Retail Overload

Just worked four nine-hour shifts in a row as a night cashier.  I usually work part-time and my shifts are more spread out so I'm not used to being in the store for so many days in a row.  Here's how that went…

Day 1: Exhausted, just happy if I can survive the shift without falling over.  I vigilantly count the hours until I get to go home and vow to go to bed as soon as I go home.  My tiredness gives me a drug-like numbness that helps me tolerate massive amounts of douchebaggery.

Day 2: Got 7 hours of sleep, which is an improvement.  I feel more well-rested.  The store is very busy, but I work hard and I am more friendly with customers and coworkers.

Day 3: My vow to get better sleep has been ignored again and I get 5 hours of sleep.  However, for some reason I am happy, contemplative and energetic.  The customers are a mix of entitled, ignorant people and attractive men; sometimes a combination.  I treat all of them way better than they deserve.  An indian woman asks me if I hate her, possibly because I didn't help her immediately and because she was being a pain in the ass.  I say "no," but my acting needs work.

Day 4: Everyone is an asshole and if I don't get out of here soon I will kill someone!  A woman asks if she can have a 5 cent plastic bag for free and I say, "I guess."  When she says goodbye I say nothing and give her a look of contempt.  A European woman tells me that cashiers are given chairs to sit on in Europe so their backs don't hurt.  "I bet you didn't know that!" she says, as if she is talking to a child.  She makes no visible effort to change the rules in our store or any Canadian store.  When customers ask for help using the self-checkouts, I try my best not to throw their items onto the carousel as hard as I can.  When I'm finally free, I do not feel joy, but confusion and a profound feeling of disappointment and regret.

At least I'm off for a few days… :)

Hello, pleased to meet you!

So this is my very first blog post.  Pretty exciting. I wasn't sure what to write about on this first blog and I think this first post will be short.  I've seen other blogs about cooking, sewing, creating art, singing, being a waiter, doing people's makeup, so many things.  The one theme I'm seeing is that it has to be something creative and interesting.  And although I'm an undergraduate singer studying voice at university, I don't really want it to just be about that.  I'm also really into writing poetry and prose, reading, exploring music, travel (although I'm not rich enough to do that regularly), vegetarianism, cooking, drawing, languages, swimming and many other things.  I want to start writing songs soon, because it sounds like fun.

I work at Wal-Mart during the summer (although I plan on finding something better next summer), and I might come back for the dreaded Christmas season, so I will probably have quite a few horror stories to tell.  It's really not that bad, but sometimes really screwed up shit happens.

I'm a soprano.  Some have said that I'm a coloratura.  I myself am not sure.  I sing opera, art songs, oratorio, etc but I also love to sing other genres like big band (I am actually in a big band), jazz, rock, folk, alternative rock/indie, etc.  I'm open to pretty much all styles of music and I love new music, sometimes even when it's dissonant or really unusual.  I love music, basically.  The one genre that I only slightly like is hip-hop/rap.  I find that a lot of those songs take songs that have already been written, make that the loop and then do a rap over it that doesn't do the song justice.  They really like to do this with classical music for some reason.  I guess the contrast.  Anyway, I do like some rap/hip-hop but mostly I'd rather listen to the Edge (if you've heard of that radio station).  I'm pretty sure I want to be a singer and/or a music teacher when I get older.  At least something sort of having to do with music.  But I'm not completely sure.  So I have officially decided that this blog will be about self-discovery.  Thus the title which quotes the "Logical Song" by Supertramp.

I'm also a left-wing agnostic and I live in Canada, just to give you a little vague personal information.  I have two brothers and a dad, but sadly my mom died of cancer over the summer.  It's been really hard to get used to, but I think it has helped me grow up a lot.  I still really miss her every day.

I love writing.  I deal with my feelings that way pretty much on a daily basis.  I recently finished "The Artist's Way", a course in creativity by Julia Cameron and I still do morning pages and occasional artist dates.  Morning pages have really helped me express my feelings in writing.  I'm not sure if they've helped my creativity.  But because of them I can write a lot.  I can just write and write and write.  Thanks, Julia Cameron!  So I hope you have good eyes, should I choose to go on a blogging/writing binge.

All the blogs I've seen look really interesting.  It's a nice way to let out what you have to say and to have your own space to write, create, have fun, interact.  Better than your own website?  I don't know.

It would be nice for my friends to read this blog but I'm worried that I might want to write about people that I really hate or love, or things that I don't want people I know to know about.  It's hard to explain, but I like my privacy.  So I have decided to be anonymous.

Also, I recently quitted facebook.  I had an essay due and I don't think I would have finished it if I didn't quit.  It's also not very useful.  It's just a sophisticated stalking tool.  I felt like I was getting way too obsessed with other people and their lives.  I'd constantly check my news and the walls of guys I like, check out friends of friends.  Really weird.  And also there's that odd feeling when you talk to your friend and you ask "How was your weekend?" and they say "Oh great.  I went surfing and sang karaoke in a bar with my friends" or whatever, but you already know, because their status says "Great weekend.  Went surfing and sang karaoke at a bar until 4 am with my buddies."  But you ask anyway, because, well, you don't want them to know that you know.  Very strange.  I don't need to know all this information about people.  If I need to contact people I'll email them.  But I still want something fun to do online other than email and youtube.  And this is actually kind of productive at the same time.  In conclusion, facebook is the devil and blogging sounds like a good alternative.

That said, I welcome you to my blog I hope it entertains you, and me.