I've been meaning to write this post for literally a week now! I'm just...really busy at this point. And likely to fall asleep the moment I get out of work.

I haven't talked much about my job on here because I think everyone around me is a little sick of the "Cammy doesn't like his job" carousel even though this one probably legitimately deserves the complaints. At my last two jobs, I was at fault, really—a lot of me being a baby for no reason, a lot of issues with customers and other employees that were on me, a lot of autism—and I regret complaining so much because I enjoyed both of them for what they were. In the case of my first supermarket job, which I've been trying to get back, people still get excited when they see me come in and ask me if I'm coming back! So many people have asked me how Wales was, both regulars and associates. That's a sign of a good job right there.

With this store, though, everything from

• Breaks (when I get them, if I get them, if I even get a choice to take them or not)
• My schedule (no consistent days off, no consistent shift times, don't know what next week's schedule is until the previous Friday)
• Employee discounts (got explicitly told we didn't get one, turns out, we do, but they don't want people using it, so they just tell people it doesn't exist and you have to go out of your way to set it up)
• Managers (some are alright, but I have had plenty of people talk to me like this is my first job and I don't understand how a store is run since I started)
• Store protocol (I got told my register would be used exclusively for beer, not groceries, with the word of both the hiring manager and the beer lead behind that, and the moment I attempted to use it, I got an earful from a customer and a third manager saying "actually that's not a rule, you have to take them anyway", so that was two people who lied to me or were also misinformed)
• My federal goddamn taxes (didn't get the necessary forms for dependents/withholding during onboarding, got lied to about when they go into effect by the store, got lied to about the paperwork being filed, had to go to associate support to get a straight answer, and had to spend another start of another shift filing it again)

has been an absolute flip-flopping fucking nightmare. Nothing is consistent whatsoever. Stuff I took as a given very much isn't here. Even the beer register pinpad has been broken for four months now, and they can't get anyone to fix it. I kinda don't know how this store stays functional. I've had customers, plural, come up to me and tell me how much their experiences working for the store or having family and friends work for the store suck as well. I know it's not just me this time, and this all started happening within my first week of working there, so I don't even think I factor into it. This is just how it happens here.

I was originally going to spend the rest of the year working on my IT certifications, but then I realized that I'd be more likely to find something in that field that'd hire me locally (locally meaning within a few towns of me), and I'd need a car for that. That's my story. I'm here saving up for a car and perhaps some more driving lessons so I can finally be mobile and go on fun vacations and bring Caby over here. This is car money and not much else.

Thankfully, no one bothers me over in beer most days, so I'm free to just take customers (who are frankly a good bit nicer than some of the managers), clean up a bit, and be on Discord the rest of the time. I've gotten pretty good at this customer service thing, so it all runs smoothly and no one ever has any complaints (aside from that one lady, but we made up the next time we saw each other, so I'm just gonna chalk it up to her being crazy and Puerto Rican). I'm looking at the rest of my year here, and I've accepted it. This is an opportunity for me. It's not a lot of money, but it is an opportunity to save up and make the things I want happen. I'm not squandering it.

Days go fast at this point, provided I'm not spending six hours at a time bagging people's groceries. Now that I'm not New and In Need of Training, people generally leave me alone. Before I know it, it'll be the end of the summer, it'll be getting cool out again, and I'll have been there three or four months. Then six. Then it'll be 2025 and I'll have a nice little nest egg of savings, and I can fly back to Wales for a month, get my car, get my driving lessons, and be free of it. I'm looking long term here. Right now, this is what it's like, but that's okay. I have a five year plan to blow this popsicle stand and get with my girlfriend finally and not have to deal with the living online, the shitty jobs, the no money—all of it will pass, and I will make this happen.

I mentioned Art Fight! I feel bad about not being in the right state to participate in the last two fights, despite promising Caby I would, so all my free time over the last week has gone towards drawing refs so I can actually take part this year. What motivated me outside of just purely making it up to Caby is that there's a large amount of not just mutuals and potential mutuals I've come across, but old-time and new-time inspirations of mine participating. I'm pretty sure I could actually carve out a little niche of friends and mutuals for myself here! I'm not gonna be able to get all the characters I want up on my profile drawn and before the start of the fight, but I can debut with three, I think, and then get the next two up at some point within the next week.

I've been hesitant to link my profile out and follow people until stuff is ready, but the good news is that I feel pretty fuckin' good about my art these days. It's a nice feeling that what I'm drawing now won't look dated in a year, like I'll have to redraw a ton of refs again come next July. Extra nice is that these refs double as illustrations for toyhou.se! I was aiming to have a fullbody on the toyhou.se profile of every character of mine, and the ref drawings are a perfect match for the aesthetic I want, once I color in the lineart. All this work is killing two birds with one stone, which is the kinda efficiency I really need as life gets crazy.

As a final note, I do technically have lofi.mari.somnol up on that domain, looking all lovely and all compatible with retro browsers as intended (seriously, this might be my favorite site I've ever built), but I haven't announced it anywhere because there's still a few missing pages, mostly in the writing section. I have a nice, tidy list of stuff to bugfix or missing words and misspellings to correct on nofi as well once lofi is sorted, and then I just need to draw a ton of Alexis and Setters, respectively. That might have to wait until August at this rate.

Like I said though, that's soon. August hits and then we're not far off from fall 2024. I will hopefully have hifi sorted, now that I know what it'll look like, by the end of the year, and that's huge. I'm working on lots of things so someday soon I can relax and enjoy them instead. Things are shifting. The end of an era of my life and the start of a new one is in sight. I can feel it. I'm making this happen. Stay tuned.