This episode of bus blogging is brought to you, in part, by me needing to make up a few hours at work. If you don’t know most of that line, you’ve never watched PBS. I have no idea why it strange to mind just now. Must be my synapsis firing randomly from fatigue.

I’m trying a new route this morning. It’s like the one I take home from work, only backwards. I have to switch buses in the middle, but I don’t have to walk 2 miles total everyday anymore. I’m all for exercise, I need to do more of it, but not at 7 in the morning. I finally summoned the courage to ask a bus driver for a transfer. It was actually easy.  

I didn’t get much sleep last night. Well, that actually depends on how you quantify it. I “napped” from around 9 to 11:30, then “went to sleep” somewhere around 1, with brief interruptions for conversation.

A few years ago, before the downfall of the economy, I worked a job I really liked. It was full time, in the evenings, and work from home. But then I, and about 400 other people from that business, got laid off. Back then, my first job out of college which at the time I wasn’t sure I wanted, ended up paying me around 42k/year.

I got paid last night. With all my hours, plus what appears to be a good quantity of commission based on what I’ve seen, this job isn’t going to pay me even half that.

What happened? I mean, I know what happened, the economy is terrible. I’ve got debts, I contributed. But I thought that I would be able to sustain a job at a livable wage.

I thought that at one point in time, people actually made more money than they needed. I never saw this in my own family. I grew up in poverty. But I thought that it was a thing. An expectation. Perhaps it never was. What I do know is that now days, I, and most people that I know, are hoping to get a job that can at least pay all their bills.

When did paying bills become optional? I know my phone blows up probably twenty times a day from businesses, normally the same ones again and again, wanting me to pay them. I want to pay them. I don’t like having terrible credit and always having to keep my phone on silent. But they don’t care. I guess my inability to get a sustainable job creates jobs?

The most frustrating part is that it feels like it should be a fixable problem. Not getting paid enough? Find another job. But there aren’t any. I’ve got a bachelors and a solid résumé, not to mention proof if metrics that show I’m a good worker, and yet I can’t get an interview in any vocation that doesn’t involve sales. And that’s only because they will hire literally anyone because they know you will work really hard for three weeks, make them money, then realize its a terrible waste of time and move on to the next mistake.

So, now I’m sorta stuck. This job takes all my time, especially with the commute and exhaustion. How am I to find another? My goal this weekend is to polish up the first part of my completed novel and see if I can release it via amazon for free to generate some interest. If all goes well, perhaps this job thing won’t be an issue anymore.