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Honestly, I have lost count. I think it has been four months since our weekly hours have been cut at work. We were the last department effected by it, but we have finally caught up with everyone else.

It hasn’t been so bad. Missouri has offered the Work Share program. It is designed to encourage companies to cut hours instead of laying off employees. Our company has qualified. If the normal weekly hours have been cut by twenty to forty percent, employees qualify for that same percentage of a weekly unemployment claim. I qualify for the maximum claim, which isn’t so much but is $320 weekly. So, each short week, I receive a subsidy between twenty and forty percent of that. The federal government has added a weekly twenty five dollar stimulus to all unemployment claims.

That almost makes up the difference of the lost day. Almost. Also, the Work Share payment shows up a week to two after I receive my paycheck for the same hours… That makes things a bit tighter.

Still, I do pretty well at getting by. I am proud of myself for the effort I have put into reducing the cost of my life. And in the last few months, I have been adjusting the way that I shop and keep groceries, reducing the amount I keep on hand in the pantry and the amount of waste over-all: I buy less fresh produce at one time, ensuring it is all eaten while still good; I shop almost exclusively at no-frills discount groceries; Costco trips are incredibly limited; I have watched more tightly my power usage, turning everything off more often, not using as many lights in the first place…

My credit debt hasn’t helped much. I fully realize how much more comfortable I would be if I didn’t have that monster strapped to my neck, even at my modest pay rate.

And now some things have stepped up the struggle.

<snark>Yay! for economic recovery </snark>

I received two lovely notices in the mail yesterday.

The first was from Citibank, the holder of what I previously considered my good credit card. The fucking bastards.

I am dodging things. Kinda. Well, maybe. I feel like I am dodging things; hopping from spot to spot, avoiding the shadows cast by the ominous clouds. For the most part I am good. Good good, not just okay good.

But, really, I keep skipping the off stuff. I need to vent but no longer seem to remember how. And as much as I enjoy where this blog has headed, I feel that the path has excluded the original journalling aspect of this place from the current option list. In essense, my journal has become a blog. It is a struggle for me to offer up the struggles of my personal life these days, independent of how much I need to print them here.

Work is awful. I do not wish to have faith that it will improve, as everyone there is want to tell me. Seriously, it has been a crap job for three years now and it is getting worse. I personally feel that national management is corrupt and no where near the breaking point of turn-around. If it helps to understand, the higher ups are filling in spots from the auto industry. Yeah, I know. Maybe next will be some of their banking buddies.

Between not understanding how much food is inteneded about the “take with food” suggestion of my meds, the week-long chase and tag with Fed-Ex to receive said meds and teh stress of a crappy job with crappy pay, my GI track has been running a week-long race to the shitter, and almost winning… I have been holding this all in all week long, just not wanting to rehash and relive it all after I get home… I want to turn it to something useful, so I swallow it and get to work. Only it never leaves. Each day the stressors are sitting at the curb, waiting for me to start the race once again. I work to let it go and move onward, but in letting go, I don’t hold onto what I need to hold onto in order to permanently resolve the greater repetitive problems…

See, here I am. Frustrated and no longer wishing to get into it all… That is how it goes. Here, a pretty picture/grid thingie:

It is really pretty relevant. It is my becoming; where I am from; where I am going and how I am getting there. This was inspired by an interesting older gentlemen on my list over on Flickr. I produced it last night when I decided I didn’t want to bitch about life. It helped; for one night…

There is a curious thing inside of my brain. I remember how much I hated sitting for photos. Family photos were awful, but school photos were a walking nightmare. I always hated whatever I picked to wear after I had walked to school and was stuck with it for all eternity as of the session in the afternoon. Also inside of my brain is the strong recollection that I was a fat frumpy acne stricken awkward idiot of a child… I am missing ninth grade in the grid, but I have the yearbook and that one is heinous. Truly, an awful photo all the way around…

Position 14 was the first posed professional portrait I have ever liked immediately out of the gate. It was for my fraternity’s composite photo from circa 1991. I actually remember bits of the day for positions 3, 6, 10 and on-ward. I remember the entire day for position 6… (It was one of those days, when it became obvious that I had lost my owner’s manual, because everyone else just knew without discussion that the uniforms must be worn for every gathering except those that occur on picture day… And I was so proud that I remembered all on my own, so much so that I entirely forgot about picture day.)

I suppose all of this is really about the patterns of my life. As much as I grow and expand and evolve, I do not stray far from the patterns, behaviors and choices set in these earlier years of development. Inside of all of this fur and skin is a tiny terrified little boy that is absolutely convinced he is a fat frumpy idiot. Even when my higher brain continues to disprove the case. I know I am none of those things. Looking at these photos, I know I never was. And still there it is.

This is the root of why I consider childhood to be such a rotten place to live. I have been increasingly ecstatic to step out of every decade I have been able to complete.

In these awful, exhausting weeks like the one I have not even finished, I am comfused by my ability to be both strong and confident and full of love for myself and this tiny weeping insecure thing. All at once. My head hurts grasping it, so I simply roll…

*sigh*

None of this has focus of meaning or purpose except to droll onward…

Bah.

Back to the grid:

Position 19 was taken by kumazuki, three months after chemotherapy. My first social outing after treatment. The beard wasn’t shaved; it was just growing back. It is painful for me to look at it. I have to struggle to see myself in the face, even as I know beyond doubt that it is me. I was in pain from carrying the weight gained by feeding the turmoil of chemo, even if I think that helped me to stay alive.

Position 18 was perhaps two months before I found the lump. It was likely already there, waiting to be discovered.

Position 17 was my last summer in Phoenix. It was the official photo for my entry in a swimsuit fundraising contest. I came in second. I *gasp* ed when I saw the photo. The full-length is still something. It was taken at the height of a three year long workout regimen. I still had body fat to spare, but the muscle mass was obvious. Here, I am already bringing my innerself outward… I am happy for that.

It has been a slow journey.

Here, enjoy the photos. I just can’t stay focused enough to finish a thought. I can’t even begin to explain all the places I went during the effort to write this post….