I started my new job November 10. I've not met a person there that I don't like. The work itself is easy, but very demanding mentally. I have been getting up at between 4:30AM and 5:20AM since November 10. I catch the train into the city. I walk ten minutes before that. I walk another ten quick minutes from the train station to the office.
I try to log on at 7AM. That means I can finish at 3:06PM. Workday done.
The work building has a gym. Sometimes I use it after work, but it is not equipped like the one I pay for near my house. The days when I have to come to the office, which at the moment is every Monday, every Tuesday, every Wednesday, every Thursday and every Friday, it is a 70 or so kilometres on a train all up, two hours.
An ideal day, I wake up 5:10, I leave, I return home at about 4:40. There's little time for much else. I get tired. I get irritable, particularly now that the children have return ed to school and their loud voices and misbehaving tongues exceed the noise level that I determine to be a suitable one.
I have noise cancelling headphones. They silence the masses of conversations on the train, and on some days, I get to sit next to a coworker on the journey home.
I am so grateful for my noise cancelling headphones. Without them, I would be guilty of so many verbal misdemeanours, mainly involving my desire for silence on a train carriage.
My meals at work are the same every day. I have two protein shakes, one in the morning, when I arrive, then another on my first break a few hours later; and then when I get home after the gym, I have some more protein and fibre and find that no matter how much water I drink, it never feels enough - given the Australian heat of the summer, and the necessity to commute through it.
When I left my prior job, I was happy. When I started my new job, I was happy, but I find myself having no medium to long term objectives beyond retaining gainful employment, in order to provide for my family, my cat, and to keep the corporate entities that demand money for bills at bay.
With each passing day, I feel my free will stripped ever so slightly more. Perhaps it is the fact that the routine of travel, the stubbornness of the train that always takes me to the same destination - the fact that I take the same laneways and alleys instead of the main streets (because it gets me in and out faster) makes me feel more like a small part of a larger moving machine.
I maintain my unique identity through my homeless appearance - long hair, un-trimmed beard, and a desire to find myself in the gym every second day. I get mentally tired.
Then I go to the gym, and I get physically tired. But it never feels like enough for sleep to claim me. I don't drink coffee. I've started drinking green tea in the office in the mid-morning. I gaslight myself into the antioxidants enhancing my mental focus, when in reality, it is the creatine in my protein shake.
Yet, I dream at night. I have lucid dreams of the office's production systems, and I wake up multiple times in the night. I struggle to get back to sleep. I'm tired.
I'm sleepy. I'm exhausted. I'm stretched. I'm making just enough money. I'm not hungry. There's nothing I want to buy. Spending money on anything that isn't a retirement goal, or indeed putting money away for the future is the only thing that I am interested in doing, so that one day, in perhaps, the very nearest future, I won't be so tired anymore.
I miss writing. I hope you miss reading.
Meanwhile, on the HIVE front - I have read the news that HIVE trading pairs will be delisted from Binance shortly. There is much discussion (ongoing) that off-ramps cause Hive to bleed in terms of its value, with people who sell hive the moment it enters their grubby mits.
Perhaps the removal of a prominent off-ramp will stem the bleeding, but perhaps also people should realise that the underlying function of hive - writing, reading, engaging, making friends (or enemies) is not linked to its price.
Perhaps it will also see such people vanish from the platform, until we're a few dozen souls being sincere in a small corner of the world.
Whatever does happen, it's been a ride, and one that I don't want to get off.