Monday, Oct. 26th: I quit Sears this morning. There's a story behind that & I'll post it here when I can, but the bottom line is I just couldn't stand it any more. I was born to create. I was not made to be a slave in the retail industry. I am a mercenary, not a shitcan private in the great corporate army. I don't regret my time at Sears since I learned a lot, but I just couldn't stay there anymore. That's it.

If I can get ahold of a digital camera, I might be able to post the sculpture/bead stuff I do here. If not then it'll only be drawings & prints. Now I have work to do at home.

Oct. 27th Edit: Scored a digital camera this afternoon. It's a Nikon Coolpix. I don't think it's the most up-to-date model but for my purposes, it will do. What I need now is a charger for the camera & instructions. I can turn it on & off & take pictures, but that's it.

So now I am unemployed, technically. In reality, the Ren market is almost back. Most of the concrete has hardened in the square; as of last night only a small section remains to be poured. Also, there are two art shows coming up in mid-November which I have access to & of course the holiday season will arrive soon enough, so as far as art & crafts go, I have lots to do. That suits me fine.

Far as I'm concerned, the scut job at Sears was a bad idea from the start. Anyone who's been reading my blog here knows that in September I went over the high side when I was on my bike & chipped a piece of bone off my hip upon hitting the asphalt. I was riding home from work & it was raining at the time. If it weren't for the job at Sears, I'd never have wiped out on Red River St.! I wouldn't have been out in the goddamned rain, let alone trying to ride in it. The training at Sears was inadequate, so I didn't learn how to use the SNC (Sears Network Communicator, or "snick". It's an olive green handheld device with a laser beam diode in the top end, & it talks to the store server. You use it to track inventory, among other things) correctly until I'd made a few mistakes & been warned for it. And that didn't help either because the store server was having problems, the SNC was having problems, or both had problems at the same time. I was not the only one having trouble with such malfunctioning technology; it is a regular gripe among Sears employees. If the people who run Sears Holdings Co. had any foresight at all, they would have the Hancock Ctr. store's Bronze-age server replaced with something modern with a better operating system & have better units for the employees to communicate with it. But of course the company doesn't want to spend the money. No, it's much easier to keep the old technology & blame any problems it causes on the employees. Why not? After all, the employees are expendable--like toilet paper. And for most of my time at the store, I was treated the same way. We all were & those who work there still are. Naturally, this does not make for good morale. Nor does paying people minimum wage make for having good employees. There were maybe two people, at most, who I really got along with. Everyone else I had to keep at arm's length.

About 2 weeks ago I got a written warning from the Assistant Store Manager due to my inventory counts & other counts being incorrect after a few verbal warnings. To be honest, I admit I did make a couple mistakes; at times I should've slowed down a bit & paid more attention to what I was doing. But the main reason my work wasn't good there was the technology! At least once a week & usually more, I had to swap out SNCs repeatedly until I found one that would work--if there was one that worked. The same goes for the portable printers we non-cashier peons had to carry around. At least once a week, the store server wouldn't function right. It acted like someone in the intermediate stage of Alzheimer's disease, which makes sense since the server is several years old. Under such conditions, it's no wonder that my performance suffered. I can control what I do, but I cannot control the server & other gadgets at the store. I told two managers about this, several times. But I got written up anyway.

As if the above indignities weren't enough, last week my hours were cut. I was scheduled for Monday & Tuesday, 800-1200. I thought I had my regular schedule after that, so I came in Wednesday. There were only two managers at the store. Neither one of which was in Appliances or Electronics, so I didn't report to them. No one was there to tell me what to do, so I just got a SNC & a printer & replaced old &/or damaged merchandise tickets all day. After I clocked out, my immediate supervisor showed up & told me I wasn't supposed to be there. I'd been scheduled for eight hours on two days. Wage-wise, that's less than chicken feed.That was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Yesterday I got up early as usual, but I didn't pack my work clothes. I just biked to the store & told them I quit, then went right back home & went back to sleep. Later I got up worked on a couple of cups I made from polymer clay. When they're done, I'll take some photos & post them here.

(from an e-mail to a friend, edited)

For weeks now I've been grappling with depression. It's been rough, to put it mildly. At the turning of each year, I look at what I've accomplished. And coming up to 34, the only real deed I can claim is getting my bachelor's. Even that was marred by it being useless for anything except a teaching job. (If I were more functional, I might consider becoming an art teacher. That's how artists get by, right? But just try dealing with teenagers, especially these days.) All I've gotten from it is $13-some-odd thousand in debt. In a few days I'll have been on this planet for 34 years & other than a B.A., I haven't achieved squat. I did get something after my father died, but I had to deal with him & his second wife for years. I paid a price. And since getting a useless degree, I have paid so dearly for my mistake every single year.

Of course I've thought about religion. I've heard the "good news" enough times now that when someone starts to tell me, I can usually predict what (s)he will say. One of the reasons I've never become Christian is because threats of going to hell don't scare me. Since depression, tendinitis, & some other lovely conditions have been my physical inheritance, & several years of dealing with my immediate family corroded my health further (in all ways), & chaos like the bike crash, I know what agony is already. Hell is usually described as akin to physical pain. For me, physical pain is small potatoes compared to other kinds.

What has my life been lately? Meaningless work, exhaustion, goals set & not achieved, recurring irritation from several sources, disorganization, romantic isolation (not that I've seriously looked), & having to risk my life just to go from point A to point B. I knew that before the crash & I know it even more now. But when you lose the capacity to enjoy things, risking your life is not difficult. The possibility of death does not worry me in the least. What is scary is the thought of, say, ending up as a vegetable or in a coma, but if that were to happen then I wouldn't be in a position to know about it. So it's no big deal.

Other problems: My mother is old, sick, in a bad neighborhood, & has problems of her own. I rarely ever confide in her anymore. I didn't tell her about the crash right away; in fact I considered not telling her at all.

Life is horrifying.

Orig. written 9/19/09:

I got an x-ray of my shoulder & hip this past Friday. The shoulder didn't show anything but that's no surprise since X-rays only reveal solid tissue, not muscles or tendons. But there is a small fragment (probably a chip of bone) in my left hip, certainly from when I hit the asphalt in the accident. That's where the pain comes from.

I have a piece due the middle of this week.

I don't know anything about the health insurance from my job, so I'll have to ask the HR woman about it. Getting face time with her is no easy task as she's all over the place. If the insurance from Sears will pay for medical help then I will stay. If not then I'm leaving & can't go fast enough.

Looking into getting transport to/from work for people with disabilities, also. Am pretty sure I qualify now since I can't ride to/from work, or even do my job, without painkillers. (I haven't taken any this morning.)

9/21/09 Edit: By now I'm pretty sure whenever I walk anywhere, it will be with a cane. This will be true for a while; for all I know it may be for the rest of my life.

Now: I made the inquiries. Turns out I didn't sign up for health insurance when I applied at Sears. Admittedly this was a dumb move, but I didn't want the money taken out of my paycheck & who expects to get into an accident, in any case? The next open enrollment period starts in mid-November. The trick is to last until then. As I am now, I do not assume this to be a given. I will try but cannot assume I will succeed. Call it negative thinking if you like. This is the real situation. This is my life. And frankly, the thought of losing it doesn't bother me too much.

Thursday, sometime btwn 1430 & 1500 hrs, I was biking home from work. It was raining & I was on a bicycle, but what choice did I have? Anyway I was going slowly & was about 4 feet from the curb when I noticed the water under the tires (you know how those little rivers form on the sides of the street when it rains) & decided to get out of it. I moved to the center of the lane & tried to straighten out--& lost traction. I slide into the left lane & bounced off the side of an oncoming van (& the sonofabitch didn't stop, either!), slid sideways into the right lane again, & went down on my left side. I looked up & saw an SUV coming really fast & thought Oh shit, game over but luckily it stopped in time. When it stopped I was maybe halfway under the vehicle--I got a good look at the bumper. The thing backed up, stopped, & this nice older couple got out & helped me up. They wanted to call 911 but I said forget it: I could still stand up, nothing was broken, & my first thought was if my bike was okay (it is, fortunately). Then this nice black gentleman with a shaved head showed up. He saw me go down & that rattled his nerves. He took me across the street to his van (a white one) & drove me home.

My left hip & shoulder feel like a run-over dog left on the interstate for a couple weeks or so.

Edit: Today, as you know, is the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, the great slaughter of Americans. Let us all remember it, & let us all know that no matter what other reasons there were for it, it was also a perfect expression of faith. Islam, after all, requires the conversion or destruction of all who do not believe, who do not submit to Allah's rule over all the earth. Let us remember.

These titles make up my personal library as of now. I've read most of them. One day I'll read them all, but by then I might have more books! I recommend looking them up on Amazon, then buying one or two at your local bookstore (not a chain store, please).

BASIC/INTRODUCTORY TEXTS

What Is Atheism? (A Short Introduction) - Douglas E. Kreuger
A Question of Faith - William E. Kaufman, Morton Shor
The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason - Sam Harris
Letter To a Christian Nation - Sam Harris
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything - Christopher Hitchens
Atheism: A Reader - S.T. Joshi, ed.
Atheism: The Case Against God - George H. Smith
Why I Am Not a Christian - Bertrand Russell
The Case Against Christianity - Michael Martin
God's Defenders: What They Believe and Why They Are Wrong - S.T. Joshi
Irreligion - John Allen Paulos
Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity - John W. Loftus
God's Problem - Bart D. Ehrman
Ethics Without God - Kai Nielsen
In Defense of Secular Humanism - Paul Kurtz
Prejudices: A Selection - H.L. Mencken
The Vintage Mencken - Alistair Cooke, ed.
Letters From the Earth - Mark Twain


HISTORY/CURRENT EVENTS: CHRISTIANITY

In the Name of Heaven: 3000 Years of Religious Persecution - Mary Jane Engh
God Against the Gods - Jonathan Kirsch
The Dark Side of Christian History - Helen Ellerbe
The Medieval Papacy - Geoffrey Barraclough, ed.
The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason - Charles Freeman
Strange Histories - Darren Oldridge
The Scopes Trial: A Brief History With Documents - Jeffrey P. Moran
Sacred Causes - Michael Burleigh
The Missionary Position - Christopher Hitchens
Terror In the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence - Mark Juergensmeyer
Under the Banner of Heaven - Jon Krakauer
When Men Become Gods - Stephen Singular
Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism - Michelle Goldberg


HISTORY/CURRENT EVENTS: ISLAM

Islam: A Short History - Karen Armstrong
Why I Am Not a Muslim - Ibn Warraq
Islamic Imperialism: A History - Efraim Karsh
The Assassins: A Radical Sect Within Islam - Bernard Lewis
The Crisis of Islam - Bernard Lewis
Sword of the Prophet - Serge Trifkovic
Guests of the Ayatollah - Mark Bowden
The Siege of Mecca - Yaroslav Trofimov
Ministry of Lies: The Truth Behind the Nation of Islam's "The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews" - Harold Brackman, Ph.D.


RELIGIOUS THOUGHT/RESPONSES

God and the New Atheism - John F. Haught
Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age - Eugene (Fr. Seraphim) Rose
The Late Great Planet Earth - Hal Lindsey
Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood - George Grant
What's Right With Islam Is What's Right With America - Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf


SCIENCE, CREATIONISM

Superstition: Belief In the Age of Science - Robert Park
Abusing Science - Brad Kitcher
Denying Evolution: Creationism, Scientism, and the Nature of Science - Massimo Pigliucci
God: The Failed Hypothesis - Victor J. Stenger
The "God" Part of the Brain - Matthew Alper
The Bible Unearthed - Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman


ADVANCED TEXTS, MISCELLANEOUS

Language, Truth, and Logic - A. J. Ayer
Fallacies and Pitfalls of Language: The Language Trap - S. Morris Engel
The Impossibility of God - Michael Martin & Ricki Monnier, eds.
Induction: Processes of Inference, Learning, and Discovery - John H. Holland, Keith J. Holyoak, Richard E. Nisbet, Paul R. Thagard
Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits - Bertrand Russell
Everything You Know About God Is Wrong - Russ Kick, ed.
Follies of the Wise - J. Frederick Crews
Philosophers Without Gods: Meditations on Atheism and the Secular Life - Louise M. Antony, ed.
The True Believer: Thoughts On the Nature of Mass Movements - Eric Hoffer

1. After checking out the photos in a certain Deviant's gallery, I'm glad I missed the "devmeet". It must have been fun for those who went, but I'd have definitely been out of place. Besides, it's not like I wave the DA flag everywhere I go. If I ever go to a members' get-together, it'll be for Artician. Unless it's also full of people who I would be out of place among...

Guess I'm getting old. Which is fine. Once I walk with a cane again, I can whack homeless people with it.

2. A few days ago, I was pulling out into the street (on my bike, as always) & I had the signal to cross. This twentysomething couple are pulling out in their black car & looked in the direction of oncoming traffic, but not where I was coming from--the other side. The upshot is they hit my bike, me & bike hit the ground, & they tacoed the fucking front wheel. I was not harmed nor frightened, but I was pissed. Fortunately I managed to keep myself in control. We all went to a nearby parking lot (I carried my bike there since it sure as shit wouldn't roll) & the girl offered me $50. I turned it down because I didn't know how much a new wheel would cost, & we exchanged contact info instead. Might post the receipts from the bike shop here later, I dunno. At least I could get a new wheel that same day. Those kids owe me approx. sixty-five bucks now.

3. I don't always hate my job, but after today, I despise the store's GM. And I know, with utter certainty, that I will never make a career in corporate retail in my life. I'd sooner live on the streets or wind up on disability than become a retail guy, after seeing what the business does to those who stay too long in it.

On most days, just before the store opens (1000 hrs), there's a staff meeting. This morning we were informed that our "C-Sat" (customer service) rating was 40-something percent. It's the lowest the store has had in years. The manager leading the meeting informed us that despite the remodeling going on, if C-Sat scores stay down for long enough, corporate HQ could decide to close the store. This is the second staff meet (not in a row) at which I've heard that.

Never mind that I always do my job as well as I can when I'm there. Never mind that just today, it was because of my assistance that we sold three items (one a vacuum cleaner) out of Appliances & Electronics within 45 minutes or so. Never mind that we get an unusually large quantity of old people in the store, & those folks don't typically have Internet access at home & so can't do the survey. Never mind that in general, people are far more likely to notify a business of something when complaining than when they're pleased. Never mind that a lot of people just toss out their receipts instead of following the link on it, & we have no way of knowing what they thought. Never mind any of that. The bottom line & percentages are all that matters.

I've already started looking for another job, closer to home. If the managements' statements are even halfway true, then the store at Hancock Ctr. is a sinking ship.

The construction at the ren market is almost done now, so vendors are coming back. (I was a vendor out there for several months.) The holiday season is coming soon enough & for a vendor, that's the time to be out selling your handcrafted stuff. The problem is I work at a department store & holiday season is when it does major business also. The bosses will ask everyone to put in extra hours in the weeks before Xmas--that's a given. But I don't want to be there any more than I have to--I wanna be at the market & on S. Congress for First Thursdays, ferchrissakes! My loyalty is to my business, not to corporate America. But if my boss turns hardassed, it may be my job or my business. I may have a decision to make.

So what should I do when that question comes up? I know what I want to do, but economic necessity is something we all deal with. Any constructive advice would be appreciated.