I don't expect anybody to read this, but it feels better to write it all out.
I'm getting to the point of really, really not liking my job. At all. I dread Monday mornings and knowing I have to make the trek back to this place. All week I just count down the days until Saturday finally arrives again, and then before I know it, Sunday night is back. I hate coming into work to a stupid note saying something along the lines of "last week was slow, you could have done this, this and this" when I already did those things. And because she's my boss, I can't tell her that I left the store on Friday in better condition than she left it for me this morning. She's a nice person, but she's so nitpicky and it doesn't matter what I do or how much I clean, it's as if she doesn't notice. And I feel like she thinks it's my fault last week was so slow, eventhough she said she doesn't think it's me... there's always an underlying tone of "well, it's busy on the weekends when I'm here (so it must be you)". Of course it's busy on the weekends. It's always been because everyone shops on the weekend. It's busy on the weekend when I'm here, too. I feel like I'm pretty good at my job, so I hate feeling like I'm being blamed for a slow week.
I hate the commute to work. It takes me at least an hour to get here. I have to walk a fair ways to the train station (which it's bad in the spring/summer, but sucks in the winter because of the ice), get on the train, get off the train, stand around waiting for a bus, get on the bus, sit on the bus while the driver reads a newspaper for a while, and then finally get to work. To a stupid nitpicky note. And customers who think it's all my fault if we're out of a product, and talk to me like I'm the stupidest, worst person in the world because I'm 'just a retail worker'.
I wish I had better training. I wish I got to go to seminars and stuff so I could learn more about each individual product. It seems a few Chazzers have a similar job to mine and they're all super confident in their knowledge and get to go and learn things. I feel like while I do pretty good at my job, I could be better if I had some more actual education rather than basing what I know off of mostly my own research and my own pets and the bit of information I got out of reading the training manual.
There are a few things to like about my job and are things that keep me here: I work alone (which is mostly good, sometimes boring), I get to bring Journey, aside from the nitpicking I generally like my boss and know that she does appreciate me, and I usually only work weekdays which is nearly unheard of in retail.
But I can't do this forever. I really do not want to live at home forever. I'd like to move out within the next year or two. I need a job that pays well so that I can support myself on my own, preferably something that is Mon-Fri and not something I need to go to school for a hundred years for. I'm not very good at school. I learn better hands-on and having someone show me, rather than trying to read and comprehend and learn from what I just read. And even if I did want to go to school, I have no idea what for. I just want to figure out my life and get on with it. I'm already going to be 23 and feel like I've kind of just wasted my life since I graduated High School and time has just flown by. I want to be successful at something and have a good job/career that hopefully I might enjoy or at least won't mind doing for the rest of my life.
To top it all off, it's really just been a crappy couple of months. My mom got a boyfriend in January (first one ever since divorcing my dad) and while she's very rarely ever home now (which is weird for her), when she is home she's just weird. It's like she barely listens to anything we say, she's talked to me a few times recently like I'm 10 years old... and I don't know. It just feels strange and not right, but she doesn't notice a difference at all. Usually she's a really quirky, funny person and we get along super well, and lately it's like I'm just avoiding a big fight. And I can't talk to her about it because 1) she gets immediately defensive and never realizes what she could have done to contribute to an issue and just goes off on a tangent of all the things I might have done to annoy her in the last year, and 2) I feel like crying everytime I try to bring anything up, which is really annoying. I've been on the verge of tears or crying more in the last two months than I've ever been my entire life I think and I wish it would stop.
Ugh. I wish I could sort my life out and feel like I'm going somewhere rather than sitting at a dead end, and I wish my relationship with my mom would get back to normal. Mostly my life is pretty good, but I feel like everything is just piling up and falling apart lately. The good news is that I've finally made some friends with the same dog interests as me. Hanging out with them on the weekend is the highlight of my week.