Yes. I do realize my last few posts have been utterly negative, complete downers. Things are.. bad, but there are moments–(Somehow I feel I’m repeating myself–Have I said this before?)
There are moments where I am indeed enjoying myself. These moments more often spent by myself; Seldom in the company of others.
—
I am losing my train of thought-currently sitting at a table next to some teens at McD’s. One of them is talking in a very obnoxious, gruff voice, trying to be funny with his friends; Totally annoying. I’d like to buy a Happy Meal, and stuff the toy down his throat, impairing his speech-Would also like to find his mother and slap her.
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As I was saying, I am by nature a ridiculously shy person. Always on guard. Lately tho, I’m starting not to care so much about image-Well about anything regarding me. I’m pathetic, I really am. Shame and embarrassment doesn’t matter when you’ve hit rock bottom. How low can one go without breaking the law or pushing the envelope on what’s morally acceptable?
—
I hate these kids.
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OK. I think I’m definitely delving beyond the simplicity of my initial intent of this, so I’ll get to the point.

I enjoying singing.
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These fucking kids!
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My taste in music is falling back to my pre-goth rocker, riviethead, and punk rock flavors, and that is more jazz-vocals, the Great American Songbook standards, opera and choral. Been listening to a lot of material by composers like Harold Arlen-Vocalists like Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Al Martino, and James Darren. Lest we forget the female vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, or Keely Smith.

I listen to and sing a lot of this stuff when I drive around running errands, and have even entertained (or annoyed) my co-workers at Green Hell over the store intercom (after hours of course).

I feel the one true physical talent that I have is vocal control of which derives mimicry, and singing. Would like to take a stab at voice acting.

Let me re-iterate, voice acting.

Regular acting? Ha! Never. First off, I am completely unattractive. Secondly,  I mentioned earlier of my ridiculous shyness which results in stage fright. I can remember trying to perform a part in highschool, the witches in Macbeth, as an extra credit in English class. Hell, I even dressed up in goth club mode. I started out great, but by the second or third line, I froze. As people gawked at me, I had forgotten everything. It was beyond humiliating. I believe it was at that moment where
I knew I couldn’t do stage work.

I wish I could have tried harder back then. I do recall now, doing yet another presentation for an English class in college, an oral report on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest-I do remember performing that rather brilliantly, pacing sternly around the room as I read aloud and threw the pages behind my pack as I finished them. I don’t remember if I made any sense, but I do recall people were entertained, and the teacher mentioned that I should have joined a debate team.

So as I get older, it seems the nervousness and shyness is slowly peeling away.

Singing. Well, I’ve always had more confidence in that ability. I had no problems singing with various choral groups in junior high and highschool, always performed well. In fact my vocal teacher in junior high even tried to talk to my grandparents into not moving away, so I could continue working with him-To join the men’s chorus in high school, which would have been nice because they were competing chorus that got to travel everywhere, including Japan. Truly missed out on that opportunity.

Of course things happen that you have no control of, and so here I am-Singing along with ghosts, as I’m cruising down the road. 

I would like to create a SoundCloud account and record some passages and songs to exhibit my vocal range. Regrettably I sold my recording interfaces before I moved here, and I have no money to purchase even a cheap one. I still have my beloved Super 55 mic, just nothing to hook it up to. Haha!

It’s all a mean joke, and the funny part is, I’m the one who’s telling it to myself.
—
Thank goodness, those damned kids left.

Note to self: Don’t use the WordPress android app to write the initial draft as simply switching to the dictionary program seems to delete everything you wrote.

I’m sitting in the members lounge at the Kaiser Permanente building in Springfield, Virginia. Brought mother here to attend her weekly insomnia class that will continue into early September. So in the following Tuesday mornings, I’ll have to bravely navigate us through Beltway traffic. It’s not that bad tho.

On the plus side, I have found that the cafeteria here makes a small, but excellent tasting Reuben sandwich, and that these classes are two hours long-Hence my making time to blog here now.

And now onto more pressing matters…

About two weeks ago, Saturday, 19 July I was asked to work a cashiering shift at Green Hell on the backup register. I’ve come to find out that on weekends there is no backup register-Like the main register, it is always active.

As I have noted in previous posts, I dislike-No, I just plain hate cashiering. Additional to my reasons stated, I believe in part now that I have developed or have always been a bit of a chrometaphobe. Perhaps the experience in bankruptcy brought these feelings to surface-But at times now, I get nervous looking at and handling money. Now that I think of it, all those years at Streetlight Records, I never felt comfortable dealing with money there either.

There was a couple moments during that shift where I was literally going to just walk out and quit. I was not at all happy or comfortable, and there were more than a few people/customers whom I would have truly enjoyed punching in the face. Somehow, I was able to get through it without doing anything regrettable.

Now here’s interesting bit.

My sister had asked me the day before to walk Kingston (her husband’s and her dog), around their place which I had agreed to. The landlord won’t allow quadrapets in the basement, so I’m happy to hang out with Kingston whenever.

After that horrible shift, I headed straight over.

Not sure where it began, but somewhere, somehow… I blacked out. What I mean by that is that for a moment (or longer, I honestly can’t remember), I had no idea who I was, where I was, or where I was going. Muscle memory alone probably helped with the motor skills in keeping me driving.

When my mind finally realised something was wrong and I woke up, I was in the action of making a turn somewhere. I hesitated and almost ran over the center island exiting an intersection. Thankfully there were no other cars around.

At this point I was in extreme panic, and pulled over into some residential road and parked. I looked around, just dumbstruck. “Where am I?” I looked down at my hands and questioned, “Who am I?” At the dashboard, “Who’s car is this? And how do I know how to drive?”

I started to fumble around my pockets and I felt my smartphone. “Oh good! Information.” It took a few seconds to figure out which icon to press, but I soon found Google Maps and I figured out where I was. “Burke… Virginia. What the hell am I doing in Virginia?!” As I was saying that, I caught my image in the rear view mirror. That’s when it all flooded back into me.

“Oh.” I took a deep breath and sighed. Have to admit that I was kind of disappointed when I realized who I was again.

According to the GPS, I was in the right area, just a few blocks off my usual course. I eventually got to my sister and brother-in-law’s place, got to walking Kingston, and everything has been normal since.

I believe my blackout was caused by the stress from that shift, along with home life (in taking care of mom), and my troubles with money (and lack of), and quite frankly just being me-Depressed and feeling wholely unfulfilled, completely ashamed, and confident that it will not get any better.

Yeh. My mind basically said to my body, “F-U, I’m taking a break. You’re on your own for a few minutes.”  

Haha. I wonder if I should get myself checked out. Maybe I’ll end up being some crazy old man with Alzheimer’s or some form of dementia-Happy-go-lucky and spinning vivid tales about my fantastic life that never actually happened.

That doesn’t sound so bad. If by then my mind is so far gone and removed, and I’m locked away from society-Maybe then I can believe such stories, believe in myself, and I could die happy and fulfilled.  

I have to question:

–Working at green hell here in Virginia, am I helping poor people save a buck; Or am I helping elitist and impatient rich, yuppie arseholes that do not have the common courtesy to say hello and continue to talk on their mobiles while your ringing them up… Am I helping them get richer? 

I very much dislike the combination of dealing with people consuming, and their money. 

I really hate… and I don’t use the word hate loosely, but I hate cashiering. 

I don’t feel any satisfaction or fulfillment from doing it – All I see is people with their faux enthusiasm and/or impatience.

Not all customers are like that of course, but it only takes one to ruin what might have been a tolerable day at work.