"It's only temporary" I tell myself, and resolve to look for work my next day off...
This job, it's day to day, the money is good, you can bank on it, but the hours, 13, 14 hour days, 3 to 5 days a week, they're killing me.
And the money's good only absolutely, the summing up, add up the hours spent at work and it's only fair, the split days off, lack of stat holidays, it soon becomes merely mediocre.
And there's the precariousness of the position - the fact that you can be fired, let go, at any time. Or perhaps, like so many that have gone before me, simply have enough and not go in again. In fact the big thing that keeps me going in is the fact that each day, each shift, could be my last...
But the day off comes and it's spent with kids and napping, patchwork recuperation for the coming week.
And there are the plans....
Time off in August. 3 weeks in a row. The last 2 days off in a row I had were at the beginning of January, August, it's only 3 months away....
Meanwhile summer approaches and I'm trapped in the restaurant, sunny days and cool spring evenings, outside the birds, sunsets, the ice has thawed enough on the Bow that I can begin again my hunt for arrowheads and Native artifacts, art projects beckon, my life is calling....
"3 months" I tell myself, I owe the children a decent vacation, it's been years...
But this vacation, it comes at the expense of seeing them during the week, and visits now become the cheapened "Take them for dinner and tell me about your week", not the parenting that I signed up for...
And I owe myself too, and life slips by...
I buy lottery tickets, but even if I won a million dollars still I would be broke, there are the innumerable claims upon my finances that could be made by relatives and ex's, the fair division of winnings would not see me take more than a fifth, a seventh, and a hundred, two hundred thousand dollars, not even a house....
I'm hanging on for the vacation, but after the vacation then what? The thought of returning to the restaurant kills me. And I'm hanging in for benefits as well, I'm in desperate need of a dentist and am loathe to spend several months income on restoring my smile to a marginal state. Benefits will reduce that expense. I don't want to lose my benefits....
The money I'm making, the money I'm saving, there are debts still to be paid, vacations to be taken, teeth to be fixed, vague plans to open a cafe, a business of my own, these sacrifices will not be without meaning...
And I'm like a gambler on a losing streak, throwing good money after bad, chasing my losses, trapped by future plans....