It's been hella stressful. I legitimately think I couldn't have picked any worse a timing to start this line of work, given the recent COVID-19 shenanigans. I rented a 2008 Corolla Altis 1.6 for a month at 55 dollars a day to see if this line of work is for me, and... well...
I think, with all my mental distress aside, I quite like this job. It just so happens that I go through a LOT of mental distress on this job, and end up wiped out from about half a day of driving. Now, I am a (funda)mentally broken person, so I doubt anything will be smooth sailing for me. And to be fair, half a day of driving is almost the same hours as a regular office job hours, just shifted around a bit.
Admitting that things aren't easy is easy. What isn't easy is not judging myself for struggling so much. Am I too sensitive? Are my feelings too easily swayed? Probably yes to both. Is it normal to be stressed and panic a little on your first few days at a job, especially with no one to guide you? Definite yes to that. COVID-19 means every business is suffering. But it doesn't change the fact that the sheer amount of distress I'm feeling is driving me to extreme edges in my head. The extreme edges that make me give it all up and say "fuck it" and die. And that's a pretty awful head space to be in. And that makes me feel weak and doubt myself. And then that leads to me hating myself.
Business I feel has been agonisingly slow in the three days that I've been driving, and I am struggling immensely just to break even with all the costs of doing this job, which is about a hundred dollars a day, if you were to take fuel and parking into account. I think I would need a lucky full day driving my balls off to even have a hundred dollars of earnings. I am genuinely paying to work most of the time. And THAT I think is the biggest kick in the balls for me the past three days. It makes me think that I really am a hopeless, good for nothing. That I have tried and failed at an office job, a blue collar job, and now a self employed job. What else can I do, what else could I possibly be good for? If I can never hope to make a profit at a job with flexible hours like this, how am I supposed to seek long term psychotherapy treatment I know I need? I feel like I'm stuck in a deep pit and there are bugs, or something, anything, constantly gnawing away at me for as long as I'm in here. And I don't know how to get out.
One good thing that has come from all this is how reassuring my family and friends have been in my "time of crisis", assuming I can actually categorise any period of my life as being particularly in crisis, because they all are. My cousin, -, who's balls deep in the car industry, has been offering me expert level advice, and is even offering to meet me and talk at each stage of my PHC life, from application, to test, and now when I am actually driving. On my first day, I went to have lunch with my sister, when I was on the verge of losing all composure from panic and stress, and she could see that. She tried to talk me down and reassured me that what's important now is that I learn the ropes and go out and see the world a little, forget the money, implying that she and my parents will cover for me financially. My mother went out and bought collared shirts for me, and dug out my mechanic pants from long ago, because she heard that I need collared shirts and long pants, and none of my previous ones fit me anymore. I didn't even ask, I didn't even tell my family about any of this. They just heard and sprang into action, glad that their hikikomori-ing son is finally trying to do something with his life once again. It's been tremendously moving, even if I can't express it in person because I'm always so emotionally exhausted and frustrated at life and at myself.
I've planned to explain away my very long periods of being unemployed at my next job interview by saying things like, "I was driving PHC while trying to figure out what I want in my life", but it's ringing scarily true for a statement that's just meant to be an excuse. In my moments of extreme panic and feeling so hopelessly lost, my mind snaps to places of great comfort for me, which is usually around where I live. Also, strangely, I find myself frequenting IMH a lot, despite saying that I never ever want to go back there, because it reminds me too much of █, but I guess maybe that's precisely why my mind snaps back there in my time of crisis to begin with. It's an odd thing, to feel comfort in ferrying customers who live near me, even if they are the very same strangers from anywhere else. But the real oddity here for me personally is that I felt the same, if not more comfort, for ferrying workers and patients from IMH. I always felt so glad to be helping someone who's helping others in such a meaningful way, and I feel an odd empathy, an odd connection, for the patients I ferry, too... well, "worker" and "patient", anyway; I've only had two fares from the area the past three days.
It makes me wonder if I've been barking up the wrong tree this whole time in my life. I kept saying I wanted to be an engineer, to build the world's best sports car it has ever seen. I kept thinking I had to be a racing driver, to have credence. But, really, I feel like age has dulled that desire somewhat. Yes, I'm having a mid life crisis at about a third of my life. Sports cars are so mostly pretentious, image things. Social status, women wooing tools. Who really drives a sports car the way they're meant to be driven? A shocking microscopic minority. So much so that there are "sports" cars made just to cater to an image, with no performance to speak of. Racing as I've come to feel is such a stupid sport. Nowadays I think I legitimately feel more joy in helping others, talking them through their mental hurdles, as I have had done to me before. Of course, I'm no trained professional, so the level of help I can offer is severely limited at best and maybe dangerously flawed at worst, but I enjoy it nonetheless. I do legitimately wonder if I, broken to bits as I am, could be someone else's light for a little bit. I wonder if... I could be someone else's █.
But bah it's not worth thinking about because I'm actually going to need a degree in psychology or something to be a █ and where the fuck am I going to find the money for that.
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