#Wage Slave

[insideout-black]

Joy, you have to make Riley HAPPY or all this would be of NOTHING!

(Riley had a really really bad day at work and Anxiety has to make sure Riley can keep her job……at ALL COSTS.)

-----------------------------------------

A breakdown of the concept:

Joy is wearing shoes, a tight belt and a hair tie. This represents restraints and the loss of freewill

Two pegs to force a smile, as Joy is too exhausted to smile again (for both herself and Riley)

Chain of Shame and Memory Orb of Guilt: to ensure Joy remembers why Riley need to keep her smile at work

Anxiety dresses like a bossy woman for you know why

Joy’s new dress is no longer joyous but you can still see some vague flowery patterns. So maybe there are still some hope left? Meaning meaning…

[snidemollusk]

babies shouldn’t have jobs

[xxdrowninglessonsxx]

I've worked 40 hours this week, and my boss wants me to come in and work overtime. Like, bruh, I already said "no" once. I shouldn't have to say it again.

[bucknastysbabe]

GOOD MORNING UNIVERSE

TIMW TO BLOW MY SHOULDER OUT CHOPPING BOGO CANTALOUPE

MONEY

[tunamuffinsand]

Taco Bell more like Taco Smell cause I hate it here and they don't pay me enough and they keep adding stupid things to our menu all our customers are smelly (derogatory)

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Lich King - Wage Slave

[chrisisunavailable]

6 shots of espresso, 7 hours working the fryers, and 1 hour of shitting after to cleanse. The system does not fail

[jj-online]

i hate to say but

i’m starting to understand the existential horror of hating your job but being paid too well to leave

[distantdreamspt2]

life is abt give & take

[howifeltabouthim]

Every time I accepted a job I felt terrorized, like I was about to be sent to jail.

Lisa Taddeo, from Animal

[hannahd1987]

Selfie dump the second.

[copiosis]

The Best Organizations Protect The New World Order

Copiosis turns agencies in our justice system into the best versions of themselves, which keeps despots from overthrowing it. Here's how.

Photo by Fred Moon on Unsplash Law enforcement agencies worldwide are pretty good at crime fighting. They’re especially good at foiling plots involving treason. Or those involving mass violence. Especially after 9/11. We’re near the end of our series showing why taking over Copiosis is extremely difficult. In this installment, we’re looking at “super-organizations” – hyped up versions of today’s…

[gaasubap]

Eviction Causes Global Warming

We all want to do something about how bad things are getting.

But we can't.

We'll be thrown out of our homes if we stop working.

Thrown into deadly heat or cold.

Allowed to starve to death.

[basically-queenberyl]

There’s no justice in the workforce. Just milk it and exploit it like it tries to do to you. Then leave ASAP.

[kyndaris]

Rat Race Escape

Even weeks after the fact, I wonder whether or not if it was pity or something else that drove me to undertake a journey that was roughly an hour and a half down the motorway on a weekend to meet up with Bachelor number 7. It’s a difficult situation to navigate, especially when I consider how incompatible our lifestyles currently are. And yet I also don’t want to cut off all connection immediately, fearing that if I do, he might believe it was a poor reflection on his part. Still, it won’t be fair to string him along for too long either. Particularly if if he’s hoping for something more and it’s not something I can deliver.

Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I must needs tell the story from the beginning, yes? Provide context and build up a tantalising narrative for you, dear readers, to enjoy.

So, where to start? Well, it should be known that my meet-up with bachelor number 7 was my first one for the year of 2023. From the end of November 2022 to February 2023, I was caught up in holiday celebrations. While I did chat with a few other individuals during this time, and they did ask to arrange a meet-up, they simply didn’t provide much in terms of substance.

One was a Daddy’s boy, reporting to his father every interaction we shared. It didn’t help that his father was adamant about fighting his son’s battles for him as well, constantly calling and messaging my mother as we had met before through our shared mortgage broker. Goodness, if I could strangle but one man, it would be this man’s father.

The other was someone a friend of mine tried to set me up with. His first text, no joke, was: hi Kyndaris, someone gave me your number. If I didn’t know already that someone might text me out of the blue, I would have either blocked them or gone: new number, who dis? Since I was aware, I asked if he was Mister Blah n Blah. His response? how did you know? So, when he asked me out, I denied him. If a man is not going to put in the effort into texting about himself (he said he doesn’t like revealing himself too much through text - but gosh, why would I be a scammer? We were introduced by a mutual friend At least give me something. You aren’t even a cute himbo!)

Sorry. Where was I? Ah yes, so after a few missteps earlier in the year, and during late 2022, I started chatting with Bachelor number . He is five years younger than me and had liked one of my photos or had left a comment on one of my prompts - I can’t quite remember. But as I was perusing his profile, wondering if I ought to reject or match with him, I noted that he was wearing a lot of Kingdom Hearts related paraphernalia. That was my kind of fandom.

Honestly, it doesn’t take much to impress me. 

So, we started our burgeoning ‘relationship’ through Kingdom Hearts. After all, I was convinced that any fan of the franchise couldn’t be terrible. And even if nothing eventuated, we could still be friends! At least, that’s my hope. For now, we’ll just call him...Ansem (so I don’t have to call him Bachelor number 7).

But I will say that there wasn’t much in terms of practicality to our relationship. Yes, we had a few shared interests but as one of my work colleagues pointed it, if the relationship was ever going to lift off the ground, it would need a lot of work. And, to be honest, she was right. Ansem told me quite quickly that was on the autism spectrum - diagnosed with Asperger’s when he was younger. He also recently had brain surgery. As such, he was currently taking a break from working retail at the local Reject Shop. Although, he did have aspirations to work in politics in the future, be it local or state related.

As yet, though, he had no immediate plans about what he truly wanted to get into.

The vibe I also got, as we were chatting, was he might not be as flexible as I would have liked when it came to stepping out of his comfort zone. And that may come from the fact that he was neurodivergent (no judgement there). Which makes a lot of sense as one of my old high school classmates, who was later diagnosed with autism later in life, told me how they very much disliked it when their plans went awry. And that it was very difficult for them to adjust to change - leading to friction during a trip to Europe in their early twenties. 

So, with Ansem, I felt like he was very much fixed in his ways and sticking to how he foresaw the day going without too much deviation. One example that sprung to mind was the cafe that he offered as a meeting point. Even though there wasn’t much in terms of food options, he never volunteered another place as a substitute once we had glanced through the very short and select menu. Although, now that I think on it, he probably didn’t much care as he had an early lunch just prior.

There were other limitations too. Ansem didn’t drive. And I got the sense that he wouldn’t be very interested in moving away from his home in Shellharbour and heading to the big city. 

Whereas my job was in the big city. As were most of my friends, although we lived in separate suburbs that weren’t just a street away. 

Those were two major factors that were immutable and I wasn’t very inclined to move to a place that would lengthen my already long commute to work every day.

But worse, in the grander scheme of things, I was further along the path of life than he was.

In summary, it simply felt that our lifestyles were simply incompatible. We might have shared a lot of similar interests and were both only children but that was where it ended. Even our relationships with our parents were different. Not to mention what we wanted out of our lives. 

He did comment once that he saw little worth in money. And while I agreed with his sentiments, living paycheck to paycheck isn’t appealing either. I’m not trying to say that his view was wrong, given the fact that money is really just an ephemeral concept where we place value on scraps of paper that can be used in exchange for goods and services, but I also don’t want to be turned out on the street and just toeing that poverty line. Not that he was homeless, but it felt like with Ansem that there wasn’t much he aspired to be. Except maybe being a politician somewhere down the track. Whenever that might be. He certainly didn’t seem to be in any rush.

So, could the relationship work? Maybe. But it would need a lot of blood, sweat and tears. 

Still, the door remains open for another date and feeling out where it might go. Hopefully, we can arrange a date at a place that a middle ground for where the two of us live. But if it continues to be long distance (yes, yes, I know that we’re in the same country and also in the same state but driving one and a half hours for someone I barely know and haven’t formed any definite feelings for is a lot of investment!) I don’t think it’ll last. Especially if I feel like I’m not getting as much, as the saying goes, ‘bang for my buck.’

One of my friends mentioned having to chaperone her now-husband a lot back during the time that they were dating. But back then, they lived far closer than Ansem and I currently do. And they also had a year of friendship to buil up on. Ansem, for all intents and purposes, is just someone I’ve met in-person once and had a somewhat average first meeting.

Don’t get me wrong, it was fun to talk about the things we were both passionate about and shared in common. But as with most of the first dates I’ve gone on, I’ve found myself always passively listening to their much more excitable chatter. Not that I mind. I do engage and add a bit of dialogue to guide the conversation, but I often find it easier to see what the opposite party wants to talk about and then offer my two cents as needed. It provides a little insight into who they are and allows me to weigh up the pros and cons of what the relationship may entail. But maybe it also distances me from making a true connection.

Is it the wrong approach? Perhaps. But I don’t think there’s a right approach to dating either. This is no smut story where I swoon at the hottest guy that even thinks to look in my direction.

I can be witty and provide excellent banter if required, but the circumstances need to be just right if that is to happen. And with Ansem, that may be a struggle. For better or worse, I’m still wrapped up in the rat race and haven’t given much thought yet to retiring to the south coast seaside. Still, all hope is not quite lost just yet. But as ever, Shrek does appear to be the best contender when it comes to affairs of the heart.

On the plus side, I did get a few nice brochures for possible walks in the Illawarra region in case my friends ever decide to do some hikes in the near future out of the trip!

But let’s just say that a cheese and bacon baguette was not what I was expecting for lunch. 

[xxdrowninglessonsxx]

How my knees feel after a long day of work