Life is a pickle and a horse is a horse

I am now a cubic age, and while I felt pretty good about things at the time, I’m not quite as sure now. I feel like I have a lot of things to look forward to in the more far-off future: a rose-colored existence with Nick; some degree of success in my musical research; my SAM presentation in March; starting a PhD program; eventually making a dent in my various debts by enduring no small amount of suffering in the present; possibly getting to teach college students for money again.

But the ‘right now’ part really, really sucks. I’m pulling 40-45 hour workweeks, and have been since the end of July, with no sign of it stopping until I quit the company. There’s the former friendship/political nonsense between me and LL which generally makes things a bit tense for me most of the week. To all of you who think she’s simply jealous over my ‘success’: you have no idea how very wrong you are. My store is one of the busiest in lower Manhattan, overwhelming as a result, and also, at the moment, one of the most understaffed. It’s the end of the fiscal year, so the other ASM’s are trying to use up their vacation time before October 1. One supervisor got fired a couple weeks ago and hasn’t been replaced. Two baristas have left the company for good, several are high school/college students and have slashed their availabilities, and today a pregnant barista fell and was put on bedrest, which means she won’t be returning to work before her due date. The remaining baristas are, with few exceptions, some combination of immature, poorly trained, unfocused, and unreliable to show up for their shift, either on time or at all.  There’s also 6 credits of school, which is usually too much to think about, so I’ve just kind of been hoping whatever term projects I’m responsible for this semester are not going to be too time-consuming.

More immediately is my problematic credit card debt. I had four ‘problem’ cards-one went to collections and was paid off as of April; one I’ve nearly paid off, a third one I’m in the process of paying off, and the fourth one disappeared in December, and got sold to that uber-awful collections agency. I think I wrote about it at the end of last year. Anyway, they passed on the work of collecting to this collections law firm in New York State. I had just received some verification of the debt when they slapped me with a court summons. These people are less threatening than the previous collection agency, but equally as greedy. They don’t really want to negotiate a settlement, and want pretty extensive proof of financial hardship. I had hoped to settle out of court, as I genuinely want to make payment, but this firm doesn’t seem to be very interested. I’m not too certain of my chances in court, either. I think I’d end up having to pay more, but it seems like a toss-up.  Urgh.

What a quagmire. I wish I could fast-forward to all the nice things I have to look forward to happening someday …..