The Search Begins

Cutter's Log - Stardate 9002.91.90
Current Song - Early Autumn (Stan Getz)

This is what happens after you faint when you get the kicked the crap out of.

It's hard for me to write this.

I love my customers at the gas station. Aside from my classmates from school, these are the friends I talk to these days. I come to work each night to service them. I want to be here for them. My customers are the reason why I work at the Shell station. I come in early because of them. I stay there late because of them. I skip some of my chores because of them. They bring in the dough, but I don't think of it as that. My concentration should be on them, because they take the time to come in the store to get their things. For most customers it has become THE go-to place for things.

These particular customers, for whom East End Shell is a go-to place for, I know by name. They're the ones who stay a minute or two to chat. For someone who has deep trouble communicating with people, this is something I cherish.

Working at a gas station is not what I want to do. That honor goes to sportswriting.

There have been many times where I thought about quitting. But there are a few people who somehow manage to make me stay behind the counter. Indeed, the relations I have with the customers is what makes me want to stay at Shell.

That can only go so far, however.

While customers make me happy, it is the inner workings of the workplace that fusturate me. I hate it when I get pushed around by my co-workers. They out-perform me, and now I am slow. These are the same people that work there for a paycheck. It's nothing more than a job to them. For me, being at work is the only time I can put forth a Social life. A social life is something I always wanted to regain from childhood.

When work, and co-workers, take away my mission to obtain something I always wanted, I feel even more depressed. I keep getting kicked around, and any form of retailiation just can't work because it goes too over the edge.

It's come to that point when the inner workings have become just too much for me, having overshadowed my customer relations.

I want to quit.

I don't know if I'll be able to right away, but I do know time is going to run out. I put in everything I can, but it's still not enough. I have a talent and I want that to be the thing that makes me successful.

I want to write again.

I'm eyeing a weekly newspaper out of Erie that covers Erie and Riverdale high schools. I bought their paper a couple of days ago and noticed they didn't have a sports section. I wonder if they would like one? I can most certainly do that - I did it for two college newspapers and won awards for it.

The Review would give me a chance to cover just two schools; two schools that don't necessairly stand out in anything. It's more community-based, aside from my power-based NISB.

I talked to a friend of mine who is working at a weekly in the Washington panhandle. He says he's making good money there, and is nearly double of what I make in a month. I want to take a guess and say working there would be just like getting paid at Shell, and just like commuting to and from Highland.

I took a look at a few other weeklies from around here, and they all have good sports coverage. I don't think I'm fit for a daily just yet. Working at a daily requires full attention, which is something I can't obtain until at least June 2010.

I want to give them a call and discuss my plans with them. I don't even know if it will be sucessful. But I want to give it a try.

I want to be able to do what I like doing.