Well, hell. It's time to start looking for a part-time job. I've been delivering for Postmates for ... over three months now? and I'm not sure how I feel about it. The thirty-percent taxes, while accelerating my paying off of my defaulted student loans (sigh), are a bit high for a guy who still doesn't earn enough money to get out of subsidized housing — lol at least not unless I live in a tent or an RV, or something similarly homeless. Not only that, but just how feasible will it be for me to try to earn a living delivering food by bike during the wintry New Year doldrums? And what about my bursitis? It's quite possible that I may not be able to mount and dismount my bike, or ride it for any great distance, sometime within the next few years.
I'm not trying to talk myself out of or into anything. Service and food work is generally fraught with chaos, melodrama, agitation, indignity, and pain. But it pays more, is comparatively consistent and reliable, is generally conducted indoors, and doesn't put my life on the line by requiring me to share the road with dangerously inattentive and impatient dunderheads piloting world-devouring behemoths. And, well, as much as I tend to be critical of and dismissive of other people, it's nice sometimes to have co-workers to share some Canterbury Tales ribaldry with.
Yeah, I don't want to get some job wearing a damn polo shirt and a name tag, encouraging the infantilization of successful American consumers with my scripted dialog and sarcastic sycophancy. I also don't want to ride my bike surrounded by SUVs driven by imbeciles glued to their phones, eventually in ice and rain. I don't want to do anything, anything at all. I'm tired of life; I was tired of it decades ago, back when it was relatively cheap, beautiful, peaceful, and full of promise. All I see right now is repeated failures and persistent loneliness until my body falls apart on me — possibly fairly soon! — and I die, alone like an abandoned cat.
