I am tired.

I spent the early hours of this morning walking from Queen and Carlaw all the way home to my home in the Annex. It took me an hour and a half, and by the end my feet and knees were ready to give out. Lately, that's all I've been doing is walking long distances. I have to. I can't really afford the TTC. But I don't complain, because that won't help anybody.

Yes, I walk to and from work every time I work, which is nowhere near often enough. Usually my shifts are cancelled. You see, it's January, and no one goes to restaurants in January. So my 25-hour work week quickly looks more like five. That's if I'm lucky. It's not my fault though. Honestly. My managers think I'm doing a fantastic job, and the kitchen has even offered to help me out on occasion (to no avail). They call around and try to find me shifts at other places in the company. No one bites. They want full-time availability. Though I'd imagine it would be difficult to find someone content to live off of one shift a week a slightly-above-minimum wage. But I don't complain, minimum wage is relatively high here, and I am fortunate to have managers so supportive.



Finding more work is exhausting, you know. I read a statistic in the paper that our local unemployment here in Toronto is above 10-percent now. Highest in the province. Complete with supporting anecdotes from people who've been sporadically employed since the banks collapsed four-plus years ago, sending out "hundreds" of resumes to uninterested prospective employers who likely saw over a hundred applicants that day with identical resumes. Once again, I'm told I should move to the Land of Milk and Tar Sands, also known as Alberta. But the arts jobs and connections are here. The majority of my friends are here. My life (such as it is) is here. Still, I don't complain. I can hear people's voices in my head, telling me to "keep your chin up! You won't get anywhere with that attitude!"

Alright, alright.

That dream job is another kettle of fish. I've always been into things that no one else on the planet would care about doing. This means I usually end up finding ways to do it all myself to avoid relying on others. Well, music isn't easy to do that way. It's all about collaboration. I have great friends, don't get me wrong. I love them and they have done great things for me. But if I've been itching to make music or jam, getting people together to jam is kind of like trying to pull teeth out of a rabid dog's mouth. People have jobs, they have other interests, many have significant others (and an alarmingly increasing number of them, in fact). And I don't like to pressure people too hard, because that just pushes folks away. So I tried to get into writing. Well, I'm writing now, no? Well, I meant more specifically scriptwriting for television. I actually went to college for TV broadcasting so I could put together a webseries myself, or at least get connected enough to get the work and resources together to do so eventually. It's just too bad that I still have yet to get anyone to read the damned scripts I put together for this webseries. After sending them out, I'd hear weeks of "Oh I'll have a look later" and "I was busy, I'll check it out tonight". Three months later, nothing. It's hard to improve something with no feedback. So I just stopped investing time into it. No sense complaining, you can't control what others do!

This would all be a lot easier time if I had some sort of companion or someone to rely on. Quite frankly, seeing all your close friends coupling up is a nice feeling. It's good to know your friends are able to find people as awesome as they are to share their lives with. It's also nauseating to be around as the perpetually single friend who hasn't been on a second date in six years. The patronizing of well-intentioned friends who reassure you of how awesome you are, and reassurances that once you learn to love yourself and have the right attitude, someone great will come along, are bad enough. But the realization that the woes of coupled friends in your financial situation are tempered by a curious lack of urgency thanks to requiring a smaller income to make ends meet (not to mention the need for only a one-bedroom apartment), the ability as such to take their time to find "the right job” without the pressing concern that you’ll end up destitute if you don’t start making more than $10.25 an hour soon, and even the simple emotional lift one gets by having that rock to comfort, support, and assist you in lifting you out of that hole you fell into. It’s not as easy when you have to chisel your own steps to get out. But I don’t complain, because whiners aren’t sexy, and no one wants to date a negative Nancy.

However, dating is an impossibility when you haven’t for so long and feel like you have nothing to offer. I am not the most clever, the most ripped (though all this walking and whatnot has made the pounds fall off me at a surprising rate), or the most forward (I’m cripplingly shy with guys I fancy). I don’t have money to make myself look the way I’d like to, and I find I tend to get along better with straight men more often anyway. I expect self-confidence, or a distinct lack thereof, plays a part in this, though the preceding paragraph should have made that self-evident. Suffice to say, I’m romantically crippled, and have been for a very long time, and I’m tired of that too. But I don’t complain, because I don’t feel like being a magnet for pity, and that would be even more of a turn-off, anyway.

Reading all this, one wonders: Why do I keep going?

And to them, I simply have to say: Because I have to. I have this stubborn belief in my agnosto-socialist little brain that I can’t seem to shake that I have something I need to do on this planet, and I had better do it before I get off. It colours everything I do, and in spite of all the crippling fears, the self-deprecating humour, the tendency I have to give up on myself, I have conquered a lot of things, and I’ve fought very hard to stay the course.

I have had fantastic friends who have helped me out at my lowest, given me a roof over my head when I would have otherwise been living under a bridge, helped get me work when I felt I was unemployable, and reminded me that I am a caring, kind, and talented person who has great things to contribute to the world. I thank them for their kindness and their encouragement.

But sometimes I can’t help feeling trapped and helpless. I can’t help but resent the successes of my friends, and regret the mistakes of my own from my younger, more sheltered years. Opportunities laid in my lap, and were squandered by my own idiotic notion that I knew better than anyone else.

A friend told me yesterday that this generation doesn’t understand how easy they’ve got it. As a gay man at 50, he’s struggled through some of the hardest struggles one can face in life as a white Canadian. But he came out the other end of it, and has a great life because he powered through those struggles. Sometimes I have to wonder, if everyone has dues to pay, when will I stop having to shell out? But I stop myself from complaining, because he’s right. You can power through these struggles, and come out the other side a stronger, better person for it. And that’s just what I have to do: Push a little further.

But boy, am I ever tired.