I like making the title of my posts contradictory, so that they don’t make sense thus lowering one’s expectations for the post itself. The title of this post should be no exception, except it perfectly illustrates the situation that came up today.

I have been working for the same company for years and my wage has grown alongside me, until I moved to Quebec and saw it get cut by $2 per hour. However, this was something I knew prior to the move and I was okay with taking a pay cut for the change of scenery.

My hourly pay is now almost back to what it was before I left Vancouver, but it will never match. The pay cap, which I reached about six months ago, means I can never match my Vancouver-era “wealth”. Except, ever since I took on the role of a bike mechanic, I was eligible for a “mechanic bonus” which was dependent on how well the shop performed, as well as my productivity. I have yet to receive the bonus from the 2017 season but I have been told that it is about $1500 to $2000. In other words, it’s the equivalent of a new bike which is what a bike mechanic always dreams of.

Today, I was told that they were axing the bonus in favour of increasing the mechanics’ wages by a dollar per hour. Save for the six mechanics nationwide who have already reached the pay cap. My hourly earning won’t go up and I won’t be getting a bonus for the 2018 season.

Continue reading “Disadvantageous perk.” →

Yet, “youth is wasted on the young.”

I hate that first idiom. Always have. To me, it implies that life isn’t meant to be enjoyed.

Me having the time to knit, cycle, climb, hike, camp or even build an obscenely large gingerbread house isn’t an accident. I actively make time to do all that stuff. My dream is to challenge myself in fun ways and have adventures. Fun is good!

I realize that hard and not-so-fun work is sometimes necessary to achieve what you really want.

But for how long? Is the payoff really going to be greater than the suffering?

Continue reading ““You’ve got way too much time on your hands.”” →

“We are creatures of routine.”

True. I am a creature of routine up until a certain period of time (2-5 years. Yes, like the lifespan of rats.) For two years, I would eat a single fried egg, on top of homemade spelt bread (which was like eating cake, if cake tasted like bread). Then one day, “Fuck eggs. Done with eggs.” Next phase: yogurt and granola.

While I think about food a lot, my routines aren’t limited to what I stuff in my bread-flavoured-cake hole. One routine that far outlasted my egg phase was my previous job. I went to the same job five days a week for 6 years. (But sat at 4 different desks! Exciting!)

This job paid well (not by most people’s standards, but I was one-half of a debt-free DINK) and it wasn’t awful. It was… just okay. Prior to this job, the longest I had held a job was a year and a half. At the three-year mark of working my not completely unpleasant desk job, I was ready to leave but knew that it would be difficult to find anything that would pay me as well, and didn’t involve borderline or outright illegal activities. (Escort-slash-drug dealer. Simultaneously selling drugs AND my body by letting people snort coke off my butt.)

Continue reading “An unestablished routine.” →