Today marks 28 years ago that I was born, at 9:12AM, July 26, 1992.

Usually I am somewhat excited or cheerful on my birthday, but with everything going on around the world, the civil unrest in the US, politics, and the ravaging pandemic, plus some new work stress, has left me kinda down in the dumps. I honestly just feel emotionally burned out from everything going on.

On Friday, I had an exceptionally bad day at work. I had to drive over 300 miles to make two deliveries. One in Logan Ohio, and then backtrack and head all the way down to Cincinnati for a delivery. I was frustrated because I have told my store multiple times that if I am to be sent to Cincinnati for a delivery, I cannot be inundated with deliveries beforehand- and that's exactly what they did, again. It takes a round-trip of about five hours to make a Cincinnati run, no matter how fast I drive, or unload/refuel. Making a delivery to Logan, which is 1 hour, one way, only added to more wasted time. To make matters more stressful, my boss was having a bad day and decided to take his frustrations out on me accidentally forgetting to throw away an empty pallet from a special order I delivered the day before. I had forgotten about it because I had to make seven deliveries that all averaged a commute time of about 30-50 minutes, across central Ohio. He threatened to not only throw trash in my own personal truck, but to keep me working over and doing "stuff I wouldn't like", and ended it with a rather unprofessional "Watch. It." in our group chat. This is the third time he's taken his frustration out on me. Next time I take it to corporate.

I've been sussing up to the realization that I have grown very stressed as a driver. The stress level has been building for the past two months as things have really started to pick up steam. Everyone's getting burned out in the lumber yard- we're understaffed, and the sales people keep dumping last minutes loads. At one point, we almost had three people quit simultaneously, until our store manager stepped in and offered major concessions to keep people. I've been really stressed by keeping up with the delivery demand, and unlike the drivers of the bigger "pig" trucks and semis, I have to manually unload my truck by hand. So if I have a 2,000lb load? I have to move a ton of lumber myself, by hand. My joints have been bothering me lately, because I have to climb up and down constantly to get product off the top rack. It's left me really sore. The heat has worn me down. I've also been rather dragged down by a combination of dealing with people who constantly downplay the seriousness of this pandemic for political reasons, and for being the butt of people's jokes. At 84, everybody makes fun of everybody- it's their way of bonding. But some of the jokes involving me are starting to really rub me the wrong way. Incidents like a wardrobe malfunction in November, and me accidentally bumping a pedestrian with a truck, grow tired when you hear it every. single. day. Add to that more sexual jokes, like people claiming I am sexually interested in old women in nursing homes. I really do not find it funny frankly, and hearing it everyday starts to just annoy me. And there's nothing I can really do about it. Looking out for everyone on the interstate, and ensuring that your load doesn't come off the truck, has been another major source of stress to me. In all, it's making me start to wonder if maybe I need to start finding myself another career path? I hate to fathom the idea of uprooting myself again, in the midst of a pandemic, to another job... but I feel like the walls are starting to close in around me- just like Home Depot. Just like Lowe's.

In Ohio, the pandemic continues to churn on- though much slower than down south. We're now a state that mandates masks, which isn't a big deal to me, honestly. But if you listen to the people I work with, you'd think we live in a fascist dictatorship or something because "mah freedums". Honestly, I don't see any end to this Covid-19 pandemic until a vaccine is found and approved. There's promising candidates, but it's clear that they won't be coming down the pipeline until sometime in 2021. Even if Ohioans flatten the curve, the moment restrictions start to be relaxed again, it's just gonna flare back up. Germany, Japan, South Korea, are finding that out as restrictions start to be eased, only to be clamped down again to mitigate the damage. It's just the problem dealing with a pandemic that involves a very contagious pathogen. Masks, social distancing, and frequent hand washing, are only band aids to a larger problem.

One day at a time~