2017 to Now: What I Went Through

So... this might be a little long, but I want to finally write this all out. This may also seem to be a bit of a stress read... but it’s only because I’m dumping all my past depressing emotions out onto virtual paper in hopes to get a fresh start.

TL;DR - 2017 - 2019 has been incredibly tough. (If you’re still interested, here’s the story.)

2017 going into 2018:
Moved downstate MI with my girlfriend so she can go to grad school and everything was great. My car (Suzuki) was working fine and I was having a great time discovering a new city. Honestly I still am and I love it here more and more everyday :)

When I got here I was faced with the issue of finding a job because we were so busy trying to secure a place to live that I really couldn’t even get around to finding work. Luckily, I worked for a gas station chain that is pretty big where I now lived as well so I had the opportunity to transfer. Now let me be clear, I loved my job and the people I worked with up north.. but down here it’s just a completely different animal...

That being said, I had a short interview with the manager and he happily took me in as a cashier... but the only available position that had stable hours was the graveyard shift... 11:45pm-7:45am. See.. this wasn’t too terribly bad at first. I could easily deal with the annoyance of working in the middle of the night.. besides, I probably saw around 3 customers in 8 hours so whatever.

The real issue arose when it came to the people I worked with. Pretty much everyone I worked with either came in late or made their own schedules (even though they’re part time employees that are just minimum wage cashiers) .. so that made absolutely no sense to me. Better yet.. the assistant manager didn’t give a shit about it at all. So there would be times where I’d go in at 11:45 and work all night and one of my coworkers wouldn’t come in until 10am, leaving me almost working an 11 hour shift. This happened consistently and only was addressed occasionally by my main manager.

Soon after that, my main manager left for another manager opportunity for more pay at a neighboring location in the same company. That’s when the assistant manager just let everything go to shit. Employees would leave 3 to 4 hours early, leaving others to have to work 10+ hour shifts, some would call in leaving others to have to work way longer until the next available person came in... if they even did. I found myself working wayyyyyy too much.. like for example one day I worked a night shift and got home at 9:30 just to have my assistant manager call me at 10:30 and ask if I could come back in at 2pm and work till midnight because someone called off... to make things clearer.. one day I worked 17 hours because no one showed up and I technically could lose my job if I left the store unattended... I continuously called my boss to see if he could come in and I KNOW he was ignoring my calls because it would ring once or twice and go straight to voicemail. Needless to say, I was fucking over it.

I would come home so tired and couldn’t really sleep because I would have stuff I needed to get done during the day. I felt like I never saw the sun and was taking 20 minute naps throughout the day and generally was deeply depressed so I had a giant lack of motivation to do anything. It was one of the most miserable times of my entire life. One night I was so exhausted that I kept nodding off at the register and was hallucinating that someone ran across the store yelling. I would have auditory hallucinations as well... like a crowd of people talking or someone whispering to me. It was fucked, and honestly terrifying. It was at that point that I knew this job wasn’t going to work.

We had several people quit and my assistant manager also quit.. so the store went completely unchecked by anyone, so people would just stop showing up with ZERO consequence. We had a “step in” manager who worked at corporate and that went okay for a bit, then they hired a new woman as our manager. She actually did a pretty good job at keeping things together for the most part. She ended up firing more than half of the staff and hiring some new people. Unfortunately they ended up hating the job and 3 of the 4 new hires quit within 2 months. Also our other employee that was recently hired in that seemed promising went to jail. It was a god damn shit show again.. I went from the new guy in the beginning to the longest person working there in only 6 months. It was crazy.

So... now that I was seen as “the one who actually shows up” they needed me for days because no one could actually cover mornings because we didn’t have enough people. We got a new assistant manager and she was really cool too. Things were actually finally seeming like they were looking up. Until it went from me working days only... to me working days and a few nights.. then switching to 3 days, 2 nights... then a whole week of nights again.. back to a full weeks of days. It was just so all over the place that I was even more tired than I was when I was working all nights because my sleep schedule was so incredibly fucked. Not to mention I barely was able to spend any time with my girlfriend and dogs because I was always either working during the day or sleeping during the day because I had worked at night. Also... I smashed my Suzuki on the highway and it no longer ran... totaled.. someone in front of me had slammed on their breaks, hitting the person in front of them and then it just had a domino effect. So I went through a really stressful financial situation then too..Eventually everything came down on me and I knew I couldn’t do it anymore.

I was so tired on a shift one night that I felt terribly sick and was laying on the ground feeling like I was going to puke.. all I was thinking to myself was “Enough of this shit, I refuse to live like this anymore.”
Then just like that, in tears, I drove home and had a huge mental breakdown and immediately planned a trip with Becca to go up north and visit family that very weekend. From there, I had a ton of support from family and friends on the next step I was going to take.

I applied at a ton of places because I needed out.. and ended up landing a Deliveries job at Home Depot in my town! This was the first glimpse of hope and positivity that I had for almost 8 months.
I had gotten a new car and things were really looking up! At this point it was mid 2018 and I was loving my job. I worked hard and got full time and became an associate coach, meaning that I’m a mentor at work and teach other associates how to properly perform their job and make them feel welcome to the company, get them signed up in our system, fill out safety protocol paperwork, etc. Everything was great!

Late 2018:
Soooo... as always, when something gets too comfortable, something bad has to happen. Long story short, over the course of the rest of 2018, my car has had a TON of issues with it.. ranging from lights on it going out, the starter going bad, the alternator dying, the electrical had to be reprogrammed because the alternator fucked it all up, cooling fans for the engine went bad, gas cap cracked leaking microscopic amounts of fuel out.. lowering my mileage, a head gasket blowing, my engine misfiring, a bad piston, fuel injection pump having a hole in it so it leaked oil... so all this over the course of the year costed us well over $8000 and I bought the car for $6000.... so it has been a terribly bad hit for us.

It’s also been very tough because it has made saving money almost impossible so I don’t feel any further along in life than I have 2 years ago.. but things recently have been seeming to pick up for the better, so that’s good. My job has been amazing lately because I’ve been able to basically hand pick our deliveries team and train everyone accordingly so we’re all on the same page and the company is trusting me with more and more responsibility everyday. I have my lisences to drive forklift, pacer, reach truck, balleymore (electric ladder) and EPJ.

I’ve had more time to dedicate to sleep, visiting family and friends and most importantly, my beautiful girlfriend and pups. I feel like for the first time in SO long, I finally have a grasp on life and have some sort of control on the outcome of my day. Ive had more time to dedicate towards streaming and other fun hobbies I have. My car has been working great too! The only bummer recently was having to back out of Speedrunning Expo because of some slight issues with the vehicle again and just needing to save some money to clean up the rest of my current bills... but other than that, I’m incredibly happy! Becca graduates in a few months and then we’re probably going to look to buy a house :)

All in all... life was super fucked.. and I think a lot of people could see that in me... but never truly knew exactly what I was going through. So to my friends, family, and the Beasts that continue to push my Further everyday and keep me inspired, thank you so much for listening to what I think I had to say to finally let go of all the depressing feelings I’ve held onto for the past 2 years. I hope you understand. Thanks for everything.

Marshall / StuntCoyote