The Queen is for sure dead.

Hi Mike, it's me again. So, as you are certainly aware, the Queen is dead. As is my will to live, at this point. There just is so much noise in this world, and all I want to do is climb in a van and drive away. Dunno where to, honestly. Just away. I don't know how I'd pay for gas, but I guess I would just drive until I run out? Even writing this seems useless. Every morning, I think: today I'm gonna start writing again. Then, by the end of yet another pointless excercise in helping rich people order ridiculously priced sandwiches in order to pay the rent, I get home and just want to ingest any damn substance that will dull my awareness of how shitty life generally STILL is. I mean, it's not bad on the surface - in fact, by most metrics I'm doing way better. But inside I cannot stop the voices in my head. Karen came up for a long weekend and we went to the penninsula and I spent four days literally talking about the same shit, which was not my original plan. I did get a bit of perspective on my mom's decline, but not as deep a dive as I had hoped for. Also, I brought you up more than once, and I wish I could stop doing that because I feel like it sounds like I'm rubbing her nose in it...and lord knows I have no right to do that. Given I'm still not sure if she knows about my indescretion(s) as well. I mean she knows some of the lowbrow stunts I've pulled, but honestly not the worst. I don't bring it up because as everyone knows all that does is clear my conscious and saddle her with the understanding that her pal is...what even am I anymore? We are all flawed. i just don't want to cause more pain if I can help it. Also, buddy, to head in a whole other direction, I need to vent about the youth. Especially the ones I work with. Their absolute lack of patience is really gonna be the death of me. They are also insanely oversensitive (and this comes form the queen of HYPERSENSITIVITY). I blame our stupid, stupid cohorts who fucking bred (like you, you bastard) ((also, did I mention yr progeny is now claiming the other gender - like what seems like a good 50% of their generation they are reassigning themselves a gender, and to be totally honest, I wish everyone would just lay off the constant need to label everything)) and then raised a bunch of cry babies, ill-prepared to deal with the pure evil that humans are capable of. Maybe I could just make this a venting area for my daily frusteration with working with...kids. The one I am currently working closely with (just two of us in the godforsaken customer service hell hole) is 23, 24? Same as LJ. NO....SERIOUSLY. Some of these kids have never been ridiculed in elementary school and it shows (although he was apparently abused by his brother and father so he...gets a pass?). I dunno man, how to even communicate with them. I just cannot for the life of me get the phrasing right. Everything I say is construed as an attack, or a dismissal of his ability. Fuck, I wanna introduce him to MY dad. You want to be dismissed? Jesus. Not matter what I suggest in terms of how to do things is met with this baseline arch attitude. Yet then I am also accused of not giving him enough information as well. It's hard. I want to tell him that the words that come out his mouth mean something, and his emails need to convery information, not just reaction shots. But alas, I seem unable to figure out how to impart information correctly, and so, in my modified damage (I really should return to therapy, if only to cope with this getting old stuff) I just sit on my hands and try to put bumpers on the sharp corners (so to speak) and shock-guards on the outlets and let him fly as best as he can. What's it matter really anyway - I mean I've got my corresponding manager just narrowing our capability day after day, so wtf to do? Argh. So, like just now: I apparently assumed to much in terms of suggesting making a vegetarian sandwich a substitution for a vegan one and he got pissy with me for doing a like-for-like switch and in terms of that and then gets all full of himself as if for some reason I made a bad call. It's hard for me with people Mike. My introverted self is not doing well with these kids that are all PANIC AT THE DISCO 24/7. Everything has to be responded to immediately, and apparently without thinking through a fucking answer. Which, if you recall being 23, works about 60% of the time. But at my advanced age, I'm motherfucking tired of being wrong 40% of the time about that sort of shit. Like, I get that there are some things you just are not going to get right, but a lot of stuff you can figure out if you take a fucking minute and be creative. Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggggggggggggggghhhh. Honestly, I miss having you as a pal. I miss having any pal to bounce ideas off. Can't really do it with anyone anymore, and I get that it's my own fault for not making the effort in terms of connecting with people, but it's exhausting and I feel like I'm midway through a heart (or panic) attack at least once a day lately. Yesterday for instance, there was a perfectly nice dude out in front of the Central sitting down with a beer and a lovely black pug who KC was into and they were doing their sniffy thing so I made smalltalk, and he was kinda cute (cute?? jesus, attractive, I guess) in an old-alternative dude way, but for whatever reason when he mentioned that "they" were from West Seattle, I immediately assumed he had a mate (not that it could have been him and the pup, like I do with KC) and bolted outta there. I think the dogs were bummed to be pulled apart so abruptly, but whatever. My point (such as it isn't) is that while on one hand I am better at random conversations with people more than I have ever been, as soon as anything even seems like it might be getting more in-depth, I bail. I am walking angst.