Smacked a tree branch with my mirror while driving my mail truck, and then my postmaster found me during an observation with my doors unlocked during a park-and-loop a couple days later and saw me rounding a corner with my shoulder belt undone the next day. Three serious safety strikes. I think I’m cooked.

He did do disciplinary interviews with me without union representation present even though I requested it. He said as a probationary employee I wasn’t entitled to it. I had called my union rep before he spotted me without the shoulder belt so I’m working with them to fight it but I feel like they got me dead to rights on termination even with the union violations.

I feel like absolute dogshit. I got fired from another job last year, for bullshit reasons while they were finding anything they could to fire longtime employees left and right to replace them with corporate flunkies who’d do what they’re told. I got a job at a fast food chain only to get my hours cut to nothing due to snapping back at my boss when she’d micromanage me and yell at me for shit that wasn’t my fault and contradict herself etc. etc. I keep fucking up in preventable ways and I can blame my ADHD all day long but the capitalist reality of the situation is that nobody gives a fuck about my reasons, they care about my ability to make and manage money and in that regard I’ve always been a miserable bottom-rung social failure for the entirety of my life. I’ve never moved out, I never got a degree, and I can’t seem to hold down a job anymore.

If the union lets me go back with re-training that’d be a godsend, but if they don’t I don’t know what I’m going to do. I feel increasingly unemployable the older I get, degrees have never been more worthless in this country, and I don’t know who the fuck would want to hire a 40+ college grad when there’s plenty of 20 year olds out there eager to be exploited and capable of functioning for days without sleep.

My girlfriend is of course upset with me and reminds me that if we’re going to be long-term I need to stop doing stupid shit and putting my job at risk because she can’t carry the both of us on a dog groomer’s income no matter where we move to together. Not to mention I fell asleep at like 6 pm last night and woke up at midnight to messages of her being increasingly upset that I wasn’t answering her texts, bringing back feelings of abandonment she had with prior partners ignoring her for long stretches.

I haven’t told my mom about my situation as she’s on vacation and I don’t want to ruin that for her but the shame I feel is immense and the agony of waiting for phone calls not knowing what’s going to happen is ruining me.

I’ve always felt like I’ve never been able to stack up. Like life’s an endless list of constantly-changing chores that I’m too tired and slow to ever complete. Like I’m spinning plates. A bunch of plates on sticks. Go to the beach, look out that the ocean. Only instead of water, it’s plates on sticks. And I fucking suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck at it.

I just feel lost and worthless today and I needed to vent somewhere.