Shit, where do I start? Things over the last, well, while, have changed a fair bit. I'm sitting here now in a hotel bed, in the middle of nowhere (Arno Bay, if you really must know), with not much to do, bludging off company paid for Telstra Next-G data-plan. Tomorrow I have to install a puny three-handset (With one cordless phone, legacy analogue PSTN phone service) system, probably with just one measly incoming PSTN line.
First things first, I'm not working in commcercial cabling anymore. I got a job with a company recently installing and programming NEC phone systems. Small systems at the moment, keysystems like the Xen Topaz, Xen IPK2 (Called the Elite IPK2 in America), and the new Univerge SV8100 platform that we're having so much fun with. I'm really enjoying it so-far, except for some pay related issues which will have to be sorted out at some point in the future. Either way I'm guaranteed $35p/h+ by the end of my apprenticeship with this mob, wages reviewed each year.
It's just the apprenticeship itself I'm struggling to justify continuing. Outside of my Certificate 2 and my telecommunications license that I already hold, the apprenticeship gives me sweet naff all. I'm coming up on my fifth year working in the data and communications industry, yet just because I'm under twenty, I feel like it's being used as a continual justification to screw me around. Mind you, I knew this was going to happen as soon as I entered into my apprenticeship, already holding the qualifications necessary to work in the industry, the apprenticeship was useless, and a potential liability. It was however a way to absolutely guarantee that I would have work for the three years following my departure from thirteen years of the public education system. I mean really, who's going to employ some fresh-out-of-highschool prick, regardless of holding a cert2 and his comms license?.
However when I entered my apprenticeship, I didn't bank on getting pretty-well forced to move out of home not even two years in.
Now, that's all well and dandy, but with the new job, I'm getting progressively more and more fucked off about the reality of the situation. Reality is, I'm getting paid the same as what I was getting at my last job, yet my work responsibilities have increased so freaking much I barely know where to start drawing the lines between 'work time' and 'personal time'. I went from clean cut 7:30 till 4pm job that did not involve computers at all, to 8:30-5, with a company car, a personal laptop that now has to last out long enough as a work laptop to program up the damn phone systems without falling apart until I get a payrise and can afford a new one, working my arse off all day doing work years beyond my fucking pay-grade as an apprentice, and then only having enough time to do answer all the fucking emails, and wade through all the crap in Outlook when I'm at home. All because I'm bound to an 'award rate' that's based on stone-aged standards of living, and on a corner of the industry that I'm nolonger in.
Yet what the fucking hell extra do I get for it? Sure, I love working for the company I'm now at, the people I work with are legends, my boss is awesome (and I can legitimately say he's a rockstar, as well), and I know these folks are going to pay me shitloads when my apprenticeship finishes, but for fucks sake, I can't pay the bills TODAY based off of what they're promising me in the FUTURE.
So yeah, on to the next recent big event, I'm now moved out of my parental home and living in the big wide world. I didn't have a huge amount of choice in the matter, my parents both being on disabled pensions from workplace injuries just cannot afford to live in the suburbs anymore. They're packing up and moving to the southern-most cape of this state, and my sister and I were forced to find our own place and fend for ourselves for a few years until we can get our own places. Okay, so I'm getting off well enough, rent is only $105p/w, about fifty or sixty bucks a week for groceries, and then $25 per week goes towards a stash fund that will clear off the electricity/gas/water bills each month/quarter. So-far the numbers work out, but it just annoys the crap out of me that things happened like this and at this time. I'm really worried that if I even just for a little bit let my finances slip, I'm going to be absolutely up to my kneck in shit. I'm pulling through each week. So far.
I wasn't supposed to even have to move out till early to mid next year, after my next pay-rise which would let me live quite comfortably, but my sister found a place, and with the rental market what it's like, you absolutely have to jump on any chance you get. So yeah, jump up, out ye get, get on with it.
What choice do I have these days but to just, well, do it?
Now, some of you folks may have remembered me rabiting on about my missus, and those of you that give two fucks about me (Don't worry, I wasn't expecting a show of hands) may have noticed said talk ended a while back. Well, after five months, I've been back to bachelor life for the last, shit, it'd be coming on about three or four months now. Shit just went pear-shaped and I had to get out, before we started tearing bigger and bigger chunks out of each other. Part in parcel was that it seemed like I was the only one intiating dialogue, it seemed like I was the only one actually trying to plot weekend outings, and it seemed like she was more interested in doing volunteer work for shithole shops that just want the free labor than seeing me. Of the total two paid jobs she got, she couldn't hold either of them down. But heck, this is retail we're talking about, you've got to downright hate yourself, and hate the world, all with a smile on your face to survive in that industry.
We're both happy now living seperate lives, she's shagging another guy now, which is cool with me. The new guy is great, although apparently his parents are hardline polish catholics - that can't end well. I'm quite happy to be single, I've stopped giving too much of a crap what's going on around me anyway these days. Call me selfish, fuck, whatever. Come to think of it, all I'm really missing is the sex and someone to hug me and tell me it's going to be okay at night.
God knows it's a hell of a lot cheaper being single.
