I have a lot to process right now. The first thing to process is how I get out of a job that I mentally, emotionally, and physically hate. I even hate the company I work for. The toll it is taking is very real. I have got to stop the fear of Uber. It’s very simple and only involves driving people to and from their destinations. This is my last week picking up extra shifts as a security guard. On Monday, February 9th, I will begin Uber. The time is now and I want to do this so I’ll make it happen.

I wanted, with every fiber of my being, to send that resignation email I drafted this morning to my manager. My head is still hot so I’m not doing anything. It felt slightly better simply to draft that email. I felt like I reclaimed some power and emotional maturity. I will resign once I feel comfortable with Uber and not a moment before. I’m going to behave smartly and not make a choice I could regret.

But one thing is for certain: it is time to shit or get off the potty. I’m serious about improving things for Denisse and myself. I’m serious about making a run at self-improvement. So Monday, February 9th at 10am will go down as milestone of a day. I’m going to have to act with courage. The first few days won’t be easy but I will try.

I find myself also processing whether or not it is a good idea to teach information technology. Could I make it as a podcaster of IT subjects? Could I even do both? I’ll allow myself to relax and brainstorm.

I’m about to usher in another challenging week trying to negotiate and mental and physical hellscape that is the United States. I’m now waffling between Uber and upgrading my security license. I cannot make a choice that doesn’t feel like an all-encumbering decision. Perhaps I would do simply better not to fight it and just let the phase pass. There are some things to fight and coping skills are not working now. So I may have to simply ride the unpleasantness.

I want to relax today but knowing I have to work at my security job tomorrow ruins everything. I just feel like being stupid and worthless and I feel like I’ll be okay with that for today. After all, tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday are going to be painful. I wish life would get easier but it’s not. It’s getting sadder.

The bright spark is Denisse. Without her I don’t know where I would be. This is going to be short because the day will not be easy.

While on Reddit today, I was reading a posting in the r/smallbusiness community. Someone posted that they were having difficulty launching their business doing bookkeeping for other small businesses. They were bemoaning the difficulty of getting people to trust them. Someone else posited that soon a bookkeeper’s job would be gone to AI. Those words might well be prophetic. They struck a chord in me today because I used ChatGPT to create a chart of accounts for the business I just started. Next thing I know, my accounting system based on “Generally accepted accounting principles” has been set up.

I did not even need an accountant or bookkeeper to get started. ChatGPT distilled everything down for me and it worked. While I should feel good for accomplishing something of a personal milestone, I feel quite the opposite. I feel worried because it dawned on me that one of the services I thought I might be able to sell would be remote bookkeeping. Well, clearly I might be very wrong. This lead to some deep thoughts.

What does our society do when AI replaces many professions? What do we do to earn a living to pay for our needs, wants, and desires in an economic system that depends on consumption? When nobody has money to spend to make the gears of the economic machine turn, everything grinds to a complete and devastating halt. Soon the only jobs left will be working in fast food. Even those jobs disappear as robots cook the burgers, chicken, and fries.

When the middle class occupations cease to exist, we go back to feudalism, a 180 degree turn in human history for the worse. I wonder if AI will usher in a dark ages for this millennia. My present job, being a security guard, is being replaced by technology. This has now dawned on me. The very fabric and underpinnings of our beliefs and culture are about to be torn to shreds.

I hate it when I have dreams about all of the things I have regretted doing and all of my personal failures. It’s even worse when you wake up in the middle of the night thinking that the nightmare is over, only to have it resume upon falling back to sleep. I know these dreams are definitely related to the inordinate amount of stress that I am currently feeling. Today needs to be an easy, relaxed day where I work on things/projects that provide enjoyment.

I do not think this week is going to be as bad as last week though. I believe it will be somehow just a little bit easier. I am not taking on any additional shifts at work, even if asked. While I know I need the money, I need to relax and recuperate so I do not have another week where I teeter on mental health collapse. It is incredibly hard to talk oneself down from the ledge once in a week, let alone three times. It was entirely too much.

I don’t know what I am going to do today. I think I have some grand plans in trying to start this free class on Intuit QuickBooks. I don’t know that I will have the concentration to do so, but if I do not try, I fail by default. I may even feel better for just getting one of the lectures completed. At the very least it will be something. I notice that I am feeling very angry right now. Explosively so! I don’t know why but my patience is nil. Being angry is easier than breaking down and crying.

I also have a feeling that I will be written up at work today. I was so mentally done on Friday that I called out of work. I didn’t even want to think about going in. So, I am waiting for the supervisor to hand me the write up form on Tuesday when I go in for my 10am-6pm shift. Of course I will refuse to sign it because I never sign those things. Maybe I should search for work today instead of trying to build a business.

It is brutal cold! It’s the kind of cold where even the sun burns cold. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I’d be living on that icy planet Hoth. I went to the library and I was not productive at all. I couldn’t focus on anything other than my own personal woes. I did manage to get my blog somewhat more secured behind a proxy server and it took a while because my concentration level was that piss poor. I really just want to be able to take something like fentanyl and let myself drift away. But nothing good will come of that; quite the reverse actually.

What’s a man to do if he has ideas and goals but is otherwise unable to follow through? This is why I feel like I am failing my legacy, a legacy of successful businessmen. I suppose these feelings are contributing to some of the exhaustion because that is depression in a nutshell. It makes everything ten times harder. Even things I normally enjoy are hard and I find excuses not to do them.

I just realized today is the last day of January and I have little to nothing to show for it other than ideas, lost opportunities, and expensive realities. I guess I am trying to think of how February could be better but I am just not seeing it. I want to crawl into bed and sleep. I want to retreat from this bone-chilling cold and depression. I wish I had a hot fire to curl up next to and fall into a deep sleep – but I don’t.

Well, maybe there’s some promise of tomorrow and being able to concentrate on what I had in my mind. It’s good to have goals and it is good to want. I guess I need to carve out some time to at least watch one video or make it through one unit of the class that I intended on taking. I have to tell myself that even one hour is a form of success. Each time I tried to get to the learning management system of edX, I found myself distracted by something else.