It's just nearly dawn. The sunrise is coming late today.

Maybe it's cloudy. Maybe it's rainy.

I haven't looked at my phone or out my window yet.
But it's darkness that's pouring in through my blinds.

I am about to take my roommate's dog for a walk.
I do this when the four days a week they are at work.
They didn't ask me to do this, but I feel bad for the pup. Especially after 8 months of my roommate being unemployed and around all the time.

So though the dog is very reactive and maybe doesn't know his own size and strength and hurts me everytime I see him (he's made me bleed twice this week), I still try to give him a solid hour long walk to start out the day.

And it is nice to be outside. Good clouds yesterday. Good clouds always make for a better day.

I should probably be right now in the room across the hall from mine, making futile attempts to get him to sit while he insists on jumping and scratching and biting, all from the excitement of me being in said room.
But instead I am writing here. At least for a few more moments.

Mostly just to confess that I feel a lot of resentment towards my roommate sometimes.

Because they feel comfortable taking up space in the house and making food and leaving a mess.
and I don't. I am welcome to do those things, but it feels weird and difficult for me.

But also because they are really one of the most negative and pessimistic people I know, but yet things kind of always go right for them.
For instance, and this is really the reason for me writing all this, around this time last year, being super poor (as always), I found a random job as a barista at a coffee shop. And it turned out to be a horrible, abusive situation where I didn't make any money but killed my body and hated every moment of existence.

They, (my roommate, non-binary) on the other hand, just got a random job as a barista only for it to be this amazing, great, supportive environment. And to top it off, they make $400 a week in just tips alone.
Jesus Christ, that's so much money.
When the pandemic struck and we all went on unemployment, somehow they received nearly twice as much as I did even though our situation was literally the same.
So much so that they already paid their rent for the rest of our lease and gets food stamps and so now just has all this money to save up to use during the apocalypse or whatever other kind of destruction awaits us in 2021.

And I hate that it was all kind of by accident. I just applied to the wrong random coffee shop. They applied to the right one.

I just feel like I work harder and make way less. And I don't know what I am doing wrong.

Some of my friends tell me it's all about attitude and a positive outlook.
But again, my roommate has none of that. Complains about everything, believes nothing good will ever happen. Even as they told me last night about the surprise extra $1600 a month, my first thought was that I give it another week before they find a reason to hate this job. They already kind of hate it.

And I am not a positive person myself. Not exactly wanking off onto my vision board or whatever. And truly, all day yesterday, I was trying to find ways to make myself more positive, more open to the universe and all of the possibilities within it.
And I get home after 8 hours on my feet and only $68 to show for it, my body (as always) in immense pain.
And I hear of their surprise and delight of going from bottom of the poverty pile to basically middle class.
And it made me cry. That is, when I was able to go to my room I cried.

Not because of them. I really am happy when any of us are able to not have to worry about access to food and shelter.
But I cried for myself. Because I do very much have to worry about how I am going to live.
Not live well.
Not live my best life now.
But merely to survive.

After a short temp job (that didn't pay as much as promised) I am again unemployed, getting basically nothing off of unemployment.

And I am so tired of that struggle. I am so frustrated with myself that I can't get out of it.

I just want to make art and decorate people's brains with pretty words.
I want to take deep breaths.
I want to wake up well rested.

And if it's not my rotten attitude that's to blame, what is?
What is it that I need to do?
To which God do I make the sacrifice?

There's that soft gray light seeping through my shutters now.
I shouldn't keep the dog waiting.

Despite our best efforts, time rolls on.

I remember in the third grade the whole school had a "fun run" twice around the building. Not only was I one of the very last kids to finish, not only did I only go around the building once instead of twice, I was lapped by about half the school.

This is how I feel about all things in life.
I swear, I am just not cut out for this shit.

7:09 a.m. - 2020-10-16