Allow me to invite myself in and whine a wee bit…

I'm tired and frustrated.

Job #1: I work mucking paddocks.  On a good day, it takes my sister and me three hours.  On a bad day, less.  Or, on a bad day, it takes three hours and on a good day, it takes less.  –However you want to look at it.  What concerns me is how much I get paid.  I get 10/hr for this job, which is really good.  I have another job, but the pay is less certain.  Job #1 is nearly every weekday morning, depending on harsh weather.  I count on this job to give me a steady amount of good money.  It's important because my other job has varying hours and less pay.

Job #2: I work at a pick-your-own strawberry farm.  Strawberry season will be over in a week or a little more.  After that, they might put me in the vegetable stand.  It's possible that they'll have me do other work around the farm, you never know.  But, although I work more concentrated hours there, I'm not likely to earn much money cumulatively, would be my guess.

And so, as strawberry season comes to a slow end, my other job hits a bump in the road.  My sister and I are instructed to only do half the paddocks today.  Then next time around, we can do the others, and switch it up.  The only real reason for this new idea I can think of is that their money is running short so they want to cut our hours short.  Karen, the owner, wasn't around to talk this morning, and she sent her husband to let us know.  I didn't ask him about it at the time because I was trying to make sense of it in my head; and then I couldn't find them when we were through.  So one, I couldn't discuss the goal of this change with Karen, and I didn't get paid either.  I was a little frustrated.

So if indeed the idea is to cut my pay in half so they can afford us, I'm screwed.  I have two jobs because the first wasn't really enough to get me through the next semester and then my semester abroad.  So I got a second job.  Now, it looks like the two combined are going to amount to almost nothing.  I may be done for.

But this is only the first day that this has been the official new plan at my first job.  I'm trying to keep myself from hyperventilating and just wait to see what happens.  But I'm feeling the pressure from my parents to make plenty of money and do everything I possibly can to make it happen.  Especially from my mom.  I know they have the best of intentions, but I'm doing my best.  I want the more at least as much as they want me to have it!  And now I'm really anxious, because traveling in Europe will not be cheap – and we wouldn't exactly want it to be, would we?  We expect me to have a ton of fun, but fun costs money.

It just seems that as the summer goes on, I'm going to be making less and less money.  Now, starting Saturday, I'll begin house sitting, and so I'll earn a bit of money from that; but I don't expect it to be very much (I don't even know!) because this woman usually doesn't pay me very much.  …And I just can't imagine how I'm going to make up for the rest of these losses.

I know this is one long rant of a drama queen, but I had a burst of writing inspiration and now I haven't been writing lately so I thought, as long as I have something to complain about, I might as well whine about it.  And so that's what happened.

However, in many ways, this summer has been the most amazing summer in years.  But in so many ways, it could be so much better.  I miss my best friends, but they are so far out of reach.  I text one of them nearly every day, which is such a blessing; but the rest are so – too – far from me.  And I'm still learning about myself and I'm so stressed.  But overall, it's going well!

Wishing the best for yours,

~Meggy