First post of 2019

The last month flew by like a breeze. I have not had much time to update my blog. The good news is that we found decently priced movers, and will be living Toronto for good (most likely, for as long as Doug Ford is Premier in Ontario). The PC government has been cutting off a lot of social services, and even gave themselves an increase on the amount they can declare for housing, while scrapping rent control, the minimum wage increase that was supposed to take effect as of January 1st, no more free tuition, amongst other things. It is a complete mess, and it is clear that the Conservatives do not care about poor people, especially LGBTQ and people of colour. It is no longer safe for people like me (disabled, poor, and queer) to stay in Ontario.

The weather here is currently a deep freeze. Step into a freezer and you’ll get the idea, though you’d be missing the wind. Many homeless people in Toronto will likely die from exposure, because mayor Tory won’t open more space to offer shelter to them. Last night, when the windchill made it feel like it was -35ºC, the heat in our unit was off, despite my landlady claiming it was never turned off, but then in another email, she said she turned it off because *she* was hot! It takes a lot from me to request fixing things, because I detest confrontation, so I tend to be as polite and diplomatic. Then we received a hostile reply that we are complaning too much, and preventing her from doing her work. I have never felt so disrespected. Of course we are going to get in touch if something needs to be fixed, is that not the point? It is really upsetting, I just want to maintain peace, but being bullied and silenced doesn’t sit right with me.

As if things didn’t already suck so much, yesterday I was thrown in Facebook jail for saying that “Men are trash”. 3 days where I can’t post or comment, or even use Messenger. It’s truly appalling when reporting content that is clearly racist, homophobic, transphobic, and misogynistic, rarely get taken down. Men can threaten women with violence, and Facebook will take your screenshots down for being against their TOU. The assholes doing the threatening though? No consequences whatsoever. My presence on this site will be greatly reduced once I’m free. I cannot continue to support a platform that cares so little about its users. Cutting me off from Messenger is terrible, this is what pisses me off more than not being able to post or comment on FB. That’s how many people, including family, keep in touch with me. Now I have to email my mom to reassure her I’m not dead. Mark Zuckerberg only cares about white, cis, straight men. 

I will update this blog again once we are all settled in at our new place. It will be a stressful 8 days. 

New Beginnings

I sincerely apologize for not updating in so long. There’s been a course of events that’s been really hard to keep up with.

First, I’ve been having endometriosis symptoms again. My private insurance maxed out in September, and I had to somehow decide which meds to prioritize. I tried to just put up with it, without medical cannabis since 1) I cannot afford it since it is not covered by either OHIP or my private drug plan and 2) ever since legalization took place about a month ago, there have been shortages – apparently recreational cannabis gets priority over medical because the government taxes it at a higher rate – and Canada Post has been on strike since early October, and they are the main courier for anything ordered either via the Ontario Cannabis Store or most Licensed Producers. I’ll dedicate an entire entry about cannabis since it is a very important subject which I’m very passionate about.

As November came by, my SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) hit me pretty brutally. I have a light therapy lamp, but I don’t apply enough discipline to do it every day. That’s when things started getting foul at work. I gave so much of the little energy I had to my work, but it was never explicitely praised or celebrated. I had been in this department the longest, but that was only an excuse to ask me to be a superhero.There was one recent event where I had a really good day. I got picked to be a backgroupd performer for a huge TV production. I cannot reveal many details on the nature of it, but that day, I met wonderful people on set and had a blast. I have some social anxiety, so showing up on set not knowing a single soul was rather terrifying. But a fellow performer came to chat with me, complimented my glasses, and we ended up being in the same group. We exchanged phone numbers and social media handles. The call time was 6:30am, and we wrapped up for the day at 12:30pm, which my new friend said was indicative of a good shoot, and her easiest so far. I went back home feeling elated about the whole experience. 

But soon after, things took a different direction. And would you know it, this Thursday morning, something more or less unexpected happened. I got to work, opened my emails, and saw a meeting request 15 minutes into my shift, that was titled “quick discussion/update”. Being an anxious person in nature, my brain sent a panic signal, which I tried to dismiss, because it was meant to take place at a moreso semi-public space. 

But once I went up to said spot, my manager was there and took me to HR, not saying a word. I should have known. As soon as I sat down, he says he has “bad news” and proceeds to tell me it would be my last day here. Because of traumatic terminations in the past, I full-on panicked. My husband has been unemployed since February, has had multiple job interviews that lead nowhere, only feeding his depression even more. I asked my manager to tell me why I was being let go, and he simply said “performance issues” which I automatically questioned. I was not given any warnings, or write-ups about my performance, so that was quite shady. He then left me with HR, who explained it was termination without cause, which was a silver lining (it makes me eligible to Employment Insurance). 

The severance package was quite generous, the best one yet in my professional life. That definitely softened the blow. The one thing I’ve always hated about being laid off is that I’m never allowed to go back to my desk to pick up personal belongings. My manager picked up my “immediate belongings” so my coat, bag, and cane. I stil had family photos on my cubicle walls, which I assume they will mail out in the coming weeks. I also hate I was not allowed to say goodbye to the few people I was close-ish. I guess I understand why they do it, they want to prevent drama and whatnot. But that hurt more than losing my job. Thankfully, there is LinkedIn, so once I’m done “grieving”, I’ll update my profile and add former colleagues.

I took a cab home, which they let me expense given the situation. I got home, to a husband surprised to see me back home so early. I explained everything, and I was oddly calm about it all. I just saw it as a blessing in disguise. I had been quite under-stimulated for the past few weeks, and since management had no intention on promoting me, I should have seen this as a red flag. 

For the past 2 days, I’ve been doing some serious thinking about my future. I decided that I was mostly done doing anything customer service oriented, whether face to face like being a cashier, or in a contact centre setting. Counting the cashier jobs I’ve held since I started my professional life, I have about 15 years of experience. Transitioning to a different career path will be a little more difficult, but if this has taught me anything, I feel like this is fate telling me to get my Translation Certificate at U of T as soon as possible and look for freelance writing and/or translation gigs and build a portfolio. I’m hoping to enroll in the Winter 2019 semester, or at the latest, Summer 2019. It’s entirely online, which is great since I can continue working at the same time, and it is one course per semester, for a total of 4 semesters on an 18-month period. The only times I’d need to go on campus are for exams. It isn’t as expensive as a full-on Bachelor’s degree, running at about $750/semester (not including textbooks, but we’ll eventually get there), so a total of $3k for the entire program. It’s pretty reasonable and I’ll be doing more research so to know what to expect.

Despite everything, I feel surprisingly okay with this turn of events. I don’t want to think too much about the future, so it’s day to day for now. I’ll dedicate more time to writing, since I’ve found is a great outlet for my anxiety and depression. As said above, my next post will be about cannabis and the recent legalization in Canada.

Thank you for reading!