2020 in Review

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The first couple of months of 2020 were kind of chaotic for me. I was starting a new line of work in Security, working graveyard hours. I met this great guy a couple of months earlier and we were spending a lot of time together outside of work. The fact that I had come into 2020 homeless and had no where to really go meant that my new boyfriend felt obligated to make sure I had a place to sleep in between shifts. Which is honestly the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me, without me having to give something up. He also worked in same Security company I did, just at a different location. That way we avoided the problems that come with having a relationship with a coworker.

Then the Corona virus became a problem and anybody not essential was ordered to stay home. I honestly enjoyed that for a while. There was usually no one on the bus besides me and the driver when I left work at 6 am. Bus stops and Max stations were crowded with pigeons scratching at the ground for scraps. There were probably one or two homeless pushing their lives around, but mostly it was just me. This vast city of Portland was quiet and I got to enjoy the beauty that everyone usually sees. Things slowly got a little better from there.

I found a house where I rent a room with my boyfriend. My patrol position changed and came with a pay raise. It also put me on the same campus as my boyfriend but rules were put in place so that we could work on the same site. The benefit was that I was no longer subject to taking the bus since my boyfriend and I worked the same shift. Places were less crowded when we went shopping. Granted most of the food we’ve splurged on has been take-out, and we haven’t had a traditional date since the start of the Pandemic. I haven’t cared because I don’t usually like being in public anyway. I am reclusive by nature, so the government telling us we had to stay away from each other and wear masks was actually kind of nice.

Then my Grandfather got sick and he died, alone, and I got to see how horrible a Pandemic really can be. The first call came in that my Grandfather was in the Hospital because of a broken hip. He had fallen getting out of the vehicle, it was the first time he and my Grandma had left the house since the start of the Pandemic. In the hospital he was isolated from the other patients and my Grandma could only see him through a plexiglass window. We thought he would be able to come home at the end of a week. The stress of being isolated caused him to have a stroke, in El Paso, Texas. I live in Portland, Oregon now.

There was no way I could find any other way down there that didn’t involve a three day drive and a two week quarantine from work upon my return. Not to mention my Grandma said she was still keeping to quarantine rules and wouldn’t let anyone in the house who haven’t already been there in the last three months. So, I stayed home and went to work like always. Only this time it felt like my world was falling apart. My job stuck me in a box where all I could do is think about what I lost and what I left behind in my decision to move up north really meant. It started to affect my job so I found a different opportunity somewhere else. The new job came with the promise of a pay raise and the chance of something new. Nothing new happened and I got paid the same for sitting in a box contemplating my problems. I also ended up getting lesser hours leaving me at home with the roommates’ cats and video games. It left me a lot of time to think about what is it I actually came to Portland to do.

I realize in the new year that I didn’t come to Portland to do anything in particular. I came to be someone my family told my I shouldn’t. So why should I mourn the loss of a family that never accepted that I was different? I will forever miss my Grandfather because he encouraged me to be different so long as I remembered to be kind. There are places in Portland where I can make a mark in the writing community I so craved growing up. I can go into 2021 not having to hide the person I wanted to be to please a family I was born into but never really a part of.

Life’s Little Choices

I was showing a friend the first things in Portland that I saw when I first arrived back in April of 2019. Explaining to her how I spent my days made me think of what it was like for me at the beginning. My first two weeks I found a job and a place to stay. Then the next few months became getting up and going to work. Then getting off work and grabbing dinner at a food cart so that I wouldn’t have to cook. Then going home and going to sleep. In that time I moved into an apartment and began living with a couple of friends I had back in the south. One of them paid for me to move to Portland to begin with, the other I paid for as the price for my journey here.

The first few days here I did try to stick my feet into the writing community. I found writer’s workshops, literary pitch groups, all of that. I didn’t have a stable sort of income though and no real place to stay. So I got a steady job and an apartment like a good little girl and my writing dreams went back to being dreams. I started off with day shifts in tech support only to fall into graveyard security jobs. I’m good at the security job and I kind of like it. I don’t want to be in any higher position than the one that I am in though. I also have no time to go to those pitch sessions or even the workshops.

So I’m left with a few little choices. Do I continue with a job I merely like for the security it gives me in life? Or do I try to find a new hustle and work my life through as a writer?

Tales From The Pandemic

This song has become my theme song of late. I started out this pandemic as an essential worker so I saw no real impact on my life other than the fact that for once in my life there wasn’t people jostling together everywhere. I selfishly reveled in the solitude I suddenly found myself in living in one of the most densely populated cities in the country. Only that didn’t last as long as I would’ve liked.

Where there were once regular commuters, transients began to fill those spaces. They still followed the guidelines of quarantine but their detritus often did not. They had become very aggressive about their right to exist. It didn’t help matters any that I was in a Security uniform more often than not when on the bus and current circumstances made anyone with any affiliation with law enforcement suspect. Never mind that security is glorified mercenary work when you really think about it. (There was a reason why we called them Rent-a-Cops growing up.) It didn’t help that I worked graveyard in a Historic part of the city. There is often times my job required me to chase transients off of the property and to call the cops if they refused to leave.

There is a point in my job where I can stop doing something because they don’t pay me enough to deal with it. Number one was the one transient who happened to carry a chain around. He did not seem in touch with reality and I let local PD deal with that. The other is I did my best to give the transients a safer place they could stay for a longer period of time. I at least understood that there wasn’t always helping the fact that you were in that situation. It still didn’t go over too well with some of them, I was still seen as the authority figure getting rid of them. Still I tried, until trying became irrelevant.

Then I found a different security position. I got paid more and was guaranteed longer hours to sit in a box. My one and only task was to make sure that all the construction workers and trucks going through had the appropriate badge. If not I was supposed to write their name down on a list. A very cushy job if I am being honest. The problem soon became that I was left alone more often than not in that little box. I was left alone a lot to reflect on the things going on in my life. Mostly that I spent 12 hours a day, 4 days a week in this little box and I can’t do anything else. Quarantine meant that all restaurants, camping destination, ect… was closed to the public so that we couldn’t form in large groups. Not to mention the fact that my Grandfather died of a stroke just as things were starting to open up again.

I wasn’t mentally fit enough to stay in that job so I found a different position. I work in a smaller company and I do get paid more. I don’t get as many hours anymore. Mostly because there aren’t really any hours to be had. I’m honestly one of two people getting full time hours in this company and I am grateful for that. My job is mostly patrolling late at night when nothing is happening. If something does happen I am supposed to call the cops. Though, if I’m being honest, the cops have been on higher alert than normal of late so they are usually around.

Still, we’re ending 2020 still in a pandemic with no real end in sight. People are chaffing at the restrictions, many yelling about their rights being violated just because they can’t have large family gatherings. Others are trying to get more people to change a system that hasn’t really worked. Covid numbers are rising and I’m wondering if we are really fighting the right fight as a country at the moment. I really need to make it through this year, even if it kills me.

Something New

I started a new job this month. Not because I needed to but because I wanted to. I wanted to strike out on my own at a job where I could say for sure that everything I earned I did it on my own. My Boyfriend isn’t too happy about it because I lost the security of the last job and my insurance from that job. I understand why he feels that way. It’s not often you get a job where they will only fire you if there is a security breach that is your fault or someone dies because of something you did. At least I left that last job in such a way that I can always go back if I really want to.

The new job is still in the field of Security like my last job. I get paid more but I’m also left to my own devices more often than not. They haven’t even trained me beyond what I already knew from my last job since it was applicable to this job. There isn’t as much accountability at this job if I’m being honest. Which means that there isn’t much that can keep me at this job if something goes wrong. So in a sense my Boyfriend is right, this new job isn’t too secure. I wanted to do this on my own though.

My Boyfriend and I worked together at the last job. I was on one side of the site manning a gate all night. He was on the other doing patrols. We were lucky enough to have roughly the same shift where we worked the front half of the week. My week just started on Sunday while his started on Monday. I can honestly say it did make the job bearable because he would check up on me and bring me food. The problem with that is the favoritism that showed and it affected his own job which is bad. Not to mention that I was stuck in a box checking to see if the construction workers had the required ID to be allowed on the job site. It was 12 hours of that ridiculousness. The entire time I was there maybe one or two construction workers forgot their badge inside the site because they left for lunch which required me to sign them onto a sheet of paper along with someone who could vouch for them. Which is something they got mad at me for, not sure why, but they did.

My new job has me doing patrols, going from one business under our contracts to another making sure no one tries to break in. My hours are still graveyard hours when the businesses themselves are closed. Tis a necessary precaution since the places are dispensaries. It also means I get paid more and I am allowed to carry a gun for my job making it a technical promotion from unarmed security to armed security. Which might also be why my Boyfriend is so against it. At least as a security guard I’m not actually looking for trouble, like the cops are paid to do. I’m just supposed to prevent it if possible. If not, that’s what cops are for. I just hope I don’t lose everything trying to do something new.