Posse Up

 I've been going over the idea for this post for a little while now, but I wasn't totally certain quite how to go about it. And then Thursday happened. Thursday, May 19th. Not a spectacular day in Cliff history, but it certainly provided the impetus to finally get this thing hammered out.

Ever have one of those days where things happen and you just end up eating shit? That was Thursday. It was like a double-barrel shotgun blast of crap unexpectedly flying down the throat.

Yeah okay, that was gross. I'd like to retract that, but I obviously didn't because it's there. Am I lazy? Am I cruel? A little of both? Chalk it up to what you will and let's try to move on.

So, Thursday. First, the biggest (by a spectacular margin) freelance site on the Internet decided to go ahead with a host of changes that make the entire enterprise fairly close to untenable. On the first $500 I would earn from any client they are now taking a 20% cut of (up from 10%). Since most jobs are one-offs, that's a lot of green I'm handing over. The reason? They claim that short jobs cost them more money to host, which makes absolutely no sense at all. So on top of ripping me off, they're lying to me. Wonderful.

They also changed the way that applying for gigs works. See, to apply for a job, I need to spend Connects. Every month, I get 50. It now takes at least 2, and as many as 5, to apply for a gig. Those can be returned to the pool fairly fluidly, but not all the time, so you do tend to burn through them. But hey, I can get more...for a few bucks. Yes Virginia, everyone loves micro-transactions in every other aspect of their lives, so let's bring it in to this.

Freelancers are pissed. Good clients are leaving the site in droves (they ended up being ham-boned with a bunch of extra fees as well), meaning all that remains are cheapass joke clients who aren't worth my time. So there goes that side income, because I'm not wasting another moment on an enterprise being run by people who would clearly be challenged by work in a seed plant.

Okay, fine. So it's time to sink my efforts into finding another part time job. In the mean time, at least I've got my part time FedEx gig, right? And...oh...great. I still have it, but I just lost 10% of my weekly hours. Everyone did. And while the corporate types CLAIM that those hours can totally come back later on, I don't see why that would possibly happen. Large companies don't hand out more money if the people working for them have proven that they can get the work done in less time. Why would they?

So, in a matter of hours I lost a lot of money and opportunity. It wasn't a good day. The long weekend was looking bleak. I ranted and raved and got a little drunk and hit up the Facebooks and mentioned what was happening before heading off for a rather sleepless Thursday night.

And then people stepped up, helped pick me back up, and things got better. Everything isn't bad. Hell, most things are good...even though I find myself currently applying to work part time at ATS again (yes, really).

When I really slammed into rock bottom, drilled deeper, and kept wallowing in darker and bleaker recesses of the shit hole I'd made for myself years ago, I had rendered myself quite solitary. It wasn't something I was doing consciously, it just sort of happened that I enveloped myself in alone. And as has been covered a few times here already, that didn't exactly go well. If I'm being honest here, I think it had more to do with finding the need to keep up illusory airs of things being okay so exhausting that solitude was easier. Why admit things are bad when you can just...sit alone?

I'm a fairly tough person, but I'm pretty far from indestructible. And I tend to be fairly emotional. I mask that well a lot of the time by just being the guy who cracks a joke when things get serious (working on that), but that's all about armouring myself. Because when you're putting yourself in a bad position and you're being bombarded by little shots of your own creation, those wounds tend to hurt more when you're an emotional guy and you leave yourself open. You might not realize the damage is happening (even when it's catastrophic), but it is. But I do need to get better about always resorting to being 'joke guy'. Speaking of which, I'm now about to get a little...emotionally happy...
  

Warning. I am about to get sappy, which is certainly different for me. See, this post really isn't about me. It's about all of you who help make my life tolerable, fun and interesting. I'll be honest and admit I got a little teary writing parts of it. And yes, I've had a couple of drinks while finishing it. You've been warned. 

 
This weekend has been a nice reminder that I don't need to be some macho idiot standing there alone trying to tough shit out by myself. I've got a small army of people who I can lean on. And those people don't need me to pretend to be bulletproof and invulnerable. I don't need to pretend to be anything different than who I am. You all don't care what I do for a living, how much money I've got, whether I actually finished high school, what shows I watch, what stuff I own or any other irrelevant bullshit along those lines.

I'm lucky enough to have a great family who have always backed me, even when I've messed up and probably haven't deserved it. And I'm even luckier to have a large collection of friends who apparently find me interesting enough to hang around with. I don't really know if I can adequately explain to you lot how much it really means to me to have all of you around. I can only hope to be enough of a friend in return that this is all ending up somewhere close to even, because I owe every one of you crazy motherfuckers more than I can ever hope to properly express, much less repay.

I've had a bad habit of going it alone when things get tough, like I believed that being some stoic action movie cliché would somehow make things easier. And it didn't, because that's not who I am. Fuck that. I want to go back to being more social. As I've been formulating how I want this post to go, I've been thinking a lot about friends over the decades. I've thought about those who I haven't seen in years, those who I've recently started to re-acquaint with, and those who I see all the time. There have been a lot of good times, a few bad times, and a lot that fluctuated between the two. And every one of you have helped me maintain my sanity. 

You guys have been there for me whenever I've needed it. And you would have been there in the past if I'd been less of a stubborn idiot and allowed you to be. And look, not everyone was around this weekend, and that's fine. Everyone has stuff going on. I get that. But if you had been around, you would have been there as well. That's what matters. If any of you ever needs anything, you best believe that I will do whatever I can.

In any group of friends there's that core group. Like a war council in a mob movie.

I especially want to spend more time with you lot, even if we've scarcely seen each other for years. If we've ever spent an entire night talking about everything, where 5-10 minute silences didn't matter, you're in it (Ahoy, James & Liam). If you've shown the courage to always be totally open and honest, regardless of the subject and how much you were opening yourself up to criticism/ridicule, you're in (Pretty much all of you, but I'll single out Shaun here). If you're the one who I always know will boil down my constant over-analyzing to the basics and/or give me a needed boot in the ass, you're in (Hello, Janine). If you've put up with us bringing up awful incidents from 15 years ago with good humor and have always been there, even though we don't really 'talk serious' all that much, you're in (Kelly, of course). If you've been a basically constant presence in my corner all of the time, you're in (Yo, Vlad and Chad). And if you're someone who I once had coffee with for four hours despite getting in a minor car accident on the way to your house that left me with a bit of whiplash and a trunk that wouldn't close because I knew we'd have an awesome conversation that made it all worth it, you're in (Hi, Monique). 

We might not be capable of 14 hour coffee sessions any longer (or spending all night at coffee, then going directly to work before returning to coffee again. Kelly, you were a complete maniac), but I definitely want to be better about spending time with every one of you. And if I didn't mention you, I wanna hang more with you as well because there's always room for another seat at the table. Except when we're literally out of table space, but we can always drag a second table over in total violation of fire codes or something. I need, and want, to be a lot more proactive about making things happen.

Thanks. If any of you ever needs a laugh, a shoulder to cry on, a boot in the ass, someone to listen, someone to talk, someone to overthink, someone to unburden your troubles on to, someone to help dispose of a body or anything else, you've got my number.