Writer of fiction, poetry, etc - based in Vancouver BC
There’s something intensely cruel about shift work. I know what I said about kvetching, and I’m really trying to write about something else, but you’d be shocked (those of you who don’t work a labour job, at least) by how much this sort of work dominates your time and energy. Today, for example, I’m exhausted from having worked two shifts in a row going from 4pm-11:30pm, which kept me up late, and then I have this one day off before I go back to work a shift that starts at 7am, which will get me up early. So I can’t sleep in to recover from the shift before, I feel totally drained and unfocused, and then I can’t relax in the evening because I have to worry about being ready for to wake up super early and rush out the door. It doesn’t feel like a proper day off because, even if I’m not physically at work, the whole day is still dominated by the effects of work.
It’s partially my fault. I’m bad at falling asleep fast, so I stay up too late once I’m already home. I stayed up late reading. Vernon God Little, the novel I’ve plucked from the shelf I’ve left it sitting for years, and then a lot of related wikipedia articles—I do spend too much time on my phone, but at least I’m not doom scrolling social media. Not most of the time.
This morning I was a bit. Sunday means my grandpa makes pancakes, so the kitchen isn’t free when I come up to make breakfast. I stayed on my phone waiting for him to finish. I don’t like doing that first thing when I wake up, but I was too tired to do anything else. I tried.
The pancakes he makes are dense and burnt. Every Sunday, the dense and burnt pancakes. Sometimes more often than that, too. I am offered them and sometimes I eat one.
He likes them, which is good. He saves them in the freezer and will microwave one at a time to have for breakfasts.
The batter comes from a family friend, an almost ninety year old French-Canadian woman who runs an antique shop on Dunbar St. She comes by in her Jeep, stops by the back gate, and one of us runs out and takes the giant bowl of pancake batter. Okay, not always like that, but it’s happened like that and the event is burned in my mind as how the pancake batter enters our lives.
Mainly, I am just burnt out and upset about it. Thank you for attending my rant. I feel better now.