Okay, the times continue to be changing for PDR.

This is the last full week of me doing the job I want to quit. After this it’ll just be two nights a week while I am in school. I am, as I have said before, disappointed in myself for sticking around those two nights a week, since I want to get out of there so badly, but I really, really do need the money*. And. who knows, maybe having something familiar on the weekends will help keep me from losing myself in the all the change? I guess. Is that an upside?

To help me with that I’ve got a new roommate. It’s another case of me taking in someone I don’t know, but I think it’ll work out better than last time. He’s already managed to pay me for the first month, which comes to more money than the previous one gave me at all. I can afford some food today! (I can, but I should probably still save it for food another day…)

Anyway, to sum up, I start school next week. Weird.

*Really.

I mentioned this in passing last week, but I keep forgetting to go into further detail: I have spent my last pre-student paycheck on a new laptop.

This is the first time that I’ve went and got a new computer before my current one had some kind of catastrophic failure. Sure, my old one (Computron Rex) has plenty of issues, and seems to be getting worse all the time, but it is technically still a functional machine. That means, for the first time, I’ve got two computers on the go. And it is pretty effing sweet.

The new computer, an Asus model of some kind, seems really good. It is very fast compared to its predecessor and it is light enough that it probably will be able to function as a portable option in ways that that one never did. This is, of course, important now that school is happening. Most importantly it prevents me from worrying that my computer will die while I am needing it for school and I’ll be too poor to do anything about it.

I also have my weird computer naming policy that nobody cares about but me. I have to call it Computron Something, but I’m not entirely sure what. In chronological order, the computers I’ve owned were Computron, Computron V, Computron X, and Computron Rex. Where do I go from there? What’s better than Rex? My first thought was Computron Dei. Also, there’s the undead-based nickname that I have to apply as well, out of tradition. But I’m pretty sure I’ve used up all the best kinds of undead creatures. frankensteins, zombies, ghosts, and vampires I have used. So what is this guy? Sure there are options like maybe a lich or skeleton or mummy or something, but in a lot of ways those guys are just tricked-out zombies. As I pondered, my brain immediately started making the case that angels can be undead (in religious theory this is obviously not true, but we’ve all seen movies and stuff where dead folk become angels after death, so those guys would surely qualify).

Notice a pattern? My first thoughts for both of the naming conventions I use on my computers seem to be overselling this laptop to religious proportions. For the time I’m going to not officially name my new computer and we’ll see how well it lives up to my apparent subconscious impressions.

Anyway, now you are all up to date on my computer situation.

All week I’ve been talking about worries I have about going back to school apart from money. Well, the last one is money. I’m so worried about money it even shows up on the list that explicitly excepts it.

My financial state has not been good this year, that is for sure. As you may recall I even went so far as to get a roommate to help with rent because I wanted to climb out of debt (that hasn’t worked, by the way, what with the roommate apparently deciding that paying rent was optional and leaving half-eaten plates of food around would suffice). So here I am, kinda screwed. Still in the worst financial state I’ve ever been in and I’m quitting my source of income to go to school, which I have to pay for. Not the wisest plan.

I have no idea how people afford things. People out there have cars and smoke and drink and can apparently pay for all these things somehow. People have pets and children that do nothing but drain their resources. I don’t get it. At the job I am leaving I made a pretty decent amount of money, but it never seemed to get me anywhere. After rent and bills and stuff, I made enough to occasionally buy a dvd or a book (though not as often these last few years). I guess I did travel about once a year, but always as cheaply as I could. And anyway, it seemed like that was always coming out of credit, rather than ever being the result of any amount of money being saved. I’ve met people who can go on week-long trips at least yearly, whereas all but two of my trips in the last five years have been crammed into weekends without missing work. No monetary progress has ever been made.

I guess a lot of the people out there have people helping them, spouses or families who also have an income to help out. But still, it seems like I should be climbing out of this hole faster than not at all. I know I pay a lot for rent, so that’s a big chunk. I also give a little to some charities every month. That takes up a little of the money too. I am lucky that I don’t eat much, but when I do eat it often includes restaurant takeout and fresh produce oranges/apples/grapefruit/melons. That stuff probably adds up. I have always tried to pay back more than the minimum payments on my credit card, but the debt just grows and grows. Every time the statements look good some other fee comes out of nowhere and keeps me from getting closer to paying anything off. Are those four types of expenditures enough to use everything I earn?

And if they are, how am I going to manage without the money I make now? It looks bad.

Continuing my attempt to look on the bright side I find that the bright side of this is pretty bittersweet. First of all, I’ve cut my charitable donations by more than half. That makes me hate myself all the more, but it will probably be helpful. I always credited those as the reason for getting so much back on my income tax, though, so I sure hope I don’t end up with less coming back to me, or worse, owing money.

Another sad victory, Amazon has told me it can’t find a copy of the Black Panther Masterworks to give me. It’s good because it saves me like forty bucks, but also it is sad because I want to own those comics.

Perhaps I have to look for this silver lining from a different angle. How’s this: I’ve got a paying job now, which means I can just barely afford to buy a laptop before I go to school. So I did that yesterday. I have a new laptop. I’ll talk more about that in the future.

Another thing I’m going to have to put up with as I return to school is that there’s gonna be all those people there. I hate that.

In the time since I last attended school I’ve done a pretty good job of whittling down the number of people I have to be subjected to on a daily basis. I mean sure, I have to put up speaking to people I don’t want to speak to at work, or even just random people on the street who think I might want to communicate with them (like this one probably-drunk guy just last Sunday night who decided I wanted to hear the story about how he got asked to leave a Tim Hortons for smoking), but on the whole I’d say I’ve had to put up with less of that than I will in the coming year.

As I return to school, I’ll be surrounded by people who, probably, will be used to talking with people who don’t have “Why don’t you stop talking” repeating in their heads throughout the whole conversation. b.Some of these people will probably want to speak to me. Heck, I’ll probably actively have to start conversations with people for whatever stupid reasons school will give me for doing that. And, from what I can tell with my encounters with them, the younger generation doesn’t seem like the type cherish succinctness and brevity the way I do.

And it will be the younger generation I am dealing with. I am going to be, like, over a decade older than many of the other students taking first year classes. While this is okay in as much as it means I have a perfectly valid excuse for not relating to them and all their references to young people things (the first time I did university, I had no convenient excuse for my not relating), it also serves to complicate the relations I will have out of necessity. I am already incapable of having a forced conversation without constant awareness that I don’t want to, and the added awareness of the age difference isn’t going to help that.

Anyway, to look for the upside, some of these people will probably not be terrible and boring. I may even encounter people that I can enjoy speaking to (it has happened a handful of times in the past). What’s more, hopefully the fact that a lot of my co-students will be young persons who, for all I know, will be more interested in drinking and reality television will make me look smarter by comparison when it comes to schoolin’. Could happen.

Okay, so we’re probably around a month away from when I start school. Obviously the money thing is my biggest concern at the moment, but what about the other things I’m nervous about? I think I’ll talk about some of those this week.

First up: Daytime.

I have made sure that the earliest of my classes is scheduled at 11:30, so at least I don’t have to wake up with the sun like some chumps out there, but even that is pretty early for someone who has spent the better part of a decade living in the nighttime. And while I’ve got the excuse of working nights to explain why I was never up in the day, it is also a true fact that I prefer the night. It’s nice and quiet and I don’t have to put up with that terrible bright ball that is so intent on blinding me. I’m going to miss nights.

And what’s more, I’ll still be working two nights a week. That means I probably won’t be able to settle into a nice schedule. Not since the unhappy year of 2006 have I had to switch back and forth between days and nights on a regular basis. It was not at all pleasant then, so the fact that I will have to do it again now is not something I can look forward to. It could be rough. It’s not gonna be good for my morale.

The best way to deal with this is to look for upsides, so here is my upside for today: Five nights a week, I’m not going to be working. Sure, I’ll probably have homework or whatever, but apart from that I’ll actually be able to see some nights (even if I have to go to bed sooner), whereas most of my years of working nights meant that, while I was awake in the hours I like, I spent them doing this I didn’t. So who knows? This one could go either way.