In the previous update about my stupid life, I shared that I had contacted the local union at the hospital where I work because I had been screwed out of a potentially years-long contract. I was informed definitively that due to the day the contract was registered (the 14th of August), I had no chance to contest the contract. You see, I officially worked until the 14th (included), but, because the motherfucker whose medical leave I was covering didn’t call in advance to inform that he would return to work, something that every other worker does as a basic human courtesy, I ended up showing up at work on the 16th (the 15th was a holiday) only to find out that I was out of a job. In such circumstances, nobody can give you a straight answer about whether or not you will get paid if you stick around for the day, so some just leave. I left in most previous occasions, but this time I stayed to finish some tasks that had kept me busy for the entire week, and because I get along with my boss. In the end I didn’t get paid, although I have contacted a couple of departments in an attempt to correct that issue.

Anyway, because our secretary wasn’t aware that the person whose leave I was covering would return, she arranged that potentially years-long contract on the 14th. She told me that if she had known that the guy would return, she would have waited a couple of days to formalize the contract (that started on the 18th), meaning that it would have gone to me. So the medical-leave guy has screwed me out of a better job in a different department. To say that I’m very angry at him is an euphemism. Some day I’ll end up paired with him to work the afternoon shift, and I’ll have to get it changed to mornings. This time he screwed me over was just the last one; I have covered his leaves about six times, and all of them ended with me entering the office to find the fucker nonchalantly sitting at his desk. It’s no use talking to him; he’s clearly screwed in the head.

I have spent this night entangled in an hours-long nightmare, and then I woke up with a headache. Shortly after my shift started at eight in the morning, the usual middle-aged coworkers who interact with each other as if they’re in a school playground forced me to shove earplugs in. Minutes later, as I was trying to focus on my tasks, the secretary approached the female technician who sits opposite me, and I started getting the feeling that they were talking about me. I usually ignore these kinds of paranoid thoughts; as a solitary autistic guy who was persecuted by nasty people in middle school and high school, and who can’t determine people’s intentions to begin with, I’m always on the defensive, never knowing from where the next attack is going to come. However, I’m also aware that such defensive mechanisms tend to create lots of false positives. But in this case, these two women started gesturing clearly toward me. Very annoyed, I pulled my earplugs off and asked them what was it that they wanted. The secretary asked me if I was alright. I considered explaining myself: I have a headache on top of a sensory processing disorder, and the fact that I’m wearing earplugs should have told them that they shouldn’t bother me unless necessary. I said, against my will, “I was just trying to…”, and my voice trailed off. However, they weren’t even listening; they were already chit-chatting with each other about the fact that they couldn’t wear earplugs themselves because shoving things into their holes is icky. Once again I was forced to face the fact that I deal five days a week with the kinds of human beings that would wake you up just to ask if you were sleeping. Also, fuck open-plan offices.

This afternoon I’ll put together the audiochapter for the 114th part of my deranged, depraved novel, and during the rest of this morning I’ll arrange my 2200 words of notes for the following chapter into chronological chunks that will allow me to synthetize them through the usual sessions of freewriting (usually performed at five in the morning). Losing myself in writing is my most reliable way to remain sane; the older I get, the more unbearable I find human beings. Even dealing with them online has gotten annoying. Oh, and recently I’ve been playing Cyberpunk 2077. The 2.0 update finally made it good, so check it out if you’re into that kind of stuff. Bye bye.