The last 38 days

I quit that god forsaken newspaper delivery job. Sure, it pays well but I was literally dying after doing it for less than two weeks.

I came to the realization that interior design was not my passion. I had tried to fool myself into believing that just so I can keep working at IKEA for several years and not care about anything else. My passion is to go to Japan and… so far that is it, hence the 自分探し.

I also came to the realization that IKEA’s “lots of opportunities” are not so special. I don’t have to work strictly at IKEA to find good opportunities.

So I have made plans to quit my job at IKEA and go back on that job offer from TELUS. If I’m going to be working at a place for several years before I can get anywhere then I might as well pick the one that pays $20/hour.

However, all this thinking about what I want to do with my career

I spent $600.00 buying new furniture from IKEA and then spending many hours assembling it for my room; which before had absolutely no furniture and I had to leave everything on the floor.
Here is a current work in progress photo.

I think I am entering an extremely late rebellious phase where just being in the same room as my mother bothers me let alone listening to her nag me about what I should/shouldn’t do. I have made plans to move out as soon as possible.

I am now more obsessed with foursquare and twitter than ever before now that I have a shiny qb phone; you know, the one where you have to sign a contract with the devil’s fruit for.

There’s so much going on in my head right now that I don’t even know what to write here anymore. It’s either that or using Twitter is causing my writing skills to completely turn to shit.

What I did for the past 34 days

- drive 1 hour per trip to and from work to IKEA Richmond

- I work 5 days a week in the IKEA Food Services department

- I spoke to the IKEA Communications & Interior Design department acting manger and got permission to help out in that department. So now I work roughly 6 days a week at IKEA.

- My grandparents came to live with me

- On a whim; bought an iPhone 4S with 3 year term contract for $70/month
( ﾟ∀ﾟ)ｱﾊﾊ八八ﾉヽﾉヽﾉヽﾉ ＼ / ＼/ ＼

- Decided that I want to go back to school and study interior design and merchandising so I can get a full-time position at IKEA

- I spent the majority of my free time either at IKEA talking to people, doing research on which school/program I want to go back to school for, catching up on anime/video games, or keeping my grandparents company.

- And lastly just this morning, I got back from training to be a carrier for the Vancouver Sun and Province newspapers for a route near my home. This means I have to get up every morning at 2:00AM and deliver newspapers by car until roughly 5:00AM depending on how many routes I decided to take. I will get paid roughly $650 – $700 per route per month.

I’ve come a long way

I can hardly believe myself that all of a sudden I’m busy as ever, going to work everyday, thinking about my career everyday, and for perhaps the first time in my life having a good idea what I want to be like in 5 years.

This is coming from an individual who dropped out of university in his 2nd year and then spent an entire year sitting around at home and playing video games.

I really hope I don’t go back to being like that.

My to and from drive to the IKEA store in Richmond today was more tiring than the actual shift itself… and that’s not including the fatigue I incurred by getting lost and stuck in Delta for half an hour on the way home.

I didn’t do much at IKEA today because it was orientation day. I spent 4 hours walking around the store meeting all the department managers and staff, filling out a shit load of paper work, and going through the usual “this is our company culture and how we do things here, if you don’t follow it we will fire you” kind of lesson thing along with a safety lesson and test at the end.

The one thing though that struck me as very intriguing was the fact that IKEA’s Food Services department is customer-oriented first over profit-oriented. This explains why the food at IKEA is always so cheap yet good quality.

Instead of selling overpriced food (like just about every other food selling business out there) IKEA aims to provide a good experience for the customer before anything else. In turn, by satisfying the customers, they would be more likely to come back again and buy more furniture. It’s such a simple and brilliant way of doing business, I love it.

After my shift at IKEA today, while lining up to get my staff meal dinner of what-the-hell-I-want for $4.00, I ran into a young man named Igor and his girlfriend Veronica who started talking to me because of a certain file folder I was using to carry my papers from orientation. Based on his appearance I assumed he was just a young teenage anime fan, but once we sat down with our food and started talking, I found out that Veronica wasn’t his girlfriend but his wife and he’s a computer engineer who works for Microsoft in Vancouver (I will never judge someone based one their appearance ever again). We had a nice chat then exchanged Facebook before going our separate ways.

I’m starting to think that leaving university to find a full-time job was a really really good idea.

(picture is somewhat related, if you know the Touhou characters here)

P.S

My grandparents from my mother’s side arrived in Vancouver last night and will be living with me for several years. Why is this important? because this grandpa of mine is the coolest grandpa ever. How so? He taught himself how to use a computer a few years ago and currently has a laptop that is even newer than mine.

(I made sure to clean my mouse and keyboard before taking the photos)

So let’s see… other than being a full-of-himself idiot reckless driver… what else is there that I desperately need to improve on?

I go to sleep everyday at 4:00AM and wake up next day with nothing to do.

I loitered around at home like a parasite feeding off of my mother’s goodwill and money without ever having to worry about paying for anything myself.

I get annoyed at my mother when she tells me to do this and do that despite me having absolutely no reason to be, other than because I’m lazy.

I try to show off at every opportunity I have when I’m around other people and will often completely disregard other people’s feelings at the time whilst doing so.

I don’t listen to what people have to say because I’m actually a incredibly stubborn dolt who likes to think he’s always right.

I may be good at befriending people but once I get to know someone, I often start being pretentious and treating my friends as nothing but subjects for me to stroke my ego with. This is one of the number one things I hate about myself.

And this is not the first time I have come to realize these problems about myself, the main problem here is that even though I am aware of these issues I force myself into being retardedly optimistic and thinking “it’s ok, don’t worry about it” time and time again.

I need to grow up. I need to stop talking only to people who I can look down upon. I need to immerse myself in something greater than myself and stop being so god damn self centered all the time. I need to go to sleep earlier.

So as a start… I will go to sleep today at 1:00AM and tomorrow start trying to be more considerate to my friends and family.

… ~sigh

P.S – To anyone who has actually read this far, thank you for reading this stream of consciousness rant to myself…