Mean things.

Every now and then I see this old guy on my tram and it’s obvious that he works for whatever company runs our public transport system now because he’s all decked out in the uniform and all his buttons are shiny and he wears a very official looking conductors cap and I’m pretty certain he would have had to ask for it because not every tram guy has one. He looks like he has been working with trams for the last fifty years, since back when being a tram driver was a career, when there were conductors, when it was a respectable job that came with a uniform and a hat and brass buttons that you shined and the passengers knew your name, back when shit used to mean something.

And it kind of kills me. And don’t get me wrong, I am not nostalgic about a past that I have never experienced, oh no, I am being entirely selfish in my effected sadness. It kills me because I am thirty years old and all that I know how to do is work a cash register and say ‘Hi, how you going?’ in a way that makes everybody in the room want to kill themselves. I’m thirty, I work in retail, I have a twitter account called Masturbation Blues and I think that pretty much says it all really.

I don’t even know where I was going with this. White persons problems. The usual Will I lose my job and am I competent enough to find another one, what skills do I have, if any, that would allow me to live my life but perhaps of a slightly higher standard, is it even necessary? When you compare my life to say, that of an infant in some malaria stricken village in Africa, sure, I’ve got it pretty good but that doesn’t stop me from wanting nicer things.

Am I what’s wrong with the world? I am the unsatisfied youth that is youth no longer. I am neither satisfied nor dissatisfied. I am unhappy, belligerent and complacent but not outwardly so. I never got what I was promised as a child so I want it all now even though I’ll never have it. It sucks and I blame the media and anything else within reach because that what we do now. I’m like this because that happened, it’s got nothing to do with the fact that I am naturally a total arsehole and indeed excel at being one.

I’m getting off track. I guess what I’m trying to say is that now that I'm thirty I'm beginning to feel like a man repenting on his deathbed, in the sense that if I don’t do something now then later will suck even worse, you know? Only, he’s worried about the after-life and I’m worried about being homeless when I’m fifty and then being recognised by someone whom I was a prick to. I think it’s a fear we all have.