Year in Review

Uh, so.  My 2014 kinda sucked.  MAGFest, and then buying a 3DS and Bravely Default were literally the only things that kept me going.  I'm going to have to exert some effort on the "getting a job" front in 2015, methinks.  The story of why 2014 sucked actually starts at the end of 2013, so here we go.

I mean, my contract at Silverchair ended abruptly, five minutes before close-of-business, on the week of my birthday in 2013.  I was basically just shoved out the door, not even given a chance to say goodbye to the team members I'd spent the majority of the year working with.

Then I got myself a health insurance plan from yonder healthcare.gov and had to cope with their extremely clunky website and insistence on having a credit report for "identity verification".  Having no credit card and no desire or need for one, I don't have a credit report.  As it turns out, there's an alternate method of "identity verification" that's far easier, you just photocopy a valid photo ID (say, your drivers' license) and mail it to a specific address.  So whatever, all that headache was over with.

I trusted my dad.  I did.  But he let me down.  He was handling the selection of the plan and the subsidy amount, and didn't give me the full subsidy.  He claims "it's better that way because you can get a tax credit the next time you file taxes", but...  I dunno about you, but I'd rather spend less money now than pay more now and get refunded later.

Anyway, MAGFest happened, where I went crazy and bought a SNES and some games, including Chrono Trigger.  A few months later came the 3DS and Bravely Default, which as I previously mentioned, would carry me through the majority of the year.  This entire time I was feeling pretty horrible because of shenanigans with roommates, specifically a roommate's girlfriend who may very well have not had a place of her own and as far as I'm aware, wasn't paying a share of our rent.  She probably should have, given the amount of time she spent in our apartment.  Then the lease ended and another headache began.

That headache would be convincing my parents to let me move back into their house.  They've got this horrible habit of trying to completely dismiss me when I'm asking a tough question.  In this case, the tough question was "would you rather have me be homeless than move back in with you?"  They refused to answer.  Not even kidding.  If someone's accusing you of preferring your son to be homeless over having him move back in with you and you don't immediately say you'd do what it takes to prevent him from being homeless, you're a bad person.

Anyway, so I've been back here at my parents' place feeling incredibly weird ever since about mid-August.  I went to a job fair where nobody was taking resumes and defeating the point by telling everyone to apply online.  I'm going through the healthcare.gov headache again too.  I wanted to apply for a different plan in 2015, to see if I could get a lower premium since I don't have any fucking money, but their site said "lol I see this perfectly good 2015 application that you've fully finished filling out, but I'm going to insist you haven't finished it and extend your 2014 plan instead".  So basically, this death trap of a website is going to cost me a lot of money having to basically wait until February to be able to pay a lower premium.

I don't even know how I'm going to afford parking at MAGFest.  Maybe I can try to reactivate my NEET gene and get ~$100 from my mom to cover parking and hopefully some small amount of merchandise.

Speaking of MAGFest, that's another headache that I haven't ever really brought up before now.  For the last several years, I've worked teardown.  The internal system that keeps track of everything, including staffing hours, goes down a few hours after closing ceremonies, during which I've always been hard at work helping pack shit up and get it to trucks at the loading dock.  So I never got to turn in my shift sheet until after the system had been taken down so that it too could be packed into a truck.  Operating solely on the promise of someone in registration that my shifts would get entered, I've always thought I'd been good at that point.

Except I've never been good at that point.  The person who promises they'll enter my shifts never does, and thus I have to bash some heads to get back into the system every year.  This year, I'm finally tired of it.  Not only have I not signed up for teardown, but if I don't end up in the system for 2016's MAGFest, I'm completely done with MAGFest.  Not even going as an attendee.  Staffing Operations knows this, because I emailed the department head directly.  As a staffer doing at least 30 weighted hours, I get a comped hotel room to share with three other staffers.  Also part of the deal is that I also qualify for the staff food room thanks to an earlier weighted hours goal.  If I'm not on staff, I can't afford the hotel room, much less the food I'd need to keep myself alive while I'm there.  Parking is also expensive, and I've only been able to cover that in previous years because staffers get a discount.