Fork in the Road

Well, I should, admittedly, probably be sleeping.
I got off work at midnight, and I leave for Powell River at noon tomorrow.

But potential decision-points are floating around in my head like bullets which may never be fired.

Working at the hat-store, called Lids, in Burnaby's Metrotown Mall is a lot of fun. It's definitely something I would have no issue sticking with for months or even a couple years on end if the opportunity arose.

On the other hand, working at a McDonald's within a Wal-Mart seems like not only a double slap-in-the-face to most (if not all) of what I have stood for (and against) in the past couple of years; it is also exactly as I expected it would be. Droning, impersonal, monotonous, gratuitously wasteful, and something I wish to toss out of my life as quickly as I can.
Not only do I have numerous practical issues with working at a McDonald's; I also have numerous moral issues as well. For example: during one shift, I emptied all the bins of what is designated as 'recycling,' and carried the full bags into the back. When I asked where I should put these bags for proper disposal, the shift-manager at the time told me that "oh! We don't actually have recycling. We just toss it in with the rest of the garbage."

Concealing my annoyance at such dishonesty and ignorance, I simply laughed along with the shift manager and said, "Oh! I see. So we're just pretending to be green."

Now, the people working here in question are not dishonest or cruel. Although I did have one incident of being treated like I was less than a human being, 99% of my time at McDonald's has been acceptable people-wise. It simply seems as if the shift-managers, assistant managers, and the manager of this particular branch himself seem either one or two of three things: they have either surrendered to what they see as 'reality' as so they do not compromise their position and/or pay cheques (as I may very well be doing now); or they are apathetic and indifferent to details like the whole 'lying about recycling' thing; or.. and I'm sure this applies to at least a few of them.. they are simply ignorant, and that is why they have actually stuck around long enough to be of high status at McDonald's. It's as far as their aspirations seem to go.

Beyond my rather mixed life of labor, life here in Port Coquitlam has been trying in quite a few aspects.
One of the biggest issues, to me, is a lack of friends and family. Although I do have about 2 friends down here (one of which I am living with), and a 'mother' who has now adopted me as some sort of extended family, it still doesn't feel like home. It feels like a base I have established away from home in order to probe the world outside. And there's nothing really wrong with that, as it has given me a proper spoonful of everything I needed a spoonful of, whether it was the bitter stuff or the sweet stuff, but if a place barely feels like home after 2 months... chances are, it's not going to feel like home after another 2 months.

Between laborious nights at McDonald's and lonely days in bed, alongside the occasional onset of anxiety whether due to worrying about the mild ringing in my ears or my perceived feeling of improper breathing, and never having any friends to let-loose with every now and then aside from occasional jokes and quick chats over the phone, I have found myself driven to considering a return to my hometown of Powell River until I can figure both myself and my life out a bit more coherently.

I believe a return would be much appreciated on my end, but at the same time... I have wanted nothing more than to leave my hometown since Grade 10.

I guess the point is that when I said I wanted to 'leave home,' I never meant I wanted to exchange it for loneliness and McDonald's.
However, that's not to say I haven't had good times down here. I certainly have.

It's just that I still feel like I did in Grade 10, and it wasn't so much that I wanted to leave...
It was that I wanted to be free.

I'm still waiting to be free, and I refuse to wait much longer.