Last year was a biblically bad year for me, top 5 at least with 2017 and 2019 but especially poignant was the lyric that rang true: nobody likes you when you’re 23, so coming into 24, I’ll try and focus on what I really care for: cars. But this post really isn’t about them, really.
This is really more about the sort of Blue Monday your Alfa-Romeo, Maserati or Jaguar suffer from where they crank but don’t start and well, after 5 days of everyday vent-posts I found myself needing to write about the way I feel about the way things are, I only really get solace writing about stuff–remembering my password to this blog!
And seemingly, to the outside world, I’m sure it felt to you like I’d abandoned my efforts but nothing could be further from the truth. With how bad ’25 was and how my job search is going, I feel like I’m pissing against the wind and things don’t feel like they’re gonna get better. Yet, a lot of you have gone out of your way to tell me that it does… and that strangely enough motivated me to share more about the way I’m feeling now.
Truthfully, I lost myself last year, I hope now that I’m writing to you again after a short hiatus, I have got what’s left back. If you’re already groaning at the musical references throughout this post, it’s the only way I’ve got left to deal with the horrors, so strap in and enjoy because that’s the only poetry I interact with and life certainly is poetic.
My body is making all sorts of new squeaks and rattles and I’m certainly not getting any younger… and after three months of looking for a job with broken promises and a naff outlook on life only to remember one of my most interesting discoveries about myself I hope you’ll get something out of. Maybe Tran Girlismo radicalized me to start putting stuff out there. Who’s to say!
Let’s work through it but be warned, this a bit of a downer.
I don’t know if you’ve ever watched Craig Ferguson’s monologues but he got through serious topics with comedy and grace and I hope I inject a bit of this and some of that here, it needs it.
While we’re at it with lyrics that will color all of my articles going forward, all your dreams are made when you’re chained to the mirror like a razor blade— so I think these are maybe the most important kinds, observing myself and checking me at the door before we go on and talk about stuff that actually matters, not this trite nonsense that is my life.
The meat of it though and the reason why I have made silly choices like taking on that minimum wage, 6 month summer gig (IN GREECE, this is KEY to the pain you endure) 9-5 is simple: unlike so many kids these days you see on the apps with Ferraris and suspiciously financed G80 M3s and G-Wagens, I didn’t come from money. I’ve not seen “the world”. I’ve only been in one “grand” vacation in 2017 with my family through Switzerland and the South of France and that was it, I’ve not really “lived life” dated or ever spent money frivolously–nor have I ever gone to a rental counter with someone else’s credit card looking for a car when I was 19 in a “boy group” looking for the best spots, barely being able to pronounce Halkidiki as Halk-ai-dick-ai. You got that right.
Last year’s theme, other than that was undermining my value, never celebrating my achievements and then being forced into a situation I didn’t want is punctuated neatly by the fact that I was supposed to go to Rome for my graduation celebration in April that made me feel like things were gonna go my way but that’s when I found out I got the 9-5 and with… ahem… pressure from everyone else, I couldn’t go and naturally, I wasn’t even allowed time off to reflect on life, nevermind a week’s long vacation I never got. It is a special kind of feeling driving to the airport, the day of and picking up a car from there to go back to my job. The world is a vampire and I only get angrier thinking about what’s going on now. The interviews I got in between I was so drained by the job and my lack of time I feel like I missed out on opportunities to actually get out of here.
So while I’m at it: I’ll air out a few more frustrations and surprisingly, this is quite poignant with the ever-lengthening wealth gap that seems to be happening at its extreme and bitter ends across the pond. At least this isn’t quite oligarchy, if that’s even a consolation.
The only thing I really have is my pride and as a knower, when someone with a Vacheron Constantin complaining about their Mercedes-Benz GLB being “lightly optioned” compared to their GLE back home, I took comfort in that I knew they were b*llshitting me that their 25k watch was without exception, a gift. That’s always the nice, white lie and the best way to doucheproof because inheritance isn’t flexing, my Breitling serves some solace.
The problem comes when someone like, picking from the crop of examples I have I can’t quite share publicly, Dutch mechanical engineer with a vintage VW Beetle back home who we graciously upgraded to a GLA from a Puma who thought my 316i was the fanciest thing ever and who was I to own that when he came right after the store had closed, demanding service when he was: late and just in time for my shop’s closing time. I hope his Käfer never runs right. It is weird to feel attacked for the single, truly valuable escape I have in my life just because some yokel from the Netherlands needs to be condescending. Wasn’t in my bingo card to be at the center of a class war.
I felt a bit more violated when a customer snapped a photo of me without permission while I was showing them the buttons of a new BMW 3er they wholeheartedly did not deserve or treated with respect that I only really get angry thinking about.
That’s the sort of stuff I can’t mention without going back into that dark place for not making as much a big deal out of in the moment, dissociating and just standing there with a death-stare.
What really bugged me throughout the year was that I lost quite a bit of weight from where I was at at the start to the end of the job and that was entirely down to me losing my appetite and not getting a real lunch-break without a co-worker telling on me and having me stay 30 minutes more, even when there wasn’t any work to do.
And yet, the valuable lesson I got working a retail job at least is that I’m no misanthrope. I will bend over backwards and do my best to help and understand your situation and, really, I learned I generally liked people in this job and that certainly seemed like the wrong attitude to how everyone else approached them. For instance, my older, bitter colleagues commented on the small stuff yet I wasn’t concerned–there was a queer guy who always came to pay his parking ticket across our booth with a dress worn as a top, a large straw hat and a bag over his shoulder and that felt more like an act of defiance in the world than anything these guys ever accomplished. It takes a larger set of balls than they have to be so righteous in the face of *gestures at everything*.
Really, I was only bitter at the kids having a blast being in an exotic country to the world’s eyes like Greece from far-away places like Australia and Sweden, coming into my world to get a car with their girlfriend or group of friends, in this heated, repressive, homophobic, dead-end, work environment (quite typical of Greece!) sinking deeper into my armor that I felt really angry at myself that I had gotten a degree, spent five years grinding away at it, to waste away a summer being made to feel like a servant of a bunch of sixteen and sixty year old brats from around the world, with their one goal to use up as much of me as they can.
I’m almost midway through my 20s and I never experienced any kind of that sort of freedom and the sad thing is, I really feel like I missed out on that boat what with being a late bloomer and, well, sans-trustfund. Teeanage angst has paid off well. Now I’m bored and old.
This was, in the grand scheme of things, a minor thing I largelly washed away whenever I had the opportunity to settle into the bolsters and slide around a new BMW around the block or hammer along in a Polo GTi, for old time’s sake. Stories worth telling you about.
That was all well and good until a canon event unfolded when at the end of my shift, I adopted a girl-kitten that waddled, swollen and afraid outside of the office that I was so taken by, I took home. Matt Farah, if you’re out there, you really influenced me getting into cats with the one podcast you did describing watching a movie about one and how it made you emotional to see a kitten lost and alone. Maybe I saw myself in her and felt she needed saving, who’s to say.
I had her a week before, while she climbed onto the balcony, she got startled, jumped and lived her last few breaths alive in my arms while we took her to the vet. That was Saturday.
I got a phone call from my boss at 10 at night after the worst afternoon of my life while I’d burst into tears and had to put on my professional tone and face about my shift alone the next day. Sunday, bloody, Sunday that was. I’m sorry, Vicki.
I remember that day so vividly that when I was done with customers, I took a Fiat 500 to get washed and get a large, iced Americano from the mall as I broke down in tears picking it up and I remember barely being able to stand, let alone take that selfie with the amount of grief I was experiencing. I’d never had, or lost, a pet. I was told in therapy that I wear armor, I sink into to protect myself. I’m here to tell you that this time, baby, I’ll be bulletproof.
To be honest though.. I remember sitting in that Fiat and listening to Life’s What You Make It on the radio and the thought came to me that it was all going deeply wrong, because it really was. All of my action or perhaps in-action and poor judgement and guidance let me to this point.
So I adopted another kitten I called Nikki after Formula 1 legend Niki Lauda. She’s a rowdy girl, this didn’t stop me. I still can’t quite wrap my head around her being as large as a small fork!
It is a tired old cliché that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger because I already know I’m a fighter and a survivor far stronger than my façade suggests, I needn’t have it hammered home but that year really did it in to illustrate it to me. You should also know that even through that, a friend of mine actually reached out and really wanted to spend time with me, which I was actually pretty touched by and it went swimmingly: in June I went to Bulgaria and chased a GT3 through the mountains and also experienced what it was like to beat on a 240hp MiTo, stories coming to you soon. Those stories felt like my S-O-S was answered from afar, I hope I share them soon.
In my small world though, since then, tbh, not much has changed, even with a new year I immediately was rewarded with the Recaro I ordered shortly after saying “fuck it” (another story for another time) and I’m going through a seminar and started to learn German to improve my chances to leave here but nevermind all that: I received a package out of the blue from a viewer.
David Gaunt is someone who was instrumental in my decision to make a blog and write about stuff whom I’ve mentioned before but he told me that if I wanted a pack of a GoPro+bits, it’s mine.
Look what he wrote in the back of the package and tell me my stupid smile wasn’t justified!
It is one thing though to stand there defeated that things didn’t get better and that I’m not sitting in my chair now with some tangible proof that there are people out there (yes, you dear reader!) that are rooting for me, believing in me and cannot wait to see what I come up with. I’d never felt anyone, let alone a group of people want to see me prosper, see me do well that… moves me.
It’s something I can’t quite put to words and I don’t know why–I’ve mentioned so many songs here but if I were to attribute this it’d be Roger Sanchez’s “Another Chance” where it depicts a woman with a big heart that gets smaller with bad experiences. I can relate.
The world will chew me up and spit me out but then I get acts of kindness and support like this that really blow me away beyond words where I just want this small thing to succeed.
I just need a chance to get out of here, get me out of this two star town and kickstart my life finally.
If for no-one else, I guess I’ll try and make hay consistently here but that whole experience made me feel a bit defeated and sad this past while, this was sorely needed. Even going back to a whole inbox of rejection emails from abroad, I’m still gonna try and get out of here; there’s no future in my country and that’s a lot to grapple with, on its own.
Maybe this is the Evangelion congratulatory TV ending you want to hear but the truth is rather less certain. This was buried all deep inside me and dumping it all here and writing about it, I have.
All I can tell you for sure is that out of all of the darkness and sadness, soon comes happiness. If I surround myself with positive things, I’ll gain prosperity.
In so many ways, this is the only place I can really call mine so I hope I come around more often.
I hope 2026 is great. That’s why I said, screw it and bought a Recaro, anyway to make it so 🙂
