Idk if this is the right sub for this type of rant but it's most definitely anti work so we'll see 🤷️
TLDR; A long-winded rant about me missing my chance to see the Auroras because I had to get up early for a job I can't take days off from.
Preemptively, I recognize my position of privilege when it comes to being able to complain about something comparatively menial to the other absolute atrocities happening in the world today, but this feels therapeutic and, if nothing else, I want to put it out there for selfish reasons (possible vindication idk).
Since the start of my senior year in highschool I've worked in my family's business as a vendor to some local grocery store chains, I get up at five am five days a week and three am on the other two days. I only get national holidays off and sick days are all but non-existent, I've been able to have my dad pick up for me if I was vomiting and couldn't stand or something. I've been doing this job for about three years now. It pays well considering I still live with my parents and they don't make me pay rent, but it's nowhere near the amount I could live on my own.
I recently picked up a second job at a greenhouse with a shitty boss, the workers (like usual) run the store and a lot of the decisions when my boss can't be fucked to leave their office, but we still get paid far less than them. I work my greenhouse job three days a week and go from my morning job straight to the greenhouse and I get home around five thirty-ish. All this context is to establish that I don't have a lot of free time and what little I do I cherish and protect as fiercely as I can.
While I don't think my conservative ultra religious city has much in the way of a night life, I have no way of knowing for sure because of my line of work I've needed to be home and asleep by nine o'clock ish so I can get up on time the next morning. My body is really weird in the way that if I don't get enough sleep I will literally wake up with what I imagine a hangover to be like (vomiting and a horrible headache) so I never got around much in highschool or anytime afterwards because the night was basically off limits to me. It's hard to meet friends who have a similar schedule where they're free during the day and occupied at night, but I'm autistic as hell so I can just put that on my tab in terms of social problems.
The whole reason I'm making this post though is because of what happened this morning. I'm a huge astronomy nerd, I love stargazing, looking through my telescopes at different shit I can barely make out through all the light pollution, and trying my hand at astrophotography when I can. That whole hobby has basically been cut out of my life since I got the vendor job.
Just last night was a huge solar storm, Auroras would've been pretty plainly visible from where I live and I haven't been able to see them because it happened on a night where I was getting up at three am. Since it's a family business, we have no other employees that could fill in for me, days off just aren't a possibility. Waking up this morning, I saw so many people's stories on Snapchat of all the gorgeous pictures they were able to capture of the auroras and/or the times they shared with their friends or partners stargazing.
I'm just utterly devastated, I've never been able to experience night life with the small handful of friends I do have and for the foreseeable future I won't be able to. The society we've been trapped in just seems so hopeless to me, I can't even afford a break from work to look at the fucking sky. I've been distracting myself all morning throughout the job with different podcasts and videos and any other para social relationships I've developed, but that's just it, in order to stop feeling so shitty about missing this huge storm and the isolation that comes from not being able to experience it with others, I've pacified myself with media and tried to claw back any sort of comfort I can get, i just hate it.