One Gamer's Thoughts

My observations, rants, and philosophies on life and gaming in general

Monday, August 23, 2010

This blog post brought to you partially by Epic Win

So, mini review time. There's this iPhone app called "Epic Win". The app is essentially a to do list. You write down what tasks to do for the day, week, month etc and do them. "That doesn't really sound epic", you're thinking. The brilliant catch is that you gain experience points and loot for your avatar. To advance in the "game" you have to do real world tasks. It's a to do list, motivation app! For me, this is is brilliant. As I have probably documented before, I'm extremely unmotivated. This app has motivated me more than anything else in years. I think that says something. I'm just in love with the concept, and I'm hoping I can actually do things with this "motivation". It's really bare bones at the moment, but the developers are committed to adding to it indefinitely and for $3 it's a win for me.

Now then, why am I bringing this up? Today, I have told Epic Win (and thus Epic Win told me) to complete my FAFSA application to get ready for school. I was excited to finally get back on track. I've been out of school and have really missed it, so this was the first step to getting back in. Of course, I knew the deadline had since passed, but my sister said it would be ok. I go to the website and it says the deadline has passed. This is discouraging. It would really help if I didn't have to pay that much for school. I have bills to pay and I still have to work really hard to get that money. If I have to pay for school, it'd be yet another setback. I tried to get that off of my mind. I figured I should see what classes I would be taking this semester.

I bring up the search for classes and get the worst news possible. The required class is only available on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Bad news. See, I have a pretty rigidly set schedule at work. As one of the main members of the stock team I have to work Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. These shifts are all 6am-2pm at least, but it never happens that way. On a regular day, we get something like 20-something hours of processing. Lets say 24 hours for the sake of this example. We are expected for all the shipment to get done before we all clock out. So if there's 3 people working (rare), we all would work 8 hours. That's a best case scenario. Things often get in the way. Someone inevitably needs someone to do an extra project, or jump on the cash registers, or take out the trash. With a 15 minute paid break and a 30 minute break without pay, I'd say, generally, that 1.5 hours are spent not doing shipment. That means what would take 8 hours has taken 9.5. It's already 3pm at that point, assuming the supervisor arrives on time (which never happens). Did I also mention that we get tired working these long shifts? So working on boxes takes longer. On a day like this we'd probably be out by 4pm. Now imagine if it were just 2 people working 24 hours worth of shipment, and an inexperienced 3rd member is called in halfway through. Yeah. This is normal.

My problem? By taking classes on a shipment day, I'm robbing myself of a huge amount of money. 12 hours in a day sounds horrible, but if you're only working 3 times a week, it's not so bad. If I have to cut my hours that means I can't afford school. I can't afford to live if I cut my hours. "Get a new job", you're thinking. No other job can offer me those kinds of hours. If they could, I'd be working there. I just love my job. I can't leave my coworkers, my boss. They're like my extended family. Plus, they can't do anything without me. Seriously. I was off for 3 days and I came back to a mess. My manager would probably outright refuse me.

Did I mention that I still don't have a car? Yeah, I missed my deadline. I feel like crap, but there seems to be a silver lining. My coworkers dad is selling a car. Woohoo! I have his phone number, so I'm going to call him... eventually. I'm just nervous. She says he's really intimidating, and I don't want to make a fool of myself. Epic Win can't help me here. Anyway, without a car it's that much harder to get to class. If I could take it online I would, but it's not available.

These kinds of things keep coming up and it's extremely discouraging. I'm 21 and still a freshman in college. My high school classmates are juniors and seniors. Some have already graduated! I'm being left behind and it's really depressing. At this point I don't know what to do. Can I really afford to sit out another semester? That's a rhetorical question. I already know the answer.

And I just gained 100 exp by writing this. Suckas!