Life's very crazy at the moment, as everything which has happened so far this year seems to be changing very very quickly. Maybe that's got something to do with me not updating, but it seems like the internet is just boring me at the moment - I get on for a little while and check a couple of things, then I open my favourites to have a look at what I'm going to do next and just stare blankly for about a minute: 'no... too depressing to check my bank account', 'no.... can't be bothered looking at that','no.... haven't checked that for ages so I'm probably lost now' or 'no... looked at that yesterday and it bored the hell out of me.' What's going on?? The only things I really can be stuffed looking at is checking the box office data and the visitor stats for my site, both of which have become unhealthy obsessions over the past year. But everything else, which was also a rather huge unhealthy obsession, just seems so god damned boring! Is this a good thing maybe?

I went to Gilmours today with Nats, which is a rather huge food wholesaler. We spent a bit too much money on everything, but I suppose that when you look at it in the long run, it's a hell of a lot cheaper than buying it from a dairy or wherever else I always end up buying snacks from. It was interesting seeing how much dairies and the like are actually buying their stuff for, and therefore seeing what their profit margins are (surprisingly low in many cases). I guess all this management stuff is making me a little more aware of how things work in the business world.

It's almost halfway through the year, which is pretty unbelievable as New Year's doesn't really seem that long ago. I guess that every year I think back to when the year started and it usually doesn't seem like that long ago. But when I really think about it, a lot has happened this year and I've come a long way in my life. While last year I think was a year based around coping with the huge changes in my life which happened in 2001, hopefully this year has been one where I have built upon the foundation which I was creating last year. I know that my break from university is serving me well, and is definitely the right decision rather than being back at uni for just another year of hard slog. When it comes around to March next year I can see myself looking forward to that first assignment instead of dreading it, and to be in a position to make the most of my two year masters. Furthermore, I think that I have matured a lot this year, partly related to my increased responsibility at work, which will hopefully make me handle everything better next year so that I'm not leaving millions of assignments to the last minute like I always seemed to do throughout my bachelors degree.

It's been ages since I updated, because I've been really, really busy at work. I think that last week I worked something like 52 hours, which has left me rather tired.

Nats is in the middle of her exams, which have been pretty stressful for her. Luckily the three hardest ones are out of the way and she only has biology to go, which is her favourite subject. Exams are always a pain in the ass, I know that I've written many many times in here during my exam times about how they seem to totally occupy your mind and you can't do anything else without the huge guilty feeling that you really should be studying for your exams. I guess that has been the best part of this year, for once not having to worry about deadlines, to be able to just leave work at work.

I have been running quite a few shifts at work lately, which is good because it's something a little bit different. However, it's also a bit more stressful because you are the one who's ultimately responsible for how the restaurant is running. That was especially the case today when I was the only manager in the store for about two hours, and was left in charge of a relatively inexperienced team. But it's a good learning curve, and I am starting to understand what needs to be done a little bit more, so that I can not only run the shift well, but can also do things the way that I've been thinking that they should be done for the past three years.

Yesterday was one of those crazy days at work, when everything seems to go wrong at breakfast time and you can never catch up. I've had two breakfast shifts in my time at McDonald's which have gone totally to hell, one when I was at St. Lukes and another when I was at Pt. Chev. It's something you really, really don't want to happen: have no food ready, millions of customers waiting, and not enough people available to catch up. Having been there and done that on the screwed up breakfast I was really determined not to let things get totally out of hand, and I guess we did eventually kinda catch up. But I was rather stressed out from it all, to where little things that don't normally bother me (such as dropping something on the floor and having to chuck it out) drove me a little bit crazy. I guess the question remains: why is it always busy on the shifts when you don't have enough people to cover because someone has called in sick, and why are the shifts when you finally have heaps of people working really quiet - which means the bosses get angry because they're not making any money? Murphy's law I tell you!

Next week should be quite interesting in the life of Josh. It's Nats; birthday on Monday - she's turning 19 which for some reason (probably the fact that I'm now 21) seems really really young. Hopefully she has a good day, as she's been feeling pretty sick an awful lot lately. She also has her restricted license driving test on Monday, which would be a rather nice present should she pass it. As for me, I think that I might be running the shift at Maccas for two days next week, which should be interesting. This time I'm going to try to make sure that I get the hang of things without rushing it - even if I have to stay there for a bit longer than planned I want to be able to say that I ran the shift from start to finish without missing anything important so that I can get everything right before trying to improve upon the speed I do it at. I know that when I first started working at McDonald's all the managers used to say that I was pretty good at everything and I only needed to speed up a little. Sure enough I've sped up a lot in the last three years, and I guess that the same thing will happen with my shift running. I just need to give myself a little time and to make sure that I do everything the way that I should before trying to cut my time down, as last week I probably stuffed myself up by having to rush things a little.

Phew...... man it's been a long week. I guess that this week more than any others I really began to feel like a manager at work. I ran the place on Wednesday which was pretty fun, although rather challenging indeed. Doing the cash and counting the safe takes me forever, and it was a little stressful knowing that I'm the one who's responsible for how everything is going and that I can't just say "oh... go see the shift manager" because it's me! A combination of lots of people calling in sick, and strange scheduling has meant that I've been run off my feet for most of the week, which I suppose has made the time go past pretty quickly.

My life seems to be going crazy at the moment, with everything at work changing, and just about everything outside work completely fucking up. I think that this is one of those times in my life when I'll look back and go "man.... that was one crazy time", possibly a time of great change as I really don't have a clue what's going on at the moment in my life which means that everything could be completely different next week to how it is this week. I guess I'm feeling pretty unwanted at the moment which always sucks, because I get a bit depressed and down about things. But maybe that'll pick up, or maybe it's a sign that I need to change some things in my life big time. I just really don't want to go back to how things were in July and August last year - when my life seemed to lurch from one crisis to the next, it was bloody hard sorting that out and my life has come so far since then so I really don't want to go back to that.

I had a really strange weekend, on both Friday and Saturday night I was awake until about 5am which is rather unusual for me. Furthermore, on neither of these nights did we actually go out into town, just watched lots of videos and DVDs. As a result, the whole weekend seems rather blurry, like I was either asleep or half asleep for the whole of Saturday, and then I worked yesterday which made it feel like a pretty normal weekday. I had a couple of good talks with Nats which was good, the kind of talks which need to happen, but are often avoided because they might lead to arguments. But they didn't, and hopefully some progress was made - although neither of us have really been acting like ourselves lately.

On a different note, tomorrow I am running my first ever shift at McDonald's which should be a bit of a challenge. Luckily I'm not being thrown head-first into the deep-end and I'll have one of the senior managers doubling up with me so that I can learn how to do everything. But I'm going to try and do as much as possible myself, as the best way to learn is to do it myself. Maybe I can show everyone that I have something to add, that from my years of observation of millions of different managers I can take the best bits from all of them become a pretty good shift manager.

Damn I'm normal:

One thing to note is that the lower the number is, the more I am of that - as is the case in purity tests. So I'm almost completely unpure when it comes to straightness, but completely pure in gayness. So.... well.... yeah it may make a little more sense now.

Luckily it's a Friday, because I feel so incredibly wiped out. Maybe it's a combination of a long week's work and a touch of alcohol this evening, or maybe I'm catching the bug which has floored Nats for the last couple of days. I spent most of the day working at McDonald's Head Office, cooking a few products which they may introduce over the next few months. They seemed like pretty nice burgers, kinda different from usual.

I played Warcraft III for the first time last night, I was kinda bored so I searched through Nats' computer to see if I could find anything interesting to play and came across it. It's a pretty cool game, although I kept on dying really really quickly as soon as I got attacked, but I guess that I'll eventually figure it out. As often happens when I play a new computer game, I dreamed about it last night although it was weirdly incorporated into working at McDonald's. And I also remember trying to roll a really big ball up a huge tree... man my dreams are screwy lately!

Somewhat predictably I got roped into working tomorrow, on my first day off during the week for ages and ages. Oh well, I guess it isn't too bad as I do need the money quite a bit at the moment (refer to previous posts about the alarming shrinkage of my bank balace lately). Work was quite busy today, as I was up on the front counter for the first time in ages which was a bit of a pain (I do prefer it back in the kitchen). But it was something a little bit different, and I could run things a little bit more the way I wanted to for once, which was nice.

I was also learning how to use the complex McDonald's computer system today, and even got my login code (how exciting!) which means that I can login and use the computer whenever I like rather than having to rope someone else into it. There's still a hell of a lot I need to learn, things such as figuring out how to enter all the cash details into the computer as well as verifying the time-clock entries. But I guess that over the next couple of weeks I'll get around to learning it all, as well as sorting out all these other administrative things which I'll need to know in order to run a shift.

My life seems to be quite monotonous at the moment, which doesn't really leave me with too much to write (as saying 'same as yesterday' is pretty pathetic). I suppose that at work there are a few changes as I'm learning new stuff and having to play a different role than in the past. But otherwise the whole last three months seem to have been a pretty big blur - although the start of this year does seem like an awfully long time ago. I wonder whether the rest of the year is simply going to disappear quickly like last year whizzed by, or maybe it is going to be one of those years in which heaps happens and the start of the year seems so long before the end of it. 2001 is definitely a year like the latter - probably because my life changed so much within one year the end of it seems not that long ago but the start seems like another lifetime.

After about a year of them, I'm finally getting used to early starts in the morning. When I went to school, and for the first couple of years of university I don't think I ever woke up before 7am unless I occassionally had work on the weekend starting at 7. I had an incredibly accurate body clock which had been finely tuned over the years to wake up at almost exactly 7:25am every morning, giving me just enough time to have breakfast and get ready before we left the house shortly after 8am. Then last year BANG! with Nats have 6:30am starts for most of the year and me having lots of 7am starts this year it seems as though waking up at 6am or even earlier has become the norm. I still feel like crap when the alarm goes off, and I do still rely upon an alarm as my internal body clock is probably forever stuck at waking up at 7:25am. But after a while I feel pretty good, and by the time we leave I've generally shaken off all my sleepiness. Maybe after another year of this I'll actually naturally wake up at 6am every morning and my body will feel like that's normal. Well, so long as I can still sleep in on my day's off!

Both yesterday and today I had nostalgic conversations with people at work about how McDonald's used to be, and the strange people that we've all come across during our time. As I've worked at three different stores over my time at Maccas, I know a fairly wide range of people who've been through the system. Yesterday I was chatting with someone who used to work at St Lukes, the first store that I worked at. She moved to Queen St a while after I left St. Lukes, so she was asking me lots of "oh... do you remember such and such", while I was wondering "do you know if such and such still works there." Funnily enough, in the year and a half since I stopped working at St Lukes there seems to be only one manager left, and none of the same crew people who I used to work with. That's kind of scary I think, makes me feel old and that I've been working for McDonald's for a million years.

I'm really enjoying my new role as a manager at work. It gives me the chance to express myself a bit more, and to do things the way that I want to. In the past I've had to go with what the other managers have thought was the best way to organise things, and if I wanted to do anything myself I always had to double check with them. But now I can do things more the way I want to (the best way of course!), and I feel that by showing some more leadership skills and proving to both the crew and the managers that I'm going to be good at my new job I'm gaining some more respect from them. Other managers are no longer looking down at me, and crew seem to reponsd to me better. I'm also doing something a little bit new, which makes it more interesting than my previous role - which had basically been the same for almost three and a half years.

Working on a public holiday today, which is pretty sad I suppose. But when you consider that I got paid double today then it doesn't really sound so bad after all. Furthermore, it was bloody dead at work for most of the day which meant that it was pretty cruisy - more like working on a Sunday than during the week. Whenever work is quiet it gives you the chance to get around to sorting out all this stuff you really should be doing but don't have the chance to do when it's busy. My management development folder is coming along slowly, I've pretty much finished the kitchen part of it with only the front counter area to get verified on. I'm keen to get it done as quickly as possible, so that I can get a pay rise and move on to shift management which will be something new. I'm fairly confident in myself that I will make a good shift manager, and that I really don't need to learn that much more - just a few technical things like organising the cash and learning how to use the computer system they have (some weird ' Maxtel Ontarget' piece of software).

I also went to the gym today for the first time in ages, although it was only to have a shower and a spa. Now that my timetable is becoming a little more settled (basically 7-3 shifts from Monday to Friday) I might be able to get back into going to the gym more often than I have been. That would be the smart thing to do as at the moment I'm basically thowing $112.50 a month down the drain by not going. Just for the past month or two everything seems to have been making me so tired and I haven't really felt like going up there after a long 8 hour shift. My goals of building up a bit of strength and extending my endurance levels have kind of flown out the window, but with a little bit of determination I'm sure that I'll be able to get back in the flow.

I seem to have been feeling a little bit lost lately. Not during my work time, which has been pretty cool recently being promoted to management and having a slightly different job to that which I had been doing for the past three and a half years. But at other times I haven't really been able to settle on anything and have felt a bit like I'm not going anywhere. I probably hinted at that yesterday with my entry that I'm getting a bit bored of the net - maybe it's not that, but more like it just doesn't seem to have a point. I'm trying to save up my money so it feels like I'm getting something out of all this full time work - so that I can feel like I'm achieving something; but there seem to be all these huge expenses which just mean that I'm getting nowhere or even going backwards. About a month ago I had almost $1000 more in my account than I have now which is kinda depressing. But I suppose that I will eventually get there with my savings, plus my holiday pay is building up quite nicely so I should be able to have a nice break at the end of the year for a couple of weeks, maybe me and Nats could go away somewhere nice. Possibly even the trip to Wellington which we were going to do like a year and a half ago.

Winter has begun, my least favourite season of the month. In Auckland nothing exciting really happens in winter: it doesn't snow, it just rains and rains and rains. Lots to look forward to in the next three months I'm sure.

I'm getting a little bit bored of the internet lately, all the things that I spend my time online checking out don't seem to interest me as much as they used to. Updating my site doesn't seem quite so interesting as it used to as well, which probably explains why I haven't been updating as frequently as I used to. It's probably just another stage of my life that I'm going through at the moment, which will eventually pass. I guess for the time being I'll update when I see fit, but don't expect too many updates in the next while.

It’s been a pretty normal week, getting used being a manager at Maccas hasn’t really been that hard because it seems as though a lot of the people there already have some respect for me so it doesn’t come as a huge shock now that I’m there boss (of sorts). This shift has also meant one really good thing: I’m guaranteed 40 hours of work a week. No more wondering whether I’d have enough hours to cover all my bills etc., now I’ll be able to figure what I’m going to get paid each week so that I’ll know what I can afford to spend and what needs to go towards my bills. It’s like growing up you know, once you have bills to pay every week and the need to earn enough money to pay them all you realise that you have grown up – kinda sucks in some ways.

I am missing university a little this year, being away from the education system for the first time in forever. But it’s a healthy ‘missing’, one which says that I don’t mind working fulltime this year because it’s something different and is giving me a break, but at the same time is making me look forward to next year and doing my masters degree as I know that I don’t want to be in the McDonald’s business forever. Hopefully I’m also learning stuff this year, about managing people and other things that may indeed prove to be useful in the future.

I guess the positive side of working fulltime this year so far has been the people I’ve met and worked with, and the whole different side to life that working fulltime brings. As I’m probably going to spend most of the next 40 years of my life working fulltime I sure as hell better get used to it, and I think that this year is going to help me lots in the long-run. I’m also quite a lot happier than last year, although I don’t think this fact has anything to do with the fact that I’m working rather than at university maybe by me not being as stressed out as I was for much of last year I’ve become a bit more laid back about things and I’m not as easily bothered as I used to be. Maybe that’s also part of growing up, learning to say “oh well, shit happens, better luck next time” and to not get all stressed about everything.

Angelfire seems to have been playing up quite a lot lately, when I go to the page which I update from nothing appears except for a blue screen, sure it's quite a nice blank blue screen, but no matter how long I wait for it just never loads. So if there are gaps between my entries it's not always my fault. Although what I should probably be doing is writing my updates in Microsoft Word and then copying and pasting them into my webpage editor if something like that happens. But I just can never be bothered.