Recently I finished my 54th orbit around the sun and have embarked on my 55th orbit.
I don’t know how much longer I want to keep working.
Now that I’m 55 I’m eligible for my pension via work, but as I don’t have my full 30 years yet, I won’t get maximum payout.
Yes, I have a class action against the Government of Canada at the moment, but I’m not pegging my future on this.
I’ve worked since I was about 11. My first job was cleaning cages in a pet shop in a mall across 97th street from Canadian Forces Base Griesbach. Home life sucked so badly in the fallout from the events on Canadian Forces Base Namao that I did whatever it took to keep as much distance between my father and I as possible.
I started working for the family that owned a pizza shop in Kingsway Garden Mall. CFB Griesbach was on 97th street and 137th avenue. Kingsway Garden Mall is down on Kingsway and 111th avenue. That was a good walk. Again, any chance that I’d get I’d go down as this was far preferable to being at home.
When my father got his posting to Canadian Forces Base Downsview in January of 1983 to avoid my apprehension by Alberta Social Services I didn’t have any jobs at the time. But by 1985 I was actually servicing video games, pinball machines, and jukeboxes which was an odd job for a 14 year old to have.
When I was 16, the employer I was working for realized that things were really bad at home. He arranged for me to rent a room from a friend of his.
And I’ve been on my own since.
With no support from home I never had the luxury of taking trade training that I would have loved to. Which meant that even though I was qualified to do the work, I couldn’t be paid for the work at the higher rate as I wasn’t qualified.
And with Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Terry Totzke interfering with my mental health treatment in the aftermath of the CFB Namao Child Sexual Abuse scandal, I was always going to be the “outsider”. The freak.
Spent my early years living paycheque to paycheque.
And let me tell you, when there is no safety net, you don’t take any fucking chances.
Sure, it would have been nice if my father could have helped out, but that was never going to be an option. And I knew much better than to ever ask.
My mother? No idea where she was. I had always lived my life with my father’s explanation as to her disappearance. It wasn’t until 2013 that I would learn the truth about what my father had done.
So the jobs that I’ve held over the years are the ones you get by slowly climbing the ladder.
My background in electronics and computers allowed me to bring skills to jobs that normally wouldn’t have these skills.
For instance when I got into servicing bowling alley equipment my skills in electronic were able to massively reduce costs as the centres no longer had to send logic boards out for repairs. I could do the work in house.
And with my background in mechanics, repairing machine assemblies was dead simple. Instead of ordering entire rebuilt gearboxes in from the manufacturer, I could press shafts and press bearings.
One centre that I worked at they ended up firing their head mechanic because I easily demonstrated that a lot of the issues the machines were having were due to his incompetence. But you know what, at the end of the day they couldn’t pay me what they were paying him as he was factory trained and qualified and of course I wasn’t.
Could they send me for factory training like they had sent him?
Don’t be silly, I know too much already, it would be a waste of money for them to send me.
Even in my current employment I’m haunted non-stop by the “you’re not qualified” taunt. I would have much rather been an Instrumentation and Automation tech. But I’m not qualified. And no, taking a four year course at BCIT isn’t in the cards.
So I took the Chief Engineer position instead. The pay is close to what the tech makes, but I really don’t get to spend time doing the kind of work that I like.
So yeah, I think that it’s time to throw in the rag and call it a day.
And as I’ve said elsewhere in my blog, I’m going to keep fighting for the right to avail myself to Medical Assistance in Dying to be free of Captain Totzke, my father, and the mental illness that I’ve been dragging around since my days of living on Canadian Forces Base Namao.
If I’m lucky, the Department of Justice and the Department of National Defence will settle with me, but I ain’t holding out any hope. It took the DOJ to settle with Captain McRae’s accomplice, so I can only imagine how long the DOJ will string my civil action out.
