Life As Performance Art 48

I am awake too early again on too little sleep. I suppose this can be partly blamed on stress. There are always battles at work about hours and income and maintaining my dignity in the face of my idiot employers, as well as counting the days till I retire and will no longer have to rely on those stingy losers for my sustenance and survival. I have 648 days left, and I may, before that time, leave my least productive jobsite, since they are particularly slow at generating clients for me to work with. Time will tell. I still have enough time left to really shoot myself in the foot, or two years minus three months, but the consolation is that with each day, the magnitude of potential damage lessens, leaving me feeling a little bit safer than the day before. I have so far not sabotaged myself, and time will only tell before I fall victim to the lurid temptations of the Pyrrhic Victory. I am also undergoing simultaneously job and church stress, and those two never pair well, so I am likely going to have to distance myself a bit from church, since religion does nothing to pay the bills. This could also be difficult. My relationship with clergy is always difficult, given that they seem to expect from me a kind of deference for their status and title that I don't believe they either merit or deserve, and few priests there seem to be merely content with being treated with the respect that I would have for any ordinary mortal. I neither like, nor do I trust clergy. I simply do not believe in their office, nor do I accept that they have a special anointing or empowerment from God that isn't available to everyone who approaches him with a loving and humble heart. I simply do not believe in priests. They are a class of people I have come to know way too well to believe in or love. So I would prefer to approach them as individuals, as human beings hidden behind the dog collars. It is very hard for Christian ministers, I have noticed, to really check their ego at the door. And now I have this suit pending with the Anglican diocese for just redress for the problems and trauma that I incurred over the years from various clergy of different parishes. The good news is that the current archbishop seems actually interested in supporting me through this process. I will go into detail in a few months, after things have been settled. In the meantime, this could be a little bit onerous. Maybe also my reason for not getting enough sleep. This does not prevent me from enjoying the day, nor from embracing it as a gift. I was commenting yesterday to a coworker that I have been living without a cellphone for much of the past two years or so. This was a cause of concern, almost panic, to another coworker who was trying to coordinate a meeting with me. He was anxious that I couldn't be in contact every few minutes to determine my quadrants, so to speak. I replied that we would have to try it the old-fashioned way and see how we cope. I was not able to connect with said coworker, by the way, but this is because my stingy employers will not give me a new cell phone, since they will not do this for underpaid contract workers, neither are they going to give me a raise, which means that I can't afford my own phone. So, I rely on my landline and my laptop to communicate with the outside world and when I am out, I have to rely on my surroundings and my own intuition in order to see my way through the day. It is actually pretty good. I notice a lot more, I'm not distracted, nor addicted by a smartphone, and lately, I actually stop and pause to look at the beauty around me. Especially with everything so new, pure and bright in this glorious spring season. I pause now, to really look at the light in the foliage and flowers and grass, and I touch and run my hand along brick and stone surfaces to appreciate the cool hard and rough texture, such moments I receive as gifts from God that help me forget about the pathetic, sad, tragic and selfish idiots around me