2019 Has Been A Bag Of Suck

2019 JUST PLAIN SUCKS

The wife recently posted something similar (just a little shorter) and I am feeling the need to get some sort of cathartic release as well.  With that, I am not trolling for sympathy.  I am not looking for help.  I am not looking for any sort of validation…well…maybe a little of that.  What I am actually looking for is somebody to just listen outside of the family.  To lend an ear and listen to my grips for a moment.  Viki and I have done of enough venting with each other but the rest of the world has been seeing an Academy Award winning performances from each of us. As far as everybody has been concerned, everything has been hunky dory on our end.  The end of 2018 and all of 2019 has been an epic bag of suck for this part of the Duvall clan here in Colorado.  A bit of the writing was on the wall in the early part of 2018 but I was at the time, blind to it.

While I and Viki usually accept our troubles since most of the time it has been due to our faults (like our bankruptcy 10 years ago), this is not the case this time.

THE SETUP/BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

Over a year and a half ago, Regal Entertainment Group was bought out by a smaller theatre chain in England and they slowly started restructuring things, went private, new logo, and made slight name change.  Everything seemed promising at first.  I was blind of what was coming due to drinking the Kool-Aid they were serving.  I did not see some key players leaving the company, radically changing their role or just going dark in communication. New players come into power and little changes started happening.  Long story short, I started getting gas lighted in late October in the worst way by my new boss into thinking that I was incapable of doing my job.  I was eventually forced out after nearly 25 years of loyal service on trumped up charges of negligence and failure to uphold the “new standards”.  I felt it was bullshit because I got wind of the target on my back a couple of months later in January when I heard Matt Eyre (CEO) off mic at a GM conference actually say that “NO gm should be making x amount of dollars.”   I was currently making more than x amount.  The gas lighting increased from my boss right up until 3/17/19 and I was officially terminated.  Despite what the “official” answer from the boss and what HR rubberstamped about me “not doing the job”, I knew it came down to money.  My replacement was put in fairly quickly and I found out that he was making about $50K less than I was making…just proving that it has always been about money.  My mistake was that I dug my heels in and should have found a more graceful way out.

BTW, I found this meme online after I started hearing that many of the GMs with Regal were being axed left and right.  It also confirmed the idea that I was indeed being gas lighted by the boss into thinking that I was worthless and that they were building a weak case to get me out of the company and
replaced with somebody cheaper.

CURRENT SITUATION:

I got a new job with AMC through an old contact (my old boss with them).  Just not as a GM at this time.    One of the many reasons why you should avoid burning bridges.  In any case, we have hard landed in a shaky way but we on our feet. I am making just less than half of what I was making.  Wouldn’t be that bad BUT we had just bought a new house and the mortgage was based on what I was originally making.  Luckily, Viki’s job gave her a nice promotion and raise to offset some of what I lost in pay and we also were sitting on a sizable tax refund from earlier in the year.  As the months wore on up to our current frame, we have been budgeting and rebudgeting each week. We started cutting small unnecessary things out of the budget.  Our yearly camping trip was cut.  Extra expenditures were cut (no video games, no movies, no junk food, basic 1^st world creature comforts cut out).  Then tighter budgets came in.  I need to go to the dentist but cannot because I cannot afford to pay the deductible at this time.  I need medications for migraine prevention and elimination but cannot afford the doctor copay or the medical copay despite having insurance. $30 is $30 and I would rather eat than do away with a migraine.  Viki is currently uninsured because her job has REALLY expensive insurance and my job will not cover her due to her having the option to get her employer’s insurance. It is now just a mere 12 days away from 2020 and we have tightened our budgets so tight that we are living on roughly  $100 a week for food and we are down to basic survival to keep our house, pay our utilities, and pay our car’s gas.  That’s it...just a $25 per person food budget in the house and household bills.  We have NO safety net.  No more savings and we are barely scraping by check to check and doing everything in our power to keep our heads above water. The only thing we able to keep a budget for is the internet and our phones at this time and if things got worse, they would have been cut too by now. This has been beyond frustrating and just plain putting our all of us in the family on edge with one another since we never go out to do anything anymore and we are up in each other’s space every day.  Except Viki and myself.  I no longer have a regular schedule that I control and we barely see each other and when we do, we are either tired, frustrated or both by our situation. When together, all we can do is commiserate about how we cannot buy Christmas gifts this year for our kids, that I will have to deal with migraines again after I use my one last injection or how she cannot get insurance at all or just that we would like open our food budget more. 

Before ANY of you even think of trying to pony up anything for us…don’t.  In the name of all things holy…please do not do anything for us.  We are fine…frustrated as hell but we are fine.  The light at the end of the tunnel is in sight for some breathing room.  Some MAJOR expenses are going away in the next month or so and we will be able to spend on the things we must have again and have a little disposable income again.  We are almost there.  I have been through this sort of thing before when I was a kid bouncing between divorced parents.  Helped me cope with it.  Viki is frayed but she is strong and doing her best to hold things together  Our kids have been amazing and even the eldest has stepped in a couple times to help with some expenses when she didn’t have to.  We will survive…it just plain sucks at this moment.

Overall, I just needed to get up onto a soapbox for a few minutes to whine and bitch about how shitty things are right now...at this very moment.  A rant to get off my chest.  I just needed to scream out into the void for a moment.  I know there are many others out there dealing with something similar or even much MUCH worse that what we are dealing with.  This is why I do not want help.  I have a roof over my head, the heat is on, and there is some food on the table.  Viki, Kaitlyn and I all have a steady income coming in and things are getting paid.  I would much rather see somebody else in a much more dire situation get the charity than us. We are survivors and we got this.

Thank you for lending your ear and listen to me bitch for a few minutes.  Now back to the daily funny memes, cat videos, general bullshit and shenanigans.