Where I'm At: A Mostly Whiny Ramble.

I'm somewhere in the middle of my long Vegas exile. This will be a whine post.

Things are - not great. Struggling on a few fronts. The one that concerns me the most is...I hate my fucking job now. In order to stay with the company I'm with I had to start commuting every day back and forth across the Bay Bridge. For that to work I have to be there by 6:30a, meaning I have to wake up a little after 5a. This, this is not good for me. I hate getting up before the sun, hate going to bed at 9p, it's just totally against my body clock and it's not getting any better after almost 3 months.

Then there's the job itself, which essentially entails me sitting in a chair for 7+ hours properly formatting documents to store. It's mind-numbingly boring and soul sucking. The people suck too. It's just a bad environment in general, more industrial plant than drug discovery facility. I'm searching for a new job but the prospects aren't great, I've had 2 companies want to interview me in 3 months and nothing on the offer front. I'll continue to search and interview when I can but I have to expect I'll probably be in this personal hell job until next year at least; if I get into October/November I'll need to stick it out or I'll be throwing away a possible $5K bonus.

Which I need, because the other fucked up thing in my life right now is debt. The June Vegas trip, not to put too fine a point on it, fucked me. In past years I had no other obligations and could pay down debt in a hurry, but now with the car lease payment, insurance, gas, bridge tolls, yadda yadda I'm not able to. I'm chipping away at it but I'm carrying debt over every month now which I hate. This I can affect more than the job sitch, as I can and definitely must start reducing my spending, which is drunken-sailor-ish.

The hard truth this year is I may have to go into an old-fashioned Vegas save in October/November. It's been years since I've had to do one of those. Cutting down to 2 weekends out per month and maybe only 1. Also need to drastically cut my food budget. Too. Much. Damn. Doordash. I may have to go old school starting in October and set check by check budgets. That would give me 3 full months to pay down the debt all the way, then hopefully the bonus comes through and I'll have my bankroll. I am NOT "Junesing" myself again on a Vegas trip, like the past two years.

Health, you ask? Not great. Not significantly feeling any worse since, say, start of the year but certainly no better. The weight is up thanks to the lack of activity at work; I'm going to try to do short campus walks there to start helping that, and have reached out to my doc about getting on a GLP-1. The real hit since about June 1 is the mental health. Hating your job is a major stressor, add the hour plus total commute to that and I'm not a happy camper.

So, personal drama aside, on the actual Vegas front not much has changed. Still locked into the Cosmo show for the Xmas trip. Decent offers from full comp (plus resort fees) at the CET group, or $100/night at FB have tempted, but nothing so far has swayed me from the price/room quality ratio at the 'Mo. No flight booked yet, haven't seen anything less than about $250 round trip and for less than ideal flight times. It is Xmas week, after all. At some point in the next month I may have to break down and book something around $300 which, ouch.

I have a decent chance of getting to MGM Gold again this year, despite almost no-pointing on the April trip. 20K away now, with 4 more months of MGM CC earning and another Vegas trip to come. Not going to drop the ball on this Xmas trip - if I'm close I'm all MGM all the time to make it. The whole "playing the field" thing I was going to do this year never came to fruition really, the deals are still just too good at MGM.

So yeah. Not an ideal middle third of the year. And yes, I know these are fucking first world problems, you judgmental asshole, but I LIVE in the first world, so fuck off. All I can do is hang in there, plan and execute the best I can for the last third, and hope I get a little luck.

115 days to Vegas.