So I’m keeping up with the every 3 month entry into my blog. It seems that is about how long I can go between panic attacks or severe bouts of depression before I actually get the time and/or desire to put my thoughts into words. I know I have a few people that read this but I don’t know who you are. All I see is I get visits from time to time. To you handful of people, thank you!

This isn’t going to be a pleasant entry. It seems my desire to chronicle changes from negative thinking into positive thinking has utterly failed. Basically like most of my life. One failure after another.

I’ve lived my entire adult life neglecting those closest to me and myself. I don’t do it intentionally. I honestly would rather I didn’t but I get into ruts or courses of action I find it nearly impossible to deviate from. I don’t like change. It makes me feel extremely uncomfortable. I like the same things and the same routines every day. That is where my comfort zone is. I only like change when I am the one that wants it. I really hate it when it’s forced upon me or I’m surprised by it. I get extremely agitated and irritated when things don’t go the way I’m expecting or planned. It aggravates me a great deal. Then I go into a downward spiral because I don’t want to feel aggravated, agitated, irritated or any ed. But I seem to be powerless to change what I really want to change. I guess I’m so comfortable with routine that I can’t even convince myself I want to change a habit or thought process I know is killing me.

My mind is racing at the moment I’m writing this. I’m supposed to be sleeping right now as I have to be at work in about 3 hours. I just finished a 26 hour work day. In 3 hours I’ll be starting what is looking to be at least a 16 hour work day. I’ll have 1 day off and then I’ll be leaving on a route that will take over 24 hours to do again. I’d like to chronicle a little about the company I work for and what I do if I may, just to give some insight into my deep depression I”m feeling because of this job.

My company is a food distributor. I’m a delivery driver for the company and have been working there for over 2 years now. The first 6 months of that was as a temporary driver until I got hired full time in February of 2016. Since the time of my full time employment with the company I’ve been working 65 hour plus work weeks. I do a mix of team routes (me and another driver on the truck) and solo routes. The average route is 12 stops a day with anywhere from 18,000 lbs up to 26,000 lbs of food that we have to pick up by hand and stack onto 2 wheel dollies, run down a 3 ft wide aluminum ramp and into kitchens of restaurants, hospitals, hotels, anything with a kitchen. The trailers are temperature controlled with 3 zones for food. 1 zone for frozen food (0 to -10 degrees) 1 zone for refrigerated food (36 degrees) and 1 zone for dry or non temperature controlled. Only drivers with years of seniority or good standing with the management gets stops or routes in which you just unload pallets of food into large hotels or hospitals that you don’t have to actually touch every case.

The transportation department, whether it would admit it or not, runs off of favoritism 100%. Seniority has some benefits but the routes you get are given by one man and one man only. The Transportation manager. And honestly I don’t know how much direction he gets from his boss the Operations manager.  He keeps what he does to himself or at least he does from me. I don’t rate very high with the man it seems. I don’t work nearly as fast as the long time veterans of the job, or the younger 20 year olds. They can run their ass off all day barely breaking a sweat in the Florida heat. I’m 47 and not in the greatest shape in the world but I can assure you that when I work, I’m sweating my ass off and have to take Alieve or some other mild pain killer in the morning before I start working or I cramp like a mother fucker. If I don’t drink close to a gallon a water a day, I have a great deal of trouble sleeping because my legs and feet cramp up at night, keeping me awake. Long time veterans of this job that have any kind of speed at all to delivering have long term health problems and/or have had major reconstructive surgeries to repair anything from, shoulders, to knees, hips you name it. The injury rate in this industry is very high. So for that reason I try not to over exert myself.

My job is always under stress from many different angles. First and foremost is time. We only have 14 hours in a day we can “legally” work under D.O.T. rules and regulations. The routing department uses a computer software program to put the routes together. This program takes the average time of the last 13 deliveries at the stop you’re delivering to when it makes the time it “should” take a driver to make a delivery. It also averages time it takes to drive miles from one stop to the next. What it does NOT do is take traffic or any other problems we may face with customers into account. And most often, (for the routes I do) the routes are made for 12 hours or more.  I don’t have a set schedule of routes with the exception of Friday. I mainly cover routes for other drivers off, on vacation etc. The Friday route I have, in nearly 2 months I’ve had it, has NEVER been routed for less than 13 hours. It used to get delivered from a city closer to where the route is, meaning the company shuttled a loaded trailer to a town called Davenport FL which is close to where the route takes place in Kissimmee, Lakeland, Winter Haven and Auburndale FL. However we no longer shuttle loaded trailers to the Davenport drop yard so the route leaves out of Daytona Beach every day. The route was never redesigned to lessen the work day since I took it over, even though I’ve asked several times for it to be changed. It hasn’t.

I’m going to document this work week so you understand my frame of mind as I write this. Today is Thursday the 14th of September. (for 10 more minutes) Last Sunday the 10th and Monday the 11th, Hurricane Irma rolled through the state of Florida. We did not evacuate our home near Daytona and chose to ride the storm out. We lost power for 18 hours. Our company, which normally operates Sunday night through Saturday was shut down on Sunday and only ran limited operations on Monday. I’ve had Wednesdays off for the past couple of months since getting released from the hospital after having an anxiety attack and put back on anti anxiety medications to deal with the 65 hour plus work weeks. The doctors made sure to include in my FMLA discharge I have 1 day a week in which to keep getting outpatient therapy to help deal with my anxiety. However that has not stopped my company from working me well over 50 hours a week. Anyway back to the work week.

So I was off Monday and Tuesday due to the hurricane. I was asked to “volunteer” to work on Tuesday but because we didn’t even get electricity back on until late and the fact I’m trying not to put in so many god damn hours a week, I did not “volunteer” to work. So I went out on a route that left Wednesday night at 8:00 PM. Now let me be clear on how this works. The route I did leaves Daytona Beach FL and goes to Mobile, AL, Ocean Springs, MS, back into Mobile, then Spanish Fort AL, Foley AL with the last of the 6 stops in Pensacola Florida. It takes over 24 hours for 2 drivers to complete. It took us 26. However I went with a temp driver that isn’t a full time employee. So I went to sleep Wednesday around 1:00 PM because I had to drive out that night so I could make my route I have that leaves 3 hours from the time I’m writing this. So I show up to work at 7:30 PM, start getting my paperwork and load sheet together, load the route into my hand held computer, hook the truck and trailer up and we leave around 8:30 PM. Like I said, I drove out, my partner was in the Sleeper of the truck. It takes a little over 8 hours for our 65 MPH trucks to make the drive to Mobile. Legally we can’t drive for more than 8 hours consecutive without taking a 30 minute break. So I drive for 7 hours 45 minutes to the Florida Alabama state line and then stop and get a cup of coffee and energy drinks for the rest of the work day.

Now here comes the good part. EVERY SINGLE TEAM ROUTE that leaves our distribution center in a sleeper truck with 2 drivers does this exact same thing and every supervisor and manager at the company KNOWS this goes on mind you. They ALL KNOW IT but will never admit it on paper or print. Just because you are legally logged into the computer as being in the Sleeper Berth of the truck doesn’t mean you get to stay in that sleeper and sleep when you get to a stop. No…you get up and help the on duty driver deliver the stop. This happens every single day, day in and day out. The supervisors are all ex drivers and have done this exact thing and KNOW this is how the company operates. Now, you could feasibly refuse to get out of the sleeper and deliver the stop, but you’ll be pissing off the on duty driver and ultimately the managers and supervisors as well and you won’t be employed at the company long if you actually try to go by the book. They will find a way to get rid of you. Florida is a “right to work” state meaning an employer can fire you for any reason they see fit. If you want to keep a job, you won’t try and do things by the book. Anyone at this company that tries to deny this stuff happens or make up any other excuse as to why we work like this is lying 100%. I put my life on it.

So now I drive for 14 hours. It’s all you can legally be on duty and still drive according to DOT regulations. At the end of my 14 hours my partner now logs himself into the active driver in the computer (logs are all computerized and kept by the company’s log program) But my day is far from over. Although I’m not driving I still have to be up to make the rest of our deliveries. I was able to drive the first 3 stops. My partner or co-driver will drive the rest. So I get about a 30 minute nap from stop 5 to 6. I get up to make the last delivery in Pensacola and we start heading back. My co-driver can’t make the drive from Pensacola back in the time he’s now spent on duty. He must take a 30 minute break before his 8 hours is up. So he drives about 45 minutes down the road and stops at a truck stop to take his break. I haven’t eaten a meal so I wake up to eat. Now we leave Dufuniak Springs FL and drive back to Daytona. I get to sleep the rest of the way home which takes just under 6 hours. However have you ever tried to sleep in a moving vehicle? It’s not that easy. The sleep you get isn’t exactly restful.

We get back at about 9:30 PM. Now I have to get up and fill out the route sheet and turn in my paperwork and returns we had from the routes deliveries. Now here is the catch. Even though I’m up and doing my job I can’t log in as on duty. After you’ve been on duty you need 10 hours off in order to drive again the next day. If you don’t have 10 consecutive hours you will not be legal to drive. However if I log myself on duty to turn in my paperwork, returns and check my schedule for tomorrow, I won’t be able to do my solo route. And if I do that, I’ll get someone really pissed off. Mainly the dispatcher, the transportation manager and my supervisor because they will have to put another driver with me to drive the truck because I wouldn’t be legally allowed to do it. This messes up the schedule and there is never any drivers that aren’t on the schedule already. Now there is a possibility another route going out tomorrow is light and they cancel it and they send help with me but here is another truth. I rate very low on the totem pole so the chances of actually getting help is between slim and none. I’m not one of the young fast or veteran fast guys. I seem to have also upset the TM because I had a doctor note forcing me to have a day off during the week because of anxiety. I’m a high risk to them and will cut ties to protect their assets soon enough.

So now it’s 12:30 AM, I tried to lay down to get a nap in before I go back to work in 2.5 hours for my 16 hour day tomorrow. But as soon as I lay my head on the pillow my mind goes into overdrive with anxiety. My anti-anxiety medication isn’t working. I’m under a huge amount of anxiety because of the past few days with the hurricane, my work schedule and all this other bullshit. My mind will now stop racing. I try to meditate by just can not get my mind to stop “thinking.”

I’m under a huge amount of anxiety because I must keep a job to pay for the mortgage and other bills we have. My fiance runs her own business but doesn’t have a set schedule of income to rely on. That is all on me. So if I want to keep my kids and fiance with food on the table and a roof over their head, I must endure this job. It is the highest paying trucking job in this region bar none. I”d have to commute over an hour to work every day to find something remotely comparable out of Orlando. But trucking jobs are all the same. You don’t work 40 hour work weeks, you work close to 70. 70 in 8 days is the max allowed by the DOT. And every fucking trucking company in the US works drivers the max. There is very very few 40 hour a week driving jobs.

I don’t want to be a truck driver any longer, I want to be a writer. But I can’t commit to writing when I’m so god damn stressed about my trucking job and need for income.

I’m stressed about tomorrow because I know I’ll be exhausted and tired while driving and this scares me. I’m driving 80,000 lbs of machinery that could easily kill another motorist or pedestrian on the road if I’m not fully alert. I know if I go to my supervisor or TM about my concern with not being rested I can kiss my job, my income and my families livelihood goodbye. I’m just not cut out to handle 60 hour plus work weeks with the physical and mental demands you must have to operate commercial vehicles. But I feel trapped. And like I mentioned at the beginning, when I don’t feel I’m in control of my environment, life or surroundings, I get anxious. And then depressed.

It’s a god awful life. Thoughts of ending this miserable existence enter my life every fucking day.

But I can’t do that. My wife just lost her 29 year old niece to suicide in June. I’m seeing the emotional damage caused to my sister-in-law, fiance and all the other family over that tragedy. I’ve overdosed earlier in my life in an attempt to end it all. All I want to do is stop this miserable feeling of being trapped and forced to do live in a way that I don’t want. And when I read back what I just wrote I get sick because I sound like one of the miserable millennials that are having so many problems adapting to life today. It’s an endless supply of depression and angst.

If you can read this blog and not relate to the suffering that someone with anxiety and depression goes through every day of their lives than I both envy and hate you. I’d kill to feel that emotionless and empty. I’d even kill myself to feel like that.  The only thing that stops me is the guilt of what I’d leave the survivors I’d leave behind. I live in hell on earth. It’s why I’m not afraid of actually going to hell for taking my life. Because in my eyes, I’m sentenced to eternal hell while I’m alive. I can’t speak for knowing what awaits me on the other side. I died once after overdosing and didn’t experience any of the NDE shit I’ve read others go through. So from my personal experience, I don’t believe that shit even exists. I believe in what I can see, touch, smell and feel. And right now, what I feel, is complete pain, misery and endless anxiety and suffering, for as long as I shall live…………