I'm just glad to be staring down the weekend again, rather than another day of work and potentially being bitched out by my boss or an arrogant customer. It gets old. More and more its wearing on my nerves.

My grandfather goes on and on about how I should just let it roll off of my back. Maybe I'm arrogant, or naieve in thinking that I really should not be someone's whipping girl.

I know what he'd say if I brought that up. "You're young, you don't get that kind of respect until you're older."

Right. Like the respect that my Dad got by being laid off after 22 years of his life was spent at his company? Or the respect I got after busting my ass for my last company by being laid off, and even after my former boss discovered he couldn't do my job, I still have no respect for what I do or did there?

People work for their entire lives, gaining no respect. Whoring themselves out for a paycheck that will never quite make ends meet, put food on the table, money in the savings and allow them to maybe go out on a Saturday night to a movie.

I'm probably being too idyllic in thinking that there should be more to it than this. A little too egotistical or wet behind the ears in thinking that there's something more for me in this place than working day to day, fretting over everything I spend or don't spend. Feeling like the creditors are going to eat me, that I'll never provide a better life than a one-present-under-the-tree Christmas for my son.

Sometimes I think I need to grow up, but I don't want to wake up at 30 with the feeling that I've let myself down. That I let all my dreams go because they were too big or just too overwhelming to attempt. I don't want to hit middle age, with the regrets of a 70 year old sitting in her rocking chair, reminicing about the old times to the grandchildren at her feet.