The Cost of Being Independent
Well, today was supposed to be the day. I was going to go out, alone, and have a self care day.
I woke up this morning in my bed with freshly washed sheets from the night before, feeling anxious but excited. I got out of bed after a few minutes of my usual morning routine of doom scrolling on Twitter and a deeply unsatisfying wank, made some coffee after getting dressed and making (what I thought was) a funny TikTok. I got all the games I want to trade in to RedFox together in my bag and made sure I had notes on each to remove them from my backlog and collections lists. Seeing the pile of unwanted Disney Infinity items, I just threw the bag of discs into the box of figures, rather irritatingly, and decided that I’ll just have to try to post them all on eBay if I want to be rid of them.
After I went through the check list of games, battery backup for my phone, wallet, earbuds, and my watch, I sat down at my desk and decided to do some price shopping on the cost of the rides. First up was Lyft:
I mean, if I was being carried by an old style sedan by hulking muscular men down interstate while being fanned with a giant palm leaf then I wouldn’t balk at this price, but this is a bit ridiculous for a 30-35 minute drive. The worst part is that this has been the price point with Lyft for days. After seeing this was the cost, I deleted the app off my phone. Next up was Uber.
I don’t have a flashy screen cap of their price because they either can’t decide what they want it to be or they adjust the cost of the ride every time you load up the page (similar to Amazon). At first this morning it was a reasonable $25 to get me to where I wanted to go. Now, suddenly the price was up over $30?! Not sure if the rate went up because it was near lunch time or what (even tried looking up coupon codes to no avail), but I decided that was a no go and went to the last ride option I had.
A local cab company called Abby Cab, yesterday, had the price to get where I wanted to go at $40 and today it’s up to $45. At this point I decided lunch and a 2pm showing of Doctor Strange just wasn’t going to happen today so I resigned myself to being stuck at home and threw the remaining three Nathan’s hot dogs from the bag into a pot of water and went to sulk in the living room.
All I really wanted was to go eat at my favorite Chinese place and get rid of some of my games, see a movie and maybe pick up a few household things. And I didn’t want to have to ask anyone I know to take me because all my local friends are either getting on my last fucking nerve or we’re just not talking for whatever reason. At this point, being picked up and possibly kidnapped or murdered by a stranger from the internet is preferable to the way I’m feeling. Hickory really isn’t that far, but without a vehicle or a way to get there it might as well be in another country.
Oh and the real shitter? After I ate the hot dogs I made I checked the price to ride on Uber again. Back down to $24. Fuck my life. I’ll see where the price is close to dinner time so I can maybe salvage something of my self care day and at least have dinner where I want, but I’m not getting my hopes up.