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Late on Rent, Bills, and other stressors.

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Blog

Published: 01 October 2026

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I'm fucking late on my rent, and this is stressing me out. It's not because I've not been working, if anything I've been working more to clean up some outstanding debts - power, credit card, etc, etc, but - work is behind in paying me. 3 pay periods, next week it will be 5.

There's no sign of them paying me.

I sent them a text, apologizing, requesting at least a couple of cheques so I could pay my rent, utilities, etc, etc.

And this morning a cheque, but not enough to pay my rent.

Today, a double, and this whole shebang is stressing me out. I understand - short, late, whatever, but this is carrying on to me and the burden is mine to find the difference and I'm not so happy about this. Interest alone on debts is accreting faster than I can pay it off. And I'm out of cigarettes, vodka, food, and all this on a day off which is just annoying me further. I need to find more stable, regular employment.

****

Anyways, annoyed and had to vent. Yesterday was a long day without alcohol, cigarettes, peanuts for the crows, food in general. I had enough to buy a gummy and try and forget it all; but - like any stoner I found myself with the munchies and raiding a largely empty fridge for snacks, looking for the mini-pickles, the tapinade, cheese, crackers, salsa, whatever might satisfy the craving...

Nada.

***

The neighbour, she's learning chess, ways to fill the perpetual boredom of unemployment, she comes over to pay back $20 she borrowed and brings me some cheese and some grapes.

She hasn't repaid me a single loan in over a year. But there's a reason.

She wants me to install a trading app on my phone, hers has been “hacked’ she tells me, this may or may not be true but contradict her and you’ll hear about it so I just set it up on my phone and watch her do her trades. The next night she's over again, only she’s discovering she has no talent for this, the easy money is eluding her, her balance on the app dropping like a barometer in the eye of a Tornado, I warned her, still she makes her trades but by the next day all the money she deposited in the app has vanished.

She’s indefatigable in her rising up to meet defeat, she says nothing but I can read it on her face, pursed lips twitching, the mass of tics, micro-expressions, she doesn't rise up to meet defeat rather than she manifests it, in her pursuit of easy money she only gets to see the hard money vanish...

***

Playing Chess with her, now that we have a shared interest - better than sitting around watching her read the Bible (My flat, apparently, has a more saintly air), we play. She's still learning the moves, the pieces, what she can and can't do and is surprised that she loses. It's to be expected, really, and while I've handicapped myself greatly with a drink (or two) and a gummy and I've no interest in this, even with these monkeys on my back she's no contest (it would be worse if she was, I'd have to revise a few opinions...). Three games and we're done, she's won none.

***

The crows, I've run out of peanuts, they follow me down the street, they don't understand paycheques or being low on cash, they're annoyed. And then a couple take it upon themselves to drop chestnuts in my path - perhaps, now, it's time they fed me? I crush them under my heel, this is what they're looking for, and no sooner are they crushed than they fly down to eat them.

***

And now, time for a quick shower and off to work to plead for any portion of the cheques that are owed, a larger portion that I might pay my rent and - with luck - some other bills, but this is all a very "good luck" sort of proposition...