Diary of thoughts

  Today, Daniel and I had a bit of a verbal clash. It all started with his first paycheck when he asked to see my pay stub to compare something. I let him. That was my mistake. Since he rarely brought up money, I assumed it wasn’t that important to him, so I saw nothing wrong with his request to compare our pay reports. Over time, he found more and more reasons to complain. Some were justified in my eyes, like how I also don’t get why his taxes were higher despite nearly equal amounts. I also don’t understand why my report listed two weekends, which we both worked and which pay slightly more than weekdays, while his report for the same period only showed one, even though we worked the same days. But there were moments where I clearly saw his mistakes, which he refused to admit. Like the latest incident that sparked the conflict. It was the day before payday, in the morning. I’d just finished my morning patrol and returned to the security office. Daniel was sitting by the monitors, ...

  Usually, when I went to barbershops, I had no idea which haircut would suit me best. When the barber asked how I wanted to be cut, I’d say, “I don’t know,” and it always showed on their face as a mix of an incredibly tough task and some repulsive action they’d have to force themselves to do. So, over time, I just described the most popular haircut, and the barbers would do it without extra hassle or worry, while I pretended that’s exactly what I wanted—sometimes even convincing myself of it. But in reality, I was never satisfied with my haircut; there was always some “but.” Before flying from Poland to Canada, I found the nearest barbershop and got a haircut just to check it off the list. At the time, my haircut didn’t matter to me at all. I was going through a breakup with Aura and was in such a state that I cared about very little, if anything at all. I think that period was the most fake in my life. So, when my hair grew out a bit, I decided to let it grow long. I was living i...

  Due to staffing issues, I got stuck at my job in a small town in northern Manitoba not for two weeks but for a whole month. It was the last week. And I had yet another new partner. His name was Daniel. He was the third one this month. He arrived late in the evening, and I didn’t bother with long introductions or chatting—just introduced myself and went to bed. The next day, I observed him. Since he was new, I had to train him, though I don’t really enjoy it. But his training went smoothly and was interesting because he asked questions to understand the meaning of things, not to blindly follow my answers. He also never asked me or anyone else about salaries or payments; he didn’t bring up money at all. That meant money itself didn’t interest him much. Plus, I didn’t see him latching onto people for pointless chats, so crowd attention wasn’t a big deal to him either. But I noticed one thing he did almost constantly throughout the day: singing. He was always humming something under ...

  It was the last day of my work shift. I was fully ready to leave this little town for a few weeks. Arvin and I had even loaded all our stuff into the car, so we could head out straight from the mall without going back to the apartment. All we needed was to wait for the guys who were supposed to replace us. They were supposed to call around noon to say they were in the last town on the way here, since there’s no signal further along the road. Around twenty minutes to twelve, the long-awaited call came. I was having lunch in the security room at the time, while Arvin was out in the mall. The work phone stopped ringing, and I realized Arvin had answered on the other phone he kept with him. Two minutes later, he came into our office and headed straight for me. I thought he was about to share some good news, but his face looked worried. He handed me the work phone and said our supervisor wanted to talk to me. I took the receiver, knowing this couldn’t be good. The boss told me there w...

  I don’t even know where to start. Well, in that case, it’s best to begin at the beginning. As a kid, I wasn’t a terribly problematic child, but I caused some trouble. Like all kids back then, I loved playing until night. We’d mess around at the stadium, in the tree grove nearby, on some hills, or in a field. We often played games using just nature and our imagination since we didn’t have cell phones or computers. We simply enjoyed nature and interacting with it and each other. A small meadow seemed like a vast field, a little grove felt like a forest, an ordinary pond was a sea, and three-meter hills were mountains. The world seemed so big and incomprehensible, yet everything was so simple. We didn’t attach extra meaning to simple things, so we didn’t have to think about how to act in situations—we just lived by our feelings. When we were happy, we laughed; when we were sad, we cried; when we were scared, we hid or ran; when we were bored, we turned on our imagination. It was a w...

  My partner, Rick, was complaining about his sore knees—they’d been bothering him the entire previous shift. After we returned to Winnipeg, he went to the doctor, who put him on sick leave, which meant I’d get a new partner. And so it happened. My new partner was from India, named Arvin. He’d been working in security in Canada for nine years, but with a different company. When his company’s contract for that site ended, the staff was let go, and he had to find a new job. We first met at my company’s office to discuss our trip with the management. Arvin was a dark-skinned man in his middle years, of average build, about a meter seventy tall. There wasn’t anything particularly striking about him—I think in India, he’d blend right into a crowd. The only thing that stood out a bit was his very bulging eyes. In the office, he was very friendly. We exchanged contact info, discussed the trip details, and went our separate ways. When we finally started working together, I noticed he tried...