When I was a kid they were almost always like movies - I wasn’t involved at all, just watching things play out. Sometimes they would be first person though. In early adulthood it flipped, now they’re almost always first person.

I saw UFO’s. I don’t want to believe in aliens, but I witnessed it when I was with a pretty big group of friends and we all remember it and none of us have a better explanation. The people who saw it first were outside smoking pot, the rest of us didn’t believe them until we went outside and saw it ourselves. I was sober that night fwiw. We tried recording it but no one’s phone had good enough dark recording to pick up anything, and no one had a real camera on hand. The flight style didn’t match any craft any of us knew of - it was an array of lights that moved together, and then separated into smaller groups, and eventually individually. They moved unnaturally, with near-instant acceleration, deceleration, and extreme direction changes. It was too high up to be likely to be drones or helicopters, and right above a major Canadian city, not near any military base. If this was, like, Nevada or something, I would assume it was a government test craft. The closest match I’ve ever heard was in an interview with a pilot who saw UFO’s, and that scared the shit out of me. I’d love to find a non alien explanation, because I don’t want to believe and also I know it sounds crazy. Like, I myself probably wouldn’t believe someone else telling me this story.

A few main issues contributed: the commute was 1.5-2h each way. The pay was low, and the raises that kept being hinted at never materialized. And the supervisor… picture this: you’re in your mid 20’s,and your supervisor is the same age as you. He was clearly only made supervisor because he’s good at the work he used to do, not because he has any leadership skills. He doesn’t seem to enjoy being in management, and is responsible for a solid 90% of all workplace hostility. He’s not exactly mean or anything, but definitely way too intense. Despite having done the same work you’re doing, his expectations seem maybe impossible? His work is his life and he brags about things like working on Christmas.

There were a lot of things I genuinely liked about the job, but after a time my mental health was the worst it had ever been. It’s the only time I’ve genuinely felt suicidal at all, as in, not intrusive thoughts, but actual desire. I had so little spare time because of the commute, but couldn’t afford to move closer. I knew I had to leave the job and was frequently applying for other jobs but hadn’t had any success yet. I was too scared of not having another job lined up.

Then I went and hung out with an old coworker from a restaurant I had worked at in the past, and I found out the dishwasher there had a higher hourly wage than I did at my STEM job that required a degree - it was a pretty fancy restaurant but still… Within like two or three days (I think, although I was dissociating a lot so it’s hard to say) I had my resignation letter turned in, and I was ready to leave and never look back.