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byeoujison · 5 years ago

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october 2020

i tend to not like to reflect on things until they’re over because i feel like im jinxing myself, but i want to do this now. i need to get over my superstition.

ive been working my current job since mid-july, which sounds fake. i feel like i just started this job but i pretty much have my duties down. at the beginning i was determined that i would be staying with this company for a long time. It pays very well, and it’s not horrible so i figured i could learn to live with working 8 hours days for the foreseeable future. the problem is, i don’t do well with foreseeable futures, i perform best under time constraint, so working somewhere that i have no idea how long i’ll be isn’t good for my work ethic.

October was when my mind was really changed regarding my work here. The first week was normal. We decorated for halloween while watching over the garden wall. Me, GF, our roommate R, and J all played poker with chocolate candy and i lost big time.

then the week of the 7th happened. my coworkers aren’t bad people, but they’re very different people from me. I don’t feel like i fit in with them particularly well, especially my only male coworker, we’ll call him Nothing. the previous week, Nothing and I had a very long very exhausting conversation about politics where i basically realized i can’t talk to people about politics unless they’re somewhat versed in sociological rhetoric. i have a degree in sociology, and it’s important to my understanding of the social world. having a conversation with someone who doesn’t know the importance of social forces and social stratification is like talking to a toddler. I also suffer social anxieties that are not diagnosed or treated, so i have difficultly in some circumstances knowing when to take my feelings seriously, it makes me get into social situations that i am uncomfortable with because i initially ignore the anxiety associated with talking to people. I would love to be one of those people that can talk to anyone confidently, but i am not nor have i ever been that person.

the week of the 7th, Nothing asked me very suddenly if he has a bad attitude. i said yes. i was being honest, something he told me to do. he was upset and walked away. i was anxious but tried to ignore it. he did not let me. we had another conversation later and i realized as i was talking to him that i was explaining very personal things about my social anxiety to him to try to get him to stop talking politics with me. he is a very difficult person to get to agree with you. i was shaken, because i knew that he would never seen from my perspective and i would never see his. later that day my boss asked me if i wanted a calzone. i said yes. i was grateful, because she let me drive to pick them up, so i wouldn’t have to be in the building. i spilled sauce on my jeans and had to wear my flannel (thankfully i brought it) to cover it. the calzone was delicious, i was tired and nervous and wanted to go home. that was when the illusion of me working here began to fall apart.

it makes me angry, because a lot of people hold fast and true the notion that you shouldn’t let anyone’s behavior affect you. I agree that we shouldnt but i still do. thats what a lot of people dont understand. i don’t want to be afraid to talk to Nothing, but i still am. I dont want to care about what he thinks of me but i do. it’s not a decision i’m making, it is my gut reaction. the anxiety is not conscious, it is physical, it’s a pain in my stomach that tells me my coworker is something i should avoid. I have not talked with him at length since, and im happy about it.

that weekend, i decided to go retrieve my snow tires from bellingham, as i had been storing them in J’s dad’s shop. i was going to drive up to my dad’s house on saturday (my friday) for the night, drive up and back from bellingham on sunday with the tires, and then drive from my dad’s back down to portland on monday. My GF came with me and R stayed home. my dad’s house feel golden, like candles. it’s the feeling of being somewhere homey having never lived there. he has a very nice house with his new wife and one of her daughters.

we went to a pumpkin patch on sunday and did a cornmaze, i like doing cornmazes because im good at reading maps, they make me feel smart. there, we decided not to go to bellingham that day, as it was much more appealing to stay at my dad’s house. the weather was pretty bad and getting worse. me and GF took a bath in my dad’s fancy bathub and we watched Insidious, a really bad horror movie that i loved. i love cheesy horror movies.

we went to bellingham the next morning. the drive was normal, and we got my tires with no issue, but i decided i wanted to drive by our old apartment, the one we moved in to in sept 2018. as we got closer it became harder to hold back my tears. GF noticed i was crying and i broke down - i finally realized after driving past the place i’d called home as my memory slowly warped and my brain melted, that the life im currently living is not the one i want to live forever.

we went to boulevard park. there was tension between us. we never fight, we just put each other in bad moods. we got woods coffee and looked out at the water. we got to a place where we both could communicate well, and I finally said out loud that i don’t want my job forever, that i felt as if it was sucking my soul dry.

we left bellingham as we talked about my future. By the time we got to federal way and pulled over in the marlene’s to go to the bathroom i had decided that i want to go back to school. I want to get my masters, maybe even a phd, i just want to go back to college.

i listened to avenue q when i was in middle school, and the song ‘I Wish I Could Go Back To College’ always haunted me. all throughout middle and high school and into college i was afraid of becoming that person - stuck in a time that i couldn’t return to. but on that drive i realized - i dont have to leave college. there are still things these fingers itch to write, but the smog of lonely adulthood ive been forced to inhale his choked me of my skills - im a once-used vessel, still reeking with the stench of all that has used me - but i am empty for another host. a bright, shining beacon of hope; academia.

i’ve felt better ever since this happened. Nothing’s wife had a baby that same weekend, and he hasn’t been at work as often. we hardly speak to eachother. it’s perfect.

GF’s brother stayed with us the next weekend, the J stayed with us the week after that and we went to another pumpkin patch while R was in california with her grandma.

today is my friday, today is halloween. tonight i am going to dress as Gerry Keay from the magnus archives, drink cider, and spend time with my friends.

-Mitchie, Oct 31, 2020, 11:40AM

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byeoujison · 5 years ago

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august 2018

August is still fairly clear to me but i want to include it for context.

We finalized plans to move in to our first apartment, and my roommate (now my girlfriend) moved up there and started a job at jc penney (a job she ended up hating for good reason). I was still living at my dad’s house in Tacoma, and made frequent trips up to Bellingham to move my stuff in to my new room. The first trip I took up there had been in July, and the second trip was in the beginning of August, where I picked up GF’s friend H from the hospital and we drove up together and listed the names of all the US presidents and talked about them. I was glad to have such a long-winded conversation topic because im not good at making casual conversation. While up there, we met up with our friend J and their friend M and went to Haggen and got supplies for smores, then went to teddy bear cove and made smores with a lighter because we couldnt have a firepit. The sun began to set, that sunset lives in my memory brighter than anything that happened that day. We walked down to the water and I swan in the freezing bay, the sun made the water look golden and hazy. A group of guys sat up on the cliff and sang, i don’t remember what they were singing but it was nice. I swam farther than anyone else did, all the way past the cliffs and into the open water. I felt like i was floating through the air, like nothing else in life mattered than that single moment. I had friends, I had an apartment, I had a promising academic career, I had everything i could’ve wanted and I was swimming in the sunset. it got dark, and we could faintly see the bioluminescent bacteria in the water. It got cold, we talked for a little while, we went home and dried off. i left Bellingham and dropped H off at home in seattle.

i went to the interactive introverts concert in seattle at the moore theatre. I was older than a lot of people there - not including parents - but not so old as to be uncool, i got a lot of admiring looks from teens, i felt so cool. i wore black boots and my witchy hat and sunglasses (not inside). i remember being at the concert, i remember wishing i had brought earplugs, as the crowd was very very loud. dan and phil’s voices were high-pitched in my ears the whole time. im so glad i got to see them in person, they saved me in high school (more about them later).

I worked at a retail store back then, but i have very little memory of actually working. I would eat the little packets of gummy bears my boss had on the shelf when no one else was around. I remember being the last person there every night I worked, as i was the only part timer that knew how to close the shop. I got through those last few weeks happily knowing i’d never have to work there again.

i went back to bellingham. J and GF and I played the sims 4 in GF’s room, we made our DND characters. We ate poutine and drank wine at J’s house. I think we watched a movie?

I suddenly felt the need for it to be fall. You know the feeling you had on the first day of school as kid, where you were old enough to know fall had begun but young enough to not know when it started? As I’ve gotten older, my mind has anticipated this feeling earlier and earlier, to the point where mid-august my brain tells me it’s time for autumn. I sat in my dad’s living room while he and his girlfriend N (now his second wife, technically my stepmom) rearranged the furniture.

I was participating the HK Week for the bou/eibu fandom. it was the first time I felt comfortable posting fanfiction online, and it’s still the only fandom i’ve written for. I wrote fanfiction on the couch while burning an autumnal candle.

we went to rattlesnake lake (me, my dad, and N), it was foggy and cold, we brought our dog. I want to go back, but now that we live in Oregon it’s very far away. Maybe i can ask to go there this thanksgiving or christmas if i visit one of my parents. We went to a waterfall too, which one was it?

I had my last day of work, and my boss insisted she throw a party for me. I had to go back to the store later that week. My mom worked for my boss’ husband at the time at a uhaul distribution office, they were having a barbecue and asked me to come. I said yes. I needed to get my car serviced and that was the only day I could do it. how was i ok with being so busy that day. I drove out to my mom’s work. I talked with her coworkers, her office felt fake. like they didn’t actually work there. I helped my mom with the BBQ and we ate meat and corn and other things I dont remember. (later my mom would quit that job because her checks kept bouncing). then I drove out to my old workplace. I didn’t realize how big this party would be, but everyone from the building was there, some even got me presents. a woman who sold tupperware gave ma a catalogue and told me to pick out anything i wanted. one of my favorite coworkers got me a slow-cooker recipe book that i still use. i don’t know why they were so nice to me - i offered nothing of value to their company or their lives - that’s not me talking down on myself, it’s the truth. But now thinking about it - if I had the opportunity to gift a young college student something that would make their life a little easier, hell yes i would do it. I suppose they were all trying to invest in my future as if it were their own. i went to the car dealership with a trunk full of presents, they offered me a vacuum and i told them to work around the presents. I like being at the dealership. Something about being in a waiting room when your car is being serviced is comforting. You are literally only responsible for sitting quietly and waiting - maybe it reminds me of being a kid.

i packed up my furniture in the back of my dad’s truck on the last day of august. i moved in to my new apartment on september 1st, and the card tower of happiness i’d built felt its first breeze.

-Mitchie, Oct 29 2020, 10:14AM

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byeoujison · 5 years ago

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im going to attempt to write down how my memories feel in my head, but im not sure how legible it will be

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byeoujison · 5 years ago

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i have found just how difficult it is to find actual-real-people tumblr accounts when you first make a blog ^^; i want to follow people that post interesting things that arent the people I’m following on my main account but it feels like every blog i come across is run by a robot.

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byeoujison · 5 years ago

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a way-too-long introduction

Call me Mitchie. I am 23 and graduated from college in March 2020. Since 2012 I’ve been using tumblr as an escape from mundanity and stress IRL, but at some point my blog became more of a weight on my shoulders than an escape. I used to be very connected with the identity I presented online, but now I feel like Im just trying to recreate my teenage online persona. I tried to make a side blog for my main account to ‘start over’, but my friend found it almost immediately because I wasn’t careful about who I reblogged from. The same happened with my twitter account. I need to actually start over, no friends no followers.

A problem I have is that I need some sort of private space away from people I know IRL. This is what I was like as a kid and as a teen, and is still true now that I am a young adult. However much I enjoy living with my friend + girlfriend, neither of them are working right now, and I find I have little to no time where I am completely alone and not on the clock (I have a full time job). The only time I have where I am completely alone and have no obligation to socialize or work is during my 30 minute lunch break at work. I don’t think this is necessarily good for me in the long run.

I also have found the need to journal, as the months between September 2018 to the present have become very fuzzy for me. Before September 2018 I’d kept a consistent sleep schedule for a majority of my life, but that month I was hired for a job that started at 5AM, which meant waking up at 4AM. It was also the first year living in an off-campus apartment, which was freeing is some ways and daunting in others. It was like I’d been swimming downstream my whole life and that was the moment I hit the ocean. As comforting as it sounds to try and swim back to those rivers I travelled through so easily, I know I won’t be able to find my way back, and instead must tread salt water for the time being. Oceans aside - I managed to royally fuck my sleep schedule with that job, I think I legitimately got stupider that year. Luckily I have a full-time 8:30-5 job now, so my sleep schedule is slowly getting back on track, but I have realized that I have very little chronological memory of my junior and senior years of college.

This may be normal for some people, but I can remember with perfect clarity what anime I watched every season between 2014 and 2018. I can smell a candle and remember in what month, what video game I played and what music I listened to while burning it. I can listen to a song and remember where I was walking when I heard it the first time. I can listen to a podcast episode and trace three simultaneous paths I walked listening to it three separate times. I have an impeccable memory.

On top of all of this, I have forgotten how it feels to love myself and be critical of myself at the same time. Because I have actual friends now, I don’t have as much time to devote to self-appreciation and self-evaluation - something that previously was a full-time commitment. I am moodier, have more self-deprecating thoughts, and am more sensitive to what others say than I used to be. This is because I am more socially aware, like I said I have actual friends, and it is partly a good thing. But I am not used to it. I am having a difficult time adjusting to being aware of other people, and I need a place where I can talk about that without the gaze of other people. That being said if somehow someone is reading this feel free to keep reading or even follow me - just be sure to know that I am not making content for anyone but myself. That’s how it should be.

Long story short - I just want to use this to make sense of the last two years and, eventually, the present. Maybe I’ll even archive every memory I have, but for now my goal is September 2018 - October 2020. I hope if you’re reading this I’ve found you in good spirits, and if not, plain spirits will do.

-Mitchie, October 28th, 2020, 3:43PM

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