going-through-some-stuff

[going-through-some-stuff]

Entry Twenty-Two - Saturday, October 12th 2024

New record for longest time without an update, I didn’t realize it had been since May of last year since I updated here. A lot of stuff has happened since then, but I won’t get into everything here for time and character limit. Overall life has been good, though obviously today has been different since I’m posting on here. Today started out great, played magic for almost the entire day which was very fun and cool. It mostly went downhill after I left, but for the full context of the story we have to go back to July of this year.

CW WARNING // SUICIDE

On July 1st, 2024, my friend killed herself. I only knew her for maybe a year, but she had already become what I consider a pinnacle of our magic group. She was endlessly kind, curious, and overall truly the golden standard that anybody could hope to be, and I miss her every fucking day. She was truly a one of a kind type of person, and my only regret is we didn’t get more time with her. I think what fucks me up the most is she was over a year younger than me. I don’t know why, but it just adds a level to it because she was so young. I’d give anything to have her back, but also I know she’s gone and I’ll never get to see her again and that fucking sucks. It all fucking sucks. The transphobia she faced, the issues she dealt with from being neurodivergent and having BPD along with other mental health issues. She was getting treatment for her BPD and one of the side effects was memory loss. Nothing long term as far as I’m aware, mostly short term from anything after she started the treatment, but it still really broke my heart to see her not remembering conversations she had with people just the week before. I had at least hoped in the long run it would all be worth it and she’d get better but obviously and unfortunately that was not the case. She died far too young, and the world is far worse off without her light in it. We did have a nice celebration of life ceremony for her a couple weeks after then where we got to meet some of her family and friends, and it was nice to meet them and be able to grieve our friend together. A couple of months after that we planted a tree in her honor, which was also very nice. In 60+ years that tree will fuck up that lawn/sidewalk/driveway but that’s someone else’s problem.

Now you might be asking, what does any of this have to do with today? Well today one of our friends was able to get access to her google account (email, drive, etc.) and found an initial draft of a last letter in there. She shared it with a lot of disclaimers that it was very sad and nobody had any obligation to read it, but that it might help with the grieving process. It did shed some light on how truly bad her mental health was, and I knew it was bad but it was so much worse than I expected. I won’t get too into it here out of respect for her, but she did say she had been wanting to do this for 14 years. 14 fucking years. Since she was 10. I’ve had off and on suicidal ideations since I was probably around that age or maybe a little older, but it was never this bad. I cannot imagine what it felt like for her to be a child dealing with this the way she was. Part of finding out what I did makes me wish I did more but she was damn good at hiding how bad it was, and the other part was finding out there was truly nothing any of us could have done. Honestly that might hurt more than finding out we could have done more. At least it would have been some kind of learning moment to find out what to look for and maybe how to help someone else. But no. It was just the cruelty of this world and her situation that led to this. Nothing could have been done, and that fucking sucks. None amount of medication, therapy, or other forms of treatment could have done fucking anything. And that infuriates me to no end. How could there have been nothing any of us could have done differently. How was it a lost cause from the start. Why could none of us have done anything to even just make it to the end of the year with her. Even to her birthday in September. I know it would have just been prolonging the inevitable at this point but fuck. It just all sucks. She truly was the best of us and we’ll do our best to come back from this but I don’t think any of us will fully recover from this, at least not any time soon.

I’m going to break one of my rules for this blog and use a person’s real name, but it’s not like anyone reads this blog anyway.

Rest in peace, Maple. Every time I look at the stars I will think of you and know you are laughing among them, and I will laugh with you. We all miss you every day, and I swear on my life one of these days I will win a game with Soundwave.

It’s ya boy, AW, signing off.

[going-through-some-stuff]

Entry Twenty-One - Sunday, May 14 2023

I cried for the first time in a long time this weekend. Last time was over 5 years ago when we put my dog down. I honestly couldn’t tell you how old he was at that point, we’d had him for as long as I could remember. Definitely 12+ years old. He was a bitter old man of a dog who would definitely yell at kids to get off his lawn if he was a human, but he was a great dog and I loved him. But I digress, that’s not what this weekend was about. My sister graduated med school this weekend, and I couldn’t be more proud of her and all of the work she put in to get this far. I wish I could say this was heartfelt tears and I cried because she’s pursuing her dreams and getting to do what she is really passionate about, but that’s not what happened. The ceremony was in a packed hall where we were shoulder to shoulder with everyone, it was hot, the lights weren’t even bright but just weird, and people were excited that their friends, family and loved ones were graduating med school so it was loud. I don’t want to sound like I’m blaming them for what happened, they had every right to be excited for their people and it’s not their fault it was too much for me. I made it through most of the ceremony just fine, but about 75% of the way through I just felt it all at once. I had to close my eyes and really focus on my breathing to not lose my composure. I really wanted to cover my ears too but didn’t want to draw too much attention to myself so I didn’t. That helped for the most part until the end, which is all just a blur. Everyone was of course standing and clapping at the end of the ceremony, which was much worse than the concentrated groups of loud noise for individual names being announced. Then we all had to leave, and it was cramped both inside and out so it was just making the sensory overload so much worse. I honestly barely remember between the last 25% of the ceremony and managing to find my sister in the crowd. I just remember being hot and cramped and barely being able to focus. It got a little better once we found my sister outside because it wasn’t as cramped, but it was still a little too much so I was kinda standing off to the side trying to avoid being touched or really interacted with in any way. I thought the worst of it was over and then we got in the car and it just all hit me like a train. I was sitting in the back and I honestly don’t even know how to describe how I felt. It was just all too much. I had to fully close and cover my eyes with my hands and spend all of my energy on just breathing normally. We were initially supposed to go to dinner after but by the time we got to the place I was holding back tears. We ended up going back to my grandparent’s place and I just ran into one of the bedrooms downstairs and threw my face into a pillow and just started fucking weeping. I just laid there with my hands over my face, laying on my side facing the wall for like half an hour crying. I texted my mom and said they should all just go to dinner and that I’ll be fine, so thankfully they were gone by the time I got my composure so I could just pack my stuff and go. I also had basically forgotten I’d made plans to play games with friends so I managed to power through that. I had fun playing with them and don’t regret doing it, but I definitely should’ve just gone to bed. I finished a couple of hours later and just went into my room and passed out. I hoped that was the end of it, but I woke up the next morning (today) and could barely get out of bed. I spent basically all day in bed, I think I got out of bed like three or four times in total to either get food or go to the bathroom and just go back and lay down in bed. I think the most time I spent out of bed was probably 20-30 minutes to shower/get ready for bed. I’m normally pretty tired on a daily basis but I couldn’t tell you the last time I was this exhausted. It felt like I got hit by a fucking truck and was so hard to be awake but I also couldn’t really sleep so I was just on my phone all day.

If my family somehow finds this and figures out it was me, I’m sorry for being stand-offish at the ceremony but I just couldn’t handle it. And to my sister, I hope you know how proud of you I am. I couldn’t wish for a better sister and hope you accomplish everything you want and more in life. You’re the best role model I could ask for, and if I can even be half the person you are I’ll count it as a success.

Before I start crying again writing out all the things I have a hard time saying, I’m going to call it a night. It’s ya boi, AW, signing off.

[going-through-some-stuff]

Entry Twenty - Saturday, January 28 2023

It has officially been the longest I’ve gone between the posts, over a year at this point. A decent amount has changed since December 2021 when I last updated this thing. I finally actually moved to KC since my time in Manhattan came to an end and I started a new job a few weeks ago. I’m still definitely depressed, but being in somewhere with plenty to do and tons of friends has made me probably the happiest I’ve been in a long time. Having a more regular schedule has also helped, since I don’t have to drive four hours round trip to another city for work now that I actually live here. I live by myself now which is a huge plus. I loved my old roommates but living alone is much more ideal for just how I am as a person. I play magic basically every week in person at this point which is fucking awesome, this game is so much fun and so many cool people play it. I was skimming the post before this and talked a lot about just starting my first actual corporate level job so I’ll touch on that again. First thing’s first, working from home is infinitely better than being in office. Being able to just fuck around when I have down time is a huge plus for me, along with just being able to get out of bed later than normal, etc. If you get a job that requires you to work in office more than like one day a week after an initial training period look for other options unless you really like being in office for some reason. Also onto the big news of me starting a new job. It seems like I didn’t really go into specifics about what exactly my job was in the previous post, so I’ll continue that trend here. I left my old job for a myriad of reasons, being things like pay, benefits, number of days per week in office, etc. I liked most of my coworkers and the handful of you that I was/am actual friends with know who you are and are the reason I stayed as long as I did. The breaking point for me was when I got to my end of year review and earned a very high rating and was told I basically do everything above average, especially for only being in industry for a year, and they gave be a forty-one cent an hour raise from $20.50 to $20.91. I asked my supervisor if there was any way to get more because of my performance (for reference people who got at or below average got the same percentage increase as I did), and they basically spent an hour talking in circles about company policy, there’s nothing they can do, blah blah blah. So I immediately updated my LinkedIn and started looking for new jobs. Low and behold, there’s a company in the same industry half that is half the drive time from my apartment to my old job, has better benefits, offered me $55k/year starting (about $27/hour), and also I was going to get to learn how to do things I had been wanting to learn about for a pretty significant portion of my time at the old job. The only downside was saying goodbye to some of my customers and a handful of coworkers who I do still miss seeing on a regular basis. From what I’ve been told though, some of the people I did say goodbye to were able to get a pretty good raise because another one of the more competent employees left about the same time I did, so it’s not all bad I guess. I truly am probably the happiest on a day to day basis that I’ve been in a long time, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have bad days. Today started out pretty good, I went thrifting with a friend I haven’t hung out with in months and got some good stuff. We also got some solid Chinese food (the crab rangoon was solid and the general tso’s was ok but still good). I got home and wanted to take a nap since I didn’t get much sleep last night but that just didn’t happen and I think that’s why I feel as shitty as I do right now. Being tired and the coming down from spending most of a Friday evening with a lot of friends and then immediately getting up and going to hang out with another friend the following morning can hit pretty hard. I’m hoping to sleep like a damn rock tonight but I know that’s not going to happen since I don’t every get good sleep, but hey who knows. Either way, I’m going to try and go to bed now so it’s ya boi, AW, signing off.

P.S. it seems like I’ve been pretty hit or miss with using the tags, so I’m going to just stop using them entirely. It’s a lot of work and I just don’t feel like it lol.

[going-through-some-stuff]

Entry Nineteen - Monday, December 13 2021

So it’s been a hot minute since I posted last, largely because I kinda forgot this existed for awhile. A decent amount has changed since I last posted on here, so I figured I’d make a post about it. First thing worth mentioning is that I finally moved out of Emporia to Manhattan back in August. It’s been a good time overall, there’s just not a lot for me to do in Manhattan which kinda sucks. Like it’s a college town, so a lot of the things to do are going to football games and bars and stuff, but those are things I’m not a huge fan of and if I did go I wouldn’t want to go alone, and my roommates are always busy and don’t really do that stuff either. So for the first three or so months of being in Manhattan, my days were pretty much a routine of wake up late, do random shit online, go to bed late, repeat. But that changed at the end of October/early November when I got a job in KC. It’s a the same place Katie and Siobhan work, which is most of the reason I decided to apply in the first place (other than sheer boredom). The work can be done remotely, but the company prefers to have people in office when possible so I split my time between working in office in KC and working from home in Manhattan. I like the people I work with and being in office is nice, but being able to get up later and not having to wear business casual while working from home is also nice so it’s hard to say if one is better than the other. My team is incredibly helpful and have been a big reason I haven’t just quit this job out of frustration because god damn there were some frustrating and frankly angering days I had to deal with. Without them this job would suck a lot more ass and be probably unbearable. The pay isn’t great, but also my expenses aren’t that high either so it’s just nice to be earning money instead of burning it at this point. I can’t tell if I’m exhausted just because I work 8-5 M-F every week or if it’s because of every day just blurring together and making it hard to keep track of time. It’s hard to do stuff like play video games with friends when I spend all day working because I’m just tired after, but I think I’m also exhausted because all I do is work. Like when I get done working all I think about is staying awake long enough to go to bed at a reasonable time, just to get up and do it again the next day. Like I want to hang out with my friends more but it just takes so much energy to do that. Life is just exhausting at this point and I’m definitely taking things day by day and very happy that next week is a three day week because of the holidays, followed by a four day week for New Years. I think overall life is good right now but it’s just fucking exhausting as a whole so it’s hard to say for sure. I want to write more but I’m so tired so I’m just gonna go to bed. Maybe I’ll write more tomorrow, who’s to say. It’s ya boi, AW, signing off.

[going-through-some-stuff]

Entry Eighteen - Monday, June 14 2021

So this has definitely been the longest amount of time between posts (almost a year for those keeping track) and holy shit has stuff happened. Currently we’re in the process of cleaning up the house that I live in so that we can sell it sometime this summer. I never realized how truly dirty this place was until I (and my dad and step-mom) went over it with a fine-tooth comb. Like I knew it was bad but *damn* is it bad. I’ve spent multiple days working on this shit and there’s still tons to do. I’m also definitely not in the mood to clean today but I have to so I’m going to. But my procrastination aside, some actual big stuff has happened. I graduated college, which is great and also horrifying. Since I dropped the accounting major to a minor, I finished undergrad in December of 2020, and spent this last semester doing just graduate level courses, which are very much different from undergrad courses (especially econometrics holy shit that class was a lot of work). But I did enjoy it overall and learned a lot of cool stuff, which made it worth it. I didn’t do the full masters program, just got a certificate, which is just a 12 hour program instead of 36(?) and is mostly just the core classes about econometrics. It also means I don’t have to do any sort of thesis and/or capstone which is amazing. I’m also apart of a new group who are so much god damn fun to hang out with. For the purposes of this blog I’ll call them Brian, Emily, Siobhan, and Katie. Brian, Siobhan, and Katie were all also economics majors, which is how I met them, and Emily is Siobhan’s childhood friend. We all started talking around the beginning of the fall 2020 semester, but we didn’t really get to know each other until around winter break of the same year when we did some house sitting for Siobhan’s sister and spent the weekend hanging out. That was honestly one of the most fun weekends I’ve had in a long time. We’ve hung out quite a few times since then, especially because Katie is dead set on meeting everybody’s parents for some reason. The only parents we haven’t met yet are Brian’s, which he (much like myself) is trying to put off for as long as possible. Overall though they’re an amazing group of people and I absolutely love hanging out with them and talking to them. Speaking of people I love talking to, I’ve been talking to my friend Ally a lot more recently, and they’re so much fun and we have such great chaotic energy together. We’ve been friends since I was a senior in high school (they were a junior at the time) but we didn’t really become close friends until the last two-ish years when we’ve started talking all the time. They’re one of my best friends and I can talk to them about truly anything. That being said, I think I really like them. Idk if this just happens to anybody (especially AFAB people) who shows me any amount of human decency, but I really do want to date this person. I really want to tell them but I don’t know how, and also they live an hour and a half away from me, so I don’t want to try and do this long distance because I’ve never even been in a relationship, let alone one where we don’t get to see each other barely ever. I also don’t want the feelings to not be mutual and have it be awkward and hurt our friendship. Part of me feels like the feelings are mutual because of the way they talk to me, but I really don’t know for sure. I’m also 100% okay with being friends so like it’s not the end of the world if I never tell them, but also I feel like they deserve to know. Literally everybody I know that has come to me with this same issue I have told them to just tell the person because they deserve to know the truth, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Maybe part of it is because I’ve been on the receiving end of that situation a couple of times myself and it hasn’t ended super well either time. Those were pretty different situations where the first person was a friend’s ex (I also handed that poorly so that’s also partially my fault) and the other one was a married coworker (which is a whole other issue that could have its own post), and both times the feelings were not mutual. I really don’t know what to do, but I just reached out to a mutual friend both me and Ally are close to who met his current partner through a different mutual friend, and him and his partner were friends before dating, so we’ll see what wisdom he can bring forth to me. Anyway, I’ve got a house to clean and other general stuff to do. It’s ya boi, AW signing off.

[going-through-some-stuff]

Entry Seventeen - Saturday, July 11 2020

Well it’s been a hot minute since I’ve posted on here. It’s also been a little over  two years that I’ve been posting on here, which is fucking insane to me. There honestly hasn’t been anything super insane that’s happened to me specifically in the like six months since I posted last. COVID-19 is still going on because people refuse to wear masks and self-quarantine, which is frustrating to say the least. Black Lives Matter protests are also happening still, which is another whole ordeal in and of itself. Like how hard is it to understand that the police force disproportionately targets black people and shouldn’t be allowed to get away with all the bullshit they get away with. Fuck qualified immunity and all that shit. Fuck 12, All Cops Are Bastards, de-fund the police. Anyway, back to what’s going on in my life specifically because you can and should go listen to what more qualified people are saying about Black Lives Matter, and COVID if that’s still going on. One big thing that happened to me over the last few months was I decided to drop accounting as a major and pursue higher level courses in economics because accounting is very boring and not what I want to do. I’m getting a masters certificate in econometrics, which is basically the data analysis and projection side of economics. I think I’ve gotten all of that stuff sorted out, but we’ll have to see. It’s gonna be weird because I’ll be taking undergraduate and graduate courses at the same time this fall, but I should be fine. Still going to therapy (virtually because duh) and it’s been helpful. It’s nice to have a person that I can just talk through my shit with. I’m also pretty sure I have ADHD in some capacity because my mind is just constantly running in all sorts of directions but I won’t know for sure until I can get back to Emporia and take an official test for it. I also quit my job at Walgreens because I didn’t enjoy working there and didn’t want to be there anymore. It’s been nice not having to worry about work all the time and having a ton of free time to myself. Not getting paid kinda sucks, but I have money saved up so I can pay my bills and still have money left over for stuff I want to do like seeing movies, buying magic cards, etc. Not having a job also means I get to spend my summer in Wichita, which has been pretty great overall. It was supposed to be a time to get to see/hang out with my friends a lot but COVID has kinda put a damper on that. I still get to see them, but not as often as I’d like. I also haven’t been talking to my dad as often, which has also been good because basically every conversation I have with him ends in me being pissed off in some capacity. I’ve seen him like three times since summer has started and they’ve all been fine but he’s still very obnoxious to deal with as a whole so the less the better. Like he just refuses to admit he’s wrong in any capacity. I try to call him out on his bullshit, he tells me I’m wrong and that I need to “grow up” and get used to the “real world” where apparently everybody is an asshole, at least according to him. It’s just impossible to have a serious conversation where I tell him anything important going on in my life because he always finds a way to turn it into a fucking lecture. It’s so fucking frustrating. He’s just always so passive aggressive about shit. Like I have to go with him, my sister, and my stepmom to Emporia later this week for some stuff and my sister and I were going to drive up separate because she wants to be back pretty quickly since she will have gotten back from a month or so out of town doing medical school stuff. So my sister asks if it’s ok if we leave early, my dad says he wants to have dinner up there, and she asks again because she gets back the day before and wasn’t aware until yesterday or two days ago we were going up there, and my dad’s exact response was “That is fine. I was thinking it was another hour, but if you feel that way, that is fine.” As if that’s not some of the most passive aggressive bullshit ever. Also whenever my dad says anything is going to take X amount of time, it’s usually twice that long at least. So when he says an hour, its at least two hours or more. But it’s this kind of passive aggressive shit that makes me not want to talk to him. He talks like he’s so much better than we are and that we don’t know what we’re doing or that we’re adults, and it’s infuriating. If he didn’t have financial power over me (paying for phone bills, etc.) I would probably never talk to him because I just don’t want to deal with it. If he could just admit to being an asshole and not being right all the time, then maybe we could work on some kind of compromise. Like I know I’m not the best son/person but that doesn’t excuse his shitty behavior. I really want to have a sit down with him and have a serious heart to heart about what’s going on because I feel like he really does want what’s best for me and doesn’t understand how much he’s been fucking with my mental health for most of my life, but also I’ve tried to have serious conversations with him before and he always ends up condescending, interrupting, and overall treating my experiences and feelings like they’re invalid. I’d like to do it before I go back to college this fall so I can just have that off my mind, but it’s hard. I don’t know if I’m going to really be able to put all of my feelings out there in a way that doesn’t make it sound like I”m attacking him and trying to blame everything on him, because it’s not entirely his fault I am the way I am. But on the other hand I think he deserves a chance to be able to learn from his mistakes and be a better person. I just don’t know how well he’s going to be able to do that and how much of an impact this is really going to have, and that’s what scares me about it. I really want to try and fix this because I know other people’s dads are irredeemable and they’ve got no shot, and I feel like I”m doing them a disservice by just completely giving up without a fair chance. I don’t know. It sucks. I think I need to talk to my mom about it because I know they went to couples therapy for a long time before they divorced and I want to hear her side of how that went and see what she thinks. My therapist thinks it’s a good idea and my sister agrees, but we’ll see. Anyway, I’m gonna start doing a thing where I put a song that I’ve been listening to a lot recently and hopefully one that pertains to whatever I end up talking about in these posts, even when I post as infrequently as I do. The first song is Could Have Been Me by The Struts. If you pay attention to the timing of these posts, you’ll notice it’s a song that I’ve only heard because it was popular on Tik-Tok, but this app is great and anybody who thinks they’re too good for it is a pretentious asshole. Like if you don’t want to use it, that’s fine, but you’re not special for not using it either. Anyway, this song is really good and I very much suggest it. But that’s it for today. See y’all again at some point probably. It’s ya boi, AW, signing off.

[going-through-some-stuff]

Entry Sixteen - Wednesday, January 22 2020

This is probably my first post that has happened before the time frame of 11 PM to 2 AM, which is cool I guess. But you know what isn’t cool? My dad being an asshole, which I’ll provide some backstory on. As you all know, I currently work at Walgreens, which is nice because it pays well and I work will cool people. What I don’t like about it is how much I work and that I don’t have a lot of free time (depending on who you ask. My dad will say he worked 60 hour weeks in college blah blah blah and was fine). But this summer is supposed to be the summer where I, an accounting major, am supposed to have an internship because that’s what we do, I guess. This means that I wouldn’t be able to work at Walgreens over the summer or next year unless I either came back once a month to work a shift to stay in the system or reapplied in the fall to try and get my job back, assuming they’re hiring. That sounds good to me because I don’t really want to work that much my senior year for the sake of my mental health and grades. Like I said, I enjoy working at Walgreens for the most part but it just takes a lot of time and has prevented me from partaking in I don’t know how many social gatherings or events. Because of that, I don’t want to work next summer whether I get an internship or not because it’d be nice to just be free for the summer and just be able to see my friends because I don’t get to see them that often. Because I don’t plan on working this summer, that means that I’m free for a surprise birthday party that my dad wants to throw for his dad, my grandpa. It would be in early to mid June depending on when we get it worked out. I plan on not working at Walgreens by that point. When my dad asked about that weekend, I said I don’t plan on being at Walgreens so I should be good to go. He asked me if I had an internship on the horizon, I said no, just don’t want to work at Walgreens, to which he replied “Ok.” with a period. Obviously not happy. That was a few days ago. Fast forward to today when he asks if I can call him when I get the chance, so I do, and he wants me to elaborate further on the previous discussion we had, so I do. I explain that I want to be able to see my friends and take the summer for myself to just take a break from working. He proceeds to tell me how bad of an idea that is and how shitty it looks on a resume to not work this summer if I’m not taking classes or doing an internship. I then explain that working at Walgreens (which will be 5 years at the end of July) hasn’t been the breaking point for me getting an internship thus far. He snaps back with a “no, it’s this crappy, sarcastic attitude that you have.” Like bitch I have gone into every interview feeling good and feeling prepared, overall a positive mood, and I haven’t gotten an internship thus far. It’s probably just my inability to set myself apart from other people that are also applying for these positions. I thought I was doing that with the extra major and the treasurer position but that obviously hasn’t been enough either. I’m honestly thinking about dropping the accounting major and just being an econ major but I’m not sure what that all entails so that’s not anywhere past just thinking about it. Idk. At this point I’m just going to apply for a bunch of different positions that are looking for accounting and/or economics majors and we’ll just have to go from there. Overall, its just demoralizing to feel really good about an interview and then just get an email that says no. Or there’s the one place I applied for that called me, which I didn’t answer because it wasn’t a number saved in my phone, and the voicemail said “call me back about your future at X place” and I thought that sounded promising, so I called back almost right away. But no. I had to fucking call them back for them to tell me that I didn’t fucking get it. Just fucking email me or leave it in the voicemail or something. Getting my fucking hopes up by saying some shit like that is shitty. I just want to not have to deal with this shit anymore. It’s just obnoxious and I hate having to deal with it. And the worst part is all I can hear when I think about this shit is my dad’s voice in the back of my head telling me how much better he is than I am with shit like “oh I worked 60 hours a week when I was in college and it was no sweat for me” or “you just need to get to know your professors better and they’ll be helpful.” Wow thanks dad you’ve solved my depression and social anxiety thanks so much I’m the top intern choice for each of the big four CPA firms and I’m going to work for all of them at once because of this magical advice that I definitely didn’t think about before. And on the CPA thing. From what I’ve heard about it, the job fucking sucks. It’s not great pay and you work 60 hour weeks where you travel all the time and you have a very linear career path and you work like 3-5 years then get the fuck out. And I have to go to another year of college to get my masters. And take this long as shit test that’s super fucking hard. For a title that gets me a job I don’t want and isn’t necessary for the jobs I do want. It’s obnoxious. Now that I’ve ranted and gotten that off my chest, I’m gonna go apply for internships now. It’s ya boi, AW, signing off.

[going-through-some-stuff]

Entry Fifteen - Wednesday, January 15 2020

Holy shit I haven’t posted on here since last decade. Alright now that we have that out of the way, it has been a hot minute since I posted on here. I’ve been real busy, which I know I said last time I was on here, but it’s true. Last semester I was in 17 credit hours, working 30 hours a week, and trying to establish new relationships, romantic and otherwise. I guess I’ll start with Fiona, who you all have already met and know, at least sort of. I don’t really know where I stand with her honestly. Like we both want to pursue a relationship with each other, but we don’t have the time and honestly I’m pretty sure we just want different things from life. I think she’s great, she’s funny, pretty, and really fucking smart, but I just don’t know if now is the time for this, or ever honestly, which fucking sucks. I really need to have a talk with her about it, but I don’t know how to address it or what to even say. I don’t want to end things, but we’re in this weird limbo where we aren’t something but we also aren’t nothing, and I don’t like being here and I don’t know how she feels, but I doubt she enjoys it. I just don’t think we see each other enough to be able to have a romantic relationship, and I don’t think either of us want to try and force anything because we both know that won’t end well. I don’t know. It sucks, but it is what it is. That’s what I’m telling myself, anyway. On the topic of relationships, I’ve figured out that I’m polysexual, maybe pansexual (I don’t know enough about non-binary genders to say with 100% certainty that I”m pan and not poly), which is definitely not what I thought I was before. I knew I was panromantic, but I was very sure I was heterosexual, but after a lot of thought and reflection, I figured out that I wasn’t. I’ve also figured out that I’m demimale, meaning that I don’t feel like I am completely and totally male, but that is the label I feel the greatest attraction towards. Basically it means I’m predominately male, but don’t feel entirely male. I know that was kind of a sharp turn from what I was talking about, but I needed to get it off my chest. I don’t hugely think that coming out is a super important thing as I don’t think people should just assume heterosexuality because of how many different options there really are. That’s just how I feel, so I don’t think I’ll come out explicitly to my parents or anything, but I might tell some of my close friends if I feel some urge to do so. This is where I’d put a smooth transition sentence to my new friend group if I had one. I’ve entered a new group of friends, which is cool. We’re all accounting majors that met in a non-accounting class, coincidentally enough. We met last semester and we started going to get coffee after class got out on Tuesdays, and we had a great time, so we made it a regular thing. We’re trying to figure out a time to do it again this semester, so we’ll have to see if we get to meet up like that again. I really hope we do. That’s what got me through the end of the semester, especially after trivia night getting cancelled. They’re a really good group of people, and I really enjoy hanging out with them. I’ll give them fake names at some point, but I don’t want to mess with it right now, so you’ll hear about them more later. I still haven’t gotten an internship, which has been pretty disheartening. It just sucks that I keep having to apply for places, especially ones I’m not super keen on working at, just because I feel like if I don’t get one that I’m a failure. There’s just all this pressure and focus on getting an internship that I feel like if I don’t get one then it’s going to make getting a job that much harder once I graduate. It’s just shitty and it really isn’t helping with my already low self-esteem. I hate interviewing and I’m not very good at it, and I just want to get an internship so I don’t have to fuck with it anymore. I also hate having to keep telling my dad that I haven’t gotten an internship yet because that further makes me feel like a disappointment who won’t amount to anything. Speaking of feeling shitty about myself, I started going to therapy recently, which has been nice. I’ve only been to two appointments thus far, one right before winter break and one today, but they’ve been helpful. It’s been really nice to have somebody to be able to just vent about what I’m feeling and what’s been going on in my life, as well as get a better understanding of myself and how to handle situations where I feel like I’m spiraling. My therapist also thought that keeping a journal like I am now was a cool idea and could be beneficial to me, which is a plus. There’s this group she’s starting that she thinks could help people with social anxiety, such as myself, and she asked if I wanted to join it and I was 100% down to join, if I can manage to work my schedule around it. *insert other transition sentence to talk about winter break* I also had a pretty good winter break. I got to go to OKC with some friends for a weekend to play a shit ton of magic, which was really cool. It was nice to get to go down there and just do nothing but play magic for a weekend. It was a good way to finish of the semester. I also got to go down to Wichita for new years and see the old high school people and hang out with them. I always love getting to see all of them, but it sucks when it’s over because I don’t know when I’m going to get to see them again. They’re all at different universities than I am, other than the one I live with, but I don’t see him that often and we aren’t super close friends. Hell, I think he’s probably going to move out at the end of the semester when his lease is up. I just really wish I got to see them more because I didn’t really get to join the friend group until later in high school so I haven’t known them as long as they’ve known each other. I really enjoy spending time with them whenever I can, and I wish I could truly articulate to them how important they all are to me. Speaking of people who are important to me and roommates moving out, Jeremy moved out at the end of December. It was a culmination of a lot of stuff in the house and a bunch of other stuff, but he moved out and moved in with another friend of ours. It hadn’t really set in that he was moving out until after he already started the process, even though I knew for about a month in advance that he was for sure doing it and awhile longer than that that he was almost assuredly going to do it. It just sucks that I’m not going to get to see my best friend as much as I used to, which wasn’t a ton anyway because of conflicting schedules, etc. but it still sucks. I guess the culmination of this post is that I really wish I got to spend more time with the people that I care about, and that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to explain to everybody how important they are to me. Anyway, its ya boi, AW, sighing off.

[going-through-some-stuff]

Entry Fourteen - Wednesday, October 16 2019

Ok so I know it’s been two and a half months, but in my defense I’ve been busy with shit. School is a lot, work is more, and life is just busy. Applying for internships has been fun, and by fun I mean pretty stressful. I haven’t heard back from one of my top choices, which wouldn’t be as worrying if Fiona hadn’t heard back from them almost a week ago. I’m trying to keep the “it is what it is” mentality that I normally have about this kind of stuff, but it mostly sucks that I haven’t heard anything back from them. Like if I could just get an email back saying that I didn’t get it, I could at least move on, but until I get that happens I’m there’s going to be apart of me that is still holding out hope for it. Nobody I know that interviewed with the first company I interviewed with has heard anything back, which might be even worse. The last company I had a formal interview with was just last week, and they said it’d be a few weeks before we heard anything. This company is my second choice, and I feel pretty good about the interview for that one, so I really hope I get to intern there and then hopefully get a full-time job with them after I graduate. One step at a time though. This semester has been a whirlwind so far. Aside from the 17 credit hours, the new position at work, and the interviews, the house has been all over the damn place. Started out pretty strong, there there’s been a bunch of drama involving virtually everybody, and it seems to have settled for the most part, but I’m not holding out any hope about it. Drama will always find it’s way in when there’s five people living under one roof. Jeremy is moving out at semester, and idk if he’s told any of the other roommates, but I think it’s for the best. It sucks, but he’s been at the center of a lot of this drama and it’s taken a pretty big toll on him, so moving out will hopefully help. I’d say I’m worried that I’m going to see him less, but we don’t really see each other that often anyway because we have pretty conflicting schedules. I’m just pissed of honestly. Megan first gave off the impression that she was just a confident person who doesn’t take shit from people, but it turns out she’s more of a self-righteous dick most of the time. It seems like if a relationship is actively and wholly benefiting her, she just cuts it off. Like she met some guy, and they were just friends, and everything was going great from what I can tell. Then one day she’s in a pissy mood and he pushes the wrong button and she comes home and is going off about how she never wants to talk to him again. And it’s not like he was super shitty, he just kinda irritated her and she lost it. She’s just super hypocritical about things. Like she’s allowed to make snarky comments no matter what mood you’re in and if you get upset you’re the asshole, but if she’s in a bad mood you get the “today’s been a long day” or “I’m really not in the mood” type shit, and then you’re the asshole. She just has a super short fuse and is just frustrating because she refuses to acknowledge that people are different than her and that being shitty and passive aggressive about things doesn’t solve shit, but holds others to the standard that if they have a problem with her, it’s on them to fix it. So even when she knows or thinks other people have beef, she won’t change or acknowledge it in any meaningful way because apparently relationships aren’t a give and take system where, rather than seeing how you can change and grow as a person and doing something about it, you should just not change and say fuck it. Obviously there’s limitations to this where the other person won’t be willing to change and they expect you to do the changing (basically what she does), but like I said it’s a give and take system. You can’t expect others to change if you aren’t willing to either. Megan would rather just give up on the relationship altogether than try and put effort into fixing it. It’s just frustrating to deal with. 

On a more positive note, I finally had the courage to tell Fiona how I feel about her. We had a talk about it, and while she wants to give it a shot at some point, she thinks right now isn’t a great time because we’re both so busy that we won’t be able to put the proper amount of time and effort into a relationship (not that I’d know how much time and effort goes into a relationship, but I think I have an rough idea at least). Hopefully this semester will slow down and we’ll get to see each other more, not that I really see that happening based on the pace it’s at now. Maybe next semester will be easier because I’ll be in fewer credit hours (and even have one online class), which means I should hopefully have more free time. Not sure if both of us will, but I’m hopeful. She’s graduating a semester earlier than I am (December 2020 vs May 2021), so we don’t have a ton of time before we go our separate ways, assuming I don’t get an offer with my top choice. If we get a solid chance at it, awesome, but if not, it is what it is. On that note, it’s ya boi, AW, signing off.

[going-through-some-stuff]

Entry Thirteen - Friday, August 2 2019

So much for uploading regularly to this page, not that anybody follows it to know that. It’s been a busy summer, to say the least. I’ve gotten new roommates, a promotion at work, and made some more friends. I don’t really know where to start, so I’ll do something positive. I got to go to a wedding for my friends, Elyse, and it was an amazing time. We had a ton of fun and it was hands down the best wedding I’ve ever been to. Because the school year ended, some of my old roommates moved out, meaning we got some new ones. Jeremy moved in, as well as one other person who we’ll call Nick, who was Jeremy’s roommate first semester last year. So for most of the summer, it’s been me, Lawrence, Nick, and Jeremy, and after summer we are getting a fifth and final resident of our household, Alex, who I went to high school with and Jeremy and Lawrence know through extracurricular activities. The summer went pretty well for the most part, up until mid-July. For some background, Lawrence has been without a job for two months at this point. He had rent for the first month but had to get money from a family member for the second, and hasn’t payed utilities for either month. He also has pretty bad mental health, but not only did he not seek out help, he actively refused it. This had taken a toll on the house as a whole, and we realized something needed to change. This led to us having a heart-to-heart, almost intervention style conversation with him about his future in the house. We gave him the proposition of moving out of the house by the end of the month, which would allow him to be relieved of the debt he owes me, and he would get his security deposit back if there weren’t damages to the room. The conversation lasted about twenty minutes, and he was understandably upset afterwards. He was angry and yelled at us, told us to go to hell, the works. But after an evening to simmer down, he decided that he would move out willingly later that week. It was really hard on all of us. We didn’t want it to come to this, but for our sake and his it did. I’m not sure what the future holds for him, but I wish him the best. We didn’t tell him this because he was already upset, but the catalyst for this was because we had one of our friends, Elyse, reach out to us and ask if we had a spare room for the year. Her sister, Megan, was transferring to the college we attended and the roommate she had bailed last minute, so she needed a place to move into soon. I need to clarify we didn’t ask Lawrence to leave purely because of this. The problems that I discussed had been brewing for a long time, but there was never a good time to go through with it, and this situation provided us with a good reason to do what we did. Jeremy and I had met her briefly at the wedding, but didn’t know her super well, but we knew Elyse wouldn’t ask us this if she new it would be bad for us. We met her officially today and I think she’ll fit right into the house. Her personality matches with ours pretty well and she plays Magic: the Gathering, so I have high hopes for this semester and the future of the house. Hopefully I’ll use this blog a little bit more and maybe accrue some followers, but I’m OK with not having any. This is really more for me than anybody else. Maybe I’ll post regularly, maybe not. I really have no clue. Anyway, its ya boi AW, signing off.

[going-through-some-stuff]

Entry Twelve - Friday, April 26 2019 (part 2/2)

It’s hard to spend time with her right now because I work a lot and it’s getting close to the end of the semester so that means finals and projects are happening so neither of us have a lot of free time. Also I’m a huge wimp and can’t gather the nerve to ask her out. I kinda tried to almost maybe do it earlier this week, but not really. Basically, there was this banquet on campus where people who received scholarships from our school of business were invited, and I was going to go just to see what it was. I was going to bring Jeremy as my plus one because I was going to be bored af by myself, but he got really busy with a paper and other projects so he couldn’t go. Whatever, not a big deal. Then I had the idea to ask Fiona to go with me. She was already going, which makes sense, so she said I could sit with her and some of her friends. Well my dumbass couldn’t find her when I got there so I just sat down at some random place and assumed she might not be there yet. Turns out, she was there and was at the table RIGHT BEHIND MINE. By the time I realized where she was, her table was full and I was SOL. We got a brief second to chat, but I didn’t really get to spend any time with her and I was super bummed out. I also just left right after the banquet, which was mistake number two. I should’ve stayed behind and talked to her or something, but I was in a bad mood and just wanted to get out of there. She texted me afterwards saying she felt bad that we didn’t get to sit next to each other, which made me feel even worse for leaving immediately after. I on the plus side, I got to say how nice she looked in her dress, which was a plus I guess. Overall, that night kinda sucked but it could’ve been much worse. Anyway, that’s really the big stuff that’s happened in the last sixth months or so. Maybe I’ll post in the next six months? Idk anymore. It’s ya boi, AW, signing off.

[going-through-some-stuff]

Entry Twelve - Friday, April 26 2019 (part 1/2)

Well shit. It’s been almost 8 fucking months since I posted last, not that there’s anybody that follows this account to notice, but that’s whatever. I made this for me. Anyway, there’s been a hell of a lot that’s happened in the last 8 months. Where to even start... I guess from where I left off. What the fuck was I even doing in October of last year. Probably working and doing class stuff. I guess I’ll just list off things that happened in no particular order. I think one of the biggest things that happened is that I started going to trivia night at our local Applebee’s. I know it sounds dumb or whatever, but it’s a lot of fun. I started going because one of my friends, Adam, invited myself and Jeremy to go with him because we were hanging out before and he said we could come if we wanted because James was going to be there, along with a few other people I hadn’t met that we’ll call Elsie, Elyse, Ellie, and Wes. Jeremy and I had nothing else to do, so we decided to go, and we had a great time. We’ve been going ever since, and I’ve only missed weeks because I’ve had work. I really like all of the people that are part of the group, for the most part. Wes can be a little annoying sometimes, but he’s a good guy. At first Jeremy and I went because we had nothing better to do and because we knew Adam and James were going to be there, but what really kept us around was the new people that we met. Elyse was one of the primary reason we both kept going back because she appreciated our crude humor (mostly jokes that Jeremy and I made about our parents being shitty, stuff like that), but Ellie and Elsie are also super nice to us and a big reason we keep going back. Jeremy already kind of knew the three E’s because they’re all RA’s or RCA’s in the dorms on campus, but he didn’t know them very well. I had no clue who these people were until I met them, but it’s been a ton of fun going to this and had been a decent supply of dopamine for my fucked up brain. Another big thing is that I think there’s finally a girl that I’m into that’s not in a relationship and is actually possibly maybe also into me, which is wild and totally new territory for me. Her name is Fiona and she’s great. We’ve known each other since I got to college, but we were more acquaintances than anything until this semester. When I first got here, she met and befriended my first roommate Greg, which is how we first met. We were friendly acquaintances who had bio lecture together second semester freshman year, accounting 1 first semester sophomore year, and accounting 2 this semester. We didn’t really start talking until this semester, when we would go to each other for help on homework. Usually she would ask me for help, and I had always just assumed we would be friends and I was ok with that (I hadn’t even really thought about her as ever being more than my friend, which is why the next part was surprising to me). But then, one day, there was a question I had to do a lot of explaining for and after we finished, she said I was going to have to let her do something for me to thank me for “putting up with her all sensester.” Didn’t even question it at first and I told her it wasn’t a big deal and I don’t mind helping her, etc. But after that she replied with “Hmm. I get that. We’ll see what happens :)” I. Was. Shook. The only other time I’ve had a girl be into me, at least that I’m aware, it was one of my best friend’s exes so it was easy because I just told her no. As soon as I got these messages, I sent them to Jeremy to confirm that what was happening was what I thought was happening, and he was like 100% sure that she was flirting with me. So now I’m in totally uncharted territory, having a beautiful girl be into me and not knowing what the fuck to do. Still don’t know what to do tbh. Those first texts were on April 1st and it’s April 26th now and I still haven’t asked her out. She’s going to be here over the summer (I think) and hopefully we’ll get to spend time together then.

[going-through-some-stuff]

Entry Eleven - Tuesday, October 2 2018

It has been a hot minute since I last made a post. Two months is a long god damn time. And a lot has happened in said time. Classes started. My dad got married. My sister got accepted into early admissions for medical school. I don’t really know where to start so I’ll go back to the earliest thing that happened: my dad getting married. He got married on August 17, 2018, the weekend before classes started. It was a good time. It was a catholic wedding that only lasted 30 minutes, which is about half the normal time of a catholic wedding. The reception was a lot of fun. Did some dancing, ate some pizza, the usual stuff. Overall a good time. Nothing chaotic happened, we just had fun. Then we got to start classes again. I initially didn’t want to go back to class because duh, but it’s actually been pretty nice having some routine in my schedule and not just spending all my time in bed or at work. It also means that all of my friends are back in town, specifically Jeremy. I had gotten to hang out with him a little bit because he came to emporia for a summer choir thing at the college and he also played trumpet at my dads wedding, but now he’s fully back in emporia and it’s been awesome. Classes starting again had also meant that I get to play the card games Magic: The Gathering (aka the greatest card game of all time) again on the regular. Jeremy and I, along with the other magic playing people we know, have played at least once a week since school started. The others have met a few times without me because I have a job that requires me to work more than theirs does, at least for now. My hours have been around 25-35 a week since school started and seem to be dipping back down the around the 25 mark instead of the 35 mark, which is A+. I’ve also made a few new friends from magic, and I’ll call them Lawrence and Bruce. Those two are some funny motherfuckers. They both get internet jokes to the same degree that I do and it’s been awesome having some people that understand the same internet jokes that I do. It’s also been really cool seeing some of the returning faces, like Adam and James. Those two are actually the two guys that started the magic play group. Also there’s some backstory that needs to be explained here. Myself, Jeremy, and my first roommate Greg are what we call the “towers boys” because we lived in the towers complex at ESU. Now that you know that, I’ll explain something that was brought up by James. He said that him and Jeremy are a lot alike, they’re both in magic for the fun, like to just hang out with their friends, but still take the game somewhat seriously. Then there’s me and Adam, who are in it for the same reasons as Jeremy and James, but we take the game much more seriously, as in we invest more money into it and know more about the rules. Then there’s Greg and our other friend Nick, who also enjoy the social aspect, but don’t invest much money into the game but still take it seriously, so they get upset when they’re decks don’t do what they’re supposed to do. Lawrence is a total fucking wildcard and does the most random shit, and Bruce is still new so doesn’t necessarily have a set play style as it where. There’s a few others that I play with, but I haven’t gotten to play with them as much. All of them are fun to play with and it’s been great seeing them again, at least when work allows. As stressful as the last month and a half has been, with work and classes, they’ve really kept me grounded. I’m super grateful to have them in my life and look forward to the rest of this semester and year. That’s really it for this post. I’m going to try and post more often again, hopefully daily but at least three times a week. Anyway, it’s ya boi, AW, signing off.

[going-through-some-stuff]

Entry Ten - Thursday, August 2 2018 (pt. 3/3)

My point is that they are constantly trying to control this stuff even though I’m my own person and want to live my own life. Another point to this story is that my dad is also making me get my hair cut for the wedding. When I first asked how long he wanted it, he said, “short enough we can comb it, put some product in it, and make it look nice.” Whatever that’s supposed to mean. Eventually we decided that one and a half inches was good enough, which is over half my hair because it’s about three and a half to four inches right now. Anyway, there’s some insight into my dad and what living with him has been like. Seeing as this is my longest post yet and it’s been all about trashing my dad, I should clarify something. I don’t hate my dad. At least not all the time. He’s frustrating and tries to tries to force us having similarities, but I know he means well. He’s trying his best to be an involved dad, and sometimes he just doesn’t do a great job. If my dad ever reads this (let’s hope to whatever deity you worship he doesn’t), but if he does: I love you. I know you’re trying, and I can’t fault you for that. Anyway, longest post yet needs to end because it’s been about 45 minutes of writing this, it’s 2:40 AM, and I have to be up at 7 so gn. And this has been my first three-part post. Holy shit. But anyway, it’s ya boi, AW, signing off.

[going-through-some-stuff]

Entry Ten - Thursday, August 2 2018 (pt. 2/3)

Not necessarily trying to force me to drink it, but very much implying they wanted me to have some. But enough of that. I got to bring a friend with me, Gus, who is a year older than me. He was fine with drinking, and I was fine him doing it. Most of the restaurants we had gone to we got orange Fanta because it’s delicious and we like it more than Coke or Diet Coke. We had also been joking about “dirty” Fanta (like dirty martinis) because we didn’t know it meant extra olive juice. We thought it meant extra alcohol or something like that. But the night before the wedding, there was a party of sorts for everyone that got invited to the wedding. We found out earlier that day what “dirty” actually meant, so we thought it would be funny if we got “dirty Fanta” shots. My dad went and got them for us, and we did them. I thought it tasted really bad, but I figured it was the olive juice because it didn’t burn or anything like that. Flash forward to like six months later, and I find out he put tequila in the shots, which really pissed me off. Like who the fuck puts alcohol in their son’s drink after him spending almost a week of telling him he didn’t want any alcohol. He laughed it off as a joke, but I was actually mad. I tried to tell him that he did a shitty thing, but he just played it off like no big deal. He also constantly offers me alcohol, which is fine, but I always turn them down because I’m not interested. Eventually, he just asked me why I keep saying no, and why I hated alcohol so much, and he said it with a snarky attitude. I explained to him that I don’t hate alcohol, I’m just not interested in drinking any. That was the end of that and he doesn’t offer me alcohol as much anymore. He also just assumes we like the same things. As I mentioned earlier, he’s getting married soon, and I’m one of his groomsmen. As is tradition apparently, he’s getting all of his groomsmen gifts. He asked me if I liked smart watches, and I explained to him not really because I wouldn’t use any of the extra features. I use a watch for telling the time and the date, and that’s pretty much it. I just use my phone for the rest. He also mentioned a wallet that can be tracked in case it ever gets stolen and even has a camera that can take a picture of anybody that takes it and opens it. To me, that’s super extra and I really don’t need it. And now he’s mad at me for not wanting these things and keeps trying to convince me why I would use them by telling me all of the things I can do with them, and I keep telling him I wouldn’t use those extra features, but he just can’t comprehend that somebody wouldn’t like those features. He, along with most of my family for that matter, also try to control how I look. Mainly, how long my hair is. I have very curly hair, like halfway between straight and an afro kind of curly. So my hair doesn’t really grow down, it grows out. Think Finn wolfhard (mike from stranger things) but not quite as long or thick. I like my hair long because it fits the form of my face better and I just think it looks better. My dad, on he other hand, keeps his hair very short. Like half an inch in the top of his head and buzzed on the sides short. I think that looks awful mom me because of my head shape, but he tries to get me to keep my hair that short. As does the rest of my family, namely my mom and her parents. If my hair gets more than an inch and a half to two inches long, they make a point of bringing it up every time they see me. I can tell they’re kind of just giving me a hard time, because my family is know for jokingly shit-talking each other. Like when my friend Jeremy met my mom and her parents for the first time, he said “my sisters and I joke around but y’all are savages to each other.” But on the other hand I can tell it actually bothers them. Especially my mom. I know this because she judges people for having tattoos, non-traditional hair colors (green, blue, pink, etc.), and other stuff too. But more on my mom in a different post.

[going-through-some-stuff]

Entry Ten - Thursday, August 2 2018 (pt. 1/3)

Because this blog has mainly been about my personal issues and the thoughts that go through my head, I haven’t really talked about some of the causes for said problems. One of the big ones is my father. Really both my parents, but if I go too deep with both I’ll need a bunch of posts, so just my dad for now. I want to start this off by saying that I know people out there have much worse fathers than I do so I’m not trying to say “my dad is the worst parent ever” or anything like that. I know he’s not. But he also isn’t the best. This post will be more of a rant than anything. He was relatively emotionally distant when my sister and I were growing up, which was mainly because his job required him to be out of state every other week. Then, in February of my freshman year, my parents got divorced. This sounds worse than I intend it to, but I had kind of seen it coming for awhile. My parents just aren’t compatible in the way a married couple should be. The have a lot of small disagreements and a significant amount of big ones. They don’t hate each other by any means, they just aren’t compatible. This divorce, however, did mean my dad needed to get a job change because being gone every other week was not something he wanted to do now that him and my mom weren’t together. Nothing big, he just found a different position in the same company. I knew he meant well, but he tried to make up for the being gone every week and it was, to say the least, weird. He’s not great at showing emotion, and when he does it comes out weird. He just doesn’t know how to read the room very well. For example, I typically don’t talk about my problems to others such as to not be a burden, and I guess also not to show others that side of me in general, as I talked about in entry six. But I digress. Sometime I just had shitty days. I’d be tired, annoyed, whatever, just like everyone gets. But he would be unrelenting about trying to get me to talk about what was wrong. Again, I knew he meant well, but it was irritating. I just wanted to be alone. He also thinks that everyone should like what he likes. For example, my dad is, if you ask him, a beer connoisseur. He enjoys beer and the restaurant/bar he would go to was just a place of constant after the divorce. He’s not an alcoholic in the sense that he gets drunk all the time or anything like that. He drinks responsibly, always eats food and drinks a lot of water when he drinks, and usually just drinks beers and nothing hard like whiskey or bourbon. My mom also likes light beers, i.e. bud light, and wines. She doesn’t drink as much as my dad does, but still drinks. Not to the point of drunk, more like a glass of wine or a bud light with dinner. She drinks plenty of water also, much more than she does alcohol. My point is that she enjoys drinking but not excessively. The point of this has been that my parents are pretty chill around alcohol. Like growing up we had alcohol around us all the time and were taught that it can be good, but when you’re old enough and in moderation. They were cool with us drinking when we were 17 or 18 as long as we weren’t idiots about it. My sister would have people over for small gatherings and they would drink and stuff, just because that was something her friends enjoyed. Which is totally cool, I’m not judging her. Like she got a 516 on her MCAT, which is in 94th percentile. My friends however, never really were super into that stuff, mainly because their parents didn’t let them, but they also had no interest in the stuff, so I never got into it either. This is where we come full circle on the “my dad wants others (mainly me) to like what he likes.” We were in Mexico for my cousin’s wedding. I turned 18 while we were there, which is the legal drinking age in Mexico. Even though it was legal, I didn’t want any alcohol because I wasn’t interested. I mentioned this what seemed like a million times a day because my dad and his now fiancée would offer me some.

[going-through-some-stuff]

Entry Nine - Wednesday, August 1 2018

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve posted, which I guess is a good thing because Its been a pretty good week or so. I haven’t been working as much, which has given me more time to do what I want to do. Plus, my sisters boyfriend, Jack has been in town the last two weekends, and hanging out with him is fun because he’s a great and funny dude. I’ve also been working more with the coworkers I enjoy working with recently, such as Mariel, Andy, Mica, and the most recent hire Mia. Mia fits into our store quite well and is willing to work hard and learn how to do her job, which is nice. But overall, not having most of my time consumed by work is awesome. It lets me do the stuff I want to do, like play video games, watch YouTube, etc., which also means I’ve been sleeping better because I don’t feel like I need to maximize the time spent doing stuff outside of work. Overall, been a pretty good week or so. Another positive post in the books, which feels good. It’s ya boi, AW, signing off.