Rambling in Journal of life stuff

Today on reddit I learned about a guy who developed “Mr. Spock” in his mind to help him look at his own life from abstract and logical point of view. He used it as a tool to get over being too hard on himself. There is some merit to the idea.

But mostly, I need to write. Today was frustrating. Though, in fairness, saying ‘today’ is a misnomer because my ‘today’ started yesterday at 9am. I’ve been awake (mostly) since. Why? Well, I had an interview. It went great, the director isn’t a dick, but is a man who likes to have power over others. The CEO is a scumbag though. He makes business decisions based on his own kickbacks and doesn’t pass that along to his employees. Additionally, he makes all of the healthcare options in his company cost the same to the employees, so an HMO, PPO, and HDHP/HSA plan all cost within $20 of each other. He claims that is for ‘fairness’ to the out of state employees who can’t get the HMO. I say socialism has murdered more people than religion ever did.

But that’s not what got me angry. What got me angry was having both the HR guy, and later the recruiting company, outright berate me to give them a number I would deem acceptable in an offer. The HR guy was genuinely sad when he admitted they used to not hire anyone without knowing their former salary. But then tried to say they would always pay within band if you were too far below. I can promise you, if you do that, you have no need to know the former salary. The HR guy is either lazy, or incompetent. He can’t, or won’t, value you as an employee and they don’t know what your worth is.

I have, in my career, only ever had one job that paid me fairly, and one job that was mostly fair. In the 10 years I have spent working, I’ve only been fairly-ish paid for 2 of them. The rest of that time the minimum I was underpaid was $20,000 a year. Often much more than that. It…really made me angry. And I have learned all the tricks scumbags use to keep wages low. It angers me. It especially angers me when the two guys I’d be working with are genuinely nice people and I would enjoy them as co-workers. But when management is scum…it’s like cancer. If the cancer is in the brain, the body isn’t long for this world. And that’s why a company with less than $100 mill in revenue per year has over 3000 physical servers. Oy vey.

I keep thinking about Traci. What are the real reasons she thought we were two different people, and was she right? I want to know those answers partly to improve myself, but mostly because I want to blame myself for everything that goes wrong in my life. That is simply not realistic. But I struggle to accept that I am not the point of failure for everything.

I’ve played over 3,000 games of Overwatch, most of them competitive. In all that time I’ve lost countless games where I was excellent. Just a few hours ago I lost a game where I was being told verbally and through chat that I was a terrible player, but I watched the reply and on top of having 4 golds, I also died the least, and had the highest KDR by extension. I would not have brought more value playing another tank, because the team wasn’t using the shield they already had, so a second one would not have done anything. They were also passive, and so they would not have worked with more aggro-oriented tanks. But if you argue with these people, they just double down that you’re wrong and they’re right. It’s exhausting, it’s why I never talk to them.

And it’s the same shit with employers. The headhunter agency for the job I interviewed at tried to tell me this place only hires “A” grade candidates. I had to hold back a laugh. This is a little po-dunk medium business that’s been around for 10 years and still hasn’t broken $100 mill a year in revenue. Do you really think they are hiring people who get offers from Google, Facebook, and Amazon? People pushing the bounds of quantum computing, and other fields? It’s a bad fucking joke. They hire, at best, B candidates, if they’re lucky. But mostly their people are Cs and Ds. Let me be clear, you can have a perfectly functional and profitable company with mostly C-employees. It works fine. C is just that, average. But if you can’t be honest with yourself, and with me, that your people are exactly average, then I have to wonder what else you can’t be realistic about.

The final nail in their coffin, unless I really get motivation to move forward, is that they checked my references without ever asking for them. On one hand, clearly I had good data because I was in the room with them. On the other hand, common protocol and courtesy is that you ask for permission to contact former employers and you honor the answer you get. It grates on me for all the times I was called creepy by people for doing the exact same thing, but then my employer does it and suddenly I’m supposed to be the weird one for thinking it’s not ok? It makes me want to scream.

It’s so many months until I can move out of this place. But I keep reminding myself that I am not losing money. Unemployment is enough that my bills are paid and I am not touching my savings. Bitcoin has gone down a bit, but it remains stable and there’s still signs that it isn’t dead. I am starting to think we might not see a Christmas bump this year, but that isn’t the worst thing ever. I’d love few things more than to see $100k/BTC by Dec 2020. I could retire. I could never have to worry about having a job again. That would be truly wonderful.

I got fudge after the interview yesterday. I had wanted to get chicken tenders, but there was nobody working the stall, and the tenders they had were burned. Bleh. Why would I pay a premium price for a low quality product? Nuts with that. So I got fudge instead. I mostly wolfed it down, which was a better indicator to me of just how stressed out I was than anything else. Food is my coping mechanism, I’ve said it many times.

And that’s why I keep thinking about Traci. Because when I had her to talk to and go on dates with, I didn’t just maintain my weight, I actually lost about 8 lbs in the month she and I had been chatting. A part of me says I should make another online dating profile, try to find another date, and have another try at all the outcomes. The rest of me says that I know I can’t handle the constant rejection and lack of interest, and I’m better off just waiting.

But I want to lose weight goddamnit, not maintain it. And when I get stressed out and eat I wipe out a week’s progress in a single day, or two days of eating. It’s aggrivating. I was 205 on Wednesday, but as of last night I was up to 208. Why? Mostly the sugar from the fudge. Calorie wise I didn’t eat over 2000 calories, so it has to be water uptake to deal with the high sugar levels. But it’s still heart breaking to keep seeing the same high numbers over and over. On one hand, I’ve maintained the same average weight (about 206) for over a month now, which means I have finally stopped the upward trend of 1lb per month gain. A part of me wants to call that a victory.

turns on Mr. Spock It is a victory. Objectively. No commander of any ship can ever win a battle with every ship ever made. A commander must fight a battle with the resources he or she has on hand at the time of the battle. You, captain, simply made the best of the battle with the resources you had. Fighting an enemy to a stalemate is preferable to losing in any war. More things stay alive to fight in the next battle. Similarly, you are right to question what changes could have been made to the tactics employed. It is always possible a better outcome was possible with the same resources. That said, it is of paramount importance that you not fall into the trap of wanting to undo the past. That is impossible. Instead, you must focus on applying any lessons learned to the future.

Why did I stay up for so long? A bunch of reasons. One, I wasn’t tired. Two, by the time I was tired, it was 3am or so, and I didn’t want to wake up at noon and have a totally wack sleep schedule. Three, my back hurts when I sleep, so if I stay up I can walk on my treadmill and burn away calories without feeling like I’m constantly running out of time to walk before the end of the day. Four, because normally when I started to feel sleepy was about an hour after I ate something. If I go to sleep then, I wake up in about 3 hours and I want to eat again because my brain/body says “we just woke up, time for breakfast!”. I simply don’t have enough mental resources to spend fighting off being hungry. That’s part of why I want to try and find a short term girlfriend. So that I have someone to keep my mind off food.

But I also feel like it’s cruel to meet someone when I know I’m moving out of the state at the end of April. It’s the same reason I feel like scum going to interviews. I’m going to take a salaried position and then leave in under a year, and that will be the third job where I have stayed less than a year. It looks bad, or so people say. Fuck what people say, people are morons. My overwatch games are proof enough of that. It’s just…so emotionally exhausting being the only voice telling me that I’m the sane one. I grow weary of it. I want someone to talk to. I want someone to listen to. I want someone to give me something to focus on besides my own problems and myself. I’d be totally happy to focus on their problems instead.

But that paragraph brings up a totally valid point I hadn’t considered before: Tracy and I only ever dated for about 1 month. I’m stuck here for another 6 months or so. It’s entirely possible for me to meet someone, go on a few dates, and poof, two months are gone. I just have to decide if…bah. It’s not a new thing, I have considered this before. The problem is on the back end. I tend to gain back all the weight when the emotional boost is gone because I’m so sad about losing it. I constantly have to choose whether to try and stick to keeping the surface of the lake calm, and making slow progress that way, or constantly creating storms and hoping that I can find a path through the winds and rain. History shows I need the calm stillness to make progress long term, whether that stillness is with someone or alone. I must have stability. And that’s why I don’t try dating. I’d rather actually be retired. I’d rather actually have my money. I don’t want to go on dates and talk about how I’m ‘going to win soon’, I want to have already won.

Of course, that will cause 99% of them to say some bullshit about how we aren’t compatible for a hundred different reasons when, in reality, it’s that their feminism won’t let them live with the fact that someone outdid them and they, by their own rules, would have to look to me as the leader/winner. Whether I ever acted that way or not is irrelevant. What I want/think/do doesn’t matter one iota to them, no, what matters I that I objectively pulled ahead, and that makes me evil to them, because their world view is fucked up.

And that’s why I keep going back to Traci. She wasn’t crazy. She had a good head, and a kind heart. She was so many things I wanted. I want to find someone like her, but who stays. I know they exist. I just have to find them. I just keep going back to this cycle of can I risk the mental resources to put up with constant rejection on top of everything else? I don’t think I can. But it’s like gambling. You only have to hit it big one time, and the incitement is the same. It only takes one bit of luck to win! Cmon try! Gambling has never been an addiction, or even interest, of mine. That’s why I’m able to sit here and think the paths through without needing to act on them. I’m very old. I’ve finally learned to think, then act.