to-do: title in Journal of life stuff

Ever feel the need to just write? Well, I don’t really have that so much as I have a combination of sickening boredom, lack of purpose, and free time.

I lost my job last week. Specifically, I was laid off. This is not a surprise to me. We got a new CTO and she struggles with ethics. She asked me to do things akin to misrepresenting the company so that it could be sold for a much higher price than it should be. When I refused, my name got added to a list of people who she didn’t like and we were all laid off together.

I’m 95% ok with losing my job. The 5% not ok is the part of me that acknowledges how utter bullshit it is that we have gormless pieces of shit like this woman managing companies. You do not hire and fire based on personal preference, you hire and fire based on competence! And that 5% of me is so angry that if I gave it even a second of exposure outside of its cage, it would punch and tear through the material world around me until its fury was spent. So, it remains safely locked up in the cage I built for it before I was age 12, a cage which has never broken. A cage whose limits I do not test.

That cage is the reason I’ve never tried alcohol. I know that cage is there, and I know the kind of rage that cage holds back. Losing my inhibitions is about the worst possible thing I could ever do. Those inhibitions keep that rage from coming out. Am I saying I’d get buzzed and go psycho? Hah, no. If it was that bad I’d seek therapy and other treatments because that’s an unhealthy way to live. Rather, if my inhibitions were removed and someone said the wrong thing, annoyed me, etc. Then there would be nothing to prevent that rage from showing them just how much I disapproved. And without the inhibitions, there would be no limit or metering of the outflow of rage onto that person. It would be…gruesome.

The 95% of me that is ok with being laid off though, the first few days were great. When people ask me what I do I tell them I’m retired. I’m under 35. I get a lot of strange looks and “how?!”. It feels nice. :) In truth, I’m not financially stable enough to truly be retired just yet. I will be in another year or two, when some investments finish maturing. But in between then and now, I could easily live on the money I have saved up and not need to work again. And not working again is something I’m very tempted to do because I have worked for assholes like this CTO who laid me off at every single job I’ve ever had.

Before anyone buts out some “if it’s everywhere then you’re the problem…” bullshit, I want you to know that I have enough facts to disprove that with empirical, statistical, and objective data that I will fucking bury your ignorant ass beneath the Everest of your own ineptitude. So just don’t even try it. A lack of luck and good fortune is a defining trait of my life.

The one criticism you could level against my is that my attitude sucks. That is valid. I say I lack luck, when a more positive person would simply say that they persevered in the face of continued adversity, or some other happy-sounding phrase like that. But I’m not that positive person. I’m a frustrated person. I will change when my fortune changes.

I was totally happy about being retired/laid off until Tuesday of this week. So what happened Tuesday? Three things:

1. I didn’t hear back from a job I had a phone interview for that would have been great. (Dogs at work?! A group of co-workers who eat / socalize together? / getting out of New England?! Yay!)

2. I bought cookies and frosting.

3. Due to #2, I gained 3 lbs the following day.

The cookies and frosting were, in total, 4000 calories. I ate them over 2 days and also walked 12 miles. So, in total, I had 2800 calories over 2 days. But I gained 3 lbs. How? Water. Of course. The human body isn’t meant to take in that much sugar and the chemical processes needed to process that much glucose require a tremendous amount of water. So, I just need to wait a few more days and I will be back down to the weight I should be, but I get a lot of my motivation to NOT eat to make myself happy from the fact that the scale trends downward, so when it jumps up 3 lbs in a 24 hour period and stays there for 2-3 days, it’s …difficult to deal with, even if you 100% understand why.

“use determination, motivation is fleeting.” Thank you Captain Obvious. You aren’t talking to a defeatist who doesn’t know what he’s doing. You’re talking to an expert who has fought this battle a thousand times. I’m just fucking sick of fighting. I want a vacation from fighting. I want to feel happy.

And #1 is the real reason I want to say and believe I’m retired. Because I can’t handle rejection anymore. Well, I can handle it, but I’m sick of handling it, and if the choice to not be rejected anymore exists, I am very tempted to take it. One of the best things I have done for the past year is get off all dating sites and platforms. No more low-level feeling of being rejected day-after-day when nobody matches with me. And the job hunt is the same sort of thing. I know I’m a great employee who has made my employers FAR more money than they’ve spent on me. But getting an employer to say yes and hire me is always a super frustrating process.
And I think about whether or not to apply for unemployment because one of the requirements is that you must continue to look for work. Will I really be happy hearing no again and again? Will I be happy going to interview after interview where I can tell how toxic the work environment is? To be clear, no, not everywhere is toxic. Far from it. But if you have 100 interviews, where I live, 85 of them will have open cube formats, which I cannot work in. I can’t handle the visual distraction. Of the 15 that are left, 12 will be toxic. The remaining 3 will be good, but also universally say no to hiring me for their own reasons.

My hatred of job hunting is second only to my hatred of moving.

Ok, enough bitching. What is going right in my life? WoW Classic launches next week. I still haven’t decided if I will play it. I mean, I will play it eventually, but at launch, on launch day, etc. I have a lot of good memories from Vanilla WoW, but I don’t think it will hold my interest long term. That said, I don’t have any reason to feel bad about playing and quitting because I never once asked blizzard to bring WoW Classic back. So I am not to blame for doing exactly what they are worried about happening.

In overwatch I bought a second account. In practical terms, I have played enough hours on my main account that it’s fair to give them a bit more money at this point, and from a practial standpoint, I’m sick of being stuck with game after game where the enemy team is either a joke or way better than me. The number of close games I get is far too small.

So, instead, I have a second account where I can play Widow and not care if I drop all the way to low gold/silver. Or I can play Genji and not care. I can learn Wrecking Ball or whatever other character is the current meta. And I can do it without caring about my SR or being banned, or being hated on, etc. I can just fucking play, no pressure. And, if the day comes that I get super pissed off, I will be in gold and I can steamroll my way up to diamond in a fit of frustration. :p

I unlocked all / almost all of the Engineers in Elite: Dangerous. So, once I farm a few more materials for engineering, I can finally make myself a pimped out combat/exploration ship that is perfect. I also found some workarounds to let me play while walking. They aren’t perfect, but they are better than nothing, and good enough for everything except mining/combat. Eh, they may be good enough for mining too, but it’s dangerous because if my throttle ends up jamming I will fly into the asteroid and maybe explode. Sad day!

I stuck to my diet. I bought cookies and frosting for a snack/cheat day/happy day and I didn’t overeat. I stayed below 2000 calories. My weight still fucked off, but my CICO game is still strong. I went to bed last night instead of eating more food.

That not wanting to go to sleep is becoming a thing. I find that it gets later and later at night and I just don’t want to go to bed. I’m tired, but I want to eat again, and stay up, and chase…I don’t even know what I’m chasing. I think what I am trying to hide from is the feeling that day after day is ticking away and my progress towards my goals (being back at a healthy weight) is going so damn slowly that I struggle to see the progress.

My parents are coming up next weekend. It will be the first time I’ve seen them in 3 years IIRC. It will be the last time I ever see them. Why? Because when I move out of New England, I will not tell them where I am moving. I will change my phone number and vanish. Of course they could hire a private investigator or pull some questionably legal activities and find me because I won’t be hiding from the government, just them. But I will go no contact. Why?

Because I won’t take care of them when they are old. I’m 31, walking on a treadmill to burn off calories from tea, so that I stay at a calorie rate where I lose weight, in an apartment that has only ever had two guests in 7 years. I’ve only ever dated one girl. I’m not married. I have no friends I hang out with. No real social connections. And why? Because of how I was raised. And because I never learned how to adapt. Me staying broken, that’s my fault. Me being broken, that’s theirs. And let’s not forget the 13 years I spent wanting to kill myself, and their complete refusal to accept any responsibility for their role in all that – going so far as to attempt gaslighting me into thinking it never happened / I remembered the facts wrong.

No. I won’t care for these monsters. They talk a lot about moving near me so that I can take care of them. I know of no better way to make it clear to them that outcome is unwanted than to make that outcome impossible. It will be the first time my father really lost something he cared about since 1993. It will not be the thing that makes him change who he is. He won’t ever change.

I want to be truly retired, with my matured investments, so that I can get a dog and fill in the social hole in my life. I know a dog isn’t a person. But a dog is more than I have now. It’s a safe starting place. In theory. We have to start somewhere. I hate to remove hate to make progress on love.