A glimmering of thought

While my housing situation is now fine, my work and romantic life have gone to hell. I'm rather regretting giving even two weeks, honestly. Not that I'm being treated poorly or anything, but it just seems to be dragging now, and that's to say nothing of the INCREDIBLY awkwardness that has suddenly arisen. Cliff notes version, one of my coworkers (not a superior or anything like that) and I have been texting back and forth for several months now. I've made my interest in her obvious, and while I was flirty, I don't think I ever fell into anything inappropriate. Heck, I tended to tell my mom later on each time I got the chance, to run things past her. Girl has had a lot of hurt in her life and while shy seemed to respond to my various communications. I'd send her funny videos, or say uplifting things randomly. I even gave her numerous, easy outs, letting her know that if ever I got over-effusive or ever stepped over any line for her, she was to just tell me. Once I basically told her to tell me to shut up if she needed to and I would take no offense. Not once did she take the out, and several times let me know that I hadn't stepped on any toes or anything.

Then I had to go and tell her that I really liked her. She knew, of course, but while she didn't think she and I were on the same path, as she put it, she assured me that I was okay. I informed her very clearly that while I still thought she might be the one for me, I would not in any way attempt to force anything, basically leaving anything in the future up to her. I told her I would still try to encourage her, as she is often down and sad and seemed to appreciate words of encouragement. So imagine my surprise when, yesterday morning, seeing as how we were busy, I sent a text telling her to hang in there, only to have my boss stop by a little while later to tell me that me texting her at work was incredibly inappropriate and that I had made her feel awkward. I didn't bring up that people at work often message each other, boss included, nor the fact that the she and I had been in conversation for months. More than anything, I was a massive mixture of shame, awkwardness, and feeling betrayed. My boss said that had I not just put in my two weeks, I would have been let go right there. I understand how charged workplace harassment stuff is, but considering how chaste our conversations have been, with nary as much as an innuendo involved, I feel it unnecessarily harsh. I followed up with my boss later, saying how terrible I felt about it and that if she needed me to go, I could skip the two weeks, but she said she had talked to the woman and she was fine with me sticking around, so I think my boss realized it wasn't as crazy as all that.

Still, it felt like such a punch in the gut. I've been seriously interested in this woman since I met her, and have done my best to give her space and not come on too strong or try to force anything. She clearly responded to some degree and never took any of the easy outs that I offered her, only to suddenly feel the need to get an intermediary involved (potentially getting me fired, no less) rocked me. She and I have studiously avoided each other since. She avoids my gaze, as I do hers, and she sometimes has a look on her face either of guilt, or like she expects me to scold her. Maybe both, I dunno. It just hurts to have it done to me in such an indirectly direct fashion. All she had to say was no, or I feel uncomfortable, and she knew that. I'm still not sure whether I'm more angry at her for not even telling me, just getting me straight up in trouble, or that somehow I made her feel like she had to do it that way. Truth is, I have no way of knowing her reasoning, and I certainly cannot ask her now. I dare not give even a whiff of impropriety. I find it so odd that the last two texts I sent her were so incongruous with the response. The first was simply mentioning that our schedule that day was packed and, a little later, for her to hang in there. Sappy poetry, love songs, comparing her to something or other, or insisting on anything really, those I could understand.

I tend to be incredibly introspective at times, and nothing makes it worse than uncertainty. I don't think I was overbearing or creepy or anything, especially since she continued to text with me for hours after telling her how I felt. I don't think I did, but the sudden severe response makes me question everything. So I am just filled with a mélange of emotions: anger, guilt, sadness, awkwardness, fear/dread, heartbreak...

Been a hell of a couple weeks. Two months back, my landlord informed us that he and his wife were moving into the house in which my roommates and I resided. I am thankful he gave us 60 days, as the law only required 30, but he's ever been an awesome man. I do, of course, hate moving with a fiery passion and would very much have liked not to, but I certainly appreciate the four years I spent there. Within the first week of looking, I found a potential new home, but right before agreeing to the lease I felt it was not the right fit and declined. It was the correct choice, I think, but turned out to be the only option I could find for the next month and a half. Housing was already becoming more scarce last year due to some major fires in the area and covid massively exacerbated the problem. A house for rent could go up and be gone in a matter of days.

I found myself intermittently feeling like God had it taken care of, and mindless panic. Last week in particular was exceedingly rough for me. I had to twice call off work; I was so stressed that I could not sleep at all and felt constantly like throwing up. I found myself doing frequent deep breaths to keep from weeping or maybe vomiting. It sucked. A lot. In one last, desperate plea for help, I wrote a, well, desperate plea on the facebook housing page that most christians in the area use, and received an answer. I signed the lease Thursday and moved Friday, the absolute last day on my previous lease...

I am eternally grateful to my friend who has a truck and helped me move despite having worked a full day as mechanic before doing so. A pity that none of our other friends were willing. I don't have a lot, but numerous heavy boxes, and it took us three trips and many hours, leaving us both utterly exhausted. You know the feeling of growing pains you had as a kid, where the length of your legs just ached and ached? That's how my arms felt for several days after. The last trip honestly could have been just me loading up my car with numerous bags of various clothes and things, save for one problem: my car broke down that morning on my way to work. I wasn't looking forward to having a full day of work before moving, so that, at least, was a blessing, but having your car die in the street, calling a tow, and then having to foot the bill whenever it happens to get fixed (likely tomorrow, but I'm not certain) is less so. Still, it happened only blocks from my home, so after the tow truck whisked away my car, I simply walked back and didn't have to figure out how to get a ride across town. So I was able to get moved, and quite like my new place, but have been without transportation over the weekend.

It's amazing how much less free and capable one feels without a vehicle at hand in areas such as this, with poor public transit and long distances. I know, I know, Uber is a thing, but I have never set up an account and don't want to jump through a ton of hoops or anything. Silly of me perhaps, but we all have our lines.

In addition to the increasingly panic-inducing issues I've been having with housing concerns, I have also been stressing over my current job, and a prospective lady. In short, every major issue most folks worry about individually I have had on my mind simultaneously. There is certainly more on those two subjects, but not right now.

It's funny how, sometimes, our in our efforts to avoid being a bother or burden to others, we can not only burden them more than had we just gone to them with our issue, but can also potentially deprive them of the chance to bless us. It's a similar situation when a person has a difficulty accepting gifts; said person is essentially disdaining your efforts and sacrifice. We all do it to some extent. Someone offers something, and we're like, I couldn't possibly, I'd feel bad, but we're saying that it's a waste. Exceptions aside (as there are almost always exceptions to a given rule), I think it can be a bit selfish of us to reject a gift offered in good faith. I get that we often think we're not worth it, that the waste is on us, but it's really a bit of pride, if you think on it. We're saying, I know better than you what is worth your time/energy/etc. and I'm too lowly to accept. False humility is considering ourselves of no worth, as bad as considering ourselves too highly. Regardless, it's not even about what we think, or even know (which is really not possible), what we're worth; it is about what another is willing to give. To decline a gift (again, when done in good faith) is to disdain the giver, to reject their good will and kindness.

I was finally, after many months, able to procure a job last month, and at a medical clinic. I basically answer the overwhelmed phone lines and answer a lot of covid questions. I also call people with covid results and such. I won't give any specifics because that would just be foolish (and likely illegal), but there are a few general things I can say. First off, I can say with broad certainty that most people in the medical community are really not worried about this thing. Other than gumming up our phone lines and wasting a lot of our staff's time over mostly little things, covid has not been particularly bad. I've called well over 100 people a day at times to give people their test results, and the general feedback from nearly everyone who have had it land somewhere between a very mild cold and a very unpleasant flu. There have a handful that had no symptoms at all, but the majority of people are either surprised that what they had was covid, or were pretty sure due to being rather sick. Also, losing your smell and taste is a fairly common event. Though I have a limited sample overall, from the dozens of people who've had it, I've only had a single person have to get hospitalized for it.

As I, and pretty much every doctor and nurse I've spoken to, have noted, it seems like much of the world, or at least our chunk of it, are making rules based off the rare occurrences of the really bad cases rather than the average. Just like we shouldn't be making policies based off those rare edge cases of people who had no symptoms at all, we really shouldn't be closing everything based off the edge cases of bad reactions. I can't tell you how many people are terrified and don't know how to handle a virus that behaves more or less like most every other virus we've experienced in our lives. People will find out they or a loved one has it, and freak out wondering what they're supposed to do. A lot of them are already on the tail end of it too, with maybe a few more days of quarantine. It's weird having to tell grown-ass adults that, just like every flu or cold you've had in the past (and this from the CDC's guidelines backing it up), once your fever breaks (for at least a day) and you start to get better, you ARE better. The fever breaking typically means your immune system finally has a handle on it and, as long as your symptoms are generally improving, you're not contagious anymore. It's that simple.

Honestly, I feel like if everyone had been told this was just a particularly nasty strain of flu and not to worry about it, this past year would have been barely a blip on the radar. We should probably do the mask thing in general when we start feeling ill, like a number of asian countries have done for many years now, but forcing everyone to wear them all the time is a bit much.

If you think about it, one of the biggest travesties committed by technology has been to take away our boredom. True, we still get bored, but it gave us quick and easy access to a million little trivialities to engage us, even if slightly. This, I realized, is bad, because extended periods of boredom have always been the times when people are most thoughtful and creative. Being bored with no phone or internet forces you to be imaginative and actually do something productive-ish. Think of those times when the power has gone out for a while, or your phone has died of something other than needing a recharge. Don't you accomplish things? Don't you get around to some of those things you've been meaning to do forever but haven't found the time for?

I'm old enough to have grown up without smart phones and limited internet. Even video games can get boring if you play the same handful too much. To be sure, I did have a tv in my room, often on as background noise and distraction, but there were many times when there was nothing worth watching. I think of some of my brightest and most creative moments, and some of the best came from sitting and thinking with no distractions. I once figured out a math concept regarding square numbers while sitting on the toilet and looking at the arrangement of tiles. Considering that very idea wasn't introduced until my third year of college in my linear algebra class, I'd say I did well, but I likely would never have realized any of it had I had a phone to constantly be the source of my focus. Newton figured out calculus and basic physics during his year off from college working on the family farm. Einstein did much of his thinking while working as a patent clerk, something I imagine to not have involved too much work or mental effort.

It's not that we can't cut out the distractions, but we rarely do, as everything is so readily available, easy to use, and we don't want to be bored. I wonder if we don't need to start setting up periods of time where we aren't allowed any tech or reading material, in order to force ourselves to use our minds.

It's been an interesting few weeks for me. Two new roommates have moved in, and both have improved the house. Both are great for chatting with, so that's a plus. On the other hand, I still haven't found a job. I've got an agency on it for me, but the few possibilities have all gone nowhere. I had an interview Monday, and it went quite well, thankfully, and I'm waiting for a second call by the end of week. As I'm already late on rent (thankfully my landlord is super-awesome and understanding), I'd really like to have an income here soon. My grandma, out of the blue, called last month and said that until I get my first paycheck, she'll be sending me a few hundred dollars every month, for which I am most thankful to her and God. Still not enough for all my needs, but definitely better than nothing.

I'm a lot less stressed and anxious than previous times when I've had no money or job, so that's a plus, but there's definitely still a bit in there.

Do you ever think about what it would be like to time travel? I do. Specifically, I sometimes sit and ponder what it would be like to find oneself in the far past, without knowing the language. I find myself attempting to figure out how I would explain new ideas without a common language. It's as much an exercise in learning a new tongue without any help as anything. What's remarkable is how much you can actually express purely through hand motions and facial expressions. I found myself in the shower this morning thinking of how to simply convey the idea of things smaller than the eye can see, such as germs, atoms, etc. Sound waves would be simpler to convey, as they work much the way that waves in water do, so you could visibly tie sounds from your mouth to ripples in the water. I think for showing the idea of atoms and such, you would have to keep breaking things into smaller and smaller pieces, showing a progression beyond the point of visibility. Not exactly a difficult idea, though, as the idea of atoms were first written of by an ancient greek thinker, and by various thinkers since.

Unlike what people want to think, we "modern" people aren't more intelligent than people were thousands of years ago. If anything, we take less time to think about things. We simply have more access to knowledge. Even then, the vast majority of people today have as little understanding of the workings of electronics as your average farmer did six thousand years ago. I have a CS degree, and I don't even understand half of it. It's pretty cool to figure out simple ways of expressing concepts without the use of common speech.

I have fallen down the hole that is Babymetal this evening, and I have no regrets. Sometimes you just need some good kawaii metal. Good metal in general, really, though I'm not much a fan of screamo, or the more un-ironically dark metal. I end up listening to a lot of metal covers of Disney songs...

Officially my last day of work today. I should not have let them talk me into even this one extra day after my two weeks, but it's done now. They didn't mean to, but they saddled me with two of the most heinous jobs I've had in a good long while. 'Twas the perfect exclamation point on the reasons for me wanting to leave. I'm mentally, even physically, exhausted after just the past two days. I'll celebrate tomorrow, perhaps. Blarg.

California's Governor has deigned to release a list of activities we are "allowed" to do without suffering penalties. So kind of him. Also, this is weird-ass list.

— Athletics
— Badminton (singles)
— Throwing a baseball or softball
— BMX biking
— Canoeing (singles)
— Crabbing
— Cycling
— Exploring rock pools
— Gardening (not in groups)
— Golf (singles, walking – no cart)
— Hiking (on trails and paths allowing distancing)
— Horseback riding (singles)
— Jogging and running
— Kite boarding and kitesurfing
— Meditation
— Outdoor photography
— Picnics (with your stay-home household members only)
— Quad Biking
— Rock Climbing
— Roller Skating and Roller Blading
— Rowing (singles)
— Scootering (not in groups)
— Skateboarding (not in groups)
— Soft martial arts – Tai Chi, Chi Kung (not in groups)
— Table tennis (singles)
— Throw and catch an American mini football, Frisbee or Frisbee golf (not in groups)
— Trail running
— Trampolining
— Tree climbing
— Volleyball (singles)
— Walk the dog
— Wash the car
— Watch the sunrise or sunset
— Yoga


How kind of him to ALLOW us to walk our dog or garden on our own property (as long as it's by ourselves). Whatever basic human rights will we be allowed to act on in the future? Sky's the limit!