I'm 20 years old now.
I figured a daylog was in order, considering I posted for the first time in months, and the last daylog I wrote was in June of last year. That needs to be fixed. I need to get back into the swing of E2.
So... what's up?
I looked back at that daylog and it turned out that I didn't accomplish much on that goal list. It's funny how a year or so will change your perspective on things. On the things that I did complete, I now can drive—though, in a family of four with only two cars to share, I get very little in the way of practice. I got two jobs, actually—I spend my time these days working night shifts at a Smart & Final, and take on gigs as an assistant to my father, who in addition to his primary career as a freelance graphic designer, also does drone videography and photography. It means I travel around a lot during summer. The winter months are quiet on this front, so I can focus on the job that actually pays a lot more. I was actually recently promoted there—the whole deli department is now mine after 4 or 5 months at the job. This scares me.
But my optimism about going to college has been snuffed a little bit. At the moment, I'm not sure what exactly I want to study, were I to go. I was super deadset for most of my life on taking on the world of music. And then, starting 2023, I found a real passion for writing. Not like, fiction or anything (though that is fun and I should write more fiction), but non-fiction. Reviews, analysis. Academic stuff. Words and how they go together became a major point of passion for me, and it has shaken my world up pretty intensely. Every time I think about college, I feel myself tearing in half between two wants and unsure as to how to proceed. And when I'm not thinking about college, I'm working. I'm saving up for a car, at which point after the next goal would be college. I hope I can figure this shit out soon. And Vietnamese... yeah, that is probably not happening anytime soon. I mean, I still want to learn, but I gotta pay for some kind of teacher; I can't just dream about it while trying to converse in broken Vietnamese with the chef of the Viet fusion place next to my work. I have to be serious about it, and at the moment my energy (or lack thereof) isn't anywhere near where it needs to be for that.
I guess that part of this hesitation stems from a severe lack of financial freedom that didn't appear until quite recently. Now that I have, like, a credit card, I am trying slowly to be a tad less stingy with the money I have. My parents were quite adamant about me getting a full-time job before considering a card, but it became clear very soon that such a banal thing was quickly becoming the kind of pipe dream that you'd be fucking stupid to have. Southern California is a joke, and the joke is "Why did the chicken cross the road?" I was led on by fucking Sam's Club. 12 rejected applications, a completely fucked-in-the-head hiring system with the most exacting and arbitrary requirements on how to get accepted for an interview, and when I finally did have one (I happened to meet someone who was in the hiring department), I was told that I would be guaranteed the job—and got ghosted. On my first day at S&F, I got the thirteenth automated rejection letter. You can say a lot of things about me, but you can't say I'm not persistent. And the next person who says that "x company is really desperate for new employees" is getting throttled. There is no way in hell this is the case, because although incredibly and uniquely frustrating, the Sam's Club debacle was just the very sharp tip of an iceberg of companies who ultimately passed on me. If you're saying this to me, I am immediately assuming you haven't had to look for a job in at least a decade, because no the fuck they are not.
Past that, I'm really just chugging along. I still buy vinyl records, I eat good food. I went out for a day in Temecula with a couple of friends. We did our catastrophizing about the next four years, but ultimately, I'm still living. I've struggled with body issues since sophomore year of high school, and these days I've gained some weight. I'm getting good physical workouts at work, and I take walks often. I listen to good music. I went to a Porter Robinson concert in October—that was incredible, bar the drunk EDM frat bro a couple of rows above us who kept screaming for him to play Language. I'm hopefully going to see Tyler, the Creator in February—we'll see where life leads. My brain might be broken, I might be riddled with anxiety like fleas and be stricken with horrible audio processing issues—but I like my coworkers, I have good friends, I still love my heaven from Nebraska. We've had rough patches in recent, but I swore that one day our worries would be roadkill on a freeway and I'm still standing by it even if I haven't any plans on how to make it happen. It's just one day at a time for now.
I've got really good poems that I've refrained from sharing, on account of being either too personal or too political, on other sites that are not E2. Perhaps they will see the light of everything.
Talk soon.