Thursday, December 10, 2020
Best birthday of my life was my 18th, that morning, on the emptyV, they played that Green Day song about the time of your life followed by Semisonic's Closing Time, which was peak morning Carson Daily music for 1998. That day, it got to damn near 60°, I remember, after school, going to volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club and a fellow volunteer offered to take me to the Taco John's for food because it was my birthday and I didn't want her to get me anything because 18 year old Tom was a fucking asshole without a clue. She insisted, so I had her get me some churros. I went on my first date with her later that month. It went as well as most of the other first dates have gone in my life... But that day was still fucking excellent. I measure all other birthdays against that one.
I live in a different part of the state now, where the winters are far less harsh, possibly because of global warming, possibly because the lake that's my neighbor.
My 40th birthday, I had always told myself I was going to kill myself. I had it all planned out, I would douse myself in gasoline and strike a match on a street corner and stop traffic, telling everyone how much I hated them. Today in Milwaukee, it was approaching 60°. I have a job that's not awful. I haven't been on a date in over four years, I drink too much, I'm disabled, I have no friends, no pets, I live alone in a shitty apartment with an old-ass upstairs neighbor who runs his wet/dry vac at absurd hours and drops every god damn thing he picks up, but still the prospect of lightning myself on fire didn't appeal to me. Sorry, Winston Churchill.
I've legit contemplated killing myself, as was the plan, but, to make an excuse, I finally found a job that doesn't suck complete ass, and there's a woman with fucky colored hair at the bougie groucery tore I get sushi on Friday nights for Friday night Anime night @ home who compliments something about my appearance every time that I'm going to give my number to tomorrow night and maybe I shouldn't kill myself before then. Possibly after, we'll see.
said Tommy T. at 8:46 PM - #
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Wednesday, November 18, 2020
I'm almost a month in to the new job and it's still pretty decent! The gribblies try to creep in and hit me with that imposter syndrome shit, but I do what I can to brush that away.
Today kind of sucked and I came close to losing my cool because I had one of those dreams that spans many years over the course of a sleep where I was in a relationship with a friend of mine that I haven't seen since I moved to the most romantic city on earth. The dream felt good, REAL good, but then I woke up and was greated to the harsh reality of the 5:30 morning in mid November in Wisconsin. My patience for uncooperative printers was greatly diminshed after that one. Fortunately, Wednesday is the day they give employees a free lunch and not a bitch-ass one, either. Because I work for the non-evil mail order spice company, the lunch is made onsite by a team using our own seasonings. Today was chili dog day and the chili was quite spicy, just the way I like it. I feel bad for the folks that had to deal with me an hour after eating spicy chili, but that's the price you pay for wanting to print in color on an overworked printer.
said Tommy T. at 7:11 PM - #
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Monday, October 19, 2020
First day at my new job! I'm still beaming with pride that I got this one, and it seems like a phenomenal place work so far. Everything in our employee orientation was centered around making it a nice place to work and the coworkers that I was able to meet seemed to really respect the place, which has been exceedingly rare in all the opsitions I've had previously. There's no curmudgeon in the group, as far as I can tell.
The only negative from the day came after lunch, when I settled in to my desk. I don't know if it was because it was so cold in my area or just my brain being an asshole as it's apt to do, but I felt a flood loneliness wash over me. Like, I'm proud to be there in that moment, but I just really wanted someone to ask me how my day was going so far. I wanted someone to be beaming with pride with me and for me. When I looked at my phone and saw there was a message, there was a fleeting moment where I was all, "Hey, someone cares", but it turned out that it was just our payroll system letting me know my account had been activated. Thanks, payroll bot.
I'm still certain this is going to be a great job and will lead to bigger and better things and I'm extremely excited for the possibility that I could get a condo in the next couple years. It's about god damn time I got my shit together. I'll be eagerly looking for that real nice form letter from the white house, hopefully, from the incoming president.
said Tommy T. at 4:33 PM - #
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Sunday, October 04, 2020
I FUCKING DID IT!!!
I talked to my high school crush who friended me on facespace? Lol, fuck no! Let's live in reality here, though I've had some weird fucking dreams as a result of it. I blame the nightly melatonin. When I say "weird fucking dreams" there's no fucking at all, let's stay firmly planted in reality, melatonin or not. No, I got a job offer for a company whose values align with mine while I already have a job. I've been the kind to quit a job without any backup plan, which fortunately hasn't bitten me on the ass, but I've been working this contract for a shitty bank the past few months and it's been a complete clusterfuck of a shitshow. At every turn, they say they didn't plan on there being the work that we're being handed, leaving me to question what exactly they did plan for, because it appears tht they planned for a completely uneventful takeover of this company's IT department, which is wishful thinking, at best, and comically shitty planning, at worst. I applied for this position with the progressive spice company, laughing at the futility of filling out an application that asks me what my favorite spice of theirs is and giving them the full details of my disability, which I never give anyone.
To my surprise, I get a phone interview that goes better than any phone interview I've ever had. I discuss the fact that I'm a home chef, and that my favorite show in the world is Great British Bakeoff and that I cook recipes they do on the show and I always imagin Paul Hollywood absolutely shitting on my finished product, telling me it's got a soggy bottom, it's stodgy, and the worst example og baking he's ever seen. After our interview, I send out a thank you email, thanking my interviewer and mentioning how I'd be exceptionally proud to work for this company because I absolutely believe in everything their CEO is about.
I somehow get a second interview that's relatively short and I mention the fact that I've spent my quarrantine year working on some projects on my home network to eliminate ads completely from websites I visit.Afterwards, I send another thank you follow up and I somehow get a third interview that goes absolutely pear shaped. Or so I though.
Days later, I get asked for an in person interview, which I assume is all for show after the previous phone interview and how absolutely off the rails it felt it went. When I show up to this interview, I find that it's less an interview and more a "Hey, we're going to tour the area you'll be supporting to make sure you feel up to this" and culminating with "I'm going to talk to my management and you should hear something next week."Next day, I get a voicemail late afternoon from the original interviewer, sounding very chipper, asking to speak with me. I try caling her back, but it' late in the afternoon on a Friday. Her message said she'd be working Saturday and I could reach her then. I spent Friday night figuring I'd be calling on Saturday for a rejection that was going to ruin my weekend. I did my early morning grocery shopping, which is how we do thing in the quran-times to avoid the anti-mask nut-jobs, then call the interviewer after putting away all the groceries as slowly as possible to avoid what I perceive as the inevitable. We talk and I get the congratulations and the information about a salaried position that gives me a 10% raise, benefits, and a paid holiday on election day in America(!), even though I will have voted long before then. I thank the interviewer profusely and let her know that my mom is my next call to tell her the good news and how excited I am to start the job.
It is now Sunday, and I'm happy to say this is the first time in a very long time, years, actually, I'm not experiencing the Sunday scaries where I dread waking up on Monday morning. I'm wondering how I'm going to word my resignation to united states bank, and I'm curious if they accept my two weeks notice or if they let me go on the spot. I'm good with either scenario, I could use two weeks to myself to prepare for an awesome new job, and to get in the right headspace to be an excited worker bee for a company I trust and value, and whose product I use on an almost daily basis. I'm about two months shy of turning 40, and I finally feel like a accomplished adult.
said Tommy T. at 6:17 PM - #
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Monday, September 07, 2020
It's been an exceptionally weird quarantimes summer. Like, more weird than I could ever have imagined. I quit my job in January, before shit hit the fan, because my friends on my trivia team were cognizant of the fact that shit was going to hit the fan, and the job I was at was actively encouraging people to come in to work while sick. As someone who had a particularly bad strain of pneumonia a decade ago, I'm not about to fuck around with illnesses that fuck your lungs.
Somehow, I managed get a job during a fucking worldwide pandemic that caused the second "once in a lifetime" depression of my life. I bought a new car to alow myself to commute to said new job, because that bus life isn't up to par as it is in Canada. I bought a car that gets at least 45 miles per gallon, and over 50, depending on where I'm driving, so, not an American car because Americans just don't give a fuck about that kind of thing.
Shit got even weirder when the girl I had the most massice crush on during junior high and high schoole friended me on the facespace. A year ago, it was supposed to be our twentieth year high school reunion, but everyone who had more than half a brain moved the fuck out of there, so our president wasn't around to plan a reunion, so folks that had moved away and were tech savvy started a facespace group where we talked about what the fuck happened in the ensuing twenty years. That girl that I had a massive crush on, who was out valedictorian, shared a story of her struggles that are almost wildly uncharacteristic of what you think valedictorians go through, unless they're Jessie Spano taking caffeine pills. I shared my story of becoming disabled because of bullshit. The girl I had the biggest crush of my life frieded me on the facespace. I'm not trying to make a thing out of it, but, like, my time in high school was not good. I forced myself to go to school some days telling myself maybe she'd see me that day and wave or smile. Every semester first day, I got excited because maybe we'd have a class together. Me and the valedictorian never had a class together apart from keyboarding in the 8th grade and band classes in junior high. So, when I received a friend request, my life flashed before me. This person knows who I am? The girl who 18 year old me thought was hotter than Mira Sorvino acknolowedged my existence? Like what the actual fuck?
I'm still not about to talk to her, even after she friended me. I've sanitized my facespace as best I can without removing the warts that are important to me. But, man, this shit's fucked me up. Like, her life hasn't been sunshine, lollipops, and roses, but she's still exceptionally hot, like Mena Suvari has nothing on her in my head, and I'd give anything to be able to say words to her that didn't sound absolutely fucking stupid. I don't even know how to begin that conversation. Common sense suggests saying "Hi" is a good opener, but experience suggests that's an awful attempt at opening communication. I'm beyond well aware that I've built her up in my head more than is healthy, believe me, I've had melatonin dreams about her, because I don't sleep without melatonin anymore, which suggests how unhealthy I am, I think.
said Tommy T. at 5:18 PM - #
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Sunday, September 06, 2020
Christ, it's been over a year, now. Shit's worse. Story of my life, right? I took another garbage job, where I worked for three months. Motherfuckers got hacked by Russians who tried to ransom their data. I honestly wish I was making that up, but it's thing that happened. Yeah, a real shitshow. Pwned by a bunch of script kiddies from a bloc country. I quite literally walked out of that place when I realized the whole pandemic thing was a real concern and that the place I worked gave no shits about people coming in to work sick. The day that really tipped the scales for me was when the homeless guy who begs for money saying "I smell like shit because I haven't been able to wash my clothes" bothered me and I had to let him know that he didn't smell anywhere near as bad as the guy in the next cubicle. Now I've got another shitty job that I'm looking forward to leaving because it's another fucking joke. We've been working from home and had on-site access for over a month, but my co-worker still doesn't have a badge to get on-site and I still don't have the access I need to get to the mail room to pick up my parts orders. I hate flitting from job to job the past couple years, while I'm mere months from turning forty, the birthday where I'm supposed to kill myself.
I've had the idea for years that on my fortieth birthday, I was going to kill myself because "the first forty are the best forty". I think of that quote and look at my life, and think "you're telling me it gets worse?"The past decade has been varying degrees of awful: I've gained a disability, I've been on a handful of dates, and on those dates, I've been attracted to comically few of them, the last one I WAS attracted to may well have voted for Trump because she was a ""libertarian", which I've found is code for "Republican who wants to smoke weed". She believed the constitution was infallible, and told me that she couldn't vote for Hillary, but also couldn't vote for Trump. There's a right answer and a wrong answer as to who to vote for in that situation, and I'm curious which she chose. I don't really care, though, because every time we hung out, she had to get a fifth of brandy and a pack of smokes. I gave that up after I realized this was bad news, when she said the asshole from the video game club on Degrassi had a point when he said that the girl with the hijab might be a terrorist. I haven't been excited for a date since, which hasn't been fair to the women I've tried to date and that makes me feel awful. In the meanwhile, I've taken to drinking too much on weekends. I'm embarassed to say, it's borderline alcoholism. I drink and I watch Law and Order: SVU all day. So here I am, months away from forty, and setting myself on fire on a random street corner, as was the plan, doesn't seem so bad. But it seems like it would hurt. A lot. And I'm worried there would be some asshole Samaritan who would ruin the whole thing.
Man, I don't know. I miss being hopeful about tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure tomorrow will suck. I had an interview with a company I'd legitimately like to work for, and that I trust, that I think went well. I want to believe I can land that job, and I might be able to, but I worry the pay isn't where it needs to be. While I've worked in my job for over a decade, I haven't pursued certifications or further learning as hard as I know I should. I feel like I'm a lazy drunk piece of shit and I want to get in a TARDIS and meet my 19 year old self and fuck up the space/time continuum, space and time be damned. Maybe I could prevent so much of all this.
said Tommy T. at 7:42 PM - #
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Monday, August 19, 2019
I had to quit my job because of how shitty it was and how it was affecting my mental health. After taking a call from a woman in her late fifties, so younger than my mom and dad,where the woman in question was having an issue connecting to our citrix server, I asked her if she could could open a webpage so that I could attempt to connect to her computer to help her out, and her response was to start bawling and tell me she didn't know how to open a webpage because she's "computer illiterate". I had to bite tongue damn near completely off to stop myself from congratulating her on being able to make it to mid-2019 and not know how to open a webpage. I don't recall how that phone call ended, but I do know I had her click on the blue E and navigate to a webpage. I put off giving my two weeks notice as long as possible, hoping to get a job lined up. Ultimately, I couldn't do it before my frustration reached its apex. I booked a few days vacation in Minnesota after I had finished the job to hit up a baseball game and a few breweries, which was ultimately a good time and absolutely what I needed after that nightmare of a job. Unfortunately, that's nine months of my life that I'll never get back and I feel like was completely wasted on what I had hoped would be excellent experience to forward my career but nearly completely broke me. Towards the end, I could barely get myself to leave my house on weekends and just sat at home drinking too much while watching the Law and Order: SVU marathon. It wasn't healthy at all and not what I wanted. I've since joined a team for the weekly pub trivia down the street from my house, I'm trying to reach out to get a group together to do a Pathfinder campaign because I prefer that to D&D these days, I'm applying to jobs that I think will be good fits for me in my area, I'm working on getting my apartment organized and working on eating right. I want to start working on learning a foreign language, Japanese or Chinese, so that a future vacation spot could be somewhere in Asia once I get my shit back together.
Earlier in the year, my dream condo went on the market, but it was $30000 more than the last time it was listed a couple years ago. I ran the numbers on its asking price and it would have made shit very tight, especially considering that I had a job that made me as miserable as it did. It sold the following month for $30000 under its asking price, so well within my range, and I'm sure with my credit as good as it is, I'd have been able to get the loan I'd need, but I'm telling myself it wasn't the right time yet, which sucks because my thirties are ending in a year and a half and I had hoped I'd be in a better spot by this time. Hopefully I can get there soon.
said Tommy T. at 3:51 PM - #
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Sunday, March 31, 2019
My alcohol free month was going fine until last night, while switching between Hockey Night in Canada and Law and Order: SVU, my buddy sent me a photograph from almost twenty years ago that sent me into a deep existential crisis. I look at myself at what is probably half my current age and I don't know who the fuck that even is. I mean, I'm obviously aware the guy in the back with the tank top is me, but when the fuck did I ever look that good in a beater? And, god, I miss that sweatshirt with the anti-swastika patch. I remember that night we were seeing Mustard Plug with a band opening for them called The Velveteens who are criminally not on Spotify, but they were a phenomenal east coast ska band. I recall something about that night, possibly seeing a guy on a crotch rocket get hit by a car on the way to the show. I probably danced myself into a pulled muscle because that was my thing ska shows in those days. There was a shirtless guy dancing who was easily the sweatiest person I've ever seen in my life.
I wish I could talk to that kid, tat was easily the height of straight edge Tommy. When I talk about myself, I always say that if my past self saw me now, he'd kick my ass. The person in that picture is who I'm referring to as the one who would kick my ass.I want to ask that guy what he thinks the future holds because I'm pretty sure back then I had just as much of an idea of the future as I have right now. I want to tell that kid to keep his head up, it's gonna far worse than he can possibly comprehend and that's no excuse for my behavior, but sometimes it doesn't completely suck.
Fortunately, I received that picture after a day of walking around catching Pokemon and had no energy to go out and get a six pack of something hoppy. If I did, I would've gotten pizza. I realized this morning that I had to get out of the house again because my trigger for drinking is boredom and being trapped inside with my thoughts about how much I miss that guy and his usable left side and absolute freedom to dye his hair crazy colors and his style would necessitate at least forty ounces. At this point, I'm okay, I've got my custom turntable in a shopping cart, ready for if I can make it.
I just can't stop thinking about that kid.
said Tommy T. at 8:00 PM - #
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Thursday, March 28, 2019
I had a weird morning today because it's Thursday and I never got the hang of Thursday. I've taken to taking meltonin before bed to help me sleep, which has the added benefit of giving you crazy dreams apart from making you sleep extra, extra hard. Anyways, it was a good dream, for once, where I was on a date with someone I was legit stoked to be on a date with and it was going well. I had that warm gushy feeling in my stomach. And then I woke up. I woke up feeling like I was in a cartoon and they shot a cannonball through me, leaving a cannonball shaped hole in my chest. For the first few hours of the day, it felt like I was hungover, I couldn't fix a damn thing, none of the shit people were calling me about made any goddamn sense because they were trying to do things email was never meant to do. I was again precipitously close walking out. Shit got better, though. I got two requests for phone interviews for jobs that I could feasibly walk to or bus to in a third of the time it takes to get to my current job and I was contacted by a recruiter for a job that pays a comical amount of money that I'm almost uniquely unqualified for, but I'm willing to waste their time because headhunter recruiters are like cockroaches to me.
said Tommy T. at 8:28 PM - #
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Monday, March 25, 2019
I don't know what to make of alcohol free March. It hasn't been extremely difficult, I think I've swapped one addiction for another, I drink gallons of coffee on my weekends. I got a promotion-ish at my shitty job. I say "ish" because they're bringing me full time from part time despite the fact that I've been working full time hours for six months, so it's really just a title change in HR with a slight negligible raise that they didn't want to give me because "Ihadn't worked there for six months yet", which was some bullshit I called them on because October-March is six months. If it's not, you're either bad at math, or you work for Aurora healthcare. I updated my resume because six months is five months too long for working in a call center. I've been putting off updating the resume because I didn't want to deal with the phone calls and emails "Greetings for the day! I was looking at the job portals and saw your resume and I was impressed with your experience at [current job]! I've got a position I'm trying to fill in the far flung suburbs that only tangentially has anything to do or has nothing to do with all the experience listed on your resume! And it pays minimum wage! You don't need insurance or days off ever, right?"
So I'm reading a self help book for my bus commutes and got to the chapter where the dude gave up alcohol and he said it always starts with people who shit like "I'm going to quit for thirty days just to make sure I don't have a problem." and he goes on to say that if you're making those ultimatums, you might have a problem because you're thinking about how ripped you'll get on day 31. I have no intention of getting ripped on April 1st or April anything. My intention is to order the turntable I told myself I'd buy when I got a job,then told myself I'd buy it when I quit alcohol for March, set it up, put on a record(which one fluctuates between folk punk records, Kepi Ghoulie, the Lillingtons, or Sigur Ros) and crack a hazy IPA to really be a fucking hipster. I want to believe that's not problem level drinking.
said Tommy T. at 7:25 PM - #
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Best birthday of my life was my 18th, that morning, on the emptyV, they played that Green Day song about the time of your life followed by Semisonic's Closing Time, which was peak morning Carson Daily music for 1998. That day, it got to damn near 60°, I remember, after school, going to volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club and a fellow volunteer offered to take me to the Taco John's for food because it was my birthday and I didn't want her to get me anything because 18 year old Tom was a fucking asshole without a clue. She insisted, so I had her get me some churros. I went on my first date with her later that month. It went as well as most of the other first dates have gone in my life... But that day was still fucking excellent. I measure all other birthdays against that one.
I live in a different part of the state now, where the winters are far less harsh, possibly because of global warming, possibly because the lake that's my neighbor.
My 40th birthday, I had always told myself I was going to kill myself. I had it all planned out, I would douse myself in gasoline and strike a match on a street corner and stop traffic, telling everyone how much I hated them. Today in Milwaukee, it was approaching 60°. I have a job that's not awful. I haven't been on a date in over four years, I drink too much, I'm disabled, I have no friends, no pets, I live alone in a shitty apartment with an old-ass upstairs neighbor who runs his wet/dry vac at absurd hours and drops every god damn thing he picks up, but still the prospect of lightning myself on fire didn't appeal to me. Sorry, Winston Churchill.
I've legit contemplated killing myself, as was the plan, but, to make an excuse, I finally found a job that doesn't suck complete ass, and there's a woman with fucky colored hair at the bougie groucery tore I get sushi on Friday nights for Friday night Anime night @ home who compliments something about my appearance every time that I'm going to give my number to tomorrow night and maybe I shouldn't kill myself before then. Possibly after, we'll see.
said Tommy T. at 8:46 PM - #
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Today kind of sucked and I came close to losing my cool because I had one of those dreams that spans many years over the course of a sleep where I was in a relationship with a friend of mine that I haven't seen since I moved to the most romantic city on earth. The dream felt good, REAL good, but then I woke up and was greated to the harsh reality of the 5:30 morning in mid November in Wisconsin. My patience for uncooperative printers was greatly diminshed after that one. Fortunately, Wednesday is the day they give employees a free lunch and not a bitch-ass one, either. Because I work for the non-evil mail order spice company, the lunch is made onsite by a team using our own seasonings. Today was chili dog day and the chili was quite spicy, just the way I like it. I feel bad for the folks that had to deal with me an hour after eating spicy chili, but that's the price you pay for wanting to print in color on an overworked printer.
said Tommy T. at 7:11 PM - #
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The only negative from the day came after lunch, when I settled in to my desk. I don't know if it was because it was so cold in my area or just my brain being an asshole as it's apt to do, but I felt a flood loneliness wash over me. Like, I'm proud to be there in that moment, but I just really wanted someone to ask me how my day was going so far. I wanted someone to be beaming with pride with me and for me. When I looked at my phone and saw there was a message, there was a fleeting moment where I was all, "Hey, someone cares", but it turned out that it was just our payroll system letting me know my account had been activated. Thanks, payroll bot.
I'm still certain this is going to be a great job and will lead to bigger and better things and I'm extremely excited for the possibility that I could get a condo in the next couple years. It's about god damn time I got my shit together. I'll be eagerly looking for that real nice form letter from the white house, hopefully, from the incoming president.
said Tommy T. at 4:33 PM - #
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I talked to my high school crush who friended me on facespace? Lol, fuck no! Let's live in reality here, though I've had some weird fucking dreams as a result of it. I blame the nightly melatonin. When I say "weird fucking dreams" there's no fucking at all, let's stay firmly planted in reality, melatonin or not. No, I got a job offer for a company whose values align with mine while I already have a job. I've been the kind to quit a job without any backup plan, which fortunately hasn't bitten me on the ass, but I've been working this contract for a shitty bank the past few months and it's been a complete clusterfuck of a shitshow. At every turn, they say they didn't plan on there being the work that we're being handed, leaving me to question what exactly they did plan for, because it appears tht they planned for a completely uneventful takeover of this company's IT department, which is wishful thinking, at best, and comically shitty planning, at worst. I applied for this position with the progressive spice company, laughing at the futility of filling out an application that asks me what my favorite spice of theirs is and giving them the full details of my disability, which I never give anyone.
To my surprise, I get a phone interview that goes better than any phone interview I've ever had. I discuss the fact that I'm a home chef, and that my favorite show in the world is Great British Bakeoff and that I cook recipes they do on the show and I always imagin Paul Hollywood absolutely shitting on my finished product, telling me it's got a soggy bottom, it's stodgy, and the worst example og baking he's ever seen. After our interview, I send out a thank you email, thanking my interviewer and mentioning how I'd be exceptionally proud to work for this company because I absolutely believe in everything their CEO is about.
I somehow get a second interview that's relatively short and I mention the fact that I've spent my quarrantine year working on some projects on my home network to eliminate ads completely from websites I visit.Afterwards, I send another thank you follow up and I somehow get a third interview that goes absolutely pear shaped. Or so I though.
Days later, I get asked for an in person interview, which I assume is all for show after the previous phone interview and how absolutely off the rails it felt it went. When I show up to this interview, I find that it's less an interview and more a "Hey, we're going to tour the area you'll be supporting to make sure you feel up to this" and culminating with "I'm going to talk to my management and you should hear something next week."Next day, I get a voicemail late afternoon from the original interviewer, sounding very chipper, asking to speak with me. I try caling her back, but it' late in the afternoon on a Friday. Her message said she'd be working Saturday and I could reach her then. I spent Friday night figuring I'd be calling on Saturday for a rejection that was going to ruin my weekend. I did my early morning grocery shopping, which is how we do thing in the quran-times to avoid the anti-mask nut-jobs, then call the interviewer after putting away all the groceries as slowly as possible to avoid what I perceive as the inevitable. We talk and I get the congratulations and the information about a salaried position that gives me a 10% raise, benefits, and a paid holiday on election day in America(!), even though I will have voted long before then. I thank the interviewer profusely and let her know that my mom is my next call to tell her the good news and how excited I am to start the job.
It is now Sunday, and I'm happy to say this is the first time in a very long time, years, actually, I'm not experiencing the Sunday scaries where I dread waking up on Monday morning. I'm wondering how I'm going to word my resignation to united states bank, and I'm curious if they accept my two weeks notice or if they let me go on the spot. I'm good with either scenario, I could use two weeks to myself to prepare for an awesome new job, and to get in the right headspace to be an excited worker bee for a company I trust and value, and whose product I use on an almost daily basis. I'm about two months shy of turning 40, and I finally feel like a accomplished adult.
said Tommy T. at 6:17 PM - #
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Somehow, I managed get a job during a fucking worldwide pandemic that caused the second "once in a lifetime" depression of my life. I bought a new car to alow myself to commute to said new job, because that bus life isn't up to par as it is in Canada. I bought a car that gets at least 45 miles per gallon, and over 50, depending on where I'm driving, so, not an American car because Americans just don't give a fuck about that kind of thing.
Shit got even weirder when the girl I had the most massice crush on during junior high and high schoole friended me on the facespace. A year ago, it was supposed to be our twentieth year high school reunion, but everyone who had more than half a brain moved the fuck out of there, so our president wasn't around to plan a reunion, so folks that had moved away and were tech savvy started a facespace group where we talked about what the fuck happened in the ensuing twenty years. That girl that I had a massive crush on, who was out valedictorian, shared a story of her struggles that are almost wildly uncharacteristic of what you think valedictorians go through, unless they're Jessie Spano taking caffeine pills. I shared my story of becoming disabled because of bullshit. The girl I had the biggest crush of my life frieded me on the facespace. I'm not trying to make a thing out of it, but, like, my time in high school was not good. I forced myself to go to school some days telling myself maybe she'd see me that day and wave or smile. Every semester first day, I got excited because maybe we'd have a class together. Me and the valedictorian never had a class together apart from keyboarding in the 8th grade and band classes in junior high. So, when I received a friend request, my life flashed before me. This person knows who I am? The girl who 18 year old me thought was hotter than Mira Sorvino acknolowedged my existence? Like what the actual fuck?
I'm still not about to talk to her, even after she friended me. I've sanitized my facespace as best I can without removing the warts that are important to me. But, man, this shit's fucked me up. Like, her life hasn't been sunshine, lollipops, and roses, but she's still exceptionally hot, like Mena Suvari has nothing on her in my head, and I'd give anything to be able to say words to her that didn't sound absolutely fucking stupid. I don't even know how to begin that conversation. Common sense suggests saying "Hi" is a good opener, but experience suggests that's an awful attempt at opening communication. I'm beyond well aware that I've built her up in my head more than is healthy, believe me, I've had melatonin dreams about her, because I don't sleep without melatonin anymore, which suggests how unhealthy I am, I think.
said Tommy T. at 5:18 PM - #
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I've had the idea for years that on my fortieth birthday, I was going to kill myself because "the first forty are the best forty". I think of that quote and look at my life, and think "you're telling me it gets worse?"The past decade has been varying degrees of awful: I've gained a disability, I've been on a handful of dates, and on those dates, I've been attracted to comically few of them, the last one I WAS attracted to may well have voted for Trump because she was a ""libertarian", which I've found is code for "Republican who wants to smoke weed". She believed the constitution was infallible, and told me that she couldn't vote for Hillary, but also couldn't vote for Trump. There's a right answer and a wrong answer as to who to vote for in that situation, and I'm curious which she chose. I don't really care, though, because every time we hung out, she had to get a fifth of brandy and a pack of smokes. I gave that up after I realized this was bad news, when she said the asshole from the video game club on Degrassi had a point when he said that the girl with the hijab might be a terrorist. I haven't been excited for a date since, which hasn't been fair to the women I've tried to date and that makes me feel awful. In the meanwhile, I've taken to drinking too much on weekends. I'm embarassed to say, it's borderline alcoholism. I drink and I watch Law and Order: SVU all day. So here I am, months away from forty, and setting myself on fire on a random street corner, as was the plan, doesn't seem so bad. But it seems like it would hurt. A lot. And I'm worried there would be some asshole Samaritan who would ruin the whole thing.
Man, I don't know. I miss being hopeful about tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure tomorrow will suck. I had an interview with a company I'd legitimately like to work for, and that I trust, that I think went well. I want to believe I can land that job, and I might be able to, but I worry the pay isn't where it needs to be. While I've worked in my job for over a decade, I haven't pursued certifications or further learning as hard as I know I should. I feel like I'm a lazy drunk piece of shit and I want to get in a TARDIS and meet my 19 year old self and fuck up the space/time continuum, space and time be damned. Maybe I could prevent so much of all this.
said Tommy T. at 7:42 PM - #
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Earlier in the year, my dream condo went on the market, but it was $30000 more than the last time it was listed a couple years ago. I ran the numbers on its asking price and it would have made shit very tight, especially considering that I had a job that made me as miserable as it did. It sold the following month for $30000 under its asking price, so well within my range, and I'm sure with my credit as good as it is, I'd have been able to get the loan I'd need, but I'm telling myself it wasn't the right time yet, which sucks because my thirties are ending in a year and a half and I had hoped I'd be in a better spot by this time. Hopefully I can get there soon.
said Tommy T. at 3:51 PM - #
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My alcohol free month was going fine until last night, while switching between Hockey Night in Canada and Law and Order: SVU, my buddy sent me a photograph from almost twenty years ago that sent me into a deep existential crisis. I look at myself at what is probably half my current age and I don't know who the fuck that even is. I mean, I'm obviously aware the guy in the back with the tank top is me, but when the fuck did I ever look that good in a beater? And, god, I miss that sweatshirt with the anti-swastika patch. I remember that night we were seeing Mustard Plug with a band opening for them called The Velveteens who are criminally not on Spotify, but they were a phenomenal east coast ska band. I recall something about that night, possibly seeing a guy on a crotch rocket get hit by a car on the way to the show. I probably danced myself into a pulled muscle because that was my thing ska shows in those days. There was a shirtless guy dancing who was easily the sweatiest person I've ever seen in my life.
I wish I could talk to that kid, tat was easily the height of straight edge Tommy. When I talk about myself, I always say that if my past self saw me now, he'd kick my ass. The person in that picture is who I'm referring to as the one who would kick my ass.I want to ask that guy what he thinks the future holds because I'm pretty sure back then I had just as much of an idea of the future as I have right now. I want to tell that kid to keep his head up, it's gonna far worse than he can possibly comprehend and that's no excuse for my behavior, but sometimes it doesn't completely suck.
Fortunately, I received that picture after a day of walking around catching Pokemon and had no energy to go out and get a six pack of something hoppy. If I did, I would've gotten pizza. I realized this morning that I had to get out of the house again because my trigger for drinking is boredom and being trapped inside with my thoughts about how much I miss that guy and his usable left side and absolute freedom to dye his hair crazy colors and his style would necessitate at least forty ounces. At this point, I'm okay, I've got my custom turntable in a shopping cart, ready for if I can make it.
I just can't stop thinking about that kid.
said Tommy T. at 8:00 PM - #
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said Tommy T. at 8:28 PM - #
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So I'm reading a self help book for my bus commutes and got to the chapter where the dude gave up alcohol and he said it always starts with people who shit like "I'm going to quit for thirty days just to make sure I don't have a problem." and he goes on to say that if you're making those ultimatums, you might have a problem because you're thinking about how ripped you'll get on day 31. I have no intention of getting ripped on April 1st or April anything. My intention is to order the turntable I told myself I'd buy when I got a job,then told myself I'd buy it when I quit alcohol for March, set it up, put on a record(which one fluctuates between folk punk records, Kepi Ghoulie, the Lillingtons, or Sigur Ros) and crack a hazy IPA to really be a fucking hipster. I want to believe that's not problem level drinking.
said Tommy T. at 7:25 PM - #
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