JULY 2025

07.11.25↑

Well happy free slurpy day!

We really should get a 7/11 where I live. I don't think I've actually had a slurpy in years. Maybe I should fix that soon. I'm going to make another attempt at getting back into the journaling thing. I don't know why I stopped. I think I never really started to do it to entertain people and more of a me thing, but felt like by letting people in my real life know about my website I had to have my writing at a certain caliber or that I had to water down what I was writing to make it acqaintance acceptable. But hopefully if you're reading this you're just a stranger finding yourself reading about another stranger's life because you have nothing better to do.

Today was probably decent enough, I guess. I ended up working today even though I was supposed to have the day off. One of my coworkers forgot to ask for the day off to get her braces removed so I offered to cover for her. Having to cover someone getting their braces removed kind of make's me feel old. Somehow I've been working this job for almost 10 years. What started as a part time job at a grocery store selling lotto tickets and cigarettes while going to school somehow turned into a full time job keeping drugs on our streets. I'm somewhat burnt out on it, but it's treated me well over the years. I'm surrounded by coworkers that seem to care about each other and it's keeping a roof over my head, so I shouldn't complain to much. I kind of feel like I'm getting some lifestyle creep. I came to Wyoming with a twin size bed not even sitting on a bed frame, a fork, a spoon, and an armchair, and a car with handcrank windows, no airbags or cupholders, and was probably honestly a boxy metal deathtrap. Nowadays I buy so much stupid stuff that, while I'm grateful for all of it, I don't really know if I feel any happier than when I had nothing of real value. Money doesn't buy happiness. I think I read a quote on Reddit that went, "the only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there" and I'm thinking I should read the source material. I go through periods where I feel like I need a reset where I fast from all technology and try to live a minimal life, and I know that's probably not really addressing why I feel the need to go through a minimalist phase. I sort of feel like I get the general puzzle pieces to being happy and just need to work on the execution. Money, health, time, social belonging, purpose. It seems kind of simple on paper. I dunno. Everyone spends a large portion of life figuring it out, and I'm not entirely sure if anyone actually has it figured out 100% by the end, but I'm probably not getting closer either by dwelling on it.

On the subject of being burnt out, I wonder how people decide to cut ties with jobs, people, and relationships. When do scales tip and people decide that life has to be more than what it seems? I'm finding myself at a crossroad. The people I work with I've worked with long enough for certain things to grind my gears. And I'm an imperfect person, so I'm sure that I have habits and work behaviours that drive my coworkers crazy, too. I'm sure the grass isn't always greener on the other side, and I'm afraid of anything different than what I know whether it's going to pharmacy school, finding a new job, or whatever. I think I almost turned around and went back home listening to one of my bosses ramble about politics and making jokes where being gay is the whole punchline. I normally have pretty thick skin and I don't really care about other people's political opinions, but when people make more money where I could work 4000 extra hours this year and not make as much money as them are complaining about the work ethic of people nowadays while doing nothing it really makes me sick.

Anyways, I hope no one reads this. I kind of feel like venting about things was unproductive, and largely feel like complaining about things makes me a little bitch. But that's kind of toxic mentallity and my feelings are valid. Or something. I gotta work on it all. Yikes. Rant over. A website with background images with cute pokemon art shouldn't be this negative. I'm going to try to do something that makes me happy tomorrow on my day off to make up for it. I promise I'll practice making my life a good one. Peace out!

07.12.25↑

I am pretty sleepy. Trying to squeeze a quick entry in around midnight because I've decided to really try to stick to this journaling thing.

Today was a pretty lazy day. I probably should have cleaned a bit today, but I ended up mostly playing saxophone today. Recently, I got a 3d printer and I found someone that made some 3d scans of some professional jazz mouthpieces and ended up printing some, and they play surprisingly good straight off the printer; I even used some fun metallic-pink filament. It's a bit morally questionable, but I ended up playing for like 3 hours. Kind of the longest I've played in a long time. Hopefully, I'll be able to show Rex up the street sometime. It's wild that one of the best saxophone player's in this town moved up the street from me, and I've never gone out of my way to get lessons or jam with him. It's kind of wild what 3d printers are capable of. Those old antipiracy ads that went, 'You wouldn't download a car' probably never imagined that it's almost possible now. I also printed a plastic cupholder that I accidentally broke that's built into our living room couch (might've taken me 2 tries; measure once, cut twice...)

I guess I did do a few productive things today like mow the lawn and finally cutting down the dead branches from a bush that was mostly dead for like the past 3 years. It was kind of a spur of the moment thing for me. Hannah's cat accidentally got outside, so I figured I'd work in the lawn for a bit to keep an eye on her for when she decided to come back in. The sun was starting to set and the fluffy asshole was nowhere to be seen. I finally decided to look for her, and in our garden I ended up finding another orange cat that zipped off when I saw it. I was getting nervous because I couldn't find her, so I took a quick lap around the block figuring she probably wouldn't wander too far. I ended up seeing a fluffy, black cat that was pretty friendly that I gave a few head scratches. After walking all the way around the block without seeing her, I get back home just to find her sitting on the neighbor's porch x_x. She still didn't want to come in, so I figured I'd just leave her for the raccoons and I started boiling some water for some pasta. Eventually she did come in after I called her. Again, she's a fluffy, little asshole.

I'm super relieved that she decided to come in though. Hannah's grandpa passed away today, and if anything happened to her cat I couldn't even imagine how she would've felt having that on top of things. I wish I could do more for her, and I worry I'm not a good person and should be comforting her more or something. I'm trying to make her laugh when I can, and hopefully trying to make things feel normal is distraction enough. She has a great family though, and I'm sure they're all doing their best. I need to be better about keeping in touch with my family. Anyways, it's getting pretty late and I should probably be off to bed.

07.13.25↑

Sundays are for Jesus and anime.

Just kidding. I didn't do either of those things. I ended up waking up a bit later in the day around 10am (pretty late for me) because I accidentally stayed up until 3 am. I've kind of had this running hypothesis that full moons make me stay up late, and it's generally when my impulse spending and hobbies take a bit of an uptick. This month's moon I guess I fell down a rabbit hole of data hoarding and offline access to data and I was researching creating a 'Internet in a Box' server on a raspberry pi which creates a local network full of various things like offline websites, medical information, educational materials, and a whole slew of things you can put on it. I've known that internetarchive.org was a thing for a while, but I was exploring it last night and it's really insane the amount of information it has. I feel like data censorship is the next burning of the Library of Alexandria, and who know's what they'll scrub with this current administration. Recently, even pornography in this state has had legislature requiring personal identification before accessing. I'm not really pro or anti porn, but seeing that kind of gives me a sense of unease like big brother is constantly watching. I dunno. I figure it'll be a fun project to put essential information all in one spot for a shit hitting the fan situation that hopefully never happens.

I did start my day drinking my coffee on our patio with no phone or music. It was the most my mind has been at ease this entire week I think. The weather was perfect and I got to just listen to the birds and wind and watch the world. I don't know why I don't do it more often. Maybe I should make that a morning ritual. We have an older neighbor who has an immaculate yard, and often he'll just be sitting in his chair watching the neighborhood, and I think he's probably onto something. I don't really want to be the neighborhood creeper, but I think everyone could probably use a half hour just to let their brain cool down and appreciate the world.

Today I also finally popped in a new battery in the Jeep! I think it had been sitting for like two years, and while I was out back, I was looking at it and decided it was time to at least do something instead of letting it rot. When I popped the hood, it'd been so long since I did anything with it that it was actually full of spiderwebs. I had to fill up the coolant, and really should change the oil, too. I'm a bit nervous to fire it up. Besides the oil, I read somewhere that the generation of Jeep I have has a weird cooling system where you have to do something special to get air bubbles out of the system so it doesn't overheat. I should really just sell it, but it holds a special place in my heart being my first car and putting so much into it. Stockholm syndrome, I guess.

Finally, I got to hang out with some coworkers for an old coworker's going away gathering. Normally I don't really care for social functions, but it was nice hanging out with them and I was glad that I went. I was thinking I was just going to show face, but ended up hanging out for like 4 hours. It always seems like extroverts find the introverts and get them out of their shells a bit. Tomorrow, we're gonna try to do one last TJ Maxx adventure when I get off work. I'm super excited for them to get out of here, but partings are always hard. Hey, maybe it'll give me an excuse to visit Europe again. Wyoming has a way to make oneself crave adventure in the great wide somewhere. Also, I just discovered that my calendar doohickey is off by a day. Damn it. This is a note for my future self to fix that.

07.14.25↑

Today, although I was a bit tired was a pretty good day. Yesterday, when I went out I only had two drinks and I ended up having a bit of a headache and some gastro distress overnight and didn't rest as well as I should've overnight. Probably partly because I hardly ever drink anymore and have lost all tolerance, and partly because I hadn't ate that much that day. I think drinking is pretty overrated for myself and glad I don't really drink anymore. But even being really tired, work was pretty decent and had an easy-ish day there.

After work, I hung out with Erin and Lauren at TJ Maxx which was nice. We'd been on a few outings out there before, and this was kind of one last one before Lauren moves to Belgium in a few weeks. I think it originally started when they wanted to look at Halloween decorations after work one day and they asked if I wanted to tag along. I'm pretty introverted, so I'm surprised I actually said yes, but I'm glad I did. One of life's greatest joys is accidentally bumping into people that you like to spend time with. After that we ended up going out to eat at Olive Garden which was super delicious. I'll definitely miss having her around, but I always feel like every times you cross paths with other people, you either take a little piece of them and carry it with you. (Or you find people that you don't want to be like, I build your life into trying not to be like them.) I always wonder the person I would be if I never encountered another person, but I am a bit of every person I've ever met whether I can pinpoint where I picked something up or not. I hope as I move through life I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by people I want to be like and can look up to.

07.16.25↑

I think I need a little bit of a reset. Diet, horrible. Sleep schedule, awful. General tidiness, lacking. Touching grass, tragically lacking. All that stuff is probably catching up to me. Had a bit of a headache all day and was just generally moody and I think it was showing. I almost felt the need to apologize after work to my coworkers. Gotta get that under control. Gonna get back into routine hopefully and see what I can do. Didn't post anything yesterday, but it was pretty much just work. I also got to try to make pina coladas (but I used pineapple, orange, guava juice.) The one I had didn't have rum, so it was essentially a smoothie, but I liked it much better than my last attempt at it. Today right around when I got off work, there was a huge rainstorm which I actually always enjoy. We lucked out and didn't have hail, but it was really pouring. As I was driving home, there was someone who got stranded in the road, so I ended up helping them push out of the road with one of our regulars and ended up with soaked socks. Hopefully it's an easy repair for them. Right now, I'm just kind of tinkering on my raspberry pi trying out that Internet in a Box project. I didn't have much luck trying to install it yesterday, but I'm trying again and hoping I can get it figured out. I hope I feel generally better tomorrow if I go to sleep early. Fingers crossed.