My Awkward Life

I started to add this to my last post, but apparently, I just have too much to say and I need to calm down here.

I always wanted to write a book, but I could never figure out how people could just pull 400+ pages out of their heads like it’s nothing. Some people do it 15+ times! (I’m looking at you, James Patterson. And yes, I Googled just to make sure I typed his name right and to see if he had more than 15 books.)

I know there are other authors out there, but my grandmother (we call her Nonnie) has so many of his books on her shelves and I remember always looking at them and wondering how he did it. Now I know.

Anyway, here I am writing plenty for a book if I wanted to. Maybe I should write a book or something. I don’t know, probably not. I don’t have much to say, just talking shit and documenting stupid parts of my life. Maybe I will though. Who knows? I’m unpredictable.

I should also add here that I’ve been trying to write this since 11/7/21 and it’s now 11/22/21, so who knows how long it’ll take me to post this. A lot has happened since I started writing this. Also, I tried to change the dates to reflect the new dates/times as much as I could, but there might still be some stragglers. Just keep that in mind…

Stu-bid-ity

So, in late October, I bought this laptop from eBay on accident.

How do you accidentally buy a laptop?

Someone, probably

I was already in the market for a laptop anyway. I had done some research and found that I just did not want to spend the money on a decent laptop. I looked on eBay for shits and giggles and found this gaming laptop bidding for like $350 or I could buy it now for like $650 or something, I can’t remember. I knew I didn’t want to spend that kind of money. I need to add here that I’ve never won an auction on eBay. Every time I try to bid, some bot or someone outbids me. Do you see where this is going? Anyway, I decided to be an asshole and set the bid at $400 because I knew for sure I’d be outbid by someone. I don’t know why I did it, I guess I’m just miserable. The bid was also set to end in a few days. Well, those days go by and I completely forget about this auction until I get the notification about winning the bid. When do I ever win anything?? And of course, there was an additional charge for shipping so the new grand total is $442.93. I don’t even have that right now, so I’m scrambling to try to figure something out. I don’t have any credit cards attached to anything anymore because I got myself into a little pickle with all of that. I eventually figured out one of my credit cards was still linked, so I used that to pay for it. A tiny part of me was excited about getting the laptop, but a larger part of me was disappointed in myself for doing that and being so irresponsible.

After I win the bid, I go to pay and I realize there’s some kind of big gun in the background of one of the pictures like an automatic weapon or something. I don’t know anything about guns, but I just know that I’m now buying a laptop from someone who feels like it’s totally okay to have this gun sitting on the couch in the background of this picture. Now, I’m feeling very guilty and ashamed like I’ve just funded this guy’s murder spree or something and I’m freaking out a little bit. (Okay, I’m freaking out a lotta bit.) Everything goes smoothly and the next thing I know, I’m the proud new owner of a used gaming laptop. In my defense, I had checked around and there were a few other people selling the same model for a lot more and they weren’t in great condition. This one was in pretty good condition. Also, when I went to open the laptop, I noticed there was an SD card in the side of it, very visible. Of course, I took it out of the laptop before I started using it and I didn’t connect to Wi-Fi until after I had reset it.

Did you at least check to see what was on the SD card?

You, probably

HELL YEAH I DID!

Me, definitely

I plugged it into my Linux computer, of course, so I didn’t get any kind of bugs or anything from it. There were a few video files on there and they turned out to be dashcam footage. After I had done this, I realized I should not have looked at it at all because what if it was some kind of murder video (or way worse?!)?? What the actual fuck would I have done then??? I briefly thought about turning it into the police station just in case because it was just so weird to leave in there. Then I thought, what if the police arrest me or something??? I don’t know how the justice system works, clearly. I’m just always scared of something. Anyway, I asked the guy if he wanted me to send the SD card back to the address he sent me the laptop from and he told me to just throw it away. Of course, that just amplified the spooky feelings I was already feeling from before, so I still have the SD card. I don’t know why I kept it.

The guy had written that it would probably need a new battery soon and when I received the laptop, it wouldn’t even hold a charge. I ordered a new battery for about $30, so now this stupid laptop is a $470 laptop. I go through all the trouble of replacing the battery (which involved taking the entire laptop apart, why would it have been easy?) only to find that this thing is very slow. Here I am thinking maybe I should just try to get the RAM and stick it out (see what I did there? RAM, stick?) to see if anything gets better. So, now I’m looking at RAM options and I try to bid on some of those on eBay since I’m so lucky now. Guess what happened. Yep, I lost the bid. Fucking eBay. Also, RAM would have added an extra $25-$75 on top of everything else. Then another part of me is like, if I’ve already spent all of this money and it’s not even what I wanted anyway, maybe I should just try to ask the guy for a refund and see what happens. I talked it over with my fiancee, Sheila, while we were on an afternoon walk (this is kind of relevant, I don’t actually think everyone cares about every aspect of my life like that) and she said to go ahead and message him.

So, I message the guy and say this:

12:21 PM
Hi there, I replaced the battery so now the laptop is holding a charge but it’s running pretty slow. I just want to return it and just get back what I paid for it. I’ll leave the new battery in it and also send you the previous battery in case you want it too. It’s just not what I thought it would be. The whole reason I ordered it is because I thought it was going to be really fast, but it’s not.”

Then we ended up walking to dinner and while we were at dinner, I got a message from PayPal saying I got a refund. Wait, what? Then, I see my next notification was from eBay. Apparently, the guy had written me a few times, but since we were walking, I didn’t feel my phone vibrating. This is what he had written me:

12:26 PM
Hi Alex. I completely understand, i’m willing to 100% go through with a return transaction. Would you be able to do me a favor and wait until after the Holiday season? My finances are in a tough position right now, I want to ensure I can return your funds.

12:29 PM
Hey Alex, I understand & i’m 100% willing to go through with the transaction. If you could, may we wait until after the holiday season. My money is tight and I want to ensure I can return your money

12:46 PM
Hi alex, i’ve refunded your money and I want you to keep the laptop. Merry Christmas 🙂

ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS??? Holy fucking cow. I was literally on Cloud 9 the whole night and much of the next day. I’m still giddy about it. I have no idea what happened between 12:26 and 12:46, but whatever it was, I’m very grateful. I messaged him back and apologized for not seeing his message sooner and then I offered to still send the laptop to him, but he still declined and told me to gift it to someone or something. I hadn’t put in a request for a refund or anything official through eBay either, I just wanted to figure it out between us. It was all very cool.

Every time something bad happens to me, I’m so quick to pity myself and think “why me?” When good things happen, I’m trying to be mindful and remind myself, there’s my good karma/juju/vibes/whatever. And not just huge things like this, little things too. Like when a cop doesn’t pull me over for speeding or I don’t actually drop my cup of hot coffee all over me. This was very very very cool karma to get and I’m so happy and thankful.

Life & Other Thoughts

About a month ago, I started feeling very weird, like the “something-is-about-to-happen” type of weird. Usually, I feel like that and the feeling goes away or something actually does happen, but it’s always an uneasy feeling like there’s trouble looming. This time was different.

It started out like it usually does, the feeling of “something might happen, but I don’t know what it is” for a few days/week. Then it went to this feeling of overwhelming peace like everything is going to be okay and that’s when I got really scared. I always hear that before most people die, they have this weird peaceful sense.

Apparently, my dad reached out to a lot of people before he died. I was not one of those people, so that kind of hurt my feelings. I was also all caught up in being little shit and not giving him the time of day, so maybe he was just giving me my space. Also, he didn’t know he was going to die.

I should also note that right around the time I first started feeling this way is when the weather started to get really nice and beautiful outside, so I wasn’t sure if it was the weather change either. Maybe I’m just one of those people with weather depression/seasonal depression. Here I am thinking I just have regular depression. Little did I know, there are all types of depression out there. Mental illness is like fucking Ben & Jerry’s, there’s a flavor out there for everyone! And if they don’t have your flavor, just wait, it’ll be out in no time.

I wasn’t sure if the whole thing was just that I simply had been so “blah” for so long that when I finally felt happy, I didn’t recognize the feeling anymore, and I was genuinely scared or if it was that something might happen. That sounds way more depressing than it actually is. I didn’t realize how “blah” I had become. I’ve been so stressed out about trying to make money and get into a house and COVID-19 (yet another thing I have to get back to) and our future and babies and bills and debt that I kind of lost sight of the most important things.

I’ve kind of reconnected with my step-dad a little which felt really good. We weren’t on bad terms, but we’ve never really been close either. There was always a disconnect because we were constantly butting heads over something. I’ve been on this journey of reconstructing myself into someone I can be proud of, I guess? Or maybe I’m trying to create who I think my dad would’ve been proud of. I’m not sure. He’s the reason I even went back to school to get my Bachelor’s degree. I’ve never really cared much for school, but I also like it at the same time. I guess I just hate having to be somewhere and always feeling like I have to do something like homework or studying.

Anyway, so I’m trying to face everything head-on that has impacted me in any negative way. I’m filling voids that need to be filled and also trying to declutter parts of my life that don’t need to be there anymore. I have these goals in mind that I want to reach in a timely manner.

Fun fact: I always use “timely manner” in my résumés to make myself sound like I am really good at managing my time and like I’m sophisticated or something. In reality, I’m always rushing to get things done because I work better under pressure. Not really, I get super stressed out, but it’s when I do my best work somehow. Maybe because I just focus on what needs to be done rather than trying to beef it up with useless details or something? I don’t know. I’m mainly talking about like research papers or writing papers in general.

Maybe I’ll write my list of goals down somewhere and so the 10 people who read this blog can finally be satisfied because I know you guys are just waiting to hear everything about my life, right? Just kidding, I think it’s more like 3 people and I probably know them all in person and they’re probably only reading it because I keep talking about my blog IRL. I don’t know. I’m literally annoying myself right now. Jesus.

I’m trying to think of something to say besides “anyway” all of the time because that’s going to get old really quick. Back to the story (does this work? I guess we’ll see), so I’ve been trying to reshape myself and I’m finding that there are a lot of things that I may not get the chance to do in my lifetime, but there might be, I’m not sure yet. I’m only 30 and I’m already feeling like I’m running out of time. That could also be because I’ve never been able to picture myself as an old person. I’ve just never seen it. I can picture myself as different versions of myself or as a millionaire (lol, get real, I know), but I cannot picture myself as old. So, maybe that feeling I’m getting paired with that information could be a prediction or something. Or maybe I’m just being stupid, who knows?

So, just a recap, I started having this weird feeling that turned into overwhelming peace of mind. I couldn’t figure out if it was because of the beautiful weather or because of rekindling the relationship between my step-dad and me or if it was because something good was coming my way finally.

Something good like what?

Imaginary Person In My Mind Who Cares About Every Aspect In My Life (which words are supposed to be capitalized here?)

Okay, so I’ve been on this kick lately about trying to make one million dollars. I literally went bonkers a couple of months ago and started hardcore research on how the hell everybody is making millions somehow. What exactly did they do to get there? Were they born into it? Did they just get lucky? Were they one of the ones who sunk everything into a cryptocurrency that just took off? Are they killing the stock market? Did they work their asses off with 20 jobs to get there? Did they happen upon their millions by accident? What happened and how the fuck can I just “accidentally” fall into millions too? I’ve always researched here and there how to make passive income, how to make money online, how to do this, how to do that, blah blah blah. Lately, I’ve just been more serious about it and that has to do with a few factors, one of them being COVID-19. Again, I’ll talk about that later.

I’m on all of the Reddit threads about making money, retiring early, passive income, stocks, etc. Any time I see a TikTok about making money, I save the video to my phone so I can go back and rewatch it later. I have folders on my browsers that I save all of these methods to and I’ve watched countless videos on YouTube from self-made millionaires. Somehow, there’s always something you have to buy to find out. Whether it’s a course or a secret hidden in their book (but you have to buy their series of 12 books to find out and decrypt the code) or coaching or whatever the hell else they can think of. So, obviously, they’re making millions by selling the dream of making millions to other people. Is there a way to do it without selling the dream to other people? Is there a way to do it on your own? Kind of, but not really. There’s always going to be some kind of supply versus demand dynamic in anything you do. I’m going to share everything I’ve learned about making money, all you have to do is subscribe to my blog for $19.99 a month!

Just kidding, I hate when people do that. I am open to donations though. I also hate when people shill their donations page too, but I’m out here trying to give my cats a motherfucking catio, OKAY KAREN!? I’m just kidding again, I think I’ve had too much coffee.

IDK why the third option has that “strong” around it. I guess the poll is telling me how it actually feels? Whatever.

Hi, okay. Let’s get back to the important stuff. So anyway, a few years ago, I think in 2017 or 2018, I became part of a few subreddits dedicated to penny stocks and I also subscribed to WallStreetBets. See where this is going? I started playing around in the stock market and ended up making about $3,000 on little stocks and some penny stocks which was awesome. I’ve never made money like that before, so I was obviously walking around like my shit didn’t stink (but lean a little bit closer, see roses really smell like – wait, what was I saying? Just kidding, I just didn’t know if they say poo poo poo or boo boo boo. I feel like it’s boo boo boo, but when I looked up the lyrics, they are saying poo poo poo. I disagree).

OhMyGod, back to the topic AGAIN!!! I always get so upset when people interrupt me while I’m talking, but look at me. I’m the fucking worst. Ugh, okay so I made $3K and I was hot shit until the GameStop fiasco happened and I lost everything I had earned because I bought high and sold low like a true ape.

This is how they talk in WallStreetBets now, I think there are people in there that shouldn’t be in there making the group into something it never used to be, but whatever. Don’t go in there and do what I did because you’re probably going to get hurt unless you actually know what you’re doing unlike me.

Since then, I’ve dabbled on and off in the stock market. It is an excellent way to make good money and FAST, but it’s also a great way to lose money just as fast. Sometimes, I end up making a few bucks, but nothing crazy…yet. If you want to know how to lose money, let me know. I got you. I don’t know why I’m still trying, it’s like trying to box Mike Tyson and every time I crawl my way back to some sort of life, I get knocked out again. I know that’s a shitty comparison because I’d probably be smelling the back of my skull with what’s left of my nose if he hit me. I honestly just don’t know anything about sports or the athletes that partake in them so I’m going to stop myself here.

Moving on, the next adventure I tried was investing in cryptocurrency and yep, I lost money on that too. I bought and sold $DOGE at the wrong times. (I sold about 30,000 coins for about $1,000. Yes, I wanted to die and yes, every time I think about it, I want to die all over again.) To be fair, I did end up making a few people quite a bit of money on it though. I was just the dumbass who could not time the market correctly to save my life. The next adventure I got into is SafeMoon and I still do believe in that whole-heartedly. Sometimes the community gets a little out of control, but I still like their goals and what they stand for. I’m excited about where they are headed.

The next adventure I got into was dropshipping because that’s one of the ways people are making buckets of money. I am not one of those people. I did everything right: I applied to start an LLC through SunBiz so I could start up the legal way. Then I set up my PayPal and got my business phone line going. Then I got my bank account in order too. The only sale was from me trying to test the website before I realized there’s a whole testing section, so that was cool. Then they discontinued the product I was using as one of my main products. I was going to try to find a USA supplier for all of my goodies, but I haven’t been on there in a hot minute. I’m also not really trying as hard as I could because there are so many ways to make money out there, I’m just casting as many lines as I can to try to get a bite. What’s actually probably going to happen is that my lines are going to get tangled up and I’m going to have to end up cutting them loose. On the plus side, I am technically a business owner now! That’s pretty cool, I just wish it could at least be sustainable to pay some bills.

The next adventure I got into was Etsy and uploading the spreadsheet I’ve been using to track all of my debt and also some extra bits about the steps it takes to become a millionaire. (I’m going to shamelessly add my link here in case anyone wants to get in on the action. And yes, I made the whole sentence a link so no one would miss it.) I did the math a while back and if you start with only $1 and double your money 20 times, you’ll have $1,048,576. After that, you only have to double your money 10 times to have $1,073,741,824. That’s one BILLION dollars. Theoretically, this could be pretty easy if you made the right moves. Realistically, you have to be ready to go all in to double your money. A lot of people aren’t ready to part ways with the most money they’ve ever seen in their lives. If you have $32, you only have to double your money 15 times and so on and so forth. So anyway, I made a little spreadsheet mapping it all out and stuff because I printed it out and put it on my wall to try to manifest it. So yeah, I have that stuff on my Etsy to see if that gets me anywhere because I read that some guy had a couple of excel files he sells and makes around $50 a month in passive income. That $50 could add up!

Then I read about this game called Axie Infinity. It’s based on cryptocurrency and NFTs. There are basically two ways to make money, either you get a scholarship and play with someone else’s Axies and they pay you to play (usually the split is 50/50 or 60/40 or 70/30 with the higher cut always being in the scholar’s favor, which I thought was cool) or you buy your own Axies and play or you buy your own Axies and give someone else a scholarship which is where you would make money. You can also breed Axies and stuff, but I haven’t gotten into all of that yet. It seems like it’ll cost an arm and a leg right now with Ethereum being as high as it is and gas fees are higher than ever right now. Anyway, so I bought a few Axies to see if I could make some money as passive income and stuff. I started to play and realized I might’ve gotten in way over my head. I read that it was similar to Pokemon and I thought to myself, “I used to play Pokemon, how hard could it be?” What no one talks about is that when you get older, all of that knowledge just falls out of your head while you sleep, apparently. Also, maybe I wasn’t as good as I thought I was.

I just remembered when I was a kid and the GameBoy Color was all the rage, I was always playing Pokemon but I didn’t have many friends who were playing. I remember there was one where I had to send a Pokemon back and forth or something so it would evolve or something. I can’t remember. Anyway, I used all of my birthday money one year to buy myself another GameBoy so I could do that. I think we ended up selling the extra GameBoy or giving it away.

WARNING:
If you have problems with detachment and depersonalization, then don’t read the next part. I’ll put another red label afterwards to let you know when it’s over.

I put that disclaimer because this isn’t the first time I’ve felt like this, but I know when I think about it too long, it happens again and I have to be careful or my brain is all wonky for a few days. This is the worst it’s ever been though and I think that’s because I gave into the feelings.

I’ve been going through a lot lately internally and I feel like maybe I’m on the brink of a mental break or something. I went through this thing where I started believing that everyone and everything around me was like a figment of my imagination and we are in some type of Matrix deal. I’ve heard about the Matrix conspiracy before but never gave it much thought because I know how dangerous conspiracy theories can be once I go down that rabbit hole. Anyway, it got pretty scary, but I didn’t exactly want to go parading it around that I thought I was losing my fucking mind. That would have been the icing on the cake. I just acted like everything was normal because it was, I was the one being abnormal. I did mention it to Sheila (my fiancée) a little bit casually because it was weighing heavily on my mind one day and I had a hard time shaking it off.

Ever since my dad died, I figured out how to ground myself when I feel myself spiraling or detaching, but this was just something else entirely. I really started feeling like if I’m the only one in my world, then what’s the point of living in it? Especially when I’m torturing myself trying to make it into this tax bracket that I’m realistically never going to be in unless I really bust my ass trying and even then, it’s still a long shot. What exactly is real, anyway? What if Sheila is just the part of my imagination where I have to challenge all of my ideas and learn to love myself? She’s not actually there, no one is. Everyone around me is just me constantly making up new characters in my mind to deal with different parts of my life. It sounds pretty narcissistic, doesn’t it? No one else exists. It’s just me, myself, and I in this universe that I’ve created around myself. Which, yes, in a way that’s how all of our lives are. We create the world we’re living in. Sheila and I both have very different views of the world, yet we’ve spent almost 10 years of our lives being inseparable, so we’ve experienced much of the same things. We just have different angles we see these things from. The same thing goes for my family too, we’re blood and we have the same thought process when it comes to a lot of things, but we have different experiences.

Anyway, so I basically just had these weird feelings and it was difficult because, at one point, I truly believed I was going to die soon and I started to get very sad. I thought about how much I would miss my fiancée, our families, my cats, our home, everything, and everyone around me. I just got really sad and it was really tough, especially because I felt like I couldn’t really talk about it. (I’m opening up now because the feeling is gone, but obviously, I know I could die any moment because humans are actually really fragile.) I didn’t want to burden anyone with how I was feeling and I was scared I might just need to check myself into a mental hospital. Then I’d forever have that title hovering over my head like the plumbob hovering over the Sims’ head (yes, I looked up what it was actually called… I didn’t just have that weird piece of information sitting in my brain).

What the fuck is a plumbob?

You, probably

I feel back to normal now and I’ll explain why down below, but I was actually scared for a while there. It lasted about 2 or 3 weeks, but it’s gone now. I don’t know if it’s the after-effects of COVID-19 or not either. It could’ve just been a premonition because of some pretty cool things that happened later. Again, I’ll explain below, let me end my disclaimer. Hold your horses, Pete!

This is the end of my warning. We’re back to the regular fucked up shit and not the weird existential crisis bullshit.

I don’t know why I feel the need to type out every little fucking thought that pops into my head. Whatever.

Actually, this is getting pretty long. I’m going to continue into another post so I don’t write an entire book right now. Ta-ta (haha, boobs) for now!