aka tkcamas, angstydaisy, amateurtattletale, ladypolarity, &c. ... "esse quam videri" ... described colloquially as a time traveler's life-log while navigating this brief (encompassing that which does not exceed a singular lifetime) hiatus from the cosmic time tide of nonlinear time travel, upon this rock called Earth as it sails around a star named Sun, a name, oddly enough, that is my alien name in this foreign language, and so, "nullius in verba"
Obviously, Orca are not our friends. We hunt, steal, kill and enslave them. At least they're revealing themselves to be even smarter than we ever thought, in that they are not killing us. They could easily tip the boats in such a way that the people in them are thrown off board, and then they could kill them. But the orca are not doing this. They are damaging the boats themselves, not the people on board. I would wager an enormous bet that they understand that humans are a "life for a life" type of creature.
[HEADLINE]
I've worked in food service since I was seventeen years old. I am thirty-seven, as I type. My first official job was as a summertime host at a full-service local spot in Basalt, Colorado. By the end of the summer, I was a server. Even though I wasn't old enough to serve alcohol, the manager let me; I just had to keep my mouth shut. By the following summer, I landed a server position at the upscale Tempranillo, in Basalt for the following two summers. I made about $300/night, on average.
Since then, I've worked at a McAlister's Deli, Starbucks, a Chinese-food restaurant, a French-style bistro, and in a grocery store as a person who cuts up fresh fruits and veggies so that they're ready-to-eat and as a commercial baker. Our very first business was food service, and I still work in food service, to this day.
What I've learned over the two decades I've worked in food service is that people who have never worked in food service do not understand exactly how much power food service workers hold over their food/beverages. The fact that lazy-ass motherfuckers, who eat out every fucking day, want a personal human being to make them their food, complain about tipping the preparers of said food is outright disgusting to me.
If you don't want to tip, don't fucking eat out! It's that simple.
And if you're like, "Oh, but the reports say that it's the credit card companies who are really benefiting from all of this," then pay in fucking cash. I've said it before, and I'll keep on saying it ...
As an everyday consumer, IF YOU CAN'T AFFORD SOMETHING IN CASH, YOU CAN'T AFFORD IT!
If you don't want to tip the person who handles your food/beverages, then don't. Don't gripe that the credit card machine is prompting you, and it makes you "feel bad" to not leave a tip. Everyone who works in a food service establishment knows who the bad customers/tippers are. We all know, and we behave accordingly. We prepare your food/beverages accordingly.
Have you ever wondered why your venti, soy, triple-shot white mocha doesn't wake you up anymore? Ask yourself if you're a good customers, i.e. friendly and a good tipper. If you're not, you're probably getting decaf shots, etc. Facts. And this "customized" beverage is a very banal example.
My point is that everyone, in general, has the idea of eating out ass-fucking backward. Eating out is a treat. It's a privilege. Even eating fast food is a privilege. What you're demanding is a private chef. You're embracing a lifestyle wherein a human person prepares your food/beverages for you. If you cannot see how you need to treat these people (like me) both well and abundantly, then you can go fuck yourself.
If you don't want to tip, make your own goddamn latte; make your own goddamn meal. Oh, you don't know how? You lack cooking skills? THEN FUCKING TIP!
[HEADLINE]
When you feel down, and you're prompted to "be grateful" and/or "find gratitude today," and you're internal instinct is to think about how other people have it worse than you, you're not being grateful; you're comparing yourself to other people and deciding that you're better than them. That's PRIDE (not like lgbtq+ pride), like "Pride comes before the fall"—type Pride.
Gratitude, instead, is realizing that all of the challenges in your life, everything that you're going through and have gone through makes you a better person, has created within you, a human who is learning what it means to live this life in a way that is better not only for yourself but also, for all humankind.
Looking back on your life and accepting it, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful, is gratitude.
I've always been an emotional eater, so sayeth my adopted mother, and I believe her, because I've been aware of my emotional eating for as long as I can remember taking note. The first time I, myself, realized that I am, in fact, an emotional eater was when I was in college. I was miserable, and I starved myself.
Thus, I've learned, that since I love food so much, the cure to my emotional lack-of-eating is to eat, a lot, of whatever will make me feel happy, i.e. kimchi, chips, frozen burritos, etc. And today, I ate all of those things because I am feeling low. I think that I hit my lowest last week, but the miserable climb from the pit of despair is just that ... fucking miserable.
Why am I so miserable? you wonder, while knowing that I recently moved to "paradise" on Earth? Well, it's multi-fold. First, moves are physically difficult. My physical body is no longer existing within a location within which it is familiar. I feel the physical stress of changing locations from somewhere familiar to somewhere new.
Second, moves are psychologically difficult. My psychological mind has to create new pathways of being within an environment that is new. I feel the psychological stress of changing locations from somewhere familiar to somewhere new.
Third, moves are financially difficult. It costs money to move, and it cost kind of a lot of money to move here, Hawai'i, the most expensive state in the United States, apparently. Something we knew intellectually but somehow did not register intelligently. Not that we "should not" have moved; affording it has been no struggle, but we are not spenders. We obviously had our living expenses in Longmont, but aside from our most expensive expense, rent, we NEVER spent more than about $50 on anything for any reason. We are unfamiliar with spending and spending and spending on all of the things that are required for a move. We feel the stress of "having to" spend on stuff because we got rid of all of our stuff to move here. We packed up suitcases; that's it. And no, it would not have been cheaper to have shipped all our shit.
Four, although we are still jobbing for the same company, we are in a new location, and I am training for a completely new job. The bodybuddy/lifemate is basically doing the same job, but it's a different store with new coworkers and new management. I am also now working full-time as opposed to part-time.
Five, we used to be together all day every day. We had the exact same schedule at work, and we had the exact same days off, and we worked from home on our business, together. We haven't had a day or even an hour apart since February 2021. This was by design, and we loved it. We are co-dependent. I have long-lasting issues with regards to my abandonment/adoption, and even as an adult, I still have to cope with my trauma on a daily, ongoing basis. I am not debilitated by my co-dependence. I am more than capable of being away from my bodybuddy/lifemate and exist in the world without him by my side, but I do not choose to be away from him. Nevertheless, I am capable of functioning by myself. But if I don't have to, why would I?
Six, we don't really know why we are here. We want to be here, but with our entire life hanging in the air, it is hard for us to remember exactly what it is that we thought we would find here, because the pull of "what was" is so strong at the moment, because the pull of "the familiar" pulls at us with such longing, even though we both remember that we definitely needed a change, wanted to leave Longmont.
Seven, we've done exactly this sort of thing before. We've done it exactly four times before when we moved from Denver, Colorado to South Korea, South Korea to Auckland, New Zealand, Auckland to Seattle, Washington, Seattle to Longmont, Colorado. We remember being miserable during the transition period, and that transition period lasted for a minimum of about three months.
We've only been in Hawai'i for a little over six weeks. We moved into our condo less than a month ago, and we cleared our first two weeks at our new jobs today. And yet, I feel as though I should feel different. I feel as though I should feel settled. And that's crazy. I sound like a crazy person demanding of myself that I feel anything but shaken, stirred, a bit unsettled.
All of these feelings I feel are perfectly within the realm of normal.
Yet my life is not "perfect." Hawai'i is not "perfect." Our condo is not "perfect," so I somehow feel as though we've made a mistake, that all is lost, that I'm stupid and crazy for thinking that we'd be happy here. In short, I feel like a failure.
The reality is that there's no knowing whether or not I'll be happy here, because I simply haven't even been here long enough to know whether or not I'll be happy. And the things that make this place "not perfect," are superficial, meaning they are "problems" we would face anywhere, no matter where we moved.
I know for sure that I like all of the people we've met so far (with an exception or two), and I know that we love being in this warm climate. We also know that we love being in essentially a Little Asia with Asian markets a plenty, Korean food at our fingertips, the beach within a fifteen minute walk of our front door, and yet, all I can see is that the condo is a little loud, there are some homeless (excuse me, unhoused [as an aside: you may prefer the euphemism "unhoused" to homeless, but it means the exact same thing, the prefix of "un" is "not," which is essentially the exact same thing as being without, which is what the suffix of "less" means, there's no literal difference between being "not housed" and being "without house," fuck the libtards!; and don't come at me about how "home" connotes an idea of "home" being wherever the heart fucking is, and that what they lack is a house not a "home;" it's not like anyone surveyed the homeless to find out what they want to be called, and I'd make a bet that they don't give a fuck; they have more pressing issues at hand; only an elitist cunt would think that homelessness is due to the fault of the person without a home, therefore demanding that they not be called "without home" because it's not their fault they're "lacking;" homelessness is a symptom of a shitty society, a society that cares more about using the "proper" word to define a problem rather than fixing the problem itself.] fuck the libtards!), and the city itself is not as cool as we had imagined.
The point, they say, is that I am "supposed to" remind myself that things could be worse or that I "should be" grateful that my life is what it is. My point is that change is the point. Change puts us into unfamiliar territory, and then, we are forced to learn something about ourselves. This is the thing that I love about moving and changing my environment. Yes, I feel miserable from time-to-time, at the moment, but feelings are fleeting. My feelings about my situation change about every hour. I am living in a moment of instability, and this instability is making me feel unstable. Duh.
Thus, I remembered, today, that I am an emotional eater, so I ate. I cooked up some ramen, my way (since the bodybuddy/lifemate wasn't home, I didn't have to temper or tone down my favorite way of eating it), then I ate some chips, and then I ate a frozen burrito. And now, I am currently deciding what I will eat next. I'll definitely drink a glass of wine when the bodybuddy/lifemate gets home, and then we will go buy a fifteen pack of cheap Keystone beers, and then I will drink a beer. And then I will probably eat some cake (for the bodybuddy/lifemate's bday), and then I will definitely eat more chips.
Life is short. Learning how to be me is my highest priority. How do I want to move through this world? Why did I move here? What am I here to accomplish? What am I here to learn? Why is life so difficult to live? Where do I look to find the answers? Who can I trust to help guide me on my journey? When my life ends, will I be happy with who I turned out to be? These are the things that matter, not the little day-to-day issues that I have to "deal with" because there is nowhere in this world where I can escape the day-to-day issues of the day-to-day.
So I'm focusing on the bigger picture. I have to use all of my mental powers to stay focused on the bigger picture, the bigger picture of our financial freedom, the bigger picture of my business, the bigger picture of our LOPSIII ideology, the bigger picture of my need to help others be freed from financial servitude.
I am here for a reason. Not knowing what that reason is when I am not settled, because I've only been here for mere weeks is OKAY! My impatience has gotten the best of me a few days during this transition, but it hasn't gotten the best of me every day, which means I am more me than I've ever been before, which is all good news, in the big scheme of my life. And I feel excited for the first time since the move about the future. I do not know what it holds, but I must remind myself that every other time we've uprooted ourselves, it has been for the better. There's no reason why I should stop believing in us, now. We've come so far, proven ourselves too much to not believe in us.
Therefore, I believe in me. I believe in us. I believe in our dreams and goals. I believe that we are here for a reason and that reason can only be revealed over time. I believe that I was put on this Earth to create and make real my LOPSIII ideology. Whatever I have to do to make that happen, I will do it. Even if it means jobbing a shitty job so that we don't succumb to Parkinson's Law. I will do it. Because I must. It's in the math. I don't really have a choice. I will be the Black Swan event that nobody could have ever thought to predict. I will change this world for the better through my vision of what a new-capitalism can be.
See you on the other side!
Until then, here's a video I made of the ramen I made myself in the name of self-care *peace*
