Things Change, part 3

February 17, 2022 — Kaye

Three years later. Let’s make this simple and sweet.

  • I’m in college again. For someone who hates debt and school, I can’t seem to stay out of it. Well, 2020 didn’t help, and the jobs I got after leaving trade school sucked anyway. This time, I’m going for an associate’s degree. The transfer credits helped, though. It’ll take only another year to pursue a bachelor’s, if I choose to.
  • I’m on my third car. It’s older than my niece, but that makes me a little less perfectionist about it. No accidents so far.
  • I’ve been with the company I’m at for 2 1/2 years. Too long, but can’t complain about consistency. I wanted a steady job, and I got one. And it pays more!
  • Moving date is set for January 2023. Boyfriend is coming. Oh, and we’ve been together for seven years now. Well, I’m hooked. In more ways than one.
  • Social media bores me now. Seriously. I never thought I’d see the day I’m tired of it, but nothing about it entertains me. I keep it for my friends. That’s it.
  • Started investing, paying down card debt, made a budget, and opened another bank account. In other words, I’ve gotten heavily into personal finance. Let’s see how long this interest lasts. I give it a year.
  • Gym consistently. Only once a week right now, but it was a start. Three times a week off the bat wasn’t happening.
  • Stopped trying to lose weight. I didn’t like my body at 112 lbs at 12 years old, 122 lbs at 14, 130 lbs at 18, 150 lbs at 22, and I don’t like it at 175 lbs at 27. I don’t like the stretch marks, bumps, the look of my toes, my eyes (brown is boring), my height, or my hair either. And a variety of other things. In fact, I want surgery. Do you see where I’m going with this? There has never been a time in my life when I liked my body – even the times I lost weight (hence why I regained it) – and it’s safe to say at this point, there never will be. But the gym is fun, so I do that.

Something I’ve noticed is when I become secure in a certain position, I begin to feel bored and crave something else. Maybe that’s because I’m used to chaos. I won’t ruin the few good things I have. I want things to be secure and consistent. I want to know what will happen, so I can plan for it. And I want my brain to stop fantasizing!

 

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Things Change, part 2

April 11, 2019 — Kaye

Four years later.

When I browse through my archives, I feel like I barely know the person who wrote those entries. I have a diary blog on Blogger I haven’t updated since December 2014, but keep around for the sake of looking back when I want to read my old stuff. I pity my younger self for a lot of the hopes and ideas she had, despite I had no way of knowing they’d become a disaster until they did. There have been a lot of changes, big and small. Of course, the one thing I want to change hasn’t and I’m not hopeful it will. But there are many things I couldn’t picture until they happened.

One of the biggest changes is my desire to own a house. On my diary blog, I mention wanting no less than a three-bedroom house, and no less than a five-bedroom house if I have a partner. I even entertained the thought of having a six-bedroom house! Much like my childhood dream of being a veterinarian sputtered out because I grew up to realize how much schooling is needed, my dream of owning a house died because I learned about mortgage, loans, household repairs, property taxes, and most annoyingly, HOAs. Actually, this opinion is seven years old, but at the time, I only knew about HOAs. I am not buying a house, only to be told what I can and can’t do with it! People argue renting is bad because “you’ll have nothing to show for it at the end of your life except a bunch of rent receipts”, but I don’t care about having anything “to show” for strangers. If how I live my life bothers you that much, that’s your problem. I’d rather not take out a loan for the sake of having a boring house to show off either. If I buy a house, I should be able to do what I please with it. If HOAs make that impossible, home ownership isn’t worth it. And no, I wouldn’t care what the neighbors think. They wouldn’t be the ones paying the mortgage or living there. If I want to paint my house with rainbow polka-dots, there should be rainbow polka-dots on the outside paneling! No arguments! I wouldn’t paint my house with polka-dots, but the point is I should have that freedom.

So, yeah, I’m cool with renting for life. May as well with all the restrictions HOAs have.

Something funny I came across in one of my early 2015 posts is referring to my boyfriend as a friend, and insisting I won’t let any more relationships go beyond friend. I sure failed at that! In my defense, I had good reasons. Nevertheless, I have no regrets, but should we ever break up, I will not enter the dating world again. As I said in that linked post, dating sucks.

On my diary blog, I claimed I wouldn’t return to college if I had to take out loans, and when I did return to college, I wouldn’t study IT. Do I really need to say that proved to be a huge falsehood? It goes without saying! No regrets about that one being wrong either. I hate I have loans, but $12,000 is manageable. It was worth that certificate.

Above all, I think what makes me really different from the person who started this blog and my old diary one is I don’t feel so hopeless anymore. Perhaps not here, but many of the diary posts and Tumblr posts are about how I constantly feel depressed, hopeless, and want to kill myself. I think that’s what’s really unrecognizable. Of course, I still have bad days and bad times, but I no longer wake up to wish I had died overnight. I travel when I need to, I work, I spend time with people I love when I can, I stay out late, I have money, and I now have a certificate. All of that probably makes a big difference.

Among the smaller changes: I gave up drawing to focus on writing because I never was passionate about the former, I’ve had Cities: Skylines for four years and don’t play it anymore, I don’t care for Pokemon anymore (I didn’t enjoy the Let’s Go games, and the price jump from $40 to $60 didn’t help; I like Pokemon, but the games aren’t worth $60, and I don’t like the eighth generation starters either, meaning the last generation I liked was the seventh), and I refuse to allow my retail job to take over my life anymore. Maybe that last one isn’t a small change, but for me, it was as simple as not going in extra every time I’m asked. I remember when I was so excited to have my first job. Now, I’m yearning to leave it for a higher-paying one that isn’t retail.

I can’t think far ahead, but I look forward to the next changes that will happen over the years, assuming they are positive. I mentioned in a recent post I’m studying to finally get my driver’s license, so that’s one change I have my hopes up for. It’ll still be a long time before I can get a car, but having the license is the first step. I think at the moment, that’s the change I’m most looking forward to.

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Something Old, Something New

August 31, 2018 — Kaye

Something red, something… silver!

I started a new job yesterday. I won’t work with them again until after next week because I must finish this upcoming week at my old job. It’s still a clothing store, but smaller and much more expensive! My old job turned me into a shopaholic, but I will not shop at my new store! Too pricy! The first day went well, though. Everyone’s super nice, nothing too hard, and I got all the on-boarding done. So many manuals! I am still employed with my old job, but as an on-call employee. I confess part of that is, despite all my complaints, being my first job makes me somewhat attached to them. That, and how I like so many of my co-workers. Having a heart sucks!

One of my bosses told me this recently: “Don’t burn a bridge.”

Putting aside the hope that bridge has two sides, I have to wonder how often bridges have been burned to say that. I certainly didn’t want to leave on bad terms, but I know a lot of people just stop showing up or quit that very day. I (unintentionally) gave them only a week’s notice instead of two, partly because I had no idea how transitioning to on-call works, but they didn’t hold it against me. I’ve learned anything can happen, so for all I know, I could go back to them as part-time someday (if they let me), so I very much don’t want to that bridge to become ashes.

I think the biggest change, however, is I’m paid bi-weekly instead of weekly now. That’s undoubtedly going to take some getting used to!

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Dreams Change

June 14, 2016 — Kaye

I feel like I may have talked about this already, but I can’t find it in my archives, so maybe I haven’t.

Something I’ve noticed happen to me over the years is many things I used to long for aren’t desires anymore. In fact, most of my long-term desires are very simple. I’m not sure if it’s happened because I’ve become a cynic or if it’s a result of growing up and learning to be more realistic about both my own limits and life in general.

The best example of this is from when I was a child. One of the most common questions children are asked is, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” My answer was always, “I want to be an animal doctor.” When I learned how to say “veterinarian”, I would answer with that to sound more adult-ish.

Naturally, as a child with a very limited view of the world at the time, I assumed being a veterinarian was little more than checking ears and eyes, and occasionally giving shots to animals just as my doctor did to me, a human. I thought the only difference between playing “doctor” with my stuffed animals and being a doctor of real ones would be the animals are alive.

That childhood dream only lasted until 7th grade, when I finally learned being a veterinarian, and a doctor in general, is much more complicated than it looked in my childish eyes. You have to go to school for a very long time and it’s not cuteness and cuddling the pets most of the day. Of course, nobody told me that before I learned it from science class and the internet. Many people would deem someone cold-hearted, at least, for potentially crushing a child’s dreams. I can’t say if being told earlier what I learned later on would’ve been better, but I’m certain I would’ve recovered from the shock.

I’ve had several other dreams and desires change or fall away entirely due to learning the realism of them: owning a house, having a huge career, having children (yes, I did want children at one point; before I hit 12), certain jobs, and even having a garden, which I previously wrote was my biggest dream.

Some people may say it’s lazy or lacking motivation to change or not go after your dreams for reasons like not wanting to continue school, but I think it’s smart. Let’s face it. Everyone is not cut out for everything. It’s not so much I no longer want these things as it is I now know what I’m capable of handling and what I’m not. To use the veterinarian example again, I’m sick of school. Absolutely sick of it. Graduating high school felt like being released from a 14-year long prison sentence. I was so fed up with school, my family had to put constant pressure on me to attend college and while I did go, it didn’t work out since I had no clue what I wanted to study nor did I want to be there. It would make no sense to put myself through 8+ more years of schooling when I’m so fed up with school, having the debt I’ve obtained is preferable. Add to that I’m very squeamish, sensitive, and get disgusted at the sight of fictional blood and waste, and it wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever to pursue any kind of career in medicine, let alone one as a veterinarian. Let’s also not forget schooling is very expensive. I’d wring myself out like a towel if I went through even one year of medical school and realized I wasn’t cut out for it.

Does that mean I’m not willing to work, and work hard, for anything? Absolutely not. There are some things I still want, despite knowing what it’ll take to get them, and am very much willing to work toward. In fact, I have one of those things. At some point, I decided I was ready for and wanted a relationship, and after two years of bad dating and a little bit of luck, I found a very happy one with a wonderful person. Considering the stories I’ve heard, it seems I got off easy with that, but I sure don’t feel that way, especially since my naïveté led to me having the worst sexual experience of my life.

It only means I know myself better and I’ve discarded dreams that are not reality as I believed they were. I know the difference between the fantasies in my head and what I’ll need to do in reality, and have decided the reality isn’t worth it. If whatever path I go down leads to some of those discarded dreams returning, I’ll reconsider them and for that reason, I stay open to the possibilities. For now, however, they are not active desires, and the desires and dreams I do have remain much more simplistic and generic.

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Birthday Resolutions

April 18, 2013 — Kaye

Not counting today, my birthday is in eight days. As far as I’m not concerned, it’s not different than any other birthday, except it marks that I’ve officially been a legal adult for one full year. The only big thing happening this year is my high school graduation.

Pretty much all of my life has been dictated for me. However, I’m not a kid anymore and the whole “you’re a kid and don’t have any say” is old. The only way I’d better not have any say in something is if there’s some future benefit or there’s a damn good reason behind it.

I came up with some rules for my life beyond this point, not just in reference to controlling my own life, but also to developing my own self-esteem. Really, if I’m going to hate myself for as long as I live, I may as well die. Read the rest of this entry »

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