It's been a long year

Let’s talk about how the year started because it started on a rather positive note for me. I started the year out having quit my old overnight job at Walmart without notice on Christmas night. I simply just stop showing up and put an application into Amazon to start ASAP. I spent that early part of the year getting adjusted to my new job working in an Amazon sort center while Aryia was working as a waitress at a Japanese restaurant and as an Uber driver on the side. We were living a pretty modest life during these months, mostly just focused on starting our savings together and trying to get me some proper medical attention for some issues I was having with my immune system. We were focusing on some of the world events but didn’t pay too close attention since we felt there were more pressing matters in our personal life that needed our attention. Early 2020 was a very humble time in our little part of the world, we just wanted to start focusing on saving money to eventually move out of our current apartment. Looking back, I am happy that our start of the year was so humble and we were able to just find some peace in those times. I quite enjoyed working in a sorting center, my entire job was stacking boxes and throwing boxes, these are things I am more than happy doing for a living. I was also pretty happy with the fact that my hours were flexible and worked with my school hours. This made those early months some of the least stressful months I’ve had in years and compared to the rest of 2020. I am not gonna lie, it was a rollercoaster from here on out.

Around March I decided it was time to leave Amazon and pick up in a field I had a lot of experience in, sales. This was both by choice and by happenstance because I ended up quite ill due to getting exposed to something during a “grassroots meeting” at Amazon. This illness was pretty much nearly two weeks of the worst stomach problems. As a result, I ended up eating through all of my UTP (unpaid time off) and was just getting by on being able to score VTO (voluntary time off.) My time at Amazon was coming to an end and it was time for me to move on to a different job. I applied for a job for a company that specifically sells cell phones/cell phone plans in Walmart and Sam’s Clubs. This seemed like a rather ideal job for me at the time as I already had a lot of experience doing just that when previously working at Walmart. The funny story about this job was that I was pretty smug about getting this job. I literally showed up to my job interview wearing cat ears just to see if they would hire me due to my qualifications. I ended up getting called from the District Manager telling me that he was impressed with my resume and how I presented myself, but was really confused by the cat ears and asked me not to wear them when I started working for them. So that’s how I got hired for that job and that has stuck with me as a highlight for this year.

The first week when I started this job COVID-19 started just becoming serious in the US. I ended up only working for a week and getting the flu, just a normal boring flu. I got a doctor’s note and had to stay home. I spent most of this week just playing Animal Crossing and relaxing. I also decided to start wearing the masks that I had been previously wearing when working at Amazon when I returned to my work. The week I returned was the week when everyone was panic buying toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Despite the panic, I was the only person wearing a mask and that ended up getting me a lot of attention from customers. April ended up being one of my best months in terms of sales made due to how many people noticed my mask and wanted to talk to me. Worth noting the cute cat masks that I am often posting on here are the masks I wore to work, which really got people’s attention and started most conversations. I think this was the last “good month” for me with this job because I ended up just going downhill from here. In terms of my personal life at this time. Aryia ended up losing her job due to Covid and she started her struggle with unemployment. This resulted in a lot of debt that we are still dealing with as of writing this blog post. It makes me happy knowing our relationship has been strong, if not grown stronger as we’ve been going through troubling times.

I would say May was more of the same, but due to Covid sales completely dropped and our money started to grow thinner as the days went on. We started digging into our savings to start paying for the rapidly growing debt and my job wasn’t helping. There were a lot of panics caused by uncertainty if my job was still going to be in the morning or not. There were days when going to work was met with a lot of issues, like newly changing regulations on everyone. This created a lot of stress and made focusing on personal time and schoolwork all just the worst. I was starting to struggle more with the hours I was working, I was finding less time to balance school, work, and life. May was the month when a lot of my stress started becoming more and more unbearable. Aryia was just starting to get somewhere with unemployment after spending weeks fighting between two different states trying to figure out who owed her money. This was a rather stressful month of uncertainties for us.

June was a little more manageable due to the world slowly settling into the new normal. My job started becoming a bit easier to manage and I had moved to a slower store for my job. This allowed me more time to do some of my school work during my lunch and breaks. Aryia had her unemployment fixed and we were seeing some money coming in from that as well. Things started looking a bit better for us. I was also pretty happy to be wearing a mask everywhere because I love wearing masks. I wanted a socially acceptable reason to wear masks everywhere for years now, so this new normal was the best normal for me! This was the time when we started noticing a lot of improvements to my health. I was getting sick a lot less, my allergies weren’t nearly as bad, and I was more willing to travel and venture outside. I am never returning to life without wearing masks. This is something that has improved my life and I am not going back to a life where just walking in a small crowd would get me sick for weeks. This was a good part of 2020 for me. At the end of June, Aryia proposed to me in her own geeky way. We were talking about bills and the cost of living together when I brought up the fact that much of our bills would get lower or be easier to manage if we were married. She then asked, “Why aren’t we married then?” and I asked, “Are you proposing to me?” And she said, “Yeah, looks like I am.” So we got engaged and decided it would be best to just do a courthouse marriage than a wedding later.

July started for us, just newly engaged and we were able to enjoy the 4th of July fireworks with our friends. I don’t like loud noises, but I was able to enjoy them with some calming music and in the arms of Aryia the entire time. This was a great way to start the month and lead to the fun adventures of getting married. We first tried in the state we live in but that was a mess because apparently we were required to have the wedding and other nonsense first before we could get the license. This sounded like garbage but we didn’t care to fight it because I had another idea, which just required us to drive to another state where I knew we could easily have a courthouse marriage. This ended up being a lot easier, we just had to answer a few questions, fill out some paperwork, and then get it signed by someone authorized to marry people. This was convenient as I am actually friends with a Satanic priest. He was a friend of my ex-boyfriend and someone I actually introduced to Satanism, so I am proud of him and the progress he’s made on his journey in life since we first met. That aside, Aryia and I drove 2 hours upstate to meet with him and have him sign our paperwork, and hang out with him and his wife for a bit. We spent a few hours up there with them and admiring their massive video game, manga, and anime collection. Then we went on our way with our signed paperwork. We drove back to the courthouse, turned everything in, and on July 7th, 2020, we got married! The rest of July was spent hiking and venturing into the world together. The weather was quite nice most of the month and there were very few days with too much rain or humidity. Even though the month ended with a mild stomach illness, it was still one of the better months of the summer.

August had the potential to be good, I started the month out with a 2-week vacation but things got pretty dark. At the start of that vacation, I went to my doctor to test how my hormones were doing. We also had questions about my questionable immune system and had some test run to see if anything was odd about my blood. Thus far, the most we saw was my white blood cell count seemed a bit high, my vitamin D is super low, and I am a bit anemic. This caused a lot of stress during my vacation because I really don’t know what’s going on but something is clearly off. I am in a lot of pain and thus far we still lack a lot of answers. My time away from work was a stressful time and returning to work was just as stressful. I was sent home or asked to stay home by my manager several times, he saw just how broken I was about several upcoming tests that I needed to be done. August was just a month of stress and depression created by the realization that my health questions are going to take longer to answer. Many of the obvious and scarier possibilities were tested and eliminated, but this is still something that’s being dealt with as of the writing of this blog post.

September was kind of an uneventful month, outside of having several of the tests from August done during September and my sales being better than August, it was a pretty uninteresting month. The most interesting part of the month was a lovely hike I went on with my wife, her sister, and their friend. We went mushroom hunting and ended up finding a massive amount of oyster mushrooms on a tree! We made an amazing mushroom stew out of them and I got plenty of pictures of interesting fungi and plants. I used the hike as a good opportunity to practice my photography skills, which was something I got into during 2020 but really started exploring this new hobby during the summer of 2020. I will include some of my favorite pictures I took over the summer and the phones they were taken on.

These turned out too big to upload directly to the Temp, so I upped them to Google Drive. I might add more to it in time, I really want to share my photos.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1UgdOlGb9__VRzHQBdY8egJBCTeVWA7R4?usp=sharing

October was another pretty ok and uneventful month. I spent most of this month watching anime and shows on Netflix, like She-Ra, and rewatching Made in Abyss so I could really be hurt by the 3rd movie. Although this month was a fun month as the classes I was doing were super easy for me, which meant more time could be spent gaming. I was able to really connect with several friends and get my Minecraft server more active. It felt nice to not feel so constantly stressed all the time. Aryia and I also spent a lot of time together in the kitchen making different and new meals together and bonding the entire time. We also got to spend Halloween with some of her family friends, who turned out to be super cool people. I was even able to enjoy Halloween with a proper ritual to finish off the night. October was such a necessary month for my mental health.

November was a fucking nightmare that I hope I never do again. The month started out hectic with neither my boss nor me knowing what was going on for the upcoming Black Friday event for Walmart. We didn’t even have our schedules, until about a week into the month when we found out with very little notice that we were all going to be working 60 to 70 hours a week for 2 weeks. Just one day off both of those weeks and working 10+ to 12+ hour days. On top of these horrible hours, I was working alone in my store, my manager was helping in the bigger store that he also managed. I still had my school work with a health class that I wasn’t allowed to fail or it was going to fuck up everything for me. So I had to buckle down and I worked nearly 90 hours that week, with next to no lunches, coming in early, and leaving late. The Saturday after the event was over, I was so drained that I nearly passed out at work. I was running for nearly two weeks, one day off, 4 to 5 hours of sleep a night, and a lot of caffeine. My body could no longer handle it and I was sent home and to a doctor. I had caught a viral infection, I was dehydrated, and dealing with exhaustion. Walking, standing, or even just functioning was out of the picture. It was a needed break from the abuse, but something that was completely avoidable and led to me putting my two weeks in only a few days after this all happened. I was finally just done with the job and realized that I couldn’t do this anymore. I was so drained of life that I was noticeably more sickly looking and less happy. By this point, this job had just become an abusive situation for me and I decided it was time to leave.

December rolled around and I was preparing to leave my job and finish the finals for the health class I was in. My replacement was hired and I started training him on how to do my job, which he quickly picked up. I was really happy with the replacement that they found and felt like it was finally a good time to begin my leave. December 14th rolled around and I made my way out the door. I said my goodbyes, removed myself from the work chats, and threw my badge away when I got home. The job was done and I was finally free from that job. This gave me time to focus on my finals and finish those with all A’s on my work, which gave me 2 more weeks of free time until I got started at Amazon again. I was able to spend Christmas eve with Aryia and her sister and we had a fun adventure around a city near us. We played Pokemon Go in the freezing night and then went home and watched Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, one of our favorite movies. We then spent Christmas Aryia’s family, which was a lovely day that of course involved unwrapping gifts and playing some games on Aryia’s switch. The days after that were several interviews at Amazon and getting ourselves ready to start in January. Then spending my days watching stuff with my wife, spending time with her, playing Minecraft with my friends, enjoying Animal Crossing, and enjoying some well-earned rest. Yesterday being the last day of 2020, we spent the day skiing with Aryia’s dad and his friends. It was the first time I went skiing in over 15 years! So I was scared and fell several times or whimpered clinging to Aryia on the ski lifts, but I had fun. The night did end with me injuring my knee on one of the harder hills and we needed to head home early. Still, I spent the night with Aryia until she fell asleep. I then spent the rest of my night with my close friends, one of which lives in Canada and I knew she needed someone to spend New Year’s with. So I spent the night playing Minecraft with her, making a tunnel bore in the Nether with her, and just having fun until we both went to bed.

Right now the first day of 2021 is slowly coming to an end as I am writing this blog. I started this post last night around 9 PM and I am finishing it now around 10:30 PM. I spent a good part of today in bed letting my sore knee and muscles rest before we went to a store called “Jungle Jim’s” in Ohio. This store is an international market with food from all over the world and we were looking for some very specific stuff for pickling, which is something we took up towards the end of December. Aryia and I then just spent some time watching YouTube videos together while eating dinner and of course, I am finishing this blog post. I think I am going to spend the night playing Minecraft or maybe Hades, a close friend bought Hades for me as a late Christmas gift after I said I wanted to play it. So I am pretty excited to start playing that when it finishes downloading. On Monday I start my classes again and on the 6th Aryia starts at Amazon and I start on the 11th. That’s the most I know about 2021 thus far and I really hope 2021 is somewhat better compared to 2020.