angry recidivist

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 02:46:00 +0000

Best birthday of my life was my 18th, that morning, on the emptyV, they played that Green Day song about the time of your life followed by Semisonic's Closing Time, which was peak morning Carson Daily music for 1998. That day, it got to damn near 60°, I remember, after school, going to volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club and a fellow volunteer offered to take me to the Taco John's for food because it was my birthday and I didn't want her to get me anything because 18 year old Tom was a fucking asshole without a clue. She insisted, so I had her get me some churros. I went on my first date with her later that month. It went as well as most of the other first dates have gone in my life... But that day was still fucking excellent. I measure all other birthdays against that one.

I live in a different part of the state now, where the winters are far less harsh, possibly because of global warming, possibly because the lake that's my neighbor.

My 40th birthday, I had always told myself I was going to kill myself. I had it all planned out, I would douse myself in gasoline and strike a match on a street corner and stop traffic, telling everyone how much I hated them. Today in Milwaukee, it was approaching 60°. I have a job that's not awful. I haven't been on a date in over four years, I drink too much, I'm disabled, I have no friends, no pets, I live alone in a shitty apartment with an old-ass upstairs neighbor who runs his wet/dry vac at absurd hours and drops every god damn thing he picks up, but still the prospect of lightning myself on fire didn't appeal to me. Sorry, Winston Churchill.

I've legit contemplated killing myself, as was the plan, but, to make an excuse, I finally found a job that doesn't suck complete ass, and there's a woman with fucky colored hair at the bougie groucery tore I get sushi on Friday nights for Friday night Anime night @ home who compliments something about my appearance every time that I'm going to give my number to tomorrow night and maybe I shouldn't kill myself before then. Possibly after, we'll see.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 01:11:00 +0000

I'm almost a month in to the new job and it's still pretty decent! The gribblies try to creep in and hit me with that imposter syndrome shit, but I do what I can to brush that away.

Today kind of sucked and I came close to losing my cool because I had one of those dreams that spans many years over the course of a sleep where I was in a relationship with a friend of mine that I haven't seen since I moved to the most romantic city on earth. The dream felt good, REAL good, but then I woke up and was greated to the harsh reality of the 5:30 morning in mid November in Wisconsin. My patience for uncooperative printers was greatly diminshed after that one. Fortunately, Wednesday is the day they give employees a free lunch and not a bitch-ass one, either. Because I work for the non-evil mail order spice company, the lunch is made onsite by a team using our own seasonings. Today was chili dog day and the chili was quite spicy, just the way I like it. I feel bad for the folks that had to deal with me an hour after eating spicy chili, but that's the price you pay for wanting to print in color on an overworked printer.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 21:33:00 +0000

First day at my new job! I'm still beaming with pride that I got this one, and it seems like a phenomenal place work so far. Everything in our employee orientation was centered around making it a nice place to work and the coworkers that I was able to meet seemed to really respect the place, which has been exceedingly rare in all the opsitions I've had previously. There's no curmudgeon in the group, as far as I can tell.

The only negative from the day came after lunch, when I settled in to my desk. I don't know if it was because it was so cold in my area or just my brain being an asshole as it's apt to do, but I felt a flood loneliness wash over me. Like, I'm proud to be there in that moment, but I just really wanted someone to ask me how my day was going so far. I wanted someone to be beaming with pride with me and for me. When I looked at my phone and saw there was a message, there was a fleeting moment where I was all, "Hey, someone cares", but it turned out that it was just our payroll system letting me know my account had been activated. Thanks, payroll bot.

I'm still certain this is going to be a great job and will lead to bigger and better things and I'm extremely excited for the possibility that I could get a condo in the next couple years. It's about god damn time I got my shit together. I'll be eagerly looking for that real nice form letter from the white house, hopefully, from the incoming president.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Sun, 04 Oct 2020 23:17:00 +0000

I FUCKING DID IT!!!

I talked to my high school crush who friended me on facespace? Lol, fuck no! Let's live in reality here, though I've had some weird fucking dreams as a result of it. I blame the nightly melatonin. When I say "weird fucking dreams" there's no fucking at all, let's stay firmly planted in reality, melatonin or not. No, I got a job offer for a company whose values align with mine while I already have a job. I've been the kind to quit a job without any backup plan, which fortunately hasn't bitten me on the ass, but I've been working this contract for a shitty bank the past few months and it's been a complete clusterfuck of a shitshow. At every turn, they say they didn't plan on there being the work that we're being handed, leaving me to question what exactly they did plan for, because it appears tht they planned for a completely uneventful takeover of this company's IT department, which is wishful thinking, at best, and comically shitty planning, at worst. I applied for this position with the progressive spice company, laughing at the futility of filling out an application that asks me what my favorite spice of theirs is and giving them the full details of my disability, which I never give anyone.

To my surprise, I get a phone interview that goes better than any phone interview I've ever had. I discuss the fact that I'm a home chef, and that my favorite show in the world is Great British Bakeoff and that I cook recipes they do on the show and I always imagin Paul Hollywood absolutely shitting on my finished product, telling me it's got a soggy bottom, it's stodgy, and the worst example og baking he's ever seen. After our interview, I send out a thank you email, thanking my interviewer and mentioning how I'd be exceptionally proud to work for this company because I absolutely believe in everything their CEO is about.

I somehow get a second interview that's relatively short and I mention the fact that I've spent my quarrantine year working on some projects on my home network to eliminate ads completely from websites I visit.Afterwards, I send another thank you follow up and I somehow get a third interview that goes absolutely pear shaped. Or so I though.

Days later, I get asked for an in person interview, which I assume is all for show after the previous phone interview and how absolutely off the rails it felt it went. When I show up to this interview, I find that it's less an interview and more a "Hey, we're going to tour the area you'll be supporting to make sure you feel up to this" and culminating with "I'm going to talk to my management and you should hear something next week."Next day, I get a voicemail late afternoon from the original interviewer, sounding very chipper, asking to speak with me. I try caling her back, but it' late in the afternoon on a Friday. Her message said she'd be working Saturday and I could reach her then. I spent Friday night figuring I'd be calling on Saturday for a rejection that was going to ruin my weekend. I did my early morning grocery shopping, which is how we do thing in the quran-times to avoid the anti-mask nut-jobs, then call the interviewer after putting away all the groceries as slowly as possible to avoid what I perceive as the inevitable. We talk and I get the congratulations and the information about a salaried position that gives me a 10% raise, benefits, and a paid holiday on election day in America(!), even though I will have voted long before then. I thank the interviewer profusely and let her know that my mom is my next call to tell her the good news and how excited I am to start the job.

It is now Sunday, and I'm happy to say this is the first time in a very long time, years, actually, I'm not experiencing the Sunday scaries where I dread waking up on Monday morning. I'm wondering how I'm going to word my resignation to united states bank, and I'm curious if they accept my two weeks notice or if they let me go on the spot. I'm good with either scenario, I could use two weeks to myself to prepare for an awesome new job, and to get in the right headspace to be an excited worker bee for a company I trust and value, and whose product I use on an almost daily basis. I'm about two months shy of turning 40, and I finally feel like a accomplished adult.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Mon, 07 Sep 2020 22:18:00 +0000

It's been an exceptionally weird quarantimes summer. Like, more weird than I could ever have imagined. I quit my job in January, before shit hit the fan, because my friends on my trivia team were cognizant of the fact that shit was going to hit the fan, and the job I was at was actively encouraging people to come in to work while sick. As someone who had a particularly bad strain of pneumonia a decade ago, I'm not about to fuck around with illnesses that fuck your lungs.

Somehow, I managed get a job during a fucking worldwide pandemic that caused the second "once in a lifetime" depression of my life. I bought a new car to alow myself to commute to said new job, because that bus life isn't up to par as it is in Canada. I bought a car that gets at least 45 miles per gallon, and over 50, depending on where I'm driving, so, not an American car because Americans just don't give a fuck about that kind of thing.

Shit got even weirder when the girl I had the most massice crush on during junior high and high schoole friended me on the facespace. A year ago, it was supposed to be our twentieth year high school reunion, but everyone who had more than half a brain moved the fuck out of there, so our president wasn't around to plan a reunion, so folks that had moved away and were tech savvy started a facespace group where we talked about what the fuck happened in the ensuing twenty years. That girl that I had a massive crush on, who was out valedictorian, shared a story of her struggles that are almost wildly uncharacteristic of what you think valedictorians go through, unless they're Jessie Spano taking caffeine pills. I shared my story of becoming disabled because of bullshit. The girl I had the biggest crush of my life frieded me on the facespace. I'm not trying to make a thing out of it, but, like, my time in high school was not good. I forced myself to go to school some days telling myself maybe she'd see me that day and wave or smile. Every semester first day, I got excited because maybe we'd have a class together. Me and the valedictorian never had a class together apart from keyboarding in the 8th grade and band classes in junior high. So, when I received a friend request, my life flashed before me. This person knows who I am? The girl who 18 year old me thought was hotter than Mira Sorvino acknolowedged my existence? Like what the actual fuck?

I'm still not about to talk to her, even after she friended me. I've sanitized my facespace as best I can without removing the warts that are important to me. But, man, this shit's fucked me up. Like, her life hasn't been sunshine, lollipops, and roses, but she's still exceptionally hot, like Mena Suvari has nothing on her in my head, and I'd give anything to be able to say words to her that didn't sound absolutely fucking stupid. I don't even know how to begin that conversation. Common sense suggests saying "Hi" is a good opener, but experience suggests that's an awful attempt at opening communication. I'm beyond well aware that I've built her up in my head more than is healthy, believe me, I've had melatonin dreams about her, because I don't sleep without melatonin anymore, which suggests how unhealthy I am, I think.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Mon, 07 Sep 2020 00:42:00 +0000

Christ, it's been over a year, now. Shit's worse. Story of my life, right? I took another garbage job, where I worked for three months. Motherfuckers got hacked by Russians who tried to ransom their data. I honestly wish I was making that up, but it's thing that happened. Yeah, a real shitshow. Pwned by a bunch of script kiddies from a bloc country. I quite literally walked out of that place when I realized the whole pandemic thing was a real concern and that the place I worked gave no shits about people coming in to work sick. The day that really tipped the scales for me was when the homeless guy who begs for money saying "I smell like shit because I haven't been able to wash my clothes" bothered me and I had to let him know that he didn't smell anywhere near as bad as the guy in the next cubicle. Now I've got another shitty job that I'm looking forward to leaving because it's another fucking joke. We've been working from home and had on-site access for over a month, but my co-worker still doesn't have a badge to get on-site and I still don't have the access I need to get to the mail room to pick up my parts orders. I hate flitting from job to job the past couple years, while I'm mere months from turning forty, the birthday where I'm supposed to kill myself.

I've had the idea for years that on my fortieth birthday, I was going to kill myself because "the first forty are the best forty". I think of that quote and look at my life, and think "you're telling me it gets worse?"The past decade has been varying degrees of awful: I've gained a disability, I've been on a handful of dates, and on those dates, I've been attracted to comically few of them, the last one I WAS attracted to may well have voted for Trump because she was a ""libertarian", which I've found is code for "Republican who wants to smoke weed". She believed the constitution was infallible, and told me that she couldn't vote for Hillary, but also couldn't vote for Trump. There's a right answer and a wrong answer as to who to vote for in that situation, and I'm curious which she chose. I don't really care, though, because every time we hung out, she had to get a fifth of brandy and a pack of smokes. I gave that up after I realized this was bad news, when she said the asshole from the video game club on Degrassi had a point when he said that the girl with the hijab might be a terrorist. I haven't been excited for a date since, which hasn't been fair to the women I've tried to date and that makes me feel awful.

In the meanwhile, I've taken to drinking too much on weekends. I'm embarassed to say, it's borderline alcoholism. I drink and I watch Law and Order: SVU all day. So here I am, months away from forty, and setting myself on fire on a random street corner, as was the plan, doesn't seem so bad. But it seems like it would hurt. A lot. And I'm worried there would be some asshole Samaritan who would ruin the whole thing.

Man, I don't know. I miss being hopeful about tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure tomorrow will suck. I had an interview with a company I'd legitimately like to work for, and that I trust, that I think went well. I want to believe I can land that job, and I might be able to, but I worry the pay isn't where it needs to be. While I've worked in my job for over a decade, I haven't pursued certifications or further learning as hard as I know I should. I feel like I'm a lazy drunk piece of shit and I want to get in a TARDIS and meet my 19 year old self and fuck up the space/time continuum, space and time be damned. Maybe I could prevent so much of all this.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Mon, 19 Aug 2019 20:51:00 +0000

I had to quit my job because of how shitty it was and how it was affecting my mental health. After taking a call from a woman in her late fifties, so younger than my mom and dad,where the woman in question was having an issue connecting to our citrix server, I asked her if she could could open a webpage so that I could attempt to connect to her computer to help her out, and her response was to start bawling and tell me she didn't know how to open a webpage because she's "computer illiterate". I had to bite tongue damn near completely off to stop myself from congratulating her on being able to make it to mid-2019 and not know how to open a webpage. I don't recall how that phone call ended, but I do know I had her click on the blue E and navigate to a webpage. I put off giving my two weeks notice as long as possible, hoping to get a job lined up. Ultimately, I couldn't do it before my frustration reached its apex. I booked a few days vacation in Minnesota after I had finished the job to hit up a baseball game and a few breweries, which was ultimately a good time and absolutely what I needed after that nightmare of a job. Unfortunately, that's nine months of my life that I'll never get back and I feel like was completely wasted on what I had hoped would be excellent experience to forward my career but nearly completely broke me. Towards the end, I could barely get myself to leave my house on weekends and just sat at home drinking too much while watching the Law and Order: SVU marathon. It wasn't healthy at all and not what I wanted. I've since joined a team for the weekly pub trivia down the street from my house, I'm trying to reach out to get a group together to do a Pathfinder campaign because I prefer that to D&D these days, I'm applying to jobs that I think will be good fits for me in my area, I'm working on getting my apartment organized and working on eating right. I want to start working on learning a foreign language, Japanese or Chinese, so that a future vacation spot could be somewhere in Asia once I get my shit back together.

Earlier in the year, my dream condo went on the market, but it was $30000 more than the last time it was listed a couple years ago. I ran the numbers on its asking price and it would have made shit very tight, especially considering that I had a job that made me as miserable as it did. It sold the following month for $30000 under its asking price, so well within my range, and I'm sure with my credit as good as it is, I'd have been able to get the loan I'd need, but I'm telling myself it wasn't the right time yet, which sucks because my thirties are ending in a year and a half and I had hoped I'd be in a better spot by this time. Hopefully I can get there soon.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Mon, 01 Apr 2019 01:00:00 +0000

My alcohol free month was going fine until last night, while switching between Hockey Night in Canada and Law and Order: SVU, my buddy sent me a photograph from almost twenty years ago that sent me into a deep existential crisis. I look at myself at what is probably half my current age and I don't know who the fuck that even is. I mean, I'm obviously aware the guy in the back with the tank top is me, but when the fuck did I ever look that good in a beater? And, god, I miss that sweatshirt with the anti-swastika patch. I remember that night we were seeing Mustard Plug with a band opening for them called The Velveteens who are criminally not on Spotify, but they were a phenomenal east coast ska band. I recall something about that night, possibly seeing a guy on a crotch rocket get hit by a car on the way to the show. I probably danced myself into a pulled muscle because that was my thing ska shows in those days. There was a shirtless guy dancing who was easily the sweatiest person I've ever seen in my life.

I wish I could talk to that kid, tat was easily the height of straight edge Tommy. When I talk about myself, I always say that if my past self saw me now, he'd kick my ass. The person in that picture is who I'm referring to as the one who would kick my ass.I want to ask that guy what he thinks the future holds because I'm pretty sure back then I had just as much of an idea of the future as I have right now. I want to tell that kid to keep his head up, it's gonna far worse than he can possibly comprehend and that's no excuse for my behavior, but sometimes it doesn't completely suck.

Fortunately, I received that picture after a day of walking around catching Pokemon and had no energy to go out and get a six pack of something hoppy. If I did, I would've gotten pizza. I realized this morning that I had to get out of the house again because my trigger for drinking is boredom and being trapped inside with my thoughts about how much I miss that guy and his usable left side and absolute freedom to dye his hair crazy colors and his style would necessitate at least forty ounces. At this point, I'm okay, I've got my custom turntable in a shopping cart, ready for if I can make it.

I just can't stop thinking about that kid.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Fri, 29 Mar 2019 01:28:00 +0000

I had a weird morning today because it's Thursday and I never got the hang of Thursday. I've taken to taking meltonin before bed to help me sleep, which has the added benefit of giving you crazy dreams apart from making you sleep extra, extra hard. Anyways, it was a good dream, for once, where I was on a date with someone I was legit stoked to be on a date with and it was going well. I had that warm gushy feeling in my stomach. And then I woke up. I woke up feeling like I was in a cartoon and they shot a cannonball through me, leaving a cannonball shaped hole in my chest. For the first few hours of the day, it felt like I was hungover, I couldn't fix a damn thing, none of the shit people were calling me about made any goddamn sense because they were trying to do things email was never meant to do. I was again precipitously close walking out. Shit got better, though. I got two requests for phone interviews for jobs that I could feasibly walk to or bus to in a third of the time it takes to get to my current job and I was contacted by a recruiter for a job that pays a comical amount of money that I'm almost uniquely unqualified for, but I'm willing to waste their time because headhunter recruiters are like cockroaches to me.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Tue, 26 Mar 2019 00:25:00 +0000

I don't know what to make of alcohol free March. It hasn't been extremely difficult, I think I've swapped one addiction for another, I drink gallons of coffee on my weekends. I got a promotion-ish at my shitty job. I say "ish" because they're bringing me full time from part time despite the fact that I've been working full time hours for six months, so it's really just a title change in HR with a slight negligible raise that they didn't want to give me because "Ihadn't worked there for six months yet", which was some bullshit I called them on because October-March is six months. If it's not, you're either bad at math, or you work for Aurora healthcare. I updated my resume because six months is five months too long for working in a call center. I've been putting off updating the resume because I didn't want to deal with the phone calls and emails "Greetings for the day! I was looking at the job portals and saw your resume and I was impressed with your experience at [current job]! I've got a position I'm trying to fill in the far flung suburbs that only tangentially has anything to do or has nothing to do with all the experience listed on your resume! And it pays minimum wage! You don't need insurance or days off ever, right?"

So I'm reading a self help book for my bus commutes and got to the chapter where the dude gave up alcohol and he said it always starts with people who shit like "I'm going to quit for thirty days just to make sure I don't have a problem." and he goes on to say that if you're making those ultimatums, you might have a problem because you're thinking about how ripped you'll get on day 31. I have no intention of getting ripped on April 1st or April anything. My intention is to order the turntable I told myself I'd buy when I got a job,then told myself I'd buy it when I quit alcohol for March, set it up, put on a record(which one fluctuates between folk punk records, Kepi Ghoulie, the Lillingtons, or Sigur Ros) and crack a hazy IPA to really be a fucking hipster. I want to believe that's not problem level drinking.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Tue, 12 Mar 2019 00:43:00 +0000

I won't waste my time fitting in
High school Tom was in love with the band Millencolin and High school Tom would say he has no love for Mike Herrera, but Mike Herrera kills it. It doesn't sound quite right without Millencolin's weird accent, but this shit was stuck in my head all day. To combat the Smarch Sadness, I need to get my eyes checked so I can get my first new glasses in a decade and then do some thrift shopping for a godawful ugly suit to adorn with patches and buttons and spikes. I've somehow found some energy with the beginning of Daylight Savings that I want to carry with me. Part of me wants to dye my hair a crazy color for the first time in fifteen years, but I feel like the only reason I felt so confident when I dyed my hair was because I was living in a small town rural area where people were terrified of that and it showed. I now live in an urban city where I can literally see some someone with rainbow hair when I get my coffee. That still might get you shot or tazed in my old town, but here it's no big. Also, I told myself when I was younger that when I either started losing my hair or going gray, I'd handle it gracefully. I'm going gray. I really only notice it when I get my hair cut and look down at the trimmings, but it's definitely grayish. If I dye my hair, I'm doing the whole shitting mess gray. None of this bleaching, wash it out, dye it, condition it, and wash it once a week bullshit.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Sun, 10 Mar 2019 23:39:00 +0000

Alcohol free March sucks. I'm not looking forward to the Smarch sadness. This week looks like it's going to be extra shitty with my job rolling out a new ticketing system forcing everyone to come in a half hour earlier every day, flying in the face of their "no overtime" directive.

I guess I'm surprised most at the fact that I don't crave a drink at all, so perhaps I'm not an alcoholic. It seems I drink so much because I'm bored and have nothing better to do with my time. I should be looking for another job, one that doesn't give me what I hope are panic attacks, where my chest tightens and it gets hard to breathe. I can feel it getting worse as I get closer to work on the bus and I feel it completely lift away on Friday night on the way home. I'm a little afraid that I I'm replacing drinking with sugary foods, which isn't a good combination with the very sedentary job I've got. My employer offers a small gym membership reimbursement, but I don't take advantage of it because, by the end of the day, I've had enough of people where there's no way I could handle naked elderly dudes in the changing room nonchalantly walking around bareass naked. Thus bus ride got even worse the other day when I tried to smile at the woman who gets on at the library stop on the way home. I'm not good at smiling,I guess, because her reaction was one of disgust and disappointment. Not a mistake I'll make again.

Not drinking kind of makes me question who I've become and it's forcing me to take a look at my habits and what I am and it's not a good image. I don't have friends, I don't date, I hate my job,I hate my apartment, I spend my time watching twitch streams or hockey games or listening to podcasts. I'm really tired of feeling lost and not knowing who I am. It feels weak and I hate that.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 19:42:00 +0000

I'm at the point of February where I NEED Spring, like right now! Or at least give me a weekend where the weather isn't garbage. I've looked at the 90 day forecast and it looks like by the end of March, there could be 50° temps, so I'm trying to tell myself I've just got to make it a month and things will be better.

I'm at the point at my job where I'm ready to jump ship. I don't get to move from my desk until lunch at 1:30 in the afternoon, so I'm taking calls for about six hours with very little movement. I worry that I'm atrophying my muscles. I've slipped on ice more times in the past few weeks than I have in the past five years combined. I don't know if that's because this winter has been more brutal or that my muscles are weakening. It took me a year of going to the gym every fucking morning and making the incline treadmill my bitch to teach myself to walk properly again after my disability and I feel like the people I work for would like nothing more than for me to be completely disabled. The only person that actually talked to me at my job died of heart attack two weeks ago, which hit me harder than I thought it would or should. An announcement was made late last week that overtime would no longer be allowed, so anyone working weekends would be given time off during the week commensurate with time worked over the weekend. No, I think I'll just work 40 hours during the week and have weekends off,thanks. I'm looking forward to the first time they try it on me. I want to believe I'd tell my boss to fuck off, I don't know if I would realistically do it.I'm tired of their bullshit, refusing to train me on the software they expect me to support because it's "too big and changes too often", bungling software upgrades badly enough to where call volumes are escalated for over a month, and marking my status in the department as part time, despite working full time hours, which I assume is their way of side stepping some H.R.requirements.

I've got to make some changes this Spring and to help motivate me,I'm going to try giving up alcohol for March. I thought about doing it in January, but decided against it out of laziness,any other excuse I offer would be bullshit. I'm very afraid that I drink too much and it's been holding me back for quite some time. I don't know if I know how to have fun without alcohol anymore, something straight edge Tom from twenty years ago would hate. I don't anticipate thirty one days od not drinking to undo at least a decade of stagnation in my life,but I hope it's a start. I know where I want to go,but I just don't know how to get there.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Sun, 27 Jan 2019 21:42:00 +0000

I did an open house on a condo tat I've been watching for a couple years now. Had I jumped on it a couple years back, it could've been had for thirty thousand dollars less than what they're asking right now... It's a cool place, but 750 square feet doesn't seem as big as I want it to seem. I've been trying to sort things out in my head how I would make it work and I'm not in love with the idea of being in debt and working at a job that makes me quite literally pull my hair out on a near daily daily basis. I wanted to like this place because it's well within my conservative price range that i've arbitrarily set for myself. I haven't gotten approved for a loan yet because I don't feel super comfortable with that level of adulting just yet. I guess I had always kind of hoped I'd be doing this kind of thing with another person, but it's been a couple years since I've een been on a date at this point, so it seems like I should be marching into my credit union and saying "Yo, my credit rating is fucking good, or so the other people I mention it to that are my age tell me, give me a number I should be looking at spending on housing." I'm anticipating their number to be far above what I'm comfortable spending because what I want to spend in property taxes every year is too low for the areas I want to live in, unless I want to live in a tiny house. I've thrown around the idea of a tiny house and, while it sounds nice, it's not practical. At all. I genuinely wish it was, but it's not for me.I've got a fairly rigid set of needs for what I want from a house that's going to put me in years of debt working in jobs with people that I absolutely would not interact with under any other circumstances.I guess I just want to possess some kind of foresight where I could see that if I do this thing, things will align in such a way where I'll be happy and content. I worry that such a thing isn't possible, that I'll always be unhappy with where I'm at because it just seems like I'm never happy.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Sun, 30 Dec 2018 23:07:00 +0000

I just don't even want to make New Years resolutions because it's all bullshit. I don't even know what I said I wanted to do this year, but I do know that I don't like where I'm at and I'm completely embarrassed and ashamed of my life right now.

I had a job for a minute that was completely fucking terrible for a company that lied to me in their interview, but taught me what questions I need to ask in an interview. Every Friday on that job, when I got home, I had to go to the bodega and getasix pack of something and, before I knew it, I had drank three beers. I ghosted that job because I realized my life at that point was a fucking Smiths song and that's not alright in my late thirties. I spent months looking for another job and I got one that's equally as shitty, but in a different way. My manager refuses to train me in what I'm supposed to support because the hospital software is too big.

So, earlier today, I was watching this movie with Sarah Jessica Parker whose parents are going through a rough patch and she's reconsidering her engagement to her boyfriend and there's a scene where she's talking to boyfriend and they're changing, getting ready for bed or a night out or some shit, and she's undoing her bra and walks off-screen while they're talking to change into a tank top and it's inferred that the boyfriend is watching her, doing his own thing while she's topless and dude does nothing. The whole scene is meant to infer the loss of spontaneity and passion in their relationship, but it made me feel like absolute shit because all I could think was "Man, I don't remember the last time I saw a boob." I don't want to ask to see more than one, a pair, even, because I don't want to seem greedy and be asking for too much, one is good. I'm not even all that attracted to Sarah Jessica Parker, but if we're having a conversation and she takes off her bra, conversation over, it's on, I'm attacking her and that makes me feel terrible because I don't want to be one of those incel motherfuckers, I want to believe, whether it's true or not, that I'm voluntarily celebate.

I haven't even talked to a girl this year. There was a girl on the bus on Friday who sat next to me who was playing pokemon go, who I could have talked to because I still seriously play that shit and do raids in my neighborhood. I could've asked her if she's gotten the shiny delibird or hatched muchlax, but there's no way she'd want to talk to me. And there was a girl at the grocery store today who mentioned she had a gravity blanket and I'm seriously considering getting one because they sound wonderful, but they're pricey and I'm worried I'll never get out of bed if I get one, but I wasn't about to talk to her because it's Sunday and I haven't shaved for five days and I didn't shower this morning, so I feel especially smelly and I ain't about to put myself on the line unless I feel awesome because I'm well aware I'm not most people's cup of meat.

What I'm missing is that feeling of excitement when you see your crush, that feeling where your pulse goes up and you think "oh, shit, there she is!" I had that for a hour this year when the girl from my old job showed up on my dating app as my daily pick. We very occasionally drank together after work in the bar below our office and I learned her favorite band was the Replacements. In my earlier days, I wanted a girl into similar music as I was, realistically, that'll never happen because my tastes are so far off the beaten path, so now I'd murder for a girl who listened to '90s music in her underwear, so she was right there. She was my daily pick, which meant there was a possibility that she had liked me, or I had to like her first. I'm still unsure how the app works, if it tells women that a guy liked them, so I panicked about liking her right away, but hope got the best of me that maybe she liked me. A couple hours later, I did what I think was the right thing and liked her, but we didn't match. I saw her a couple months later at a festival and she freaked and hugged me, which felt nice, but also weird because I don't know if she was informed that I liked her on the app and I was embarrassed because I'd be all about seeing someone like her because she was cool as hell.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Tue, 25 Dec 2018 05:09:00 +0000

I tried to do the thing that's become what I look forward to at Christmas. The bar where I won the drunken spelling bee a few years back does karaoke Mondays and Christmas falls on a day conducive to drinking and singing songs badly for a few years now. I've been trying for years to gather a crew who knows the Fairytale of New York, but it seems like that song is only popular in groups that I don't run with. So I watched a man who made himself up like a shitty Milwaukee Hank von Helvete with a middle schooler's amount of Axe Body spray, such that I could smell him over fifteen feet away, sing some awful song about doing cokee and possibly celebrating Christmas and something about Skittles, followed by a man with a Duck Dynasty beard sing something about drinking Shiner and smoking Lucky Strikes, which only served to remind me that yeah, I could go for a Lucky Strike or a Chesterfield, but it's been years since I've done that bullshit and I don't need that until the man comes on a couple songs later to sing Sitting on the Dock of the Bay the fully kill Sir Otis Redding, such that everyone in the bar will be haunted by His ghost until the end of time because that shit was so awful that God herself won't forgive us for allowing such an abomination to exist. Just as I'm thinking it can't get worse than this, possibly the whitest couple of suburbanites sings what might be a christmas song by TLC and I start thinking to myself about how this must be what the dude from Counting Crows was singing about how it's been a long December. That shit was over twenty years ago, that song hit me hard twenty years ago because December sucks so much ass because it's cold and awful and dark, and I can remember watching the empty V hoping that video of No Doubt doing Oi to the World would come on after that Ramones Christmas song or Fairytale of New York. Sorry, teenage Tom, not gonna happen, it's a long December, maybe this year will be better than the last.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Tue, 11 Dec 2018 01:18:00 +0000

Not the worst birthday ever, but by no means the best. I received my first qa grade at my new job that I hate. 94%, which is a damn sight better than I expected or deserved. I anticipated being walked out by armed security, but I was only downgraded for not saying please and thank you and not addressing the client by name. Unfortunately, my birthday was the busiest day so far, knocking out 47 tickets by day's end. Any other place I've worked, 47 tickets would mean the place is a smouldering hole in the ground after a nuclear blast that left survivors with genetic mutations. In the world of healthcare IT, it's just Monday.

I kind of feel bad that I'm single at 38 years old, but I understand why. I neither have nor want a vehicle, I'm more than happy walking or taking the bus, visiting large Canadian cities with functional public transit made me despise it less and helped me understand that the only ones who don't want it are frightened suburbanites who don't want anyone able to commute reliably within a city because that would mean the poors could someday move to Flanders Grove and lower their property value. Also, I'm aware that I'm now a middle aged man with a disability, so no one in their right mind would want to date me, so I've no interest in trying. I'd rather play this game by my rules or not play this game at all.

I typically spend the first half of my birthday asking myself what would the 18 year old version of me tell me and I always think he'd kick my ass for not dating, not going to shows every night, not having an awesome job or house or condo or a car twenty years on, but, today, I think fuck that asshole. He doesn't have the luxury of experience and time. And I'd also tell him to talk to that girl two lockers down from him because she's damn cute and becomes exactly who you think she will,which is cool as hell. And maybe he should talk to that dude in English class who always brings the D&D 3.5 player's handbook and see if you can join in, fuck what anyone else might think.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Sat, 31 Mar 2018 01:24:00 +0000

I'm now three weeks into my job and I'm basically training two new people how this company works. At this point, I've got a decade of experience in this industry and I'm training people who have less than two and don't gave any kind of education. I'm trying not to feel superior, but their troubleshooting skills and their basic knowledge of how systems work is lacking. The guy training me is having a new kid in a month and is mentioning that he'll be gone soon, so they lean to me saying "Oh, Tom can help us". So, I'm beginning to see that I'm really fucking good and knowledgeable at what I do and I'm severely underpaid, especially if I'm training people. I'm not a teacher,by any means, but,if they want me to explain to noobs how I come to the conclusions that I do, they need to show me the proverbial money.

I had to attend a meeting early in the morning, pre-coffee, about ITAR, or something about International Arms Resolutions and how I'm supposed to make sure I'm not divulging information about how to use our products to cause terrorism, which I literally paid no attention to because, if COBRA comes to me offering more money and actual benefits, then fuck you, America, me and COBRA Commander are fucking shit up in the name of anarchy. Rather than paying any attention to it all, I daydreamed about the condo that went on sale yesterday that was foreclosed on a year ago, and is reasonably-ish priced and how I'd like to live there and fulfill that resolution about being a person the little curly haired girl would want to date.When they started talking about government shit in my meeting, I started having a Goodwill Hunting conflict. I thought about buying my condo and getting a dog from a shelter, whatever was the most pathetic looking doge I could find is,hopefully a grey pitbull,and her name will be Ellen Ripley because she'll be a badass bitch and she'll have a dog bed and we'll go to the dog park down the block together. I might be Lennie from Of Mice and Men...

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Tue, 13 Mar 2018 23:22:00 +0000

I got a job,but it's not going to be a long term thing.I'm not going to let it be. During my interview, they pointed out rather extreme turnover that they've had the past couple years. I thought it strange that they've gone through four IT directors in two years,but figured that's on them to figure out. Afterwards, their H.R. guy sat me down and showed me their benefits package. If Iwere to get hired on from being a contractor to a regular employee, there's no raise whatsoever. There's a chance,however, to get get quarterly bonuses if I meet arbitrary objectives that don't seem to be laid out in advance.You get ten days of vacation a year, there's ten holidays they get off, along with a floating holiday. The guy training me told me today he's expecting a kid next month."So, do they offer paternity leave?" "No, you get short term disability at 80% pay for a couple weeks." There's your answer right there. Having kids is nowhere on my radar considering I don't even date, but how a company treats its employees is pretty high up there. I looked around at everyone that works there, they're all my age or older, no younger folks whatsoever. I've got no misconceptions that I'm a young person anymore, but I've gotten butt surfed by enough employers to know that if an employer looks like a scumbag,they're probably scumbags.If they want loyalty and complacency, they're going to have to earn it. So I'm going to put in my time and continue to apply to other jobs in the mean time, hoping to find an employer that gives a shit about its employees and its community.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Thu, 01 Mar 2018 17:11:00 +0000

Not feeling good at all about being unemployed yet. I'm at the point where I've seen the same episode of Roseanne four times in the last six months on the OTA channel that just repeats old '80s and '90s sitcoms and advertises farmersonly.com and where to buy catheters cheaply. I've been thinking a lot about what to do if this is a long term thing and how to prevent it from happening again.

School? Do I want to be going back to school at 37? What would I go to school for? Am I still capable of learning? I've tried to come up with an idea of what I'd like to do, but I'm not particularly good at anything except avoiding people. I'm not interested in much apart from food, punk rock, and staying fit. Staying fit isn't something I'm willing to get a job in at all because I have no patience for people who think it's too hard to learn how to plan and cook their own meals and not eat out five or more nights a week, or are afraid of being judged at the gym. Punk rock isn't really something I could apply to real life, short of an English degree or something so that I could write about it and I'm shit at writing about music. Food is a non-starter because I have only one usable side of my body and I'm utter shit at creating recipes on my own.

To pass the time, I've started watching Gilmore Girls again because that show became my security blanket while going to school in my twenties and living with the man who wore his ass as a hat. I started with season where Rory started going to Yale because that when it started to get really good and because I though maybe it'll get me in the mindset of going back to school. But now that it's March, it got me thinking that when I last went to school, this is when I was craving Spring Break and planning elaborate trips to follow the Boston Bruins hockey team around for a week or going down to Texas for SXSW. It might be cool to go to Texas, but I really don't follow music as much as I did a decade ago. I've mostly settled into listening anarcho-syndicalist folk punk bands who sing about overcoming alcoholism.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 21:31:00 +0000

They want an in person interview next week... And I spoke to another recruiter this morning for the job I interviewed for back in September, so they either picked the wrong person for that one or went a few months down a person. I'm less inclined to give much of a shit about either way. Not helping was that the recruiter straight up refused to tell me who it was with but I was able to figure it out based on the street name he gave me. The pay is far less than I'm looking for, particularly when they claim to have gained over two billion in assets in under five years. I'm hoping the in person interview goes well because that job offers substantially more.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Wed, 24 Jan 2018 19:22:00 +0000

Just did my first phone interview for a job that actually pays more than what I'm looking for. Like always,I don't feel good about how it went. I hate phone interviews. I hate interviews, period. I hate them for the same reason I hate dates: I get so nervous about it, I forget my entire life, so answering questions is extremely difficult and I stumble through it, vomiting up a word salad rivaled only by Donald Trump. I prepared for this one, looking up relevant information about the company so I could reasonably answer why I want to work there better than "because I want a fucking job and it appears that you have one available." I wrote down questions to ask because you're supposed to ask questions of your interview because you're interviewing the company as much as they're interviewing you. Maybe the whole corporate drone, middle class, home owner lifestyle isn't my thing and I should stop trying to fit in. Give up on those dreams of being a contributing member of society, meeting a woman while out volunteering who isn't raging Christian religious, and being all dashing and charming and shit, and then going on extravagant vacations touring breweries that don't specialize in gross ass sour beers.

My dream condo that went on the market two weeks before I lost my job is now off the market, which might not be so bad. I looked at its page on zillow and noticed that there's no washer or dryer in the unit. I stayed at an airbnb while in Montreal where the woman who owned it put one of each in her kitchen and then ran her countertop between them, which was an interesting way to setup a kitchen, but I don't think it's something I'd want in my home or have to figure out how to plumb into a kitchen, so maybe it wasn't my dream condo, which is good considering the job hunt has been largely fruitless, with only nibbles from recruiters offering shit jobs doing phone support for insultingly low wages.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Mon, 01 Jan 2018 18:21:00 +0000

2017 wasn't a bad year, but it wasn't a great year, either.

I saw the Descendents live, something I had been hoping to do for 18 years and it was everything I hoped it would be. They played pretty much their entire catalogue and were able to rock pretty well for a bunch of old guys.

I traveled to Toronto to see the band Sigur Ros, which proved to be the best vacation I've ever had and the most amazing concert I've ever seen. And, true to form, as soon as the handbell choir opener played Staralfur, I started crying because that song moves me to tears every time. It was hard to leave Toronto because their public transit system was incredibly convenient. Like I wish we could have that here. And I ran into chef Chuck fucking Hughes on a steet cornerin downtown Toronto! Since I got back, I've been saying that as soon as Trump implements the death camps, I'm fleeing to Toronto. I'd like to believe PM Trudeau would be okay with taking in American refugees in that situation. Quebec City, however, remains my zombie apocalypse bug out destination.

I lost my job this year. My job in Milwaukee was eliminated and I was offered to be relocated to Kansas City. Their number to relocate me was nowhere near the number I'd consider taking to leave Milwaukee. This place is my home, the first place I've ever been where I feel like I fit in, and god damn anyone who tries to make me leave.

Rather than move, I took the generous severance package option. A few weeks later, my best friend visited from Alaska, got me drunk, and convinced me to go to Alaska for a week. I hadn't seen dude in five years, so it was cool to go visit and meet his kid and his wife and see that his dog was still alive and happy and still puts his snout directly into your crotch. I also had long layovers in Seattle, so I got to spend time there again and it turns out I still love it there.They've got a light rail now that makes getting around pretty easy and it's pretty cheap, $6 for a day pass, so I was able to do and see things I missed last time I was there. I'd still love to live there, but I don't think it's time yet. My buddy wants me to move to Alaska,but there's no way, the place is too far removed for me, which is really saying something. You're able to drive from one end of the road to the other in an hour.I mean, the road just fucking ends. The only way to get things there is by plane or boat, which makes shit expensive. I guess they pay well up there to make up for it, but I can't handle the fact that the sun rises at 8:30 in the morning in the winter and it starts getting dark at 3pm. I already despise winter, that place would be hell for me.

For 2018, my priorities are to get a job, not drink at all until the job happens and to get myself to a point in my life where I'd feel comfortable actually trying to date.I spent 2017 avoiding dating at all, which makes it sound like it was a difficult thing. It was not. A couple weeks before the New Year, I activated my profile on the app where women have to message the guy first because I wanted to see if the landscape has changed much. Nope. Still loaded with women whose bios contain such choice morsels as "love to have fun" and "hobbies include: Netflix, sarcasm and the oxford comma". My new favorite, though, was the one whose bio read "My sarcasm is so dry, sometimes my friends think I'm an asshole, but I'm not, though!" That complete lack of self awareness was from a woman well into her thirties, not some 23 year old because I've got my filters set realistically. I want to get to a place where, were I able to actually form sentences around the little curly haired girl, she'd actually enthusiastically say yes to a date with me. I don't know how to get there, but I'm going to try to figure it out.

2018 was supposed to be the year that I bought a condo. I've got enough saved to plunk down a 50% down payment on a place at the top end of my budget, but that's now going to get used to keep me alive and sane while funemployed. I live comically below my means, so I could be fine for quite a while, if need be. I hope it need not be. Unfortunately, I'm over the entire I.T. field. The whole having to find a new job every couple years is annoying, especially as I'm hurtling towards 40, so not only do I have to worry about being discriminated against for having a disability, I'll soon have to worry about being discriminated against because of my age. I don't like those odds. I'm pretty jealous of the job stability the accountants at my old job had. The most of their worries seem to be whether or not the printer was going to cooperate and whether or not the lady who refuses to retire at 75 bathed in perfume again today.

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Tue, 26 Dec 2017 06:43:00 +0000

Dear Tom,

Next time it's Christmas Karaoke night at the dive bar down the street from your house and you're four beers deep and there's a super cute girl with the pipes to back it up, ask her to accompany you on Fairytale of New York because anyone worth a damn knows the words to that one, even though no one else at the bar knows that song. Love,

Tom

noreply@blogger.com (Tommy T.) — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 23:55:00 +0000

And I couldn't do it.

I spent weeks building myself up, working on what I was going to say when I saw her and then the moment came. I saw her after the race was done, presumably walking back to her car. I tried smiling at her to see if there was any reaction, while at the same time trying to not look like a goofball smiling at her. There was not. She looked dejected. I had wanted to say hi and ask her how she did. It was on my tongue but I couldn't get it out because she looked like she wasn't having any of it. Based on her bib number, she missed out on a top five finish by a second. I don't know if a fifth place finish would have gotten her anything or not, but, in that brief moment, I could tell a positive outcome wasn't going to happen. So I chickened out.