Left Forgotten

Wow. Yeah. I really did completely miss October of this year.

Well, there goes my streak of updating this thing at least once every calendar month, huh? Ah, well. I'll start again. Everyone makes mistakes.

You know, I had been meaning to come back and talk to you unseen eyes for a while now, but it always just seemed like I didn't have a good stopping point. Everything was up in the air, and reporting on my current status would give no closure, because I didn't have much. It's silly, in retrospect. I think some of my best writing on this blog has been from when I've been uncertain about the future.

So. October. I spent most of September desperately trying to find a place to move into for October. It didn't work. Me and Robby were turned down everywhere we applied, for various reasons. We suspected that the reasons were largely due to us being a couple, and therefore perceived as less financially stable than a single person with high earnings. So, he asked his current landlord for permission to stay where he was already, and continue to pay rent month by month for now, and I started looking for a place where I might be able to do the same thing. That way, once he was working again and had passed his three month probation, having been fired early September at the end of his last one (likely part of the reason for our rejections), we could look for a place to rent together with little to no time pressure, and wait to find a good place that would accept us, then move out of our flexible month to month situations only once we had found one.

I asked my roommate to let me stay at the apartment for the month of October even though my term on the lease was over, and offered to pay him the same amount in rent that I had been contributing when it was just us two... Despite the fact that his new girlfriend was now living there, too. He accepted, and I resumed the search for a place, but to move into for November. With the help of his girlfriend's mom, I found the place I am sitting in now. A bedroom in the fairly posh basement of a nice couple's house. I have my own bedroom across an open living room that the landlord sometimes walks through to use the laundry facilities down here. I share the upstairs kitchen. It's quite nice and very affordable, but I need to ask permission to have folks over. I've had Robby over to visit twice, under the restriction that he needs to leave by 11 PM.

My position at Goodwill continues to gradually accrue age and experience. I've been working there I think six months now, and I feel generally quite competent at almost every part of my job... The big exception being confrontation with difficult customers and thieves. While my social anxiety has not been crippling me nearly as badly now that I have the confidence of a job in which my work is appreciated and I've passed my probation, and a house that shows no sign, thank goodness, of being infested with blood-sucking bed bugs (I must have done a fairly good job of getting them out of all my things when I moved), but still, being faced with a particularly difficult or conflict-ridden social situation paralyzes me. Thankfully, my workmates are generally understanding, and can accept that it's not something I'm good at, so take the burden off me somewhat.

Though I am usually fairly happy at work, and my new place is safe, much more comfortable, and very convenient, I grow restless. I had feared, before finding employment, that if I was employed, I might become complacent with my passionate socialist ideals among other things... And to a degree, that's proven valid. My perspective is very different now that I'm making money and am not just on welfare. However, when I think about what I believe should be, much of it is still the same. I still think that welfare would work better, and people would be better off, if basic essentials were available without cost. Now, though, I look at a different set of advantages to the thought. It would be harder to defraud or take advantage of the welfare system, as well, if it offered you goods, shelter and services directly, rather than through money allowances. It's a lot harder and much more work to get simple food and goods and have to sell them somehow to get easily exchangeable money to spend on luxuries that the benefit wasn't intended for. Or, indeed, drugs or alcohol, for that matter. I imagine people who do have their own income stream would far less often bother to do that than to fraudulently claim money benefits they are not entitled to, as they might do now.

I've also been reading a little bit about becoming rich through real estate and stock market investments.

Yes, I know. Funny how much things can change, right? I'm seeing more of the picture now, because I'm seeing a lot more of a side I wasn't able to before. I'm trying not to lose sight of my old thoughts and the things that made them valid, too, though.

My half-brother emailed me yesterday asking how my life has been, and commented that he had been to check out this blog to find out, but there were no recent entries. So, if you've been missing my blog entries, you can thank him for reminding me to return and talk about how things have been.

I'm still getting used to working, and I'm trying to make up my mind whether or not it's okay for me to wait longer to become more secure and save up more money before I start doing interesting things. Probably not. It's just a matter of remembering that some of the interesting things I want to do don't take much money, and getting out and doing them.

We'll see how it goes.

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