I've always been a very ambitious person my entire life. Any top career that exists I've probably aspired to it at least once. Growing up I always struggled in school though and had to have a lot of help. All the way through high school I had a lot of help. I'm grateful I was able to get through school with a diploma. I think I grew up with very poor homework skills because of the extra help though. I was pretty much bribed to try. When I got to college I naturally crashed and burned. I had depression because of other stuff and took a break for a few years. I went back and did a few semesters, but I have never been able to get past the general classes. I did do my electives and a few prep English classes, but I hit a huge wall I couldn't overcome.
Four years ago I crashed and burned again and started to question whether or not I wanted to bother with college. I know that sometimes it's good to push through and to do more than you think you can sometimes, but sometimes you just have to put your foot down and say no. I love learning, but the truth is I believe I am incompatible with college. I am great at learning on my own, but if you put me in a classroom I will cease to function properly. I do not do well with third parties and time constraints. So I decided, I quit. I'm never going back and I am happy with that choice. I could probably find some way to do it, but it would probably come at the cost of my mental health too. It's no longer worth it to me if I have to give up my sanity and I would probably at some time have to go into debt to finish, so forget it.
I won't become anything and I am fine with that now. I will just live the rest of my life student debt free and work a normal low paying job and I will be happy because I know what is important to me. I was never able to figure out what I wanted to do anyway. I want to learn as much as I can on my own and use my knowledge in my own way. I have a lot of interests, so I'll just learn as much as I can about everything on my own. I will find a way to be self employed if I can because I really hate working for other people. If I can't do that I will be fine though. As long as I try my best to make it happen even if I fail and end up working a low paying job for the rest of my life I'll be happy because I tried my best.
I tried my best at college and failed because I'm not willing to go crazy over it. I won't sacrifice my mental health for a job either. I've been there before and I don't ever want to go through that again. No one should have to do that. I know not everyone has the luxury of giving up, but my life circumstances enable me to do so. I have enough support that I will be fine, and so I'm just going to do what I want.
Wouldn't it be funny if this ended up being how I make a living? Just a thought. :)
You know that January 6th is a hard day for me. I lost the friendship of someone I cared about 4 years ago on that day. This year the memories of that day still haunt me, but they weren’t the hardest thing I had to deal with.
I really hate politics, and so having to go through the drama of having Biden’s victory certified was very stressful. I just wanted Trump out of office. I have had to be careful about seeing or hearing anything related to Donald Trump since the voting last November. Every time I see him or hear his name my heart starts pounding out of my chest. The entire time he was president I had a tight anxious feeling. I hated every minute of him being president. I was curious at first, but that faded really fast. I don’t know what would have happened if he had won, but I’m glad I’ll never have to figure that out.
So I guess my memories of my friend went on the back burner this year. My thoughts were utterly consumed with carefully navigating the news all day on January 6th. I also did my best to avoid as much as i could while still trying to keep myself informed on at least a minimal level. I didn’t want to give myself an anxiety attack and cause myself more stress than I needed, so I chose what I read very carefully. It was a very tight balancing act I guess you could say.
Anyway, I stayed up last night until the very end of it all. I am glad that Donald Trump has finally given up. He makes a better reality TV star if you ask me.
I was so relieved to have this all over that I just chilled out, played games, and listened to music all day yesterday. It’s 1am on the 8th as I write this. I feel at peace with the political situation for the first time in a long time. My feelings toward my lost friend will probably be with me for a long time, but they are healing. I just hope January 6th turns out to be a better day for me next year. I hope I am able to go out and escape my thoughts and everything next year.
I could have sworn I already wrote this. Oh well, I guess now is as good of a time as any.
I'm not one of those people that was successful at getting a job at 16. Due to a few life circumstances like depression, other mental health stuff, social awkwardness, my bad eyesight, and probably laziness; I didn't have a job until I was 26. I am 30 now, so it hasn't been that long.
When I was 24 I started going out a lot. I would go to the mall and around town. I still to this day go window shopping a few days a week. I find it to be a good use of my time. Throughout my journeys I became familiar with all the different stores. With time and a little encouragement from Vocational Rehab I found myself seriously looking for a job by the time I was 25. I had been in an out of college at that time, and I guess besides the other reasons, finding a job just wasn't something I was that important to me up until then.
Two of the places I frequently visited at the mall were Cinnabon and Coldstone Creamery. The manager, who I refer to as Manager J on here became familiar with me with time because I visited so often. That is how I landed a job at Cinnabon a little over 4 years ago. It pays off when you get familiar with employees in your favorite stores. I was so excited to work at Cinnabon and I started the day before Halloween in 2015.
I am legally blind, so I had to convince Manager J I was good at cleaning in order to get the job. When you have a physical handicap it can make it super challenging to land jobs. I knew I was going to have to be convincing, and that worked out for me. My first two days I helped hand out samples to trick or treaters around the mall. We gave cinnamon roll samples and Coldstone did ice cream samples. I was allowed to wear my Halloween costume to work for this occasion. I kind of question if being a rainbow sock monkey left the best impression though. I think the combination of me being visually impaired, kind of socially awkward, and wearing a kind of childish costume gave my coworkers a bad impression of me. It wouldn't be the first time someone has mistaken me for someone who is mentally challenged.
After the first two days at work I started training. I helped Manager J clean, but I was also trained in all the Cinnabon operations. I had to wait a bit longer to do the registers though. I think the franchise owner didn't know what to think of me yet, so he held off on that for a few weeks. I kind of expected that though, some people don't know what to think of visually impaired people at work. I eventually learned how to help customers though. Customer service is actually my favorite part about any job.
I did a lot of dishes at work. I also helped Manager J clean the racks, and under the sinks. I did a lot of cleaning up and organizing. What we did on days we cleaned was pretty random. Back then cleaning was something I found very therapeutic, so I loved it. The normal par of my job was really fun. We always had a race with each other to have the fastest rolling times when we made the cinnamon rolls. I loved rolling and it kind of sucks that I don't do it anymore. What we do is we thaw out already made sheets of dough, roll them out to a certain length, put margarine on top, then cinnamon, then we roll them up. I'll insert a picture below. After this they proof for a while and then we bake them.
Other items I've made are cinna sweeties, which are basically donut holes with sugar and cinnamon on them. We also make cinna stix, which are sticks of dough that we dip in margarine and cover in cinnamon and sugar. We twist them so they have a spiral shape. Usually when we make them we store them in the freezer for later. We only take them out for baking when we are getting low on the display. Other things we make are Chillatas which are smoothies basically. We have different flavors depending on the time of the year. we also have frozen lemonade and regular lemonade. In the winter we have hot chocolate. That's just a few things we have there.
I would highly recommend Cinnabon as a starter job. It really is great for people who haven't worked yet.
My relationship with my coworkers had always been a bit strained. I have never been all that great at talking to people in general. I didn't take to most of my coworkers that much. I got along with a few however. Most of the time I felt very isolated and awkward. I've always had the feeling that my coworkers feel at least a little awkward around me and don't know what to do. Things went well for me the first 8 or 9 months I worked there. It was pretty normal and I loved my job. I love the job itself, not really my coworkers so much. I really wish we could have had a better relationship back then. That would have made the job perfect.
Things took a turn for the worst when we switched managers. The manager of Coldstone Manager T took over Cinnabon and Manager J left. I thought Manager T was an okay manager at first, but things went terribly wrong. First he implemented the sample shift. this shift we would basically spend the whole shift just making and serving samples. I had nothing against the shift itself, it's just that Manager T used it to shove me off to the side. He had me sampling more than I was doing regular shifts. It wasn't like that for anyone else. I began to hate my job at this point and started to feel even more isolated and different.
I got depressed and one day I had enough. I complained and expressed my feelings to him. I told him how stressed out by always being stuck on the sample shift. Most of my regular shift had been taken away from me at this point. He wasn't even letting me help customers. The way he explained it was that I wasn't going fast enough and a couple people complained about me. I wasn't told this until it was too late. I completely broke down the day I told him how I felt. I didn't know what to do, so I turned to cleaning for comfort. I told him I would clean more as long as he didn't make me do the sample shift anymore. I really didn't know what else to do at this point.
From that day I cleaned 3 days a week for 2 or 3 hours per shift. Manager T had made me a list to follow every time I came in. It wasn't a hard list, but it got repetitive. Sometimes I'd do extra stuff on my own. I was okay with cleaning at that time, even though it didn't help me develop a better relationship with my coworkers. We were more separate than ever. Sometimes Manager T would have me roll, which at the time I was grateful for. I've always loved making the cinnamon rolls, so I'm glad he at least let me do that. Also, I'll admit that sometimes when I was working with someone I liked I would help customers behind his back. That was probably dumb, but I regret nothing.
I was basically stuck cleaning for around 15 months I guess. During that time I was switched from the Cinnabon payroll, to the Coldstone Creamery payroll. This basically cut off any way for me to help customers at Cinnabon. Manager T said that the franchise owner couldn't afford to pay someone that was only cleaning, so that is why I was moved to the Coldstone payroll. This ended any chance if me getting my old job back. I didn't know what to think at the time, but I think I'm unable to like working at Coldstone because I go the job this way. I think Manager T used this to control me too.
Cleaning went from something I enjoyed, to something I hated. I wasn't even rolling by the time Manager T quit. I was depressed to the point I had trouble physically moving some days. I reached my limit around October 2017. I made up my mind that I had had enough of the misery I was feeling so I decided it was time to quit. I complained to Manager T one last time. I told him about how unhappy I was and that i felt under appreciated.
It was at this time that I learned Manager T was going to quit. He told me to talk to whoever became the new manager about it. I held off quitting until I could meet my new manager. this is where things started to get a lot better. My year of hell was finally coming to an end.
Sorry to leave you on a cliffhanger. I just don't want to make this too long. I'll have the next part up soon
Anyone that knows me knows that I am a really optimistic person. I am strong and I know it. I can handle a lot of things, but sometimes stuff does get to me. I guess work is one of those things. I'm incredibly proud of myself for even lasting this long at Cinnabon because I usually have so many burdens when I'm there. The biggest one is that I always feel like I'm under estimated. I think I've mentioned on a previous occasion on here that I don't really talk much when I'm there. I just find it hard to open up for some reason. There are a few people that I don't feel as much pressure around, but I'm usually not around those people much right now. Mikayla is one of my favorite people there as is Rene, and I think I'm starting to warm up to Rachel as well. I know I've had a lot of inner trouble with Rachel in the past, but I think I'm getting used to her finally after a long time. I guess things are improving for me when it comes to feeling comfortable around some people, but most of the time I do feel like an outsider.
I'm honestly not really sure how to change this. I feel like the vast majority of people at work feel weird around me or are uncomfortable. I feel bad a lot of the time because I don't know what to do or say and I feel like they feel the same. I am not a natural at making conversations. People I feel are easy to talk to are relatively rare. I feel like Mikayla is probably the closest I've ever gotten to having someone I feel I can talk to at work naturally.
In a nutshell, I'm not enjoying work right now. I feel like everything I loved about the job has been taken away. I feel like I've been pushed off to the side and I feel like I'm only in the way and taking up space. Right now I've been regulated to only doing sample shifts and that is one of the worst feelings for me. I feel like the people in charge just see me as a burden to push out of the way. I'm capable of so much, but I feel like no one believes in me and it's taring me apart inside. I've actually started applying for other jobs as of this week. I honestly do not feel like there is room for me at Cinnabon. I just don't know what to do. I wish i could find a way to make things better, but I am usually feeling so weight down in my heart when I'm there I can't think straight. It does somewhat mess with my performance as I get nervous sometimes, but I've always been careful not to let it affect me too much. I have to stay responsible and all that otherwise there will be no hope for me at all. I'm going to stay strong for the time being because I know I can handle everything, but someday I hope i can find a job where people believe in me. I think Jan and Maddie believed in me which is why they hired me. I think I took their presence for granted. I know a lot of people at work disliked Jan, but for me personally I feel she was a bit of a godsend. She gave me my first job and made me feel like I was actually worth something.
I know I haven't written on here for a long while, but I will fill in the blank spaces soon. I think I needed to write about all of this. Knowing myself this won't be the last time I talk about work and it hasn't been the first of course. I think this is good for now. I have a shift in a couple of hours and doing this was probably very smart. Hopefully I'll feel better today. I'm trying very hard to cope with everything. :)
I have quite a few games on my iphone. To be perfectly honest I don't really play all of them that much. On occasion I'll go through all of them and play for a bit when I am really bored, but that is about it. There are actually just a handful of games on my phone that I bother playing often. Some of these are Tetris, Unblock me, Asphalt 7 and 8, and Puzzle & Dragons. There are probably a couple others I am blanking out right now. Puzzle & Dragons seems to be my obsession as of late, I can't remember if I mentioned it in one of my last couple of entries or probably both, but I've been playing it a ton. It's kind of like a cross between Bejeweled and Pokemon. Basically there are hundreds of monsters you can collect and you use them to get through various dungeons. You use a match 3 mechanic like Bejeweled to give the monsters power. The difference between this game an bejeweled though is that you can manipulate the elements around so you can get combos. Instead of further confusing you just look at this.
Anyway I had woken up pretty early when I started playing and so no surprise to me I fell asleep again and slept another 3 hours around 9am. I managed to get a little breakfast before I fell back asleep, nothing super spectacular though. There is this drink called Zevia I am quite fond of. It's pretty much soda, only instead of being sweetened with sugar it's sweetened with stevia. It's great and it comes in all kinds of flavors. Not very many people know but not only am I am introvert, but I am a highly sensitive introvert or a highly sensitive person (HSP). HSP get overwhelmed by all the sensory info (stimuli) around them. I get pretty overloaded and overwhelmed by a lot of things around me. HSP process all of the external information around them so well that our brains can get overwhelmed and burned out. I'm aware of a lot more than it seems because of this, I notice a lot more because my brain takes in everything so excellently. A good example of this is if I am around neon colors, flashing lights, and / or loud noises like a lot of talking people or something. When I am overexposed to things like this I might get anxious, stressed, tired, and in some cases my brain tries to respond by spacing out a LOT (it tries to shut off my awareness partially). Sometimes I get super restless and jumpy, the effects vary, and come in different combinations. I listed only a few of the things that happen to me. Anyway, even though I an an introvert and prefer to be by myself most of the time and I'm an HSP I try and get a healthy amount of social interaction. I try not to shut myself in to much, I start getting agoraphobia if I do that. The way I cope with all of the sensory information around me is I use my sense of touch. My sense of touch never overwhelms me. I get jumpy and fidgety when I am becoming overloaded and playing with something with my hands helps a lot with coping with everything. I find it very relaxing to take full advantage of my sense of touch, I tend to last a lot longer when I do this. The kind of things I love to play with are pretty simple. Things like Slinky, tangles, Rubik's cubes, stress balls, clay, putty, etc. There are so many things that fit under the category of fidget toys and / or stress toys. They are fairly simple to find because autistic kids also love these kind of things. I am obviously not the only person that uses this method to cope with all of the overwhelming sensory info around me. I use officeplayground.com to shop for my fidget toys and stress toys. It has a whole lot of stuff and the site is really organized. Amazon is a great site too, but it takes a lot more searching and stuff to find what I want when it comes to stuff like this. If i can't find what i want on officeplayground.com I always go and find it on Amazon. I made a pretty big order at officeplayground.com today, 20 items in total and it cost me a fair amount of money, not too much though. I won't spoil the surprise and tell you what i got, my package arrives in 3 days or so UPS says. UPS is pretty spot on usually when I order something though so I'm not worried. I love the excitement of waiting for a package. I will make sure to get pictures or video or something like that when it arrives. Anyway, after I did my order nothing sectacular happened for a few hours, I just had pasta and chicken for lunch, listen to Harry Potter, watched anime, and played Puzzle & Dragons. I was pretty laid back today. The ward had family home evening tonight, we had pizze and rootbeet, and a spiritual message. I don't remember what the spiritual message was sadly, but I loved the company and the pizza and root beer. Everyone introduced themself before we ate, they told their names and something about themselves, it was pretty cool. I think I might have slurred my speech a little because when I mentioned I have an obsession with stars everyone heard it as I have a room full of stars. I didn't even bother to correct them, the whole introduction didn't come out quite as planned. I told them I love to read, how many brothers and sisters I have, that i am probably the quietest person in the ward, and that my dream is to become a clinical psychologist. Somewhere in there I mentioned the thing about stars, I could have left that out though. Stuff like that always happens when I intend to make myself sound even a little cool. I won't lie, I like to talk about myself. I'm nowhere near being a narcissist though. I am pretty open with people when I don't feel nervous or pressured. I know I can seem a bit cold and aloof sometimes, but I'm a pretty nice person and i try my best to always have good intentions and get along with everyone. Anyway after the pizza and stuff I just went home and crashed. I didn't do anything particularly spectacular, just more of the same stuff I was doing before. I've probably written enough to today, sorry it was so long, I get carried away sometimes. haha. :)
So yesterday night about an hour and a half after I finished writing my last post I discovered that Sam had texted me. He told me that he would answer my question if I answered his. He asked me how well I really knew him. This question really puzzled me at first, and I didn't know how to answer it for a while. Actually, I came up with multiple possible answers, I didn't know which one to give. It was past midnight at this time, and so I didn't want to text him back just in case he was asleep or something. This made things really hard because I knew I would not get the answer until I answered his question first. I really wanted that answer really badly and this made me really anxious. I was strung up all night and my heart was pounding, I couldn't sleep until probably 5:30am. All I could think of all night was how I was going to answer the question and when I was going to answer it. Nothing seemed to be able to calm me down, I felt irritated, kind of scared, anxious, hyper, and really curious at the same time. On top of this I felt a little guilty and frusterated for not noticing his text earlier.
I finally got 3 hours of sleep after a long, hard night. I sent my reply as soon as I woke up. I have been waiting for his reply all day. I really hope I get it soon because not knowing the answer to my question is causing me a lot of edginess and anxiety. Normally I can be a little more patient, but something like this (( read my post from yesterday)) is something I have to know for a lot of reasons. I hate not knowing how people really feel about me it's unsettling. I am not feeling as nervous or anxious now, but I still want the answer really badly. I hope I can sleep better tonight. Sometimes I wonder if I was being a little selfish by asking him such a bold question. I don't know when he will answer, but I hope it's not too long. I hope I didn't make him feel rushed... I kind of come off like that sometimes.
I went on a walk 3 times around our local track in the morning right after I sent him the text, it helped a little. I usually only do it in the night, but I really felt like it right then. I had to get out of the house, I felt to on the edge.
I spent most of my day trying to keep calm by listening to music, watching anime, and doing stuff on facebook and Destiny Online. It did help a little, enough for me not to feel like I was going crazy from anxiety anymore.
I fell asleep again around 11am. I slept for another good 2 or 2 and a half hours. I woke up to my dad asking i I wanted to go to the store. I said yeah, and then fell back asleep for about another 20 minutes. I found him in the back yard and him, me and my sister went to the store not to long after that.
I just bought a few things like chicken and oranges, stuff like that. I was going to buy a movie at Costco as well but decided to wait until the end of the month for that kind of thing. When we were getting the roasted chicken I usually get we decided to wait 10 minutes until the next batch came in. While we were waiting for the new chickens to be done roasting we ran into one of my friends and her mom. This particular friend also has some disabilities. We somehow got into a discussion about getting jobs, like how we were going about looking for jobs and the obstacles that were in our way. My dad actually did most of the talking. We talked about my vision and my Vocational Rehab thing, and about how I'm trying to get a job and how I am doing it. The conversation lasted for a good 10 minutes or so. When it was over we said our goodbyes and went back to what we were doing.
We went back to where the roasted chickens were, they were just putting the new ones out. We picked one and then went along with our business. We got milk and my sister got a few things like chips and cat litter.
After I got all the stuff I was going to get, I of course went straight for the books. I looked through them for a little bit and found this book about various sciences that had a lot of good pictures and I got it. I was going to get two but decided to wait just like I did with the movie (which actually happened after this).
We separated my stuff and my sisters stuff into two different karts and we bought separately. I got done first and had to wait a few minutes for her to go through the line.
We left after this, but we had to also go to Harmon's to pick up my sister's prescription. My dad went inside as well looking for floor shine for the kitchen floor. I just walked to the isle with all the arts and crafts stuff and looked around for a minute. I didn't find anything I needed though. My dad and my ister were pretty much done by this time anyway. We left after this and went home. I was really hungry and ate some of the chicken right when I got home.
I just went back to what I had been doing before I feel asleep and before I went to the store, nothing really exciting. I did end up sleeping even more, for another 2 or so hours. I was wiped out. One thing that really surprised me is that I actually dreamed about getting the answer from Sam. I thought that was a bit surprising, but I guess I shouldn't have. I couldn't stop thinking about it all day, even now I can't get it off my mind it's really important to me. I guess I shouldn't be surprised about having a dream where he answered me. I know it's a bit insane, but this is just how my brain works when I really, truly want something.
Nothing really exciting happened after this. I did go back to the track right before I started posting this, and walked another 3 laps around it. I had my iPhone with me this time and I listened to music while I walked and thought about stuff. I also almost went back to Harmons for fun but decided not to. I was actually going to do this instead of walk around the track. I think I needed the walk though.
I guess this is all. I don't think anything else is going to happen, it would be cool if it did though. :)
Wow, yes It has been a month since I blogged anything. I have been having a major writer's slump. it happens to me from time to time. I haven't really thought about it lately, but once i started to think about it I started to realize just how many times this has happened. I seem to have a problem with motivation in everything really, even writing, blogging, etc.
I am usually at a loss sometimes as to what I should write, sometimes my life seems so incredibly boring that I can not think of anything to write. sometimes I am just depressed, and / or mad at everyone. I do feel a lot of negative feelings toward the human race sometimes. sometimes I just feel like I should just hide from everyone and not let anyone get to know me. i guess in a way this also contributes to my problem with dropping out of Xanga randomly and not blogging for sometimes 1 to 3 months and sometimes longer in some cases.
I have a lot of things to deal with right now, I can't geta job, I can't go to school right now. Social situations are very hard for me to deal with. I am not very fond of crowds, or repetetive enviroments that lack creativity. Sometimes my repetetive, complicated life just sees kind of pointless. I know that isnt true consciously but I honestly FEEL this way a lot of the time. Like I have no purpose in life, and / or like I am just going to be a nuisance to everyone around me. I feel like I can't do anything great for the world sometimes, like I am just a flaw in the fabric of the universe.
this is just the tip of the iceberg but things like this really effect my activity when it comes to physically writing or blogging on my computer. My brain just shuts down and refuses to think u stuff to blog about sometimes. It is a really frusterating thing for me actually. right now I'm not even thinking about what I am writing I am just simply typing what is going through my head without thinking about it. I think this will help a lot. maybe I should just do this for a couple of days and maybe I will be able to reviveas a blogger. I feel so strange right now...
Sorry about the spelling mistakes, I just don't want to worry about them right now...
So i have been on the HCG diet for like 3 or 4 weeks now. i started in the middle of Janary. I have lost almost 25 pounds already. I am starting to feel a lot better about the way I look. I have been moderately over weight for most of my life and I have always hated it. I'm glad I'm finally making progress on it finally. Little things like this should make life better for me. I still have a long way to go in my weight loss, like 50 pounds, something like that anyway.
