Changes

A lot has happened in the past few months.

Firstly, I quit my job at Target. My girlfriend is (pseudo)-done with school and I'm done living in Amherst, MA. It's a nice enough place, but there's a lot of downsides to it too. The reason I moved out there in the first place was to be with my girlfriend, so now that she's done with school I really don't have any real reason to stick around. I was just getting used to my job, which was nice. 2 years really gives you a good foothold in a retail job and I finally understood the system and I knew exactly what I could get away with.

Now, I live at home in Providence, Rhode Island. It's nice here, but access to my Filipa is pretty limited. I can see her whenever I can see her. Basically whenever my parents can drive me over there or drive over there to pick her up. Our relationship is really different then it was in Amherst. Every summer in Amherst I would wait through those grueling months to be with her, and then when she was there everything was great. We would hang out literally every day and there was never really any reason for us to separate, except for when I had to go to work. Now it's the restriction of whether or not her dad says we can see eachother, and his feelings on different days is arbitrary and flip floppy at best.

I got a job at Whole Foods Market. I work in the produce department now, and I spend all day stacking fruit or being bored. When I first started they were more lenient on how high we could stack fruit, but recently they had a visit from the regional directors who criticized most of the department. The focus went from "lazily fill the shelves as much as possible to avoid refilling it" to "quality is the most important thing. Fill the shelves just enough so that there's product on them, and make sure the quality is the best there can be." I respect the concept, but in practice this leads to 1000 short projects with repeats, instead of 1-5 projects an hour. This makes for a lot of lost time in productivity and a lot of back and forth from the salesfloor to the backroom.

I like my new job, but I don't really know anything about produce, and I never want to work on work stuff when I'm not at work, so I never look up what I should be culling when I get home. I just guess based on the color and feel of each product if it's good or not. When people ask me if a product is ripe or not, generally I just make something up. I know that's a pretty bad way to be in a sales business where the focus is heavily on selling products, but usually I don't care. I just want them to stop asking me questions so I can go back to my boring job and get out of there as quickly as possible.

My mom was diagnosed with cancer. Still not sure how I feel about this. I know I should feel bad, but nothing has really changed all that much for me. Sometimes she needs to go to the doctors. Sometimes I need to help out at the daycare. I'm fine with helping out and doing whatever, but other then that nothing has changed. She maintains this positive attitude and this nothing is wrong vibe that makes it seem so not real. I really just want to go roller skating with her, but she's too tired now. I hope she gets better soon so we can go and do that stuff again. I asked her the other day and she told me I should ask Filipa if she wants to go. Roller skating was kind of this special time for me when I was in high school that me and my mom would share. It was our together time and it was really the only alone time I got to spend with my mom where I could talk to her, and if I didn't feel like talking I could skate away from her. It was easy, it was meditative, and it was fun. I miss it a lot.

I'm going to get my drivers license soon. I hope. I've been driving around with my sister a little. I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on what a car feels like. I hope I get it. I don't want to have to wait any longer. I feel like when I set real goals for myself I achieve them. I'm pretty confident that I'll pass the driving test. The most important thing about it is that when I get a license, I can get a car. When I get a car, I can see Filipa.

Filipa is the love of my life. She's 20 years old. She has the most beautiful smile. She has the nicest hugs, and the nicest body to wrap my arms around. She gives me nice kisses. She makes me feel all loopy in my head. She is fun, exciting, and smart. She's creative and cool and an amazing sister to her younger sister. I miss our life in Amherst.

Day One

I decided that I needed a project, so for a couple of days at least I'm going to try to draw myself everyday. I don't have that much experience in art, I've taken a few classes, but I really haven't done anything significant with art in the past few years. I can't remember the last time I picked up a pencil and decided that I was going to draw.

I've been wanting to draw for a while, or at least figure out something to do, but I really have had a hard time deciding what to do. I've also wanted to start blogging, but I really don't read that many blogs so I don't know what'd be interesting to read about. So to combine the two things, I'm going to try to start writing a blog or something resembling one. More like a diary really, maybe. But it's on the internet, so maybe people will see it. I know Filipa definitely will.

My Day:

I woke up a few times at the night, 2AM, 3AM, 5AM. Each time I woke up in my addled state of mind, I had decided that I'd be better off just staying awake to go to work for 6AM. At 5, I really was getting up, but at 2 and 3, I didn't need to be up. For some reason I've been feeling stressed about waking up lately, always feeling like I'm in a hurry.

I definitely didn't sleep enough, because I woke up feeling like crap. I had been up semi-late talking to my girlfriend and playing stupid games on my phone before deciding that I really should be sleeping.

I had a dream, but I don't quite remember what it was. I remember waking up, realizing I had a dream, then trying to recall it, but forgetting almost instantly.

I contemplated taking a shower, but decided not to, and instead went to work.

Work went by quickly, I had to reset an aisle of shoes, a shoe endcap, and two bra outposts. I thought the bras would take a long time, so I decided to do the shoes first. They went by quickly, I finished both the shoe POGS by 9, and finished the rest before 10. At huddle we had to push 2 palettes of frozen goods which didn't take that long.

The rest of my day was spent pushing product back to the floor and putting up signs. We ended up finishing at 2:25, which almost never happens and so we got to go home.

Unfortunately it was raining, so I had to bike home in the rain. It wasn't great. When I got home I took a shower, then did my best not to fall asleep so I'd be able to sleep tonight.

I've been having a lot of internet connectivity problems lately, and I think it's either the router I bought or the amount of routers in the area blocking out my signal.

And then I drew, and this is what I drew.

It's an attempt at a self portrait. I don't think it's great, everything is a little off, but I figured it was good enough for a forty minute project. If I can't think of anything else to do tomorrow, I'll probably draw another one or two. This one was done from my webcam, not a picture, but I didn't move much while I was drawing it. 

I think I could do better if I wanted to spend more time on it, but really I just want to go to sleep.

Let Go

Ballet Hammer