I'm Sneaking Around

Deicisons...

It’s amazing how fast a brain can think under duress. I managed to drag myself out of bed despite the circumstances and head to work. I couldn’t help but dwell on the nights happening for, well, pretty much since then and still now. It’s a difficult thing to think about, relationships. It’s tough when they simply end in a whimper, pathetic even. I will not let this happen. Amanda is far too important to me to simply let her float by because she’s afraid of money. I’ll be moving to LA, officially, on the 10th of September 2009. I don’t care if I don’t have a job, if my car is a flaming piece of rubble, or if i’ve broken every extremity in my body. I will be in LA, I will survive, I will be with her through every ordeal now and into the future. There is absolutely no reason to break this off for either of us. I need nothing more than her, any and all other things in my life are either wholely unimportant or can wait an indefinite amount of time.

I love you Amanda. More than you possibly will ever know.

I called it.

It’s not that I wanted to be right, but I was. It’s over. She cited the unbelievalby selfish ‘money concerns’ for the entire fiasco. It’s pathetic that things could degrade to the point of destruction in under 10 weeks.

The Great Divide.

It’s amazing what such a short time of separation will do to a relationship. I know i’m living a simulacrum here but being separated from my girlfriend is really tough. Initially I didn’t think much of it, we were going to be separated for a few months, maybe six, and then be back together. However, a constant changing of plans and my girlfriends constantly panicky talk has gotten to me. For the past few weeks all I can think about is what I perceive to be the inevitable solution to our current predicament: separation. Not merely by distance either.

It’s a difficult thing to put to words, from the fact that she may see this and make it a self-fulfilling prophecy, but also because i’m simply so tired of thinking about it. It always irks me at the most random moments and then depresses me for hours on end until I can finally just clear my mind completely. Theres two lines of thought: just end it now, or stop worrying about it, but I can’t seem to do either. Ending it would be both immature and premature, it’s the part of me that wants to just cut off pain as soon as it starts though in reality, it would still haunt me for months if not longer.

The odds are stacked against us, but it’s simply something of our own making, which is what really kills me about the whole thing. It’s not as if we were forced apart against our will, she chose to leave and i’ll most likely choose not to join her. We’re separated for stupid, selfish reasons, the both of us. I hate it.

Obfuscation vs. Oppression

I started working at Safeway almost a year ago. Since the beginning I learned to loathe the absolute garbage music they pump through the PA system at every moment of every day. The lineup changes rarely, if at all, and consists of a regular 3 hour playlist looped until you just about go insane. I’m positive that it’s some kind of motivational torture, in that it only becomes bareable if you put your nose to the grindstone and focus on the work in front of you.

Lately I’ve begun to notice that nearly every song has to do with either a failing relationship, or a sex-based relationship. They can sing about sex all day over the PA system but employees have to appear sterilized: dressed like clones, no facial hair (except extremely poor looking mustaches) and unallowed to do anything but obtrusively interrupt customers in an attempt to offer assistance or please one of the power hungry managers.

I absolutely hate the cooperate ethic instilled in absolutely every type or business I’ve worked at. As if doing menial tasks like scrubbing the floors on your hands and knees is going to do anything to their years of encrusted filth except strain the employees body. I realize that I’m being paid to be there, but if I have nothing better to do why not let me go home early? Then this would cut into my available hours of work that week, but hey why not take it a step further and simply trim the fat and rid themselves of excess employees?

When business is disappointingly slow, they’re strapped for how many hours they will let you work and at he same time management loathes having to squeeze in every employee for anything resembling a full work week. Perhaps if they simply took time to cross-train employees in the various departments they could eliminate both problems. Am I crazy? I am I the ony one that thinks this idea would work? Apparently so. I hate working for corporate America, it’s decision making at it’s poorest.

An extended lapse of judgement.

I’m about done with video games.

That sentence should set the mood, but know now that it isn’t the exact truth. Over the years, with every system I have ever owned, i’ve went through a purging process. These are usually last gasp attempts to futilely extract what little value is left from what I own in order to buy up to the next generation. I sold my original Super Nintendo and 13 games I owned in order to buy a Nintendo 64, memory extension, and Blast Corps. I sold my PS2, Gamecube, XBox and over 30 games to buy into the PSP at launch, and most recently i’ve sold my Dreamcast (along with a large assortment of accessories) , my second PS2 and the over dozen games I owned for it, and now my XBox 360, PS3 and two dozen games I own for them.

It was never my intention to sell my current systems and games, but it simply evolved naturally. Since May i’ve been on a rampage of combing through everything I owned to that point and sorting out what I could, what I would have to give away, and what was just garbage. The breakdown of this was surprising and saddening to me:

Thats right, over half of what I owned was worth nothing or completely devoid of purpose. Even a lot of the things I had that could be sold wound up selling for dramatically less of their worth. Worth is a matter of perception though, and that’s the exact problem here. Things like my bed had an obvious value, but what about a heat gun? Curtains for a seven foot window? Grand Theft Auto 3 posters? A stack of envelopes i’ve been using for the last 4 years? Many of these things had value at one time but I had preserved them long past their point of use for that far off and non-exsistent future where i’ll need to use a heat gun for anything.

It’s frustrating to have gone through the process of trying to rid myself of nearly all of my possessions, it was difficult to sell things, it was difficult to decide what to give away and what to throw away. At the time, it was just a process: list on eBay, goto Goodwill, throw in garbage. But with the very little hindsight I have, it’s sad to see how little i’ve managed to accrue over the years. I know it’s not good to look at the value of your life through your belongings but when all sales were totaled I didn’t even have enough money to afford a super cheap car to move myself out of state (not including any maintenance, repair or mandatory costs like insurance, etc.) and initial rent costs for moving into a new place. It truly makes me see just how pointless consumerism is. Does everyone really need to buy their own lawnmower when they only need it a few hours every other week? Did I really need to buy a soldering iron plus accessories and a heat gun to do one electronics project 2 years ago? No, not really. If I made money to the point where I felt like I had enough that I could call it disposable income, fine, but in reality it’s been [i]wasted[/i] income. I feel as if there is so much more I could have done if I hadn’t been constantly wasting my money. Even now with the disgust of my previous belongings still fresh in memory, I find it hard not to spend. I’ve been mostly resisting the temptation, nothing frivolous.

Now, that gets back to my selling off all of my videogame systems completely. I have rid myself of nearly everything except clothes, my laptop, and my current systems and games (save for a few other odds and ends) but my initial plan to move to California sometime by September is simply not going to pan out. It sucks to put it plainly. I wish both me and my girlfriend were in better circumstances, but we’re not, so that idea has been put on hold and with it the need for these boxes upon boxes of things we kept are now devoid of use. I honestly don’t know when we’ll ever need these dishes and pans for anything (I never did want to save them) and I see no point in the next couple years where i’ll be in a place that I can afford to buy a new TV and sound system to play any games, let alone when i’d have time for it.

I’ve been long-winded enough already, I think it’s time to end this one.

Car troubles

I knew I wouldn’t be able to get a car for under $2000 and have it be perfect but I was hoping that I wouldn’t need to spend much for any work. I took it for general inspection yesterday and was floored by not only the number of fixes suggested but also the absurd cost of the individual fixes. All totaled, the place I took it to wanted $2550 for parts and labor. I wasn’t sure exactly what they listed was actually needed but I knew that they must have been taking me for a ride on the majority of the work. The biggest standout of this was the ridiculous cost of replacing the power steering hoses: $435. You have to be fucking kidding me. I’ve taken it to another place today and they want under half of what the original place did. Regardless, I can’t afford all these fixes at once but I can get the important stuff now and do the rest if the fixes over the next couple months. The simple cost of owning a car is one of the reasons Ive never even glanced at getting one before.

Overall it’s much more than I was hoping to spend (my expectations were obviously unrealistic) but it’s something I’ll live with. Suddenly the $130 I want to spend on a new basic sound system seems like a drop in the bucket, I just hope it’s as easy to install as I think it is.

Hello world!

Selling things is difficult.

I’m having a fire-sale on the bulk of my things: furniture, a ton of random videogame items, my precious CD collection, and the tons of completely random things i’ve bought and used once over the years. One of the more difficult things for me to give up, for two reason, has been my CD collection. One: Because i’ve collected these over the years, they’re all from bands I truely love and a lot of them have been tough to acquire. Two: Because taking pictures of every CD I have and then posting them on eBay is a task for at least a full day of work. It’s taken at least 2 hours to photograph my 132 CDs, and I still haven’t even gotten to putting them onto eBay which will take at least another 2 hours, but who knows how long.

Selling things locally has been equally difficult with people requesting to see things and then constantly flaking out or just dropping contact with me. It is kind of amazing what people will pay for some things. While i’ve tried to price everything fairly, people will still buy things even when it’s a rip-off for them, at least from my perspective. Good for me though, I need all the money I can get before I head out of this desert.

Gearing Up

I’m Sneaking Around will soon be doing so around the nothern US. My lease is up for my place in July and after that i’ll finally be doing a stint of traveling around Oregon/Washington. Nothing is set in stone, but i’ll probably start around the south of Oregon and simply make my way upwards, hitting towns for food and whatever else I need as I go along. After that, it’ll be the big move to California. Not my ideal state, but anything is better than Tucson at this point.

Any tips, suggestions, places to stay or see are of course welcome.