@moutwash

My Second Attempt at an Introduction Hello everybody, (again). I wrote an introduction on here once before, but that was barred from the community due to a low word count. I'm not sure if this one will get taken down since I've submitted an article here before, but hey I guess it's worth a shot. This is not an attempt to monger tips, as there are other more original articles that I would much rather be writing, but the relevant communities for such works require a post in this one. So please, mods, don't reject this unless you find it to be severely lacking in quality. My pseudonym on this website is moutwash, because that's my tag in just about everything else. The name originated when I was trying to think up of a username for my second League of Legends account, and picked the first item that I saw in my college dormitory. This was - you guessed it - a bottle of mouthwash. God, it felt weird typing that with the "h". If you're reading this and decide to check out the articles which I currently have posted on this website, you'll soon realize that the majority of them are diaries. I do plan to branch off from that category of writing, but this website does motivate me to write them and it's something that I genuinely enjoy doing. So if you want to take a peek into my personal life, feel free to check those out. I also have one on the subtle dangers of marijuana abuse, all the knowledge of which comes from my experience on the subject. Granted, my expertise on the subject is limited only to those experiences, and the argument is pretty informal and I'm not too proud of the way that I put it together. Whether that's justified or a result of my all-too-high expectations for myself, I'm not sure, but I digress. Like I mentioned above, I do have a couple articles planned for the future. One that I am particularly excited to write is concerning an apocryphal, (meaning non-canon/illegitimate), book which is related Christian mythology. The interesting thing about this book is that in the early stages of Christianity and Judaism it was widely considered to be an honest, divinely inspired account of the kingdom of God, including the war between Him and Lucifer. If that piques your interest, you can subscribe to be more aware of when that article comes out, but it may take me a while because I'm still doing research in my very limited free time. Another couple things in the works are editorials which delve into some controversies that have recently come to light. I don't want to say exactly what they are right now, but one has to do with a decidedly washed-up Youtube gaming channel, and the other will be focused on a certain disgraced politician that has been causing an uproar for a while now on multiple social media sites. Besides those subjects which I've listed, my interests are wide-ranging and vary a lot on a week-to-week basis. I can't say that I'm entirely invested, (time-wise or financially), into cryptocurrencies like I know a lot of you are. I hope that you're accepting of that fact, as I don't see any real reason not to be. My hobbies lie mainly in video gaming and art creation in several forms of media, but I also love learning about all types of science. In fact, my original purpose in creating this account was to delve into the different scientific topics that I am interested in. However, I shortly realized that there are a metric ton of people who are much more qualified than me to do so. Instead, up to and including now I have decided to write mainly about myself. Deep down, though, that feels very egotistical and it's something I would love to break free from. I've told you a bit now about my interests and ideas for my future on this website. Maybe I should fill you in on the more tangible details about myself. I'm a man in my early 20s. I have a girlfriend, who I tend to mention a lot in my diaries, and to whom I am completely devoted. I also have a lot of goals and aspirations that I am on the road to fulfilling, so you might consider me a driven/motivated person. Of troubles of any nature, I have had my share. By definition, then, I suppose that I'm a troubled person. Certain struggles have come up a bit in my diaries, mainly the ones with mental health, but I hope to use all of them in order to relate with my fellow humans and perhaps even provide some insight or inspiration. For any other recent developments in my life, allow me to refer you to my other articles. Besides that, there isn't much else to say about me. It's a shame that I have to be worried about my word count in order to post to this community, but I am pretty satisfied with the amount of information contained within. I hope that you enjoyed reading this introduction, and if you find that you're a person who is likeminded with me I'd love to get a shout in the comments of any of my work. Thank you very much for taking your time, and I look forward to interacting with you all more in the times to come. Bye!

My Past Week: 3/15 to 3/22 Hello, everyone. To start off this article, I have a question: What happened to the diary community? If anyone has any knowledge on that subject please let me know in the comment section down below. In my last diary entry, (which I had posted in the community), I talked a lot about my first day at my new job. That first day, however, was only a classroom orientation. Wednesday thru Friday of last week, I was actually on the warehouse floor getting trained on a couple different pieces of equipment. Besides that, I've been spending a lot of time with my girlfriend, and playing on my Oculus Quest. So, if you want all of the gritty details of all that stuff, continue reading below! Training for my New Job I've mentioned it here and in my other articles here on read.cash. The rumors are true; I have a job now. It's a great feeling! If you've read any of my past diary entries you know that I went a long time, (about a year), without a steady job due to Covid as well as some mental health issues. Since I've already focused so much on the things that kept me from getting a job, I'm not going to go into that stuff. Instead, I want to take this time to talk about my training, and what I'm going to do once that training is over. In the future I plan to focus on other things, so in this article I'm just getting all of this out of my system. My career is now with a cold storage supply chain. The company has a lot of big-name customers, such as Kraft-Heinz, and we deliver their product to some prominent retailers, such as Kroger. They're a nationwide logistics company, and they even have an establishment in Ireland, which is cool to me since I'm Irish. My role in all of this is what they call a Frontline Associate, which essentially means I'm at the bottom of the food chain in their warehouse. That might seem cynical of me to say, but I'm actually pretty proud to have this job and I have high hopes for the future, as I am apt to write. Most of my time is going to be spent driving a forklift, carrying product from the truck/train docks into the freezer, or vice versa. The freezer sits at about -10 degrees, which sounds very cold. However, it's actually pretty refreshing, especially when they supply you with this heavily insulated uniform that you wear even in those areas where it's not subzero temperatures. In those parts of the warehouse, it gets extremely hot when you're all bundled up like that. The biggest obstacle in this job right now is the fact that I have never driven a forklift. I've worked in a few factories at this point, but I've always been on the production side of everything. Here, there is no production side, so every associate is required to become a certified LTO, unless they're working for sanitation. The warehouse has several types of equipment, from "walkies", (a rideable electric pallet jack), to standing reach trucks, to standard sit-down forklifts. There's a few others, but those three are what I'm going to be spending most of my time on at first. So, most of my last week was spent getting comfortable on those machines. I spent one day entirely on a walkie, and I'll tell you what, those are really uncomfortable to drive in general. To turn it you have to use your arms, and by the end of that day my arms were quite sore. The platform that you stand on is also pretty small, and you're required to keep your feet on the platform for some obvious safety reasons. This means that when you're pulling the lever towards you, you're getting pretty close to knocking yourself off the damn thing. The nice thing is, these go pretty slow, so there isn't a large risk of having a fatal accident. Thursday, on the other hand, I was on a reach truck all day. These are a little bit easier to drive, physically, but the steering is hard to wrap my head around since we're only allowed to drive in reverse when we're going through the warehouse. To steer, you have a little lever that spins in a circle, or sometimes a wheel. So driving forward, you steer in the same direction as you would in a car. In reverse, of course, it is the opposite. Obviously, reversing in a car is something you have to do often, but it's usually only for a short amount of time and you don't have to think about maintaining a straight vehicle for the whole length of a road. I have figured out that you turn the steering mechanism clockwise to turn the back-end toward the left, and counter-clockwise to turn it towards the right. This information is all well and good until you're driving full-speed down the warehouse floor with a myriad of other trucks and people going past you. While I was training on this piece of equipment I was doing okay, but I'd be lying if I said there weren't some instances where I thought I was going to crash into a wall. On Friday, which was my last day of training for the week, I started actually pulling pallets from their racks in the freezer. This was fairly easy on the reach truck, since making a tight turn is just a matter of spinning the wheel until it can't go any more in that direction. Lining it up with the outriders is probably the hardest part in that situation, but after doing it a couple times I found that it came easier and easier. Then my trainer decided he'd like to see how I handled myself pulling pallets with the walkie. Getting back up on that thing I could already tell that it felt unfamiliar, as if I hadn't spent an entire day on one just forty-eight hours ago. It's worth mentioning that the training walkie in particular is very tough to steer. There's a lot of resistance in the handle. Making the tightest turn was nearly impossible for me, but that sharp turn is an absolute requirement, considering that some aisles in the freezer bay are just wide enough to fit the walkie in horizontally before you pull into the pallet. At first I was struggling, a lot. My trainer was very patient with me though, and asked if I would like to go back to the empty part of the dock where I had first familiarized myself with the equipment. I said sure, so we spent another hour out there so I could get used to the steering again, and doing those sharp turns. Once I felt confident in my ability to use it, we went back into the freezer to practice. I got the hang of it much easier after that, and we ended my training that day with using the high reach to take some stuff off the next level of pallets, which is about six feet off the ground. That was about the same as taking it off the lower level, so I performed that task well. Some things that I have to improve on: 1) Making sure I'm doing everything in the safest way possible. I have a bad habit, (or lack thereof), of not checking in both directions and sounding my horn when I back up from the pallet rack. If someone was coming past me at a time like that I would like cause an accident, and that is something that I never want to be responsible for. 2) My steering in both the reach truck and walkie. With the walkie it's just a matter of finding the best positioning possible in such a small space, especially when I'm pulling the handle towards me. My trainer also pointed out that when steering the walkie, I use my arms as the main source of power far too often. He recommended that I use my hips more, when I step in to push the handle, or to turn my body more when I'm pulling it towards me. When he said that I definitely took it in, and I plan to use that advice to its fullest. In the reach truck, I need to make sure I'm aware of the direction that I'm turning the wheel in. Far too often I found myself needing to stop and think about which way the truck would turn if I spun the wheel in a certain direction. On occasions where time is of the essence, that isn't gonna fly. Plus being more aware of that will help prevent accidents in the future. 3) I need to remind myself that I'm starting with absolutely zero knowledge on the functionality of forklifts. After a couple mistakes I realized I was getting very angry at myself, which was entirely uncalled for. I do have a history of anger management issues, and oftentimes those feelings are directed at myself. I may always struggle with that, but that's just another reason why I should always be working on it. Everything Besides Work I think I covered everything that happened while I was training over the past week. It was some good experience, and I met a whole lot of people that I'll probably never work with again on my life, since I'm going to a completely different shift. Either way, allow me to delve into everything that happened outside of work this week. It wasn't much, but I did make sure that I was able to enjoy myself. I'm also coming off a four-day weekend, which was actually entirely too uneventful. Fun with the Oculus Quest So I made a pretty mediocre throwaway article about my time with the Oculus Quest since I got it about a week and a half ago. I talked about all the things you can do in it without spending money, and some of the functionality. However, I'm no techno wizard and there are thousands more qualified than me to review the console, who already have. If you want to read mine, for whatever reason, feel free to do so. I won't be linking it. Regardless, I have been having a lot of fun with it, as the title of this section implies. After exploring the interface and everything that's available if you don't want to spend any more than the $300 some-odd that the headset costs you, I settled on two things which I'll likely be spending most of my time on until I purchase one of the bigger titles that they have to offer. First I found a game called Rec Room in the Oculus Store. It's a free-to-play game, (obviously), that revolves around community-created maps and social interaction. Basically, think VR Roblox. The game is actually available on other systems, but I don't see myself playing it outside of VR. There's climbing, a mechanic that I instantly fell in love with; shooting, which I'm really bad at so far; sports, which make for fun competition; then there's a whole lot of voice chat that I don't particularly care for. Unfortunately, a lot of the player base is little kids who don't understand proper etiquette or the notion of inside voices. On the other hand I have met a couple pretty cool people so I can't complain too much. Besides Rec Room, there's a couple other free games on the store that I found to be at least somewhat entertaining. There's Echo VR, which is like a frisbee/soccer hybrid in zero gravity. While it's pretty nauseating, I had a bit of fun with it. Not something I plan on playing much more of, though. Then there's a couple poker apps. I love poker, so I decided to check out Poker Stars VR. After joining a couple tables I realized that nobody there cared about legitimately playing poker so much as just having fun and being silly. That's all well and good, but it wasn't the experience that I was looking for, so I eventually just quit the app and never returned. Then I found it. Imagine Beat Saber. Now imagine that it's free. *Now* imagine that it's full of player-created maps for a shitload more songs than are included in Beat Saber or its multiple DLC packs. What you're picturing, then, is Moon Rider. I made the mistake in my past article of calling it Moonlight Rider, and it made me feel pretty silly when I realized that I had gotten it wrong. Guess what? Didn't change it. Anyway, I had a LOT of fun with this one just yesterday. You can choose to play it Beat-Saber-style, or you can take out your aggression by punching the blocks as they pass by you. I played this for hours yesterday and ended up quite sore, (still feeling it). I plan on playing this more later on today and I recommend that you do too. So, that's a lot of what I did during my time off from work. Besides that, I was... Spending time with the girlfriend Yeah, when neither of us are working this is pretty much what I'm doing. We live together, so it's a little difficult to find time for myself if she isn't at her job. Still, I love it. My girlfriend herself is a great person, she's a healthcare worker and I'm extremely proud of everything that she's been doing during this whole pandemic. I think she is quite brave. Most of the time what we do is sit around and watch television - not too exciting, but hey, whatever. Sometimes we go out to the bar or something, but I'm actually not too fond on that. Not that I don't love drinking, but oftentimes we find ourselves accompanied by quite a few of her friends, who I don't know very well at all, and as an introvert the experience is overall draining. That's fine though, I can put up with that as long as she's enjoying herself and I'm not being made to feel too uncomfortable. This last week, though, we didn't do any of that. The most that we did was go out to dinner with my dad, which was quite nice. We ended up at an Italian restaurant, got some pasta, and bullshitted for a while until we decided to pack things up and go home for the night. Other than that, yeah, the weekend was pretty uneventful. We watched Zack Snyder's cut of Justice League and checked out the first episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier, both of which were enjoyable. That's just about it. The Week Ahead I've been off from work since Friday, but this week I'm scheduled to go onto my actual shift time, which is supposed to be Wednesday night through Sunday morning in 10 hour shifts. I'm looking forward to going back to a third shift schedule, considering I'm more of a night owl anyway, though I am worried about being tired while operating heavy equipment. I made sure to stock up on Monster energy drinks since I have no regard for my physical well-being. For now I'll get three days off a week while still hitting forty hours, which is very nice. However, once my thirty-day training period is over with, I'm going to be mandated an extra two hours per normally-scheduled shift, and then two extra **days**, which will be ten and eight hour shifts respectively. I do not look forward to that at all. I intend to find a way to still do what I want/need to during the week, including exercising at the gym, cooking, and the day-to-day upkeep which my body and apartment both require. I'll likely be posting weekly diary entries from this point on, as long as I have something to talk about besides work. Until next time, you all have a lovely week. Thank you for reading!

Marijuana Abuse and its Effects Hello there everybody! The subject of this article may be somewhat uncommon in this community; just from my quick perusal of recent articles I can see that this is a more lighthearted group of people than those who would really want to read about this kind of thing. However, with the everlasting debate on marijuana and its legality, this is a pretty topical issue. Plus, many consider this drug and its usage to be a lifestyle all on its own. Disclaimer: I am an advocate for federally legalizing marijuana I'm aware that the above statement does conflict with the general topic of what this article is going to be about, but I think it would really be compromising my integrity if I did not make it known that I am pro-marijuana. What I am NOT is pro-marijuana-abuse, and I believe this is something that happens much more often than people are aware of. Many other weed advocates would argue against the label of marijuana as a drug. I'm here to tell you right now: I'm sorry, but it is. The fact is that marijuana's main chemical component, THC, is a mind-altering, psychoactive substance that can produce many feelings which we attribute even to psychedelics. These include euphoria, paranoia, hyper-awareness, and others. Now, as is commonly known, there exists another chemical in cannabis which is known as CBD. This is not psychoactive at all, produces no highness effect, and is generally considered calming and even medicinal. Now, in moderation, even marijuana that contains high percentages of THC is considered to be medicinal. I live in Illinois, where medicinal marijuana was legal before recreational use was permitted by law. I would not judge anybody who smokes it for this reason, or even for recreational reasons. This article is merely a cautionary statement in these times of marijuana-hype. What is "abuse" and what does it look like? The stoner stereotype is something that is commonly used in movies and other mediums of storytelling. One example that comes to mind is the character Marty from Cabin in the Woods, (great movie). In an already humorous movie, Marty is the comic relief, because I think that everybody, no matter what there views on marijuana use may be, can laugh at the air-headed stoner. Even my friends who smoke the most weed find that kind of stuff hilarious, because even if it's a bit of an exaggeration, it's one that still hits pretty close to home for anybody who smokes on a regular basis. So that's the fun, quirky take on weed abuse. Obviously the characters who perpetuate the stereotype are idiots, but they're mostly lovable and I don't think anybody's all that upset to see it. Let's look at it from another angle, though. Somebody who smokes weed everyday, like ya boy Snoop Doggy-Dog, and spends all of their time stoned, is rarely going to operate as well when they do NOT have the drug in their system. I've heard from many acquaintances and longtime users that they simply can't concentrate or relax when they aren't high. It's practically their coping mechanism, and it's usually their one and only. One issue with substance-related coping mechanisms is that they inhibit one's ability to find other more productive ways to relieve their stress. Well, that's probably no big deal, right? I mean, what somebody does on their own time is totally their business, and if they aren't hurting anyone then there's really nothing wrong with it. And that is my opinion on a lot, if not most, things. However, what about those times where you get stressed, but it turns out that you can't go off and take a hit of your dab pen? What if you're at work in a factory, and you have to go drive a forklift, but you just can't seem to calm down from whatever's bothering you? To smoke weed at a time like that can be very dangerous to everybody around you. Another problem that I've seen in my life is that parents who sit around and smoke weed all of the time can be very neglectful. It's sad, and nobody would want to admit it, but it can be true. One of my best friends had parents who were like that, and their whole method of raising him was to sit him in front of a television, or buy him a gaming console to play with for all of his waking hours. What a kid actually needs is natural stimulus from their parents and from the outside world. In the early stages of their lives, they need toys to play with if only just to learn how to interact with different objects. Later on, I believe the most beneficial thing you can do is take your kid out to the park to get exercise and experience nature. Obviously not everybody is into those things, but in that case you'd generally find something else to do. When you're high, though, you really don't have that motivation, to play with your kid or teach them. It's important to note that marijuana itself is not to blame in any situation. It is always up to the people using it, and the drug should not remain illegal just based on the actions of some bad actors. Abuse is identified when an action is repeated at such a magnitude that it gets to the point where the lives of those around you are being affected. Any kind of abuse is very difficult to live around, even when it's not noticeable to the abuser. As far as most substance abuse goes, marijuana abuse is probably the least destructive that one could be involved in. Its effects are subtle and not always immediately apparent. in my case, the opposite was true. My personal experience with marijuana abuse I'd like to start this off with another disclaimer: the effects of recreational cannabis are different for everybody. The events that are detailed here are coming from the point of view of somebody, (me), who suffers from multiple mental illnesses, some of which have psychotic symptoms. This is the main reason that I feel compelled to write this article. I began smoking as a sophomore in high school, and had partaken in the act ever since. At this time I was not terribly aware of my overall mental health. I knew that I had anxiety, but hey, a lot of people do, and marijuana is something that is commonly used to treat its symptoms. So, I had a friend who introduced me to it. We hung out a few times after that with his other friends. The whole group was older than me, and I began to feel a little out of place due to the age gap and their other tastes which involved using a few other substances. Our paths split, and that was alright, but hell I was still going to be smoking that weed. Fast forward a few years and I'm off to college. Still a pretty frequent stoner, but I was smart regardless, scored a 32 on my ACTs and I was feeling pretty damn good about where life was taking me. I ended up in Chicago, living in my university's dorms, and weed was reaaally easy to get. I was smoking every day, pretty much constantly doing one-hitters and relaxing as much as possible, because let's face it, school is stressful. On top of schooling, I was working multiple jobs, and here's where things get pretty messy. My routine was something like this: Go to classes, receive probably five assignments each day; Go back to my dorm, have an hour before work; Smoke weed and play one round of a computer game that I was playing at the time; Go to work, smoke a little on the way, (it was a restaurant so I didn't really feel that bad); Work six/seven hours; Get home, smoke weed, neglect homework, go to bed. That was it. Needless to say, I eventually failed. Although I did fill in the cracks and study when I thought I needed to, and found the time to complete the assignments that mattered most, I had essentially smoked away all of my potential. That, however, is not the worst of it. By the end of my second year, (about the time my grades were dropping really low, otherwise I was pulling like a 3.2 gpa), my mental illness took off like a rocket. I was becoming quite delusional, and when I would smoke weed these ideas became more and more profound. I was connecting dots that weren't there, letting any little notion snowball to massive proportions. I had a weeklong manic episode that consisted of extremely little sleep, and I know you workaholics out there will be scoffing at that, but nobody should be going three-plus days with literally no sleep. Following that, I found myself in the hospital. A few days after I got out of that, I withdrew from school altogether. Post-dropping-out, depression hit really hard. In the following years I found myself in and out of psychiatric wards, a lot of which were because I was too high or had been mildly high for weeks or months on end. I lost a lot of my friends because smoking weed like that exacerbated the symptoms of my mental illness and they didn't want to be around it. I can't say I blame them. At this point in my life, I rarely, rarely touch the stuff. When I do, I'm alone, in a controlled environment, when I know that my plans are to just go to sleep. I'm also medicated now for my disorders, and I can't say that I'm anywhere near in as rough of shape as I was even this time last year. I hope that the information I have given you, as well as my examples, have at least caused you to think about some of the issues that are associated with long-term marijuana OVERuse. Again, there's nothing wrong with smoking it in moderation, just please consider that it's not something that should be done all of the time. If you have any comments feel free to post them, and if you think this article belongs somewhere else please let me know. Thank you for reading.

My First Day on the Job So I recently posted an article on here, reviewing and reflecting on the events of my life in the past year. In there, I made note of the fact that I had been unemployed for just about a full year, but that I was starting a new job. Well, it happened! I now work for a supply-chain-logistics company in the town where I reside. It is pretty humble work, with, inherently, nothing to brag about. However, the fact that I have made it this far in my mental rehabilitation is very comforting to me. I am quite excited for the upcoming time to be spent at this company, and the fulfillment which I am sure to receive from being a more active member of society. First, let me talk a little bit about my past week. My Past Week Apt header, right? Anyway, since I wrote my last article I've been thinking a lot about what more I would like to write about on here. Obviously I'm continuing to post diary entries, which I wasn't too sure that I would be doing. However, journaling is widely known to be therapeutic, typing is easier than writing with a pencil, and I figured why not post it for all you guys to read rather than letting it sit somewhere in my Google Drive collecting virtual dust? Besides these kinds of articles, I would like to post those which have to do with my active interests, like science, literature, and mythology. I know the subject material that I would like to focus on, it's now just a matter of research and self-education to ensure that I'm not giving any misinformation. So, that is what I had planned to spend the past few days doing; that is, unfortunately, not the case. Maybe that sounded a little too ominous. Really I've been spending my time quite well. My girlfriend had a couple days off from her job, so we decided to spend that time together. The first day, we decided to take her nieces out to the park. The youngest one is pretty mouthy, and has a habit of insulting me for no particular reason. At one point we were sitting around the table, and I was so tired that day that I ended up zoning out quite a bit, (which is a thing that I do when I'm very tired). While I was zoning out, my head was pointing in her general direction. As a result of this, she felt it was necessary to ask me why I was staring at her, and called me a creep. A CREEP! I was instantly taken aback and made sure to point out that I was, in fact, not staring at her, but that I was zoning out a bit on the wall behind and a bit to the right of her. Of course, while I was explaining that, my girlfriend also admonished her for talking so disrespectfully about something that she had misinterpreted. Granted, this child is six years old, okay? I don't expect her to have perfect etiquette or be able to interpret the exact angle at which my gaze is pointed. Her reaction to the slight reprimand, however, was to go off into the other room and cry. At that, I just had to roll my eyes. Anyway, eventually we took them to the park. I drank beer the whole time, (whoops), and that certainly made it more enjoyable. I'm not even going to focus on that part of the day, just because it was really uneventful and consisted of me sitting down with my girlfriend on a bench for an hour and a half making sure her nieces didn't get kidnapped. God, though, is that what parenting is like? Whatever. We left pretty soon because we had to go receive some furniture that she had ordered like four months ago: a couch, a kitchen table and its chairs, and then a television stand. The delivery guys brought the furniture in, and then proceeded to spend about forty minutes putting on the doors to the T.V. stand cabinets. Apparently that particular piece of furniture was pretty defective, so after it was all said and done he told us that he would be putting in for a new one, for us to expect in presumably four more months. Great. To validate the new living room, we then went to Walmart to buy a television. We've had one but it's in our bedroom; before now, our living room had been completely bare. At the retailer, we picked out a 65" LG that has some pretty nice image resolution. I haven't watched it much since we got it, but my girlfriend put on Inception just to test the quality and that movie looked pretty damn gorgeous on it, so we're quite happy with the purchase. The next day, we decided to go to Chicago. I live in northern Illinois, so the drive only took about two hours, a good chunk of which was spent sitting in and navigating traffic jams. Normally I get pretty anxious on those rides, especially once you get into the thick of the city, but it was honestly quite bearable and I enjoyed seeing Chi-town for the first time since I moved away from there a couple years ago. I should mention: The day got off to a rocky start. The lady and I have had an ongoing... "conversation", which generally turns out to be more of an argument, about my attitude and emotions. That day, she also decided to bring up my maturity. The fact of the matter is, I'm in my early twenties, and she is six years older than me. There is bound to be a maturity deficit on my part. Of course, I can't use that as an excuse, and after the conversation I resolved to work on that. I'm beginning to understand that I can't wear all of my emotions on my sleeve, especially not the negative ones, and I can't always act the way that my admittedly humorous instincts tell me to. That being said, it was a great day. We had that talk about my bothersome tendencies quite early on, and since the end of it we never brought it up again. I did my best to be AT my best, and it worked. The drive there was spent listening to a variety of music that we both liked. We didn't talk as much as normal, because I couldn't think of much to say, but we still enjoyed each other's company. When we got to the city, we went straight to Chinatown to peruse a few of their stores and get some boba tea. I tried the brown sugar tea and it was fairly disgusting. *Let me know in the comments if this is too detailed and/or boring and/or irrelevant, thanks!* Post-Chinatown, we decided to drive along the lake, which - dudes and chicks, I'm telling you - don't even bother doing unless you absolutely need to. That traffic is just too horrible. We drove from the lake back around to Michigan Avenue so that we could pass over the bridge and see the green river, and that looked fantastic. From there we went to one of the nicer suburbs, took a walk around the mall to look at all the stores they had, some of which were really cool. After that, we ate at the Cheesecake Factory. It was my first time there, and it was delicious. Anyone who chooses Olive Garden over Cheesecake Factory needs some counseling of their own, just saying. By the time we were done there it had gotten quite late, so we drove on back. My lady had a hard time staying awake, so I did my best to entertain her with my awful singing voice. As cringe-y as that may sound, I'm convinced it's the only thing that kept us alive. This, then, leads me into today! My Work Orientation Since today was my first day on the job, I had to go through that normal process of learning all of the ins and outs of company policy. Some of it was stuff that I had heard a million times: sexual harassment, food safety requirements, all that jazz. I've worked in food packaging/distributing industry on a couple occasions so this stuff is not entirely new to me. However, this is my first time being with a national logistics company, and my first time driving a forklift, so I still have a great deal to understand about the environment. So to start the orientation off, they had all of the incoming employees grouped into a conference room equipped with a projector and a multitude of Powerpoint presentations. There were only four other new hires, which I was pretty thankful for considering my social anxiety. Everyone was really nice, so on that front I was also pleased. We started with some basic introductions of ourselves, then got into the company history. Apparently it started out in Atlanta Georgia as an ice company, and made its way across the United States to now be one of the largest distributers of frozen goods. They're also extremely innovative, (and I'm not trying to advertise for them so I'll just go ahead and keep the company's name out of this), and have designed their own automated pallet storage/retrieval system. As cool as that is, if it gets to the point where they've perfected it I would be very worried about my job in their warehouse, so I'm going to do my best to learn about their operating system and machinery, and stay ahead of the curve. The job has many benefits, as they pointed out, and for a minimal cost. I'll be part of a union, which I was raised to hate BUT I've come to realize is honestly a really beneficial thing unless you're a shitty employer. Beyond those things, what we covered had mainly to do with safety training and the other aforementioned common-knowledge stuff. The day consisted of a lot of smoke breaks, which I will be doing my best not to partake in from here on out, because they charge me $70 a month just for smoking, which SUCKS, but hey it gives me an incentive to better my health. I don't know much else to say. I look forward to training more there over the course of this next month, and I especially look forward to the different things that having a great, nicely paying job will allow.

The Past Year in a Nutshell The last year has been awful for everyone. I was raised to believe that, no matter how bad things are going for you, there is somebody out there who is have a much worse time than yourself. This is not a new concept to anyone, I'm sure, and never would I propose that my life has been more difficult than anybody else's. I especially feel this way during the current Covid pandemic. Everyone has had an extremely difficult time, and I'm certainly better off than any of the >500,000 people who lost their lives to the virus. Luckily enough, I've never even had it. What I did have, however, was still a train wreck of a year. Considering this is a diary entry - though I prefer the term "journal" to protect my fragile masculinity - I think it would be best to refrain from giving too much background on myself. The little bit of relevant information I will disclose here is this: I had recently dropped out of college, meaning I was in a financial hole and my self-esteem was shot. At the time I was also struggling a lot with mental illness, being in and out of psychiatric hospitals for multiple reasons. My living situation was precarious at best, and I was living in my hometown while all my friends and family had moved on. Basically, I started the year at an all-time low, and it kept plummeting from there. January to February 2020 At the beginning of the month, I moved out of a friend's home, more or less against my will but I understood why they would have wanted to kick me out. I was having a lot of trouble holding down a job, and was just generally a burden on their finances and an obstacle to their lifestyle. No hard feelings, right? I found a cheap apartment relatively quick, and it was funny to me too because it was a place that my dad had lived at earlier in my life, so that was a fun little nostalgia blast. I went to the landlord's office building, signed a lease for the first time in my life, and got all set to move in. I felt like a real grown-up, and it was pretty sweet at first. My job at the time was third shift at a food packaging facility, where I worked with one of my two (2) remaining friends in the world. It was nice being around her there, having a friendly and familiar face at your job is something to be valued. Little else happened during this time, I basically slept all day and worked all night, and it was more or less fulfilling. March So I'm pretty sure everybody knows this is where sh*t hit the fan in the United States, pandemic-wise. I had recently been fired from my third shift job that I liked so much and was now working bench assembly at a car parts factory. This job was pretty enjoyable, I just had to sit down and use my hands. The two other people that were sitting with me at the bench were nice enough, though one of them had a raging infection that made them smell... unpleasant, to say the least. No judgment though, and she was a pretty good person so I always did my best to be kind to her, 'cause that's just basic human decency. At this point, my schedule is basically the same as it had been before: work, sleep, repeat. BUT there's a wrench thrown into the works there somewhere because I made the very unintelligent decision of contacting one of my ex-girlfriends and trying to make a go of things. Not only is that usually a bad decision in and of itself, but I find out that she (22 years of age) is hooking up on a regular basis with a man who's just shy of 50. She, however, is still acting very into me, so against my better judgment I decided to continue on this endeavor. We go on a few dates, she comes over and we make out, watch movies, yadda yadda. Of course, this all catches up to me when I realize she is the same as, if not worse than she was when we dated the first time three years prior. As the daughter of a lucrative-restaurant owner, she had always been fairly spoiled, while I came from a family of poverty and actually understood the value of things. There's also a rampaging sense of superficiality with her to the point where it makes my stomach sick. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. We continue seeing each other through the end of March and the rest will be told soon enough. Then, of course, is when businesses started getting shut down and everyone gets laid off. The company who I was working for tells everyone to go home and that they'll update us, and this update takes about a week. At this time I'm battling depression pretty hard and I decide that I'm just not going to go back. The stimulus check made this possible, and I used that to pay my rent and other expenses. April to June So, picture this: a man in his early 20s who's been battling mental illness for quite some time, decides he's going to quit his job, have no income, isolate himself, and smoke weed all day. Sounds like a recipe for ultimate success, right? You may be surprised, but the answer is no. The aforementioned ex-girlfriend and I eventually part ways and it is pretty ugly. We had already gotten back to arguing like we used to, I have a friend who is basically stirring that pot even more, and this whole thing has got my head spinning. On top of that, there is an awful fact about my family's history that I will omit from this account, but rest assured it is plaguing me like, well, the plague. Suffice it to say, my father was convicted of a crime which the whole town was made aware of, and ended up on a certain registry. So now that I'm back in my hometown and active in the community, I start feeling like people are keeping a keen eye on me, like hardcore. It gets so bad that it blossoms into full-fledged paranoia and I'm fearing for my life every minute. However, there are a few people who I meet and develop a "friendship" with. First was a girl a year younger than me who I met at a park at three in the morning, who was walking by playing some music that I was familiar with. Feeling brave, I decided to call out and be like, "Yo, [insert artist here], sweet!" This turns into a pretty long conversation and it was very refreshing. We exchange contact info and eventually go our separate ways. Well, we meet up again either the next day or the day after, and I come to find out that she has some sort of fractured personality disorder. I want to say DID, dissociative identity disorder, but I can't recall exactly what it was. She tells me this, and I think very little of it other than that I'd like to be as supportive as I can be. I do my best to learn about the particulars of her condition, and while some things are a little off-putting I decide I'm not going to let that change how I see her as a person. Fast forward a few days and she's spending the night at my apartment. Cool, right? Again, the answer is astoundingly and emphatically no. The next day she has an appointment. I ask her if she'd like me to accompany her. "No," she says, "That's fine." I tell her, "Okay, well I think while you're doing that I'll be running some errands or whatever, so here's the KEY to my APARTMENT and come back whenever you'd like." If you need any more evidence to prove that I'm a moron I don't know what to tell you. *Trigger Warning* Long story short, while I'm gone she comes back and takes my box cutter to her wrists. Then she leaves. I come back to find quite a bit of blood on the apartment floor, and my boxcutter missing. When I messaged her on Facebook she told me what had happened and that she was going to go home to a neighboring town. I ask her to meet me before she does that, because I would like to talk about what just happened. We meet, and go for a walk, and during this she keeps talking about how nobody will ever understand the thoughts in her mind, that she'd be better off dead, and a lot of things that I had been feeling for quite a while as well. So I explain to her that she's not alone, there are people just like her everywhere who may not have her exact condition but would understand it and appreciate her nonetheless. In reply, she discredits everything I said and just repeats what she had been saying. At this point I just want to make her feel like she isn't alone, so I decided to reveal some of my deepest, darkest thoughts to her. What I hoped to achieve here was a sense of mutual understanding; what I received was her looking me dead in the face like I was a freak, and saying, "What is wrong with you?" Like, really? Considering some of the things she had said and done, I thought what I said was pretty mild. We did end up spending more time together that day, but - whew - how it ended is the worst part. After all of that we decided to go to her friend's house. I had been there before, we all got along, they were fine people so I had no problem going over there. At one point, however, this girl says that she'd like to talk to her friends alone, and she was wondering if I could go grab some of her stuff from my place. Sure, I'm happy to abide, so I go back to my apartment with another one of her friends. He drives me, I get her stuff, we go back. Then he tells me to wait in the car, because he's going to go inside and see what the deal is. Little did I know that I was actually being locked inside of his car to where I couldn't get out. Once I realize this I am overwhelmed with anxiety. After sitting there for a few minutes I decided that I couldn't take it anymore, and I was just going to get out and walk home. I unlock the door manually and open it, but once I do his car alarm starts going off. Since I'm already freaking out, the extremely loud and unexpected noise is like a bomb, and I lose all motor function. Then, the next thing I hear is him screaming from their friend's house, "Get the f*ck back in the car!" which I obey for some reason. By the time he gets out I'm ready to beat the sh*t out of him, but I was able to keep my cool and instead resolved to never associate with those people again. Which was pretty easy because none of them wanted to see me again either, after the girl who caused all of that told them what I had said, as well as a few things I hadn't. That being done and over with, I found myself in a pretty rough state. I started drinking every day, coupled with my then-overwhelming paranoia. A few friends are made, a couple are lost. There's another long story somewhere in there but at this point I haven't the heart to get into it. Maybe I can write about it later. At any rate, everything begins deteriorating mental-health-wise, and I ended up going to the hospital three times over the course of May. The last time I went, my family and I decided that that was it, I was no longer able to hold a place in society, and I was better off staying in a long-term psychiatric care facility until I completed a good deal of therapy. It was extremely hard to admit that, but I knew that it was for the best. It took a couple weeks, but by early-mid June I was placed in a nearby town's nursing home. I stayed there for the remainder of the year. June to December I'm going to do my best to consolidate everything that happened in these six months, and honestly it won't be too hard to do because nothing really happened. I was transferred from the hospital to this new facility. What I was expecting is a whole lot different than where I ended up. You see a nursing home or something of the sort on television and sometimes it is pictured as a nice, open place with a large outdoor area, activities, and at the very least group therapy sessions. This place, though, was a fairly decrepit building, with a central yard that was probably 150 square feet. Most of the patients there were way older than me, and considerably more progressed in their mental illness. Nonetheless, I was determined to make the most of it. I immediately began undergoing my therapy, starting with making sure that I was on the right medication. I immediately realized that I was living alongside a lot of people who were worse off than me, (interesting how things kind of wrapped back around to that). The experience definitely gave me a great perspective on my own issues, and the medication that I was prescribed was effective in reducing the symptoms that I was experiencing. The worst part about staying in this place is that it was during a pandemic. There was none of the regular freedom that the patients there had, which usually included home visits for ten days out of the month, outdoor activities, excursions to the park or the library. The only thing that we were allowed to do outside of the normal schedule, while I was there, is smoke. Of course, I am a fairly heavy smoker, so I took advantage of the smoking sessions that we were given. During this time I was increasingly stable and my cognitive abilities improved greatly. There was a brief episode of paranoia and anxiety, where I was worried that my roommate was trying to take my life. Of course the fear was unfounded, but sometimes once you get an idea in your head that you obsess over, you end up using absolutely anything as evidence for that thing being true. Anyway, this episode was mitigated very easily by a room change and an adjustment to my meds. While I was staying at this facility I learned a lot about myself, and by the end of that stretch of my journey I was able to communicate my feelings a lot more clearly. I was also able to reconcile many things that had been bothering me about myself, my life, the past few years in particular, and things that I had been repressing for a long time. Eventually I felt like I had learned all that I was going to, and I knew that I was stable enough to go back into the outside world and make a life for myself. I do not regret my time spent there at all, and I know that I'm in a much better position now. Now Since I left the facility I was staying at, I've been regaining traction on my life slowly but surely. I've been keeping up with my medication and had been searching for work regularly. My life partner now insisted that I find a job that I will be making a good amount of money at, that includes benefits, and so I've spent a fair amount of time unemployed while waiting for a response to the applications I sent to everywhere that fit the criteria. Now, I start my new job on Monday of next week. I'm very happy, living with a woman who I love very dearly. Every now and then I struggle with emotional issues like depression and I have realized that I still have quite a bit to learn about the way that my emotional state responds to things. I will never stop trying to improve myself, and I look forward now to the road ahead.