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.