I’ve been learning a lot lately,
I’ve learned that moving into an apartment and living by yourself is something that I was not prepared to do. I’ve grown used to having roommates over the past few years, and enjoy the consistent interaction with them as I have liked everybody that I’ve lived with. Suddenly I’m thrown into a building in a city where I currently don’t know a single person, and have no family within 200 miles. The few people I’ve seen in this building have either ignored me saying hi or have not seemed to be very friendly people. It’s nice enough of a place, but its confines hold in my loneliness and wary of this area.
It’s worth noting that this area is not a place where I wanted to live or move to, but didn’t have many other options for a job, thus forcing my hand. It’s an area that I don’t plan on ever going back to as soon as this is all done. My fears of things to do that I’m interested in haven’t been allayed, as it seems there are two things to do: Go to a bar and drink, or go hunting. Neither of these things are very appealing to me. I pine for culture, be it arts or music, and love a thriving local music scene and local art and restaurant culture. This area has very little or none of that, from what I have seen over this past month.
I’ve learned that it’s hard to be happy when you don’t mesh with the area you live in, and that it’s hard to make friends when all you have is loneliness. It kind of breeds inside of you, promoting itself until you almost want to be lonely, and start to think it’s a waste of time to go out and try to salvage something out of this. I guess that’s why I’ve been spending so much time on my music blog, [Crooked Haze], and have really ramped up writing chiptune music. It’s also very hard being away from my Girlfriend after having spent the past 6 months together at college, and another 6 prior to that. She is a good chunk of why I’m still sane, but being away from your significant other is mentally taxing and something I wish could have been avoided. This is much more difficult than last summer was. Perhaps some of this will change though, fortunately a good friend from college lives here and will be moving back at the conclusion of our academic period.
I’ve learned that it’s easier than I thought to maintain an apartment, a few minutes each day to makes sure things are dusted and dirt isn’t accumulating anywhere. It’s not a large place, but not tiny either and I like the fact that it’s staying clean without putting in a huge effort. It is nice to be completely self-sufficient in that regard.
I’ve also learned that I am not the type of person to grow into a job or learn to enjoy it for the sake of getting through it. This is not a job that I’m particularly thrilled with, it seemed interesting in the descriptions but after spending a month I’ve realized it isn’t what I want to do. It doesn’t apply many (if any) of the principles and skills that have been taught and imposed upon me through college. It’s not the most interesting job, it doesn’t involve design or creating things, and isn’t something that I’m capable of forcing myself to truly like. They’ve hired an Engineer to do something that has no science or engineering involved. I’m essentially pushing papers and doing data management on a day to day basis. It’s kind of soul crushing to realize that I’m not really getting a single thing out of this, and hope that I can find a way out before my scheduled end date in August. It’s a good thing this is all temporary, but I’m still losing my mind over it and how everything has worked out.