Journal Entry 2

Chapters

Did I Do Something Wrong?

Earlier this week, I spent two days writing up an application to be a game tester for a Roblox game for “shits and giggles”. I thought I was cooking something but I guess not because I never heard anything back. There was one section that I couldn’t write much for which was how much I engaged with the community. If there was one big reason why I got rejected, I guess it’s because I’m not unemployed enough to interact with random teenagers on Discord for fun and outsource a sense of fulfillment from it. But it still kind of sucks that I wrote so much for each of the prompts and put a lot of time into my application just for nothing. I guess I still need to face more rejections before I find an acceptance. I did find writing it fun though similar to how I found writing college applications somewhat enjoyable. They said that there was going to be a second round and that people who made the second round would have 48 hours to respond. They also said that the results would come out this weekend and if you do the math…, then I didn’t make it to the second round if I haven’t heard from them yet.

Also earlier this week, I decided to search up my good friend from middle school on Instagram out of curiosity. I didn’t expect much since I remember he said that he would never get a phone or social media during middle school. But what did I find on Instagram? Not only was he ON Instagram, but he had 1,000 followers and was apparently a model, which surprised me but also didn’t at the same time. I remember he said he would be taller than me in the future. I wouldn’t be surprised if he is since I barely slept during high school.

I wanted to talk to him so I followed him, but he never sent a follow request to me. I was kind of bummed out so I tried sending a message to him because I thought it would go to his message requests but he had that disabled so I didn’t actually have a way to contact him at all. I tried getting a friend to follow him and ask him to follow me back in his DMs. Not only did he follow my friend back but he also initiated a conversation with my friend. Despite being asked twice, my middle school friend never followed me back. I’ll probably unfollow him in a few days since I don’t think it’s going anywhere. I’ve genuinely never been aired out like this before. I’m not really sure what I did wrong but I feel kind of sad because it’s a friend I really wanted to talk to but I’m not able to have that opportunity to do so at all.

Emotional Maturity?

I binge watched an anime for the first time in months. Lowkey maybe for the first time in a year since I finished Attack On Titan. The anime I watched was called 86. I saw a lot of people online say it was peak back when my feed was full of anime stuff so I, of course, had to hop on the bandwagon. There were 23 total episodes split across two parts. I started watching at like 1 AM on Wednesday and watched six episodes before going to sleep.

There’s something about watching a sad anime involving death in a room where everything is so… still. Everything in the room was dead. The plushies weren’t moving, the spray bottles weren’t moving, the computer fans weren’t spinning, the sky was dark and still, and there were no sounds at all.

While looking some stuff up, I found that there’s this philosophical (could be a mix of fields) term/idea called impermanence. It’s basically the idea of being in the moment and realizing that nothing lasts forever so you appreciate what you have. And I think while laying in bed and watching anime that night, that’s what I experienced. I guess being grateful that I’m alive and breathing. I felt really emotional while lying in bed trying to sleep after finishing those six episodes. I’m pretty sure I first teared up during an episode and then while trying to sleep, I shed a couple of tears while thinking about being sad. This happens quite often to be honest, just like thinking about being sad makes me want to cry more for some reason. I’m not sure exactly how to describe it, but I was sad but also happy at the same time. I’m pretty sure they call that feeling “bittersweet”. I haven’t really felt that way before so yeah. This is probably the first time I’ve ever cried (more like tear up) watching an anime and I wouldn’t be surprised if I continue to do so.

I’ve felt a lot more prone to crying and tearing up this past year and I’m not 100% sure why but I do have a few clues. It could be because I’ve sat with myself more, reflected a lot, and processed my emotions or something else entirely. Or it could be a mix of a lot of things. It’s something that I’m really grateful for. Being emotionally aware and mature. Maybe not the mature part but definitely aware. I think it’s helped me process a lot of mental struggles both in terms of speed and quality, whatever that means.

Why Is She Trying To Run Away?/The Optician

Since this Thursday, it had been almost three weeks since I dropped off my glasses at the eye doctor for them to install prescription lenses into my new frames. The receipt that they gave me said that it would take 2-3 weeks and they said that they would call me but they never did. I was a little scared that they might’ve done something with my new frames because they kind of cost a lot… (I won’t disclose how much here but take it with a grain of salt). My brother had his lenses installed in his frames at a different place where our insurance plan didn’t cover because the place I went to (the one I had mine done) said that they couldn’t provide damage insurance if something went wrong, and he said that it cost about two hundred dollars to do. Mine only cost 60 dollars to install new prescription lenses. So for the past few weeks (especially this past week), I was thinking that maybe I made the wrong decision because they weren’t giving me a call to pick it up. Then I decided to give them a call to see if it was ready because maybe they forgot and it turns out that they were actually ready. I was kind of scared to call them because I remembered the last time I called them. I embarrassed myself because my Chinese speaking skills were kind of terrible but that was two years ago. I’m not sure exactly why, but I was starting to think that they were doing some shady stuff like giving me a dupe or whatever.

So I took the bus to Flushing to go pick them up and a few interesting things happened on the bus. First of all, a lady with a strong-ass perfume sat in front of me and I was gagging a bit. It was so bad that I deadass had to stop doomscrolling on my phone and lean back on the seat because if I leaned forward, I WAS going to throw up. I understand wanting to smell nice but oh my gyatt. Plz stop with the giga-strong perfume or whatever these people are wearing. I beg on my knees. Something similar has happened several times at the gym where a girl with a strong perfume comes near and I want to gag. Not sure why someone needs to particularly smell nice at the gym but please stop with that also. Keep in mind that my sense of smell is also cooked because I’m constantly congested from my dust allergy, so you know it’s pretty bad.

Then while on the same bus, I saw a woman run to the bus stop where we were stopped. She was out of breath and relieved to get on the bus. That was normal right? I was pretty happy for her that she was able to catch the bus, so I turned away. But then this girl that was already on the bus was trying to get the back door to open but it wasn’t opening. It turns out that the woman was the girl’s mom and the girl was supposedly trying to run away. I assume the bus driver was working with the mom because he was explaining what was happening to someone at the front of the bus. I’ve never seen someone try to run away before so that was surprising to me.

Hopefully that girl didn’t get a bad punishment. I can’t imagine being the mom and spending a decade raising my child just for her to run away and potentially never see her again. That would be a lifelong traumatic event, but at the same time, no one just runs away from their house for no reason. Something must’ve been going down in her family for her to do that, so that mom better realize that she’s doing something wrong enough for her daughter to run away from her. And I don’t think that starts with a harsh punishment. I’m not the mom so I can’t control what she does but it’s just wishful thinking, I guess. It most likely did end up with a harsh punishment and then that probably reinforced the idea that the family is abusive or whatever, and then the daughter runs away again. I remember the woman in front of me with the strong perfume was shaking her head in disapproval, but I was kind of angry at her not just for her perfume but her disapproval too. I was thinking that the mom was in the wrong in the first place because she raised her daughter in a way that led to this happening in the first place. In fact, I think I would blame the mom more than anything. I assume the woman in front of me was a mother of some sort or whatever because from the way she was shaking her head, she was disapproving of the fact that the child is running away.

I’m getting sidetracked here. I went to the glasses store to pick up my glasses and never in my four years of going there have I seen the optician be so warm or I guess enthusiastic. The glasses store has like a 2.8 star rating on Google and a lot of the reviews are about the optician being stern and cold. In my opinion, I don’t think it’s really deserved. The optician cares a lot about glasses. I often see the Chinese grandmas come in with their broken glasses that they stepped on and ask him to repair their glasses. He gets annoyed because he says he can’t fix it and that they didn’t pay enough attention to keeping their glasses in good shape. The coldness is highkey justified. He seems really passionate about glasses. Like if I was passionate about something and then someone unknowledgeable came up to me and disrespected that something I was passionate about and clearly didn’t put enough effort into that something, then I would be angry too.

Anyways, he was really enthusiastic to work with my glasses because of the quality and brand too. He was telling me how some family member paid two thousand dollars for a pair of glasses and it wasn’t even Cartier. When he told me that I was thinking of how well respected Cartier glasses must be if he was saying that. He asked me how much it was but I didn’t want to tell him because I was already scared of something happening to it, so I just said I didn’t know. He was smiling and I was kind of happy to see him smile. There’s something so nice about seeing someone who’s usually so cold to smile. I asked him to replace the nosepads on my old frames which cost five dollars to do. My old frames were from Boss and the nosepads had the custom Boss branding on it and for some reason I thought the replacement nosepads were going to have the exact branding. For some stupid reason, I was thinking they had an exact stock of each particular nosepad but apparently they didn’t. He also scolded me a bit because one of the glasses arms on my old frames were bent. I took care of these frames really well so I was a bit surprised but I remember one time I took a nap during class and I took my glasses off and put them on the table. But then the glasses fell off and I was really sad because it scratched a bit of the metal on the top and I guess it might’ve bent the arm then.

When he replaced the nosepads, I asked if I could have the old nosepads back because I was thinking maybe I can clean them and use them in the future and also just because those nosepads are customized so I think that’s cool to keep. Apparently he threw them into the trash can because he didn’t think anyone cared enough about it. He then went to dig in the trash can for the nosepads for about 10 minutes and I started to feel bad about asking for it. The lady that worked there (might be his wife or whatever) asked what he was doing and told him there wasn’t much point in digging for the old nosepads but he insisted on continuing to look for them. He also said that it was his fault for not asking me in the first place which made me smile a bit. When he handed back my old frames, I saw a shiny smudge and asked him if he could clean it but apparently he already did. He told me that was the anti-reflective coating on the lenses and that I should wash my glasses every day. I told him I did with regular water and then he told me that I should wash my glasses with a drop of dish soap so the anti-reflective coating doesn’t disappear because the oils from my face sitting on the frames can erase the coating. If you wear glasses, you should probably do that, just a recommendation though.

That was a lot of yapping. That’s it for this chapter though.