Life can be (a) dream

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June 6, 2026 - Three days of unemployment

Dear readers and friends that thought I had a single crumb of intelligence: please break yourself free from this illusion. It turns out I am even more stupid than I could have imagined. I put in my two weeks at my current job with nothing lined up. And, when the manager started yelling at us over made up problems, I got tired of it and quit only two days into that. Now I'm coasting on savings until at least July. I guess I am just hoping a job will magically find me. I'm interviewing elsewhere, but I'm not even sure if I'll stay in this town.

Prior to putting in my notice, I had a few breakdowns. I think I came home straight to bed for a few days just to try and ignore how bad I was doing, but I honestly don't even remember what happened. I cried a lot, too. I just know that, one day, I couldn't take it anymore and called both my mom and dad telling them that I think I wanted to quit. My mom asked what I wanted from the conversation. I told her I wanted a safety net if everything went horribly wrong, but besides that, I would still try to be as self sufficient as possible. She told me later that it must have been really, really bad if I was asking her for help. Indeed it was. My dad was surprised and asked me to try and job hunt first, but I knew I couldn't.

I don't really know why I was doing so bad. I can't put it into words. I tried before, but still! Something was definitely deeply wrong with where I worked. The manager is insane, yes, but I still chose to leave even though she's leaving very soon herself. My other manager liked to blame us for things that were her fault. Our new manager came to visit, and immediately asked if we really needed as many technicians as we had. Everyone knew something was wrong with our department, as we had the highest turnover out of anyone, but no one up above thought to come see what was happening. HR sent me an email asking about the culture when I first put in my two weeks (to which I scheduled an exit interview), but no one even bothered to acknowledge my sudden departure.

I mean, it's probably little stuff like this that made me go insane: I get asked about work that I was assigned a whole twenty minutes ago and asked if I'm done with it yet. I get asked about tasks while doing it right in front of them. I tell someone about something they requested to be informed about, but they call me later complaining that I didn't tell them. I ask questions about processes that I don't want to mess up, and get told that I'm being insubordinate. The managers complain to me about newbies that started less than two weeks ago, not realizing that they simply have to explain how to do the work to them. We are yelled at for extending our lunch breaks, but no one can even tell who extended their lunch because we had all worked through at least part of our break. The specifics don't matter, because it's really just death by a thousand cuts. Doing any part of my actual job is made into a horrible, horrible process. God, I knew my last job was good, but I really didn't realize how good it was! My breaking point included nonsensical yelling two days in a row (all in public) and blatant lying from the manager. I just couldn't take it anymore, and drove to work at 6:30 in the morning on Wednesday to drop off my stuff and send my resignation email. I couldn't even bear to see my main manager, or else I knew I'd chicken out. My coworkers weren't surprised at all.

Anyway. I spent that Wednesday laying in bed, feeling like I was going to throw up, waiting for a call back or an email back or literally anything from HR or the manager, and trying to not feel like shit. But I really just felt like shit. I tried job hunting and I tried finding a new career path. It didn't go well. I just felt like a drop out loser.

Thursday was also a haze. I went rollerblading late at night, and didn't do much before that. I read a little. I tried to write a little bit, but instead ended up making a joke website. I played a lot of Cobblemon, honestly.

But today, on Friday, I finally had the first hint of a good mood in the morning. I woke up and started cleaning. I didn't look for jobs yet, because there's just no point. I read a quarter of a book, went to the grocery store, planned a nice picnic for later, got back, cleaned some more, and just... felt happy! I don't know how to explain, since it seems so boring when I write it. But I noticed even on Thursday that I had stopped rushing around so much. It rained right before I went to the grocery store, so I sat in the car for a second enjoying it. I was tired while skating, so I just stared at the sky and relaxed. Anyway, I got bored again, so I went to a new park. I thought it was a really pretty park:

The stairs were on a pretty hidden path. I was very happy to have found them! I searched around for a while to find the perfect spot for the picnic, and once I found something, I kept going on the main trail. It had been raining on and off, but as I hit the furthest point on the trail, it started pouring. I just started laughing as I turned around. I didn't rush, though. What's the point? I realized that a lot of things I had been worrying about so much simply didn't matter. I knew that consciously, but I didn't really believe it on a subconscious level until exactly then. What's it matter what I have, what's my lonely situation mean to me, what's this whole rush about a well regarded job mean to me, really what does anything mean at all? I have the forest and the trees, and they have me.

...I think I was delirious at this point. It was really humid, like really horribly humid, and I was swaying into the middle of the (quite large) trail. When I got back home, I napped for a while, and when I stood up, I couldn't see anything for a second. Well! I was still happy. We ate our picnic food inside and still had a good time.

I'm not sure what to do about the whole job situation still, but I won't rush to figure it out like before.