KARBYTES_JOURNAL_2023_ENTRY_86
The following notes were compiled by karbytes throughout 19_JANUARY_2022 while karbytes was riding the BART train, walking, and doing errands between two job shifts. (Notes were compiled mostly on karbytes’ smartphone in the form of emails sent to karbytes from karbytes).
It’s approximately 7:30AM and I am drinking a hazelnut flavored coffee which I bought from the nearby Panera Bread restaurant in Fremont located at the intersection of Christy Street and Automall Parkway. The sky is clear with some clouds which are glowing pink from the sunrise. The moon appeared large and crescent shape with a V-shaped flock of birds flying past it. A bunch of seagulls circled close to the ground as I walked past the In-and-Out burger restaurant. I do not recall seeing seagulls inland in Dublin/Pleasanton. Honestly, I love this area. Last night when I was writing that gloomy note in the same shopping center (“The Block” and/or “Pacific Commons”) I admittedly felt comforted by the presence of people in the In-and-Out as I walked past it. The people in this area seem very chill and nice and down to earth.
Speaking of chill, nice, and down to earth people, I have already started feeling attached to seeing familiar faces at work (Ontrac) and even familiar strangers bicycling past The Loop gas station. Several of my coworkers commute to work by bicycle.
Last night I was able to clock into work normally using my employee number. I also got the chance to meet my shift supervisor (Johnny) and he gave me his phone number in case I have questions, comments, or concerns (and that number is (707) 246-6683). I am still worried that I might get terminated for not submitting the correct I-9 documents in time. Today I plan to drive to the Social Security Office next to Southland Mall once I get back to East Dublin BART parking garage where “my” car is presumably still parked. I’ll compile these notes later into a blog post after I get that chore done and have a chance to charge my laptop.
Tonight I plan to BART and walk to work like I did tonight. Tomorrow I’ll attempt to order and pickup a mountain bike from Walmart using my paycheck which gets deposited every Friday (if I work at Ontrac). I hope to keep my job. It’s one of the best I have ever had because it fits my lifestyle quite well. (If, for whatever reason, I lose this job, I will most likely search for package handling jobs only because I like that setting much more than retail, food handling, and office jobs).
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It is approximately 9AM now and I am sitting at the Warm Springs BART station awaiting a northbound train. Facing eastward I see a stunning mountain (Mission Peak) which is bright green from new rain soaked grass. I noticed that the people in this area are “smartly dressed” with streamlined, sporty, “techie” clothes whose colors are dark. Many of the people wear backpacks and glasses and they seem to have a more relaxed and no nonsense demeanor than people from other regions I have frequented. The building architecture also fits that sleek, minimalist aesthetic. It is Silicon Valley after all. This aesthetic contrasts sharply with the more gaudy, colorful, and loud aesthetic of other places I have frequented. I do appreciate the diversity but I feel most “at home” in the Silicon Valley culture than in the hippie, gangster, or churchgoer culture (and such cultures seem very dependent on location).
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Over the past five years or so I have experienced long bouts of unemployment between much briefer bouts of employment and have come to realize that having a job is orders of magnitude easier than not having a job. So why did it take me so long to get out of unemployment after taking a two year hiatus from working since I quit my job as a production associate at the Tesla factory in Fremont? Basically, I felt too poor to handle the stress of job searching, interviewing, waiting for job offers, waiting for background checks to be completed, and getting through the first few weeks at a new job before getting a paycheck while barely having enough money to afford going to work. To be honest, I did not lack sufficient funds to work. What I lacked was tolerance for stress. I have a history of lavishly spending money in order to attempt to make myself feel better (but it never quite satisfied me because what I really wanted was resilience, optimism, and a job which is congruent with my personal preferences rather than a job which I felt forced to settle for). Not having a bicycle was a major deterrent for me. I never felt comfortable relying on my mom’s petroleum powered car long term. I also put myself through irrationally extremist trials such as forcing myself to routinely walk for several hours per day instead of driving (even though I knew deep down that walking those commutes instead of driving hardly burned gasoline and was extremely time consuming). If I was smarter I would have saved up a few hundred dollars within one month to buy a cheap Walmart bike instead of a much pricier bike from Cyclepath and other specialty bike stores. It just never occurred to me until very recently to look for cheaper bikes! Oh well. Every day I am productive and going to work instead of procrastinating and ruminating about repetitive and unnecessarily stressful subject matter (which was not exactly productive), I feel my mental health improving. Now I see how fucked up mentally I was and still sort of am.
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It is approximately 10AM now and I am typing this note into the WordPress text editor on my laptop while it charges at the Dublin BART parking garage. There are several functional electrical outlets in this garage and at the nearby Persimmons shopping center. Today I plan on returning my mom’s car today after I order a new social security card at the Social Security Office in Hayward and drop off my stuff which is in that car in my bedroom at my dad’s house. I will just have the new SSC mailed to my dad’s house (which is my current legal residence address and has been since 01_JUNE_2016). I might also stop by the R.E.I. store and attempt to buy some long underwear. I figure that having sufficiently warm and weather proof clothes is better than having lots of blankets. I would rather just stick to one compact sleeping bag than continue using multiple bulky blankets to stay warm when I sleep.
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While driving from Dublin to Hayward on the 580 freeway, there was quite a bit of automobile traffic which made the drive slow. When I arrived at the Social Security Office in Hayward, I saw that the waiting room was almost filled to capacity and I ended up sitting there for more than an hour and a half before my number was called. Once I got to the window where my number was called and asked to order a replacement social security card, the staff member said that the system would not let him because it was less than two weeks since I applied for a social security card. He said that I could return on Monday and try again. Then I drove very slowly through Hayward due to the fact that I was trying to remind my brain of efficient bicycle routes to get to that office and the portion of A street which connects to Redwood road was blocked off due to construction. I might end up going to the Fremont Social Security Office instead of the one in Hayward because I think my new bicycle would be more likely to get vandalized or stolen in Hayward than in Fremont because the former is more densely populated with poor people than the latter.
I briefly stopped at my dad’s house to drop off my cheap acoustic guitar, weed bong, and bag containing the big red tent (which is too big to fit in the case it was sold inside of once I opened it) inside my bedroom at that house (which means that I do not have the weed smoking kit conveniently at my disposal (and that is a good thing for me because I would like to replace smoking weed with ingesting cannabis edibles due to the fact that the latter is non-carcinogenic and induces a more potent and longer lasting high). At this time of writing (approximately 2:44PM) I am charging my laptop at the church near my dad’s house. After I augment the journal entry which this note is intended to be a part of, I intend to drive the car back to my mom’s house to leave it parked in the driveway before walking to the Bayfair BART station to ride the train to the Warm Springs BART station. (Tomorrow I hope to get a bicycle after ordering it online at a Walmart store).
One more note: I noticed that the hours which I clocked for yesterday’s work shift were added to my timesheet but the hours which I had to write in (due to the fact that the Dayforce terminal rejected my login attempts) have yet to be added to my timesheet. If the hours are still not added by Saturday, I most likely will email or text management about that issue (rather than just quietly accept not getting paid for the hours I worked that day).
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This web page was last updated on 19_JANUARY_2023. The content displayed on this web page is licensed as PUBLIC_DOMAIN intellectual property.
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