karbytes_14_september_2024.txt

/**
 * file: karbytes_14_september_2024.txt
 * type: plain-text
 * date: 14_SEPTEMBER_2024
 * author: karbytes
 * license: PUBLIC_DOMAIN
 */

At the time I am writing this note, I seem to be in a pretty good mood; sated and happy after eating some delicious food and reading some news articles which showed up in my “personalized” news feed. I would not want to spoil that good mood by writing a note about something which makes me seem embittered of grudge-holding, but given the fact that I have at least one job interview coming up next week (for a full-time warehouse position in either Fremont, San Jose, Santa Clara, or Sunnyvale), I thought it might be a good idea (along with some coaxing from “the voices”) to disclose anything I have on my mind which has been troubling me and which I would like to get closure on (i.e. file a note about it and then put it out of my mind so that I can forward (metaphorically speaking) instead of stagnating or moving backwards with respect to my goals).

Before I get to the icky stuff which I thought I should disclose and then move on from (perhaps by starting my next coding assignment (which I think might be some simple Python application for performing some kind of arithmetic procedure such as factorizing numbers into their constituent primes)), I want to mention that I had a most marvelous time riding my bicycle earlier this morning and afternoon through Sunnyvale. I bicycled past a young lady playing the ukulele and singing quite nicely in the downtown area and I saw many people out enjoying festivities. I rode through some of the many trails going through large ponds and observed many species of birds foraging and summoning each other to form a flock and circle around the area. The sky was clear (as usual) and there was only a slight breeze and air temperatures hovering around “room temperature” (approximately 24 degrees Celsius (which also seems typical for the South Bay)). While bicycling through the tranquil sprawling streets near the technology office buildings west of the trail head I emerged from, I had some ideas (which I have had many variations of before but which today seemed extra defined): that I am always striving to attain the “highest” standard of living I can (based on my own personal preferences (which are entirely based on my memories and on my present moment experiences)) while being constrained by whatever my current limitations are (and those limitations include my current goals and overall knowledge but also include fundamental constraining laws of physics (which may or may not objectively exist as anything other than assumptions humans created about how natural phenomena operate based entirely on what those humans have thus far been able to empirically observe and then record and then analyze) and the more abstract constraints of societal rules (and their enforcement using humans and technology) and economics (i.e. how much money I currently have access to)).

I have one more nice little idea I would like to add to this cataloging of “positives” before I delve into the “negatives” of this note: that I am interested in getting a (paid) job and not just merely trying to acquire money any means I can (such as begging, prostitution, or filing for disability in the hopes that I get paid a fixed government-issued and tax-funded monthly income (and I thought that I might be able to qualify for an adult autism diagnosis)); that I am also interesting in becoming employed (and staying employed long-term while avoiding being unemployed) because doing so enables me to feel like I am “part of the world” (i.e. the human economy and the society (especially “leisure class” recreational options) that is powered by money).

(For the past 48 hours I was debating with myself whether or not to proceed with the particular full-time job interview(s) I have lined up for next week in favor of waiting for Amazon warehouse to start hiring for seasonal part-time employees (which ended up seeming more like a cost to me than a benefit long-term when I last worked (which was at the DXC5 Amazon warehouse in Fremont) due to the fact that it was hard for me to get any available shifts (which meant that I was hardly making any money) and people near or in that warehouse apparently stole and vandalized my property). I told myself, “No one in this country has it so good that they have part-time hours, an easy job which does not require advanced certifications nor effort nor discomfort and which pays as well as a full-time job.” Telling myself that caused me to have a “click” of an epiphany that I should simply keep applying for full-time warehouse jobs until I am offered one (and I decided to constrain my job search to just warehousing because I have been turned down by all the office jobs I applied for because I seem to lack the competitive edge, cultural appropriation, and other traits which many other people seem to have). This is not to say that I will not keep working on expanding my SOFTWARE_ENGINEERING_PORTFOLIO with new apps as often as is feasible for me (perhaps at least one new app every month). I just do not expect to get a job related to software engineering any time soon (if ever), but I think it is very likely I will eventually have a more information-technology related job if I stay employed in the logistics sector for at least two consecutive years).

Now here comes the “dark” part of this note…

My three year Information Technology Help Desk internship at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (which started on 01_JUNE_2012 and which mostly entailed writing Google Apps Script and technical documentation) contract ended on 30_SEPTEMBER_2015. Though I do not remember much about that period of my life, I do remember that my intimate partner at the time (i.e. SED) and I were not getting along and both of us were accused of committing infidelity against the other because each of us had been romantically/sexually involved with coworkers at our respective places of employment (and, at the time, I was just starting to form an intimate relationship with a coworker whose employment period at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory also ended at the same time mine did (but, unlike me, that person (i.e. AJP) had a new job lined up with a different employer). I had been sharing a bedroom (and bed) with SED and quite interactive with SED on a sexual, intellectual, and logistical level from the year 2009 to the year 2015. Hence, breaking up with SED was a bit traumatic for me but also undeniably liberating because I felt that AJP was opening me to new realms of experience which SED basically did not. Though I never had nearly as close-nit of a relationship with AJP as I did with SED, I did become heavily influenced by AJP in ways I appreciate (especially in terms of acquiring new political/cultural knowledge and getting into psychedelics). AJP seemed more reluctant than I was initially to deepen our relationship (and, in hindsight, I think I understand why and could not disagree that he had very valid reasons to avoid getting into an intimate relationship with me or anyone for that matter).

Some time in February or March of 2016, I was “supposed to” be attending final or midterm exams for classes which I was taking at California State University East Bay (in Hayward) but I decided to take another solitary road trip to Yosemite. (Approximately two months before that, I took a solitary road trip to Oregon which seemed to “trigger” AJP because, while I was happily taking that road trip and publishing notes about it on social media, AJP called my phone and yelled at me (but later called to apologize for the blow-up because he had difficulty with me going on a vacation while he was not able to do the same (but I do remember him trying to tease me about him relocating to another part of the world without me (or perhaps to implore me to move with him) and him taking many vacations without me (including a multi-week trip to Japan) where he bragged to me about his travels while seeming to enjoy making me feel left out))). AJP called me while I was sitting in the Raley grocery store parking where I was stocking up on some road snacks and drinks on my way to Yosemite and he was yelling and then we were texting and he said that he would commit suicide later that day by jumping in front of a train (or so I remember). Here is where I made a mistake (in hindsight I would have just ghosted him and left him “for dead”): I panicked that he was going to kill himself but also did not want our relationship to be broken up, so I foolishly called the police and told them that AJP said he threatened to jump in front of a train that day (I was also driving while talking on the phone and crying which did not make me seem very smart). Then, according to AJP, as soon as he arrived at his desk at his work place, paramedics showed up and carted him out of there to be taken to John George Psychiatric Pavilion (where he was held for a day and released later that evening after his father showed up (and, during that time, I was waiting for him to be released from the hospital with his friend T (and, although AJP was very irked and allegedly “traumatized” after he was released from that hospital, T, AJP, and I had a cuddle party at AJP’s house and it seemed that things were mostly okay even though we all seemed to acknowledge that “life is weird” which I said out loud (and AJP said he got naughty pleasure out of having sex with me while his (platonic) friend T (and I cannot remember if there was someone else there too) sleeping in the same bed next to us))).

Approximately one month after that weird incident (which AJP said he was angry at me for but also he said he needed the intervention because he was not doing so well due to all the stress he was going through because of personal hardships related to things going on in his family among other things), AJP and I went on a road-trip (on AJP’s initiation (in AJP’s car with AJP driving)) to Yosemite (where I remember AJP telling me, while walking along a trail through a meadow in Yosemite Valley, “You’re smart. You just need to work harder.” I think that was in response to the fact that I was still unemployed and still not dedicated enough to my university classes to graduate in a timely manner). Within a month of that trip, we (again on AJP’s initiation (in AJP’s car with AJP driving until the return home which I did the majority of the driving because AJP said he was too tired to drive safely)) took a road trip to Las Vegas, Nevada. I vividly remember feeling like I was on some kind of spiritual mission at that time due to being high on a lot of cannabis edibles (which I had only recently (starting late 2015) become a fiend for and which I was initially a bit scared to use because I was not yet used to being “high” (i.e. experiencing psychedelic drug trips (and I was happy to be able to buy my own cannabis from dispensaries after obtaining my own medical marijuana license and not merely relying on AJP or others to give me some of their dispensary-purchased or friend-dealt drugs))). I was also reading a paperback copy of “The Gift Economy” (originally published in 1988 and authored by David J. Cheal (and which was part of AJP’s personal home library)) while AJP was driving. I saw the wind turbines magnificently illuminated by the morning light against a back drop of epic cumulus clouds and blue sky along the Altamont Pass and I felt that AJP and I were two revolutionaries on a grand lifelong journey together to help spread “the good news” of Bernie Sanders (who was a presidential candidate AJP turned many of his friends and family onto at the time being the intellectual of his community that he was). In hindsight, I would say that I was acting like a borderline personality disordered waif who had no stable identity of its own and, instead, derived its sense of identity from being with its partner (and I no longer consider myself to be dependent on any person other than myself for a sense of ontological and ethical authority). AJP and I did not get along very well on that vacation because we were each in different places mentally, with me wanting to be philosophical and rapturous while AJP wanted to more conventional and for me to be more like a human-shaped dog who did little more than compliantly and pleasantly accompany him on “his” adventure.

Eventually, AJP broke up with me over text (very close to 20_APRIL_2016 which I looked forward to celebrating with AJP and his friends (i.e. the cannabis-celebrating annual “holiday” known as 420)). I was heartbroken and a bit manic from the copious amounts of edible cannabis I had been binging on for weeks leading up to that event. After buying a wacky sweatshirt featuring a photo-realistic image of a tabby cat breathing fire onto buildings from the Hot Topic store at Stoneridge Mall in Pleasanton, California, I rode the BART train to Civic Center in San Francisco in search of “Hippy Hill” and hopefully AJP. I was clearly having a manic episode at that point because I was going around asking random strangers (while wearing a paper Bernie Sanders hat which I made myself) if they knew were AJP was (and some people even appeared to know who I was talking about and said that they saw him go into the “Hippy Hill” area which was closed to more attendees at that point of the evening). I was smoking weed and popping more edibles on the lawn in front of the Civic Center building. A few strangers stopped to talk to me. Two of them were a young man and young woman who said they lived in the Laurel District of Oakland (which is were I said I was from (but was really where AJP was living in an apartment at that time)). I think those two people were undercover crisis interventionists because they seemed a bit concerned for my welfare because I was acting like I had no personal boundaries at that time and felt harmoniously connected to all people at that time due to the cannabis warping my mind (but later that evening I saw that not everyone was on my “wavelength” when some rough-looking old black lady said, “Let me show you my religion,” and told me to follow her to some cede back alley and I told her I did not feel safe following her there (and that was because I thought she had violent intentions (and I thought she wanted to scare the “Disney” out of me by slapping me silly for acting like everyone thought I was Jesus or something))).

I was texting and calling AJP that night and he did send one email which was a poem about how a boy used to be attracted to a girl until that girl stopped emitting light and instead emitted heat. Round ten in the evening I was feeling a bit distraught and abandoned and called SED while heading to his apartment near East Dublin/Pleasanton BART station (where he was living with his new partner, EK). SED said to go to the parking garage where he would “secretly” allow me to spend the night inside of his parked car (because EK was in his apartment and EK would was not comfortable with me being in SED’s life). As I was approaching the parking garage (and I was very high), my mom tried calling my phone (because she was worried about me because she had not seen me in a while) and I told my mom I was okay and headed to SED’s place but the phone was almost out of battery (because it was literally dying within that phone call or text message sending). I remember feeling a bit irked at my mom around those past four months of my life because she seemed to insinuate that I had to close the door on many things in my life after being broken up with by SED (and then by AJP) and that I should settle down and be more housebound and devoid of a life outside the home (though that was merely my interpretation of how my mom was behaving). SED and I somehow briefly met in that parking garage and I remember peeing into a container when I had to urinate because I had no bathroom to go to.

Within two weeks of that incident, I “snapped” after some kind of argument took place between my mom and me at her house in Castro Valley. I said that I wanted to start living at my dad’s house (which was on the east side of Castro Valley while my mom’s house (and original and current residence at the time) was on the west side of Castro Valley). My mom said something about me needing to “move on” while I wanted to keep something I still had investment in alive (and I do not remember really what the details of that argument were). All I knew was that I was dealing with some unresolved and resurfaced traumas from childhood (largely due to the cannabis helping to uncover them) about me wanting to differentiate from my mom and be self-sovereign while my mom wanted to exert tighter restrictions over how I lived. After that argument, I drove the car I was borrowing from my parents to my dad’s house and left the car parked in front of his house. (I did not yet have keys to his house nor explicit permission to live there and I even had trouble moving my own belongings out of my mom’s house because, at the time, she acted like she needed to approve of whatever items I had which I wanted to give away to thrift stores, discard, or move elsewhere (like to the “secret” Public Storage unit I was renting briefly in Castro Valley within those past two years)). After I parked the car, I walked (because I thought it would be easier to flag me down, fine me, arrest me, or sabotage the car if I brought the car instead of just moved by my own legs) to the Castro Valley BART station and rode the train to a BART station which was close to Ocean Beach in San Francisco. I felt wild and rebellious and was definitely on some multi-week manic high (and I thought that I was in some Hell realm going through some test passages on my way to a more Heavenly realm (and I thought that there were many cryptic clues and people pointing me in the right direction to the beach where AJP and his otherworldly friends (including JP) were waiting for me to properly heed the messages)). I saw personally-relevant symbolism in many things I saw and was convinced that I was on a divine mission to uncover truths and to save the world.

Once I got to the beach, I asked some fishermen along the shoreline if they knew where AJP was and they said they have not seen him or else they said to keep going west (I do not remember). Then, as I was jogging along the shore towards the Golden Gate Bridge, I saw two unleashed dogs running alongside me and, because I was in that porous ego state, the dogs seemed to communicate with me almost telepathically like I needed to be more authoritative instead of treating them as my authorities (because I was a “higher ranking” species of animal than they were). I thought that I was being dared to abandon my shoes and then my backpack (which contained a laptop covered in Bernie Sanders stickers and a bright green USB flash drive containing what I thought were revelationary journal entries) along the beach. I thought JP (whose nickname was “Flip” (perhaps to signify that he flips between multiple states of consciousness or personality)) was nearby because I found a skateboard on the beach with the word “FLIP” hand written on the bottom. I smelled some cannabis smoke (which I thought was a sign for me to follow) and went where I smelled it: inside of some tunnel which went through the cliff at the edge of the beach. At the other end of the cave were two young men. I asked them if JP was nearby and they said that JP was just there a few minutes ago and that he went up the cliff to the road above. I looked up to where the guys said JP went and I saw some man who looked like JP wearing a red trench coat quickly twirl and run away from the edge where I saw the trench coat flare out while turning. I went up the pathway to that overlook but did not see the guy who I thought was JP. I kept following clues in search of JP, AJP, and at least one other guy who I thought was part of some esoteric “planes walker” group. Some young woman said I was brave when she saw me choosing to follow my intuition down a path into some woods around sunset which allegedly went to Golden Gate Bridge. I was traveling through the dark cypress forest around 8PM and thought I saw balls of light flashing in various places (which I thought were supernatural entities trying to scare me in order to get me to continue to prove my bravery instead of collapse in fear or turn around). Once I popped out of those woods I was in the midst of a quiet upscale residential area with tall houses. I thought that all (or most) of the humans on Planet Earth had been abducted by aliens or were purged out of existence. I heard one girl singing which I took as a divine sign to keep venturing forth. Eventually I made it to the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge and saw that pedestrians were not allowed to cross it after sunset. So I started running barefoot through the traffic lanes. That’s when police detained me, put me in their vehicle, and drove me to the other side of the bridge to a small police trailer near the base of the bridge where they asked me questions. I told them I was looking for AJP, JP, and whoever that other person was (perhaps JM). Then I was sent to some psychiatric hospital near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Shortly after I was admitted, several other people were admitted (and I thought it was because they were following me and were part of some journey I was on (hence, I did not feel so alone nor misunderstood)).

I was held under supervision at that psychiatric ward (which was relatively upscale compared to John George Psychiatric Pavilion in San Leandro) for approximately one week. I had the opportunity to talk to my parents, AJP, and SED on the phone while I was there. AJP acted like he did not care. SED cried and felt sorry for me. My parents were concerned and thought I needed psychiatric help and that they would come to visit and bring some food along. A few times I and several other patients were paranoid that the staff was trying to make us more mentally ill and poisoning us. Some people even thought I was trying to spread conspiracy theories amongst the patients. I did go around the indoor premises with some young black woman nicknamed “Sparkle” (who later objected to being called that name) and she told me that the cameras were evil demons watching us. I flipped off the cameras with here and I brushed and washed her hair when she asked me to. (This is where I started feeling awkward and uncomfortable about being cast as some kind of saint or savior to humanity and was started to yearn for my formerly “no nonsense” science-oriented persona). While I was at the hospital, I accused the staff of misconduct and tried using the phone to call the number to report abuses (but the phone ended up calling the desk of those I was complaining about). That last sentence is thematically significant to what the moral “takeaway” from this note is about.

Shortly before being released from the hospital, I met with some kind of legal representative for some kind of on-site court session where I was petitioning to have the right to continue living my life as self-sovereign as I had been before instead of having to be under some other person’s authority. At least one staff member was quite understanding that what was at the core of my concerns was my want for autonomy and to not be so micro-managed/oppressed by my mother. What was agreed on (after I suggested it to the staff and legal representatives) that I change my legal address to my dad’s house and live with him instead of my mom. Though my mom did not seem to like that decision, the staff seemed to think that was a good idea and my dad said that he did not mind allowing me to move in with him.

After my parents came to pick me up from the hospital, I called AJP on the phone and he told me to call back later because he had just gotten out of the dentist’s office and was recovering from some kind of dental procedure. I logged onto Facebook and answered messages and made updates signifying that I was free from the hospital (because, while I was “incarcerated” there, my phone was placed in a locker). Within two days of that, AJP called me and asked me to come over to his apartment (which I was elated that he did and feared he would never do again). When I went over there he had put one of the Batman movies on and offered me a purple-white swirly cannabis marshmallow and reminded me that the psychiatric professionals might not want me mixing that with the lithium (or whatever that psychiatric prescription medication was) which I was forced to take while hospitalized and which my mom wanted my dad to make me prove I was taking (and my dad thankfully objected to my mom’s insistence that he be that overbearing). I was happy to defy the mental health “authorities” and take the marshmallow (which was heavenly to consume and which made the experience of watching Batman feel even more relevant to my adventures related to being some kind of revolutionary (or hero) who was being cast as insane).

Within a month of that I got a job at 85C Bakery Cafe in Berkeley (which is now closed due to the shop going out of business) and which AJP recommended to me (and whose owner was a friend of AJP named JN). The job had grueling hours with a lot of deep cleaning of a dirty kitchen (but it was the first job I had which really challenged me). I still had that revolutionary spirit at the time and even other employees at that store noticed and commented on it (but they were also insinuating that, sooner or later, I would have to “come down” from being such a social justice warrior and take on a more practical approach to life (which I was dead-set on resisting at that time)). While not at the store and while hanging out in Berkeley, some homeless people talked to me and seemed to know that I was trying to help the poor and to “free the humans” from slavery. One homeless woman said there was free Wi-Fi in her area and places to charge electronics. A few nights I, for whatever reason, decided to try sleeping on the streets inside of makeshift cardboard shelters before work the next morning. I was following signs posted on fences and poles around downtown Berkeley and Oakland and seemed to still be on a some kind of manic high; however forced.

One night, while attending an underground dance club alone (at a place I think was called Al’s Sports Bar (and a place AJP had a birthday party at (in late 2015) while we were still officially dating and where I ended up dancing and making out with some random old black man downstairs after AJP refused to go downstairs to dance with me (and which I never told anyone about)), I started dancing and tried to be friendly with some oldish black woman who seemed suspicious of me wanting to be friendly with her. After I left the club (and before), I was smoking heavy amounts of cannabis in the streets and in plain sight like an exhibitionist. That night some young Russian man told me that, although I was heartbroken over AJP not wanting to be with me anymore, it was a good opportunity in my life and his to try new things and to meet new people (which to me did not sound appealing). After the club closed (or was close to closing), I was super high and talking loudly to myself in the dark and some young people (probably University of California Berkeley students) heard me and said some things (which I do not remember). I saw some memorials on campus acknowledging the recent deaths of some Mexican descendant or Las Angeles dwelling young adults who were murdered. Then somehow I ran into some large rotund “indigenous” man who hugged me tightly as though he knew I was in heartache and so was he (because he was telling me some sad story about his life (which I do not remember the details of and, honestly, at that point in the night, I was afraid I was about to get kidnapped)). As I walked to the BART station only to find it closed, some guy who was somehow related to that other guy walking his bike and who said he was homeless tried to strike up a conversation with me. He said I could stay with him the night since the BART station was closed. I felt cornered into going along with him and somehow that guy ended up talking to me about how AJP might already be married without me knowing it (but abruptly changed the subject (and, before that, he said he was formerly married and I think he even said he had some kids with whoever that woman was but had since been estranged from everyone in that family and was then living on the streets)). He lead me to a park that I remember attending a company picnic at with Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory less than a year ago. His encampment was under some bridge, he pulled out some rainbow flashlight and then told me to hand over my backpack to him. That’s the point I thought I was being robbed. I told him I was afraid I would not get my stuff back. He replied by saying, “As long as you are not presumptuous, you will get your stuff back.” The details of that night remain unclear to me, but shortly after that, he invited me to lay down with him to sleep (and I even ended up sucking his dick before we cuddled until morning light (and I remember he smelled kind of pungent and alcoholic)). Then, in the morning, he was trying to explain some convoluted things to me about top secret government conspiracies and how the nervous system can be regenerated after parts of it are shut off. He was scribbling a bunch of barely legible notes onto a piece of paper to give to me and told me to keep my job at the bakery and to stay active on LinkedIn. He also handed me a USB flash drive which I never ended up plugging into a computer (because I was afraid it contained malware). While all that was happening, he said, “And I know you need to pee,” and some random young woman wearing glasses and a hiking backpack casually strolled past us under the bridge (which made me think that entire thing was a government set-up (which is related to some incident which happened around that time where I was high at UC Berkely campus at night and watching a procession of military vehicles go through the campus as though I was some secrete appointed official with military relations)). After all that, I was “released” from his custody (with all my stuff in tact) and walked to BART and heard people with kids calling me a prostitute along the way. When I was on the train, some young black man asked to take a selfie with me as though I was some kind of celebrity (and I remember him saying that I did some things that made me a local celebrity). He asked me which gender I identified with (because, although I was not on artificial hormones at the time, I had a deepened voice from the time I took testosterone between 2009 and 2010 and I still felt fundamentally androgynous) and said that, if I identified as a boy, he could not go out with me, but if I identified as a girl, perhaps I could be his girlfriend (and I think he also mentioned that he knew AJP and was speaking also on his behalf).

I was eventually fired from 85C Bakery after failing to show up to my assigned shift two times (and one of those times was because I did not know I had work that day and was attempting to recreate the events which brought me to Golden Gate Bridge following 420 earlier that year in the hopes that I would be reunited with AJP). During that trip it started to sink in that there was no AJP waiting for me at the end of that trip and I cried while walking. (Looking back at all those events I see I was clearly in much worse mental health than I currently am). I got a seasonal job briefly at a Target store in Hayward but was fired for not being gregarious enough with customers. Also, while there, my boss’s car got stolen (and one of the young female employees working in the inventory warehouse part of the store in the “employees only” section told me in particular that her father was incarcerated and she appeared to be of Mexican descent). I don’t know what it is but, many clues have suggested that I may have been set up by the government (without my explicit knowing nor consent) to be a human rights watcher for Mexican Americans (or whoever). In reality, the “social justice” issues I am by far most concerned with (by my own volition but seemingly with very little encouragement from other humans) is the state of Earth’s environment (i.e. ecological health and biodiversity and how it has been negatively affected by human activity).

In early 2017 I was hired for a full-time position at the OAK5 Amazon warehouse in Newark where I worked 4 nights per week for 12 hours per shift. People at that work place seemed to be especially interested in what I did outside of work and seemed to think I was some kind of avid news reader trying to be a revolutionary and to also not fall too far behind in my computer science education. I met one guy there who said he also worked on website development (and at that time I was trying to launch a successful personal blog but kept abandoning my websites and restarting them because my websites failed to “hit the spot” for me in terms of what I wanted them to evoke and communicate (and they sounded too much like a poser trying to appease AJP instead of what they currently sound like (and my current websites (which are a lot more “on point” in terms of what I was going for are named “Karlina Object dot WordPress dot Com” and “Karbytes For Life Blog dot WordPress dot Com”)))). While talking to that guy, I told him that I hoped to have enough money saved up to move out and pay for my own apartment to rent in a few months of working at Amazon. That guy said that it is very hard to afford rent even while working full time at Amazon. That’s when it dawned on me that I was not getting what I most desperately wanted: the means to attain my own private living quarters where I did not have to live under my parents’ supervision. Also what made my life difficult at the time was my dad allowing some creepy stalker lady named JLJ to move into his house in the bedroom adjacent to my room. She was a bit catty with me and made me feel a bit violated, demonized, and socially isolated (and she seemed to not want me to have any partners). I ultimately quit my job at Amazon because I found it too difficult to sleep during the day due to the heavy construction noise next door and other people generally being intrusive and noisy. I would say that point in my life (February 2017) was when I noticed my idealism come to an end and a sense of embittered disenfranchisement take over.

For approximately three months I did little other than camp in my dad’s backyard and turn my room into a yoga studio and “spa” where I laid on the floor listening to binaural beats music videos live-streamed from YouTube (and that was before the Internet stopped working in my room). In mid summer of 2017, I got a part-time job as a merchandise tag scanner with a company named Western International Services which allowed me to select which shifts I wanted to work and which entailed me meeting up at San Leandro BART station to get into the company vans which would take multiple employees to various stores around the Bay Area to scan merchandise for approximately $18 per hour. At the time I had no car (because, when I was driving “my” car all the way to Palo Alto, it suddenly stopped working (which I assumed was due to the car being rigged to prevent me from driving it too far away from my legal address) and, rather than call anyone, I foolishly abandoned the car on the road and walked for several miles north along El Camino Real (and then I walked backwards through some Target parking lot and came across some sentry robots which looked vaguely like some of the adversaries in the video game named Portal)). Eventually I informed my parents about what happened and they were informed that the car was not salvageable. (I admit I was being a bit childishly histrionic back then). Without a car, I simply walked all the way from either my mom’s house or my dad’s house to San Leandro BART station and remember being made fun of by one of my mom’s friends for trying to sleep in a sleeping bag next to my non-working car on the driveway (because they played music past midnight in the house loudly on nights I had school or work early in the morning the next day). I found some success sleeping in the yard at my dad’s house but had little time to sleep when I had to meet up with the vans before dawn (which meant I was averaging two hours of sleep on nights/morning before work).

On some days while working for WIS, I was so tired from the lack of sleep and grueling commutes and work shifts (where I dealt with people saying things about me which made me feel embarrassed and socially isolated), that I hired a taxi to take me from Bayfair BART station to my mom’s house (where I was primarily living due to the fact that her house is closer to where I had to go than where my dad’s house was). I was disappointed to see that the cost of taking such a short ride was more than ten dollars one-way and vowed to only walk from that point onward. The next time I walked home in the sweltering July heat I was so angry at all the strife I was going through (and this follows me selling most of my possessions for abysmally little cash at a pawn shop in Oakland Best Collateral) that I punched a hole in the glass part of the front door to my mom’s house when I, for whatever reason, had no key to get inside and did not have the patience to wait for anyone to come home to let me in (and I remember around those times irrationally throwing my phone into the BART train tracks in an effort to make myself less track-able and more devoted to mindfulness or whatever the “virtue” was I was trying to uphold). That’s around the time I started feeling like I was taking on the appearance of a thug; a dilapidated shell of my former self.

A few months later (after quietly quitting the WIS job by not showing up to any more shifts after “burning out”), I got a job at a Chipotle restaurant in Union City. At the point, I had access to a car but I alternated between walking and taking the car to work. Some of the employees seemed to have a condescending or disapproving attitude towards me. I think they were insinuating that I was racist or elitist or otherwise not welcome in their clique. I was fired after I merely picked up a piece of garbage on the ground and/or doled up too large of food portions to customers. I ended up only keeping that job for approximately one month (which was approximately September 2017).

I had been out of school since that 420 incident in 2016 and somehow convinced my mom to help me pay for tuition to finish my university program at CSUEB, but I foolishly decided to drop out in order to work full time at the Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburger’s fast food restaurant in Castro Valley on 20_APRIL_2018 (which some would say was the biggest mistake of my life). A few concerned customers suggested I get a job which was not so “low skilled” compared to what they thought I was capable of (which was more in par with being a designer or engineer). At that point in my life I felt that no one in my family of friends group took me seriously nor thought I was mentally okay (and I honestly cannot blame them if that is the case). After spending some time at local restaurants with my family of origin on Mother’s Day, I was headed to work (after stopping at the Garden of Eden cannabis dispensary to buy a short-lived blunt which I smoked and which left me feeling despondent and physically ill). I called work to tell them I could not come into work that day because I was sick (and I was foolishly standing within line of sight of that restaurant after walking there from the cannabis dispensary). The manager was not very sympathetic (and I do not remember whether she approved or disapproved of my absence). I ended up losing that job by not showing up to any further shifts there.

Later that year in September, I was with my family of origin at a (now closed) hamburger restaurant in celebration of my brother’s birthday (and I got upset after I thought I heard my mom making condescending innuendos about how I was not doing enough to be a “real man” to my brother and after my father said some sexually suggestive comments which made me feel that I was being subject to ongoing covert sexual harassment while living with him (and which I cannot explicit prove because the relevant incidents are rather vague but still left me intuitively feeling that I was indeed being set up to feel bullied in social isolation by someone who did not want me to feel professional (though I could be “reading too much” intentionality into other people’s actions)). My brother did not like that I had a bad attitude and suggested that I leave. So I did. I walked home from the restaurant before the food arrived. Along the way I hid in a nearby medical building bathroom to escape the heat and to law exhausted on the floor and to take refuge in what little compassion I felt there was available for me at that time (because, along the way there, I saw what I thought were signs in my environment from other people suggesting that I was being over-dramatic).

A few days later I had a phone interview scheduled for a remote JavaScript job which AJP passed along to me. While I was taking that phone call upstairs in my brother’s old bedroom (which was turned into a guest room), I thought I heard my mom making discouraging sounds from downstairs as though to say that I had no right to sound like a white collar professional in her midst. I remember the interviewer on the phone saying, “We won’t forget about you,” in regards to assumedly following up about the job application status (but perhaps for other things). I wondered then and there if the interviewer could hear in my voice a sense of frailty or pain and perhaps he was trying to be charitable. (I understand now that, if I seriously want to be taken seriously as an employee, I need to come across as a pillar of strength (i.e. someone to be relied on instead of someone who needs to be supported) and not someone who “needs help”).

A few days after that phone call I was upstairs trying to get myself together and getting angry about my mom apparently talking shit about me or otherwise making excessive noise downstairs. I really don’t remember what happened which lead to us fighting and me throwing a ceramic bowl which I was using to eat cereal out of onto the ceramic tiles near the fireplace. I saw my mom (apparently with glee on her face) video recording the broken bowl pieces to use as evidence that I could not be trusted as a professional in any sense. That seriously triggered me and, at that point, I felt so darkly hopeless about my future prospects (and felt so betrayed in general by how I seemed to be treated badly for no apparent reason by so many people despite working as hard as I could (or thought I could or should) at the time) that I threw the stainless steel teaspoon I was holding at the time at the back of my mom’s head. She let out a horrified scream. I don’t remember what happened after that other than, shortly after, the police arrived at her house and I was handcuffed and taken to Eden Hospital to be observed by a police officer while one of my hands was hand-cuffed to the rail attached to a bed out in the hallway on the bottom floor. He asked me about what happened and I told him and shed some tears of remorse, but not much. Next to me was some guy he kept moaning and talking to his mom about something. After approximately an hour of that, he emerged from that room and said, “Are you that guy who slept for eleven hours?” I have no idea what he was talking about.

Then I was taken to John George Psychiatric Pavilion and placed on observation there (not in the unit with bedrooms but in the giant room where many patients wearing light blue pajamas were wondering around, using the wall phones, or sleeping on the couches). After that I was taken to Santa Rita County Prison and incarcerated there for approximately one month (and charged with a misdemeanor for committing assault which could have resulted in grave bodily harm). I think many people think I was given “too light” of a sentence and that I should have been charged with a felony for attempted murder. I think that alone explains why so many people have been so mean to me ever since.

After being released from prison my mom filed a restraining order to have me forbidden from stepping foot on her residence (and she kept that restraining order instated for approximately three consecutive years). I was so angry about being deprived of the right to use her house (which used to be my original home) that I threw a brick through the window of my bedroom at my dad’s house while standing in the yard. (I think that may have been a way of expressing disapproval at being forced to downgrade to living in relative squalor). In response to that incident, my dad called the police and my mom and she showed up to watch me get taken away by ambulance to John George Psychiatric Pavilion (where I stayed for no longer than a week and at least got the chance to socialize a little with people who cheered me up slightly). When I was released, I needed someone to pick me up so my dad came and he took me immediately to some Mexican restaurant in Castro Valley (which I internally thought was some fucked up joke to irk me (because I felt that I was being deprived of autonomy and forced to live in an anti-feminist world where I was being treated as my father’s property while I saw other people (namely homeless people) be able to leave that hospital without requiring an escort to come pick them up and, instead, being given BART tickets to go to some longer-term rehabilitation center)).

Later that year (near Christmas 2018) I got a job working at a Wendy’s restaurant which was attached to a gasoline station in Livermore (and that was an okay job, but for some dumb reason I decided to quit within a month of working there after I got a foot injury apparently from getting an infection from getting dumpster “juice” into an open wound on my foot). I was high on weed at the time I admitted myself to Eden Hospital to get treatment for that wound and one of the male nurses gave me an angry look (and it could be because he recognized be as that “felon” who should have been incarcerated longer for what I did to my mom in September). There was another instance where I called 911 and was taken to some hospital in San Leandro after doing a lot of weed and having some “mental break” where I found myself alone sitting where my mom sits in her room upstairs while calling 911 and feeling so uncomfortably alienated from my own authentic identity and feeling eerily like I was taking on my mom’s identity at that moment. I hardly remember what happened other than being taken to that hospital and being left in some room to nap and recover from the high. I was so high so often during those years spanning 2016 and 2018 that I scarcely remember the details of what was happening. I also remember calling me dad several times after wondering “too far” on foot after getting high and ending up in the middle of Oakland. For some reason, when the same happened to me in places in Hayward or north Fremont, I felt a lot more self-reliant and able to walk for many miles without notifying anyone. I think I did that because it was the only way I thought I would be getting a “free” vacation anytime soon. I also remember another “manic” episode of walking along Redwood Road all the way from my dad’s house to where AJP lived in the Laurel district in Oakland (but not stopping to try to talk to him because, at that time we were apparently not on speaking terms). During that night, I ran into some homeless man (who I somehow ran into twice in my lifetime) and he said I looked afraid of him (particularly because he was black) and I said I was not afraid of him and tried to prove it by entertaining him when he wanted to talk and walk with me down High Street towards the Oakland Airport (where I said I was headed to meet my brother (which was a lie)). That man asked me if I was single and I said I was married to some guy named AJP who did not live too far from there and that AJP was on vacation. That guy and I walked to some place near the train tracks where some other people were standing. Somehow we ended up talking about drugs and a girl said she was too afraid to do magic mushrooms while I said I was willing to try them. Shortly after that I ended up sucking the guy’s dick in some obscure part by the tracks. Then we parted ways and I kept walking until I was at some park near the bay front in what looked like Alameda. I tried laying down there for about an hour before getting up to keep walking. I eventually made it to Oakland Airport where I rested a bet in a chair. Some employee there kindly asked me if I needed any homeless referral services and also suggested that I look into getting a job at the airport as they were hiring at the time. I told her I would look into it (but I did not take up the offer because I was weird about taking the car (or a bike) anywhere (and I think I may have had difficulty getting a bike up until less than one year ago because I thought that the cheapest bicycle I could buy was no less than $400 and my mom did not seem willing to help me pay for anything more than $100 at that time or so it seemed). Eventually, I got her to agree to give me money on a daily basis. At first she would only give it to me in cash form. Then she agreed to send it to me via PayPal. I am not sure what her reasoning has been but I think she had/has particular idiosyncrasies which make her want to do things which I have thought were impractical or illogical but for her were most comfortable and practical.

(For the record I understand that many people probably oppose me getting “free” money from my parents and free material accommodations especially given how badly behaved and seemingly disrespectful I have been towards them. As someone who cannot help but want to advocate for my own thriving, I am not opposed to me getting all the “free” resources I can get and which I want or need).

In early January 2019 I applied for a bakery assistant job at a Panera Bread restaurant in Pacific Commons shopping center in Fremont. While working there in mid February 2019, I heard two Mexican-looking guys standing behind me while I was placing uncooked bagels on a baking sheet after coating them in poppy seeds and other seasonings. They were saying some condescending remarks seemingly about me being a pig who was about to get roasted. A few minutes after that I suddenly started hearing “the voices” and it seemed apparent to me at that moment that other employees (and people in general) could hear what I was thinking because they seemed to be laughing in response to some of the things I was thinking. I even silently asked whoever if I was doing a good job and one of them (which sounded like a man who seriously cared about me not wasting my potential said with conviction, “No!” It seemed that whoever that was (and I have suspected at times that it could be AJP) did not want me to miss out on being a professional software engineer and perhaps “the voices” were trying to guide me into changing my thoughts and behavior for the better with regards to becoming a professional software engineer instead of some “fake Mexican-looking person” hiding in some restaurant, warehouse, or retail outlet.

At times I was seriously bothered by those voices but, overall, I think they have done more help than harm (for both me and for all other people in general) because those voices seemed to force me to short-circuit unproductive thoughts which I used to have a lot more of and which caused me to waste a lot of time and put myself in dangerous situations which were not fun but which I felt compelled to go through as some kind of “trial and error” styled approach to figuring out what I was “supposed to do”.

Now I feel like I am the most mentally stable and knowledgeable (and realistic) I have ever been in my life to date. Oh, I almost forgot to mention the event which originally compelled me to start this journal entry…

Some time between the year 2019 and 2022 I was spending most of my time hanging out at and even sleeping at California State University East Bay campus in Hayward (despite not been enrolled in any classes there). I was trying to make my own makeshift equivalent of a computer science bachelor’s degree by making a portfolio website which showcased my knowledge and skills pertaining to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics but I felt that I had a major “personal branding” issue to clean up along the way which took me several more years to complete. (I would say that the “clean up” job with regards to my personal branding and professional (and legal) reputation did not get “complete” until this month, actually, because this month is the first time I ever have been able to accomplish so much of my website portfolio goals which I idealized many years ago in so little time (and that has very much to do with having ChatGPT-4o at my disposal to help me quickly write and debug software applications much faster and with much more technological expertise than I would have been able to procure on my own without any outside help other than Stack Overflow, technical documentation, tutorial videos, text books, and other online forums)). One morning while near the science buildings of that campus I got irked enough at the voices (which I thought were AJP and which I thought were AJP trying to sabotage my goal-acquisition so that he could lord over me his professional accomplishments and “superior” socioeconomic status) that I called 911 to tell them that I thought AJP (or someone else) had implanted mind-reading and mind-control devices in my body without my (remembered) knowledge nor consent. I wanted to put an end to the torment and I wanted to expose the criminal(s) behind such torment. What ended up happening was that the paramedics and police showed up and they admitted me to John George Psychiatric Pavilion. I was held there for longer than any period I ever had been prior: for more than two weeks.

While there (like all the other times I was there), I was forced against my will to ingest sedative and/or anti-psychotic medications. (Patients who refused were held down and injected in the ass cheek with medication and locked in a room (and I watched that happen to a few different patients)). By the time the staff decided it was time for me to be discharged from the hospital, they contacted my parents, but something really fucked up happened: my mom insisted that I be kept there longer in order to ensure that I am thoroughly flooded with their medications and discouraged from sleeping at school or anywhere else she could not intrude upon me. That was a major turning point in my life because it shocked me into revealing to me how much my mom really had an issue with me being independent from her (i.e. not under her micro-managerial control and availability to be made fun of). After several hours (maybe a day), my parents came to pick me up but my mom was having a haughty and disgruntled attitude (like the staff was not doing enough to bully me into her submission). Seemingly as a power play, my mom insisted taking a phone call outside the building and also, while waiting for the staff to attend to me, my dad, and her (where we were sitting at some table near the building entrance), she started doing stretches where she bent over to stick her butt out as though to suggest that I be made to feel like I was there to be fucked in the ass against my will. (Perhaps I am reading too much into things, again, but I could not help but interpret her behavior as her trying to make me feel subordinated and treated as a human trafficking victim).

Flash forward to more recently. I noticed that my mom had consistently been “forgetting” to transfer me money for the next day (seemingly in order to get me to call her daily so that she could inquire about my whereabouts and ensure that I was sounding “appropriately” submissive to her). When it happened for more than a week each night, I could not help but sound disgruntled on the phone when I was talking to her and even asked her if she was trying to make me “check in” with her (especially since I was starting to seriously send out job applications after spending several months postponing my job search due to not having enough of my personal belongings organized and website goals accomplished). Later on that night, I called my mom to apologize for my irritable tone, my entitled behavior, and any and all bad things I ever did. She sounded very sympathetic and kind to me on the phone and said that she wished she could give me more money but was afraid that, if she did, I would spend it on things she did not want me to. I have since learned to hold back from sounding too openly critical of her, because, whenever I did in the past, she threatened to cut me off all financial support completely. What I have thought, at times, is that she wants me to be housebound, underemployed (i.e. not making enough money for the job to be worthwhile or not enough money to be financially self sufficient), and devoid of a social life and travels outside the Bay Area (or anything which is “too fun”), but I have no conclusive evidence to support such a suspicion. There probably are people (and perhaps AJP is one of them) who want me to be deprived of fun and freedom (for whatever reason). Oh well. Like I said most recently on the phone to my mom (which is rather “faith based” instead of “science based”), “I think there are more nice people than not-nice people.”