I sold a crappy $5 android phone on eBay. I am 90% confident that this person is going to scam me. Their initial communication with me was asking for the IMEI, and they asked before buying. I declined to give them the IMEI, after which they bought the item and insisted on receiving the IMEI.

I’m being paranoid, but I just have a bad feeling about this one. I hope that my intuition turns out to be wrong!

Seriously though. If I do get scammed, I will be so disappointed in this human. To scam me out of a shitty old $5 phone would be such a low thing to do. I need that $5! I want to pay rent next month and grow my eBay business! I’m going to have a huge eBay bill at the end of April, I’m pretty sure.

I’m thinking so negatively right now. I think I need to eat something.

12:39PM. I haven’t done much today other than take out the trash, walk 5 laps around the campfire, take a phone call from my therapist K., and text my sister K. about the family virtual get-together that I’m thinking of doing this Sunday.

I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to have a conference call with my family. I think interacting with my family is a painful thing, which is why I limit myself from doing it. I have painful memories with them, and I hold back my genuine self from them. It’s a painful thing.

I suppose I could try and make new, good memories. I don’t know if a conference call and virtual board games are the right way to go about that, though. I think there is a bunch of shit that can go wrong with a conference call that would make the whole experience just another painful one. The internet could drop out. There could be a shit ton of background noise and nobody can hear properly. There could be some argument break out. People might not show up at all.

Tis better to love and lost than never to have loved at all.

I’m probably misquoting that and I don’t know the author. I’m not allowing myself to DDG it right now because I have problems focusing and I’ll use opening a new tab and punching letters into it as an excuse to not write. Yesterday I was all angry and I couldn’t focus and I kept jumping back and forth between writing and researching GSconnect, opening discord, yadda yadda yadda.

Today I would like to focus 100% on this post, and put a big effort into dumping my mind into this post.

I. Am. Good.

Today is good and the call with K. went well. I am going to speak to her again on Monday which means I have to do homework by then. I have to read chapter 1 of the CoDA blue book and answer three questions–

• What is co-dependence?
• Which codependent patterns & characteristics describe yourself?
• What devastating losses have brought you to CoDA?

I’m not going to answer them right now. I’m going to answer them tomor…. I’m procrastinating. I’ll answer them now.

Really what I want to do right now is photograph some trading cards. I opened the last two collections I acquired earlier this month. There’s one more collection sitting at Buyee, but I’m not sure I can afford to get it sent to me. As a last resort, if I can’t come up with the money to get it shipped from their warehouse to me, I may just end up having them destroy the order. I think selling my truck is a good idea at this moment. I can’t legally drive it anyway because I no longer have insurance. It’s a hunk of metal that I can turn into a cool $500 which I can live off of and make some acquisitions with.

Right now is a GREAT time to buy. People are having fire sales. I’m even considering having a fire sale, given how COVID-19 is shutting everything down. The thing is, I can’t sell right now. Right now is the time to buy. Well, I mean I can’t fire sale right now. Regular sales are EXCELLENT and NECESSARY!

So yeah, I’ve diverged from my task, but that’s okay. I’ll come back to it in a few minutes. Right now I’m going to ramble about cards!

So the second to last collection I opened wasn’t a collection at all. I had forgotten that I even bought this thing, but it’s just a sealed booster box of Precious Memories Amagami SS+ Plus. Japanese Import, for sale in Japan only!

I actually took the time and cropped that image for the eBay listing. Without being cropped it is a poor picture!

Ok that’s better. My obsessive compulsive disorder was kicking in after seeing all that extra background. Now my OCD is kicking in and saying that this isn’t symmetrical! There really is no winning this mental struggle. I win by not playing. I win by not giving a fuck. Here’s a closeup image.

I don’t know this anime or any of the characters, but I figure they have to be someone’s waifu, right?

Precious Memories booster boxes usually sell for a shitton of cash here in the USA. There is no English Edition and there aren’t any card stores I know of who sell the cards here, so I think the otaku lust for this sort of thing reaches a critical peak!

I don’t expect this to sell any time soon, since a lot of my fellow Otakus– my target audience, are probably out of work. This is a long-term investment and I’m prepared to wait!

I won the auction for this booster box on Yahoo Auctions via Buyee. I paid $50.82 for the box, 28.03 for shipping and handling, which brings my cost basis to $78.85. I’m targeting a 1.5X return before eBay seller fees and shipping which puts the sales tag at $118.28. If after shipping and fees I make $102.51, I’m happy. 1.3X is what I want to make. I suppose I should calculate the eBay fee which lately has been 24% of my earnings. $28.36 is what I’m seeing in the numbers. I think I need to raise my price a little bit.

Dammit, I just alt+tabbed and researched seller fees. I was supposed to stay focused on writing! Oh well. I just found that my seller fee for when the listing ends is going to be at most 9.05% I think the 24% fee thing I was looking at also includes the monthly eBay seller fee. So it’s not like this one item needs to cover all my eBay seller fees for a month.

I’m raising the price anyway. I’m the only seller selling this item in the USA, so I can charge a premium! $138.28 with best offer, accepting offers all the way down to $118.28. Most offers I get, the people offer a few dollars below the asking price. It’s very sparingly that someone really low balls me. Even if they do lowball, I sometimes will say yes, especially on the trading card singles which I’m asking an unreasonably high price for. I am truly happy to get a $1 sale for a single card!

I keep pondering this COVID-19 situation. I keep wondering if I should worry. I keep wondering if I should shut down my shop and get a PT job.

The thing is, I’m doing okay. I can make rent. I’ve been getting at least 1 sale every day. I’m building my inventory and listing like crazy. I heard a good concept on JRE the other day from an ex-navy seal.

It’s funny, he hates water now, and refuses all recreational water activities! I can’t remember his name, and I’m not going to allow myself to switch focus and find his name! Anyway, the thing he said was,

Field of influence, field of concern.

Something like that. The analogy he used was circles on a dart board. I don’t like that analogy so I’ll share the example he gave.

One time he was swimming under water during a training exercise. He saw a shark or something swim past him and he decided he had two options. Pay attention to the shark, freak out and swim for the surface, or keep his focus forward and keep swimming.

If he swam for the surface, he could die from the bends. He concluded that if the shark wanted to eat him, there was nothing he could do about it. He chose to not even look back at the shark, and just keep swimming.

In that example, his field of concern could be the shark and his personal safety, but he decided that his field of influence was a very small part of that scenario. He had no influence over the shark, and instead of trying to influence the shark, he simply kept his influence on the task at hand– swimming forward.

I probably sabotaged that example, but hopefully I got the idea across. I can make my focus of concern the covid-19 pandemic and the economic crisis it’s causing, but my field of influence can never be large enough to impact the crisis. My energy is better spent on focusing my field of concern to be the same size as what I can influence.

What can I influence? I can influence how I spend my days. I can influence the rate at which I list items on eBay. I can influence my health. Thus, my concern should remain on things I can influence!

There are other ways of explaining that same concept. The serenity prayer is a good one.

God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can; and the Wisdom to know the difference.

Someone who abuses the usage of semicolons.

I think the concept shared by the Navy seal guy works well is because the fields, or rings of influence and concern are not exactly intuitive. It took me a bit of pondering to understand what he meant by it. But because of all that extra thinking, I think I have a good handle of it now.

In old english, middrift used to be spelled, mydryf.

Goddammit! I got distracted again. I looked over at an empty Weiss Schwarz Hatsune Miku Project Diva f booster box and I saw rin-chan with her exposed middrift. Her look is so amazing. She has the best belly, that’s for sure. I DuckDuckGo’d the word middrift just to see if I was spelling it correctly. Also I wasn’t sure if middrift meant boobs or tummies. It totally means tummies. Rin-chan’s mini shorts are so sexy… Goddamn, VOCALOIDS are so generally beautiful and pleasing on the eyes.

Such a distraction! mydryf.com is available, by the way. $8.88 on namecheap! If only there was a market for selling domain names!

I have two domain names configured for sedo parking now. flyingdeer.com and xtoast.com. By my domains, boiiz! It would make me very happy to sell one of them.

The thing is, there are so many good names out there, that there’s no reason to barter for a domain. Unless it’s something so hyper specific that happens to also be a short name. 3 letter domains for example, those are highly sought after, and I don’t even know if I could get one without having to first buy it from someone squatting on it.

https://www.domainnamesoup.com/3letterdomainnames.php?start=226

See what I mean? Taken! Now 2 letter or 1 letter domain names, holy shit, those ones must cost literal millions to acquire at this point in 2020!

Oh. I’m wrong. https://catechgory.com/ 2 letter domain names are available! I suppose it’s the .com’s that are the hard ones to get. There are a bunch of new .TLDs being release semi-regularly, so I suppose that there are always changes to get a short domain of one’s liking.

See what I mean about getting distracted? I can’t help myself but wander in thought!

Oh, I’m at 1900 words already. I suppose it’s time to reel it in and answer those CoDA questions as promised.

What is co dependence?

Co-dependence is a disease of the soul consisting of adopted behaviors which chip away at one’s life, happiness, peace and sanity.

Which codependent patterns & characteristics describe yourself?

All of them, but here are some that stand out.

Denial patterns.

• I have difficulty identifying what I am feeling.
• I label others with their negative traits.
• I think I can take care of myself without any help from others.
• I mask pain using anger or isolation.
• I express negativity or aggression in indirect and passive ways.

Low self-esteem patterns.

• I have difficulty making decisions.
• I judge my thoughts and actions harshly.
• I am embarrassed to receive praise or gifts.
• I value other people’s approval of my thinking over my own.
• I have difficulty admitting a mistake.
• I have a need to appear to be right in the eyes of others.
• I am often unable to ask for what I need.
• Sometimes I perceive myself as superior to others.
• I have trouble setting healthy boundaries.

Compliance patterns

• I’m extremely loyal, and I remain in harmful situations too long. (B. talking for a half hour & dominating the conversation at the movie theater while my blood sugar crashes and I can’t dismiss myself)
• I compromise my own values and integrity to avoid rejection or anger.
• I put aside my own interests in order to do what others want.
• I’m hyper-vigilant regarding the feelings of others and take on those feelings
• I’m afraid to express my beliefs or opinions when they differ from those of others.

Control Patterns

• I attempt to convince others what to think or do
• I freely offer advice without being asked
• I lavish gifts on those I want to influence
• I have to feel needed in order to have a relationship with others.
• I refuse to negotiate.
• I adopt an attitude of helplessness to manipulate outcomes

Avoidance Patterns

• I judge harshly what others think, say, or do.
• I avoid all intimacy as a way to maintain distance.
• I allow addicion to the internet and work to distract me from achieving intimacy in relationships.
• I diminish my capacity to have healthy relationships by declining to use the tools of recovery.
• I suppress my feelings to avoid feeling vulnerable.
• I pull people toward me, but push them away when they get close.
• I believe displays of emotion are a sign of weakness.
• I withhold expressions of appreciation.

What devastating losses have brought you to CoDA?

My loss of sanity brought me to CoDA. I was rehearsing how I would kill myself by holding kitchen knives to my throat or belly, because I felt trapped in an endless cycle of grief. I lost my job, on purpose, because I thought doing so would solve my problems. It did not, because my underlying behaviors hadn’t changed.

I didn’t even know what was wrong or how to solve it, I just knew I needed help.

Ok that’s it for today.

12. I am smart.
13. I believe I can change the world (or at least my corner of it).
14. I am important.

I’m grateful for my therpist K. because she gives me all sorts of strategies and she listens to me and she’s here for me. I’m grateful that she offered to speak with me twice a week because I could literally go an entire week without speaking with someone, and that’s not a trend I wish to continue. I’m grateful that K. inspires me with her own stories of her struggles with unhealthy relationships, recovery, and how she continues to recover and every day contains a challenge to overcome.

I’m grateful for my bladder which works really well and I can hold in my pee if I want to, and the same goes for my colon. I have a great digestive system and I’m very grateful that it works as well as it does.

I’m grateful that I don’t have COVID-19. Or rather, I’m grateful that I don’t have any symptoms of COVID-19. I could very well have it, but I’m completely symptom free. I’m grateful that I am not ill, don’t have a cold, and I’m grateful that I keep positive and remind myself that I don’t have to be afraid.

“Do I want to get sick?” I ask myself when I start be afraid. The answer is always, “no!” and I think that positivity goes a long way at keeping my immune system in good working order.