I fucked up. I’m so desperate to sell junk in my Bonanza shop that I lowered the price on a bunch of my tech items to $1. But I selected an item in the bulk editor that is worth way more than $1– A Kill-A-Watt power meter. Someone bought it.

I don’t get it. I thought my prices have been set to reasonable amounts and I just wasn’t getting traffic to the steals of deals! I change the price of some items for one day and immediately the item sells. It’s as if people are looking but they are only interested in getting the item if it’s free or next to free.

I’m mad about it! It’s a $20 item. I used it for about a day then never again. It’s been on eBay and Bonanza for months couldn’t even sell it for $12.

I’m losing money on this one. Maybe I should just cancel the listing. Maybe I should cancel all my $1 items and take them to Goodwill.

Some shit just doesn’t sell. Like DVDs. DVDs are worth maybe $1 at a thrift store. So I can’t charge $1 because people are looking for deals.

I think I just gotta be smarter about what I’m selling.

I’m cancelling the Kill-A-Watt sale. I’m not paying money to send it to a stranger.

Ugh, now I’m anxious that the customer will be angry.

I’m getting too desperate. I want e-commerce to be my method for making a living, but that’s not me being realistic right now. That’s me being desperate. I’m trying to force sales even if they are harmful to my income.

I gotta purge. I gotta do a great purge of all the bullshit items that nobody wants to buy. It’s not worth it to hold onto these shit items and hope for a sale down the road, when the sale is going to net me about 3 pennies. I’m not even exaggerating. 3 pennies! Even if I sell the Kill-A-Watt for $5, that is a loss. Bonanza takes $0.50 as their fee, and shipping is $4.83. Packaging cost money too although it’s all been paid for years ago when I bought bubble mailers in bulk.

I should not be running a business. Or rather, I should close this business and start a new one because it’s obvious that this one has failed.

I’ll hold out on my card shop.

Maybe I would be better off making things and selling them. I’m not sure what. Maybe something out of paracord.

Maybe I’m doomed to …

I’d rather not think that way. I watched a 10 year recap video of Joe Rogan Experience last night. One of the guests featured in the highlight video mentioned that their dad died screaming. He held his dad in high regard, and he never thought his dad would go in such a way, but he did.

That thought was motivation for him to follow whatever silly dreams he had in life, because eventually he figured he would die screaming. Life’s to short to be miserable!

I want to eat though. I want a good deal of privacy and I want internet. Because I want these things, I have to accept doing a certain level of work.

I’ve been repeating this topic for awhile now, and I don’t think I’ve been making any headway. I’ve only been accruing more debt.

Speaking of debt, I gotta add a new impulse purchase into YNAB so I maintain a good overview of my finances! I say this with sarcasm. I added the purchase which totalled $16.24. That’s for bottled fountain pen ink and a piston converter so I can refill my pen without having to spend a fortune on the little cartridges.

I bought Diamine Ancient Copper. This is one of the fun parts of having a fountain pen! I get to choose whatever colour I want!

Switching between colours might be a challenge. I want to be sure that I don’t mix the blue in my pen right now with the ancient copper that I’ll be switching to. I’m sure there are tutorials on youtube which will explain that process.

I found the above image on Flickr, but I definitely recognize that writing pad.

I watched this video after I received my pen, to get some tips from someone who knows what they’re talking about. From this video I learned about the converter cartridges and the option to use bottled ink.

I’m pretty much out of ink right now. Mid-way writing a letter to K., I had to switch to ballpoint. It’s just not the same!

One of the comments in that video mentioned that people should not buy the pen because it is a gateway drug to the world of fountain pens. I’m kind of experiencing that feeling now! I want to get another pen so I can have two different colours to switch between. I’d probably just get another LAMY Safari because it’s relatively inexpensive and it’s nice to write with.

It’s my favorite Christmas gift! If you want to buy me a great gift, make it useful in every day activities, or make it edible!

I’m not actually sure I have a Safari. It might be an Al Star. I need to research this real quick so I can lay this question to bed once and for all.

I have an Al Star! Okay then! Apparently the Al Star is metal, and contains a translucent grip. The Safari on the other hand is made of plastic, and the grip matches the body. My grip is translucent, and the body feels like metal. It is definitely an Al Star!

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So I did find something interesting from the blog I just pulled this information from. Apparently LAMY produces a special edition Safari and Al Star in a new color once a year. That might be something to keep an eye out for!

Today I completed my TODO list, which I’m happy to have done. My todo list for yesterday includes the following.

• Journal
• Train (exercise)
• List 1 item on Bonanza
• Study Japanese
• Create a jam for Jamuary
• Write a letter
• Code
• Eat
• Chill

Today my to do list is going to be identical. It’s good to have a list so I can keep busy an not become depressed.

So yesterday I tried Yoga. I watched a tutorial video on traditional sun salutations and I went outside and did my regular walking + strength training routine. Except that instead of squats or burpees or running, I would do a sun salutation once per lap.

At about lap 6 I was feeling so good. The sun salutations released a bunch of pain in my upper back that I didn’t realize I was even carrying.

When I was doing yoga, I kept looking around, making sure nobody was watching me. I remembered the research I’ve been doing on vulnerability, and I decided I should allow myself to be seen doing yoga. This is allowing myself to be myself. Feeling vulnerable is okay in this situation, and to allow myself to feel this way is courageous. After a few laps of walking and yoga, I was so thankful that my path had brought me to practice yoga. I felt an inner peace which brought me great comfort and joy. I was moved to tears and I allowed myself to cry a little.

I think Yoga is a game changer for me. I see using Yoga as a tool to keep my body and mind healthy. My spirit too! I think walking to a mountain summit, followed by yoga is probably going to become a thing for me.

Even if I can’t drive to a mountain, I can just do yoga here in my parent’s back yard and I think this will be a very good thing for me.

I kind of winged it yesterday. I just repeated the moves I saw in the tutorial as best as I could remember. Today I think I’ll do the same thing, but try and be a little better on certain poses I was unsure of yesterday. I gotta watch the tutorial video again. I figured I’ll just get a little better at it every day, and soon enough I’ll be an intermediate yogi.

I was thinking the same thing about listing an item on Bonanza. Just one item per day seems inconsequential. When I think of a month going by, it feels like no time at all. With these things in mind, one item per day is 30 items in a time period that feels like a blink of the eye. That’s 30 items! That’s a ton of items! I couldn’t imagine listing 30 items in a day. TL;DR: listing 1 item per day is WORTH IT!

Alrighty then. It’s just about time for me to go walk and to yoga. I’m feeling pretty light headed right now. I’m already hungry and it’s only 10:33AM. I think this is a sign that my training is making my body use lots of energy. This is a good thing because a healthy body is an active body. Or something like that.

My friend A. is dragging her feet once again. She had some electronics shipped to my house which are only available in the USA. I agreed to forward them to her. She won’t give me her address because I don’t think she trusts me. She keeps talking like she’s waiting on me for something. The ball has been in her court for months! I think she’s just being cheap and she doesn’t want to spend the $15 it will cost to ship them to her.

Ugh, this has dragged on for so long. She says she needs the package, so I’ll give her a shipping quote, take a picture of the package, and she’ll drop the subject.

Then a month or so later she’ll say she needs the package, so I’ll give her a shipping quote, repackage the contents to her liking, send her a picture of the package ready to go, and she’ll drop the subject.

I should be charging her a storage fee or something at this point. I thought this would be a quick mail forwarding job, but she won’t commit! She’s going so far as to micromanage me in how I’m packaging the parcel. I must have done this process five times now. I keep having to re-do the shipping estimate because so much time passes and we both forget the previous estimate.

I’ve spent somewhere around 5 hours on this project. It seems like every few weeks I spend more time on it. She’s wasting my time!

She would probably not want me to write about her or this issue. But that’s too bad. I anonymized her name and I’m sitting on this post for 2 years before it goes public. Maybe I’ll make it 3 just for her. Maybe not.

I don’t know if I want to maintain my relationship with A. She’s the kind of person who doesn’t seem to want to put any effort into improving herself. She seems to be in a bad mental state often. She’s got a ton of talent and skill in computer science but doesn’t apply herself and seems to live off welfare or the kindness of family.

I’m being extra judgemental of her because her situation is so similar to mine. She’s a few years younger than I am, so I should cut her some slack. If I am to hold her to my standard, I at least can’t judge her life in this way until she’s the same age I am now.

I shouldn’t judge her at all. It is not my place and my idea of what her path should be is irrelevant. A., if you ever read this, you do you! I write this as a method to release my inner demons, not to pass judgement on you. I value our friendship and I would be sad if our friendship were compromised.

4 years it is then! 4 years until this article goes public. I’m putting 2 year publishing timers on most of my articles which pertain to myself, but this one has information about someone else and I don’t want to share that.

So I shouldn’t publish this at all? Fuck, now how am I supposed to keep consistency when the bulk of articles do start publishing, 1 per day?

REDACTED

I should put redacted text like that in the places with friend identifiable information.

What am I even doing?

What is the goal of these writings?

I am writing for therapeutic reasons. If they have some sort of monetary value which I can extract in the form of Amazon associates money, that’s cool too.

I’m writing to log my history. I’m writing to express myself. I’m writing to exercise my true personality. I’m writing embarrassing things to get over the fear of being embarrassed. I’m writing things I feel guilty about so I can get over the guilt. I’m writing to relieve stress. I’m writing to feel gratitude. I’m writing to promote empathy. I’m writing to restore my emotions.

Something like that. The reasons seem to change from time to time.

But like… What if A. and I aren’t even friends in 4 years? What if one of us dies before then?

Secrets are okay to have. I don’t want to betray her trust or anything.

I gotta get it out though. I gotta write my feelings on the shipping forwarding thing. It’s absurd how she keeps repeating the same process over and over. She’s either being cheap or she’s being paranoid about customs. I don’t really know. But the fact that she hasn’t given me her shipping address for so long leads me to believe that she doesn’t trust me.

And maybe she shouldn’t because I’m posting this story in 4 years!

Ohh, I have an idea. I’ll write a note to myself that warns me about this blog post going live. I’ll ask her for permission at that time. Yeah. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll actually change it to 2 years so there is consistency for future readers. Then if A. says no, I can delay it another 2 years and ask her again before the post goes live.

As weird as it might sound, I like having a dead man’s switch. If I die, the blog post goes live regardless of what happens. So that’s why I’m scheduling it to be published, even if I don’t intend to publish it. I can always delay the publishing to a later date.

This is a learning process. Time capsule blog posts, that is. It’s a fun process too!

One thing I gotta do is fund my Vultr account with enough money to last 2 years. Right now, it would only last about 2 months before Vultr would terminate my account. So I can’t go dying or anything right now. That’s important.

I could go into further debt to fund my account, but I don’t think that’s really a good idea. The debt I carry is a significant factor in why I’m depressed in the first place.

Today I’m grateful for my friendship with A. I’m grateful for WordPress having a scheduling function. I’m grateful for secure communications thanks to the power of cryptography. I’m grateful for yoga. I’m grateful for the variety of colors to choose from when shopping for fountain pen ink.