My-Today was when I handed in my former employer’s hardware to my former-manager. It was a challenging day for me because I didn’t like the situation I was thrust into, but quitting was the best choice for me. My-Tomorrow will begin my job hunt more formally, so, for my-today, I took one last luxury trip out to a thrift store to meander for ties as a way to decompress. Recorded live are some additional visuals/commentaries.

I have nothing more I want to talk about concerning quitting my job.

I’ve spent the last few days thinking about, talking about it in recordings, and considering the pros and cons. Now, it’s time to move forward, rather than live in that anxious reality I found myself in. The thing I’ve come to realize about going to thrift stores is that they are a sort of mental reset. It’s weird. Capitalism is the source of much of my anxiety, as I must engage in capitalism to pay for my housing, food, assorted “luxuries” if you want to call them that, and this is what is required of all of us. Rather than empathize with any of us, it seems like the sorts of business that meanders into the “quitting my job” territory exist because some people can’t cope with this reality, and force others into feeling bad because they feel bad about their situation.

Stop buying so much shit, reduce your overhead, and take it easier with your work.

I will be figuring out work options soon, but for my-today, I went to the biggest thrift store in downtown Seattle, because as a final sort of doxxing-adjacent comment, my now-former job was somewhere downtown, but where exactly, and to what capacity it was, I won’t be doxxing. The biggest thrift store, in my mind anyway, is the thrift store that I won’t be naming directly just south of the International District-Chinatown. The thrift store was so big in fact that there were two racks of neckties that someone was looking at for over 30 minutes, comparing ties to assorted suits, dress shirts, and other items that were part of a wardrobe. By the 15 minute mark, I thought of approaching to ask to take a look, or otherwise barge in, but I thought it better not to, in part because my anxiety was still peaked having just concluded my difficult decision to quit a good paying job over anxiety induction. [A comment on anxiety: I haven’t considered myself much of an anxious person until this job. Now I understand anxiety as a fear mechanism.]

So rather than disrupt or disturb this person, I went looking elsewhere again.

I feel like my tie collection is a fun way to engage with reality. I’ve been feeling frayed and rather sad toward reality through this experience I had, along with generally feeling bad about everything that’s going on with everything adjacent to that, so, having something to focus on is a nice thing for my mental health. The physical health side of things, as well, is that it will be one year since we figured out the source of my physical disability on my-Sunday, so, one year ago I would have had no guess that I’d be here today, walking around as I did, and doing all of the things that I’ve done over the past year. It’s quite a celebration, honestly, and something that I haven’t celebrated much because there’s so much to do, and so little time.

Finally, going back to my-today’s adventure, that individual was done looking at the neckties.

I had no intention of spending 30 minutes browsing slowly through their collection of neckties, so I went through and looked at each one, from left to right, top rack then bottom rack, picked out five that I liked, and sat in the shoe section to look through to see which ones I liked the most. I came up with a good variety of ties, which I will share a thumbnail below for the readers out there, but for the video-watchers out there, you’ll have seen the full resolution photo that I don’t feel like sharing mainly because there isn’t an easy spot for me to host that image outside of Discord-#notsponsored.

Note the link for that image, however…

The first tie I found was a navy blue tie with a stripes of red, orange, yellow, green, and purple, making this a potential Pride tie. The second tie was the green tie with lime green and cyan circles. The third tie was the black tie with red paisleys. The fourth tie was the black tie with green shapes. The fifth tie I found was the mechanical-looking one. I took my bounty of five over to the shoe section to sit and look through the ties for quality, price, and overall level of interest, as well as allowing others to browse the tie section. That was in a poorly-planned area, honestly, because later on when I returned three ties, the area was occupied by people browsing the sports coats and other areas nearby it, so, not really great placement but I understand, since ties aren’t really a super common thing.

Honestly, too, if I were more social, it might have been fun to talk with that person.

However, as a note that I’m sure will draw ire from certain people, even if I mention my ten-plus years of sobriety, a significant portion of the people there were seemingly high or drunk for a Tuesday morning. How odd. Of course, there were the sober or seemingly sober patrons, but that there was at least one drunk person talking to anyone about anything, asking me for permission to do something as I was looking at CDs, and the person that was looking at neckties for 30 minutes seemingly leaving the entirety of that wardrobe near the registers tells me that if I had tried to engage with that necktie enthusiast, there might have been a chance that that person was just riding a high.

Nothing wrong with that, if that high isn’t harming themself or anyone else.

Going back to the ties, the first one I rejected was the black and green tie because the green stitching went from bright green to dull green, and I didn’t like the dull green look. Next was the paisley tie, which I rejected only because I saw so many good ties my-yesterday, your-last-week that were price-tag hole punched through with holes that were quite noticeable. The third tie I rejected was only because the artist was an anonymous artist, possibly a generic design commissioned by what seems to be fairly common: gift shop memento neckties.

There’s a whole world of fashion that I just don’t understand, but I kinda like now.