1. In a continuation from last week. There was a guy who applied to work at my job. To sum it up, he had previously applied and was rude and condescending to our office manager and pretty disrespectful to my boss. Anyway, he applies again and basically acts like he never applied. Of course, we started to put two and two together and figured out who he was. We did our best to be diplomatic and told him that he was overqualified for the job. He blew up our text line begging for a job, complete with ‘prayer hands’ emojis. He also mentioned my boss and office manager by name, looking for work. Desperation is not attractive. It made me feel like someone on a dating app where the other person is a giant walking red flag. To top it off, once he was turned down, his final message was to ask us what the name of our business was. What?! You apply twice for a job at a place, and you don’t know the name of it? This guy is either an idiot or a psychopath. I half expect him to show up and cause a scene. We didn’t tell him our business name because, seriously, use Google, dude.
2. I have a pretty good memory. That being said, I do have times when I can’t remember certain people or things. This leads to an encounter at the supermarket this week. I was in an aisle looking at yogurt, es very exciting. I had my back turned and heard a guy say ‘Do you still go to the gym?’ Thinking nothing of it, I kept looking and grabbed what I wanted. I turned around, and this guy with a beard and long hair was staring at me and again asked if I still went to the gym. My first instinct was to just say yes. I had no clue who he was, but he began talking about how he used to see me there, but stopped going because of COVID. He even introduced me to his wife. I was polite, but I was itching to get out of there. He didn’t know my name, so I felt better, like I hadn’t been his friend and totally forgotten him. Still, asking questions to someone’s back while they’re shopping isn’t too normal.
3. Every time I write at the Cape Cod Community College library it feels more important. It is one of the very few places where my potential still feels limitless. I spent so many hours in the past sitting at the desks in the library working on various projects. Maybe it’s because my brain associates the campus with having to focus and work hard? I am spending more time there to work on my script for The Cabin, the feature film I plan to shoot later this summer. The irony isn’t lost on me that back in 2008, I sat at the same desks and wrote the original book version of The Cabin. I’m hoping for a little good luck and maybe some magic as the script gets closer to being done, hopefully by the end of January.
4. Hey, hackers and spammers, you’re getting pretty sloppy. If you’re going to try to phish me with a text saying fraud was attempted using my debit card, at least make sure that you use the bank where I have an account. Idiots. I don’t have an account through Santander. It took a millisecond for me to recognize it was a scam attempt, and the number was immediately blocked.
5. Sometimes I think that old people, aka 60+, try to be too cute on social media with their reactions to posts. I have had several people in the last few weeks give reactions to posts that don’t fit what the content is. For example, I had a story where I talked about the benefits of my long walks as they double for meditation, plus I get lots of good ideas from them. Someone gives me a laughing emoji. Why is that funny? Either you need better glasses because you can’t find the right button to press, or you’re a jerk. I had another where it was a sunset photo, and some lady gave me a laughing emoji. I literally went on and commented saying, ‘not sure why this sunset photo is funny, but ok…’ Again, are you blind or an idiot? It goes for anyone, but double-check what you’re posting before you do.
6. Speaking of sunsets, and not funny ones, there was one this week that was the best in a long time. It was 360 degrees of colors that I easily got lost in. I had been working and needed a break, so I decided to go sunset hunting. I found the spot at Seagull Beach in Yarmouth. It was better than I could have anticipated. I barely noticed how cold my hands were getting because I was too busy running around the beach like a madman, trying to get as many photos and videos as I could before it was too late. Those types of sunsets are rare, so you need to take advantage of them. Here is a video that will sum it up pretty well.
7. I wish I could maintain my weight the way that I maintain my follower count on Instagram. Or on the other side, I wish I could gain followers without thinking, like the way I gain weight. Let me explain. For the last 3 years or so, I’ve been stuck at the exact same number of followers on IG, it’s almost always 2,993. I gain one, lose one, but it stays roughly the same. I believe that I take some pretty good photos that, in and of themselves, should lead to more followers, but what do I know? I won’t complain about it because I’ve seen people start going in hard about wanting more followers, only to have people unfollow them. It’s like clockwork. I wish I could bottle whatever is in the IG algorithm and put it into MyFitnessPal to help me drop and then maintain my weight. That used to be so much easier, even 6 years ago. I have to think that dealing with COVID forever changed my body. Anyway, it was a random thought I had when checking my IG account. It was like, yup, just like always 2,993.
8. The anticipation is building for a snow event to end the weekend. It won’t have happened by the time this blog goes up, though. The issue has to do with how much snow we get, being on Cape Cod. We are always at the mercy of our location. Sticking out into the ocean, we tend to get rain a lot more often than other places in New England. So we’ve seen forecasts for anywhere from one inch to six inches. Having lived through nearly 50 New England winters, I know to expect the unexpected. We could wake up Monday morning with bare ground or a foot of snow. Who knows? As a kid, I always wanted more than the forecast said. Now, as an adult, I always want less since I will have to shovel it. My guess? We get 3 inches of heavy wet snow that I end up shoveling on Monday. Stay tuned next week.
9. Every so often, I will dig through my closet and see what sorts of treasures I might have forgotten about. This time, it was lots of cards from birthdays and Christmases past. I am not a hoarder, but I am glad that I am sentimental and usually don’t throw out things from my family. Seeing the handwriting of my grandparents will always make me feel like they are still with me. On a lighter note, I also found my membership cards to both Blockbuster and Hollywood Video. Back in the 1990s, I never would have believed you if you had told me that video rental stores would someday be history. Now these cards are just relics of a bygone era. Again, not a hoarder, but I seem to be good at knowing what I should hang on to. Also, it’s not lost on me that I have had to say twice that I’m not a hoarder.
10. 35 years ago this week, I was 13 years old, prepping to take my SAT’s and being courted for Genius Camp by the prestigious Johns Hopkins University. As proud as I am of those academic achievements, it is a bit of a bittersweet feeling. I naturally look back and look to the present-day and wonder if I have done the best I could with the gifts I was blessed with. The quick answer is no, since I am constantly writing in this blog about still pursuing my dreams. Despite that, I truly believe that there is more than one road that leads you to where you are meant to be. Until you have reached the end of the road, your journey is still ongoing. I might not have immediately capitalized on the gifts I had over three decades ago, but there is still a lot of story left to be written. We’ll see where I’m at in 5 years.
11. In my closet, I have way too many half-filled notebooks. They are from all sorts of previous chapters of my life. I have one about my Vegas life, one about the most important relationship of my life, one about becoming a personal trainer, one about my travel blog trips, and so on. The one I had been searching for was a bit of a ‘holy grail.’ It is the notebook that has in-depth plots for several unfinished, or not even started, books. I found it this week and have already taken to digitizing what I have for a few of these unfinished works. I’m not saying that I’m going to dive headlong into writing a few new books, but just transcribing what I have from paper to my laptop has definitely gotten the creative juices flowing. Who knows, maybe one of those stories will end up as a film someday?
12. In one of those serendipitous, or destiny-type moments, one of the unfinished stories I found has an odd connection. I plotted out a horror story way back in 2008, and have more than half of it pretty detailed. I decided to set this story in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. In the notebook, I am pretty detailed as far as the location of the beginning of the story. This is where the serendipity comes in. Upon further research, it turns out that the vicinity of the location I chose for the beginning of the book, I actually visited during my big 2019 road trip. I even have photos of the area because I went for a walk there. I had no memory of picking that particular place, so it is crazy to me that I ended up there totally as a fluke.
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| The place on the Outer Banks where I set my book. |
13. What a brutal rock fight game it was between the Patriots and Houston Texans. The Patriots won 28-16. I am still so pleasantly surprised with where the Patriots are. I honestly thought they’d be this good next year. Now they are in their first AFC Championship game since 2018, when they last won the Super Bowl. I’m not saying it feels like 2001 again, but they could definitely win the title this year. Drake Maye is only 23 and already an MVP candidate. Mike Vrabel is an excellent young coach. The team has loads of money they can spend this offseason. All that adds up to the fact that it could be the dawning of another dynasty in New England. I think they beat Denver next week, who will have their backup quarterback playing. It’s all house money currently, but after a few lean years, I am loving the return to prominence of the Patriots.
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