I Work There

She didn’t come to school today.

One thing I hate to think about but think about anyway are my missed opportunities, be it with girls (like her) or things I shouldn’t have said or should have done. I think about all this anyways because it’s how I process them internally and how that helps me try to act or not act in the future. I’m always going to make mistakes; I’ve never even thought of not having them in my life. All I can do is work at being better.

One way I’m trying to do that is by reading more. I bought the new Getting Things Done book by David Allen and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace¹ on Amazon, and they should be here by Monday. Yeah, I bought the physical versions of these books, and I’m so excited. I’m still going through Don Quixote, and at my current pace, I won’t finish it till the end of eternity. I’m still excited to start these new books, though. Even though I’m focusing on my debt, I budgeted a bit of my money toward new books every month, and I’m going to take advantage of it.

There’s this idea of the anti-library I’ve read from sites like Farnam Street and Brain Pickings. The concept is simple: the more books you read, the more books you buy and thus leave unread. These unread books is your anti-library. I have a ton of unread books in my library, but at the moment, I have more read books than unread ones, and that simple lopsided ratio bothers me. I have lists of books I want to read, but I’ve been preventing myself from buying them because of monetary reasons. But I’m going to change that now, and it’s going to be fun.

There’s one thing books can’t help me with, and that’s my own neuroticism. For months I fought with myself about talking to her or not. I work there; she’s 18 years old; I work there; she’s a senior; I work there; what if she’s not interested? Then I talked to her yesterday, and it was great. All those warm feelings permeated throughout my body, and she was smiling and talking to me and it was great. But I work there. I work there, and she’s a student. I resisted for so long from writing these thoughts down on my blog, but here they are. This is me. Unedited. Uncensored. Possibly unemployed soon.

I won’t see her again until Tuesday because it’s a hybrid Easter/Spring Break vacation time at school. That’s four full days to figure out what I want to do. I really don’t know what I’m going to end up doing, but I’m going to write about it because that’s what I do. I write things down so I can learn from them. That’s why I keep so many journals: writing is the only way I know how to think and reading helps me live well. But what can I read to help me here? Lolita?