Keeping my mouth shut is a learned skill. I didn’t cultivate it until my 30s due to self ignorance, the opposite of self awareness. Before that, the main source of information on who I am was my parents. My mother especially has opinions about who I should be. The real problem is how long I spent trying to make them happy. If I’d adopted any accountability for my existence back then who knows what kind of bad decisions I could have made. Oh, the gutters I could have woken up in!  Now my choices are tempered by maturity and cynicism.  I stay quiet and avoid mistakes with patience most of the time.  It’s slow work but remaining self aware keeps me in touch with the ultimate goal – happiness.

In the meantime, I still make plenty of bad decisions. For example, the “job” I “had” last month. Under some fairly questionable circumstances I was set up in a virtual office designed to issue tasks. I basically accepted packages at my home address, requested a pre-paid postage label and re-shipped the items.  Lots of Roombas, Apple products, and laptops. Mostly simple. The whole operation is pretty janky but the amount of money they offer is just low enough to make it believable. I certainly had nothing better to do and the post office is downhill.  It was great practice for leaving home every day.

When it came time for payment nothing showed up.  I asked about it and received a vague message about it taking 2-3 days. I waited 3 days and then couldn’t access the virtual office anymore. I didn’t consider it a real job until I got a check so I’m less surprised by this than 24-year old me would be. I’m mostly disappointed. In myself. In humanity. It’s an elaborate way to scam minimal labor but that’s okay because I like to believe talented people don’t run scams.  Unless that’s their talent, I guess.  My only real regret is shipping those last 4 laptops.  Selling those would have been worth more than the money I didn’t get.  It’s hard being honest sometimes.

I didn’t spend any money to participate in this tomfoolery so all they truly stole was my time.  I bought a printer but that was for more than just this so I can’t be too upset about it.  Honestly, the tiny amount of purpose I derived from having something to do every day puts me at a profit overall.  That and I assume I get to keep the unshipped items at this point.  On a completely unrelated note, does anyone want to trade me a handful of cash for an X-Box 1 Holiday Bundle or 64G iPad Air 2?  I’m just going to donate the 2 boxes of Crayola products to someone that will use them.  Art supplies are meant to bring joy.  I guess if someone wanted to donate cash in return it would also be joyous.