An Open Letter to Myself, Pt. IV

Hello again, I’m back. We’re far from over, dear reader. After all, the only certain thing in life is that nothing is certain. And the only constant is change. So here I am once again. It’s crazy to believe that since my very first entry, it’s been close to four years. Now I’m 27 years old and getting closer to 30. It all feels so surreal now that I’m actually living it out. But that’s life for you… or for me, I guess.

For the Money

In my previous entry, I started working at my current place of employment on September 16, 2020. As am writing this, I have been working there for 1 year and 9 months. In the three jobs I’ve worked since graduating college, I can now say this is the place where I’ve worked the longest. Yay! Initially, I was paid the same monthly salary as my two previous places of employment. Honestly, I didn’t really care I was grateful that I had a place to work after leaving my old job on bad terms.

But then a year passed, I eventually gleaned new knowledge regarding from my new job. Before long, I finally had a clear purpose. That also meant doing more work. Of course, doing more work, I was expecting a bump up in my pay. One year after I started, my monthly salary stayed the same so I kept waiting. Until February 2022 came along. My boss, son of the company owner, asks me one morning what my current salary was. I told him and he is surprised at the amount I am making. Let’s just say it is less than what he was expecting to hear. He goes on to tell me that he’ll make sure it goes up. And wouldn’t you know it, I find that on my next paycheck that my salary has skyrocketed by a substantial amount! Hey, I’m very grateful for this pay raise and I make sure to give my 100% at work every day.

I’m going to get into why I’m bringing up the topic of pay up. When I first started working at my current company, I was taken under the wing of some people who had started there a year before me. They were experienced in sales work and were workaholics to an extent. Anyway, I remember a conversation they had with me about how the company had so much potential and that the owner was a swell guy who was worth working for. The latter part I can confidently affirm. But one of them also goes on about how he’s never in it for the pay and goes on to bash people who come into work to collect paychecks. Back then, I paid it no heed. Fastforward to now, I take some issue with what he said.

I call bullshit on him saying that he’s not working for the money. I don’t know the exact amount he was or is making but I’m certain that he gets paid more than twice the amount I make per month. So with that said, he’s more than financially stable to provide for himself and his family. But I want to draw up a hypothetical situation. Let’s say the company had to cut costs and everyone’s salary had to be halved, including his. Would he still have the same mindset? Would he still say he doesn’t do it for the money? I highly doubt it. What I’m highly confident about is that I come to work every day to get paid. Every payment period, I’m expecting to see a new amount in my bank account. Hate me if you want, but what I do, I do it for the money. Yes, I’m just here to collect a paycheck but I also make sure I do my best at work.

Back in the Game (Briefly)

Near the end of 2021, I decided to get back into the dating game again. After the bittersweet conclusion to the Palita saga back in July 2020, I took some time off to heal from some shall we say… emotional wounds. All it took was Instagram advertisement from the MMA gym with whom I had a membership to get me off the bench. As it turned out, a staff member from the aforementioned gym was used as a model in the ad and I found myself attracted.

So I reached out to the gym’s manager, who I was already acquainted with, and asked for details. It was a sort of like me asking, “Could you introduce us?” So she acquiesced to my request and I visited the gym in November 2021 to meet this girl. One thing that immediately stands out to me is that she’s way taller than me. I’m 165 centimeters (5’5”) while this girl towers over me at approximately 175 centimeters (5’9”). As if the height difference wasn’t enough, she’s got all the makings of a magazine cover girl. Aesthetically, this girl is way out of my league. But for some reason, my self-confidence is unusually high and I’m determined to get her to like me. Looking back, I laugh at that version of myself.

I remember the first two times we met, I went to go see her two days in a row on the weekend. It was a total of 15 hours that I spent with her at the gym. In retrospect, I may have come off as a bit of a creep. Granted, I hadn’t hit on anyone for over 9 years by then. She was really nice to me in all the time we spent together. Although this may have been because I was a customer of the gym and she was an employee, it’s difficult to determine.

Both my self-esteem and anxiety were tested when it came to our texting exchanges, which were few and far between. I’ll put it this way: if I sent three texts, she would reply with one. And while I would reply to her in less than a minute, she would take up to 7 hours to respond to me. Needless to say, it really messed with my mind.

Still, I was determined to go on a date with her. And eventually, I scored a first date with her early in December. We went to grab some coffee on her day off from work. Much to my chagrin, we mostly conversed about work and the date lasted an underwhelming one hour. Nevertheless, I scheduled a second date with her for Christmas. I won’t say it was a disaster but like the first date, it failed to live up to my expectations. The date lasted only an hour; she had another scheduled appointment. I found out later that she’d made that appointment after agreeing to have dinner with me. I suppose she wanted to keep the second date short. It doesn’t matter. Over the course of the dinner, she dropped a bombshell: she wasn’t looking for a committed relationship any time soon. This was when I decided we simply weren’t meant to be. And that was when I decided to end our correspondence in terms of pursuing a relationship.

During the New Year’s holiday, I was noticeably miserable and my dad decides to give me a pep talk of sorts. At the time I didn’t pay attention to it but I remember hearing ‘King Solomon’ and ‘this too shall pass’. So later, I googled those two things and found an old fable. Anyway, I came to realize that any situation, be it good or bad, can't last forever. And it was what gave me the strength to move on from my failed attempt at a new relationship. Since then, I like to think that I live by the words ‘this too shall pass’.

As I’m writing this, it would be the last time I ever saw her in person. There’s no hard feelings between us and it’s just a case of two people wanting different things. She occasionally texts me about my wellbeing and asks when I’ll return to the gym.

Still at the start of 2022, my sister implored me to give dating apps a try once more. I’d experimented with them back in early 2020 but ended up getting ghosted by a girl I’d matched with. Still, I figured it wouldn’t hurt trying again. My cousin who’d been visiting from the US had also told me two simple words: “Have fun.” So I scrolled through a list of profiles and tapped whichever one stuck out to me. After several days, I received a reply, a match.

This girl was a senior in college who was still going to classes via Zoom. I’m surprised by her fondness of Ancient Greek and Roman architecture in our first conversation. After just one day of talking on the app, she suggests we change to talking on LINE (Thailand’s equivalent of WhatsApp). I don’t think I’ve ever met a girl so talkative about a wide variety of topics. We could talk about history, architecture and even sports. At that point, I thought there was so much potential with her. She was super friendly in our conversations, asking me about my day and sending me pictures about what she was having for lunch and dinner. It seemed as though the pieces would fall into place.

But then, life had to throw me another curveball. And this was one I was least expecting. First, the year before, she had contracted the virus that had crippled the world beginning in 2020. So naturally, since she’d gotten better, I assumed she’d gotten her vaccinations. This was where things got weird. She told me she hadn’t gotten her shots. I asked her why, silently assuming she had an underlying condition that prevented her from getting the jab. What she said next would leave me speechless. She had refused to get vaccinated after seeing her friends suffer from hair loss after getting their jabs. Yeah, that was her reasoning.

And so I realized that she probably was not the girl for me, despite her overwhelming friendliness and our mutual interests. She seemed to check nearly all the boxes. Nearly. Just when I thought things were going well…

We continued to text although I was no longer entertaining the thought of pursuing a relationship with her. About a month in, she asks me how I feel about her. Honestly, I wasn’t sure mostly because we hadn’t met in person. And that was on me because I wasn’t willing to meet her unless she got vaccinated. So I told her I couldn’t give her an answer. She then tells me I shouldn’t like her because someone else has already told her that they liked her. At that moment, I feel like I’ve been freed. Then I tell her to go with it and we stop texting.

She did text me again once asking how I was doing a little over a month ago. She seemed to be doing well with the guy she’s going out with. I told her that I thought there was some potential between the two of us, although she said that I was difficult to get through to; as if I’d built a wall around myself. Perhaps that’s the case with me. And all I can say to that is that maybe I haven’t found the right person willing to spend time to break down that wall around me.

Either way, despite how things ended with both girls, I’m glad they happened the way they did. Because the experiences have helped me grow emotionally. And as the old fable said, ‘this too shall pass’. And hopefully one day, I find that girl because I now realize that, while I cherish the single solitary life, I also yearn for love.