Birthday Blues

I am now two weeks out from COVID so I am COVID-free and was finally able to go home this week. COVID was really stressful, but I guess I can maybe feel a little better that I don't have to worry about it for a little bit. I still wear my mask everywhere tho lol. I think for a few days I felt concerned that I might still be contagious, but now I think it's just good to make the few other people still wearing masks feel comfortable and because I'm still actually worried about getting COVID again lol (or some other kind of sick).

Last Thursday was my birthday. To be honest, I don't really like my birthday. I think celebrating people's birthdays are a lot of fun, but I always feel lonely on my birthday. I feel like it's a time of year where I really take stock and realize how much I have drifted apart from certain people. I compare myself to other people and start to feel lonely. It's a bad habit, but it always ends up happening, and I just get really sad.

This year was really sort of hard in particular. I feel like this might be evident from my infrequent blog posts, but I've been struggling a lot recently, feeling very sad and kind of disconnected from my life and my community. I don't have a big community here anymore and while I cherish the few friends I have, I often get upset with myself for not being better at making or keeping friends. It's a skill that I want to work on, but I definitely have always struggled with it. The problem these days is that I feel lonely, but then because I'm sad about being lonely, I have a harder time than ever talking to people, so it's just a self-perpetuating cycle. I realized I need to work harder at being a better friend to people in my life even when it's challenging. It's something I'm really going to try to work on, even if it's hard and I feel kind of socially inept a lot of the time. Sorry for the vent, that's just been on my mind this week and I'm trying to take it somewhere productive.

Anyway, I had to go get a drug test for my "summer internship" that has still not started yet on my birthday, so my dad took me into the office building. It was kind of stressful because it was my first time and it was not a natural thing to do lol. But I passed the breathalyzer alcohol test and I'm just waiting for my results to clear so I can finally maybe start my job.

After that, my dad and I went into Boston to visit the USS Constitution. Honestly, I don't really care about the Constitution, but my dad wanted to go see it and I just like visiting new places. If you aren't familiar, the Constitution -- or "Old Ironsides" -- is a US Navy ship from the late 1700s. It was mostly used to protect American merchants from pirates in the Mediterranean Sea, and it became famous for being a really strong ship I guess (it's made of wood, but people said it was so strong it practically seemed it was made of iron). It's actually still an active Navy Ship, so when you visit there are a bunch of military people just hanging out which is kind of weird, but I don't think they're gonna be deploying it anytime soon. Nowadays, it's mostly just a historic site.

You can climb all around the ship which was pretty fun. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with pirates (like some of you were obsessed with Greek gods, I know...) and even now, the idea of sailing a boat or living at sea is pretty exciting in my daydreams, even if I think I wouldn't be much good at it in real life. Because of this, climbing around an 18th century ship was a lot of fun. We also rode a ferry to get to Charlestown where the ship is, which was a lot of fun! It's only like 3.50 for a 10 minutes ride across Boston Harbor, I would recommend it for people looking for a cheap cruise in the harbor.

Afterward, some guy asked me to take pictures of him smoking a cigar because he wanted cool pics of himself, which I thought was really random and funny lol. I don't have the pics but I hope he liked them.

Then, on Friday, I met up with my friend Laura in Boston and we visited the Massachusetts Historical Society to see an exhibit and meet someone who worked there. I chatted with him about Boston transit trivia for a bit which was really interesting :) We also visited the John Adams and John Quincy Adams National Birthplace in Quincy, MA a short train ride away. We didn't want to pay to go in, but we did walk around the grounds and then we walked to a little hill where Abigail Adams and her son, JQA, watched the bombing of Charlestown in the Battle of Bunker Hill. They had built a stone cairn to commemorate it. Going to these little historic sites with my museum friends is always a fun way to spend a day, so I had a good time :^)

This week might be my last before I start work (fingers crossed), so I'm just trying to spend my time pleasantly. I've been reading a lot, and I just finished reading Convenience Store Woman and Severance, two little lonely books about women who feel kind of out of touch with their peers in different ways. Severance is also about a fever from China that wipes out most of humanity (it was written in 2018), which was a little weird to read, but I really liked the book actually, and would highly recommend it.

That's all from me this week, take care friends! The weather is beautiful this past week in MA, so I've been going for walks, and I'm hoping to exercise more as the summer ends. Trying to get a little better, every day.

starting to get ready to go to Korea hehe