21 January 2026

Couple days ago, I got called downstairs and had a three-way conversation about recent developments on Facebook which I mentioned in the previous post here. It ended with people pretty much having calmed down and with me removing the offending comment just to restore some semblance of peace. I thought about alerting the woman, who I’ll call DM here and who had hosted said comment, so to speak, but in the end decided to just drop the whole thing. She’s still a Facebook friend and weirdly, Neighbor is still Facebook friends with her too. I don’t know how much longer that will be a thing, and I doubt I’ll notice at first when it isn’t.

I am curious who was sending L screenshots, which is what started this whole mess. Plainly they were mutuals with me and DM since it was a friends-only post. Might be I go on a bit of a Facebook purge here soon. Neighbor will see whatever I comment on DM’s posts regardless, though I may rouse myself and suggest to DM that she put him on restricted status so he only sees her public posts, but at least if I have fewer potentially untrustworthy people on my friends list, the drama potential will drop a lot. But I have to decide whether it is worth it to rouse myself to bother. It reeks of paranoia, and I intend to change things significantly this year to reduce the bullshit anyway. I think I would rather just nuke everybody one time than try surgical precision as a preliminary step. Takes less energy, and I don’t have a lot available.

I might still remove people who don’t really interact with me, though. I can do that much. Because if they’re only there to look for shit to stir up, nobody needs that. I’ll think about it again at some point.

I’m under no illusion about my situation being “safe” now. It’s gotten a bit brittle, actually, even though we’re all speaking to one another again and it seems largely pleasant and/or friendly. So I want to make it clear that if I find some specific behavior problematic, that doesn’t necessarily mean I will call it out right now, and that won’t be because I don’t have principles. It will be because one of my principles is “don’t make yourself homeless if you don’t have to.” I also know the difference between a behavior being problematic and a person being problematic. This isn’t quite about the person other than my theorizing why she has taken a complete 180 on some issues. This is about the behavior.

I did point out to both L and Neighbor that this has come after months and months of me having to hear “the leftists did this” and “the left did that” and I’m a fucking leftist and I know Neighbor is (and he has explicitly said as much); I’m just tired of feeling blamed for everything when I know fucking well the people doing the awful things ARE NOT LEFTIST. Which precipitated some commentary and poor analysis about how no, it’s not the left, but it’s the left, and I’m kind of tired of having that discussion or argument with people who refuse to listen to their own fucking words. I need to talk about that stuff in my own spaces, like here, and then link to it when these arguments come up, and most of all just quit engaging with people who go “oh yeah, I see what you mean” and then go right back to spouting misinformation. I don’t think they’re all being malicious, but they’re definitely being unhelpful. I would like to not be murdered by an angry mob of parents who think I’m okay with gender-butchering children. I never thought that was too much to ask. Silly me.

Still. I finally got the book Let Them the other day, and this is one more area in which I need to just let them. They’re never gonna get it, as the song say. (Though in a different context.) I am too busy fixing me and it is a long slog up a very steep hill. I have no spoons left to fix anyone else, and it never works anyhow. All I can do is offer my own take from my own spaces and hope it sort of balances things out.

I just can’t put myself into a position where someone who can throw me out in the street gets to define whether I am “trashing” them.

When I’m on my own again, that’ll be a different story. I don’t live to trash people as a general rule, but it’ll be nice to not be at the mercy of someone shifting goalposts and changing definitions. No one is above being questioned. Ever. Fuck knows people never stop questioning me.

I’m also generally tired of the “all for me and none for thee” mentality. If a behavior is bad or questionable, it’s bad or questionable no matter who’s doing it. I’m coming to understand that so-called “normal” people don’t think that way, though. Everything is about status or belonging. No one gives a shit what is actually right. If that’s what it takes to belong, I’m not sure I ever want to.

—

Talking of self-improvement, we have seen that I agonize about getting a car. That is not the only big purchase I have been agonizing over for months.

Back story. The last time I filed taxes was for tax year 2021. It was nice. I got a little chunk of change. But I haven’t filed since, and I should have. Worst of all, I was doing 1099 work (on a popular gig delivery platform) for all of 2022 and a good chunk of 2023 and a little bit of 2024, too.

If it had just involved income tax, it probably wouldn’t matter. The standard deduction on federal income taxes in the USA is five digits now — I never retained the exact amount mentally, but it’s more than ten thousand dollars. Add to that various credits I might or might not have been entitled to and I very likely would have come out ahead. Not owing anything, possibly entitled to another refund.

But it isn’t just about income taxes. I owed self-employment tax, which pays into Social Security, on my 1099 income. Didn’t pay a dime of it. Couldn’t. Everything I was earning was going right back out again for food, fuel, and shelter.

Sooooo I need to catch that up. Problem is there are a lot of moving parts involved and a lot of screens and documents I need to look at in order to pull this off without driving myself absolutely potty.

I used to own a laser printer, but I left it behind (on purpose) when I vacated my Dublin apartment in ‘23. I don’t want to use L’s printer because (1) it’s inkjet and I don’t want to use up all her ink; (2) it’s L’s printer and sometimes she needs it; (3) I don’t like having to ask permission anyway. I got too accustomed to just printing something when I needed to. Just me being bratty I suppose.

I also didn’t want to go to Mailroom, a place here in town, and print off their machines because that’s a pain in the ass, plus you have to pay for it and I didn’t know how much printing I was potentially looking at doing. Ditto the public library, and sometimes that’s free, but usually it’s not.

And anyway, there’s other stuff I want to do with a printer. All of it put on hold because I didn’t have one.

So I knew I needed to get a printer again. That’s what I put off. Well… not anymore. I finally pulled the trigger this week. Got everything prepped up: ten-foot printer cable (because I probably won’t hook the printer up to wifi), and an outlet tap that turns that wall outlet into six instead of two (I also have two timed plant lights on that wall), and a small bookshelf that can double as a printer stand and paper storage (and whatever else). The printer is supposed to arrive today if USPS doesn’t dick it up. (I’m still wondering why they had a “problem” delivering a book yesterday. Lort.)

(Also, this is not an I-hate-the-Postal-Service post. I actually don’t; even with all its issues it is still probably the best postal service on the planet. I said what I said, and feel free to fact-check me. But it do have the “problems,” I’m sorry to say.)

A postscript: Sometimes you can get bigger-ticket items on Amazon for monthly payments, no interest. I fucking love that feature. It’s like a layaway where you get your item when you start paying and not after you’re done. I could have just paid the whole thing — it’s just a printer, not an all-in-one, and well under two hundred dollars — but I would rather manage my day-to-day finances a little more conservatively. Anyway, if you need a pricey item and Amazon has some kind of deal on one and you’re still stressing about it, check to see if that’s an item they’ll let you make payments on. The information’s linked right under the price in the listing. You might get lucky.

—

I’m hoping that once I figure out what I owe from year to year, whatever refunds I might have been owed will end up paying for what I should have paid into Social Security and I might come out ahead. I’m afraid to count my chickens before they hatch, but I suspect I might be right. With all the complaining you all probably do about what you have to pay into Social Security, think about what you were actually levied on your pay stubs. It’s never been a large amount in the first place.

If I’m right, we could be looking at another decent chunk of change to throw towards the new-to-me car fund. I’m proud of myself that I’ve gotten as far as two-and-a-half grand (that’s $2500 to you non-Yanks), and if I end up throwing in another thousand or so, I’ll be even more thrilled. But I’m trying not to get too hopeful right now. It could easily go the other way. I will owe penalties, after all. Though that’s a fairly small amount too — I already looked that up some time ago.

If I get screwed, which will have been entirely my fault (so is it really screwing?), at least I’ll probably have enough on hand to pay off the remainder, and then it’ll be back to square one. I at least am taking measures to reduce some of my expenses, so I’ll be able to save more per paycheck.

But if I come out ahead, and I mean well ahead — a thousand or more — then I have to think about next steps because at that point it’ll be goal-setting to get independent again.

It’s irritating, because I have to think about job training AND travel money AND housing AND food until I’m making a paycheck. Buy a car here or rent one to go there? If I rent one to go there, how do I get around until I can get a car loan (or a car)? What if I still can’t get anyone to lease an apartment to me? (I didn’t leave the Dublin apartment under the best circumstances, but it was not legally an eviction and won’t be on any records.) So many questions. Really hate not having answers.

Well, I can’t do anything about it right now. I can only start trying to plan.

It helps that I actually do have some potential answers to some of those questions already, but I’ve bored you long enough.

—

If it happens at few other times anymore, January’s usually the time I remember Eddy again. My birthday’s the tenth and his is a week later.

This was the last photo he sent me.

He would have been fifty-eight this year. We met in Army training when I was eighteen and he was twenty-four.

I can’t really call him an ex, because we were never an official item. In fact, I was usually in Other Woman status when we were in contact. He was like that. It was nothing to brag about and he was no catch. I suppose he stands out to me because I caught attraction to him before I realized he was taken, and it’s unusual for me to crush on a guy and then have him recriprocate. Much less follow up by looking me up years after the last time we saw one another. Completely did not see that coming. Thought it meant something. Of course it didn’t.

The last time we had a conversation, he was complaining bitterly that the mother of his youngest child wouldn’t have sex with him. She wasn’t having sex with him because she didn’t feel well. She didn’t feel well because she was battling thyroid cancer.

I finally told him off and the next time I got news about him, it was the photo of his gravestone that his sister had posted on her Facebook.

He died in Ohio in 2012 while I was living there, and I could have sent off for the death certificate. He’d been mired in a custody battle of said youngest child when he died, or shortly before, and I have sometimes wondered if he just gave up when he lost. It could have as easily been a drunk-driving accident, because he definitely had a drinking problem. It could have been anything. In the end, I don’t really want to know.

I haven’t deleted his photos, though. I don’t do the deleting-exes thing (or the not-really-exes). That was all a part of my life, and I’d rather not pretend it wasn’t.

But he’s one of the reasons I’m reluctant to try again now. I always pull the weirdos and assholes. I’m kind of tired of it.

Okay, things to do and this is my last day off this week. I may bore you about autism later today. We’ll see.