strangeness

 everything feels weird. i feel like i'm in some kind of routine of routine-less restlessness. each day different, but the same, and that's highlighted by the early sunsets and evening homework / dinner / bedtime rituals.

and the constant in-and-out of anxieties, some job-hunting related, some apartment-and-admin related, some apartment-hunting related.

...

the interview went very differently from what i expected, and i hope he follows through (he said he'd push me forward to the next step) because i might have been overly-enthusiastic during the goodbyes. it's an outsourcing firm, and the more he talked the more confident i became that it's a great fit for me. working freelance, essentially, but with a constant salary, and it being in the job description to focus on technical problems, develop domain expertise and not really have to worry about whether the client is actually successful or not.

mercenary, yes, but career mode mercenary.

...

after the air-conditioner cleaning, i informed the landlord who's now claiming that it's a cleaning problem, not a mold problem, which is completely insane. we're running the one in the living room at the moment, and it seems alright, but i'm nervous about mr smear having another breathing issue in the night.

at least i seem to have found a professional to do a proper clean.

...

i hopped on a bus to meet with my ex-boss. on the way, i snapped a photo of mr smear across the road, face buried in his phone screen. he's now been warned that i'm going to be trying to ambush him, and his privileges are on the line...

the meeting with the ex-boss went as well as could be expected, i suppose. he stuck to the lines he fired me with, but he did frame it a bit differently, and we discussed a whole bunch of uncomfortable stuff. at the end of the day there are some things he misunderstood (both in terms of what happened in the office, and in terms of what i actually do for a living), though it's too late for any of that to make much difference. and i do feel like he heard me regarding the impact of their bungling of the firing, and i got some clarification into some of the others' situations (it doesn't make their decisions better, but even if i think they're wrong at least i understand why they thought it made sense), and before we got up he offered himself as a reference.

i walked home, helped mr smear with his math homework (he's finally caught up to where he was originally pretending to have got to), we had a great onigiri / lasagne dinner followed by a chat with my mom, and then it was some more of the neverending story and me sitting down at my computer and having no idea what i want to be doing right now.

i should probably turn it off and read.