Pen, ECD talk, cake w/13g fat and Italia at Open Door

So I’m not gonna give you a quote of the best thing I said today, because it was in Spanish. I’ll give an approximate translation though: “Really I like what I’m doing more now, because it’s more significant to act as a translator than what I was doing before my injury.” That was in a random message I sent to a guy named Abe who I haven’t really talked to yet. The other significant thing about my convo with him was that I did a WONDERFUL job of telling my story to someone new. That was in Spanish too, and what I basically said was in response to him saying he currently had two jobs. I said that I used to have three jobs, and I added what they were, and said that in the middle of working 90 hours a week I was run over by a car and got a TBI, and now I’m on disability so I can’t work much without losing my health insurance, which is important because I have a “serious illness” too, and that now I’m working as a volunteer translator at two food banks because there’s a lotta people who come who don’t speak any English at all. That’s how I got to the statement I started with.

I also don’t have important photos today, just a a random BeReal I took on time while I attended an ECT chat on mental struggles coming outta being sick. That was kinda an important topic as well, and they talked about one coping mechanism being avoidance. I can’t even describe how much Fogo was letting me avoid the cancer trauma. Mom asked why I cared more about the cancer post-TBI, and it’s because frankly I’d never dealt with the cancer pre-TBI. Now I’m interested in attending their peer to peer chat in a few weeks, which would be good because today there was a ton that I related to in the presentation, but they weren’t really asking for participation.

Second to right, I have a picture of the food I took meds with at Open Door, some 13g cake at 4:51pm. Tragically, I forgot to take a pic at OD, even though I thought about, and once I got home I’ve literally already have texted Italia and told her how sad I was about not doing it. Oh, at least I got her number toight, which was on my to-do list! I had some really good interactions with two new volunteers at Open Door, who were shockingly much younger than most of them are. I was like 15 seconds away from asking at least one of them, I think Lindsey or Sarah, for a picture, and I’d already had good convos with them both about my history with the brain injury and all. I’m not quite sure why they decided to volunteer, but they decided to do it together after having worked together somewhere.

Oh, I’ve also got a creeper shot I took of Italia working today. Today, Sean and Italia both spent time helping run the greeter desk, and it was useful to have people who spoke Spanish there. It did make me feel a tiny bit less needed, since usually they rely on me, which I even told Italia briefly. She said it was incredibly useful to have me there, and when I said that I don’t feel quite fluent yet she told me that I spoke better than some cousins of hers who are part Mexican. The other vaguely significant thing is that I briefly talked to Jason, the Open Door CEO. I told him to just make a note of the fact that he can’t randomly decide to pay me $2000 or something since that’ll make me lose my insurance. He did say they’ve recently been able to increase the health benefits they offer a bit, but I still don’t think it’d cover me even if I decided to work there out of nowhere, which there is no chance in hell of me doing.

Second to right, I have a picture of the food I took meds with at Open Door, some 13g cake at 4:51pm. Tragically, I forgot to take a pic at OD, even though I thought about it, and once I got home I’ve literally already have texted Italia and told her how sad I was about not doing it. Oh, at least I got her number tonight, which was on my to-do list! I had some really good interactions with two new volunteers at Open Door, who were shockingly much younger than most of them are. I was like 15 seconds away from asking at least one of them, I think Lindsey or Sarah, for a picture, and I’d already had good convos with them both about my history with the brain injury and all. I’m not quite sure why they decided to volunteer, but they decided to do it together after having worked together somewhere. Just realized forgot to add I took my morning meds at 8:13am with an egg and hashbrown at Papa’s house while I picked up laundry.

After I drove home, I randomly decided not to pursue meeting up with this guy Carlos who I haven’t met yet, due to the fact we’re just not looking for the same thing at all. Also video chatted him tonight, which was decent but didn’t really change the fact we massively disagreed on some life plans. Ok, imma shower now.