Around 1300 I decided to go sit in the car for a bit to decompress.
As I pick up my phone to start doomscrolling, I see that I've got two missed calls from Crystal.
Fuck.
I'd completely spaced on the 1030 appointment and went to a meeting that had zero value.
Shot her a text urgently apologizing, and got a response back that all was fine.
"What's the rest of your day look like?" she asked.
"Just killing time until end of day at 1400, then going to the appointment."
And then I got a missed call.
And another.
Looked it up and it was the dentist I had the appointment with.
Turned into a voicemail.
Wondering where I was at for my 1300 appointment.
Wait.
Wat.
There's no fucking way.
It's literally marked on all my calendars as 1500.
They thankfully understood the mistake and let me come in late.
So I double-timed it back to the office, grabbed my shit, and bounced.
Got to the dentist and got seen relatively quickly, where I was told that it wasn't an odontogenic keratocyst, but something called an ameloblastoma.
Large, multilocular OKCs, particularly in the posterior mandible, can mimic ameloblastomas. Ameloblastomas are benign tumors but are locally aggressive and often cause significant bone expansion and tooth resorption, unlike the minimal expansion often associated with OKCs.
Stellar.
It's not the thing the Navy told me was; it's worse.
Headed home from there and checked all the stuff I'd missed throughout the day on my phone.
And one of those things was particularly amusing.
One of my coworkers, who'd gotten in pretty early and then just not come inside, had left a message:
His badge to get into the building wasn't letting him inside.
Buuuuuuuuuuut...
As we'd all later find out at the morning meeting, it wasn't his badge that was at fault: it was the singular door he'd tried to enter through.
To paint the picture: there are two doors that we can choose to use on that particular side of the building.
Those doors are about... four feet from each other.
One door—the one he tried to use—leads into the stairwell that has the phone lockers.
The other door leads into the hallway, and—most importantly—is separated from the other door by a single pair of doors.
So what happened—what I'm assuming happened—is that he tried unsuccessfully to badge in through the one door, and then decided his access had been removed.
Now, coming from someone who takes sublime pleasure from doing the absolute bare minimum... that is some exceptionally bare minimum energy.
I had a pretty good laugh about it as I pondered the mental image of the guy barely trying and completely failing.
Because I'm an asshole.
In other news, applied for five more jobs.
Couple of technical writing jobs, a tech support job, and a couple jobs for the city; the most noteworthy of which is a program manager for the city aquarium.
Not gonna lie: didn't even bother heavily tailoring my resume for this round.
Because both lazy and pessimistic.
Which is particularly sad, since that lazy pessimism isn't gonna do me much good in the overall candidacy area... thing.
I think that largely, the reason I don't really care to polish the turd is in large part due to all that time in the Navy.
In 20 years, I went through numerous training courses to get qualified for the jobs I'd been ordered to do.
And in all those cases—save one—the courses meant jack shit, because I ended up either:
So taking that life experience and applying it to modern life: I really don't think these jobs require more of me than I can quickly learn in a day or two of on-the-job performance.
Or Google.
Or both.
And it's funny: there was a time just a few years ago...
I've got/had a friend that worked as a contractor at ManTech. We met back in 2016 while on the job for a training course I was involved with. Years passed, and I transferred. She stuck with ManTech for another year or two before she got hired on by the Navy.
Where, last I checked, she was a GS-13.
A GS-13 salary in the federal government typically ranges from $90,025 to $135,471 per year, depending on the specific step within the grade and the locality pay area
That seemed like a pretty solid goal.
So I half-heartedly started working my way in the direction that would find me getting one of those positions.
And slightly redoubled my efforts within the past couple years as my contract neared its finish.
Found a bunch of jobs on USAJobs that really meshed with my abilities.
And then...
The Big Orange turd won the election.
Hiring freeze.
And almost immediately, email after email about posted job offers being paused, canceled, and rescinded.
I'm super thankful I had my friend as a connection to get me the job I've currently got.
Will always be grateful.
Since as I've said multiple times in so many different entries that you can't read because no pagination: I'm a goddamn man child with finances.
Other things, too, but especially finances.
Had that not been the case, I would've retired from the Navy with enough money to at the very least maintain my current quality of life, bolstered with the pension and disability payments.
/sigh
Anyway.
It is what it is.
It's within my control to make course corrections and fix the trajectory of where I'm going.
I just need to stop being such a lazy douchebag.
Or, failing that, tighten the belt and make due with the modest income from my current pension and retirement.
Meh.
Silver lining unlocked yesterday, at least: will have a reprieve most of next week from my largest stressor at work.
Cheers.