As an ESTJ, one of my top values is usefulness. That applies to things and to people. While J and S were back East visiting with the parentals, I tried to get myself back on track (with my life). I cleaned and went through my stockpile of old elecronics. Originally, the plan was to just trade in the items via some device buyback program, but then I reviewed the numbers and holy crap: selling on Ebay yielded significantly more money. So yes, I found myself jumping thorough all the pain-in-the-ass hoops, taking various pictures and figuring out shipping and cleaning shit up to be as pristine as possible. I like earning those Bubbey bucks, but fuck man, Ebay is not a very streamlined process. After selling three devices, I might need a break. Haha. I mean, I’m thrilled to find new homes for my old things, but dealing with shipping is a royal pain. When the hell did postage rates get so damn pricey??

My friend J recently retired and bought herself a new laptop and printer. She’s an older lady, about the age of my father, and she spent hours with Geek Squad setting up the new printer. They got it working, and then weeks later, the printer started giving her an offline error. She was all ready to go through the Geek Squad fiasco all over again until I offered to help her. I have done a lot of IT/tech support in my day. Back when I worked for the feminist org, I was always canabalizing our old computers so we could stretch that shitty hardware just a little bit farther. Then with my dad… well, you know the drill there. So I went over to her house thinking I would just crank out the solution in a matter of minutes. Well, I got stumped, and two hours later, I was still trying to get that shit sorted. Finally, I got it working. Basically, I kept trying to connect the printer to her old wifi network. Once I realized she was actually using a new network, we got her back in business. She was so cute though: so thrilled to have the tech help. I always thought her son-in-law who lives in Los Altos was a tech guy. Why hadn’t he helped her with this? That made me sad: that she would have someone who could help her but she either didn’t want to bother him with a request, or he didn’t make time to help her. J is such a fun and sassy lady though. While I was over, she showed me her latest gardening and home projects. It’s so nice to find an older person with hobbies and a social life! She also admired my new purse, and guess what: She ended up ordering the same one in a different color. Haha!

After my hangout with J, I headed north to spend the afternoon with M. I gave M my old Kindle, and she was thrilled. One of the cool things about M is that she is a hardcore researcher. She researches everything and anything under the sun: high end toaster ovens, car care, tax laws, everything. And we commiserate over stories about our unresourceful siblings. Goddamn, some people just really don’t give two fucks about understanding how things work. After we talked all that smack, we had lunch and hit the mall. Can’t go wrong with H&M! We had a great time! On the drive home, I had this realization about how I’d let my depression about the job really overtake so many other aspects of my life. Like I had stopped having people over for dinner, stopped biking/skating/walking, stopped hosting Craft Club… I enjoy doing things with others, and yet somehow I’d forgotten. Damn job: I let it change me and def not for the better. Fucking buzzkill of the century.