A COVID-19 Birthday

My birthday was last week, so I thought I'd share how that went.

Funnily enough, COVID-19 made it a great birthday; probably the best I've had in the last five years or so.  Why?  Because I didn't have to work, of course!  That made things much more relaxing.  I spent most of the day doing my usual fun activities, and we ordered pizza from one of my favorite chains for dinner.  My mom baked me a cake (because I really don't like the icing that comes on cakes from bakeries) which was my favorite: chocolate with vanilla icing.  My sister made a surprisingly AMAZING birthday card and my gifts from my parents included a Steam gift card, a Nintendo eShop gift card, and a couple of Pokémon TCG booster packs from the Sword & Shield expansion.  After dinner, presents, and dessert, my family watched Pixar's Onward (available to purchase through our TV service due to COVID-19) which was pretty good.  So yeah, the best birthday I could reasonably have.

There's not much else I have to mention.  Still lazing about at home during the health and safety crisis, and I'm healthy and safe because of it.  I do find it amusing though that my paychecks seemed to be larger during COVID-19 than they were when I actually worked.  Talk about money for nothing!

Until next time.

- William Winkeler

Pros & Cons of Societally Advised Isolation

I can't help but be slightly amused at the isolation situations caused by the Corona virus.  It'd been advised by health officials, government officials, and various companies at which people are employed to practice self-imposed isolation if feeling sick just a few weeks ago, and now it's essentially mandatory in some states with public events and locations forcibly closed or limited by government mandate.  The reason I find the situation slightly amusing is my solitary lifestyle, and how I already generally avoided going out in public anyway.  Of course, with all the closings and limitations on public locations now, I can't even reasonably go out when I want to, so it's just some strange irony I'm experiencing.

As such, I've decided to detail all the pros and cons for me personally regarding this imposed isolation for the health and safety of the general public.  This is mainly a thought experiment and something to do in this extended period of staying home.  And so, here are the lists...

PROS

1. No work!  I don't have to go to work, so I can stay home and have fun instead!  This also means no work-related stress, which is abundant when it comes to working with children.
2. No plans!  Since I can't go out in public, I can't run errands, and therefore don't have to make plans to go run errands.  Plus, all my appointments with government-sponsored services were cancelled, so I don't have to go to those.
3. Sleepin' in!  With no work and no plans, I have no major motivation to get up in the morning, so I can just turn off my alarm clock and lay in bed for a few extra hours.
4. More time for hobbies!  Again, with no work and no plans, I can do all the fun stuff I do at home with little need to manage my time.  Play video games, binge watch, work on projects; I can do it all!  Plus, I can even make time to do projects I haven't done in ages!  Maybe I'll finally do some writing or make a new YouTube video...
5. Everybody's isolated!  I don't have friends to go do stuff with (or even friends to talk to), but now, since pretty much everybody has to stay home, nobody can go do stuff with their friends, and therefore I don't have to feel jealous about how other people have friends to do stuff with.  ...Wait, if everybody is stuck at home doing nothing, maybe my old friends might have a little time to talk with little ol' me?  Hmm...

CONS

1. No income.  Can't make money if I don't work, so my income's going to be nil pretty soon.  Fortunately, my job seems to be able to compensate me until March 27th, and I have my tax refunds to help cushion me.  But if this isolation goes on for months, I might be suffering financially.
2. Can't run errands.  So now that I have excess free time, I can't really use it productively.  I've been wanting to look into other locations to buy clothes, but if everywhere's closed, I can't go shopping.  Might also be difficult to buy groceries and other household necessities later on...
3. Can't go to the movies.  I wanted to go see Pixar's Onward in theaters, and since my sister is home from college thanks to this pandemic, I thought we could go see it together, but while the theater isn't closed, only 10 people are allowed in, so it's not convenient to try doing that.  Plus, she still has schoolwork to occupy a lot of her free time.  I hope this is over with by May so I can go see Black Widow...
4. All appointments cancelled.  With places temporarily closing down left and right, my appointments with services I need are getting cancelled left and right too.  I was counting on those appointments to help with my mental health and finding a new job, but now that's all on hold.
5. We're all stuck together.  As mentioned before, my sister's college has closed its campus, and everything's being done online.  So now my sister's home, adding to the number of people in this house, taking up space, using internet bandwidth, and making food I can't stand.  Plus, my mom can't go run errands, so she's stuck at home with less to do, and while my dad can still go to work, since I can't that's more opportunities for him nag me and yell at me for being a useless bum wasting my time playing "baby" games and watching "baby" shows.  Sure, the four of us are going to try to do some family activities, but since my selective interests are different from theirs, it can be difficult finding something we all enjoy.  Additionally, my willingness to due stuff with these people I've been around for the last 20-something years is ever-waning...

So those are the pros and cons I've come up with for me personally regarding this strange situation we as a society are in.  Before I end this post, I want to touch upon a societal concern that this pandemic is capitalizing on and could potentially impact things negatively in the long run.

I'm talking about people not doing things for themselves but instead paying others to do stuff for them.  Those services that let people have someone else buy their groceries or pickup their fast food/restaurant orders will likely prosper in this prolonged period of isolation, and I believe there is a valid concern that that will become the norm.  People will be increasingly less self-reliant and will want others to do things they are too busy or too lazy to do themselves.  Eventually robots will probably do all that for people, and we as a people will be entirely dependent on technology doing everything for us.  ...Just food for thought if things end up heading towards dystopia.

Good thing I was able to get a haircut before all the businesses were temporarily closed!  Until next time.

- William Winkeler

Health & Safety (Both Physically and Mentally)

The Corona virus sure has the planet in a panic, doesn't it?  As important as it is to take precautions to avoid getting sick and prevent the spread of germs, it's also important not to give into fear.  There's no point in being paranoid or busting out any "The End Is Nigh" signs; as long as people remain level-headed and use common sense in regards to health, we will all get through this.

Okay, obligatory current event reference aside, how am I doing?  I'm doing alright.  Work has had numerous ups and downs in regards to my stress and anxiety, but I've managed so far.  On the bright side, the schools have decided to temporarily close to prevent the potential spread of the Corona virus, so I have at least two days off with pay for today and tomorrow, and probably will have another week off.  I don't mean to imply that I hate my job, it's just working with children is stressful when many of them ignore my instructions and warnings.  Plus, with more apparent health concerns due to the Corona virus, there's additional stress regarding kids with poor hygiene, so I agree it's a good idea to close the schools for everyone's safety.

On a more lighthearted note, here's what I've been doing for fun:

In the realm of video games, I've completed two out of the four storylines in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and am now working on my third.  I've started playing Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX, and am enjoying that.  I'm looking forward to getting Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Final Fantasy VII Remake when they're released.  I've also started playing Team Fortress 2 again due to the community effort of Creators.tf, a group of TF2 fans taking things into their own hands for regular fan updates via their own TF2 servers due to Valve not giving any f***s about officially updating the game with any content updates more than twice a year or so.

For stuff I've been watching, I finished all of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine a while back, and recently finished Star Trek: Voyager, so now I've started watching Star Trek: Enterprise.  The English dub of the 22nd Pokémon movie came out on Netflix recently, so I watched that, and even reviewed it.  There are several anime I had started watching and need to finish, which I will hopefully get around to doing eventually.  Despite the global pandemic, I want to go see Pixar's Onward in theaters, and hope to do so soon.

That's all the updates in my life worth mentioning right now.  Maybe with this time off work, I'll get around to doing a more philosophical post I've wanting to write, but we'll see.  I mean, it's not like anyone reads this blog, so why should I put in the effort?

Before I end this though, I wanted to share a pic I took of some 20 year old temporary tattoos my dad found that I decided to test out on myself.  They still work!

Time to party like it's 1999!

Until next time.

- William Winkeler

Good-Bye, Facebook

The deed is done.  I have submitted my Facebook account for deletion.  It will be 100% completely gone in 30 days as long as I don't login again before then (which I have no intention of doing, though I won't rule out the possibility of me doing so accidentally).

My use of Facebook had honestly dwindled for several months until it finally got to the point that I only checked it maybe twice a week or so.  There were many reasons for my declined usage.  For one thing, there was a TON of crap being posted on there.  It was basically impossible to filter things so that I only saw stuff that actually interested me and stuff that had been posted most recently.  Which brings me to my biggest complaint about Facebook: its complete lack of user-friendliness.

Facebook does NOT care about its users' lives.  It ONLY cares about making money off its users.  Everything Facebook shows you that isn't posted by someone or some page you follow is an attempt to make money usually via ads.  Anything it does show you that is posted by someone or some page you follow is facilitated by popularity algorithms, and you either have to go to every page you follow individually to get the full picture or jump through many hoops to get your news feed to show more of what you want (note MORE, not all).  Thus, if someone you know posted a status 3 days ago that got a hundred "likes" and comments, it will take precedence over that same person's post from 2 hours ago that only has five "likes" or comments.  This is what hurt my statuses the most on Facebook: only the same 5-7 people would like my posts so nobody else would see my posts in their news feeds because they didn't get the same amount of "likes" and comments as other people's.  It was very frustrating because it seemed like only 10% of my friends ever took interest in stuff I posted (and yes, I only had about 60 friends on Facebook because I HAVE NO SOCIAL LIFE).

Regardless of my complaints, I'm putting Facebook behind me and will endeavor to post stuff to my blogs, both my personal blog (the one you are currently reading) and my blog about my personal interests (link is in the right column in case you're curious).  Granted, this will difficult because I'm not in the habit of using them and because my life is pretty uneventful and not many things happen to me that are worth posting.  Like all things, this will take effort.  Which is unfortunate because I frequently struggle with activities that require more effort than I'm used to exerting.  And I'm mostly only used to exerting the effort it takes to sit on my butt and watch videos online or use a video game controller.  Oy vey...

I'll try to commit to posting some more this weekend.  Until then.

- William Winkeler

Blog Revival

Wow, so I last used this blog about 6 years ago.  A LOT has changed since then.  I've had a job at a grocery store, moved to the East Coast, gotten a new job in after school care, and basically lost all my friends.  So why am I attempting to revive this blog now?  Naturally, it's because of Facebook.

I hate Facebook.  I didn't join it until I had almost graduated high school back in 2010, and only decided to join in a vain effort to stay connected with the handful of friends I had in high school.  While it was somewhat useful during my brief time at college, I have very frequently despised using Facebook for almost 10 years now.  So, I've had enough.  I'm permanently deleting my account and not looking back.

I might go into all my reasons as to why I believe Facebook to be intolerable at a later date, but for now I commit myself to using this blog instead.  I will be transitioning between the two platforms probably within a week or two before permanently pulling the plug on Facebook.  Until then, stay tuned.

- William Winkeler

Volunteer Work At My Old Elementary School

This week I did some volunteer work teaching Junior Achievement to third graders at my old elementary school.  It was fairly enjoyable because I enjoy working with kids and most of them were pretty well-behaved.  I also got to see my fifth teacher during the week, so that was great.

Hopefully more things worth mentioning here will happen soon.

Until then.

- William Winkeler

O Sister, What the F*** Is the Deal With People?

Last weekend, my mother, my sister, and I took a road trip to visit my other sister at college.  The road part was tolerable, and it was nice to see my sister again, but I encountered a conundrum while there.

You see, my sister (who is 2.5 years younger than I) has always been a social butterfly.  My social skills have always been greatly lacking due to having Asperger's Syndrome, and I have been quite envious of her supreme sociability for many years now.  She's always had more friends than I have, and was super popular throughout high school to the point that she was usually out with her friends more than she was at home.  Now, in college she is just as socially adapt as ever, very involved with clubs and activities, knowing seemingly everybody on campus, and even became an RA during her 3rd semester.

While I myself attended college for a little while, and enjoyed several aspects of it, visiting my sister reminded me of how fun it was living on campus and interacting with different people on a regular basis.  However, this is where the conundrum comes in.  Despite being reminded of the joys of college life, I was also reminded by how much I can't stand other people.  While nobody at my sister's college treated me badly in anyway, I was reminded of how annoying and obnoxious people can be merely by observation of their behavior.  People being loud and farcical to an unintelligent degree really drive me nuts.  I have immense trouble focusing on anything when there are others blabbing off to each and doing things that exasperate me.  On top of that, there were people that I encountered that had one or more of the most revolting accessories in my opinion: facial and body piercings.  I cannot fathom how anyone could enjoy having those things, enjoying looking at those things, or why anyone would ever ruin the natural beauty of his/her body with those things.  Piercings are the biggest factor in me giving up on ever having a romantic relationship with anybody.  I could never feel comfortable with a girlfriend or wife with such distracting and disgusting accessories.  Even if her personality was great, and her natural appearance breathtaking, I could never fully love someone who thinks it's a good idea to stick metal into her various body parts or thinks it looks good.

So overall, here's the conundrum: I want to be social and hang out with people, but there are just so many people out there that get under my skin with their actions, personalities, and/or unnatural appearances.  I'm very close to giving up on others, but I don't want to be an extreme hermit of any sort.  I can't completely isolate myself because I will inevitably get lonely and want social interaction.  Yet there are so few people out there that I can tolerate that I have yet to meet compared to everyone that I cannot tolerate whether I've met them yet or not.  I don't what to do about this predicament, but for now, I'll just have to keep doing things my way.

- William Winkeler

No Japan For Me... Time to Shift Gears!

Well, I was not selected for an interview by Labo International Exchange.  They rejected, like I figured they would.  Ergo, no free, easy trip to Japan for me.  It seems that my calling in life can be only one thing: creating fiction and other creative works.  That's all I'm good for, and all I can do that requires no qualifications.  I will write stories and create videos to achieve purpose.  Money will not come easy, but for me, having purpose in more important than having money.  I require many things for existence: food, shelter, money, enjoyment, friends, and other things I can't think of off the top of my head; however, right now I believe purpose is most important; a raison d'être, so to speak.  So, in order to help me achieve my purpose, please check out my blog "The W Zone" and watch my YouTube videos found there.  (Especially my W Reviews videos.  I have I hopes for those.)  Any support, be it consolation, friendship, compliment, or video views would be greatly appreciated.


Thank you for any support in advance.

- William Winkeler

That's Snow Good!

It's funny how crazy weather can be.  As a child and young adolescent, snow is great; it's fun to play in for a while, doing snow-related activities, and where I live, it can potentially cancel school.  Now as an adult however, snow has no benefits.  I'm too old to find joy in playing in snow, and being neither a student nor a worker, cancellations have no effect on me.  Instead, I'm stuck with freezing cold and many pounds of snow to shovel off the driveway and sidewalks.  Plus, my sister was supposed to start her 2nd semester of 9th grade on Jan. 2nd.  Now the earliest she'll return is Jan. 10th.  I'm only jealous that it didn't happen to me in my high school days.  Snow more winter joys for me...

- William Winkeler

A Belated Holiday Greeting

Happy Holidays everyone!  I had a good Christmas myself, and hope whichever holiday(s) you celebrate(d) is/are/was/were excellent.  Good presents I got that were worth mentioning: a new laptop battery, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds for Nintendo 3DS, Mario & Luigi: Dream Team for Nintendo 3DS, excellent new earbuds, The House of Hades by Rick Riordan, Target gift cards, and an Amazon gift card.

Also, if anyone is interested, please visit my blog The W Zone to check out my latest YouTube videos where I review the first two episodes of Ultimate Spider-Man.

Here's to a great New Year's celebration!

- William Winkeler