August 9, 2025
It took me until around 8am to get up today. I wandered around trying to figure out where all my cards were. I even went into the basement and realized none of them were down there. Apparently, everything I have left is in a single blue tote in the front room. This doesn’t seem like all of it, but it’s certainly a lot of it. Did I really throw that much out? I suppose that’s possible.
I’m putting anything with an estimated value of $2 in its own pile, everything else in a junk pile that I’ll have to sort out later. ComC is useless right now, thanks to an extremely slow internet connection today, so I have to price everything on ebay, which is a slog.
I’m pleasantly surprised by some of these cards. Like a Greg Maddux insert worth $3-5 that I got from Listia. A Steve Pearce World Series MVP insert that’s a couple bucks. It all adds up. I’ve made some good purchases! My Altuve Bowman rookies are up a few bucks. Overall, I’m up, not down, but only on paper. Realized that while Julio Jones may make the HoF, Wayne and Holt haven’t, so that’s not good news. I got through quite a few cards before I realized I forgot to eat. Gonna just crash the rest of the day.
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I now have access to ChatGPT 5. It’s not unlimited, but it may as well be. It seems to be a heck of an improvement over 4o. Could be great for sifting through the articles I’m still on the fence about. [Funny enough, in 2026, I use Gemini and my Pareto Purge system as an advanced form of this idea.]
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I keep watching Bustin’ Boxes [a YouTube channel] to remind me why opening retail products and “mystery” packs are just lighting money on fire, even when you get decent “hits.” My issue now is I don’t know what to focus buying. Maybe I’ll get back to buying player lots. Or just scouring ComC for any value I can find.
I did pull the trigger today on a 1999 SP Ty Law auto. It was priced reasonably at $25 so I just snap-bought it. His auto market is strong and the ComC ones are the cheapest available. No haggling necessary! [I do have this card in-hand now and I cherish it.]
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Really enjoyed the Pokemon content today. Zen Mode had a great solo nuzlocke with the Totodile line and did a lot of clever things to win.
Scott’s Thoughts had a Chatot run where he named the bird Pokemon Taylor because he intended to use Swift. Great pokemon, too, and the name was even better!
August 14, 2025
I don’t want to get up today. But I need to. I still have much to do, a lot left that needs to be said. Even if thinking is becoming painful. I didn’t come this far to give up. I still have at least one believer in Emily. That has to be enough.
I’ve actually grown a lot emotionally and intellectually recently. I’m not even dwelling on much from my past anymore. In fact, all my fears are forward facing. I need to focus entirely on the present, but my brain just doesn’t work that way. Oddly enough, my most seemingly irrational choices in life got me here. Clearly, the rest of the world is insane, and I just can’t understand how it all went so wrong.
Emily brought up a good point. People’s reasoning is often based on either false assumptions or false certainties that aren’t based on any objective reality. The worst part is when people want to wish away (or pray away) how someone is and can’t help being. Especially those who are autistic (like her and I).
The problem is that human beings cannot be rationalized. People’s actions are so bizarre because they are often based on unrealities or entirely unrelated experiences that they stretch to cover unexpected occurrences. People rarely step back and take time to reason properly. So many papers have been written over the years that point out these inconsistencies, but it’s almost as if society at large depends on its very function by people being entirely irrational.
Consumerism, for example, is mostly irrational. I’m constantly trying to get rid of things I don’t actively use. I’m trying to eliminate things constantly. I don’t want to be a collector of anything other than ideas and things with true long-term intrinsic value. I want to make as many of my material “goods” become someone else’s problem these days.
At this point anything I accomplish at all, even just writing a few paragraphs in these journals has to be seen as a win.
