Walked By Old Neighborhoods

6:26 AM (of Monday, March 31st, 2025)

Today is Sunday, March 30th, 2025, and I walked by some of my old neighborhoods today. My dad came with me and drove. We drove to the old city where we used to live, and parked at this Safeway shopping center, where there's a bunch of different stores, but Safeway is the main one people go here for. This is the Safeway we used to buy groceries at when we used to live here.

When I was in high school, we moved to a neighborhood right next to the Safeway, close enough that it was actually within walking distance, and you can see this neighborhood from the parking lot as well. This grocery store was only a block away, but funny enough, once we moved close enough to the Safeway, we pretty much stopped shopping there and shopped at a Harris Teeter and Costco instead, both of which were quite far, with the Costco being around 45 minutes away.

Thinking back on my old memories here, I'm not sure how we survived. My parents were both broke, and have always been. I was overweight and obese, and an idiot. I remember maybe it was junior year, I walked by to the Burger King which was also in the shopping area, again it's just a block away, and there were these two girls who were in my grade, both attractive brunettes. I don't know how I got along with everyone with my looks, but I sat with them, talked with them, laughed with them and stuff, and they dropped me off at my place. We exchanged contact info I think. I was friends with nearly everyone in high school, one of the most popular kids in my grade, despite being overweight and obese.

At the time I remember I was studying PHP at home, and it was so awful and boring to learn. I also remember cooking meat at the time too, and being obese. It's weird that this day stands out because those girls dropped me off. I pretty much remember the full day, even what I cooked and ate, and how depressed and hopeless I felt. Yeah, I felt depressed and hopeless. Even though I did have friends, it's not like I hung out with them often. Even though I was popular, I still had no siblings, I had parents who worked all day, and I was still lonely and alone most of the time, kind of like today too, but I feel a lot better today.

You really can predict where people will end up based on their past and present. I have always been into computers, and even in high school I had a website with a million visitors per month. So it's no wonder I would get into tech. It's also no wonder that I am still alone today, and feel lonely, because that's how I grew up as well. I am still overweight, because I grew up obese and overweight. I'm still popular with pretty much everyone, because I have always been, regardless of anything. There are still some girls who like me and have crushes on me, because random girls have told me this since middle school at least, even when I was overweight and obese.

My memory of cooking meat at the time, and eggs, and even making pizza, made me realize all the flavor came from the seasonings, and the animal products tasted like nothing without them. Yeah, it was in high school I realized this, when I would cook on my own, and the food would come out flavorless if I didn't add any seasoning. Making pizza too, I found out that the cheese and pepperoni don't even matter in the flavor at all, that the bread and tomato sauce was fully enough to make all the flavor.

Even though I was a meat eater, I would sometimes make pizza with just the bread and tomato sauce, because one time the other ingredients ran out, so I just made due with what I had, and then I realized this was faster to prepare, with all the same taste and less ingredients, so I'd often make it in this way. By pizza, I mean just a piece of sliced bread with tomato sauce spread on top, maybe shredded cheese and sliced pig flesh added on top if I wanted. We were pretty broke, but it was no excuse to eating unhealthily. It's actually so much cheaper to eat healthily, but we were just so ignorant of everything at the time.

No one corrected me on my obesity by the way. No one told me to take care of my health. I would have blood work done on a yearly basis I think, and it would always come out terribly. I had high blood pressure even as a high school student, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, just terrible blood work values all around. My parents would comment on it that day, telling me I have to improve, but then don't give me any advice or recommendations. My parents have always let me do my own thing. Even when I got straight A's in school, that wasn't due to my parents, they didn't care about my performance on anything.

Even now, my parents are extremely lenient on everything. They have always been. I walked to elementary school on my own growing up. Elementary school was also just a block away by the way, from the neighborhood I lived in prior to high school. It was a "block" away, but it's a very long block, around a 10 minute walk, even as an adult. The neighborhood I used to live in had an "interior" path connecting right to the school. You could take the street way block to school, or just walk through the neighborhood, and it connects right to the school through a playground.

I miss those youthful days. I remember going to the school for the first time and being new to everything. New to the school, new to the neighborhood, new to all the kids and everything. It was such an experience. I remember on the bus after some field trip or something, I was in 3rd or 4th grade, there was this Romanian kid named Cory, I think he was born and raised vegetarian. I visited his place and made a page for him on my website as a trade for letting me borrow a bunch of his DVDs. Anyway, I remember him and I were on the bus for some reason, I never use the bus because I was walking distance away from school, so I think it was from a field trip.

So I just remember we talked about kissing like it was some disgusting act. He said he saw on a TV show or something, a girl and a guy putting their mouths together and swapping spit, and he was so grossed out by it. He was telling me and laughing, describing how gross it was. I think my reaction was ew, but also, that it didn't seem that bad. I didn't realize that's what kissing very intimately was at the time. I thought kissing was just touching your lips with someone else, which it can be, but I didn't learn until later that it can also be deeper, with swapping saliva and everything.

I didn't have my first kiss until I was 21. I don't think she knew it was my first kiss. It was from a girl who asked me out on a date. Like I said, I pretty much got random girls telling me they liked me, since at least middle school if not earlier, but I just don't have any earlier memories. It's weird how any girls liked me when I was overweight and obese. I was already vegan at 21, but I was still overweight or obese. She was latina. At the time I didn't like her that much, because she was 24, and I was 21, and I was like, I'm dating an older woman. But at 31, I think dating 24 year olds would be nice, my most recent ex-gf was 24.

Great, I'm going way out on a tangent here. Anyway, my dad and I walked by our old neighborhoods, because there's a path from the Safeway parking lot, that goes through a bunch of different neighborhoods. All the neighborhoods we passed by, I had memories from all of them. I had friends that used to live in them, I used to visit them and make memories with them. It's a different vibe now. I don't have this experience anymore with getting to know all surrounding neighborhoods and people from them, in any of my last 2 neighborhoods. Even though I am healthier, wealthier, older, than my past versions, it doesn't mean my life is much better. Making memories and experiences is what life is all about.

All our problems at the time, don't even matter shortly after we resolve them. At some point schools and grades were the most important thing to me, and now those things don't even matter to me at all. Health scares are the worst, I had one in early 2014 when I got a kidney stone. I was already vegan at the time, for around a year, and was just 19 years old, but I was also still obese and still extremely unhealthy. I was hospitalized, and they put me under anesthesia and did an operation to get rid of the kidney stone. At the time, that was the most major issue in my life, and now it's not an issue at all. It's the same when we are unemployed, at the time getting an income was the most important thing, until you get an income.

There were adventures I went on that involved hiking and going places without a cell phone signal. Yeah, those can be life or death situations too. Whatever is pressing us, is only an issue that exists at this moment. At some point they are either resolved or stop being an issue, with our deaths if anything. I still have issues pressing me today, that I need to resolve. They are an issue only for now.

Anyway, I want to lose weight and get ripped. It's very hard. I'm supposed to be a weight loss expert, having lost over 90 pounds. I just have 10-20 pounds more to lose to look ripped. Yet it's still hard. Losing weight has never been easy, and I understand now why it has a 99.99% failure rate. Yeah, the stats are online, I think it was tens of thousands of people tracked over 7-8 years, of those over 35 BMI, only like 1 out of 1300 or something became normal BMI, so something like a 0.0007% chance of becoming normal BMI in those 7-8 years. Something like that.

Today Lia messaged me after my dad and I's walk, and while we were at a car wash. I was getting ready to dry the car when she messaged. She says she missed me and wanted to talk to me again. I messaged her back, and I think we'll do a phone call soon and maybe even see each other again.

At home, I just read manga and watched anime. I procrastinated on my tasks again. I did do some exercises too though, but not enough. I finished Home Sweet Home, and it was an alright story. I don't think it was worth reading up to the end. Aside from a few panels, the entire story takes place in a single apartment building. There were some memorable ideas from the story though, such as not giving up. It's a common trope in any manga or anime, where the main character or characters face extreme hardship, but still persist regardless, and overcome their obstacle somehow. I think this can be applicable to life.

Reality is kind of different though. We get older, and there is a time limit for things. We can only do things while we are in the state capable of doing them. I can't experience my teen years again, I can't experience my 20s again. I should take the most advantage of my 30s and life now, since I'll never be this young ever again.

Anyway, that was my day today.