Went to the Beach, Handed Over Apartment Keys

5:32 PM

Waaaa 😭 why does everything have to end?

I drove to the beach early today at around 8 AM or 9 AM, there weren't that many people there yet, so there was one or two legal parking spaces that I found, and I was able to park at a legal spot. It's really rare that there's any parking spots at all, I mean I went there pretty early and the streets were still completely packed. Remember that last time I went to the beach? I want to cry 😭😭😭.

I set up a towel on the side somewhere under the shade of some palm trees, and took off my shoes. Then I just walked up and down the beach for an hour or two.

I walked around the beach so lost and defeated, just listening to the audiobook. My phone is supposed to be waterproof, but I haven't tried dipping it in water yet or anything. That would be cool to shower with it, but again, something I haven't done yet. I have cold showers only here anyway. I am feeling really down.

I'm just left alone, able to do whatever I want, no problems in the world. And it's the worst feeling. After walking around the beach, I went back to my towel and put on my shoes and shirt. There was some woman who put her towel nearby, who was looking at me for a while. Uhh should I have gone and talked to her? I felt really ugly and unattractive though, I think I am really ugly and unattractive. Who cares if I have career success and a small amount of money? That doesn't really get you girls. It's more looks and appearance and personality that matter far more.

While walking I saw this old retired looking guy, randomly stop in the middle of his walk and started doing push ups. He did them in perfect form, with his chest and stomach going completely down and touching the sand, and I was super impressed. He did around 20 push ups. That's freaking incredible. I can only do just 10, but I weigh more than him. I weighed 208 pounds this morning.

There were a bunch of random sights like that. Man I am feeling really down. What are the five stages of grief? I just looked it up. I'm in all stages at once, is that possible? I could be in denial, but also in acceptance? No, I can't... I think I'm more in acceptance, with a little bit of the door open to let in some deniability. 😭

Oh another sad event today, was I went to the other apartment for the last time. I handed in my keys today so I can no longer go back there ever again, in my entire life. That used to be my home for several months, now it's just some empty place that I can never return to 😭😭.

I did record a 10 minute or so video though, of me just going up the stairs, unlocking the gate, going inside, and exploring every nook and cranny of the home. It's really depressing the more I think about it. I had some good memories there. 😭😭😭😭

I can't even cry any tears because it's all dry.

8:23 AM (of Monday, September 28th 2021)

After handing in the keys, I went back home, so bored and purposeless. Oh yeah, I got back my deposit in full in cash, which was $835. My former landlord put it in an envelope and wrote down "Chino <region>". I didn't put in the region of where I lived on purpose. Basically the landlord put a note for himself, and it was like "Chinese guy who is renting out home in <region>."

I remember back in college too when I was living in a dorm. It's just a temporary home that you get for that brief period of time, because the next year there will be new residents.

I forgot to write about it, but when I got home after listening to that audiobook after walking on the beach, I did "that" again and took a nap until around noon. I was woken up at around 12 PM when I got a message from my landlord that he could come by and get the keys today and give me back my deposit today. It was yesterday when I told him that I was done moving everything out and was ready to cease rent payments and everything, so we met up today.

When I got back home, I was so bored. I had already taken around 8000 steps by that point, and it was barely 1 PM. I decided I needed to get a wallet case for my phone, so I went to a nearby mall that I'd never been to before. Inside the mall, there's some vendors that set up their store right in the middle of the hallways, and one of them was selling phone cases. They didn't have anything for the iPhone 13, but they let me try on their cases for the iPhone 12 and it fit, so I ended up getting a phone wallet there. It was $25 and this was the only place I could find that had this.

After that, I just continued walking and exploring the mall. I went from one end to the other, and then walked back out. Nothing I wanted to buy. At the other end of the mall, there was a guy who looked familiar. I don't want to write too much detail, he looked like that guy I fist bumped at the bar. He was in front of some middle hallway vendor stand that was selling artwork and I saw some anime art there. Was that really him? Based on what I know of him and pictures I've seen, it seemed like he would be doing that. I didn't have any hatred or grudge for him or anything, I didn't feel anything, just apathy.

I walked back to the other end and walked out. I think at this point I had taken 12,000 steps, I don't even know. I parked super far away, and the mall was quite huge. At this point I realized 10,000 steps a day is basically nothing. All I did today was just be a little bit more active than normal and go outside for the majority of the time, and I ended up with 12,000 steps easily.

I drove back home. I wanted to get Acai, but changed my mind, and went to Costco. I bought some food and orange juice and went back home. I watched some past Apple keynote presentations at home.

At around 6 PM I had Spanish lessons again. We explored the world on Google Earth and this just made me more depressed. My previous city in Virginia has a population of around 26,000 people. The city I lived in before that had a population of 52,000 or so people. Both those cities were the world to me for several years in my life, and that amount of people felt like a lot. I moved to San Juan, Puerto Rico now, and the population is over 300,000 people. I am flooded and floored by how many people there are here every day. I just feel more and more insignificant as I drive along and see hundreds of cars always driving along with me.

In my old cities, there were probably a few cars with me at a time at any stoplight. Maybe one through ten other cars or so, and it was often that I would be the only one. And I thought that I was already surrounded by a lot of people. But now I have like 50 other cars with me always stopped with me at any stoplight, 50 new people all the time, and it's just such a different experience experiencing such a massive population number shift. I felt more and more insignificant the more I thought about it.

We explored some of my past cities on Google earth and we even explored her city. Apparently her university has over 300,000 students that attend according to Wikipedia, her city actually has more people than the city I live in now, this massive city I live in now. This city where there is people everywhere all the time, her university literally has more people attending. It turns out her city's population is around 1.5 million which is just crazy large.

After the lesson I watched some Steve Jobs videos, specifically the one where he introduced the iPhone. This is a man that saved a dying company and completely turned it around to become the most valuable company in the world. All his product releases were so amazing and just revolutionized the world each time. People don't think about it much, but the iPhone completely changed the world, it allowed companies like Uber, Instagram, Whatsapp, and many other giant names to exist and become hits.

His iPod release also changed the music industry as a whole. And the first Mac that Apple released changed the entire home computing industry as a whole. When the Mac came out, that's when competitors started making personal computers. When the iPod came out, that's when competitors started making similar devices like the Zune. When the iPhone came out, that's when everyone switched to touchscreen phones and just copied all of the iPhone's features. When the iPad came out, then everyone started making tablets. When the Macbook Air came out, then everyone started to make thin and light notebooks. Afterwards, competitors just started making products ahead of Apple en-masse as soon as Apple patented or trademarked something new.

It's so interesting how many game changing ideas and innovations Apple released under Steve Job's leadership. Recently they've come out with some sort of cool new things like the Apple Watch and Apple Pencil and AirPods and iPad Pro, but I think Steve would have come out with far more interesting tech by now and the company would be several times more valuable today.

It's fine to speculate, but I think they would have overtaken Windows and Android as holding the most popular operating systems. Steve Jobs would probably have made something like Apple Search (competitor to Google) or something like Apple Friends (competitor to Facebook) and even Apple Cars (competitor to Tesla). Or something even more revolutionary that I can't think of. Also Apple Campus 2, Apple's spaceship headquarters, was Steve Job's idea and he presented it publicly before he died. The entire schematics and vision for the building was already ready by the time he died, he had mockups ready and everything. He also probably green-lit the concept for the Apple Watch before he died.

It's so weird how he came up with these ideas. He was extremely forward thinking. Out of the billions of people on the planet, he was the sole individual in the world able to release these technological wonders for the masses. Inventions and technology the masses didn't know they wanted, until Steve Jobs released them. Nowadays from every technology company, it's more of the same for everything. Microsoft hasn't done anything new, it's just been releasing new operating system versions and new versions of their Office suite that's it, and it bought Github recently. Same for Google, and Facebook. Facebook has just been buying up companies and integrating them into Facebook.

I like buying Apple products because not only do they look great and work great, they're sort of luxury devices and even status symbols. Apple products are not cheap and they have strong brand recognition. Having some random computer like a Dell or HP is just meh, having an Apple Macbook Pro, whoa, that's impressive, it makes you stand out. They need to make these things waterproof though, just like their phones. No one is waterproofing laptops now, I bet Steve Jobs would have done it first. I mean there were waterproof "tough book" laptops, but they never took off, too clunky and big. A waterproofed Macbook Air would be the bomb.

Anyway I fell asleep admiring Steve Jobs. This guy popularized modern computers and modern media players and modern smartphones and modern laptops. I don't think I will ever live a life as influential as Steve Jobs, ever. Never. What can I do with my life?