August 24, 2025

I received a text message from my future self warning me that today was going to be the worst day of my life.

There was a young girl from my high school staying over at my place for the night. She had the bed while I was supposed to sleep on the couch. She asked me what I had meant by “questioning rationalism” and I told her that I sincerely had no idea what she was talking about. It turned out that was how one of my former teachers had described me to her. I was more surprised that he was still teaching at the school. Apparently he now had a PhD and multiple MAs under his belt.

We were chatting while scrolling through our phones when I got a notification for an “Invite to bed”. I held the screen towards her with a puzzled look. “Is this you?” I asked. She nodded. I said I was “too tired to be embarrassed” and accepted. First however, I needed to find a convenient place to charge my phone near the head of the bed. I stumbled around the room looking for spare cables.

We fumbled around under the covers until the sheets had wrapped around us, making it hard to untangle ourselves. The music was starting to get too loud and made my ears uncomfortable. I asked her to turn it down as it was getting too noisy. I added that my parents were probably awake by this point as well.

A light turned on in the hallway and the next few moments were a blur. She rushed out of the room and called for her mom to come over. I rolled off of the bed with a pile of sheets and covered myself up. She accused me of killing her. I feared that it was as bad as it looked.

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I was playing on a payload map on TF2 and our team was winning if not for an enemy Engineer that was absolutely dominating. I tried chasing him around and following him through his teleporters only for him to change the exit at the last second ended up trapped inside of a glass case with no way out. I had no choice but to rejoin the server.

When I came back I had been assigned to the opposite team with no ability to switch back. We were now on the defending side and had to prevent the payload from going up a small hill. I was still trying to decide on a class in the final ten seconds of the countdown. Upon the gates opening I picked Pyro and chased after a couple of players that had strayed from the main mass of enemies only to be accused of not playing fair. It didn’t matter anyways as we both lost the point and I failed to secure the kill.

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I was at a pool that employed small children as janitors but advertised the program as a caretaking service. Kids as young as toddlers were able to obtain valuable “work experience” while being looked after their older siblings who were also in the program.