Today I got a letter about re-applying to live in this apartment. I have to tell the landlady that I'm not going to live here this fall.

1:32 PM 5/19/11

I just found a letter taped to my door, from the landlady. It said that I was supposed to meet with her on May 12th, and I didn't. I had gotten the previous letter, but I didn't realize that I had been scheduled for a meeting on May 12th, because I had just glanced at the first letter and set it aside. I have to get recertified every year so that they can make sure I meet the low income requirements.

My apartment is $425 a month. It's huge, way too big for just one person. (I'm allowed to have only one roommate.) In my opinion, about six or eight people could live in here if they were willing to tolerate not having much space or privacy, and if they had a minimal number of possessions, and no furniture. So they'd be paying $71 a month each. I'd be willing to put up with not having much space or privacy for $71 a month, as long as we were forbidden to have televisions.

The only reason nobody is doing this is because it's illegal. That is one of the stupid laws that I wish I could change. We are REQUIRED BY LAW to use our physical space wastefully. So we live in these low-density apartments. I live in a two story apartment building. If this apartment weren't here, and if we were just camping in tents on the ground, we could fit MORE PEOPLE per square foot directly on the ground, simply because we wouldn't be required by law to waste our space, with only two people in an apartment big enough for several more. You'd think that having a two story building would increase the number of people who could fit on a square foot of ground, but no. This is extremely wasteful and expensive.

It's true that when you have a very tall skyscraper, it DOES fit more people per square foot of land than you can fit directly on the ground, even if they are required to waste the space in their apartments.

So anyway, this letter is telling me I need to call her so that I can reschedule. That means I am now being pressured to make a decision. I do not want to be recertified this year. I would like to move out. Even if my attempt to live in my car fails, I still need to move somewhere. I never accepted Bellefonte. I am still working at a job in State College. Many of the things I want to buy are in State College. So I do too much driving. Worst comes to worst, I could temporarily live in my car and then, later on, put up an ad saying I wanted to be someone's roommate. I don't like living with anyone - I am very misanthropic when it comes to living close to other people, as they always have televisions blaring and I hate that more than anything else. If only I had a silent roommate who did nothing but read books all day, I would probably be fine.

I'm being pressured to decide now, but that is a good thing. If I tell her that I'm not going to be living here, then an outside agency will begin pressuring me to leave. I will be aware that I have an obligation to do something. I will feel anxious. I will know that I have to start soon so that I can be ready when it's time for the lease to end. It won't be just me, by myself, without any pressure, vaguely wishing that I could leave this place and move someplace else.

I haven't gotten to know anyone here, deliberately. I have strongly avoided bonding with anyone or making friends ever since I moved to State College in 1997. The only friends I have made have been a couple of boyfriends: Eric, and then Peter. I really only know two people here. Everyone else is a coworker. I do feel attached to my coworkers. But they are not really friends. It's hard for most people to imagine living an extremely antisocial, reclusive life, and consciously and deliberately strongly avoiding making any new friends. I always felt that I didn't want to stay here, and so, I didn't want to form friendships with anyone because it hurts so much to break the bonds later on. I already had friends in Scott Depot, WV, from high school, and then later, from Shepherdstown, WV, in college, and previously, from Greensburg, PA, where I lived until I was eight - and I didn't want to move away from Greensburg. I don't like breaking away from friends. So I have been extremely antisocial as I was always vaguely wishing I could go someplace else. But my life disasters always made this impossible to do for real. My life has been nothing but a constant disaster for almost a decade now.

I'm going to tell her that I'm not recertifying, even though I am not yet ready to move out, and I'm not yet sure what I will do in reality. This might be one of those things where I panic and crumble and say 'I can't do this!' and then go do the 'default routine' instead, which is, go find another apartment and move in. There are so many reasons why I don't want to do that, though. I am sick of living a totally stagnant, hopeless life where nothing ever changes and nothing gets any better.

Luckily, I've left most of my stuff in storage since I came here in 2009. I only have a relatively few things up here. And I've never bought heavy furniture, for instance, big heavy couches made of wood - I've always bought folding card tables and folding chairs, and no bed at all, just a mat on the floor, because I always knew they would all have to be removed later on. Still, it will take a lot of trips to do it, it will be physically painful and exhausting, and I will be doing it by myself.

My brother lived in his car for two months. He just emailed me and reminded me about that. So I personally know someone who has done it. That's more reassuring than just reading people's stories about it on the net. Someone claims they've been living in their car for two years, for instance. One person supposedly did. I'm not sure what to believe. But at least I know someone who did it for two months.

I will be able to save up enough money to get the car fixed. I hope that I can still use the insurance money - it's a long story - I will have to call them and ask them. It's complicated and I don't have the time or the desire to explain it.

Then, I started writing down what I would allocate the money for, if I were saving $500 a month, every month, for a long time. Imagine how much money you would be able to save if you weren't paying rent. You'd have other expenses, but by not paying rent, you'd be saving a lot.

I wrote a long list of allocations. The more I wrote, the more I was able to think of. I remembered long-forgotten dreams, things I wish I could have done. Anything that involves either money, or time. If you save up enough money, then you can afford to take a bunch of time off work, and do whatever you want for a few months. I don't just want to save up lots of money to 'buy things.' I want to DO things. I would allocate some of the money to this, and to that, and over a long period of time, I would have these funds that were meant to be spent on specific things.

How can anyone spend $2,000 on a big screen television when they could use that money to take time off work instead? To me, taking time off work is, almost, the only thing on earth that is worth doing! Taking time off work is the reason for everything. It is THE reason for saving money at all. Then, when you're off work, when you're not physically exhausted all the time, then you're able to do things you haven't been able to do in years. Remember being a kid, when you didn't have a job yet, and all of your time was free time (unless you were in school)?

I have a physically demanding job. At McDonald's, I have to stand up and walk and run around for eight hours, and I have to move my hands and arms constantly, making sandwiches or cooking meat. When I come home, my body hurts. My shoulders and elbows and hips and feet hurt.

But even if you have an office job, where you sit down all day, you still have to be someplace at a specific time. If you didn't have to BE anywhere at a particular time, then you could travel, for instance.

So I've already been fantasizing about what I will allocate my money to, if I succeed in this goal.

Well, so this means I have to call the landlady and I have to tell her that I won't be staying here next year. I will ask her what is the date when I am required to be moved out.

This reluctance to bond with anybody here is a very, very strong feeling. It's one of the reasons why I am so reluctant to actually use the dating websites to meet anyone for real. It's the reason why I won't join any groups or clubs. It's this feeling of rebellion and resistance. I never wanted to live here in the first place. It was supposed to be temporary. Then, a bunch of disasters happened, and they weren't my fault. Terrible things happened to me that should not have happened. I got sick. I became the victim of a crime (the electronic harassment). I have been unhappy and lonely since I came here, and I have felt like I'm missing out on life. I wanted to live in other places. I wanted to research where I would live. I wanted to choose a place and then go there.

I hope I succeed in moving into the car. It will take courage and I will get used to it, if I do it. I've gotten used to living a very sparse life over the past few years. I can live an even more austere life ('austere' was a word I re-learned from someone recently) if I am gaining something by doing it.