CHAPTER 03

Turns out taking a jog in the morning was a good way to relax strains in the muscles… huh who knew.

Today was one of… another of those weird days where you wake up and start doing random shit. Reason being because I had never being the type to exercise… ever. I wasn't that old, at least before yesterday, that I couldn't enjoy exercises but I was kinda lazy wasn't I?

So here I am jogging around the neighborhood after waking up with a random thought popping up in my head about me exercising, and the next minute I find myself in jogger pants, a T-shirt, shoes and hurling my ass out my front as if I was late for school.

Young people never really knew just how much they stand to lose if all their time was spent focusing on school and planning for their future which while important, was not entirely 'ideal'.

Granted, times like now are gold mines for the innovative, but 'ideally' it wasn't the ends-all-be-all for success. The future was uncertain, and while some win the lucky lottery, it was more better to just live every moment to the fullest, that way you have less regrets when at the end of your road.

Focusing that much on an uncertain, while probable, future tends to blur away the little things only the present could offer. That's why most motivational speakers would always advice you to focus on what you enjoy doing and work it through to new heights.

Hitting 40 really puts things in perspectives, needs and wants becomes apparent, you start focusing on less things only giving priority to a few. If you can't learn such a simple truth by the time you're 40 then you haven't been living a life.

I swear. Being young again was still weird.

Snapping myself out from my monologs, I focused on the road before me as I contemplated either going farther or take the next turn and go home, which the former won and I continued, extending my lap distance which wasn't a problem since I wasn't tired, probably because of my youth since I'm pretty sure my 24hrs ago self couldn't even run a quarter of what I've ran.

Damn I've really missed my youth.

Even after almost an hour of jogging, I still had enough gas for another hour which I considered either expending or taking my ass back home but once again I went with the first option, because why not?

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[An Hour Later]

Maybe pushing myself to my limits wasn't such a smart thing to do because after an hour of the extended jogging, halfway to my house, I ran out of energy and started wheezing until I found myself in front of my fridge chugging bottles of water before I managed to get a normal breath in and out. I was drenched with sweat making my clothes stick to every part of my body outlining my physical features. No buff mass or Olympics tiered physique anywhere, just normal me without buffed up muscles.

Done hydrating myself, I went straight to the bathroom and took off my sweaty clothes and dumped them with the pile for laundry. Running the relaxing cold water all through my body and immersing myself in its therapeutic chill.

Walking out of the bath with a towel strapped to my waist I walked to bed and just laid down staring at the ceiling. What now? I mean I'm glad about the dimension hopping but the question now was 'where do I now start from'?

Perspective change was cool, existential crisis? Ok. But now what.

Get a job? I probably could but then again what type of job am I looking for? A Biologist degree would, or could, probably get me a job as a lab assistant with good pay or an high school teacher which in any circumstance would be nice but the wrench to that cog was I didn't know shit about Biology. I know the mitochondria, which is the powerhouse of the cell, and the nucleus, which is the cell's heart, but I doubt I could get a job with that knowledge.

I could probably land a job as an high school teacher with my degree but no thanks. I doubt I could hold myself well against hordes of hormonal raging teens who thinks high school is all about pissing off a particular teacher, which almost sounds a bit hypocritical coming from me but meh.

So that means two respectable jobs straight out the window. Hmm I could go for construction as a labored worker but the stress… yeah no. So that's three to zero.

I don't want to follow the trend of… my previous life? OK now this shit gets weird and confusing. Since I pretty sure I didn't die, shouldn't this still be my current life as I didn't reincarnate or something.. You know what previous life it is.

Befitting of new beginnings.

Minor existential crisis solved so back to job hunting. Working in a mall or convenience store is out by default, same with security and bookkeeping, so that's six to zero. If I had an hobby then it was highly likely that it's what I would pursue, but sadly last week's version of me was an old bone both literally and figuratively. I just couldn't stomach the thoughts of regular exercise like 40% of the human population.

Since no reference from a hobby to go further and other ideas not really appealing, with some I shelved for the time being, I was back to one of my first thoughts of job hunting – bartending, to get me started on some cash before I pushed into heavier jobs. I wasn't going to be passive with my second life and leave it all to chance.

No, it was time to put on my big boy pants, quite literally too, and try to live a less regretful life. I'd still try my best to steer clear of all the Marvel bullshit that was going to hit this city. Maybe I should move to another country? Nah not yet. But that would be amongst all other future plans though.

With that settled, I pushed myself off the bed, got dressed in black jean trousers and a blue buttons up plain long sleeved shirt with the top button loose and went to get a morning feel. With breakfast of rice and a low budget salad with eggs and my cup of black, I relaxed on a chair as I checked if there was anything of importance in the news but other than the new regular, nothing was of interest so after my breakfast I went out the door and just walked out my neighborhood looking for a place I saw yesterday - a bar – one that existed in my former world and one I frequented.

Walking in with a relaxed gait despite the fact that almost everyone inside had their eyes on me, I went straight to the counter and asked the girl manning it, "Charlie in?"

Giving me a look the asked 'who are you?', she looked pretty sure she hasn't seen me in here once before but she replied after taking her inquisitive look away from me, she returned to cleaning the counter.

"Yeah, he's out back loading up the drinks. Should I call him in?"

"Yes please," I replied as she stopped her cleaning, walked to a door by the side that had stairs leading down, she shouted, "Charlie! Some dudes over here lookin' for you!"

"Be right there in a moment," came a gruff voice, after which the sound of heavy footsteps became louder as Charlie made his way up the stairs.

Looking Charlie over, I realised he didn't look that different from my world's counterpart despite being younger. I've known Charlie for almost a decade since his bar was where I spent most of my evenings, not always due to the drink but the lively atmosphere it always had at night. Talking with bitter people who had gone through what you did or something similar always helped. This bar probably helped me more than I knew with my bitterness and thawed whatever clog of depression I had.

"You called for me son, how can I help ya?" Charlie asked with his accent that I could never put my thumbs on. It sounded like Irish with a Mexican mix and a dash of French. His accent was just straight up weird.

"You hiring?" I asked straight to the point. Charlie's wasn't my only resort, just at the top of my list. I saw some bars around during my walk yesterday but don't know if they were hiring so I just decided to start with one I was kind of familiar with before hitting up the rest.

Not going to lie, hearing someone like Charlie calling me son ticked me the wrong way, just mildly, but giving how I currently looked and him not giving shit who I was, he was justified. But still, hearing an almost 50 year old man calling a 40 year old man son was weird.

"For what?" he asked as he gave me a look over.

"The bar," I supplied back while pointing at the bar.

"Dunno kid, can't let someone run the bar without experience sorry."

"I've got experience." I said and I could tell he was skeptic at my claim while at the same time not outright disbelieving, which was good.

"How long and where?" He asked after a pause, still leveling me the skeptic look.

"Five years, and as for where… let's just say far away from here." Which was all kinds of true as I did learn how not just to pick my drink but also how to mix them since I did frequent this place… frequently.

"Five years you say but not where. You from out State? Coulda sworn you looked New Yorker for a long time."

"Well I've lived here for quite a while but I did move around during the years." I clarified.

Giving me a look that I couldn't quite tell what he meant he asked, "How old are you kid?"

"… 25." I gave a curt reply.

"You 25 and still moved a lot, how long have you lived kid?" He asked with a small laugh at the end.

"Well tell you what, you work the night shift while I chaperone you. Since you said you got experience, I doubt I'll be doing much. Sound alright?"

"Cool. What time for shifts?" I was happy he agreed as this was just a small start for my fulfilling life.

"Hold your horses squirt, do the night first then we'll talk about shifts and pay ok?" He gruffed out his reply as he started walking back to the stairs probably to continue loading his drinks.

Stopping at the door he said, "Be here before 7," and continued down.

Whew, since that was out of the way I waved the bargirl goodbye and left Charlie's.

I looked at the time which was just a few minutes after 10am and since I had hours to burn I started thinking of what to do with all this time since I obviously won't be spending all my day in a bar so I needed something productive to spend my free hours on.

Maybe get a hobby? Hmm that sounds like a good idea but since video games was still pretty old now and old movies didn't really interest him apart from the really good ones which wasn't much compared to a decade from now, the only thing that interested me the most were sports. I was pretty ok with table tennis in my previous life, so pick it up again? I didn't think so. I wanted something new, maybe something I didn't get to try before.

I didn't know how long I spent in my head trying to pick a hobby to work on but when I got out of it, I found out that I was at least 4 blocks away from Charlie's. Looking around I saw a gym around the corner and while I was tempted to go in, I felt it was too far from my house. Maybe I'd look for one nearer if I remembered.

With a job and a possible hobby acquired I started walking with a spring on my steps. I didn't care how far I walked as long as I was moving. Maybe I still hadn't connected with this reality since most of my actions were acts of impulse or maybe this was what it felt like to be free.

Downplaying the importance of things unnecessary to me and only focusing on myself felt librating. It felt different from when I was working for my dreams.

Back then, I was working towards something in hopes of it bettering my life and not towards myself to make me better. Back then I did feel a sense of accomplishment and pride in myself whenever I worked or did nothing, but none so librating as this moment. I never needed a dream or ambition to define my existence, I just needed to live, finding my purpose as I did.

Guess you learn something new everyday.