To say that I haven't been writing due to the never-ending New England Winter and the crippling depression that has come along with it, wouldn't exactly be the truth. Sure, it played a large part. I mean you can't type when you're rolled up in multiple comforters on the couch like the world's saddest fucking burrito as you rewatch all seasons of Vanderpump Rules, can you? Nope! Thats just part of the reason. The other reason involves awkward interactions that made me rul uncomfortable with sharing anything online while also living in a very small state. Who would've thunk that putting personal information out for public consumption could turn into a weird and unnerving situation? I know right?! I think we need to look into this whole technology thing - seems like its kinda risky! Hahahah. We're all doomed.

Anywhoodle, a while back I took a very, very part time, very short-lived job at a very Vermont establishment. It was very. And I haven't written about it until now because it was not the greatest situation. See, I had been back from LA a bit and figured it was the perfect time to get out there and engage with some flesh and blood Vermonters. And, more importantly, to stop having hour long conversations regarding the plot points on Vanderpump Rules with my dogs (seriously though, what does Ariana see in fucking Tom Sandoval?). It would be just enough of a salary to pay for occasional coffees and all the tanks of gas I plow through due to my wilderness rambles. And even better, since it was so part time, it would afford me the opportunity to continue to box and hike. Score! Plus the location seemed ideal. The position was working the counter at one of those little stores you see in "Baby Boom" or any of the 5,000 Hallmark Channel movies set in small town Vermont. A locally sourced shanty filled to the brim with jars of home-packed maple syrup, organic, misshapen root vegetables, Vermont cheeses and meat that came from animals with fucking backstories. ADORABLE! QUAINT! PERFECTION! But, like everything in my life, there was a catch.

First off, I knew about this farmstead because it was on the way to one of my favorite hikes. And it specifically caught my eye because they keep some sheep, goats and an Alpaca in a little pin next to the store - and I'm a sucker for any type of petting zoo. Not even kidding, I almost flipped my car over in Georgia because I saw an exit saying "GOATS GOATS GOATS" and couldn't stop myself from careening across two lanes to make it. So, when I saw this farmstead's ad and that they were hiring, I was like, fuck yeah - this PERFECT. This is me selling Country Baby Applesauce. This is the most Vermont thing I could do! It seemed like the kind of perfectly mindless job that would be an easy way to dip my toe back into the workforce. Bagging rhubarb sounded like actual heaven in comparison to my last position. So when I went in for the interview and the manager told me he had googled me - it wasn't surprising. Going from working on movie sets to stocking locally foraged mushrooms isn't really a natural progression, so obviously there would be questions. So I humored him and told him I was here to take a breather and get back to nature and all that bullshit I tell myself. He said I wasn't like the normal candidates they have (organic farmers on the off season and strangely beefy middle aged hippie women who can like, chop wood and make a yurt out of locally sourced yarns) but that didn't stop him from hiring me on the spot. He seemed fine, if a little nerdy, but no red flags at that point. Well, except that he definitely struck me as someone who has abnormally soft and delicate hands. I know I shouldn't fault someone for having hands that look delicate, but I find them unnerving and the hands of a serial killer. Looking back, that was a tell for sure. Delicate hands are the hands of a creep. You can quote me on that.

So the plan was, I would go in for a few days and train one on one with the manger before I started on my own. Shit started to get weird on day one of training, three minutes into the whole thing. And you know why? Because the manager mentioned, multiple times in an hour about all the things he learned when he googled my name. Then he shifted from googling my name to discussing, in depth, this here blog. This went on way too long and he started giggling and saying, "Am I being creepy? Tell me if I'm being creepy. haha. Thats creepy, right?"...Reader, it was creepy. If you have to ask if you're being creepy, deep down, In the darkest depths of your weirdo soul, you know you're being creepy, and thats why you're fucking saying it! When I'm on a date and think to myself over and over, "oh god am I being weird?" I AM IN FACT BEING WEIRD. I KNOW I'M BEING WEIRD. But this motherfucker just kept bringing shit up. Every training shift seemed to be another excuse for him to discuss my life and to point out he knew ALL about me. And then, on day two, he decided to up the ante by telling me how he liked to print off back credit card receipts from patrons so that you could find out the persons name and .... you guessed it, GOOGLE THEM! On one hand, it was nice to know to know he spread his very inappropriate googling around to not just me, but unsuspecting shoppers as well. But on the other, nah, it was just super uncomfortable. Then he laughed and said, "I probably shouldn't have told you that....haha". Sigh. You're seeing a pattern, right? On the third day of training, after mentioning my blog again - specifically, asking when my birthday was because I referenced my age in one post, he said he "knew I had Spotify because I had posted a playlist on the blog" and If I wanted to hook up a speaker I could, so I'd be able to play said playlist. Which seems nice in theory, until I took him up on that and he critiqued the mellow music I picked (War on Drugs) because he normally listened to talk radio. Because there's nothing people love more when looking for overpriced arugula, than fucking Vermont Public Radio's hot take on hunting zoning regulations playing at a monotone whisper in the background. He also told me he wasn't used to speaking to one person for an extended period of time because he and his wife do not speak much. Which, just, sure. The fact he was normally a mute in a relationship that seems to resemble a New England rendition of the Piano was just A LOT to process when I'm trying to cull rotten micro greens, ya know? And then the reason I stopped updating the blog all together for a month was because he would say over and over again, "I can't wait to see what you write about us" and I would say, "hahahaha". Because I vowed not to satisfy his fucking curiosity. And my response? That was always my answer, by the way. A nervous "hahah" while I adverted eye contact. It's my go-to "holy shit I want to vaporize because this is weird" move.And then there was the incident at the very end of my training, when I was straightening up a display of holistic bullshit creams on a barrel, and he SNAPPED AT ME like I had done something unforgivable. I remember looking around thinking I had broken something. Nope. He told me that re-merchandising REALLY pissed him off. Like, he didn't seem to give a shit about much other than googling, but apparently, straightening creams that had been thrown willy nilly onto a fucking rustic barrel was too much to handle. It was at that moment I was able to pinpoint the vibe I got from him. I knew his fucking type. He's the self-professed "nice" guy, lacking machismo, fancies himself artsy, and who gets SUPER aggressive if you challenge him or call him out on any of his behavior. And that freaked me out. But it didn't freak me out as much as the last night of my "training". That night, after closing the store, we went into the office so she could show me how to reconcile everything into the computer database. At this point I just wanted to fucking wanted to wrap everything up so we could lock and leave. Instead, he's dragging this out and goes to the shared work computer, takes his sweet ass time sitting down, and says this: "I'm so slow at closing. Most nights I just mess around on the computer for a while and *mimics typing on the keyboard* GOOGLES WHAT MORGAN IS UP TO" and then he sealed it with his patented giggle. I'm pretty sure I hissed in response. But instead of saying, "this isn't a good fit for me" - which it wasn't, and I knew it from day one, I did something super petty. I went home and vented on twitter by posting a comment about his creepy behavior.

And let me just back up here and say, the issue isn't that he looked at my shit online repeatedly, it was that he TOLD ME about it! That's online lurking 101, my man. You do NOT tell people you've gone down their proverbial rabbit-hole! You do it, gossip with your friends about it and pray that you never drunkenly slip up and tell them! Jesus Christ. Like, how is that not obvious? I've spent my entire life lurking on people - people I've had crushes on, people I've been jealous of, people I can't stand. I creep and peep 24/7 but I don't fucking tell them. I don't put the burden of my weirdness on them! Thats just common sense.

Anyway, you won't be surprised to find that It only took a few days after posting that tweet before my spider senses started tingling and telling me something was OFF. And on a whim, I checked the tracker on this site and noticed a pattern of views that consisted of multiple times a day from both his home town and the store. And not just that, he would go to the site and then from there follow the links to my Instagram and, you guessed it, twitter. I locked all social media except this site, but it was too late. On my next shift at the stand, luckily I didn't have to see him, and I checked the browser history on the shared computer and it sent a chill down my spine. He was checking my blog, Instagram and twitter. A LOT. From home and work. And it felt dirty. I realize this probably seems like not that big of a deal - because people get harassed in MUCH worse ways online all the time. Daily. However, for me, I don't normally get the stranger danger vibe. I don't worry about people breaking in or raping me. I travel solo. Hike solo. Do stupid things when I'm solo. But I'm not normally fearful. I mean, I AM fearful, but not about realistic things. Demon possessions/nuclear armageddon/accidentally overdosing on supplements? Fuck yeah I worry about that shit! But real issues - things that should be worrisome aren't on my radar. At least not normally. But there was something about this guy and his behavior that just rubbed me in a really bad way. And I felt very, very, very weirded out by this man. And for the first time, I realized that I live in a state all alone and I don't have a support system here. I don't have friends and I don't have an emergency contact. And this dude knows that. And he knows my address. And my schedule. And that I box in his neighborhood. And it made me feel incredibly vulnerable. Maybe had the actual job been fun or fulfilling, I could've overlooked all of his shit. But the reality was, I hated being alone all day. Because aside from the hour of overlap when I worked with him, I was alone. And its the dead season and the stupid speakers didnt work - so it was just me for hours spraying the produce and dropping boxes of frozen goat meat on my feet. Even the fact that the petting zoo would be opening back up soon couldn't sway me in to staying....mainly because the manger told me that those adorable animals were killed at the end of the season each year. And one of those goat fillets I dropped on my fucking pinky toe? Yeah, one of those probably belonged to the goat I fed oats to in the Fall. RIP, Critters. And quickly, what was an adorable Vermont farmstead turned into a maple syrup infused nightmare. One evening a group of attractive skiers came in - they looked like an updated version of the Yuppies in Baby Boom - and I realized as I was helping them that I wanted to be on their side of the counter and not mine. I was not meant for that world.

When I went in for my next shift, the manager, as expected, was ready to talk about my online posting. Specially he wanted to address the "elephant in the room" (which was my tweet calling him creepy). I thanked him for bringing it up, apologized for being petty, but then explained that his behavior was uncomfortable and that putting the onus on me to tell him when he had crossed the line into "creepy" wasn't appropriate. He did NOT take this well. Because, as I assumed, he's a self-professed "Good Guy" and that means, he couldn't possibly do anything that crossed a line. In fact, as he told me, he was doing me a favor reading this blog, since nobody was, and doing me a bigger favor making small talk with me because I was "obviously very lonely". Deep breath. Reader. Here's the thing about me. I don't like much about myself, but one thing I do love, is that when someone goes at me like that, I don't back down. I square my shoulders. Speak calmly. And fucking eviscerate them. And this soft-handed, creepy motherfucker was told that his behavior, especially as a male and a manger was not ok. I then handed the keys over so I could leave. But he literally whined because he had a ceramics class that night and needed me to close. And because I've learned nothing, and am still codependent, I closed. But I didn't go back. So I guess that's a small win? I'm a mess.

So it's been a bit, and I've moved on and decided it was time to start posting about more than weather again. And I'm sure he'll lurk on my blog like he's done in the past. And when he reads this he'll be angry because he doesn't get why his behavior was inappropriate. And he probably feels like I'm dragging him for a non-issue. And he'll be mad at himself for seeing this and how it makes him feel inside. Because he knows, somewhere on the inside that he's a creep. And that's how he's gonna learn a very important lesson about online creeping - when you stalk someone's sites long enough, you'll eventually see something that reminds you why you shouldn't be there. I've been there. You've been there. We've all been there. Now he's gonna be there. In the immortal words of Joe Public, you've got ta live and learn.