nowhere

it's my birthday today! i am 34 now.

so much shit has happened in the last year and change and so much of it sucks and is awful. at some point i want to sort of summarize it here just to get it down on paper and out of my head.

my sleep schedule's still messed up real bad; it's five in the morning and i should have been sleeping a while ago. life has been pretty stupid lately but i'm trying to make it through it.

i dunno. i got out of my car earlier tonight and just thought about how i felt actually kind of good for once. i'm hoping it's a sign things are going to get better.

so, trying out a weekly planner thing. i'll probably toss a picture or two of it up here later (knock on wood and all), but i was inspired from a friend. reminds me of the old school planners/"agendas" we had back in middle school, though smaller (and thicker, since it's for a full year jul-jun instead of just the school year)

i've been horribly bad at planning anything constantly, so for now it's just a quick "things i've been planning to do" laid out on a few days. maybe in the future i'll look into different techniques or anything, but more than that, hopefully i just. use it. kinda hoping my friend'll bug me about it, which should maybe help me get into the habit.


work's been work. too much to say about it other than it's still just. work. it's money, at least.

hm.

part of the issue ive always had with journaling is that it felt you were supposed to write about something and you get stuck in this rut of "i intend to write a big deep post about (thing)" and never do. i really just need to kick that dumb thought and write about whatever the fuck, even if it's just a "yep, still alive" post.

anyway boy howdy 2020's been a year huh

one of the things that sucks about having multiple roommates, especially with weird sleep schedules, is you start to feel.. idk.

i wanna stress up front that this isn't like, me faulting anyone. its just me talking about a situation that sucks.

anyway.

rusty, for example, has a sleep schedule that's like. 8 am to 3 pm, it feels like. it varies, sometimes even later. but at the same time, they talk about wanting to go out to the pool or spa "before the sun goes down"

but by the time they wake up, the sun is already setting. (well, accounting for time spent getting ready.)

and i want that, too! it's good to be out in the sun sometimes, especially if you can stay cool/have fun with it. but it like. it puts me in a situation where there's nothing i can do to actually make it happen. unless i'm ready the instant they wake up, and they're ready immediately after waking up (which is never the case), we're only going to get out there by the time the sun is already dropping towards the horizon. and the way that our apartment building works, the main building overshadows the pool pretty early in this.

and if we wanted to go out somewhere, like a water park -- not now thanks to covid, but eg. last year -- we'd end up getting there at like 5 PM, well into the evening.

it also means that things like meals, cleaning, and other things are all constrained by this awkward sleep schedule thing, and it's just... not pleasant for anyone.


it just sucks. it sucks that there's nothing anyone can reasonably do about it. it's not really anyone's fault.

had some thoughts over the weekend and one of them was back to how a lot of the things i've tried doing over the years invariably ended up dead not necessarily because of myself losing interest, but more being made unable to continue

in old days it was parental punishment for failing grades or a lack of interest in school, resulting in losing the projects i was actually enjoying working on, for myself or others

or from the people whose web hosting i borrowed, a disagreement turning into a loss of access

or trying to contribute to projects and getting turned away for no reason other than the project leads not being interested

or developing on a game with others, but getting into a spat over political leanings and getting ejected (and ultimately, later, reinstated), but still killing the motivation to do anything after months of exile

or being at work and being unable to work on projects that i care about because we're too busy needing pointless feature x, so the things i was working on are left to rot and fall apart

it just keeps happening and i'm pretty sure it's been a slow killer of my desire to do anything;
it's hard to want to start when the inevitable outcome is always failure


not much of an update for right now, at least not one i can put public
just trying to keep going

my mh doc missed my appointment last friday so now i get to try to work up the energy to call them and reschedule
and i have no idea if they missed it or if, like they've done before, had just completely forgotten about me

fun times

i've had this open for a while, intending to post to it.

soon.

everything happens so much.

what's been going on:

- tcrf had its 10th birthday. i finished the 9th birthday party rom in time for the 10th birthday. woo
- work has been the usual hot mess
- still non-contact with my mother. almost a whole year!
- i'm a (largely inactive) coder for goonstation now
-

that's about it. i have also been engrossed in playing final fantasy 14, since it's something to do, and i like having things to do. haven't done a whole lot of much else lately, at least not worth mentioning.

so, here's to hopefully more frequent, but shorter, posts. no promises.

Things have been ... tiring.

First, the heat. I live in a desert, yes. But it's hot. 80°F inside sucks, and it's the best our AC unit can do. And it's still 110°F outside during the day, and over 90°F at night. It's only going to get worse.


Beyond that: Mostly just exhausted. Work has been draining, as always. Burnout never really goes away, though I've been doing what I can to push through it. Hoping I finally get some time off soon, and the upcoming three day weekend will help a little.

There's always so much that needs doing and never enough time to do it; it's piled up to the point that one looks at it and just sort of cringes and turns away. Getting started is always the hardest part, though, so hopefully if I can get some help maybe some stuff can get tackled.


Other than these things, I don't have much else to say right now. The days keep going by. Not bad, not good, just... time.

Maybe I'll have more soon. This is mostly just a "I want to do this, so I'm doing it fast enough that I finish it" post.

Have to start somewhere.

I've been fighting off what I hope is a cold for the last few days. One of my "resolutions", if you could call it that, was to do more writing — both here and in general — but a busy week and, more importantly, this fucking cold have done a number on me. Alas!

Failing that for now, while I have a moment, here are some things:

• Still rocking my old forum, come say hi
• Started a new projects blog, for stuff I work on. Personal thoughts and other stuff will still go here, but I plan on using that site for the various tools or utilities I make.
• Told my mother to fuck off and blocked her number, finally. I don't like having to do this, but at some point I have to give up hoping that she'll knock off her narcissistic bullshit and focus on my own mental health.

Not much else, for now. Hopefully this cold is over with soon because I really, really hate feeling physically miserable.

...

Missing the days when I updated this a little more often. Ah well, I'll try to keep it short, just to make sure I get through it.

• Been having some really bad depression days.
• Lost a friend because they told me "the only person stopping you from making progress is you". The ol' "get over it" suggestion. I told them to fuck off, and to their credit, they did.
• Anxiety and stress over stability and security in life, especially relating to work. This is what prompted the above, but it's been a combination of everything going sour.
• Zero energy. I've been going home, changing into casual clothes, and then immediately falling onto my bed and passing out for 3-4 hours.
• General feeling of hopelessness w/r/t my options and choices in life, and feeling like nothing matters. Starting too much stuff, and then losing interest or running out of time and energy.
• Struggling with what I suspect is some form of ADHD, relatively undiagnosed. I'm on something for it, and it's been on and off w/r/t its effectiveness. Seems to be strongly influenced by mood; when I feel good, I can get a lot more done, but if I feel like shit I'm arguably even worse off than usual.
• Gender feels. Hoo lordy, gender feels. Too much for a bullet point, really.

So, a quick diversion regarding that last one; if you've read this journal, you might remember this post and the (rather ironically, now) two-weeks-later update. Spoiler: Nothing's changed.

The shortest version is that I'm still risk-averse in every possible way. I don't have the energy to really seek help. I don't want to try anything because I don't know what will happen. I've had a problem with "envisioning bad outcomes" for a long time, and I've never really managed to cope with it well. (More on this later.) I don't know if I could handle it, where I am, around who I'm around for work, family, other things. It's so. much. work. and my state of mind has just been, "if it hasn't bothered me for 29 years, why should it start bothering me now".

It's obvious that it bothers me. I think about it often enough to realize that. I still don't know why. I do know that my hormone levels are, and have been, FUBAR for years. I know that has a huge impact on mind and body. I just can't convince myself that I should try; I feel like the consequences for failure are much worse than just continuing as-is.

Part of the paranoia mentioned above is that my brain is really good at figuring out how things can go wrong. It likes to take a scenario and make each part of it bad. Even the most inane shit — one of the more common ones used to be the idea of venturing to the top of the Stratosphere Tower in town, and then my mind helpfully creating a scenario where some bomb went off around the base, causing the whole thing to fall over. Real fun. Or plane crashes. Or (more recently), finding that someone near to me had died, or been murdered, or had taken their own life, usually in a particularly messy way involving a common household utensil.

My brain is a real piece of shit.

So... that's pretty much how that's been. On the other hand, since "coming out" (this feels so pointless to say, now...), many of my friends have actually come out themselves, or even flatly started transitioning, or just doing... something to progress their life. It feels a little silly; I talk about it myself, then a bunch of people tell me how much I helped them by explaining how I felt in a way they could identify with, and then... I just sort of get passed by. It's not their fault, to be sure. The best way to explain how I feel is like someone helping people onto a train, only to miss the final call and get left behind.


I don't know what else to say right now. Maybe things would have been easier if I had just stayed unaware.