man. TMS has been rough. I know the first 2-3 weeks usually have the worst side effects and it’s normal to experience what I’m experiencing but since it’s so slow acting, the side effects are also slow to go away.
like several weeks in.. I’m having trouble thinking straight, having memory issues, insane fatigue etc which are all apparently side effects that I wasn’t really warned about before starting. which is fine but actually the depression is worse because of all the side effects, also just becoming worse I think before it gets better because of depression, trauma being shuffled up and etc.
I actually ditched an interview today just because it was giving me a weird trauma trigger reaction and I don’t know if I would have had that otherwise. then I feel guilty and like a piece of shit because I know I should be looking for work right now ugh.
at least it’s not a placebo effect I guess? I mean it’s definitely doing something to me for better or worse. I was a little afraid it would end up being a placebo. they had me take this long ass questionnaire today about the side effects and I’m just… yeah I don’t know.
also there are hobbies that require other people that I would like to be doing but I’d have to go find people to do it with me bc E and all my family and friends aren’t into those hobbies. and I just don’t have the energy to go meet new people right now.
on top of that all I might be starting Spravato soon (ideally) and I can’t even get the energy to contact the coordinator. e was supposed to be figuring it out for me but I don’t know if he’s had time to send over my release of information.
and of course the Starbucks next door to TMS that was my little treat afterwards, shut down this week! urgh… I’m just going to lie down forever now
i MAYBE finally got mastodon integration working on my blog. I spent a few hours today transferring over everything from Pagecord, which was actually somehow both easier and harder than what I thought it would be… this post is primarily to see if I got the integration working and if it will actually crosspost. I know the layout on the blog is kinda ugly at the moment colors-wise, but I can’t be bothered to make the HTML all pretty right now when I spent so long just trying to get all the posts transferred. I just need to keep a Markdown archive of all the posts. Turns out transferring over like 25 years of posts takes slightly more effort than what I thought it would. I started collecting all my old blogs from all over the internet several months ago and still haven’t managed to collect them all… but I really just want there to be one (1) source of truth, and I’m hoping I can stick to the new blog I have at kawaii.place. but I will temper my expectations as I tend to be a blog hopper in general. ugh.
Hi all. I find myself mostly just tired lately. It’s hard to explain how fatigue inducing TMS has been for me. Really, it’s been the biggest negative side effect, which is hard to push through when there have been virtually no positive effects just yet. It’s three hours round trip every single day for six weeks (200 miles round trip), and I’ll tell you what… I would not be doing this unless I had absolutely no other alternative. Because right now, it is so exhausting. But what is the alternative? Not getting better?
It gets even more complicated when you realize that it’s making work awful too, or the lack thereof. There are no “normal” 9-5 jobs that are going to work around me needing to take half the business day off to go run to Dallas every single day. So, I have been looking into part-time/weekend/nights jobs. I got an interview at a grocery store for overnight stocking, but they took one look at me and how short and chubby I am and instantly decided I wasn’t right for the job. Which is awful. Like, they tried to say it was because I had “no overnight experience and no stocking experience.” You saw that on my resume. You just wanted to discriminate against my physical appearance. So pathetic.
I have another interview tomorrow, though I doubt it will go anywhere. It’s just for a job that is two Saturdays and four Sundays a month, just filling in for another person for a driving position. At this point, I’ll take just about anything. I even set up an appointment to sell plasma to help get us through and help pay for the copay and gas to get 200 miles every single day. I thought about doing Doordash today, but turns out, when I’m driving like that, I just want to get home and sit down in a chair and stop driving. I might do that a little bit later… not that Doordash is particularly worth it, honestly.
I’ve also been supplementing with Prolific. E says that I shouldn’t be so much worried about jobs and money right now and should just focus on getting better mentally. But how can I focus on getting better mentally when I know we are still negative every month? I don’t want us to have to start dipping into our super emergency. Right now, we have only been dipping into our “backup funds”, aka Elias' money, but we do have an actual emergency fund that I’d rather leave untouched if we can.
I’m probably going to try and transfer over all the posts from the other blog to this one today. But man, it’s going to be hard to look at them. I had such an “easy” life when I was a teenager, and seeing me whine about things like Gears of War versus what’s happening today is a little bit difficult… ahaha.
hey all. I have definitely not forgotten about this blog. My life has just been considerably full of stress the past few weeks. I have some major health stuff going on. Mostly major depression which doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it’s essentially an emergency level. I am going to go through TMS and Spravato soon, which is going to put further stress on our financial situation, which already isn’t ideal. Sigh… I don’t even have the spoons to get into what all is going down with the family situation, either. I will do a proper update soon, hopefully.
…or better yet, like trying to find a car during COVID???
I got told by five people last week that they had sold their machines to other people and that they had been swamped with DMs. one of those people was someone who hasn’t even posted publicly, it was just me being referred by someone who had sold their machine and had a coworker looking to sell! @_@
It’s been an actual nightmare trying to find something. I managed to find one, but jeez…
I also had a really good interview. we will see how that goes. I haven’t been having any trouble getting interviews, but I’ve been picky about where I’m applying so I’m getting less and less. which actually is a good thing because it’s been crazy overloading.
I’ll just paste what I wrote to E about the interview:
interview went really well. we ran out of time because both of us were talking a lot, that kind of how it ends up when you build rapport haha. the person i interviewed with is from a small town in western michigan, about 30 minutes north of where we were born and raised so we had that in common.
they actually are open to me being in either position (the customer service or the back office position), but they wanted to meet with me and talk to me about the realities of both positions.
they seem really nice and the work seems easy. they said they might need to schedule more time with me because there was supposed to be a mock call, but we didn’t get to it because we both were asking each other a lot of questions and speaking with each other a lot/connecting.
i think if they don’t give me an offer, it’s because they genuinely feel that my personality wouldn’t be a fit. I was very, very honest about our personality, in that I am the first ones to talk when there’s an awkward pause during meetings of 20 people and the facilitator says “any questions?” and I am the type that gives a lot of feedback when I am fully trained and have mastered everything.
The interviewer also was like “we don’t mind occasional attendance issues as long as you’re really honest, I can help you out more, I really appreciate honesty” so i put that in the back of my mind and when she asked how I stayed on task, I was like, “well, this might be too much information, but I used to be really bad with this because I had unmedicated ADHD. I’m medicated now, so it’s a lot easier, but I still have XYZ process to help me stay on task.” just showing her that I am very honest in general. I was like, for better or worse, I am honest.
she asked “what are some times that you being late has affected your job performance?” and I was like, I wish I could tell you, but this has genuinely never been an issue with me, aha.
it was a huge green flag that they seemed open about accepting feedback though, as I honestly told them that that was something that we struggled with at my last position, where i felt like my feedback was hitting a brick wall a lot of times. I also told them that I struggled with a position where I am alone a lot, so in all truth, the customer service oriented position might be better for me. it seems like their other team, the back office one, has a lot of people like at merit… super introverted people who don’t really want to interact, they just clock in, do their work, and clock out. whereas the customer service position has a lot more team camaraderie, people talk a lot more. the customer service position seems to have a bit more oversight, but that’s just because the manager is more extroverted so reaches out more.
the back office position seems also a lot more like merit because they have flexible hours, whereas the customer service one, you’re pretty much clocked in and then clocked out at the same time every day. I told them that I always clock in and clock out at the same time, I wasn’t really the type that utilized the flexibility of the position unless there was some sort of medical issue happening, and then I let my manager know. whereas I know some people will clock in and clock out at very different times at merit as long as they’re still within the window. we pretty much always have worked 10-6 without any variation.
also I tried to dictate this entry and talk about actual nightmare. Google’s Android keyboard is literally broken for voice dictation lol.
ive been asking myself this a lot lately. like I could get into stenography and I would be super good at it, but I think it’s socially isolated. I could go back to school to be a therapist, but that is a TON of schooling. both of those trade offs I’m okay with, but I am just having such a hard time committing to anything.
I accidentally ghosted an interview this week because I was so overloaded with everything going on. it’s stressful to have done something like that :( I’m doing my best but everything is just all over the place…
Elias is doing really well w his medical treatments. I’m very happy <3 I know it’s really tough and tiring for him. it is that two hour appointment along with that four hour round trip drive twice a week, and then he insists on trying to work after, when the treatments themselves have been super intense and physically draining too haha.
he sent me a super nice message this morning telling me he appreciates me being willing to all this and how understanding I’ve been. but of course I am!! he needs medical treatment, the idea of not being there for him is so foreign to me. when he told me how intense it was going to be my response was just “no worries, put it on the calendar so I know when it is and let’s do it” because he’s the love of my life & my partner. there’s very little I wouldn’t do for him let alone something as simple as a long drive twice a week and a few hours of wait in between.
well, there’s a lot of other stuff going on. I’m starting to get overwhelmed haha. the task for the weekend is to sit down and do the nearly hundred (!) page application for this job I applied to. they are asking me a lot of personal info, it feels kinda like when I got my top secret security clearance before. they asked me for 7-10 contact info of people I knew for character references, and I’m like, not me being disqualified from this job for being friendless 😭
I’ll try to remember to post when I can. the days are starting to blur into each other, none of my interviews have been the perfect fit, and I’m just all over the place… ughhhh.
The dentist recognized me right away which is really funny. I must have some kind of way about me that people recognize me, because I haven’t been back in like a little over a year. The front desk lady said that I have a really positive vibe and seem fun to be around so it makes sense to her.
I interviewed with the practice manager whom I had already met before haha.
Seems to have the same vibe as the vet industry. That is to say, sometimes it’s slow, sometimes it’s fast paced, doesn’t pay well, but you are making a difference.
There is some opportunity for advancement; they pay for you to become registered except for the exam fee. They also pay for all the classes for any follow up training if you want to get certified further.
Interview mostly focused on like, how do you deal with stress, how do you deal with people being snippy. Which to me tells me that there can be stressful situations. She said it’s fairly rare, but they do have really busy times of the year where everyone is burnt out.
This is a small town, so there’s only a few people working there. 2 at the front desk, 3 dental assistants, her (practice manager), and the dentist.
She’s only been working there two years, she got promoted to practice manager in less than a year.
She said that there isn’t a whole lot of turnover, and the people who do leave typically do so to continue schooling.
She asked about my availability for a follow-up interview on Thursday because likely going to get an offer, just depends on whether or not I actually want to take it. I mean, it seems decent to me. Worst case scenario I go, oh my god, this is awful.
I also set up a cleaning the day before hahaha. Unintentionally going to show them more on my attitude/behavior, but I just really needed to do it because it was overdue anyway.
Second interview tl;dr
Was an MLM.
Wasn’t even a particularly successful one, considering I already know a lot about the cruise industry.
No other notes.
so, pretty successful day for job interviews, if you ask me.
i had therapy today & we basically just talked about how I'm still overworking despite like, not actually actively being at work. i quit my job but now I'm 24/7 looking and applying for jobs. therapist said that i would do well to just set a timer on how long I can be looking for jobs and do it at a specific time of day so I'm not up at 3am looking for and applying to jobs. which yeah kinda. i mean whatever semblance of a schedule i had instantly disappeared the second i wasn't being forced to get up for a 9-5 & now i'm just constantly in "work" mode whether it be trying to find a job, doing chores, or whatever else.
the therapist is also going to send me some mental health exercises to do to try and get me into the habit of like, actually doing shit. she was trying to be like "what gets you excited about getting up in the morning?" and i'm like literally nothing :( i got the depression.
the psych is being awful and refusing to switch me off my current antidepressants that aren't working. last time i had an appt with her she gave the world's biggest sigh when i told her these weren't working and was like "well i'm not doing this anymore so I'm sending you genesight so we can have some kind of clarity on what will and won't work with you." like excuse me? yeah i'm also tired of my depression but try and keep your gigantic sighs to yourself. if you don't actually want to do your job then maybe change to a different profession.
therapist was like "go do ketamine" and i was (jokingly) like "yeah I'll go talk to the drug dealer down on the corner" and she was like "lmao nooo do it legally". i eventually do wanna do ketamine therapy but i can't at the moment (or any time soon) bc I would need a ride back and forth. it's like a 3 hr round trip to get to and from the closest ketamine therapy place & e doesn't drive so I'd need to figure out a way to deal w that. the only person I could think who could give me a ride is kendrick, and I love kendrick but i rlyyy do not want to be stuck in a car w him for an hour and a half while i'm ketamine tripping LMAO.
CVS is being so fucking dumb. we need to switch away from them. healthcare in this country is a shitshow so the closest "preferred" pharmacy is like a 2 hour round trip in that town with the CVS. so elias called and asked them if his meds were in. they said they were. so i did the 2 hour round trip and when i got there they were like "uh no we don't have it in, we don't even have it in our system" which i kinda assumed considering it wasn't available online but like? they are constantly doing this. plus they aren't doing the insurance verification for my T so like??? get your shit together CVS.
likely we are going to move our stuff over to walgreens bc this is a mess. plus CVS has some new thing with our new location that you can't even call & get a pharmacist on the phone anymore!!! like they only let you leave a voicemail no matter what time of day it is, and if ur lucky they will call you back in a timely manner and you'll catch their call. total shitshow. 0/10 they are not getting our money any longer lmao.
i'm doing my best to figure stuff out but it's been so hard lately. it's just... idk. everything is exhausting. how am i feeling even MORE burnt out after quitting my job??? i guess it's bc with my job I could clock in and out and be done for the day but now I feel like i'm constantly "on" with constantly job hunting and the like. i hope that i can find some kind of peace outside of that. the therapist said it was a pretty good opportunity for me to figure out what i actually want to be doing with my day that a lot of people don't get, and i agree. we are totally privileged in that way & i'm very grateful for that. but still, it's exhausting... ugh. me @ myself: get ur shit together please
something funny is, we have looked for a job pretty aggressively for about a year now with very little luck. we quit our job last monday and without any extra effort have gotten invited for two interviews this week. i think that things do play out the way that they are supposed to. maybe some would argue that we needed to have the courage to quit our job before other opportunities would come in.
the interviews are: mental health advocate at a local hospital and also seems like some kind of project management position at a web design firm. couldn't be more diametrically opposed. one is totally profit oriented, remote, pays a lot more, and likely a lot easier, but less fulfilling. whereas the other is not as profit oriented/more mission based, in person, pays not great, and probably harder but more fulfilling.
i still need to follow up with the local hospital one though as they tried to call and we missed it the other day unfortunately.
i got back in touch with my old friend from those days named amy. ozzy just died, and it made me think about the time that we did this variety show with her. we still have the video and wanted to share it with her. she's still living in the same place and still seems as awesome as she always was. i missed talking to her. i hope that we can keep up with talking more.
it's our brother's birthday today, which i guess means our journal archives are officially 23 years old today. kinda wild. he's got a lot of nostalgic thoughts today, can't say i blame him. considering it's his birthday, talking about amy, and also just sharing older pics with him.
by the way, with regards to transcription of old journals: still working on it. we did manage to scan them all in, but OCR doesn't work because of shit handwriting. i'm going to do my best to keep back adding the entries that i have. we have a big blue journal that was a majority of 2022 and 2023. i think 2024 is mostly missing-ish, unless it's somewhere else that i haven't seen yet.
after dealing with an abusive narcissist for several years, I finally quit my job. yay me :) I would go into more detail, but I think some details are better left forgotten in time. all that matters is that I finally had the courage to do it and am super proud of myself for finally doing so.
raven says I should take the week off and not do any job hunting or chores or anything, but I don't even know how that is possible. like, I was already getting bored today and finally figured out how to use the auto clean function on the oven. i will do my best to try and chill for once in my life though.
health-mental kept auto correcting to my typo from earlier and annoyed the shit out of me but I fixed it. it's 2025, why is shit like this still happening.
there's no way I'm ever going to get this journal completely done if i keep uncovering old blogs and journals. I don't really think i realized exactly how prolific I am. I'm all over the damn internet. i just found an old random alt deviantart account i had that has a bunch of journals still available on there. help...
the admin at pagecord, olly, was kind enough to help me import all the dreamwidth entries though at least (whew.) and then wrote a really nice blog entry about it :) thank you olly! customer for life right here.
i may or may not (definitely did) write a reddit post over on /r/digitaljournaling suggesting that people check out pagecord as well. I just randomly stumbled upon it; I believe that the admin of hey.com wrote an article about it...? I already forget. the search engine kagi is really good about unearthing more underground articles like that. i'm about to quit my job in a few weeks, and i told e that i refuse to stop paying for kagi haha. that's one of those necessary subscriptions for me. google is just such a shithole at this point for so many reasons.
i also started backing up my old videos which is a whoooleeeee different project. gonna use peertube.wtf - here is my account, the username is needingspace. tbh unless you're particularly interested in videos of my pets (who i definitely think are a lot cuter than everyone else thinks) or really old videos of me, isn't going to be particularly interesting. but yeah.
btw a few things that i've done to help give back to the archiving community for helping me find all my blogs: 1) started running warrior for archiveteam, and 2) installed the wayback machine plugin that will archive any new page i happen to stumble across. honestly the latter is kind of selfish to make sure that my pages don't get lost to time but the former is pretty selfless considering rn they're rush archiving goo.gl, and i don't have anything on there.
job
like i said, i'll be quitting my job in a few weeks (end of august.) i told lyn & a coworker (d) the second i clocked in today that if my manager "g" asked me to do XYZ task today that i'm cutting it short and quitting today. and of course at 4pm (she almost made it to the end of the day!) she came whining at me to do XYZ task.
there is a weekly rotation for XYZ task. d and i have wednesdays. we *always* do it. but of course there were things sitting there since monday because apparently the four tuesday people can't be bothered? yet manager is gonna come complain to me about it and ask me to clean it up last minute despite me working all morning on getting it cleared out (which is why there was barely anything in there!)
i told e "welp looks like i'm gonna have to quit today, a promise is a promise" and he was like "no, wait until friday afternoon because otherwise g is going to come to me freaking out because b (e and g's manager) is out of office this week" hahaha.
so i guess i didn't even make it a month. lyn said she was surprised that i made it this long, though.
mental health
we had therapy today and talked about the work situation. basically told the therapist that we are always feeling the need to be productive at 120%, so she told us to try and only be 70% productive, and then journal about how we feel about it. so i guess we are going to just keep making more and more journal entries without actually finishing the archives... i swear, i am transcribing them! (and i'm fast at it!) probably need to look into OCR though.
what i'm going to do for work?
well, i don't know, considering the job market is fuckin awful especially since the annoying orange got his second term. i'm getting turned down from very basic entry level shit. i think i'm too skilled for them to trust i'm going to stay at entry level jobs, and too "new" (as in haven't specialized enough in one field) for anyone else to want me... ugh.
e and i kind of agreed that i need to start working freelance/contract work anyway. whether that is through web dev/design or transcription or whatever. i've finally had a little bit of extra energy lately, so i listed a few of my idol CDs on discogs and also made a few websites for my portfolio. hey, it's better than nothing, i guess?
(i also want to learn stenography but the machines are so expensive, so maybe that can wait until if/when i can't find another job... ugh...)
i also made about $50 on prolific last week which honestly is pretty good for a week. and still have lots of surveys available, just haven't been able to dig into them because of working full time. they'll help bridge the gap so hopefully we don't have to dig into our savings while i'm unemployed.
last spending hurrah?
well, i finally got myself some IEM (in ear monitors). spent only $20 but they are surprisingly good. Linsoul 7Hz x Crinacle Zero:2 - affiliate link to help my soon to be broke ass or non-affiliate/vanilla link if you want - which is basically just what reddit suggested for inexpensive IEMs. i just grabbed them so i have a more portable solution when trying to play the steam deck instead of carrying around my big ass mixing headphones. and needed some wireless ones because i didn't want audio delay when playing rhythm games and wanted higher quality audio.
i pulled out my old ipod nano gen 2 and gen 3 (!) being like "wow these headphones don't work with my shitty phone because my phone only takes USB-C headphones even the dongle isn't supported" and then searched reddit and someone suggested to use an old phone and it's like, duh, of course that's the answer. i have a pixel 2 just sitting there begging to be used as a glorified mp3 player, it's even stripped down to the bare basics and has a custom ROM on it.
but yeah, just wanted some way to make myself not go crazy when being unemployed. i haven't been unemployed for over a decade, so i have no clue how long i'm going to be able to last without pulling my hair out... well, i'll do what i can, and keep working on my little projects to hopefully help make some more money.
steve
steve may or may not be getting a divorce... whew. whole different subject. maybe for next time.
anywho i gotta go as maru keeps walking all over the keyboard and trying to help me write this entry. i appreciate his gusto but no.
ttyl <3 sorry for long post, if someone gives me the chance i just won't stfu. i can think of about 100 other things i want to talk about but... some other time.
(also btw i just went out and got rid of some wasp nests. went from have a wasp phobia to being the house designated wasp remover. how is that for a character arc)
It's been quite some time since we've updated, almost a year. But we are currently working on adding backed up entries (all the way from 2002!) to this journal. And then I'll start adding new ones. Aha. You know how it goes. Lots has happened, and it's too much to try to think about right now.
i am just not feeling ok. something feels wrong... it's hard to explain. maybe i am just being too restless or something. i want to get something done, but i never know what to do. maybe we are just in a weird point in our lives. i suppose we are. i don't think anything can be done about it. but still.
sorry i haven't been around much! i'm going to try to return the comments in my inbox tomorrow if i can. depression has been getting the best of me unfortunately.
we went to the end-of-semester dinner for asl 101. we both got certificates which is fun. it was just me, elias, and our other friend in the class that came from 101, the rest of the people were from the higher classes. i guess that makes sense to me, the people in 101 aren't necessarily that dedicated to the language. the people that take the higher classes probably have some level of bond and dedication to the language and their fellow classmates.
it was really fun! of course, it was ASL only. it was so nice to just have silence besides laughter here and there, and i could actually communicate with people. i'm so happy for that.
i'm trying to work on my splurging problem in therapy right now and address the root issues, but it's really hard. for now, i'm just trying to hold off on spending any money until i figure that out. really hard when i just got paid, but here we are.
i got a job interview! well, a half interview. i'm going to be talking with a recruiter today. i redid my resume yesterday and suddenly i've started getting hits, so i guess that it's been my shitty resume the whole time. i pretty much changed it from "marketing speak" to something that's actually intelligible quickly and also listed my full stack web dev credentials. hoping that this actually gets me somewhere. i'm mainly looking because they're opening up the position that would be perfect for me EXTERNALLY!!! at my current job. and i know there's a very good chance that if they hire externally, i'll quit on the spot. so better to be prepared... and it's a good ego booster to know that i could get a (half) interview that easily.
also we woke up this morning and our AC was frozen over, so we called an HVAC person. but there's been flooding around here, so they haven't been able to come. there were two (!) tornado warnings here over the weekend, so bad that we took all our pets and hid out in the bathroom waiting for it to pass. and then yesterday lightning struck closer to our house than i've ever seen. a HUGE boom and just a bit scary. the weather has been crazy lately.
i'm kind of sad that ASL 101 is done. we also finished through the first 11 lessons of lifeprint, so i guess it's correlating at the same time. next week, all the classes are getting together to have a no-voice dinner. i'm excited about it.
finances
elias and i are still having some disagreements about how finances are going to be handled now that he makes way more than i do -- we will get it figured out eventually, but it's still a bummer that we are having disagreements about it
music
we are watching i-land and it has a way different vibe than produce 101 the girls -- in a way that i like, as in they are focusing more on the music rather than the idol/personality stuff. i like the idol/personality stuff but they spent like 15 minutes on staring contests in the first episode of pd101... kind of unnecessary. i appreciate the brevity of i-land
birthday/events
i can't believe it's almost already halfway through the year. elias told me that he is taking off my birthday week in june and had me take it off too -- i don't know if he has a surprise trip planned or what, but i'll look forward to it
b4 i write anything i will just say i see i got some comments/DMs i gotta reply to, i'll try to get to that today or tomorrow
but for today just a lil venting... ughhhhhh
depression
has been HELLA bad this month which has also kinda affected everything. plus i ran out of adderall and i don't even have the energy to fight to get it refilled, which is making me even more sleepy bc adderall is one of the only things that keeps me motivated and awake, otherwise i sleep 20 hours a day like my pets. but like... idk. i haven't even felt like being awake or anything.
work
is still a nightmare. it's really depressing me even worse than usual lmao. my main alter anastasia just kinda had a meltdown and said "fuck all yall" and is gone for now so bye i guess lmao. can't really say i blame her, this job is soul sucking. fucking sucks. and it's unfortunately causing a lil rift in the relationship with E. like a micro rift, barely even there but still there, which SUPER sucks.
sleep
is basically just non-existent these days, and when i do get sleep, i have night terrors every night. sometimes i'm able to get to sleep if my dog Toni is sleeping next to me, but she's the only one that helps. i've tried my other pets, and it's just toni. and bless her, unfortunately she is in a donut right now (a very cute one might i add, actually decorated like a pink donut) because she won't stop licking her leg and giving herself a hot spot. so when i'm trying to sleep, she's like twice as big as she should be because of the donut... haha. it's the only thing that helps me tho. i also forgot my meds last night which makes my sleep even WORSE.
finances
good god don't even get me started on this lmao. i have been impulse spending like money is literally burning a hole in my pocket and then wondering why i am broke. but it's like the impulse spending is due to my depression and trying to get like at least 1 serotonin however i can, but then i have -100 serotonins at the end of the month bc i'm stressed out about finances. but in the moment i'm like "yolo" and end up spending way too much... i'm going to talk to the therapist about it today.
therapy
oh also speaking of which therapy sucks it's hard and exhausting and she's currently doing some EDMR adjacent stuff w me and it makes me even sleepier than usual. like every week i feel like skipping & the only reason i don't is bc it's literally cheaper to just go than it is to pay the last minute cancellation fee :X i'll figure it out...
there's a lot of good stuff going on in my life too tho! like for one thankfully E is actually decent with finances so my questionable financial "decisions" aren't impacting our life that much. plus ASL 101 is almost over and there's a dinner next week for all the people who were in all the ASL classes! i'm pretty excited <3 elias and i are a few of the only people that are moving on to 102 though, which isn't surprising to me. i think that most people would take 101 to see if they like it, and if it doesn't really jive with them, they just stop coming. i get it... haha
work is stressinggg me out worse than normal lol. like i am very annoyed that my skip (brittany) is still coming to me with shit personally, and then doesn't listen to what i say, sends my supervisor to ASK THE SAME SHIT, i give the same answer, and then suddenly she listens to my supervisor. ???? don't come to me if you don't want to hear me? i'm going to lose my McMind. that's about it see ya
i didn't know deadjournal was still around. oh my god. my old journal is STILL UP THERE... i even lied about my age because i was like 12 at the time. i have no clue how to get into it, i think it's still private, but oh my god, that's hilarious. the interests are super funny too
i got so distracted that i forgot what i was going to write about. i think i was just mostly going to write about the fact that i keep waking up every hour in bed. the therapist (and elias) both think it has something to do with the fact that we don't feel okay in general with sleeping. i mean, it's hard. there was one time in our life when we woke up and our abuser that we hadn't talked to in over a decade had MOVED IN. we were in college and living with our father and for some reason, he thought it was ok to have our mother move in, without our consent...? so i guess maybe we're worried about that still. especially since we started talking with her again. (though she lost interest, like i think we said before)
at least today is ASL class. about the only time we are able to get out of the house, and missing last week, we are needing it more than ever. richard* noticed that our car was overheating but assured us it would be fine, so i trust him. and if he was wrong, there's always AAA.
i keep having this like. really annoying problem where i think i'm done w something and my brain is like "yaaay you're done here's the dopamine! check that one off the list :)" and then i only finished it 80% of the way and then someone else comes to me and is like "can you. actually finish that task" it's happening a lot at work which is the exact last place you would want something like this to happen
i stg my adhd will be the end of me... i have meds and everything they just aren't working as well as i might like them to lol. also i have therapy todayyyy i'm going to throw myself on the floor and kick my feet and have a temper tantrum bc i hate therapy lmao. IT NEVER FEELS LIKE IT'S WORKING even though i'm 100% sure that it's at least doing something
i mean i have a really good therapist. i feel like i'm actually making progress w her, whereas in the past i felt like i wasn't making much progress (the therapist before this was super nice and down to earth but had the tendency to just like, end up talking about politics with me instead of trauma stuff or mental health stuff... it ended up feeling like i was paying someone to be my friend which is even more depressing than just being regular depressed)
ALSO I JUST REMEMBERED THAT I NEED TO TAKE MY CAR IN TO THE SHOP TODAY BUT I LITERALLY DON'T HAVE TIME AHHHHH HEEELLLPPP
This weekend was pretty nice. My friend Kendrick came over to help us out with yard work. Of course, he tried to ask for way less money than he actually deserved, so we gave him more than that. I was out there hauling the wood with him and talking with him for several hours. I told him that we wanted to go fishing with him and his wife, and he told his wife, and they both got super excited. They were especially excited that I had never been fishing before.
I was going to go to Deaf Night Out, but after talking to Kendrick for four hours, my social battery was drained. He is a very nice person, but he is one of those people that just talks for four hours straight. I love hearing about his life, stories, etc, but I didn't have much energy to go drive 2 hours, meet new people, then drive 2 hours back. Especially since Deaf social events tend to be fairly lengthy.
Kendrick did put up a fence for us though, so we can finally just let the dogs out without needing to have them on leashes. It's been about eight months of us only leash walking them in the backyard, so it was super refreshing to be able to just let them run around-- for us AND the dogs. They didn't really like being confined to being chained to us, and they're allowed to roam around more when they're just out in the backyard. Elias and I pulled the outdoor chairs out of the closet and just sat outside for a while. It's actually a decent temperature right now, but since we live in Texas, it's a very short window of decent weather. I'm trying to be outside as much as possible because of that. Every time I let the dogs out, I pull the chair back outside and sit down and watch them.
Other than that, we didn't really do much this weekend. Elias has gotten very heavily addicted to Diablo IV, which is good, because I've been very heavily addicted to Balatro. So we end up just spending a lot of time playing video games while sitting next to each other. It's still a form of spending time together, even though some people might not think so, ahaha.
As for my personal hobbies, still just mostly doing the pirating thing. Can't focus at work, so I usually end up getting distracted with that. I also started using Habitica which is somewhat helping keep me on task but isn't really powerful enough to handle my full ADHD brain. We also installed Debian, which is making a lot of the things we do easier and quicker. Whoever said Linux was more complicated than Windows hasn't actually used Linux, because you can just install things instantly from the command line, and there is mountains of FOSS software on here.
I have therapy tomorrow. I do not want to go to therapy tomorrow. Thinking about it is giving me a headache. Ah, well.
ETA: I fixed up the host's website [adoration.me](https://adoration.me) because it is extremely sloppy and tends to make typos everywhere. The Spotify link is also now working.
ASL class was canceled wednesday which made us really depressed. we ordered take-out though. so that helped.
our power went out last night for half the house--happened when i was trying to microwave food. fortunately/unfortunately it was the non-essential but fun stuff that went out (TV, video games) and not the essential but boring stuff (home offices.) so we can still work but we can't play video games or watch TV on the good tv. we have our bedroom tv but it's really tiny and laggy, i want to upgrade it at some point, because 720p is unacceptable in 2024 when 1080p is the standard and can be purchased for really cheap, but it hasn't been a big priority because we don't watch tv in there very often
we just bought solar a month or two back, and whenever we went outside to flip the breakers, the ancient butthead dude from next door came over yelling stuff like WOW YOU REALLY GOT SCAMMED ON SOLAR, DO YOU HAVE TWO BILLS, WHAT ARE YOUR AVERAGE BILLS, YOU MUST BE PAYING A LOT and we were just like. no, it's much cheaper than it was before, it's one bill, and the average is none of your business. we carefully considered our decision and our main reasons were
1. we don't want to pay for electricity for the rest of our lives 2. we actually give a shit about the environment 3. the grid in texas is totally screwed and being off the grid is good for everyone
i didn't explain that to him because he wasn't owed an explanation! but writing all this reminded me to switch over our electric, so i'm good with that
anyway, elias and i both had meltdowns last night, anastasia fronted and helped them out, then we just ended up ordering out again because we don't have groceries, because when i tried to pick them up on tuesday it was ridiculously flooded (they were even blocking areas off) so i had to turn around--see the video i took: [www.youtube.com/shorts/Tq...](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Tq3N74U3pF0)
had to turn around, couldn't keep going, there's a reason the phrase "turn around don't drown" is so popular in this area of texas
i don't really think much else has happened, i'm not too invested in the electric being out because i can just watch tv in the bedroom or play on the switch which i usually do anyway, but we do need to get it fixed, elias is wanting to use our tax returns to upgrade the system as well, which i don't want to do
so much has happened that it's probably just better to put them all in categorical order instead of timeline.
work
a bunch of fucking bullshit. basically was de facto demoted because i advocated for myself and others to have fair pay & reasonable expectations. i'm ok with it, but it's still annoying. i'll just try to look for a new job asap.
one of our alters (anastasia) who is actually the main alter, or at least the center of the system, has work as a huge aspect of her personality. yesterday she found out that they had been under-counting her metrics for months, and then today even more so because they're changing the way the metrics for training are counted so we were being SEVERELY under-counted. she went on a rampage yesterday (which is... really not like her, so i guess final straw situation) & pretty much threw out everything we own that we purchased for ourselves. a few things survived. we told elias about it & he went out and got it from the trash bin... he's a keeper T_T
mother
she stopped talking to me bc she's a narcissist and i wasn't giving her attention. problem solved? not really honestly, because i still feel weird about the whole thing so it's not really resolved for me. trying to decide on what i want to do though...
health
i'm Deaf, so i've been pretty much solely focusing on learning ASL lately. elias and i take a class up in dallas twice a week (a two hour drive there and a two hour drive back... RIP.) i'm very clearly the most knowledgeable in class and can speak with decent enough "beginner fluency" i guess, i can hold normal conversations with people. so people have been looking to me to help teach them... but i'm def not a teacher hahaha i'm willing to sit next to people who are struggling but i am DEF not a teacher. the only reason i'm so far ahead of everyone else is because i practice like CRAZY because i actually have the impetus to practice like crazy haha. elias is hard of hearing but everyone else in the class is hearing besides one dude named mark who is hard of hearing/deaf (cochlear implants) who i think dropped out (i hope not!) the teacher is profoundly deaf though.
i am not profoundly deaf (yet), i can hear with my hearing aids and anything being beamed directly into my ears (like headphones/music etc.) trying to get ahead of it because my hearing is going pretty quickly at this point. at some point in the past few months i went from little d deaf to big D Deaf because of my integration into the community, learning ASL, etc. plus just holding the same culture and values and everything anyway.
it's been wonderful... like, holy shit. going to class the first time was a trip. i could actually talk to people. i was super outgoing because i could actually communicate. that's also part of the reason i'm learning so fast... it's allowing me to be able to communicate! our first class was "my name is X. nice to meet you." we had to go around saying this to everyone, and mark and i had a very brief conversation where i said i am deaf but i was nervous because there was a lot of people, and he said that i didn't need to be. whenever he passed behind me, instead of saying "excuse me", he tapped me on the shoulder
i almost started crying right then and there. this awesome inclusive environment, where the guy actually tapped me on the shoulder to let me know he was going behind me instead of saying "excuse me" where i wouldn't actually hear. i just... yeah. it was so relieving and nice and i just felt welcome for like, the first time in my life
but!! with my hearing getting worse, embarrassing stuff keeps happening. i need to really remember to wear my hearing aids whenever we go out. we went to ASL class last wednesday, and i thought that i wouldn't need them because i thought we were just going to class (and we don't voice in class.) we went to starbucks beforehand and someone was trying to ask if we were in line. all i heard is "are you" and thought it was a worker (due to how quick she was walking) saying "how are you" and i said "good, you?" and she gave me the nastiest look and moved past us. elias was like "she was saying are you in line" and i was like ok well i couldn't hear that.
in class, there were two occasions when i was trying to hear someone say something (because they weren't getting it across in sign.) on the first, i thought she was asking for how to say "language" because whenever she was saying "how do i sign?" she kept saying "how do i sign language?" and she told me out loud what she meant underneath her breath but i couldn't hear her. second occasion, someone was trying to ask if the sign for sun and shower are the same, but the teacher (and me apparently) weren't understanding, i thought she was asking about "sauna." i fingerspelled "sauna" to the teacher, and the teacher was like "oh" and started to explain sauna, and everyone else was like NOOOO! SUN!
elias looked over to me and was like "you're deaf too!" and i was like oh yeah. and now every time i go out i have to say "huh?" and have people repeat themselves constantly, if i don't have my hearing aids on. so i need to make it a habit of just wearing my hearing aids everywhere but to be honest, once i'm fluent enough in ASL, i'm just. not going to use english anymore. it doesn't work for me! and i don't mind being deaf!!
(i really need to go back to the ENT soon, but i keep putting it off, because i'm too nervous... ugh. i just know it's going to be way worse than it was before.)
mental health
regarding mental health, well i don't have enough time to go into that. just that my depression has been way worse and i've barely been coping lol. i changed my meds and hopefully that is going to help but yeah.
hobbies
i've just been a little goblin who is addicted to balatro. like, i literally CANNOT put it down. it being on the switch is super dangerous for me because i just carry the switch everywhere and play it like it's my full time job hahaha. other than that, well, most of my hobby stuff got thrown out, but i still do have a few more.
family
we got a new cat!!!
when we moved into our new house last summer there were a ton of stray cats in the neighborhood. makes sense, the neighbors are all nice and feed them all so they just kinda are collectively the community cats.
there is a kitten who is too sweet that we named snowball, didn’t adopt him though. he looked like he could handle himself and wasn’t super comfortable around humans (yet, probably)
but there were these two tabbies, one we called Fat Tabby and one was Skinny Tabby. fat tabby had an extremely fat face (but not body but the nickname had already stuck) and then Skinny Tabby was just his younger/kitten (probably female) counterpart
at one point we were putting out food for the cats, but the asshole dogs started eating it. like they are literally bullies and no one calls them out on it. they were fighting the cats on our front porch, so we stopped putting food out.
but Fat Tabby still came around and SCREAMED at like 10,000dB. we could hear him through the walls, with the windows shut lmao. so every time he screamed we would go out there and feed him specifically just to avoid the dogs. then he started doing it in the backyard. then he started learning our walking schedule for the dogs and would be out there screaming at 7am and 4pm every day, and we always got him food.
we sat outside with him one day and noticed that he had an injury. and another cat (mean black cat) was trying to approach all three of us slowly like he thought he was being sly. there was one of my shoes outside and when he got close enough elias threw the shoe towards him and he ran off. apparently thought this was his area but never came back after that.
Fat Tabby was super appreciative, in fact instead of in the backyard far away near the back fence, he started sleeping on our doorstep. we had some cardboard boxes out in the front that we were being lazy about getting rid of and he lived in there, used it as shelter when it was cold and raining. yeah that lasted about a week before we just brought him inside lmao. brought him inside, quarantined him in my bathroom in case he had cooties and to let the animals get used to him and vice versa.
made a vet appointment and told them that his temporary name was Fat Tabby lol. then the next day we went out and got all the cat essentials. we bought a tag and were like “shit, we can’t just put Fat Tabby on the tag” so Elias googled celestial names and we came upon Maru. we had to go super quick too because we had an appointment super soon after, can’t remember what but we were already running late so we were like ok Maru it is took him to the vet and he got a clean bill of health. the vet said he had a fat head because he was not neutered but his body was normal haha. we got him neutered ASAP, like a few days later. vet also said he was about a year and a half old.
he is still chilling in my bathroom, we got a zipper screen thing for the door so Evil and he can see each other. Maru is still trying to realize that not all cats are mean bullies, and Evil’s person is elias so he was freaking out whenever he saw him cuddling with him. they both seem to be getting over it. in the past few days Maru even started to play with some of his toys yay. he still screams at 10,000dB by the way but now he does it inside of the house, lmao. and we thought Evil (our other cat) was loud… Maru can see directly into my office and meow alllll day if he sees me and I am not paying attention to him.
Evil is pretty tsundere but Maru is just lovey to all humans. he loves everyone indiscriminately and 100% will constantly cuddle 24/7 if given the chance, so it’s hard to get a good picture of him lmao.
hey all! it's been a little while since I updated. the last update I made was just us getting used to the new house. I guess a lot of weird stuff has happened since then.
first off, a friend of mine visited our house for christmas. it was the first time we had ever hosted anyone, and she has limited English because she is from Japan. i think it went well, but afterwards, she pretty much ghosted us. :/ i did send her a message through LINE, but i haven't checked LINE since then. nothing especially dramatic happened while she was here besides her letting our indoor cat out, and that was her fault, not ours lol. we were in pretty consistent contact before the trip, so i'm not really sure what happened. it's sad to lose my friend, though.
elias proposed to me on our anniversary this year! (jan 2) so i'm super happy about that...!
um... well, february is already hard because it's a trauma time for me and elias, but also it's even more hard now because of elias' attempt last year. it's been exactly one year since his attempt, and we are still both trying to come to terms with everything that happened. we are of course both in therapy (we already were for PTSD/other mental health stuff, we have been for years) and that helps. his therapist suggested that we both write letters to each other and then burn them just as a ceremonial way of showing that we are still alive & that's not going to happen again. we plan on doing that this weekend.
i started talking to my mom again. i don't really know why. i haven't talked to her in over a decade. she was super abusive to me throughout childhood. maybe i just wanted some closure...? i don't know. it seems she's "gotten better" in at least that she's not in any abusive relationship and hasn't been for a long time, and she got clean. but she's still a narcissist, just a non-drugged up abusive/abused one. i've mostly just been avoiding my phone, not necessarily just for her but in general.
work sucks as usual. i've been putting my all into it, working 50-60 hour weeks and essentially not getting appreciated. stood up for myself, put down boundaries, was assertive, and was told if i didn't stop being assertive that i'd be fired. so i am just keeping my head down and keeping quiet until i can find another job maybe. for some reason i always end up quitting jobs around the 2 year mark in february, so it's probably more of a me problem than anything, but still. i think it's just because after 2 years you start to see how the company is really mistreating you. they're also super underpaying me and hiring people in at my wage when i'm far up in the company. as for now i'm just regular disengaged though rather than actively disengaged.
anyway, sorry i haven't really been around/updating/commenting. my therapist wants me to get better at journaling, so i'll probably be around more frequently now. she's really helping me with a lot of stuff. her primary focus is polyvagal theory, and she did something that was pretty similar to EDMR in last session. i am going to see her again today. last session she tasked me with writing about my mom, and i just ended up contacting her instead... so i don't know how my therapist is going to feel about that lmao. she's probably going to be fine with it but slightly concerned.
i'll try to reply to the comments i've received and comment on other people's journals a little bit. if i ever disappear, if you see that i haven't been around for a little bit, you can always feel free to comment! and it might prompt me to remember that this exists lol.
i am having a pretty hard time trying to get used to the new house. it's just a lot! i love the new house, but trying to adjust to being in a new environment is always a little difficult. i finally got through everything for the most part, and finally it's the weekend, but now i'm just... tired. haha. there's still a lot to be unpacked (emotionally and literally), but i'm doing my best.
we are alllmost done packing already! somehow it's a lot easier to unpack than it is to pack. however, we keep seeing stuff that we need to fix, or upgrade, haha. thankfully elias has been good at saving money, but we are going to have to do sooo much work. the most immediate thing that we have to do is have the fence fixed. or rather, a portion added. the seller just let their dogs run around loose, but our dogs are not loose friendly dogs. they are super friendly i mean, but they both have really bad anxiety, and if they ran into the neighborhood dog or strange people, they'd get really upset. so we need to have them fenced in. there's a couple of other things we need to deal with too (like the water heater not working that well), but for the most part we are done...! i'm super excited for us to be able to finally get fully unpacked.
elias made a comment about how there wasn't much storage in this place, and i was like, PERFECT!!! storage is my favorite thing to buy! my favorite store is by far the container store haha. i told him we have lots of vertical space to work with. we really should get a big pantry for the kitchen for example, and we also need to get some shelving for the bathroom... that's just to start. lots of little projects to be done here, like replacing doors, adding molding along the floor, etc. but thankfully the house is move-in ready so nothing we have to tackle right away!
thankfully the town is super easy and small to learn directionally, so i haven't had to rely on waze much. which is good because waze around here sucks, no one bothers to update it haha. google maps is likely equally as shitty. you just kinda have to learn your way around yourself, old school style. typing in the business can kind of get you in the right location, but you have to look around yourself to actually find it haha. but there are lots of cute little businesses. we went to the grocery store and had a $400 purchase (had to replace everything in the freezer for the second time this summer, but for two different reasons) and the lady there was like "you're definitely going to be my biggest order of the day!" just stuff like that. TONS of ways to shop locally, actually it's more of a pain in the ass to shop at chain stores so that's a nice incentive to shop locally.
the seller had an amazon package delivered. i put it inside, but she asked me to leave it out so she could come pick it up. i left it out overnight and it was gone in the morning along with all of her mail. :( it's not a great look! now i'm worried about porch pirates lol. i'm going to get my Ring doorbell working asap, and then i also rented a cheap USPS box that can hold anything that would be super expensive if i know i can't grab the package right away.
i got an appointment with a new psych because the old one was being awful. i'm pretty nervous though, because i haven't been to a new psych in a few years. it's through zoho too which is... kind of ugh. but the doctor herself seems good! at least from the reviews. i won't know until i actually meet her for myself. but i am on a new med, that the old psych put me on. i'm back on my adderall though so i'm feeling SO much better than before when i had run out.
elias and i both have his mother blocked cuz she is just an awful person in general, but today he got a text from his cousin. turns out his mom gave the cousin his number (huge invasion of privacy?? hello??? this is why we have you cut off, lady) and she was trying to hang out in houston. we had to tell her that we moved up to dallas. she of course asked for a more specific area. i just told elias to lie about the location itself, and he did. the problem is, with his family, if you tell one person something, then the entire family will know. and we really can't have his abusive father figuring out where he lives for a wide variety of reasons.
Sorry I haven't been very active. Turns out, purchasing a house and moving is really, really time consuming (and expensive.) We finally moved out a few days ago though! It was kind of a nightmare in a lot of ways, but I'm really glad that we were able to do it. I'm also back on my ADHD meds (yay!) so I'm feeling a lot better than I have been feeling.
This place is like, stereotypical Texas. Like, full accents and "bless your hearts" and everyone in each other's business and COVID deniers working at Ace Hardware level of Texas. I mean, I bought a house in rural Texas, so I'm not really sure what I expected. But I really like the area. It's very homey, lots of local businesses and tiny town. Way different than where I lived before. Much slower pace.
I hope that everyone has been doing well. I hope I can start updating more often now that the moving chaos is (mostly) dying down.