Daily* Miscellaneous Thoughts

easy to be spoiler free without social media and when ur only friend who watches knows better (and also doesn't really talk to u)

uhhhhh I don't think I cared about anything past jax and pomni hugging? I've hated jax for the entire run of the show, and this didn't really change my thoughts there. I think he's allowed to grow and heal and have people like him but I sure as hell don't have to. idk there's parts of me that relate to him, but I felt like in my case it was me who wanted me to change? like I only ever remember one instance of being called out for being an asshole and that wasn't even to my face, it was bc I lurked in the chat after hours to snoop. jax did so much worse shit and people are lining up to fix him, and I don't and won't understand that ig. good for him that it works out. I had to work really fucking hard to change, so i know he's got a long road ahead of him.

Everything after Caine was reintroduced was.. pointless? idk. In any property where I'm supposed to believe that something that was created to have sentience deserves to be treated like a human, I just cannot. E33 was the same exact feeling, like once it's revealed that nah this whole world is just a magic painting from the 'real world' like, blegh. Also the imagery I guess was trying to make Caine more human / grounded ? but again I just can't make that leap. Shit was way to abstract art-y and drawn out. Also him having like, kind of the same closing arc as Jax was repetitive? Like they put a lot of effot into 'redeeming' Jax by giving explanation to why he's fucked up, but ultimately he's dead as hell for most intents and purposes. Then Caine just comes along and monologues and is like, dang I sucked, lemme just go try again and see what happens and they all just are like ok sure whatever come on in. idk maybe I just hold grudges way too strongly, they both SUCK and should just shut the fuck up and find other spaces instead of hurting the same people all the time.

All the MCs being brain-scans is cloooose to the same meaninglessness feeling, but at least like it's presumed that they're fully replicated and thus fully human-minded. The whole show was about humanizing them, so that still played out well in the finale. The irl reveal was weird? Like hearing where their real person is. I get it being a form of closure, but I feel like it would not be healthy for me as a brain-scan to know that I was fabricated and am always and forever going to be trapped in this shit and that my real self is out there still living their best life. What's the point of me then? and like sure the other guys stuck in here with me are great but if I only had those people for the rest of forever and ever and ever, I'd still go crazy. Pull my plug out instead.

also abstraction just being a physical thing and ur brain is still in there as messed up as ever but now trapped in an even deeper layer of hell is FUCKED??

it's kind of a weird time for me, especially thinking of the show as a metaphor for online friendships in general, bc I kinda feel like Ribbit. Pushed away just enough to not want to be around anymore (though not nearly as cruelly as Jax did). I cherish the history of our friendships but where things are at right now it's not a place where I'm able to celebrate what's there.

also ribbit's back arch in some of the shots was a bit sus, but they used her posture generally to good effect

still a good show, well outside of my usual media intake style. The rest was strong enough to forgive a (to me) weak finale. 9/10.

Watched Project Hail Mary, it was fine. Definitely an Andy Weir IP. Lost interest right at the end and apparently there was one last twist that I stopped paying attention to but it was a 2.5 hour movie that already reached a resolution so whatevs.

Weekend days are sooooooo long. Home alone so a little bit more freedom is nice. Got some more stuff set up for the site, getting closer to a finished product I think. Running out of steam with runescape. I'm realistically like less than a hundred hours from maxing but it's feeling like a chore so that's blegh. Trying to focus energy on real self care more than pure distraction, as much as is feasible.

not going to see my dad this weekend even though it's father's day. it always takes so much energy to visit (even when it's not a night out bowling), plus I haven't seen them since coming back from europe so having to go through all of that while still dealing with me not talking to those friends hardly at all rn is more than I want to deal with. Plus my eldest brother just moved back to the state so he'd be there and he's great but more people is more bad. I asked if I could make up lunch next weekend, so that's better than nothing.

Happy Summer Solstice! Nothing makes the day feel longer than it literally being the longest day, am i right? (:

binged 7-9 of LVM s4, super good ofc. Lots of divergence from the campaign which is keeping things fast and fresh. Laudna drop was so cool. Honestly I think the sun tree despoilment is the thing that hooked me the most into the live show the first time. Such strong imagery and emotion. Lionel goated as expected. Dark bard was a fun addition. I think they did fine with the time constraints, but the Scanlan's mom scene was much more powerful in the campaign. I think also bc of time between seasons its hard to keep the throughline on all the emotional beats behind it. They're keeping the cultists (the unalive five) soooo powerful which is really fun. I wonder if they're going to keep it a battle between VM and the cultists or if they're gonna still do the whole divine trammel thing and have a Vecna, sorry, a Whispered One final battle. Season 5 confirmed in the BTS so there's definitely time. Exalted vestiges yassss. Plus the whole Titan over Vasselheim thing is just like, soooo animate-able. and I want to see the shit out the Everlight's realm. Gods campaign one was so good. Maybe another re-listen is in store.

Sundays are just Saturdays but if I feel bad I know I have work tomorrow to distract me, so that's something. I decided (for now) to not delete my discord account. Still not sure where to go with things, but at least I'm a little more stable about it all. Website is feeling like a good outlet to ground to so far.

I don't even like work that much other than being paid to be distracted from myself for a significant portion of the day and having an excuse to do hygiene and be social and get out, which makes it Good for me if not always the most fun thing to be doing. Getting back into a fair bit of routine after all the switchups that have been going on, so being able to predict what my work day is going to look like and to plan how much fucking-off I can do throughout the day and still meet expectations and such is nice. I feel sort of bad sometimes because I Definitely care less than I used to now that I feel more like a cog in the machine, and since I help make custom-fitted mobility devices I know that me fucking up makes a less-abled person's life not as good or worse 😓 most of the time things are simple enough that phoning it in is totally fine bc I know what I'm doing, and if it's a complex job I can usually focus up and get it right, but it's that middle ground that's like, an order that takes a little bit more effort but I might be on autopilot too much to notice that it's tricky or whatever.

I'm also letting other people's fuck ups get through more often and just focusing on doing my job right, which kinda feels shitty but I'm being actively discouraged by management from taking extra time to do things that aren't strictly my job because now i'm fully half of the throughput for the whole building instead of less than a quarter 😓 I feel like I should plan 'sick' time with my supervisor so we can build up some evidence of how fucked up things can be when I'm gone and why we need another person to be able to fill in. 5 sick days to use this year and 4 days of PTO left, idk what to do with it bc I'm boring but also they discourage using it at the end of the year bc that's our busy season. ALSO using any paid leave forfeits overtime pay for that week which fucking sucks but is legal i guess so whatever.

got free 3 months of extra audiobook time on spotify so that's been nice. Listened to This book on the Supreme Court's shitty shittiness and how shitty it is and UGH, but I think civic engagement is very important (even though I do the bare minimum of just voting) and knowing how systems are abused is soooo much more useful and powerful than just being mad that things suck.

Also listening to The Nine Eyes of Lucien. Quite good so far, most of the way through. Robbie Daymond is a dream. I didn't realize how unusual it was for a while, that the protagonist isn't a good guy. Getting into the live campaign storyline now and it's a kind of weird interweaving of retelling the story from Lucien's perspective with clips? or re-records? of dialogue, different but familiar both in the like content and also the presentation idk. A bit of a weird experience. I also feel like as a standalone novel, none of this would make any fucking sense without knowledge of the campaign already especially now that MN are introduced, BUT since I do have it it's fine and great hehe. I think it does a really great job of putting the campaign in more context though, fully fleshing out the differences between Lucien and Molly and the Nonagon, the descent into madness and power and grasping for humanity while seeking to give it all away. His losses feel very real and profoundly affect his character, and honestly I have mad respect for just how complex of a situation it was and how fucking hard MN want to save their friend as much as they want to save the world. Remembering the end now, and seeing all this shit, honestly there couldn't have been a better outcome for him. I'll enjoy seeing the rest of the story from his eyes.

Regular ass day. Didn't eat lunch and I went out for lunch yesterday so today I just starved. Best way to stay skinny fr. My relationship with food is so normal and healthy.

Finished Nine Eyes of Lucien. I dunno, I feel like the second act didn't really need to exist, in the end. It didn't bring toooo much that was new to the story, so other than being a slightly unique perspective it was otherwise not that engaging. I feel like they tried not to re-use too much or like give a play-by-play of the campaign in novel form, but the pace was sooooo fast at the end. Fight scenes were very glossed over, time was hard to keep track of, the existence of Essek and the Krin (Kryn?) was very much shadow dropped and left to the reader to place into the story themselves. A lot of the body-horror nightmare that is Cognoza was more thrust upon the reader than left as something to sink in on how fucked it is, and the performances of the Somnovum left something to be desired (sorry Robbie, Matt did it better). Would have been fine to just leave it as a prequel novel and not do the whole second half tbh. Still okay though.

9 more audiobook hours this month hmmm. The problem with listening at work is that I can't be Super into wanting to get the full experience of the book bc I will miss huge sections and details. Maybe more nonfiction leaning stuff would be good? Escaping to fantasy while actively stuck in the real world is fun and all but idk. Never been much of a nonfiction reader. It can't be anything that'll fuck me up, which is a lot of things bc I'm sensitive lil guy, even though fighting back big emotions at work is something I do quite regularly.

Did a full solo double shift at the rescue today. Each shift only takes like an hour, so I mostly spent the same amount of time there that I usually do, I just worked harder during it hehe. I like being there alone bc I feel so much more free to vocal stim and talk to the cats and all dat, I'm quite self conscious about it even when I'm working with people I've worked with for years who do it too. Update with more pics on the other page.

So when I said yesterday I shouldn't listen to anything that'll fuck me up at work, I went and did the most exactly opposite thing you could do and listened to that. Not all the way through yet because I had to take breaks because jesus. fucking. christ.

I watched iCarly growing up so I knew of her. Was more of a Miranda Cosgrove guy bc of Drake and Josh though. I did watch her Last Meals epi, which was great, as they all are. I also don't have strong attachments to pretty much anything from childhood if I haven't relived it in adulthood (like ATLA) so I have no real memory of the show that's separable from other sporadic memories of other shows. Having her childhood so mapped out is an astounding amount of effort by itself, but for it to be the level of fucked up that it is and to persevere in recreating it in a fashion that sounds as truthful as it could be given the nature of memory is such a strength of will that I madly respect. I'm sure parts of it were easier due to the documented nature of her mother's hoarding and being a child/teen/adult-ish actress, but it's all very cohesive and powerful and horrifying. Telling it to the world is another thing entirely.

I think the biggest, most recurrent theme that I can even sort of relate to is eating disorder / body image stuff. At like 10% of her level. I have enough issue there to extrapolate up and begin to understand what some of those feelings are and the drive and the necessity and the impurity of relationships to food and body image, but I would never claim to have anything diagnosable as an eating disorder. I'm not sure where my issues even come from, really. It's mostly a static body image, having a very specific interalized way that I look, and when the thing in the mirror doesn't match that, or the number on the scale doesn't match that, I do not like that. I don't want muscles too big. I don't want anything that can be mistaken for a belly. I don't want to be called skinny. I'm rarely happy with my hair, but I have more than my brothers so that's funny at least. I hate being remarked upon for any physical trait. Every. fucking. time I see my grandma or my step mom they say I've gotten taller. I hate being this tall (a mere six feet even), not that I'm not aware of the advantages that being a tall white guy has in society. It doesn't fit my body image but I know I can't change that so fuck me. Acne, ugh. Depression and skin picking make for a lifelong struggle. I hate the scarring I have from years and years of it. Whenever I see a photo of myself in a raking light it's just awful. I can't grow enough facial hair to cover it. I hate shaving. I hate this stupid flesh sack and how much it fucking matters to other people. The internet is great for being incorporeal.

I am a legally healthy weight, 6' 150lbs, but that do be skinny by most accounts. Coming out of uni I was 135. When I first started gaining weight, after starting antidepressants, I was thankfully already in therapy and so it was not a difficult thing to find peace with. It was more like something that I never expected to have to face? and being faced with the idea of being fat, that horrible fate that everybody in my family always says is bound to happen when I get older, was a bit of a system shock. I've never been fat. To date, I've never been more than 160lbs. I don't have any associated trauma with being fat, that I know of. I was an 8lb baby which I guess is above average but since then, nah. My therapist chalked it up to the fact that happy people tend to eat more, which I kind of took at face value (mostly bc she pointed to herself, a fat, happy woman) and instead I just reset my expectations of what I should weigh. Instead of 135 being the baseline, 150 was the new baseline. My self in the mirror still looked okay, I guess. I skip meals a lot. I get disgusted by food I eat regularly. One bite can be fine and the next can make me want to throw up (not bulimic thankfully, I was so happy the first time she said that she failed at making herself bulimic but then she went and figured it out later 😭). Good days are two meals. I snack to make up for calories a lot of the time, but I will go through all my snacks and then just be hungrier for a while instead of getting more. If dinner wasn't a regular thing in my household I'd be fucked there, for sure. It's not a money thing. It's not really a texture thing, most of the time? Sometimes it's a depression thing. Appetite and motivation both. I hate foodies. I don't get it. I have had good food. I am even a passable cook. I watched the food channel for a few years growing up. Food is fine. Eating sucks. I hate the obligation. I hate the necessity. I hate that it matters so much to how functional this stupid flesh sack is. I hate choosing. I hate that it's not a choice.

All of that is mostly overstated for effect and with the an elevated disposition in light of the book, but it's roots are real. It doesn't control my life, so it's not a disorder. It's just a fucking nuisance.

All parents are tough. Mine are emotionally distant, so I'm pretty emotionally stunted and uncommunicative regarding my feelings and being able to express them verbally. Divorced parents has its whole host of issues, too. Her mom though was i n s a n e. Her dad being a minor character in her life is sad, but at least he stuck around. I have no ability to wrap my head around everything I heard of her story and her mom. It's all just fucked to high hell. That sucks, I'm sorry that happened, etc etc. I have nothing to offer there.

Loss is trickier for me to feel like I genuinely relate. I had the great displeasure of spending several hours a week for years with my Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, et al. grandmother. It's tricky because I was deep in my own depression at the time. She was technically my grandmother but I didn't hold any great emotional attachment to her. Even growing up, she was always fairly distant, a bit stern and aloof. She tried to kill herself when my mom was a teenager. Good ol' ammonia and bleach. I attribute a lot of my genetically predisposed issues to her, but that's easy to do because she's dead and I don't care about her. I watched her die. Literally, but also over the course of those years. We watched lots of public broadcast, since they didn't pay for TV. Mork and Mindy re-runs. Gameshows that I don't remember the names of. Some Elvis movie in Hawaii, my first actual experience with Elvis and finally understanding what a hunk he was and why my other grandma has a long and public lust for him. I get you, girl. Looking through photo albums full of people who died before I was born, probing her fading memories and trying to get a picture of the girl and then the woman she was. I hold both women in my head: the photos and the husk.

Death was never so looming and imminent for her as it was for Ms. McCurdy's mother. I didn't know how to grieve or know that I should. I knew it was sad, a travesty in fact, that somebody's soul can be taken away and leave behind this barely functional facsimile of a human. I wanted her to die; I didn't see a reason for her to be alive, to take so much of our family's time and energy and emotion and never be able to contribute so much as a laugh or a smile. But I had to help out. That's family, it's what you do. I got it in my head that I had to be the one to help. Still in uni, a time to be free and explore and invest in your own future, but I had to be available to help out. Every single weekend, me and my mom would visit, me doing yard work, mom doing housework, papa doing a grocery run since he can finally leave the house and my mama alone for a bit. Towards the end, I would come on some weekdays when my papa had appointments for himself, mom was working but I didn't have class, or a job, or a club, or friends...

You get the image. I'm not trying to live in the resentment. I still don't really know where the source that feeling of obligation comes from. Eventually we convinced my papa to move her into hospice, after he fell down and hurt himself trying to help her up after she fell down and hurt herself. She could barely walk to the bathroom, a dozen steps down the hall. The first time I saw a woman's lower half uncovered as an adult, her having no presence of mind to close the door and me having to help her there anyways. COVID started around that time. They let us visit when it was time. Her laying in a bed in a stranger's house, where even if she was conscious she would have had no idea where she was. The labored breathing. Dabbing her lips with a wet rag because the nurse told us it helps them feel more comfortable. Labored breathing. Waiting. Dabbing her lips with a wet rag. Papa holding her hand, saying some soft, sad words that she wouldn't have been able hear and we all knew it. Dabbing her lips with a wet rag. A laborious breath. Her last. So uneventful. So final. A death as meaningless as the rest of the end of her life. The end of nothing important. A breath out.

I drove my mom's car home. She had a mustang at the time, a nice ride, one of the few times I got to drive it alone. I sure as hell didn't want to be there any longer. Later that night, the most we ever talked about it, my mom asked if I was doing okay. I said yeah. The timeline is fuzzy, but my planned suicide on my upcoming birthday in two months sure was awfully close.

I did better at grieving our dog. I cared more about him. I didn't stay at the end, when the tech put the needle in and pushed the plunger and, well, I don't know because I was in my room with our other dog, petting her warm fur, feeling her living breath and envying the unknowing ease of her life. I came out and his eyes were open. I tried closing them, like they do in the movies, but they were already stiff. They just bounced right back open. I didn't want to touch a dead thing any more than that. We buried him in the backyard. I would be damned if I didn't help with that; more for my family than for me, but it sure as hell is a way to get some finality. I wonder what his body looks like now. I had friends by now, some semblance of community, shared pictures and all that. I missed him, but he didn't make me think that life was utterly meaningless and want to die, so that's progress.

As my papa's health has gotten worse, a failing heart, diabetes, and skin cancer, I've been able to grieve throughout the process. We sold the house they'd lived in for 53 years. I stayed behind to 'pack up a few more things' and let myself cry. Alone, in my grandfather's house. That had never happened before. Visiting every weekend was no longer a thing. I'm still trying to figure out what the fuck to do on Sundays. But he's himself still. In a nice assisted living facility, with new friends and nurses and meals cooked every day. His is not a hollow end, if still unenviable. I don't like visiting him. I've already grieved, what do you mean there might be more to the story? but that same fact makes it easier to cope with the inevitability. I won't have to grieve as hard when it happens. Maybe it makes me a worse grandson, but keeping my sanity is more important to me.

Jesus this is already so long.

I've only just been getting into adult Jennette, so maybe I'll save that for tomorrow after I finish the book. Lots of thoughts there already. Sex and sexuality is a nightmare of a thing.

So many emotions.

The therapy saga was so blessedly heartwarming in all of its struggles and small victories. The universal, inescapable truth that you're going to therapy because you're in love with somebody and want to be better for them. The secondhand pride of her going her first 24 hours without purging, and the fall of facing the deeper issues that such a small reprieve will inevitably uncover. Worksheets, journaling, crying over the stupidest shit that nobody else would cry over but its the biggest thing in the world for you in that moment. Throwing away the scale as a gift to herself. The slow, crawling, molasses in winter pace of progress, that you can look back on years later and see how fucking far you've gone and be so proud because you know the work and the struggle and the cost and the time. To look your past dead in the eye and say what it is. To know it's not even over. Ever over.

Heads too caught up in my own shit now to write relevant stuff. Maybe tomorrow. I wish I could let myself be as angry as I am.

It's been a month so whatever, the anger is real and really needs get out.

Continually prompting somebody to keep their own word is something neither you nor I should have to do. Yelling at her directly feels like even more of a waste of breath than trying to have genuine conversation was. I know and knew she struggles to communicate. We've struggled in the past, dating, and after, and a year later witnessing it on the trip. I know it's a hard part of any friendship or relationship or any anything with anyone.

When I approached her about having Feelings come back, after the trip and after hanging out again after the trip, I knew to give her exit ramps and grace because it's a hard topic. She engaged with me still, a rejection to be sure, but directly inviting continued conversation. She was "open to talk" and I had expressed that as my main goal, talking.

So I did. More of where my feelings were at, the depth or lack thereof, engaging with her feelings and her known insecurities especially regarding our break-up. Leaving open options and even a direct question, and restating only wanting to talk. Not needing any specific outcomes. I didn't expect a reply for a day or so. That's hard for me, but not unusual. I sent a supportive message the next morning wishing her luck at her appointment and apologizing for adding complications. She replied, with her voice that uses perfect punctuation and grammar, that it went well and not to worry about things. Ok, great, I think. No hard feelings.

So when the next day comes and goes, and another day comes and goes, and so on, and I never get a response to the conversation that she agreed to, that I gave her open and unpressured time and space to respond to, 9 days pass before I'm pissed and bitter enough to block her. Something like "well she can't ghost me if I ghost her first" or whatever stupid brain logic can be found. Some small petty revenge against a phantom. She's not blocked anymore, but neither am I checking discord. I don't know if she tried to message me while blocked, and found out. If she did, I can't help but defend that 9 days was plenty of fucking time to say anything at all.

Talking to her now would be a lose-lose. If I try and she responds, then the timer for disappointment just gets reset. If I try and she doesn't respond, that's that much more energy I've wasted which is just going to convert itself into more pissiness and bitterness, and there's obviously plenty of that to go around.

I know it's hard. I know it's scary. I know she has issues around being liked. She had been accepting of my compliments in everything leading up to the start of the conversation, consciously fighting against her impulses to deny them.

I don't know how things changed from one day to the next, how saying I had a crush was so different than saying I Liked her. I didn't even ask her out again, I asked if I could talk about my feelings and see what was real and sustainable. Romantic, I know.

I don't feel like I did anything fucking wrong, and even now, past the stage of my emotional abandonment trauma being triggered, I can't help but be angry that she wasn't true to her word. I know she wasn't lying when she made that promise, but it ended up being one anyways.

I know the depression. I know the anxiety. I know the 12 hours a day playing games every single day to escape how bad reality sucks, how bad the thoughts in your head are to face. How one day can become two can become nine. I know the absolute hole it is to dig yourself out of - it took me years - and that it's unfair of me to expect her to dedicate some of what little energy she has to face the hardest things in life, on me. I know it's unfair that I have the age and the years of therapy and the relationship history and the cis body and the stable life. I know it, and I still can't give her any grace on this.

I'm sad and angry and upset and disappointed because she's the only friend I expected to keep after the trip. Because being my most honest and exposed self was the last thing that happened before we stopped talking, when it took so much fucking work to let myself feel that much (not even that much) for somebody else again. Because communication is so fucking important to me, and the only way to fail at it is to not do it; and she failed, and now I'm failing too by hating her silence and thinking it's all pointless, hating the hate and hating my own silence and hating that it's all bleeding over into my other relationships. Because anger is the emotion I hate expressing most, but it's the only one that I want to express right now. I am angry.

Anger is out so the sad is in.

I feel like I'm either getting worse or am just much more conscious about bad eating habits after I'm Glad My Mom Died. The idea of making myself throw up is increasingly appealing, mentally. Just getting the shit out of your system. Feeling like something is wrong and hey, that'd be a big change... Also just wanting something actually fucked up to be going on with me, not just being sad, so I can have a real excuse to feel as bad as I do idk. Journaling is like my only coping mechanism (horrible, I know). I don't have any standard vices, don't drink or smoke or gamble or manically spend money or whatever. I've thought about self harm too. I don't even know what it would be like. People cut their wrists or thighs? and that helps? idk. I think having been Extremely suicidal for a long period of time kinda puts me off of anything less than one step removed from being able to die. Suicidal thoughts are still almost zero lately even with this terrible brain state, so I'm doing something right there at least.

Been rewatching ATLA for a bit. On the verge of tears at least once an episode, sometimes more than the verge depending on if I fight it or not. The trust and care and camaraderie and Iroh's love for ZuZu and the whole fucking show is so cute and good and wholesome and meaningful and UGH.

LVM season 4 10-12 watched as well yesterday. I think they swung a little too far on the pendulum of making Pike the center of the story vs her not being there much in the actual campaign. Dark bard did end up kinda being annoying visually and thematically by the end. Vecna is still a great villain, and I think Pike's flippy floppiness, while it Sucks right now, should play the hand of asking the gods for boons and favors and championship to defeat Vecna all the more meaningful. Definitely her being responsible for his ascension and the deaths of however many of those followers needs to have some big consequences on her. I can't really imagine Vax not dying in the end still, but Pike saccing herself too would feel appropriate, not that I think they would.

Amongst the cities I stumbled upon an asynchronous bookclub, whereupon I do not have to directly interact with my fellow clubbers! Perfect! (I'm sure I might once I feel more comfortable). Peeping the pages of all the peeps put a lot of pep in my p... ppp..... step. Ok no more alliteration. I adore books and the not having to choose a book to read sounds lovely (thus avoiding constant rereads). I definitely struggle with remembering things I've read (or seen or heard or...) so cataloging ongoing experiences as I've started to do here is a good way to not treat escapism as ephemeral and make it mean something, even if only to mean sometimes that escapism is valid. Books have certainly affected me greatly before; Crime and Punishment lives in my head rent free any time I feel like I should be a different person than I am. "If I worried myself all those days, wondering whether Napoleon would have done it or not, I felt clearly of course that I wasn't Napoleon." I am no more Napoleon than Rodya was, and luckily for me I don't need to murder old ladies and fumble the bag and resent myself for the rest of my days to know it (I just have my own long, different struggles instead).

Going back and retroactively updating like 4 or 5 years onto goodreads is a Lot, I feel like I should write reviews more than just ratings but idk public reviews on things I don't have that much to say about or remember specifics for is kinda meh. I have done sort of book reviews in this journal thingy already, idk if I should like distill them out into something more dedicated to it or not. Probably?

I spent a fair amount of time building up my Likes page into a visual shelf for things; refactoring it to make it more functional seems like a lot of work and I'm still very new to html/css so idk I might not hehe. It's hard to limit yourself, like it would be very appropriate to list Every book of the 14 books in Wheel of Time (except crossroads of twilight zzzz). Also kinda shy about sharing playlists but albums also have stuff that I don't know or don't like too but ehh.

I see the theme of Shrines on a lot of people's pages, and I dunno where I'm at with the idea yet. It's kind of like a tattoo to me; I've never liked anything enough to make it a permanent fixture on my body. Also sharing the things that mean the Most to me in an in-depth intimate manner is very challenging, like I have to get it right and get it Whole and get it Me, not just something to slap together. Also I hate parasocial stuff and fan stuff so yk, there's that.

Also people coding their websites not in the Neocities IDE sounds like heaven, I need to try that lol. It's not the best. I dunno if I should like properly go through html/css tutorials and get a foundational understanding of things or just continue to yoink github snippets any time I think of something I should do. I'm more into the journaling of it all rn, so maybe some other day.

Primary ballots are in! The only time where my vote sort of matters insofar as choosing a candidate. My stupid fucking shithole rep is running for Governor so he isn't on the ballot this year thank fucking god. I dare to believe strongly that he's not gonna win gov. He had a 20 point margin in 2024 but was incumbent and it was 2024 and he's a mormon in a pretty mormon district. Maybe there's a chance it flips this year?? Would be nice to have a rep that isn't a monster. Who knows how the fuck mail-in-voting will be come November. State has already rebuffed calls for voter rolls and our AG is trying to revive some of the 2020 election shit (in a good way), so I'm hopeful? Is that allowed? Dare I be hopeful for this country? It's only let me down for the entirety of my adult life so far, surely it gets better.

I can't end on that, so I'll just say today was nice. I didn't pressure myself into doing anything or feeling like I should be doing something, I actually just let myself relax and explore the web and watch ATLA and vibe. I mean I did blow off my dad again, but he's had worse from me. Better a bad son than a sad son, I say. No bias.

Took today off of work mostly to have a 3 day work week this week. I don't know what I'm gonna do next weekend though.

Not as good today about feeling okay doing nothing, but that's mostly what I did. More ATLA, some Critical Role, some site stuff. Read another hundred pages or so of Catch-22 before deciding that was enough. Book review for that is up, kinda short.

Mid earth season, finally getting introduced to Toph (the best best character) and Azula (the best worst character). ZuZu yelling at the storm to strike him with lightning so he can fling it back in the world's face is so relatable. Getting in return the purest apathy that only the natural world can give is so relatable. One of my favorite Wheel of Time scenes is Rand on the Throat of the World, same scene as with Zuko pretty much. I've been on the tops of mountains alone (not in storms though, I'm not that stupid) and it's just such a humbling experience. It can be very lonely, not just to be literally alone, but also to think like, damn there's millions of people out to the horizon and I'm the only one at this spot right here able to see all of them. Not feeling better than any one of them, but feeling different to all of them. But also being purely me, having the strength and the confidence to do a hard thing alone and relishing the freedom and opportunity to do so (and also appreciating the park services who maintain trails that actually make it possible). It's also just really cool to be able to look at all the mountains that dominate the valley and know what the view is like from up there. It makes life in the city less constricting, knowing that I can achieve freedom outside of it, that I have a place to escape to.

Excited to see kitties tomorrow. I wonder if I should volunteer more than once a week to fill my time better. We've been a little short staffed lately but with work not uncommonly needing overtime now, it's harder to feel reliable.

Remembering series that I liked a lot and need to catch up on, Midst came to mind. It is *so* fucking good, but it's also weird as hell in so many ways. It's a long-form structured improv show with three concurrent narrators, so it kind of reads like an Actual Play but there's no game systems or anything, just them creating scenes and story and being really good at it. It's like sci-fi fantasy idk, like imagine a Western + steampunk but remove all the steam and replace it with weird ass magic in a weird ass world and then make it completely different than that. It's so hard to describe hehe. Absolutely recommend it.

While listening to it I encountered a strange issue that made me realize I am an absolute fool and have had my phone audio set to Mono for like all of forever, I guess?? I use only one earbud a lot so I guess I did it for that. But they used an effect that phase shifted the left and right audio channels to emulate a reverb hall kinda thing, but when that merged back into a mono channel it did exactly what noise cancelling headphones do and zeroed out the waveforms so it was just silence and post-effects where a big speech was supposed to be happening lol.

I realized that it's been mono for *everything* so I had to listen to music on the drive home that would be Much better in stereo now, so I did what anybody else what do and put on Beethoven's 6th. It contests itself with a couple others for my favorite symphony, because when it hits, it hits so hard, and I think yesterday's thoughts with the whole loneliness and mountains and yada yada set it up perfectly. The first three movements are cute and vibey and very much in line with a stroll through the countryside and set things up so the fourth movement just absolutely makes you feel like an ant in a hurricane. I've seen it live in a Loud hall and o m g it's probably my favorite experience at a concert to date. So when I listen to it and I get close to the fourth movement I turn that shit up to where I know it will Feel just as loud as that, and fuuuuuck it works every time. Headphones can't remotely do it justice. Just feeling so humbled by the power of the storm and the music that's creating it, tiny and helpless and powerless and awestruck. Then coming down from it, the fifth movement is so sweet and forgiving and it made me cry some more. I'm averse to seeing repeats of pieces bc concerts are spensy, but it's absolutely one I would take any (reasonable) opportunity to see again. Good emotional release though, very much needed. I love having music that I know can really affect me, and being able to choose the right one for the right mood is such a great tool.

this idiot company we've partnered with at work for new software SUCKS at their one job of making software. They have to be cheap as hell to work with, otherwise I can't see any reason why anybody would choose these chucklefucks. It's a bit telling that I, a nobody tech at my company, am the main liason with the *CEO* of their company for implementing everything, and even more telling that he's the fucking CEO and they still do shit that I tell them not to do bc it fucks with our work flow, is not good, or is literally broken bc they have no fucking QA process to test shit bc they don't know what they're doing. Well okay, to be fair, they have a development version that I can test the updates on, so I do and tell them what's not good or literally broken so they can update it. Then they don't update it, push the development version to the live version anyways, and make mine and my coworkers day worse trying to deal with problems that we shouldn't have bc AGHGHGHGHHGHGH. At least it keeps things interesting 🙃 How's that for being angry on main lol. I guess I only hate expressing anger when it's about people I care about.