Another update! Doing okay lately. I feel like starting to come up out of a pretty heavy dip into depression land once again. My personal space is a wreck because self care is always the very first thing to go when I start getting depressed. I'll try to clean up once my back starts feeling better. You read that right. I'm now old enough to have back problems. Fun. I never asked for this, but I guess since I grew up watching the lion king on VHS (and using NuTang during my teenage years) that it's just time for that kind of thing.

I guess I've been struggling with mental health a lot lately. My sister says she worries about me and how I'll react when I just can't take the stress and depression anymore. To me it doesn't feel like depression all the time though. It's just kind of numbness, like I can't react emotionally to anything. I should probably try to get in to see a therapist or psychologist, but that would require me to not be absolutely terrified at both leaving the house and being seen by the general public.

Most times I'm noticed by anyone, it's been a negative reaction. For instance, a person with roadrage noticed me and bumped my car from behind because they couldn't pass me before we reached an intersection. Or getting yelled at by a random stranger after getting my hair cut because I was standing at my car door, getting distracted by a horn honking in the parking lot, but inadvertently blocking a person from parking right next to me. Sometimes it feels like any time someone notices me (in reality) that they're angry and taking it out on me. It's not (much) better online. Most friend requests that I get on any of the apps I'm on (fb, tiktok, twitter, mastodon, whatsapp, any dating site ever) have been from scammers looking to make a buck off of me. I've kinda sworn it all off tbh.

Anyways. Things are hopefully going to get better soon. I've been asked by my boss to go ahead and start coming back into the office instead of working remotely. As much as I don't really want to do it, I know that's just my depression and agoraphobia talking. He constantly reassures me that I'm doing a good job at work, and that my performance is great, but that this is actually for my mental health and that he's worried about me. I understand where he's coming from and agreed that I'd start coming in. Then I did whatever I did to cause my back to hurt, so that'll start next week.

I'm hoping this'll result in a raise at the end of the year (for the first time in 3 years). I'm the lowest paid member of my team, despite being there for 5 years, longer than all but my boss and another dev who started on the same day as me. I'm being paid $35k less than anyone else on the team, and I'm the only non-senior developer on the team. Once I start returning to the office, I'll ask what I can do to step up to a senior role which will hopefully result in a pay raise.

Well, back to procrastinating my Friday away. I should be working and learning devops stuff to be worthy of the raise I'm hoping for, but sometimes that's just really hard. I feel good writing all this down though. Thanks for reading if you made it this far :)

Take care, all

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

Wow, 10 years went by too quick. I don't even know what to say here really after that last update. Things got better for me in many ways, but I've been through a lot of really hard sucky times.

• Got an associates degree and a job in programming


• more or less adopted my kid sister as my daughter


• had to live through her having a stroke due to interaction between medication and a genetic mutation


• never mended my relationship with my brothers so now everything's awkward and distant


• I learned how to make fresh loaves of bread and then decided to buy a breadmaker instead (that I never use)


• t i k t o k   a d d i c t i o n


• Maybe autism/ADHD/both?


• Never learned Japanese


• Never went back to Japan


• p a n d e m i c


• Ate sushi and watched a good ungodly amount of anime


• c r i p p l i n g   d e b t


• C R I P P L I N G   D E B T


• Chat GPT is pretty cool

All in all things are looking okayish. Being in my mid 30s is fucking weird. I miss the having the routines and structures of my life when

So yeah, that's about it. September will be one year since my daughters stroke. She pulled through though and is bouncing back. I never really got over it. Just kinda stopped acknowledging it like I do everything else that's ever really hurt me.

Anyway, who knows what the next 10 years will look like. Maybe I'll start writing journal entries more often?

Comment! (2) | Recommend!

Be it extremely emotional, controversial, messed up, or whatever, this entry has been password protected.

If you know it, enter it; or, ask me for it.

Comment! (2) | Recommend!

The season ending of Doctor Who was amazing. I cannot wait until November 23rd. WOW it was good. Steven Moffat changed everything with that ending!

Comment! (1) | Recommend!

Man, this sucks. I just got paid for my first week of work. Enough to pay half my rent and get my car filled up, and have a bit left over for lunch at work, and various expenses. Now my car broke. The front wheels are shaking like they're about to fall off. Taking it to a mechanic is going to cost 700-800 dollars. Why is this happening now. Why couldn't it have happened after I set up my emergency fund? I've got two weeks left that I can rely on a guy at work for a ride, but after that we'll have different schedules and I won't have anyone to pay for rides. I hate this. Why does every week have something bad happen?

Comment! (1) | Recommend!

Well, actually I can. Just not a good one. A water line broke under my house, and I caught it. When my front yard was flooded. So this morning, my water was shut off. I couldn't go on a walk, I couldn't brush my teeth, I couldn't take a shower, I couldn't wash fresh clothes. I was pretty angry. Heading out to work in 25 minutes, hopefully will be fixed before I get back.

Comment! (3) | Recommend!

Well, the last time I updated was two days ago. Those were two pretty crazy days. The first day, I had lost all motivation to do anything, and just came home and went to sleep. Hopefully that won't happen again. "I'VE STILL GOT STUFF TO DO, BUT I DON'T CARE" is pretty much what went through my head. I've got a list of 13 things to do every single day that I normally get done between waking up and going back to sleep.

1. Wake up Early
2. Brush Teeth
3. Exercise
4. Shower
5. Read Whatever is on my bible reading plan
6. Read Devotional
7. Pray
8. Consume some kind of Japanese Media for listening/reading practice
9. Read a chapter of my Japanese Textbook
10. Study any flashcards that I have due for Japanese
11. Learn something about programming
12. Learn something on Khan Academy
13. Log all food eaten that day on MyFitnessPal

A pretty jam packed list if you also consider that I have to work and travel 9.5 hours per day and sleep an additional 6-7 hours per day, but if I don't track each of these items on The Daily Practice then I'm prone to forget all about it.

The problem with not logging my activity in any day, is that I break my chain if I don't log. I had chains that where two weeks long at least on each of these until the day before yesterday. When I stopped doing anything, including logging my activities, on Tuesday the 7th, it made me have a break in my chains. Now, at least for the next week, I'll have to see the break in my routine that happened on Tuesday. It kind of hurts my motivation, but I think the point of this kind of thing is that it forces you to rebuild. If you care enough about the things your tracking to actually write them down and force yourself to track them every day, then you care enough to rebuild your broken chains after you mess up.

As for yesterday, I was feeling all demotivated because I broke my promises to myself about always getting this stuff done. I realized at that point that I can allow myself to make mistakes. It's the only way to learn. I think that not having the motivation to do one thing on my list shouldn't force me anymore to not work on all the other items. I lost the motivation to exercise for one day, and let that drag me into doing nothing but playing "Path of Exile" all night on my computer.

I'm going to have a lot of trouble with that game I think. It's very engaging, about as engaging as WoW was when I first started. It's a kind of clone of Diablo 2, which is another game I really liked. I found myself not concentrating during training class yesterday because I wanted to play my game. I am very sure that I'm going to to uninstall the game so that I don't have that temptation anymore. I've got more than enough stuff to do every day, and I cannot allow a game to steal any of my precious 9 to 11 hours of the day in which I am at home and not doing anything else.

This was a fun entry to write, but it's also taking up some time. I might have to add a "Blog on Nutang at least 4 times per week" goal on TDP. This really helped me to focus and motivate myself. I'm glad to see that a lot of people on Nutang are coming back. I wonder what brought all of us back at the same time like this?

Comment! (2) | Recommend!

First day of work was yesterday. Apparently, only the first day of work is in the building I'll be working at in 6 weeks. For the next 6 weeks, I'll actually be training in a building that is all the way across town. Unfortunately, I can't walk there. Thankfully though, a guy from class has offered to come pick me up. That worked out pretty well. He'll be here soon, so I can't write a long entry. My walk yesterday left me with some pretty nasty blisters, but it was fun seeing if that walk was something I could do. Whelp, that's about it for now. I am so glad that I have a job now. It takes so much stress out of my life. Not only am I able to be away from everyone in the house for about a third of the day, I'm earning money for it too!

Oh speaking of earning money, I got started on Amazon's Mechanical Turk program. It's alright, but it's slow income. I can see myself devoting maybe an hour to it per day. I earned 1.34 for about 30 minutes of work yesterday. If I'm not to busy, it's something to do in my spare time. Boring as hell though, but something to do if I know just need some spending money. I'm sure if I worked a bit harder and used my resources to find more profitable HITs, I could easily bump up my earnings. I'll have to investigate.

Comment! (2) | Recommend!