0.1 mi at 3 mph, lvl 1 incline
1.25 mi at 7 mph, lvl 1 incline
0.4 mi at 3 mph, lvl 1 incline
0.5 mi at 7.2 mph, lvl 1 incline
0.5 mi at 3 mph, lvl 1 incline
0.25 mi at 6.8 mph, lvl 1 incline
= 3 mi total

Slightly less lame but still lame. I don't think I'm eating enough to have energy for running... I did eat today before I went to the gym, but... it's been hot here and I haven't felt hungry, so I kinda just eat like one meal a day and snack a little. >.> At least today I ate... more of a meal than yesterday. My dad bought fish jun from a Korean market, so I had a big bowl of that and rice. Yesterday all I ate for my meal was a little single serving spinach lasagna from Trader Joe's, haha. I feel kinda conflicted because I want to run more, but I don't want to make myself eat more. Bleh.

Browsing Craigslist and saw an eyelash extension model gig that looked fun, although it was posted two days ago, so they might not have any openings anymore. I emailed anyway, figured it couldn't hurt. Would be something to do Sunday/Monday if it works out.

I felt ah... a bit bummed out today, although I'll get over it. Just need some time for things to settle...

"SEE SPACES" by TEETH.


---

I've been thinking about this recently, and I don't like being... over-validated, I guess. Like I'm hard on myself, I know that, but I kind of... don't like it when people try to take responsibility away from me? Like I appreciate the support but I guess it bothers me the way they do it, sometimes. For instance, the grad school I just left... people were talking to me about it and I know I've been beating myself up over that decision, but everyone tries to validate me by saying "It's okay, you needed to leave," and that's... not true? I didn't "need" to leave. I chose to leave. I could have stayed, I just would have been unhappy. I wasn't failing. I wasn't even close to failing. I was stressed out, and I was anxious a lot, but I wasn't going to die if I stayed there. Maybe I just take the word "need" differently than most people though...

It's hard, because I want to just be able to accept people's support and encouragement, but it doesn't help me when I feel like it's baseless. Like they're just saying something because those are the prescribed phrases for the situation. For example, if I was like "I'm sad" and someone was like "aw, don't worry, things will get better"... That's just... meaningless. It's well-intentioned but it's meaningless. They don't know anything about why I'm sad, they don't know what's going on at all, so how can they know if things will get better? And yeah, yeah, okay, they're just trying to be comforting, I get that. There's nothing wrong with that, it just doesn't help me. In those cases, I think it helps that person more than it helps me, because at least they feel like they tried. I don't have anything against them for it, I just end up feeling a little more tired.

Like I wouldn't want to write a poem and tell someone I wrote a poem and have them just be like "it's great!" without even reading it... What's the point? Are they just saying that it's great because I wrote it? Because that's so blatantly not true. Or is the point that it is subjectively great to them because it came from me? I mean, there's some value in that I guess, but subjective worth only has so much weight, and it doesn't translate across all situations.

It makes me think of compliments... Once, when I was a senior in high school, this girl in my weight training class told me she liked my socks, and I was startled by the compliment (wasn't used to getting them at that point) and awkwardly replied that I liked her shoes. I didn't really like her shoes though, I just felt like I needed to compliment her back to reciprocate. I did think her hair was pretty cool, but that felt like something that wouldn't match up with a sock compliment. Anyway, it feels pretty empty when you just say it for the sake of saying it. I want to be authentic in my interactions.

I definitely digressed there. But um... back to the validation thing... I dunno, like, it's not that I want people to be hard on me necessarily, because I'm already hard on myself... Maybe I've just learned how to take criticism better than validation. Criticism gives me something to fix. Validation... uh... makes me feel like I'm just supposed to sit and do nothing? Feels like people being all "whoa whoa hey, it's alright, calm down, things are okay as they are." And maybe I do need that in some respect, and I've learned how to accept things more, but it doesn't give me anywhere to go.

So ultimately I think that when I talk to people about feeling guilty that I dropped out of grad school, maybe the response I wish I was hearing more was "Yeah, you didn't have to do that, and you could have stayed, but you were unhappy there, and you're here now, so how are you going to move forward?" Because I dissect all this stuff to learn from it, not to be patted on the back. That might be a distinction I'll have to make to my next therapist... Rumination is a pretty common depressive symptom, but I don't think I ruminate... I dissect... If we're taking the definition of rumination as it pertains to depression from Wikipedia...

"Rumination is the focused attention on the symptoms of one's distress, and on its possible causes and consequences, as opposed to its solutions."

I don't think this fits me, because I'm very solution-focused. Maybe overly so, sometimes. I'd like to avoid mistakes when I can, but if I make them, then I want to learn something from them so that I don't make the same mistakes again.

I feel bad for people who are trying to comfort me. Nobody ever really seems to know what to do, and I imagine it's quite a challenge to support me emotionally. Sometimes I get tired of trying to reach out and I just stop talking about certain things, because it feels like nobody is saying anything that has an impact, but I don't want to be cynical like that and not trust that other people can help. Still, I think I do kind of believe, on some deep level, that I have to find comfort within myself. Gotta be... self-soothing, haha. And if it's not already in me then it's research time... It's funny what an odd philosophical excerpt here and there can do, with the right wording. This book looks like it could be interesting... Logic Based Therapy and Everyday Emotions: A Case-Based Approach

Fro has been helpful in the past when she's suggested things I hadn't thought about-- mainly simple stuff like keeping track of good things. She also gave me a one-sentence journal that I try to write it every day, and I like that. Practical things. It feels good to have some kind of task or routine to maintain some structure in my life and keep me grounded. Getting practical support is a lot nicer than people trying to talk me through things most of the time, because I get the sense that it's hard to keep up with what I'm thinking, or hard to find the right things to say.

Hoo boy this post got long. So much of the time I'm just staring at my screen with no idea of what to write, but once I actually start on a topic like this, it's just endless. Gonna cut it off here, I've probably rambled enough.

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I've been really digging this band for a few days. Some sexy beats here.

"Shelter" by TEETH.

I'm in the icebox, hypnotized
Dead in the eyes, spaced out
Hard to find

I'm in the icebox, hypnotized
Playing dead, hands tied
Compromised

---

I did go to the gym today, buuuuuuuuuut I forgot to eat today before I went at like 5pm, so I didn't have a lot of energy and only ran a mile. >_> Whoopsadaisies.
0.15 mi at 3 mph, lvl 1.5 incline
1 mi at 6.9 mph, lvl 1.5 incline
0.85 mi at 3 mph, lvl 1.5 incline

Feel kind of lame about it, but next time I'll try to do more. Toward the end of my run I was looking longingly at the fitness class that was starting in the studio next to the treadmills... Didn't feel like I had enough energy for H.I.I.T. though. :(

---

Mood-wise, I've been feeling good today. Not depressed or anything. I'm looking through r/bayarea and saw this post about abandoned places to explore. I would actually looooooove to get into urban exploring, but I haven't thought about it much in a few years because I found out about it before I could drive, and I also have never had anybody I'd think to go with... but it seems like fun, and aside from travel costs, is free... so maybe someday... One of the comments in that Reddit thread mentioned Mare Island, which I'd never heard about but looks like it's roughly an hour and a half away without traffic. Since Esther and I were climbing stuff we weren't supposed to climb and going places we weren't supposed to go in Hawaii, I've felt a bit less hesitant to trespass, haha. Not that I'd go anywhere I thought was actually dangerous...

Finalized details to hang out next week with a guy from IRC today! That's exciting. Adding another person to my long list of peeps I've met online... We're just going to get Jamba Juice and chill for a bit before I go have a girls' night with Fro and Becka, but I think it's better that way. Just a short hangout to get a feel for things. We get along swimmingly online though, so I can't imagine it'd be that bad in person. The great thing about forcing myself to socialize and be in uncomfortable situations so much is that now I am able to feel almost completely at ease when meeting new people. Even if they're super awkward, I can just roll with it. Boy, what would my teenage self think of me now?

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Felt pretty depressed today and was just lying in bed feeling kind of paralyzed with sadness for a few hours, but I dragged myself to the gym and that improved my mood significantly.

Treadmill:
0.1 mi at 3.0 mph, lvl 1 incline
1 mi at 6.9 mph, lvl 1 incline
0.4 mi at 3.0 mph, lvl 1 incline
0.5 mi at 7.2 mph, lvl 1 incline
= 2 miles total

Much shorter distance because I was tired, but I also did planks, squats, and burpees with a Bosu ball and did some bicep/tricep stuff with weights. I don't like only running, because it makes me feel like I'm not really working out, but at the same time I feel like I should be putting all of my energy into running so that the 15k I'm doing in January is bearable. If only running wasn't so boring. T_T

I've been listening to this song a lot in the past few days:

"Houdini Crush" by Buke and Gase.

You say you're dead and gone and you're moving on
Beyond the regular rectangular
Forced in burgeoning, come closing in
But still a serious experience
You stay out all night
It was a weapon you could use
To get through all the threads in sight
How you gonna wave hello or goodbye when your hands are tied?
How you gonna wave hello or goodbye when your hands are tied?
How you gonna wave when your hands are tied
To the end of the threads inside

When I got back from the gym, I sat on the couch for a bit because my brother was playing "Tristram" from Diablo on guitar, which is one of my favorite songs, and one of the only ones I like that he plays. I don't know if it's just the intense nostalgia hit or what, but that song always gives me a bit of a shiver, I love it so much.

My brother plays six instruments, going on eight, and has... a variety of other skills. When I think about myself in comparison, I don't feel like I have a lot going on. I mean, I don't think he's "better" than me for having all these hobbies and things he does, but I guess I kind of wish that I had more going on... externally? Because it feels like most of what I do is sort of just in my head, and I dunno, I feel like it comes off like there's just not much to me or something. I go to the gym and I browse the internet and I'm not doing anything else at the moment. :| Would like to start volunteering again, but I feel pressure to get a part time job or something so that I can refill my bank account, which took a big hit because of the Australia tickets. Also would be nice to have more money to invest... And have something to sort of prove to my mom that I'm not a useless leech... She hasn't exactly said anything to that effect but I keep getting vibes from her...

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Went back to the gym today after my rest day yesterday. All I did was use the treadmill. Feel free to disregard the following; this is just for my own records:
0.1 mi at 3.0mph, lvl 1 incline
1.5 mi at 6.9mph, lvl 1 incline
0.4 mi at 3.0mph, lvl 1 incline
0.5 mi at 7.3mph, lvl 1 incline
0.5 mi at 3.0mph, lvl 1 incline
0.75 mi at 7.2mph, lvl 1 incline
0.5 mi at 3.0mph, lvl 1 incline
4.25 mi total

Felt really lightheaded after I got off the treadmill, though it sort of decreased a little while I was stretching. I'm... very tired now. Even though 4.25 miles isn't a lot of distance, I guess the running itself makes it seem like more.

The treadmill said I burned 500 calories, which I'm sure is wildly off, since those are always off to begin with, and since I didn't input my actual age/weight. Oh well. If I was 150 lbs and 35 or whatever the default settings are, hey, maybe I would've burned something around that range.

I guess it's good that I'm tired now, because I have a CPR class tomorrow morning at 9 AM, and I can't be going to sleep at 5 AM in the morning.

---

Added a new comic to the KtB module.

The Property of Hate

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"Osaka Loop Line" by Discovery.

And I tried to catch your eye and then
Walk past you as the train came in
But I missed you there and lost my mind
The morning crowd pushed me behind

I've been listening to this song on repeat for a couple days. It feels, appropriately, like falling further and further behind a train that's rushing by. It's weird, I've been listening to this album in pieces over a period of several years. I think I like three songs from it, and I haven't even heard any of the others. Just every few months or years, a different song from the album comes up somehow, and I listen to it, and I feel iffy about it at first, but it grows on me and then I want to binge on it. The weird thing is that I never have a desire to explore the rest of the album on my own.

Think I might have posted this one before, but it's the other song I really like by this band.

"So Insane" by Discovery.

Ooh baby, you've got me going
So insane, and I just don't know what's
Going down
Ooh I try to get off my knees
Try to fight f-f-fight this feeling
But I can't

This song makes me want to dance. Sometimes I kind of want to go to clubs just to dance to loud music in a dark room, but they always play the music too loud, and every time I've gone clubbing (which was like... I dunno... twice? Thrice at most?) I left feeling partially deaf. Plus people are drinking, so it's not really my scene.

I kind of miss being 18 and being in New York and having a little two person dance party in Casey's dorm room, with just the blacklight bulb in her desk lamp on. Even though I was sort of having an emotional breakdown for a lot of my freshman year of college, there were some really fun moments, and they make me miss New York. I wish my last trip there hadn't been so bad. I'd like to go there again and have a better time, someday. When I can afford it... Or maybe if someone takes me again, haha. Pretty much all of my traveling has been on someone else's dime, except for the recent trip to Australia.

Fro was encouraging me to look into county jobs, because she thinks all my volunteer experience would be a big plus, but I feel nervous about it. I think if I wasn't looking into going back to grad school in the next few months, I'd feel a little less hesitant, but I don't feel like I can take any jobs that would be full time... Gotta have something I can fit around a school schedule...

On the plus side, I had an online info session for the school I'm looking at, which was basically a conference call, and I felt really enthusiastic about the school afterwards. I've been feeling kind meh about it for awhile, just kinda feeling like this was what I should do more than anything else, but... the program really does sound appealing to me. I was silently wondering if it was going to have the things I found lacking in my last grad program, but they answered that question before I could even ask it. I feel encouraged.

I'm trying to just take one thing at a time and focus on school matters in the immediate future, but interpersonal stuff is always on my mind, and I guess it always has been. Try as I might, I can't seem to prioritize anything above that. Always thinking about my friendships and other relationships... Everything else feels kind of secondary. It doesn't feel like this is a socially acceptable way to be, though. So much talk about "putting yourself first" and such... Figuring out your career, your dreams, whatever else... But my world revolves around people, and it feels forced, trying to dream of something that's just about me. I feel uncomfortable with individualism in this way, though I know that collectivism isn't some perfect ideal alternative. Maybe I'm just trying to find balance for myself between the two.

Sometimes I get tired of people telling me that I should live for myself more and I should disregard others and not make sacrifices. I don't like feeling like self-sacrifice is some kind of tumor people are trying to cut out of me. It's something I want to do, and something I value, and it feels meaningful to me. And anyway, it doesn't feel like sacrifice when you're eager to give it. If I'm being excessively vague about what I'm sacrificing, I mainly mean time and energy, and sometimes sleep. It feels good to give. Not that I don't have my breaking point... Goodness knows, I hit that last year.

Nobody's really been saying these things to me lately, but it comes up in therapy when I have a therapist, which can be frustrating. It makes me feel like they don't understand. If I care about someone then it doesn't feel like sacrifice to give up some sleep, to spend hours listening to them, to forgo other things I might have done. When Fro calls me on the phone, she pretty much always starts off by asking if I'm doing anything [important] and if I can talk, and there are almost no situations in my daily life that seem particularly important in that moment. If I'm watching something, I can just finish it later. If I'm playing a game, I can pause it or put it away for another time. If I'm reading, well, there are bookmarks for a reason. She also has a tendency to ask in the middle of conversation, "Am I boring you?" and it shocks me every time. I always say "no," but it's accompanied by this feeling of "What else could I even want to do right now?"

It feels like I'm drifting a bit in subject. These things don't feel like sacrifice to me, but I think they come off as sacrifice to other people who value their time and energy differently than I do. Maybe other people have a ton of other things they want to be doing, I don't know... I do get immersed in other activities from time to time, but they all get kind of boring after awhile. Hard to maintain hobbies because of that. My feelings about that are another matter, though...

I never start these posts with any sort of outline, I kind of just ramble and hope that it has some kind of thesis that can be followed. No idea if that happened in this one, but it's almost 5 AM and I can't be bothered to read back and see.

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Sometimes I annoy people by pursuing what they view as unnecessarily complicated definitions of things. I've heard "you know what I mean" so many times from different people, and it all blends together. When I insist that I don't, in fact, know what they mean, they think I'm just being difficult.

I know some people appreciate this habit of mine, but they're rarer than the people who find it obnoxious. And well, I won't deny that it can be annoying when someone is asking you to define things at ever increasing levels of detail. I guess it probably seems like a pointless exercise when you live in a world of certainty (which I don't).

I'm lucky to have developed in contexts in which I haven't been completely shut down when I try to define things. In certain ways it's even been encouraged. I do have some friends who appreciate the extent to which I think about things.

I've been reading Barking Up the Wrong Tree by Eric Barker at an extremely leisurely pace, but the bit I just read earlier today was about the differential susceptibility hypothesis, which is sort of an alternative to the diathesis stress model in psychology. If you don't want to read the Wikipedia article I linked, basically it's just the idea that people might have certain susceptibilities to their environment that can be developed in different ways. So, traits that we might consider pretty negative (e.g. ADHD) could, in another context, actually be positive.

Taking this in relation to my susceptibility to depression, I wonder if I've just happened to have a life that helped me develop in certain positive ways. Like maybe if I'd had a different upbringing, I would have the kind of depression where you just lie in bed unable to get up, and you flake on your commitments and you're awful to other people (like in that movie Melancholia, which I wanted to like but didn't at all). I don't think my life has necessarily included the absolute ideal conditions to develop that susceptibility positively, but... I'm... more on the positive side of things, I think? Instead of circling around with endless rumination, I do put that heavy need to think through things to use and try to be constructive with it. When I do have the energy to actually act on stuff, all the thinking gives me a direction to go in.

Even though I like going to the gym, it did feel like I was kind of... stagnating a bit, character-wise, when I was going all the time. Keeping the worst of the depression at bay also seems to decrease the amount I think about things. One of my most productive periods of self-development was, I suspect, when I was sad and anxious a lot of the time because my 4th relationship constantly seemed at risk of crumbling. Wasn't all great change, though.

I've been moving away from labeling aspects of myself in black and white negative/positive terms. For a long time now I've been trying pretty hard to avoid anything that I think is arrogant or vain, but that has also resulted in me having difficulty with confidence and being able to take credit for things. I still value modesty a lot, of course, but I think it's more... socially reasonable to allow myself a bit more leeway with what I've tended to think of as vanity.

Though I don't know if I would have phrased it this way previously, I think I have been trying to perfect myself by eliminating my flaws to the extent that it's possible. I'm realizing though that this sometimes separates me from other people. Not in the sense that I'm better than them or anything, but... everybody has flaws, and people relate to each other's flaws, and I think maybe some people like me less when it seems like I'm trying too hard to be good. Like I'll judge them or something... It's easy to write that off and say "well they're just insecure" etc., but that doesn't really solve anything. I want to connect with people, I don't want them to feel like I'm too "good" (in the sense of morality, not superior/inferior) to relate to things...

I dunno why I'm talking about this. It hasn't been a problem for awhile, mostly because I eased up on that relentless pursuit of improvement. I used to frame things for myself in terms of improving, as if it were so straightforward, but I think now I like "self-development" better as a term. There are some generally agreed upon positive qualities, but everything has some downside to it, and I feel that "development' reflects that better.

I'm trying to be the kind of person I want to see more of in the world, and I'm having to constantly redefine what that means to me, but I'm hopeful that my efforts have been effective. It does feel like things have, on average, gotten better for me since I started trying to do this. At times I feel like I'm struggling though, because I used to have much more clear-cut ideas about what I wanted, and as I've refined them, it seems like they were very crude and oversimplified in the beginning. I've redefined so much so many times, and I'm not always sure what I'm doing or whether I'm moving towards what I want anymore.

But... I think things are going the way I want them to be, in the longer term. Not in all the small moments, maybe, but as a trend.

---

My legs are kind of tired and maybe a little sore from going to the gym again today. I did the Stairmaster for something like 15 minutes (skipped steps this time-- it's harder and yet somehow less tiring than doing all the steps; I kinda cheated though by holding onto the rails), then did a couple sets each on the triceps extension, bicep curl, chest press, and lat pulldown machines before getting on the treadmill. Walked for 0.15 miles, then ran half a mile at a slow 9:13 minute mile pace (legs were tired from yesterday), walked 0.35 miles, ran another half mile at an 8:20 minute mile pace. That second half was easier, surprisingly. I guess I just needed to warm up. Had the treadmill set to level 1 incline as usual, though it probably makes barely any difference. Given how my legs feel at the moment, maybe I shouldn't go to the gym again tomorrow. Even though I really want to, I have to remind myself to take it slow and not try to jump into what I used to do at the gym...

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I restarted my gym membership! They sent me an email for a promotion where former members could get the enrollment fee waived, and I just called the gym and they set me up. Did most of it over the phone, but I also went over to sign the agreement and even worked out a little. I didn't do very much though, just ran 1.25 miles (6.9mph/8:41 minute mile pace) and did the Stairmaster for ~13 minutes. I'm thinking it might be more effective to skip steps on the Stairmaster, because I felt it way more when I started doing that. Maybe I can wear my wrist weights too while I'm doing it. I wish I could have done more, but I need to build back up to working out. For a test run this went okay.

Going back there felt really great, and I was super happy. It looks mostly the same, with a few layout differences. Comfortable and familiar. Sadly they don't offer all the same classes I used to take, which is a bummer since I really liked some of them, but it's okay. I don't expect to be taking so many classes a week again anyway.

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Ehhh, so, to my distaste, I got a smartphone today. My mom's phone stopped working, so she wanted to go to the AT&T store, and she took me with her and pushed me to get a new phone. I just got the cheapest one they had, the ZTE Maven 2. It's... alright. Annoyingly large and won't fit in my pants. Also the battery life is hilariously pitiful compared to my feature phone.

I guess I couldn't escape it forever. :(

Well, let's see how long it takes me to drop this thing and break it.

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