I caught covid. :(

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One of my friends likes to make observations about me. I always find these things interesting/useful, since they give me some perspective about how I'm perceived and also give me material I can repurpose if someone asks me to describe myself.

Recent additions:
"You're my favorite robot."
"Manic pixie thrift store fashionista or MTV's Daria. The two poles of your spectrum."
"You're the most redpilled girl I've ever met." (This one made me laugh)
"You're like a first gen e-girl."

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I've been hitting the gym recently. It helps that I have a friend to go with sometimes, but having a personal trainer to give me workouts is also pretty good for giving me direction/motivation. Trainer wants me to be getting 125g of protein a day though, which has been extremely difficult to manage. I mean, 500 calories of protein would be around a third of my daily caloric intake... Although I need to be eating more for those gains, I guess.

Doing (Romanian) deadlifts has been fun. I maxed out on the mini barbell weight available at my gym though (110lbs), so I guess I gotta move up to real barbells... The hardest part at the moment is that my grip and arm strength can't keep up with my leg strength, so picking up the bar in the first place and then holding onto it is tough, but the actual deadlift itself is not. Gotta work on that I guess... But hey, it'll be exciting when I can deadlift more than my bodyweight! And only 15lbs to go before I can basically deadlift myself haha.

I wanna start doing barbell squats too... Y'know, get thicc 'n all. But it kind of hurts my neck(?)/upper back area, or... I don't know, is that considered shoulders? Well whatever, the area the barbell rests on. Not sure what to do about that, or if it means I have the bar positioned wrong... A quick search suggests that it's just a newbie lifter problem though, so I guess maybe I'll get used to it if I just keep at it? Probably like how the seats on stationary bikes are horribly uncomfortable at first and then after a bit they seem fine. Honestly I'm still not sure how that works. Wonder if your brain just kind of adjusts the nerve sensitivity there or something. I'm like... pretty sure that it's not a matter of your crotch developing calluses, at least.

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As far as mental health and whatnot, I've been pretty good. Trying to remember to take my supplements, get enough sun, eat reasonably healthy (consciously making a shift towards less sugar has maybe been good?), and of course, exercise. Regular social contact is on the list of "do these things to be healthy" too, but I feel like I spend pretty much as much time as I can chatting with people anyway. Given the choice, I'd probably rather talk to my friends than eat, sleep, or do nearly anything else. Good conversation is more fulfilling than nearly any other activity I could engage in.

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Look at these perfect babies getting along.


It's been a lot more active in the cage with four birds, but I think it's a good thing. The new birds learned really quickly to eat from our hands, and my brother has been very interested in training them. Of course, his favorite budgie (on the right in that picture) has been showing everybody else in the cage how things work, and practically trains himself. Today he flew to my brother's arm even though I was closer to the cage. I keep saying that he can tell us apart and prefers my brother, but my brother just never seems to believe me.

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"Wait By The River" by Lord Huron.

I will wait by the river
In the light of the moon
At the edge of the city
I will wait for you
Though I can't wait forever
Someday I'll be dead and gone
And I won't be forgiven
For what I've done

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My lack of post writing is not because I've forgotten about Nutang. Sometimes I just don't know what to write though. I was in a bit of a slump for the past month, but I bounced back and am doing a lot better now. On the other hand, I fractured my toe, so that's kind of a new experience for me. I got to go to urgent care for the first time and see what all the fuss is about. It took about three hours, but everybody was quite nice to me and overall it was a pleasant experience as far as my interactions with the staff. Probably the worst part was that there was this woman sitting right behind me who kept loudly groaning and complaining the whole time. I'm sure she was in pain, and I can have sympathy for that, but she was practically complaining into my ear the whole time because of how close she was sitting.

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Anyway, I've been up to stuff! I started a Discord server for local people who like birds and I've been organizing activities for ECS. Unfortunately, since I fractured my toe, I'm now unable to lead physical activities like hiking, but I'm thinking of other things I could try to do to get more people interested in ECS... Right now I'm contemplating some kind of recurring meeting for self-exploration through art. It's a very rough idea and I only started thinking about it today though. My goal is to get people engaged with our community on a less heady level, because I think most of our current offerings are very heady in nature, but that doesn't appeal to everybody. We end up missing out on people who might care about the same issues but aren't drawn to have hour long group discussions about like... the ethics of solar energy farms or something.

In addition to these new responsibilities I have, I'm going to start going to the gym again soon... I had been wanting to get personal training for awhile (since before the pandemic, honestly) but I kept putting it off because I was worried about safety... Since I actually got money from the last stimulus though, I figured I would put some of that towards the personal training. Ended up getting a three month package, which I'm hoping will help me work out despite the foot injury.

I've also just started participating in a shortish toothpaste marketing study, which is kind of fun. I get to try four different sample toothpastes and give my feedback on them.

Lately I've been making an effort to make sure I brush my teeth twice a day and wash my face twice a day (as opposed to only once for each), which I think has been good for my mental health in a small way. It would probably be even better if I woke up at the same time every day and went to bed around the same time, but well, one thing at a time.

Oh, and I adopted two new budgies. They're kind of young, and very scared of people, but they're cute and I hope they get along with Bill and Mimi. Right now they're still in quarantine, so they can only chirp at Bill and Mimi from across the house, but in a couple of weeks I'm going to move them into the big cage.

I think that's mostly it for my recent life updates... I don't know how many people still read this, but I figured I'd share for my own record at the very least.

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Carefree Wandering has become my favorite channel on Youtube. I feel like Hans-Georg Moeller presents things in such an approachable way without all the flashiness and accessorizing that some philosophy channels use.



I started watching Daria recently because a friend said multiple times that I'm like the titular character. Three seasons in and I still don't agree. She does remind me a little of how I was in high school, which I guess might be fitting since she's supposed to be a high schooler, but overall she seems like a selfish and self-important person. I guess that could be said of the majority of the characters though. It mainly bothers me with Daria because she's supposed to be smart, but instead of using her intelligence to pursue any sort of personal growth, she just keeps up a constant stream of sarcastic commentary that seems to serve little constructive purpose. I've been told that she grows as a person over the course of the series, but it doesn't seem like there's been that much growth so far.

The reason I mention Daria is because there are multiple occasions she says she's not depressed and she's just a realist. While I don't think she's necessarily depressed, I take some issue with her claim about being able to see the world more "objectively" or accurately than most of the people around her. I guess it's something of a pet peeve for me when people claim their cynicism/pessimism is rooted in some kind of intellectual superiority. I'm pretty sure I've touched on this subject before, but it's been awhile since I ranted about this, so I might as well talk about it.

I really dislike that whole "the world sucks and I'm aware of it because I'm smart" attitude. It's just as stupid as people who think the world is all good. Maybe what I'm really saying is that I just have a dislike of black and white thinking, which I feel shouldn't be a trap people fall into if they're actually intelligent... but I guess that might not be fair of me to assume. Emotional intelligence and life experience play into these things as well. Still... I'm suspicious of the actual intelligence of people who seem so blinded by their biases. How unobservant and lacking in curiosity do you have to be to run across other people who genuinely believe there's a lot of good in the world and not ask yourself why there's a disagreement there beyond some smug assertion that the optimists are just idiots who can't see reality? Is questioning one's basic assumptions not a package deal once you hit a certain level of intelligence? I know that's phrased rhetorically but I do mean it as an honest question too. After all, I can't complain about people assuming things while I assume something myself in the same sentence.

It's hard for me to tell what is intelligence vs. values or some sort of nebulous personal inclination to think certain ways. I think people often talk about intelligence as if agreeing with their personal values is a mark of intelligence, e.g. "intelligent people don't eat animals because they understand that animals have feelings and it's cruel to knowingly cause suffering unnecessarily." While I completely understand the temptation to describe things in those terms, I don't like it. Then again, I imagine the people who do that probably aren't thinking of it as a choice so much as a statement of reality.

Everybody's caught up in their own vision of reality... And I am too in my own way, I'm just less confident in there being any one particular version of reality that is the truest. The noumena/phenomena split is just very salient for me, maybe.

Cynicism and sarcasm are often armors that people put on to avoid being vulnerable. Sometimes I think it would be more accurate to, instead of defending that armor with a claim like "I'm smart," say "I'm scared." Scared because awareness of the forces that affect society and the world in general can make you feel small, overwhelmed, and uncertain of how to make a meaningful difference. Evolution is slow, and humans evolved to live in relatively small groups (I remember a friend telling me once that in prehistoric times, a given individual would probably only know around 150 people max in his/her life). We're not really equipped to comfortably conceive of the kind of world we live in today. Awareness of just how far out of our grasp the scope of human civilization has spiraled is sort of a curse in the sense that it can be emotionally taxing. I still don't think the answer is to become a jaded misanthrope, but I don't know that there is a single right answer, either.

There are just no clear cut solutions to these things in my mind. My hesitance to commit to any conclusion would probably make me terrible at marketing.

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