[12:01:32 PM] Dan: I lay on top of gravel piles for their healing properties

[2:43:56 PM] Dan: Snow is actually poison
[2:47:34 PM] Me: We'll just send it to all the freeloaders living in LA.

[5:38:04 PM] Me: That seems small
[5:38:11 PM] Dan: ...For what
[5:38:14 PM] Dan: A dick, or a bag of rice

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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.

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So I uncovered the ring from the Diamond Candle my boyfriend bought me.

It's actually a light pink, I don't know why it came out looking so dark in the picture. The lighting, maybe.

It fits pretty well on my index finger, which is neat. I'm hesitant to wear it around though, first of all because I'm not a huge fan of pink, and second because I'm kind of worried I'll accidentally lose it or mess it up or something. Even though it's not worth a lot of money it's kind of a nice little thing to have.

Allergies are making me feel pretty terrible right now. I'm glad that it rained the past couple days, but it seems to have triggered an allergic reaction for me. My dad thinks it's mold. I don't really know. I don't remember ever having these problems before, but my sinuses are just totally out of whack right now. I have a sore throat and just generally feel bleh.

It makes it a bit hard to do my schoolwork, because I feel more or less like I'm sick, and I've been taking Zyrtec to try to help, which makes me a bit groggy.

Have been listening to this a lot today.

I guess you've never been lonely
There's never days on your own
'Cause each new one is so friendly
I think I talk for too long

My heart is born on the other side of judgement
How long's the wait, I should go, bet it's time

Hopefully I feel better in the morning, I guess...

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I don't look at much on Reddit but I like reading r/fatpeoplestories occasionally. Anyway, I've been reading the Chibiham series and this was in one of the stories:

“No, no one is perfect as they are. We are given this time in our lives to steadily improve ourselves. The moment we let our guard down and become selfish enough to think we have obtained perfection, is the moment we have lost the battle, and lose all right to command respect.”

I thought it was a nice quote. The author sort of implied it was from Bushido, which I'd heard about but never looked at before, but I skimmed it a bit just now and it's somewhat interesting. Reminds me of that guy who used to be obsessed with me, the one who was kind of weird and seemed like he wanted to be a samurai. He seemed kind of... tortured, for lack of a better term, by my impassivity at the time. I guess he's not the only one, though.

When I was talking to my therapist on Wednesday I tried to explain a bit about my perspective on my emotions and my approach to dealing with them. I've pretty much been expecting for years now that I'll have issues with depression for the rest of my life, so my problem-solving strategy has evolved with that in mind. I don't use outside help if I can find a way to do it on my own, and as far as I can remember that's how I've been most of my life.

(Sometimes it just straight up doesn't occur to me that there is anything that can help me, honestly. Not because I think my problems are beyond help, but I just... don't think about what things exist in the world to address my issues. For example, even though I know painkillers exist, I basically never use them for anything except menstrual cramps)

I guess I don't really expect my depression to significantly scale up in intensity, so I sort of just do everything I can to prepare for the worst I can guess it could be, based on past experience. That wasn't worded very well, so maybe it would be better to say... I expect the depression to stay the same strength, so my approach has been to strengthen myself so that I'm stronger than it?

What I do to myself is sort of like exposure therapy I guess. I told my therapist that basically I try to think through things as thoroughly as possible and find different perspectives to see them (versus just ruminating, or thinking about the same thing over and over, which is unproductive and unhealthy) until I have no more desire to think about them, and that's sort of how I get over them? I feel like if I ignore or run away from things I'll never learn how to deal with them and then if I get into a situation where I have to deal with them, I'll be totally unprepared, and that could do a significant amount of damage to me (I think it's unlikely that I'd ever commit suicide but I know there's always a slight possibility). I'm not obsessed with having control for its own sake but I think it's very important as a safeguard.

So yeah, building up resilience. I don't ever want to be in an emotional state I can't handle. The idea of having an emotional breakdown isn't romantic to me anymore. I'm writing this post more as a way to document my own thought processes than as any sort of advice to other people. What works for me clearly doesn't work for some people, though I do advocate trying different things before fully dismissing them, of course...

---Edit---

Every now and then I look at Jasper Fforde's website to see what the status of the next Shades of Grey book is (it was originally supposed to come out in 2013... then 2014... then 2015...) and there isn't even a sequel listed there now... only a prequel scheduled for publication in 2016. I've been waiting so long for this book, and I wonder if it'll ever come out. :'( I loved the first one so much and I'll be sad if the story never gets continued.

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Wednesdays are shaping up to be my busiest days. Today I had my internship meeting, which to my great surprise/relief did not take as long as it usually does. After that I had a little downtime at home, but I went out to the store with my dad and we had lunch at a new pizza place. It's a chain I think, but it was pretty good and very reasonably priced. Would definitely eat there again. My dad got anchovies on his pizza and reminisced about the salt fish his family would occasionally eat with rice when he was growing up. I guess it was a treat or something, because he said they might have it once a month. He also told me a little about his grandparents and the different prices of meats when he was young. Shrimp was about 29 cents a pound and when they went fishing they would just buy a few shrimp and chop them up as bait.

My mom never tells stories about her past like my dad. I mentioned that to him and he told me a little about her. Her mom died when she was around my age, which he thinks influenced her family significantly, because my mom ended up staying around the area and going to community college so that she could be closer to her mom. After her mom died she went to UC Berkeley, though.

Once we finished lunch we did a little grocery shopping. I guess that 2PM on weekdays is when all the old people come out and buy large jugs of water, because there were tons of people in line in front of us who had that. It was... interesting.

Had my therapy appointment after that, and my therapist ended the session by saying he was impressed by how well I've handled some of the things in the past few years, especially considering that I didn't always have much, if any, help. He thinks I should "let my guard down" more and feel my emotions more strongly, though... I'm not sure what to think of that.

And now... in about an hour I have to do my shift at the crisis line. Gotta figure out what food I can bring to eat while I'm there... Since the shifts are several hours I'll probably need at least a little something to munch on, and I'd rather have something more substantial than the not-so-nutritious snacks provided for the volunteers.

Music from the radio today:

"Hold the Line" by Toto.


"Can't Break Me Down" by Billy Idol.

Man, every time I see what Billy Idol looks like I'm just reminded that he did not age well. His face looks like a monkey skull with spiked hair now. :(

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While conversing with my friend Dan, I started thinking about my problem-solving strategy. I think I do sort of have a general way of going about it, but there are some background details that feed into my approach that not everybody accepts.

I feel that my life now involves significantly less suffering/pain/unhappiness, but occasionally I do wonder if I've sacrificed any creativity alongside those things. I felt sort of artistically stagnant the past few years, but it seems to be trickling back in some small ways now. I'm just having to learn how to not draw my only inspiration from negativity.

Anyway, I guess there are a few questions I consider to determine if something is a problem. I could make a flowchart but that would be way more effort than I feel like putting into this.

Starting values:
-Effectiveness over personal comfort
-Understanding other perspectives before imposing my viewpoint
-Openness to possible solutions (versus dismissing something right off the bat)

-How does this make me feel? (This is such a simple question, but it can be really hard to answer sometimes)
-Does this cause me distress?
--->What is the level of distress?
------>Is the distress constructive? (Do I gain understanding etc. through experiencing it?)

-What do other people think of this issue?
--->If they think I should consider it a problem, why?
--->How credible are these people? (This is something I did not consider enough in the past, but I'm working on that)

If something does seem to be a problem:

-Where does the problem originate?
--->External factors?
--->Internal factors?

-How much control do I have over the external factors?
--->What options are available to me?
----->Can I use others as resources?
--->What can I change in my environment?
----->What barriers exist to changing my environment?
----->Even if I can change my environment, should I?

-How much control do I have over the internal factors? (Hint: A lot)
--->How does my perception influence my reaction to the problem?
----->Can I reframe the situation so that it doesn't bother me?
------->How might an outside party perceive the situation?
----->Do I have beliefs/values that are flexible in this area?
------->What values am I not willing to compromise? (Sometimes requires evaluation of my true goals)

Generally I try not to get too worked up over things these days. I feel it's a more productive use of my time to evaluate the situation as thoroughly as possible to see what the limits are and what I can do. Ruminating over things I have no control over (and things in the past that I could've done differently-- counterfactual thinking, in psych terms) increases distress without contributing too much useful information.

Man, I really like making lists of stuff.

And unrelated music:

"Quick!" by The Magnetic Fields (I'm iffy about some of their music, but they have such great lyrics for some songs).

Get me a drink of something quick between your outrageous remarks
Like the mating calls of sarcastic sharks
Quick, before you can't take that back
Just before it all goes black

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An excerpt from my cultural psychology textbook:

"Dialectical thinking can be broadly defined as the tendency to accept what seems to be contradictions in thought or beliefs. This is contrast to positive logical determinism that characterizes much of American and Western European thinking. Dialectical thinking tries to find the way in which both sides of an apparent contradiction are correct, tolerates the contradiction, and tries to find mutual middle ground. Logical deterministic thinking tends to see contradictions as mutually exclusive categories, as either-or, yes-no, one-or-the-other types of categories.
Cross-cultural research of the past decade has produced interested cultural differences in dialectical thinking, demonstrating that East Asians tend to prefer dialectical thinking, whereas Americans tend to prefer logical deterministic thinking.
...Naive dialecticism is characterized by the doctrine of the mean, or the belief that the truth is always somewhere in the middle. Contrarily Western lay theories are dominated by the idea that something cannot be both true and false at the same time, and the belief that all propositions must be either true or false."

I think I'm definitely more of a dialectical thinker, based on the description given here. That seems to be annoying to some people, though, because I often don't take a very strong position on issues. It also makes it kind of hard to debate a lot of things, because I end up having to defend a position I don't feel super strongly about in the first place.

More than anything else I think I just want to try to remain flexible in my thinking right now.

Kind of in a punk mood.

"The Palestinians Are Not The Same Thing As The Rebel Alliance, Jackass" by Atom and His Package.

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I'm fairly certain I've posted "Solace for Pain" by The Gentle Waves before, but I'm really appreciating the lyrics right now.


Help me when I'm sad and lonely
I would never do you harm
But this life is unfamiliar
I don't mean to cause alarm
If I were to put the big light out
Surely there would be an end?
If I were to face a new day
Surely I would need a friend?

Sir you do possess such kind eyes
Many are so vacant where
Ought to be a patient tenderness
I would take my refuge there

---

I know I haven't posted "Falling From Grace" before...


You make me satisfied
You only want to ride
But that's alright by me
We happen to be free
And if we fall from grace
At least we had a taste
Of something more than this
Unresolved black abyss

I'm always looking for the sun
I'm always looking for the sun
I'm always looking for the sun
I'm only looking for the sun to shine

---

[11:00:15 PM] Prickly pear: What is a scrubby sponge?
[11:00:26 PM] Me: Just a sponge with a scrubby side
[11:00:33 PM] Prickly pear: Okay.
[11:00:36 PM] Me: I don't think they're actually called scrubby sponges, that's just what I named them
[11:00:49 PM] Prickly pear: You think you can just name things?
[11:00:57 PM] Me: Uh, yeah, obvi.
[11:00:58 PM] Prickly pear: What right do you have?
[11:01:19 PM] Me: We live in an inherently meaningless world. There is no such thing as a right.
[11:01:35 PM] Me: There is only freedom and chaos
[11:01:46 PM] Me: And the patterns we project onto reality in order to comfort ourselves
[11:02:01 PM] Me: tl;dr I can do whatever I want
[11:02:12 PM] Me: So it's a goddamn scrubby sponge
[11:02:31 PM] Prickly pear: :)
[11:02:34 PM] Prickly pear: That's my girlfriend.
[11:02:57 PM] Me: Yes, your weird absurdist/existentialist girlfriend who lives in a pineapple under the sea
[11:03:07 PM] Me: Or something like that

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