diary

19 september 24

sooooo, uh. i guess i should give a brief life update on what's going on with me!

i got covid in february of last year. spent over a month with a fever, emerged with some new fun long-lasting neurological effects.

still managed to finish my BA, thankfully. and then got recruited straight from that into a research assistantship that rapidly turned into "suddenly i'm doing an MA," which has been pretty great, although it did make my usual fall mental health breakdown more intense than usual last year. i'm in the no classes, only research/writing stage of my program, which is truly great for me right now as we seem to be heading into that yearly episode once again. (on the plus side, i guess it's great to get seasonal depression out of the way so early in the cycle? i'm generally pretty content in winter)

i got another tattoo... maybe two since my last update? and am getting another in the next month or two, fingers crossed.

i helped a friend move cross-country not once, but twice (there, and back again, one could say). we did something like 4000 miles altogether across the southwest united states in a car that had no working speedometer or wipers, and couldn't reverse. got stopped by the cops once, got robbed once. harrowing experience and i'd absolutely do it all again

adopted a cat. he is the light of my life. pics soon

i am in the earliest stages of dropping "she" from my pronoun list and figuring out what other gender-y changes follow this one.

in general i am just, you know. same as ever, doing my thing, taking it slow, trying my best to live a good life and generally doing pretty well with it.

18 october 22

i perhaps spoke too soon on that "now that i am mentally healthy" bit on my intro post, because oh wow it is depressive episode hours in these parts. things like simple chores are beyond me right now. i basically demoted myself at work to a role i can handle, which is good (though the pay reduction is gonna hurt). and i've been managing to mostly keep my head above water with school deadlines, although i need to message one prof about moving to virtual now that the uni rescinded the mask mandate (which they did, with no notice, the day after the deadline to drop classes and receive a tuition refund! incredibly evil shit tbh). my immune system is already fucked and getting the regular flu will typically take me out of commission for 2-3 weeks, to say nothing of covid, so it's basically a "one way or another, i will not be attending class in-person, so please let me take the option that isn't destructive to my health" thing.

it hasn't been all bad in these parts, though. i went to a concert with my best friend on saturday, which was my first large-ish live music experience since i guess 2019? just local bands playing a big outdoor show, but it felt pretty great. also, i'm getting another tattoo in a few days! very excited about this not just because i love my artist (she's done my other two and they're gorgeous) and the flash i picked, but because a) guaranteed serotonin, and b) i think having to do all the tattoo aftercare stuff for a few weeks should help jumpstart my brain a little. typically the only tasks i can manage when i'm this depressed are the things that absolutely have to be done right this minute, so having one of those that i have to do multiple times a day will be good. it's already incentivized me to do laundry and go shopping, since i'm gonna need aquaphor and clean towels/sheets.

anyhow, not much else to report from the depression zone! hope all of you are doing okay. ♥

10 oct 22

it's been a pretty quiet long weekend. i had a big deadline that got moved from friday night to this coming wednesday, so i promptly began procrastinating and having a restful time instead. i have a small shoulder injury that i keep aggravating, so i'm trying to rest it properly so i can go back to, like, being able to put dishes away and get things off high shelves and use a backpack.

i went to my nan's for a family dinner yesterday and had a perfectly nice time. as a kid i always felt like i wasn't close enough to that side of my family; as an adult, having heard so many horror stories from friends, i'm honestly really grateful to have family with whom i can have the aforementioned perfectly nice time, even if we don't really vibe all the time or (in some cases) know each other very well. one thing i want to write down for future me to remember is learning the story of how my uncle broke his toe as a kid (kicking my aunt in the shin when he caught her cheating at a peter pan board game). i laughed so hard at both his account and my aunt just, deadpan, decades later: "i said i wasn't cheating. i was. i was cheating"

not much else happening, aside from how i've been too chill this weekend and now need to start worrying about my deadlines again. i'm still toddling through teaching myself pixel art, which i'm doing mainly by trial and error in microsoft paint. i've looked up a few tutorials but tutorials just aren't fun for me, and i would rather enjoy the slow learning process and have something a little homely than have a boring time getting things right.

07 oct 22

first entry! i'm kind of at a loss for what to write. it's strange to think back on the livejournal days and realize that i was writing about my life every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. i really want to get back into journal entries, though, because i've realized that i remember those days so much clearer than things just three or four years ago. some health issues have given me mild short-term memory problems, and i think that taking a little time every now and then to put things into words can only help fix things in my memory. (and if not, well, at least i have the record to tell me what happened!)

so i guess i should contextualize the things i'm going to be writing about, for your reading pleasure. it's going to be tricky to figure out how much to share while still being vague enough to avoid the IRL serial abuser and harasser who's been plaguing my friends group for years now. (they're a big reason why i started backing off social media in the first place and ended up over in the yesterweb parts of the internet, so.... thanks for being a terrible creep, i guess?) at the same time as i want to avoid this person for my own safety and that of my friends, i hate the idea of being restricted in what i do because of them. so i think my compromise is going to be to make this blog page, but not actually link it on my site, so updates just show up through the neocities updates. i don't know if it's a safer method, but i feel more comfortable with it.

some things i do feel comfortable talking about: i work in events management, and when that entire field went to shit during the pandemic i decided to go back to school. it's been wild being in my 30s and doing post-secondary education and tbh i feel absolutely elderly all the time, but the upside is that (shockingly!) class is so much easier now that i am out of the grip of the mental health issues that manifested in my teens/early 20s and am properly medicated and all that good stuff. i'm also currently back at my pre-pandemic job, though thankfully i'm doing more administrative duties and no longer doing the events themselves. tbh i don't know if i'll ever be comfortable working events again after the past few years, so i'm glad i ended up studying an entirely different field over the past couple of years—i made that decision out of boredom and curiosity, but now it's definitely paying off. who knows what the job market will be like when i finish in (hopefully) april, but at least there's possibility.

i think that's a long enough first entry, although i realize i just gave you a tiny backstory dump and that's all. but despite my desire to log my days, the past few have been pretty dull, and i'd rather go work on my halloween page and maybe make a few little pixel treats instead of giving you an in-depth look at my grocery shopping. cheers and thanks for reading, if you're here!