2026-08-10 02:16:00
The last one was productivity ep 3. (I think 'struggle' is now the name of this series. idk.)
Yesterday.
I wasn't planning on any productivity, persay. Most of what I did yesterday was play video games. Watched some TV. After my wakeup TV, food, coffee, and video games (worked on improving an old Trackmania map), I meditated, and then I went for a walk.
It was kinda hot, but decent out, and I remember the walk being relatively nice.
I took a shower after I got home. My hair had gotten greasy; it was gross. And it was haaarddddd. I just felt so exhausted & low energy. I had to kind of push myself to shower at all, and I knew I wasn't in the mood, but damn.
I hadn't slept well the night before - I tossed and turned for quite awhile before waking up, plus I got to bed later than usual. Probably only 6 hours of good sleep, if that.
Multiple times, I kneeled or crouched in the shower bc my energy just felt so low. But I got it done.
I was basically toast after this. My dirty laundry is well overdue. I'm pretty sure I'm wearing my last clean t-shirt (it was clean yesterday, anyway. Now it has tomato sauce stains on it.). I didn't have it in me to do laundry. I think I could have handled the washer, on it's own, barely. But I sort before drying & hang some more delicate items and heavy items. I knew I didn't have that in me yesterday, the thought of doing it shot panicked feelings through me. My clean clothes basket is also full, so that would have been another barrier.
After the shower, I played Slay The Spire 2 until dinner. I was not in a good mental state. I was vocal stimming a lot. I'll do some vocal stims when I'm well, but they become almost compulsive when I'm not. And I think they help ease my experience some.
I hoped to feel better after dinner, but it was marginal. Played games. Before my tv + snack time, I vacuumed the house - doing this every day lately because I had fleas; haven't seen one in like 5 days now; can't stop yet; look at all these semicolons; whoever said sentences need to be only a single part or two; language shouldn't be so rigid; it isn't so rigid; it's a choice.
My tooth broke some more last night. It broke like 4 months ago and my paid-for-by-medicaid dentist appointment to get it fixed is another 6 weeks away. The different feel under my tongue sparks smol anxiety, but its okay. I'm not too worried about the breakage, but I hope the rot & damage don't progress much further.
My mental state was bad last night.
I think I've been lonely. Some feelings are distinct and I feel them and I know how to label it. Anger, generally. Happiness, yes. Sadness, yes. Loneliness doesn't generally have this distinct feeling. I don't really know if I'm lonely. But I can look at my behavior and thought patterns and the fact that I haven't been spending any time with any of my friends and, well, I can guess: Maybe I'm lonely. I don't know. Probably.
My thoughts were just ... a little toxic to me last night. Very focused on negative things. Remembering upsetting bits from conflicts with friends. Thoughts about being left out, not included. Thinking about asking people to hang out, thinking about how rarely people ask me to hang out. Yeah, I guess it sounds like loneliness, huh?
These last two weeks have been more of a struggle than usual.
I had a major blowout with one friend - we made up, and I've emotionally moved on (like 95% at least, anyway), but we haven't hung out; we typically hang out once or twice a week. I had a bit of an argument with another friend. We don't hang out often, but we talk a decent amount, and they're whom I talk to about exciting video game things most the time. Things have just felt a bit off there, and some of the things they said are sticking with me.
I had social plans with another friend get cancelled due to life circumstances. I've had video-gaming plans with another friend delayed and postponed due to them not feeling well. I had four people ghost me on Tinder - which doesn't really bother me, but hey I'm taking inventory, I guess.
I see my mom every day. I saw my in-public friends - a cookie baker at the grocery store, and a couple of librarians. I went to my dad's one day for dinner, though I cut it sorta short because I was really exhausted and just didn't wanna overdo it.
I've had a near-constant need for stimulation the last couple weeks. I think this goes hand-in-hand with the loneliness. I think the social stressors are part of it too. I think how much I've been struggling with productive tasks also adds to it. But I've just kind of had this underlying agitation that I don't want to sit with. So I've been staring at screens more. And playing games after my TV time, before my reading time. I've been using guided meditations instead of going on my own (which is fine, but might be indicative of this needs-stimulation issue).
My other blogs in this struggle series have been more focused on productivity and the anxiety, mental fatigue, and whatever else negative symptoms have come from that. This one is a bit more all over the place, a bit more encompassing, a bit more context, a bit less productivity. *shrug*
The motivation for this ep was definitely how bad I got during & after the shower. I didn't really explain those symptoms very well this time. But whatever, I guess I had other stuff I wanted to focus on.
2026-08-08 09:54:00
The last one was called panic ep 2. Today's didn't involve panic, but it did exhaust me, and it did cause some symptomatic behavior to surface.
Today's productivity wasn't an intentional time block like the last two. I meditated, then blogged about it, then got myself motivated.
I got new books from the library - I had started another romance-fantasy The Foxglove King. It's far better than a Court of Thorns & Roses (a terrible book), but it's still not my style. So I got new books.
I went by the bank, and had to drop some old kitty meds at the pharmacy for disposal. I dropped of donations at a local thrift store and then shopped a little - I bought two large sheets to use as blackout curtains (I'd been using 4 different blankets, and now I have a much nicer setup).
And then I went to the hospital to get some blood drawn (testing me for celiac's. It's not emergent, the hospital just has labs).
I noticed it while I was there. The sensory sensitivity as she wrapped the rubber band around my upper arm, and my t-shirt was underneath. Also, a need arose to just kind of be bopping my head, a sort of stim. I'm not sure if the bright light was causing a sensory issue, but it being dimmed just sounded nice. My social function was still operational, but it felt like it was fading.
And then after I was just so exhausted. I put my new sheets in the wash & had dinner, and a fairly typical evening of playing games (Slay The Spire 2. About to play some Trackmania.)
My mom is home now, and she was talking to me, and I just noticed my social ability was kind of vacant. There's a distinct feeling when it's gone. And, like, I'm not entirely unable to speak. There's just ... something kind of missing. Some speaking will come naturally, but then other times I'll just blank and have nothing to say, even though I know I'm supposed to say something.
It hasn't been bad. I don't mind any of these experiences. They're not panic or severe anxiety. But they are, like, part of me ... shutting down.
The exhaustion I don't like so much. But I rested. Its fine.
All-in-all my outing today was about 2.5 hours, I think? And it was ... very low effort, most of the stuff I did.
Unrelated: I'm out of nutritional yeast & I don't have more LINK (food money) for 3 more days. I like it a lot on my popcorn. So I'm going to just have to have sad popcorn for snack time tonight.
2026-08-08 02:35:00
I've had a lot of ideas over the years, many for things that would be good for my local community, for my city. I've acted and followed through on some of them. I've started and petered out on others. At this moment, none of them are ongoing.
When I'm toying with any of these ideas, I'm often thinking about how I could turn it into a real business, that makes money, one that I could put sustained effort into. But for most of the ideas, the business-side is a distraction from the work that actually matters, and makes the idea require far more work.
Consider my idea for a website that features local thrift stores. We have like 10 or more in my town of 70,000ish people. What I want is to go take photos of the thrift stores, and put up web pages for each one, with hours, addresses, and such. The simplest way to maintain this over time is to have a contact form where people can report changes to hours or new thrift store openings and closures, and then I just check in on it from time to time and make occasional updates as needed.
This would be really useful for me personally, and probably for quite a few other people. I estimate 4-6 hours of work per thrift store to take & sort photos, talk to the owners, and write up & publish details.
Then it's something that can just sit there and be useful. Or it could be turned into a business. I could add a facebook marketplace-type feature, except where some thrift stores sign up as middle-men. I could add an online store for high-value items at local thrift stores. I could etc etc etc.
This idea is a good idea that would be helpful, and it doesn't need to be a real business. It's something to make, then let sit and just be useful. The business-ification ideas could also be useful, but they're just not necessary.
Consider my other idea, a local journalism site. I built it, and then I did local political journalism for a year and a half before my mental health tanked and I had to give it up.
All of the business-side of things make it worse. Journalism is made worse by advertising. Journalism is made worse by profit incentives. Journalism is made worse when trying to maximize viewership over focused, quality reporting.
But journalism is an ongoing thing that you can't just let sit and move on. You have to keep showing up, writing, publishing. You can't do this work without some kind of material support. It sucks that it has to be a business.
Even just asking for donations does nothing to improve the core work. It adds a layer of business-management that is not journalism.
But the money-making side is basically non-negotiable in our society as it is, unless you're a trust-fund kid or have familial support. I do have familial support - a house to live in, and a very small amount of spending money. But it's not enough, not for building a life long-term. Not for developing some level of self-sufficiency. Not for meeting all of my basic needs, particularly access to culture, social activity, and social acceptance.
It's just frustrating. It's frustrating that we live in such an abundant world, with so much food, with so much shelter, and yet things that are important for our society can't exist without all this extra overhead of business-and-money-crap.
There definitely are ways in which the business-side can actually improve the product. This is especially true for physical products, where you have to actually make a good product in order to sustain what you do. It can even be true for journalism, where you need good reporting that is also approachable and readable and interesting for the public at large. It can be a positive feedback loop. But, in many ways, the business-ification of everything just sucks. And frankly, I just hate the work of the business crap. It's not the part that I'm ever interested in.
2026-08-08 02:24:00
I meditate before bed every night. My default mental state is ... stressful. Just this semi-constant tension and anxious thoughts that go with it - what could I have said differently, what am I doing tomorrow, mistakes from years ago, etc etc.
Before bed, I'm very tired. But I'm almost incapable of falling asleep without this meditation, because I lie down and the tired is overpowered by the tension, and my mind just never settles down, and then I get restless legs and my body won't settle either.
But I meditate, and it's like my tense-mind gives way and allows my mind to be aligned with my body, allows my mind to be in it's more "natural", flowing state. The tense thoughts still poke at me, the tension isn't gone, but it ceases to be the dominant force. And then I'm able to sleep.
I rarely meditate during the day. I'm a creature of habit and necessity. I'm meditating before bed because I have to. During the day, there just isn't the same imperative, plus it's not routine.
But this has left me curious about what my "natural" mental state might be during the day if I can meditate and release my "default".
But meditation during the day feels like a pointless, boring, agitating activity. Or I anticipate it as such. I'm often craving activity during the day, something to just focus my mind on - youtube shorts, video games, music if I'm in a calmer state. So I start meditating, and it's just, like, a little agonizing.
And it occurred to me today (while doing a rare daytime meditation) that I have no short-term goal when I meditate during the day.
My night meditations are intended to relax my mind and welcome in the tiredness and rest. It is a very clear goal. I know exactly what the mental state feels like when I get there. It's a huge contrast, and I know with about 90% certainty whether the meditation was "successful" or not, just based on how I feel at the end.
My day meditations (including today's) are not so stark, and the goal is not clear.
Long-term goals are there, but these don't seem to be strong motivators for me in the moment. Meditation can do a lot for mental wellbeing, overall peace of mind, reducing reactivity, finding more contentment and peacefulness day-to-day, improving depression and anxiety symptoms, spiritual development, among other things, I'm sure.
But those long term benefits are the result of regular meditation practice, not a meditate-now-and-you're-cured kind of thing.
I enjoyed my meditation today. Parts of it were very peaceful and relaxing. She shared a quote of Thic Naht Hahn's that gave me a tingling feeling inside (I think people call this chills? Idk. It's warm and fuzzy.) And, too, there were parts of anxiety, of tension, of stress, of agitation.
I do think my mental state afterward was more pleasant, more calm. But it's not stark like it is with the night meditation.
Going forward, I think I want to develop the short-term mental-state goal for day-meditations like I have for night-meditations. This will necessitate improving my awareness of my mental state before, during, and after the meditation practice.
I also wonder if I should develop some kind of behavioral goal, too. Like my night meditations allow me to go from awake to asleep. Could my day meditations take me from screen-craving to activity-engaging?
2026-08-06 03:47:00
This book is definitely a favorite of mine. The overall storytelling style was weird, and interesting. It was unique. It was hard, at first, to get into, and I'm really glad I did not give up on it. It was an easy read after the initial weirdness. (the weirdness is important and I'm glad its there)
We start with a kid (12 or so?) sitting with his Lola who is telling him stories about the Old Country. We get some of the setting of the present day - his Granjo (grandma/lola's dad), his brothers, the war that's ongoing, the dockside town they live in.
As his Lola had told him, one day, he would have this mystical dream about the Old Country. So there he is in this mystical place, a massive theater, filled with shadow-people, sort of like ghosts. They take their seats and are facing a stage filled with dancers.
And so the book sets the scene of this theater, and the audience of shadow-people (our boy also a shadow people), and the dancers on stage, etc. And then the dancers start acting out the story of the Old Country, and then we kind of fall into the major tale of this book. As the story is told, we also hear voices of the dead, commentating on some aspects of the story as it happens.
I would say the main story of the book is the Old Country stuff (which I'll get to). But the theater also matters, and the "present"-day also matters. But the main story is a 5 day journey within the Old Country by our two main characters Keema and Jun.
I recently wrote about how bad A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas was. One of my big complaints about it (Idr if I said this in my post) was that it seemed to invent magic on a whim, rather than having any underlying system. It was often an way of doing something with the plot that just ... didn't really fit. And Court ... Roses didn't really care about its own plot, the world it was building, its magic "systems", or the political conflicts. It was a badly told romance story with shallow characters.
Most books I've read don't have the problem Court...Roses had. But reading Spear Cuts Through Water after it really elucidated this issue for me.
Spear Cuts cares a great deal about the world it built. There is an actual magic system, and it plays an integral role in moving the plot forward. It's established in meaningful ways, and then followed through on with consistency. It's thoughtful.
So anyway. The story. Meaningful spoilers follow.
The Moon once was high in the sky, but the Moon & The Ocean were in love. So the Moon asked a great warrior to cut the threads that held her in the sky. She plummeted to the earth and fell onto a great Tortoise God's back, which saved her from a deadly impact. She granted the Tortoise God a wish, which was to allow her and all her children to communicate telepathically, no matter how far apart they were. She also granted the warrior a wish, which was godly powers and godly offspring - she granted him three children, despite the fact he only wanted one sun.
The Moon, now in a woman's body, still having godly powers, but no longer lighting up the night sky ... is kept captive underneath the Great Warriors palace, under the Emperor's palace. The Emperor's three sons are called the First Terror, Second Terror, and Third Terror. They have names, but it hardly matters.
Jun is a son of the First Terror. He is assigned to guard the Wolf Door (behind which the moon is held captive). The First Terror's Sons take 6 month rotations guarding the Wolf Door.
The Moon turns Jun. Jun helps her escape. The Moon literally explodes the Emperor. And then the First Terror is hunting down Jun.
Keema worked as a guard at the Tiger Gate - there are massive Gates setup across the empire to control contraband and traffic across the empire. Jun comes through the Tiger Gate. Commander Araya tells Keema to leave Tiger Gate and deliver her Spear (it's special) to someone a fair distance away. TLDR Keema ends up traveling with Jun as they outrun the First Terror.
This is all, basically, the setup of the book.
What follows is an epic journey, with a good deal of action. It is all wonderfully told. And its a large part of why I love this book.
But this book also engages in gentle social commentary. It speaks of sexual attraction in the time of the Old Country and how same/opposite sex things just ... weren't a thing then like they are now. And then how queer things are explored in the Old Country story are just very ... nice. It just feels normal, and natural.
His Lola told the boy the story was a Love Story.
I believe it is a Love Story between the Moon and the Ocean. But it is also a love story between Jun and Keema.
Unlike Court...Roses, it does not get bogged down in the Love Story. The Love is a thing that happens as a part of a much grander story. It happens because of the overall plot that's playing out. It's thoughtful, it's sweet, and it's well told.
Oh, also. The tortoises talk. The Emperor has one at each Gate, and uses them to communicate messages across his kingdom.
Keema and Jun steal a wagon at one point, and in it is The Defect - a Tortoise that is not in such good shape. He's my favorite character in the whole book, I love him so much. He's just such a sweet delight.
There's also a purple bird that Keema freed from that wagon. The bird plays a role throughout the book, though it is typically pretty minor. This stuff is also sweet, mostly.
There are some really horrible people in this story. Jun had spent his life slaughtering people on behalf of the First Terror, who did not get his name lightly. But Jimenez makes us feel for and care about Jun, and even the First Terror. While the First Terror is a true monster, he also deeply loves all of his sons (like 30+ of them). He really truly loves and cares for them, and this is shown in extremely human ways. Jun is reformed now, but also has this really dark and genuinely evil past.
It's just. It's just such a beautiful book.
One of my favorite things from the whole story is toward the end of the book, where rain falls for the first time in a very long time. It made me cry, and makes me cry again as I type it. It is just so beautiful. The bold below are the voices of the dead.
And so it is raining:
We looked up and opened our mouths and tasted the same taste. As did the boy with the cleft lip, who sat on a ledge in a small village in the palm of the Spires, where he was taken in by those who cared, along with the other lost children of the land - his tongue held out beneath the cloudburst sky. And we knew this to be nothing less than the fruit of heaven
2026-08-04 04:20:18
This is followup to I get exhausted so fast
It didn't feel like exhaustion today. I decided to put in 2 hours of productivity again. Started about 1:30 (3:00 now). Also, since Friday I decided to expand what my intentional productivity time could include. It's not just house chores now, but can include: Meditation, shower, piano, and other positive activities that I often struggle to engage in.
I vacuumed (doing this every day to try and get rid of flease). That's 20-30 minutes.
The psychic "pain" wasn't really there. Maybe a poke after vacuuming, but nothing bothersome.
I picked all the ripe tomatoes from my garden (except for the cherries. Sidenote: My cherry tomatoes are HUGE and its weird. They good though.).
I did that without much mental struggle. Some tomatoes were spoiled, had been gotten by insects, or had sat on the ground and gone rotten. The yucky feeling from their juices was ... bothersome. Had to rinse my hands once. Couldn't bring myself to clear out some of them bc I was at my yuck limit. Mostly, wiping my hands on my shirt was okay.
After tomatoes, it was ... still okay? I think the anxiety or whatever was rising, but it wasn't severe. I believe I felt fairly ready for the next task.
There were like 20 items in a box on my dining room table. Stuff I needed to sort through.
It went well. I sorted everything, threw away a few things, put things in their places.
But while I was doing this, the pain was rising. The dysfunction was rising. Still kept below the surface, but threatening to pop out.
When I was done with it, it was starting to be bad. I'm looking around, trying to decide the next thing to work on, and ... I just keep getting hit with these waves of pain. I toyed with the idea of taking apart my old tiny cat tree type things, so that I can maybe reconfigure them into something better. But I had to just nope out. I couldn't process any more. And trying to figure it out was causing these big spikes of anxiety. The anxiety is painful. Sorta.
So anyway, I decided to shower. I'm walking to my room to get clothes, and I grimace. A big grimace, which I hold for a solid 5-10 seconds. This is the pain face, and I think its the first one I made today, the first big one anyway.
I grimace several more times as I collect my clothes and get ready for the shower. At one point, I was deciding whether I want my comfy pants after the shower or my shorts, and that caused a spike of pain/anxiety. I chose the comfy pants.
And I get into the shower. At this point, everything is very routine. There's really no decisions to make, nothing to struggle with mentally, right? I had put music on because the stimulation makes me more comfortable. I'm glad I did that.
But while I'm rinsing my hair (I couldn't stand a wash today, bc then my hair is too fluffy, and it makes me really anxious, its a sensory sensitivity that I just don't have the capacity for today), I keep having these huge spikes of painxiety. anxiety pain. painxiety. Whatever. Basically, I was having thought cross my mind that would trigger it.
I didn't keep track of the thoughts, but I believe most of them involved some kind of "what am I going to do" question. What am I going to talk about in therapy. What am I going to do after the shower. Am I going to go see my case manager today.
Or things I did. Things I'd said. Different things I could have said. What should I have said. What could I say next time. You know, just like in minor disagreements or misunderstandings or whatever.
During the later spikes of painxiety, I started doing physical stims - shaking my hand(s). It helps.
Oh, and the physical symptom of all this. The difficulty moving. Just, like ... My brain is having a hard time communicating to my limbs what to do.
This is an anxiety (or something) symptom. I don't have this problem unless I'm on the verge of panic.
I noticed this most significantly when I was putting on my T-shirt after the shower. And yaknow there's a lot of fabric and you gotta get a head and two hands through 3 different holes (assuming you have both arms!).
And there's this moment where I just kind of have to pause. Putting on a shirt is a pretty automatic activity, typically. I don't have to think through it or process or figure out how to move my hands/arms. I just put on the damn shirt, I've done it a octotillion (surely not a real number, but it sounds big, right?) times. But this time, I'm trying to put on the shirt, and I feel the panic bubbling, my right hand is sorta tangled in the fabric (but no more than normal). And I have to kind of pause, and process what I'm doing, and be slow and intentional with my movement. This calms the anxiety. The pain.
And uhh. Yeah. So now I blogged about it. After getting dressed I blogged because I want to document this.
Oh and I decided on my shorts over my comfy pants bc I have to leave for therapy soon.
