I feel terrible! My sleep quality is taking a plummet. I feel like I got one hour of sleep. So tempted to just go back to bed, but I really want to hold a schedule.

An alarm clock that is in sync with the sun is kinda strange. It gets a few minutes later every day. But one thing that is going to be nice about it is that daylight savings will not have an effect. I wonder if it’s a bad idea to have this sort of alarm clock, but it’s an experiment, so I’ll stick with it for now.

I’m afraid my 20 laps around the firepit trail might not be good enough. I think I may be building a disgusting body regardless of these 20 laps. I think I need to incorporate some sort of strength training on a daily basis or I’ll just end up with the disgusting body I’ve always feared.

What do fit people do to keep a nice body? I’m not ready to do what Joe Rogan does to work out. I’m just thinking of maintenance, not manscaping. Maybe later on I’ll commit to Joe Rogan style workouts, but right now I just want to be well.

God I’m so tired. I want coffee. I don’t have any coffee. All I got is green tea and I think green tea is not good as a morning drink. Last time I drank green tea in the morning, I wanted to throw up. I don’t know if it was the multivitamin, or the tea that made me want to throw up, but it was a bad experience.

Oh my god, last night I slept so terribly. I laid in bed for probably two hours. I almost fell asleep, then my X10 lightswitch malfunctioned and my lights came on. I had to get up and flip the tiny switch meant to disable the lights for changing the lightbulbs. I hate that X10 lightswitch. The buttons are so tiny and hard to actuate. I need to find my original lightswitches and swap them out. I don’t even use X10 anymore because it’s so unreliable.

I almost feel asleep again and I get an audible notification on my new phone. My new phone doesn’t have a silent option on the top menu. To get silent, I have to use the hardware volume buttons. I have just been leaving it on audible mode, and switching to do not disturb mode manually. I figured it would just happen again so I had to get up and turn on do not disturb mode. While I was at it, I configured DND to activate automatically every night, and deactivate at 7AM. Oh, the notification wasn’t even a message from someone, it was my phone telling me to update Signal. What a dumb thing to be woken up by.

I went back to bed. I almost fell asleep again then I heard a loud noise. I sprung up, afraid someone or some thing might have been coming in the door. I figured it was just some stress in the frame of my apartment being released. The wind was really strong last night.

I almost fell asleep again then another loud noise happened. I think this time it was something falling down from my utility shelf. I stack things too high all willy nilly, and I had the fan on, so it was only natural.

I almost fell asleep again then I experienced sleep apnea– I stopped breathing and I sat up and coughed until I was satisfied that my airways weren’t blocked.

It seemed like the dumbest things kept happening and completely waking me just as I was about to drift off to sleep. I was probably sleeping all guarded because my primal instincts were saying I could be in danger from an intruder.

My sleep quality has gone down for sure. Yesterday I took a nap in the afternoon which felt absolutely superb. I think I will probably do the same today, given how tired I feel right now.

I think I need to do something about my sleep quality. I felt several degrees of discomfort as I laid in bed in my stomach. I think I ate dinner too late in the evening. I had spicy curry as per usual. I think I need to tweak the timing of my dinner a bit, so the food in my stomach doesn’t keep me awake. And maybe I should dial down the spicy a bit.

Actually I think I would benefit from a wider variety of food. LEAFY GREENS, MATE!

Fuck leafy greens! Yuck! Ugh, but if it helps me sleep, I should get on that, stat. The bad thing about leafy greens is that they don’t keep for long. That means I have to go grocery shopping more. That means I have to face the crowds, and make more money.

My phone notifcation just went off. I like when my phone is seen, not heard. I think I’m going to extend the DND period to the afternoon. I like quiet mornings and distraction free worktime.

I think I’ll make a little window in time where my phone can go beep. Then I’ll make it shutup again so I can work and have quiet. Oh yeah, I think I would like to de-solder the vibration motor on this phone. I can’t stand vibration for any reason. I like audio alerts, or silence. I don’t like feeling my phone buzz in my pocket, it’s very disturbing to me.

Oh yeah, yesterday I came up with a new reason to make more money. My generosity. I was chillin’ in the Vocaloid Discord and the topic of money came up. One of the members said they ran out of funds on their bus card. They were going to have to beg the bus driver for a ride to school!

I’ve never had that specific problem before, but the idea struck me as sad. I PMd the user and asked if they had Paypal. I said I wanted to send them money for a bus pass. They ended up declining but appreciated the thought.

How sad is that!? A student shouldn’t have to have that obstacle in their life. They said they would be up against a 11Km (~6mi) walk if they couldn’t get a ride. If that were me, I would just go home and sleep.

A part of me feels so sad about this because I didn’t stay in school. And look where I’ve ended up! My main source of income is a shitty dead end job working as a landscaper for my parents. They won’t fire me because they know I won’t do anything if I’m fired. I’ll continue to be dependent on them regardless, so they might as well get some value out of me in the form of labor, rather than get nothing.

I mean it’s mutual in that I get paid from them, but how long must this go on? If I weren’t working for them, I’d eventually get to a breaking point where I would seek employment elsewhere. But I can never get to that point because they won’t let me fail in this way.

When I think of failure, I think of my computer experiences. I’m so good at computer use because I was allowed to fail. I screwed up the family computer more times than I could count. I’ve lost data, wiped out master boot records, installed malware, all because I’ve been a career experimenter.

In social life, I’ve been a career hermit. I do not communicate well. I clam up and shut down when I encounter a difficult situation. I can’t fail and learn because I won’t allow myself to fail. I give up too quickly. There is no undo, and that’s unfamiliar. That’s scary. That’s an unacceptable operating system to run on a daily basis.

Group therapy next month!

Hey guess what? My sewing machine sucks. It is labled as, “HEAVY DUTY,” but I think that label is a mistake. It jams constantly. It ruins my thread constantly. Last night I finally got around to altering B.’s battle belt, and the thing failed on me, over and over. It’s at the point where it doesn’t sew thread onto two layers of some test cotton fabric.

Any machine would be able to sew thread onto two layers of test cotton fabric. I wanted to throw it out the window last night. I want to sell it on Craigslist and get something that actually works. Heavy Duty my ass!

It’s a fake! The thing is built out of shitty plastic! It makes more crunching sounds than I do when eating a bag of crisps! It’s motor has less strength than my hand! How dare they label it a SINGER! How dare they label it “HEAVY DUTY!”

Seriously. My mom’s old SINGER sewing machine from the 80’s is built better, and jams less.

At this point, I think it might not even be something I can fix. I think I will simply take the thing to the local sewing machine repair shop and not ask for it back. I’ll trade it in for something that can get the job done, or if that’s not an option, ask them to dispose of it for me.

I gotta have quality tools. That’s a requirement. It’s similar reasons why I quit buying cheap multi meters from eBay. The low price always allures me. I see some neat feature that they offer. I buy them and end up disappointed in the long run. I had a Radioshack multimeter which had a faulty auto power off function. I would forget to turn it off, and it would run the battery down. No problem, just switch out the battery, right? Wrong! The 12V battery cost more than the multimeter itself!

I sold that radioshack multimeter on ebay, and bought a cheap chinese multimeter. The build quality was atrocious! It was feather light and not in a good way. The plastic housing was thin and flimsy. The thing felt like it was hollow on the inside. It would flex if I squeezed it. The probes were made from cheap rolled metal. It felt cheap from head to toe.

I finally just threw it away and did what I should have done from the start. I bought a Fluke. I went with their entry level model, but wow, this multimeter oozed of quality. The plastic was thick and rigid. The thing felt so sturdy in my hand. It probably weighed twice what the cheap chinese meter weighed, and it fit in half the size!

The Fluke’s auto off feature worked flawlessly, the probes were high quality with extra long leads, and the LCD was large and easy to read. Just so high quality.

Cheap tools just waste my time! I will pay more for a better product!

I didn’t pay anything for my sewing machine. It was a gift from my mom. Bless her heart. She is half the reason I’m generous. I was so shocked that I received a sewing machine as a gift, since sewing machines are large investments. It just so happens that SINGER no longer equals quality! There is seriously something wrong with my machine’s build quality.

I think I’m just being a hard ass. I probably have done something wrong and I want to blame the machine. Maybe I should be looking for a lesson out of this, and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Maybe I should take it to the repair place, and ask for instructions on how to fix this issue if it happens in the future. Maybe I should ask for the cause of the problems I’m having.

The problems I’m having are that the thread on the bottom of the fabric is not pulled tight against the fabric, regardless of where I set the thread tension. I’m also having an issue with the thread being bunched up and frayed by the needle. I’m also having an issue where the machine becomes jammed to the point where no amount of stomping on the peddle will power through it.

Just writing that out is enough to see I’m doing something wrong. I shouldn’t be trying to power through a jam!

Ugh, I think I’m just going to end up hand sewing the remainder of my brother’s battle belt.

UGH. My kill count is 3. I’ve killed 3 sewing machines. The first two were loaners from my mom. Now I’ve killed my own. Heavy Duty, my ass! Quit jamming and quit bunching up my thread!

My mom says it cost about $100 to get a machine fixed. I don’t have that kind of money!

I suppose I’ll just add this to my list of reasons to make more money.

I want to make more money so I have a $100 bill to fix my sewing machine every month. Or save that $100 and build up a stack every month so I can spend $700 and get a HIGH QUALITY sewing machine.

I fixed a phone, maybe I can fix my own machine? We’ll see.

I’m grateful for my sewing machine

I’m grateful for my mom for gifting me a sewing machine.

I’m grateful for the people in the VOCALOID discord who make me smile. I would like to give them all an X-Mas gift if I could. Unfortunately I don’t have much money to do this, but I would like to choose one or two people and give them something. Maybe Discord Nitro or a giftcard.

I’m grateful for my friend D. who keeps asking me to go do things. I think he’s concerned about me ever since I ditched he and my other friends at Kumoricon. I think he has been going out of his way to make sure I feel included and I’m grateful for that.

Have a good Friday! I’m going to study 日本語 then take out the trash and do some exercising.