11:06 PM. Ohhhh shiiit, this late writing is becoming habit!!!
I gotta put a stop to that. I gotta do the hard thing first!
I’m learning git. I use it every day, I know the basic stuff like commits and pull requests, but I’m so not good at making branches, switching between them, stashing commits… All the uncommon stuff. I want to get better and I want to be confident when working with a team on a code repo.
It’s a free course. I’m thinking I could may pay to get the cert. My sister offered to pay for a course, and I might be able to redeem that offer (if it hasn’t expired)
Anyway, cert or not, I’ll get better by working through this course.
ok I watched a 9 minute video. TIL that there is a free program for mac or windows called Sourcetree, which is a GUI application for working with git repos. I don’t use either OS and my CLI skills are strong, so there’s no reason for me to use that program.
OK writing time!
Coursera closed. FULL SCREEN MODE ACTIVATED!
I had dinner with the family tonight. We had really yummy taco salad. My mom heated up some black beans for me, and she bought milk-free guacamole! Wow, she’s so considerate!
I got a bunch of leftovers to take home too. Apparently she and my dad are going back out to do driving for work in central Washington. I’m surprised they took that job. My mom hasn’t had a job for as long as I can remember. I bet she only took it because it’s like a vacation with my dad, but still it’s kinda strange to hear about her working at a job!
They took the dogs, too. I would think that having the dogs would make it kinda difficult. They would have to stop every so often and take care of the dogs… IDK, seems difficult.
I guess I could have asked them about it. I had an evening with them, but I was mostly silent because that’s what I do when I’m in groups. I gave myself a 40% on my authenticity tracking today. That’s the lowest number I’ve had since I’ve started tracking authenticity.
Basically, I am not myself when I’m with people. An exception to this rule seems to be when I am well fed, in a good place and in a good mood. ANIME CONVENTIONS!
This evening got good once I ate a lot. I ate the whole thing of vegan ice cream my mom gave to me, I ate two large servings of taco salad, and between the two cracker packages that I was snacking on, I ate at least a stack of crackers.
I could have just kept eating those crackers. BLISS in my mouth!
If I can afford it, I’m going to buy either some saltines, or some old fashion style crackers. They’re like the store brand Old English crackers. They don’t actually have butter in them like their namebrand counteraprt, but they taste like butter. Soy butter. Just like Ritz crackers.
Just like movie theater butter. I hear that Regal Cinemas uses soy butter rather than cow butter.
Move theaters, LOL. Those are so CANCELLED due to COVY
My parents were saying that their church is opening back up on Sept 20. That’s good news, even though their service seems like it’s going to be a little strange.
There’s going to be a song, but no singing. No singing!?!?!! Madness. Then they’re going to do individual serving sacrament somehow. IDK how that’ll work. Then there’s going to be a short lesson and then everyone goes home.
Yep okay then, strange indeed.
I’ll stick with my virtual Sangha service until this whole thing is over. Sangha service without sutra chanting isn’t something I’m interested in attending.
I’ll go to in-person sangha service when the 2020 great fear of covy is forgotten about. And it will be forgotten about. I’m thinking it’ll be like the world trade center terrorist attacks, where it’s just becomes a part of culture, but it’s not like we fear that event that happened so many years ago.
I guess that’s not forgetting it, it’s changing our way of life because of it.
I think I’ll just move to a place that doesn’t give a shit. A place like Arizona or Idaho or Texas or Nevada that either didn’t shut down due to fear, or realized the over-reaction and has gotten over it.
It seems like most the women in my family are really afraid of covy. The fear of the virus is a minor issue. The major issue is the fear of not fitting in. They wear a mask because that’s the expected thing to do, it’s what everyone else does, and going against that societal norm is so taboo.
I guess I’m similar in some ways. My personal believe is that covy is bullshit, it’s a weak-ass virus that’s just like the flu, and if I got it, I would kick it in a few days. I might not even feel the effects, and I’d just be one of the people who have it and don’t exhibit symptoms.
Do I talk about that personal belief? No. I am afraid to speak up about that, because it’s so normal to shut up and do what I’m told. It’s abnormal to question authority. I have this thought that I want to bring up, but I haven’t mentioned it to anybody. “I feel like the covy lockdown was an over-reaction.”
“Does anybody else think the covy situation is a big overreaction?”
I want to ask that question. I think it would instantly trigger everyone telling the latest news stories about people who got it and died, or the latest death tolls or how there were spikes because places were opening up again.
It’s all cherry picked stories and in the USA we have a sensationalist news regime. OF COURSE the bad news is going to bubble to the top because brains work by focusing on controversy, anger-inducing and outrageous topics.
But the actual facts of a person you know who got it? The actual stories of a person who got it, from that person’s mouth? I’ve heard sick for 2 weeks then they got better, or sick for 2 days then they got better.
I THINK I WOULD CRUSH COVY. I exercise every day and get an hour of sunlight. I take vitamin D supplements and daily multivitamin. I get lots of good sleep.
GIMME DAT COVY. It would give me an excuse to get groceries delivered. It would give me an excuse to take a day off of work LOL. It would give me an excuse to file for unemployment or other government assistance. Ehh, that’s a bad excuse for that. I don’t need it. I want to earn my living through dedicated hard work!
I haven’t studied Japanese since last Tuesday. It’s hard to spend time on Japanese when it isn’t something that is going to immediately earn me money. I can use Google Translate for so many things, that it doesn’t make financial sense to learn Japanese.
I translated a whole document using Google Translate. Most of the text was recognized using OCR, and I just copy-pasted paragraphs into Translate. I had to manually transcribe some text which was part of the background image, but it was very doable and it took maybe an hour.
I think the best course for me to learn Japanese at this point is to do more translations. If I find translating a card or a document helpful to me, it’s going to aid me in my goal to learn Japanese. I’m going to stick with it because it’s something that I repeatedly want to do. I don’t want to have spoken conversations in Japanese right now. Who would I speak with? I don’t want to speak with anybody for any reason, unless they’re family LOL.
Eh, that’s not entirely true. There are a lot of situations where I would want to speak with people.
I DON’T KNOW WHAT I WANT!!!
LOL, I keep thinking about how my therapist is trying to push me to get out and do things with Nerds United or CoDA. I haven’t been doing that because I don’t really want to!
I don’t want to get out and do things with friends because my financial situation is so poor. Doing fun things with friends is a luxury reserved for people with jobs or some sort of reliable income source! I can do it right now, but I’ll feel guilty that I’m not doing something to earn money. The day with friends is guaranteed to cost me more than I would spend if I were at home, due to the caloric demands of travelling to the hangout spot, and the caloric demands of conversing and hiding my authentic self.
That’s right, I have identified a caloric LEAK. It was very apparent to me this evening when I went to family dinner. At first, it was just me, my mom, and my dad in the kitchen. My dad was on the computer, my mom was preparing food items for the salad bar.
I was petting the dogs and talking to my mom. I felt 75% authentic, and then my sister in law showed up. My authenticity dropped to 50% as she entered the kitchen and joined the conversation.
My authenticity dropped again when my brother M.’s girlfriend showed up. Again it dropped when K. and her fiance showed up.
I was down to 40%, no, it was probably 25% authenticity at that point, because I was feeling myself doing the uncomfortable, habitual, people-pleasing smile that I do when I’m pretending to care about what the other people are talking about.
I had a little success, when I excused myself to the bathroom. I didn’t even have to pee, I just wanted to be alone for a moment. I never used to do such a thing! I would just sit there and be uncomfortable. I didn’t feel that I was worth enough to dismiss myself and take time for myself.
Thank goodness for that moment alone. I reminded myself that I don’t have to give a shit about what other people are talking about, unless the topic actually resonated with me. I went back to the dining table with 40% authenticity, where I stayed until everyone left. I might have got up to 50% authenticity at one point, when I was snacking on vegan ice cream and crackers after everybody else had finished eating. I was in a pretty good mood after having such a good meal!
Little success there, indeed. I would like to have more of those little successes!
I need more exposure therapy. I had a homework assignment to look up some CoDA meetings, and see if there’s anything I can go to.
Honestly, I don’t want to go to CoDA. I really don’t want to. I want to go play board games and I want to go hiking, but I’m not interested in CoDA. I’d maybe do CoDA if the meetings were in person, but not if masks are required. If masks are required, I’d rather do Zoom, but then again, I don’t want to do Zoom and I don’t want to do CoDA.
Fuck, what do I want? Do I want to get over my social anxiety? I don’t really care right now. I just want to make more money, and have a lifestyle that works for me.
I want to code and have good anti-stress routines like taking frequent breaks, doing yoga, and riding my bike around down.
I want to get better at code and maybe get paid to code. I’d want to make Sakura Blossom Trading Post work out if I can. I don’t know why I said, “I’d want” like it’s something that I’m conditionally pursuing. I am pursuing SBTP. I am going to make it work if it’s possible. If it’s not possible, I’m still going to keep trying. I’m going to change my tactics and make it work.
If it doesn’t work, I’m still not going to give up. I want this lifestyle and I want this business more than anything else in the world. I am prepared to become homeless and work out of a self-storage unit or a coworking space. I’m prepared to shower at gyms or something… That’s a huge challenge post-covy and it might not work out. I might have to find an alternative.
And I will find an alternative!
I’ll apply the same problem solving that I apply to code to figure out a way to make this business work. The real problem right now is simply expenses. My expenses for internet, rent, and food are too high. I can keep going if I can either reduce my expenses or make more money.
More money will come over time as I set up my supply chain. Until then, I have to brace for hard financial times, tighten the belt, and work hard.
Yeah, motivational speeches!
11:59PM and I wrote 2177 words. Pretty nice!
Here’s some affirmations and gratitude to close out this post.
43. I choose to have strength to move on to healthier relationships
44. I deserve to have good things in life.
45. I release myself from my anger.
I just want to take a moment and express gratitude for my mom. She’s so nice. I realize that I inherited a lot of her niceness. I think a good chunk of my codependency comes from how I mimic how she pays attention to people who are talking to her. I think she sometimes thinks of other people more than she thinks of herself. I think when I talk to her sometimes about things I’m passionate about, I tend to “dump” as much information as I can about the topic. I realize it’s not a healthy way to converse because it ends up being me doing all the talking.
I only realized how poor our conversations sometimes are, due to how my frienemy B. dominates conversations. It’s not fair to the other people in the group if the person doing all the talking doesn’t take breaks to let the other people talk!
If there are 2 people, each person should get 50% talking time. If there are 3 people, each person should get 33.333% talking time. If there are four people, each person should get 25% talking time. It’s a universal rule of politeness!
I try to remember that when I talk to my mom, because I know she has things to say, and she’ll say them if I pause every so often. My mom is an intelligent, talented, unique individual, and I don’t want to simply talk to her– I want a two way conversation and I want to hear what she has to say!
I’m grateful that I realized such a thing. I suppose I’m grateful to B. for providing me with the lesson that sharing talking time is very important.
I’m grateful for this free ballpoint pen that I have. I received it years ago in some targeted marketing campaign. It’s got my first name and my town and zip code on it. It also says, “Happy Holidays”
I got it in the mail, with a form to fill out to order more pens just like it. I think the whole idea was for the business behind it to butter me up with this free gift and entice me to get some custom pens of my own! I think they would write whatever I want on it.
The thing they did wrong was they sent me a shitty Chinese pen. I’m pretty sure this pen would slice my finger open if I pressed the clicking mechanism wrong– it’s got a sharp edge on the pen’s barrel, created by a stylish 45 degree angle cut in the outer shroud.
The tip is loose as well. No way I’d pay money for more of this pen!
It’s good enough to write with. If it’s anything quick like some notes or card sorting separator cards, I use this pen. If it’s something I care about or want to write carefully with, I use my LAMY fountain pen.
well I’m at 2600 words now. LOL, I’m writing a lot and I don’t mind!
Last note of gratitude. Since I’m on the topic of writing supplies, how about something else I keep in a mug on my desk? A pair of scissors!
I’m grateful for these Scotch brand scissors. They’re budget scissors, nothing to write home about, nothing ground breaking or well engineered. It’s simply a light duty pair of scissors which I’ve been using since May 2019, and they’ve held up pretty well. They could use a clean and a resharpen. The screw is a bit loose. Overall, they’re a decent pair of scissors and they will likely serve me for another year or two. Hopefully longer! Anyway, I’m grateful for their durability up to this point, and I’m pleased with their function.
That’s all for now. Excelsior!
