It’s snowing heavily right now. Windy, too.
Ah fuck, I just caught myself being a bitch.
I was using the “Morning” section of that weather report as if it were right now’s conditions. But right now is above that table. It’s Not 13mph wind which is the high end of what was forcaseted, it’s 9mph wind and it’s only lightly snowing, not heavily snowing.
I was using that forecast as a determining factor for my mood. I was deciding to be in a bad mood because the weather is not well suited for pedestrian or equestrian travel.
I don’t have a horse and I have no interest in riding one. I just wanted to rhyme with, “pedestrian.” I couldn’t think of a bicycle word that rhymed.
I’m feeling sad and depressed. My super power of riding my bike often is not possible right now. This whole week’s forecast predicts snow and freezing temperatures. The roads likely won’t be dry to where I can ride.
I’m making excuses to not walk. I really need to make a trip to the grocery store to get food, but I’m entering the zone of depression where I’m exercising self-pity and making every excuse there is to make.
I’m thinking of cancelling group therapy on Friday because I can’t make it down to the therapy office in order to pick up the necessary art supplies.
I can make it if I walk there, but I don’t want to invest the 3-4 hours it will take to get there. I think it would normally be 2-3 hours, but with the snow, I’m adding an extra hour.
I could take the bus, but that incurs a monetary fee that I’m not willing to pay.
Goddamn, see what I mean? The excuses just keep flowing.
It’s 5 miles in both directions. I’m sad that I can’t just ride my bike there. A 10 mile bike ride is easy peasy, but a 10 mile walk is not.
Google maps estimates 1 hour 38 minutes walking time, one way.
I’m tempted to use the saying, “fuck my life.” but I won’t.
I am not in a good mental state at the moment. Yesterday I completed all the todo items on my DPC, except for 1 hour of socializing. That socializing is so important, but I ignore it so often. And sometimes I get 1 hour of socializing, but I’m hiding for the entire duration, and I end up feeling empty and fraudulent because the person I presented was a fake persona.
I think this lifestyle isn’t working out. I think I need to move to a place with weather that supports me.
Or maybe it’s silly to think that way. Maybe life is going to be a challenge no matter where I live. If it’s not the weather, it’s the law or something. I think the thing that will result in happiness and peace is seeing the challenge, and meeting it head-on.
So in today’s example, the challenge is the light snow and the light wind and the distance of the destination. Meeting that challenge is dressing warm and having a nice long walk.
Goddamn, my legs sure are tense right now. They could really use a 10 mile hike.
I napped. I awoke at 4PM and I still felt depressed. I’m dehydrated, too. Myself is not being cared for as much as I’d like.
Well I turned that around. I jogged in place for 30 minutes while watching bsapricot on twitch. Got a good sweat in, then showered and shaved. 5:18PM now. I just had $119 debited from my bank account by eBay. Seller fees for last month. I got worried that my bank account had been drained. I’m okay for the moment with $250 still in my checking account. Sales have been decent this week. Hopefully I can maintain that trend.
My plan for the rest of the day is to attend CoDA at 6, then do some eBay listing at 7. Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll be able to squeeze in an entire 2 hours of eBay listing like I have planned for every day before 8:30 when I want to log onto steam.
Today I’m prioritizing social contact, because that’s the thing I’m lacking in the most. I’m getting to the point where I’m shutting down, unable to think positively and unable to do anything other than eat and sleep.
That’s how I cope with depression. Sleep.
It’s a bad way to cope. It’s avoiding my issues, and bitching out instead of facing the challenges. There’s a better way to cope now. I’ve learned it through lots of work on myself over the past year.
The better way to cope is to practice self care, meditate, focus on what it is that is bothering me. It is addressing the problem directly, and getting myself what I need to be happy. Lately it’s been loneliness. I haven’t been addressing it and doing the reaching out that I need.
That’s why today’s priority is social interaction. I’m going to go to my support group, then I’ll go to my game group. I’m looking forward to game group. Support group too, but for different reasons.
Support group helps me learn things about myself, and work on my social anxiety. Shame reduction is what I would call my support groups, lol!
Oh shit, I just got a notification that Burnerapp updated my payment method. I wasn’t planning on renewing. Did it renew just now? Fuck! Well I’ll be sending a nastygram if it did. I haven’t used the service for ages and to continue paying for it is just stupid.
Apparently it did just renew. That means that I’ve had Burnerapp installed on my phone for a year. It doesn’t seem like it’s been a year. time really flies.
I sent a polite e-mail asking to cancel the renewal. Burnerapp is a great concept, but it doesn’t work well without Google Services Framework, something that is intentionally missing on my phone.
In the future, I’d like to get rid of my cell phone service and use a cloud based VoIP service. I have been experimenting with not bringing my phone when I go out– I have learned that I don’t actually need it 99% of the time.
I could carry a phone if I was going to some social gathering, and text via wifi. Free wifi at Starbucks could be my modern version of a phone booth LOL.
Voicemail on most mobile carriers is trash. To retrieve it, you have to dial *98 or whatever, then go through a time-wasting, frustration inducing voice prompt and hope that you don’t fuck up your input or bring up the DTMF pad too slowly and the whole thing times out and disconnects you.
Fuck that shit.
Voicemail in 2020 and beyond should be like this. If the callee doesn’t pick up, the caller hears a beep and the voicemail is recorded immediately. No custom prompts. No voice prompts of any kind or of any length- – these only waste the caller’s time. The caller already knows who they’re calling, and if the caller doesn’t know who they’re calling, the voicemail shouldn’t give it away.
The interface for voicemail is e-mail, with audio sent as an attachment. No dial in voice prompts. No shitty, proprietary carrier voicemail apps. No voicemail protocol standard that works with a shitty built-in app. The best interface is no interface. Send it straight to e-mail as an attachment. Provide magic links to block the caller or trigger a phone call. Deletion of the voicemail audio on the server-side is automatic, not something that has to be manually done. The file can only exist on the e-mail server and that’s perfect.
