February
February 24
February 19
February 16
February 15
February 7
February 5
February 3
February 24 ;
From no sleep to too much sleep
I am most of all, very fucking tired right now. I'm sure this is all to do with my period coming next week since it always fucks me up, but who knows, esp since I usually get insomnia the week before. I went from barely sleeping and waking up at 5am at the latest every morning, to being so fucking tired and feeling groggy all fucking day. Also, I can feel the depression moving in, so.. that sucks. But idk, maybe it'll chill me the fuck out. I feel like I've been so fucking anxious this entire month. Mostly because of the impending doom that was jury duty, lol. Also you know.... politics (which I am trying my best to avoid). I definitely spent way too much money on keyboards this month so I also need to chill out in that department. AND I've also just been spending way too much time playing WoW, and now that I'm practically a grandma, my poor hands can't take it lol. I end up with too much hand pain and I have to take breaks. Which is dumb, because I try my best to have good ergonomics and shit! But at the same time, there's only so much I can do, and after a while I definitely start to shrimp up or slouch waaay back in my chair and it is probably taking its toll.
Anyway, there's supposed to be a big wind storm from today at 12 through tomorrow at 12. Ugh. My neighborhood always gets power outages, so that's going to fucking suck. I'm charging up all my stuff now so hopefully it'll be okay. I might call out sick tomorrow too. My apartment's doors run through fob readers and if the power goes out we just.... can't get into the fucking building? Which seems soooo stupid, since the power goes out ALL THE TIME. It makes me super fucking anxious that it's going to go out on a weekend or something when no one is around and I won't be able to get into the building. But yeah, in addition to the power stuff, I want to call out tomorrow just because I feel like absolute shit right now, and I don't foresee that getting better and I just want to lay around and rest. I also haven't used a sick day in a while and I feel pretty proud of myself? Not that I've done anything, but idk. It still feels good. I was running really low on sick time since I feel like I'd use a sick day at least once a month.
In other news, I completed the first "group" of lessons or whatever in Codecademy's Python 3 course! I really need to find a small project to do or something to make all of the stuff I learned stick. I only did a little bit a day and I feel like I got stuck on some of the lessons because I couldn't remember what was going on, even though I took notes T_T. Also, I'm almost done with The Saint's Magic Power is Omnipotent finally!!! I'm almost done with volume 8, and there's just one more volume out and then I'm caught up! Thank god. As much as I'm enjoying it, I'm also getting kinda sick of the story lol. I have a few other light novels I'm planning on reading so I'm looking forward to starting those.
February 19 ;
Frustration
My god, there's nothing that just automatically aggravates me more than computer related issues. I think because I often feel like a lot of the solutions are just too many levels above where I actually am, and I feel like I just don't have the brainpower nor the patience to find a solution. That, or I'll try ten thousand solutions and none of them work. So insanely frustrating. What was my problem today you might ask? Well, there were many. But the main one was trying to get my new Megalodon macro pad to work. I wanted to program it to work like a numpad but with a few extra features as well. It took fucking forever for VIA to read it. But I finally figured it out (though tbh I'm not sure what I did that finally got it to start working. I restarted my computer for a different reason and it worked after that so... whatever). Anyway, I had all these grand macro plans, only to find out that I can't fucking do half of them? I thought it'd be fun to be able to store my Bitwarden password or whatever as a macro and then I find out that VIA doesn't include certain special characters. I tried to make it go to my protonmail account but because it doesn't recognize the dots, it won't fucking do that either lol. Soo.... idk. I think there's a workaround, but I decided to stop today because I was just getting too stressed out and I couldn't devote all my brainpower toward reading solutions. Something about writing out the commands in notepad or something and then doing something with that, though I'm not sure what o_o
In other news, I've been trying a new veritcal mouse and tbh I'm not sure how I feel about it. I actually like it a lot and I've gotten used to it, but there's one fatal flaw... I use the mouse scroll wheel a lot, and it's hard to press on my mouse!!! My middle finger fucking hurts after using the mouse all day (I tried alternating between my index and middle finger but ended up leaning toward the middle one), so idk what to do now. I think the mouse really would be like at least an 8 or 9/10 if the scroll wheel was easier to push. If they fixed that, and then made the mouse lighter overall (so it'd be better for gaming, hehe), then it'd definitely be a 10/10 for me. Why must it be so hard to find ergo gaming mice?!?! It's just way too fucking heavy. I ended up putting these glass "glide" stickers on the bottom and that helped a lot, but it still feels much slower than a gaming mouse, and again I just can't use the scroll wheel without having to use way too much force on my fingers. To be clear, I'm mostly talking about clicking the scroll wheel. I open almost everything in a new tab, so it's just incredibly convenient. I also just you know, scroll around a lot. Though the actual scroll movement on the mouse is pretty good overall! It's very smooth but there's still that feeling like there's notches in it or something that I really like.
Anyway, I took a break from gaming because of my hand pain and I ended up reading a ton this afternoon. I'm still reading The Saint's Magic Power is Omnipotent. I had a couple days there where I didn't feel super motivated to read, but I'm almost done and tbh I'm glad for it. It's fine but it's definitely nowhere near the level of The Apothecary Diaries. I'm not sure what I'm going to read afterwards though. I don't know if I'll try reading a "regular" novel, or try another light novel series. "Regular" novels just... don't feel very interesting to me right now, aside from the few that I'm listening to on audiobook. I REALLY like Kitty Cat Kill Sat. The narrator is perfect and the story is so cozy. Once I finish that, next up is going to be the new Emily Wilde! I'm really looking forward to it. Not sure if I have anything planned after that, but meh, that's for future me to worry about lol.
February 16 ;
Notes on being a spender
So you know how they say that there are spenders and savers? Well, unfortunately I am a spender. Things are more or less under control now and I don't feel a huge amount of anxiety like I used to (thank you YNAB), but I definitely still struggle like... emotionally/psychologically. Especially when I get into a new obsession/hobby. I convince myself that I need ALL the things, and I need them RIGHT. NOW. And then I blow all my extra money on those things and then inevitably weeks or months later I'm like hmmm... why the fuck did I buy all that shit? Even though at the time, my entire being felt like it was so vital and important to whatever I was doing. Then rinse and repeat. I do occasionally have saving phases where I don't feel like spending any money at all, but they are too infrequent!!!! Just looking around my apartment, it's kind of crazy just like... how much shit I have and how much of it was because of some stupid passing obsession I had. I don't necessarily regret all of it, but I really could have chilled the fuck out and focused on cheaper things instead of thinking that I needed to get all this expensive shit (I'm looking at you, sewing machine + fabric).
So... what the fuck do I do? I was looking up this issue on reddit, as I typically do lmao. Someone recommended basically replacing the dopamine hit with something else? Because that's essentially what it is. So... yeah. Not sure how tf I do that. I was thinking I could probably do that with games somehow? Like instead of spending money on real life stuff, I just spend game money on game things. Or do more transmog/mount runs or something and get treasured items that I've always wanted or look really cool. Ugh, I'm not sure what else. I'm.. not a very disciplined or patient person, which of course can be a recipe for disaster lol. I already recently redid my YNAB budget and everything is categorized and pretty. I think I should probably set more clear saving goals instead of making them broad. And to also save up just enough for the hobby stuff I'm thinking of getting, instead of some nebulous amount. Like I should calculate out how much the keyboard and keycaps I want to get are going to cost, and then think realistically about when I want to buy them and if I want to save over a few paychecks or not.
February 15 ;
Keyboards Galore!
NOTE: I'm going to have a bunch of links here. none of them are affiliate links!!! I just want to link so you know what I'm talking about, and for my own purposes. Maybe it'll shame me into spending less money if you can see how much everything costs lolol. But hmmm.... you know I might make a keyboard page just so I can track things lol, and I think it'd be fun to write about.
Oh my god, I can't even begin to tell you how obsessed I am with mechanical keyboards right now. SO. FUCKING. OBSESSED. It's all I've been looking at for the past week. Ever since I accidentally spilled tea on my main keyboard, a Kono Kira that my coworker gave me (bless them because this keyboard is kinda expensive lol) with dessert keycaps and bought an emergency one just to hold me over until my kira dried out or officially died and I could get a new one. Luckily my board ended up surviving the night and it works again! I'm thinking of replacing the switches and the keycaps on it for now. I'm not in love with the sound and I thinK I want to use it as my gaming keyboard. Right now I'm planning on these candy keycaps and the akko silvers switches, which are supposed to be good for gaming? So I guess we'll see!
AnYWAY! I ended up getting an Aula F99 and... THE SOUND! It's PERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL. But naturally I had to buy keycaps for that..... lmao. And thus has begun the era of looking up and meticulously researching keycaps, different boards, switches, and all that. I ended up buying the akko bun wonderland keycaps, but then recently switched them out for these black and white MOA ones that I found on amazon. I really like the akko bun wonderland caps but I think they would do better on a more compact board. There was just an awkward amount of space between the keys and it started to bother me, especially when typing for an extended amount of time. That being said, I'm not sure if I like MOA keycaps? I'm not sure how I feel about the dip in the middle of them, but I do like that they are all flat/uniform size. I'm very curious how they're going to compare to an XDA keycap. I also want to try DSA as well one of these days! Maybe on my next build lol.
So... I may have ordered another keyboard lol! I ended buying the Wobkey Rainy75! I really wanted it in purple but it was way more expensive so I just got the white one (which I think is actually a cream color). I'm really excited! I got the milk & honey XDA keycaps for it, so I'm hoping I like those. I think the profile on those is going to be really nice?
Anyway, I am kind of already maybe planning my next build lol...? First of all, I want to buy a num pad so I can more properly delve into the world of 75%, TKL, and below keyboards! After using my Aula compared to my Kono Kira, I think that I prefer the compact feel of my Kono Kira. It's just easier on my hands tbh. Though it's also possible that having MOA keycaps is doing something? I guess I can always test it out and see how the dessert keycaps feel on my Aula one of these days. But yeah! When I bought my akko silvers, I actually ended up buying another set of switches to use on a future build. I was afraid they were going to go out of stock so I just wanted to get them now, because I am OBSESSED with how they sound. But yeah! One thing I'm really looking forward to as well - I really wanna build my best friend a keyboard! Especially since he's had to endure listening to me talk about keycaps all week lolol. I feel like it'll scratch the itch and also I won't end up with ten thousand keyboards lmao. I also think it'd be fun to build one for work one day? I suppose I'd have to get some silent switches, which sounds kind of lame. But at least my keyboard will be super cute? I'm really interested in looking at barebones boards right now, since I like the idea of just choosing my own switches, and I'd be replacing the keycaps on my boards anyways.
Okay in non-keyboard news, I GOT OUT OF JURY DUTY!!!! On Monday night with 30 minutes to go, I was sent a questionnaire by the bailiff and ended up spending 3 hours on it because I was so anxious (it really wasn't that long at all lol). Then at the end of the survey it said voir dire was going to be on Thursday over zoom, so I was fucking AGONIZING over that and ended up watching and reading a bunch of shit on how it works and stressing out over that. THEN on Wednesday she said that the scheduling changed and they weren't going to do voir dire, but she'd let us know on Friday if we were going to have to report in next week. Well... she emailed me on Thursday night saying that the jurors were filled and I diudn't need to go in!!! Wo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I almost cried out of sheer relief. Like I can't even begin to tell you how anxious I was and how much this has been taking over my life. I think my obsession into keyboards kind of helped get me through it LOL. But yeah, crisis averted! I think my nervous system is still recovering though, which is very unfortunate. I still don't have a huge appetite, my digestive issues haven't fixed themslves, and I have still been sleeping like shit. Not as bad as I did on Monday night, but I've been waking up right before 5am every morning feeling wide awake. But I took a clonazepam this morning so hopefully that kind of helps reset things??? I usually sleep really well on days I take clonazepam so I'm hoping that I can actually sleep well later.
February 7 ;
So much reading
A lot of book stuff: I've officially caught up in Apothecary Diaries, and I'm afraid that I have read so much that I have nothing to say in a book thought summary! But I suppose I'll do it anyway at some point, just because I like tracking this sort of thing. I started reading the Saint's Magic Power is Omnipotent! I actually tried reading this several years ago but for some reason it just didn't mesh well with me. At that time, the only light novel that I could bring myself to enjoy was Ascendance of a Bookworm, so everything else felt horrible by comparison. I've of course broadened my horizons since then and now I'm capable of reading a lot more light novels, but man was it rough for a while. It took me a while to get into Apothecary Diaries for a bit as well. Though to be fair, I don't really like how the first two books are written. I think it gets much better when everything feels like one narrative. On that note.... today is my first day of reading it weekly and ugh!!!!! I hate it!!! I mean I love it really, but I just don't want to have to wait one whole week to read what happens next, ugh!
ANYWAY! Saint is okay. I can see why I didn't like it, especially compared to the anime. It's a teeny bit repetitive, and the volumes are so short that it feels like not much happens in each volume. I really wish they were longer. I really want to see more of the day to day life of Sei and see her making things and inventing things. That aspect of it is so fun and it reminds me of the early days of Bookworm a bit. But yeah, I've already burned through the first two novels and it feels very possible that I might catch up to the rest of the series by the time the weekend is over.
On that note actually, it's been really hard for me to not feel weird about posting this all on goodreads. I just feel so self-conscious about it. Like I'm reading "too much", or maybe people might accuse me of "padding my stats" or whatever since I've just been burning through a bunch of light novels, which are shorter than regular novels. Not like I'm sharing my books read stats anywhere LOL, but I guess I just have this nasty habit of assuming I am being judged/perceived for the things I do, and then worrying about people hating me for whatever it is. Which like... I can definitely point to many times in my childhood where that very much was the case, and I was judged harshly for just being myself/doing normal things. It's really hard to get over that, but I'm trying! I've still been using goodreads to track the books I'm reading, and I'm trying not to shy away from that, even though part of me cringes when I make my presence "too obvious" or whatever.
Budgeting & a lack of sleep: So yesterday I ended up waking up at 3:30am and I couldn't go back to sleep. I'm about to get my period and I always get pretty bad insomnia before and at the very beginning of it, and idk. It's just been especially bad lately. I felt absolutely wired when I woke up, so I migrated to the couch and then just ended up deciding to sync my bank account to YNAB (my budgeting app), as I had just been entering my transactions manually before. But then it made my whole budget weird, so I decided to redo my whole budget and... yeah. Now it's so shiny and nice! And most importantly, it's ACCURATE! I'm also watching a bunch of videos on their youtube channel and learning more about it lol. One of the main reasons I never synced it (besides the fact that for a while my bank was being weird about it) was that I never understood how the credit card balance worked on the app. Anyway, it's all great now and I think I'm getting the hang of it! Ideally I'd like to get to a point where I'm a month ahead on all of my bills. For some I'm about half a month ahead, but yeah it'd be nice to slowly build that up.
Coding maybe?: So I feel like this is somewhat connected to my desire to not be perceived, but man is it very hard for me to ask for stuff as well LOL. It occurred to me yesterday when talking to my boss that I could have my job pay for a Codecademy subscription. I don't know if they'll allow it (I actually don't know what their policy is on subscriptions vs like... actual classes) but they allot $2000 one time payments (or $4000 annually) without approval from the head. And Codecademy is just like.... $265 or something lol. Which like... that's a lot of money for me, but definitely not a lot of money for my department lol. And I haven't asked for professional development anything for a long time. In fact, our HR person told me when I got hired that most people don't use their pro dev money so it's totally okay to ask for more stuff if you want to. So yeah! I guess I'm worried that maybe they'll deny the request because there are a bunch of free resources out there for learning Python (I also said that I wanted to learn SQL as well). But ugh, I really hope they just approve it. I've tried to look at other resources and my god, idk. I think my brain is just no good. I think the issue with a lot of free shit out there is that a lot of people assume you know a lot more words/terms than you actually know, so they don't take the time to explain things. And idk, I just REALLY don't want to have to google something every other sentence. Like yeah I can probably figure it out eventually, but already feeling overwhelmed... I really would like something to hold my hand for a bit. Just to get started. Then maybe I'll feel more confident when I try other resources. Anyway... idk. If my boss can get thousands of dollars of career coaching covered for her even though at the time she was going to retire in a couple years... I feel like this isn't asking for too much... Right??????
February 5 ;
Too many options!
Well, I spilled tea on my keyboard last night and it stopped working temporarily. I ended up buying an emergency keyboard as a backup, and now I'm realizing that I actually quite like my new keyboard more than my original one lol.... so... naturally I had to buy some keycaps! They're so stinking cute!! Hopefully the MOG profile won't be too difficult to get used to? I've never used a keycap like that before.
I know it's only been a couple days since my last update, but man I'm already feeling overwhelmed with Mandarin. Not so much the language itself but more just feeling so stressed out about the different options and ways to learn. And how it seems like so many of the really good things that would actually help me cost money. I was really seriously contemplating paying for the Mandarin Blueprint, but man idk. The marketing just really puts me off of it. And the website. And how I just feel like for that amount of money, I would expect getting everything. It's not clear how many courses they sell in addition to their "main" one and idk. As great as it is, the way it's presented just feels shady. Anyway, idk. I switched over to Hanzihero because it's cheaper and the creator just seems like a chill dude, but tbh it's taking me some getting used to after really enjoying the Mandarin Blueprint. But I do like that it takes the thinking away from me. One of the issues I was having was it was hard to come up with a new person/prop/whatever for every new thing. At least with Hanzi Hero, a lot of that thinking has been done for me. And being a millenial who loves in the indoors, a lot of the references and characters that he uses are familiar to me. So... we'll see. It only let me review two characters today so I wonder if it just limits how many you can learn per day? Which might be for the best so I don't overwhelm myself. Either way, I'm trying out as much free stuff as I can so I can decide if I really want to pay for it.
In other news, I'm having a similar issue with Python. So I have this very nasty PDF and I can't turn it into usable data because when I try to bring it over to excel, it's just... idk. VERY VERY hard to make clean. There's like 14k+ rows and nothing is consistent and there's weird spacing and the entire thing is a mess. I tried importing it into excel, and I tried power queries, and nothing seemed to work. So I reached out to a colleague who had actually cleaned up the data before and I wanted to know how he did it. Well... it turns out he used Python. He said he'd be happy to give me the code or to just do it for me, and UGH. My self-reliance!!! My fear of burdening others!!!!!!!! I'm going to have to ask him for help this time, but now I really want to learn Python. I think there's something that I fundamentally don't understand with coding languages (that aren't like... HTML/CSS/JS, not that I know JS but it feels more tangible to me lol). But! Apparently you can use Python to automate lots of stuff, and that sounds really fun and useful. So... idk. I tried going to Codecademy, but it turns out their Python3 course is paid so... that fucking sucks lol. And now I'm feeling overwhelmed at having to find a new place to learn it. But! I think I found a place (bless reddit for always having resources). I'm still so tempted to pay for Codecademy because it's what I know and am comfortable with, but I suppose I should do my due diligence and try free options first.
After all, I'm currently undergoing what I'm calling Operation Frugality where I try not to be such a fucking spender!!!!! Which... I know I'm not doing great at since I bought those cute bread keycaps... but you know what, I'm not going to fully deprive myself either! I do just want to be more mindful though and want to save more. Especially when the tariffs really go into effect, I have a feeling that my budget is going to be verrrry tight this year. I really should be putting away at least $100/paycheck minimum toward my savings or something. Idk.
February 3 ;
Just a bunch of random stuff
Dentist - Hmm tbh I'm not sure if I have anything substantial or burning that I just have to say, but I realized that I needed to make a February page so here I am. Let's see... well, in January I ended up having a bunch of fillings done, so I had to go to the dentist twice. I always think it's going to be so much worse than it actually is, lol. But I also think the conditions have just gotten better. I think before when I'd have fillings, they weren't giving me as much numbing shit as they do now. Because I have had plenty of fillings where I could feel the metal crown thingy that they put around your tooth, and it fucking hurt. But yeah now? I didn't feel a thing.
Jury Duty - I got a jury summons last month too (I can't remember if I talked about it) and I'm supposed to respond to the court by today. I already did that last month so... I guess I just have to wait. I will find out idk, either late this week or early next week? My summons date is February 10. UGH I had to talk myself down last night. I THIIIIINK my county still does jury interview shit online, which would be SO SO SO SO nice. Like why the fuck would they make us all go in person just to sit around and waste time all day? Idk. But yeah, trying to convince myself that just because I get summoned doesn't mean I necessarily have to serve on a jury. But even if I do serve on a jury, it's also not the end of the world I hope??? Like... I will survive, somehow. I guess we'll see...
Hair Mishaps - Hmm I got a haircut late last week and well... I don't love it, unfortunately. I made the rookie mistake of seeing the length wet and then asking her to cut it shorter, and thus it ended up too short. Oh well... ugh. It's not totally unfortunate if I slick it back, but it definitely made me feel ugly as fuck for the first day lol. I did make a hair appointment for May for adding color again, and then I made another one for June to cut it. I guess we'll see what the conditions are like then.
Reading - In book news, I've been burning through the Apothecary Diaries. I'm really not looking forward to catching up, but I am getting closer and closer each day. I think I have a few light novel series lined up once I'm done, but ugh who knows if I'm even going to like them as much? At least I have the anime to look forward to as well, but ugh........ I just want more Maomao!!! I'm on volume 11 right now and I think I have two more until I get to the prepub. So yeah, I guess I'll have another series to add to my weekly reading. At least I have more than one going at a time. Currently I'm also reading From Villainess to Healer, Dahlia in Bloom, and Ascendance of a Bookworm: Hannelore's Fifth Year weekly, so yeah! Lots of stuff to keep me going throughout the week.
Mandarin - In Mandarin news, it's been going pretty okay. I think I stumbled from one thing to another but now I'm working on the Mandarin Blueprint free lessons. Not sure if I'll end up paying for it, but so far it seems cool. And I already know a couple characters, so that's more than I knew last week (zero) lol! I'm kinda excited to learn how to read? One I feel like it'd be fun to read what people are saying on Xiaohongshu without having to translate it. And two I think it'd be cool to read Manhua and Chinese webnovels without translation. Not that I am reading any at all right now, but idk I just feel like the reading possibilities are endless! Anyway, I'm trying to go slow with it though so I don't burn myself out. So far I think it's going okay!