January

January 25, 2025 ;

Mind-Numbing Marathon

Welp. I've been trying my best to numb my brain as much as possible this week. I had a really high level of anxiety at the beginning of the week, despite my best efforts to ignore the news. So that's why I've been burning through light novels and anime, because I just can't deal with real life.

I decided to give Xiaohongshu a try, even though I actually haven't been using tiktok for a couple months. My best friend got it and he kept sending me videos from there, so I thought I'd finally give it a try. And I love it!!!! The people are SO NICE and I appreciate the vibes so much more. So relaxing and peaceful and seeing all of the art, the recipes, the cats, daily life, and houses/apartments of people is just so fun. I've been trying to comment more too, and idk. It feels easier and less scary to comment there than it does on literally all other english speaking platforms for me lol. I think it's because I feel less self-conscious about my formal way of writing to people I don't know well, and idk... I just feel like the environment makes me feel like no one is going to laugh at me or think I'm dumb just for saying something simple. Even though no one has done that to me before, I just have this tendency to censor myself and only speak when I feel like I have something substantial to "contribute." But yeah, I've also been using a translator and so all my comments are in Chinese, so that probably helps too.

On that note! I've decided I'm going to attempt to learn Mandarin Chinese! Nevermind that all of my past attempts at other languages have failed miserably LOL. The truth of the matter is though, I do know more Chinese people irl than I know people fluent in Japanese and Tagalog. Though my best friend is Filipino and he is fluent in Tagalog so perhaps I shouldn't count that LOL. My family is fluent in Ilonggo and while they do know Tagalog too, they don't use it as often as Ilonggo or English. I also just don't really have any Filipino friends who know Tagalog aside from my best friend. So... we'll see. I am going to TRY MY HARDEST to not overhype this for myself and go too hard too fast and stop doing it altogether. Slow and steady... or something. And maybe I can even find a way to have fun with it? I think I get tripped up with Tagalog because I put too much pressure on myself because it feels like part of my identity. And I get so frustrated hearing some of the words sound "wrong" because I know how they're supposed to sound, and I know I'm not doing it right. Essentially, I'm not giving myself a break at all when it comes to Tagalog. I think I won't run into those issues with Chinese, lol.

But yeah, we'll see I suppose... my secret goal is to at least learn a few phrases and make simple sentences in about a month? So that I can surprise my cowororker when she comes back from traveling in February. She's from China and idk I think it'd be really fun lol. On that note too I also want to get her a gift, but I'm not sure what yet. She always brings me back presents when she travels, but I never travel so I haven't really gotten her much in comparison. I try to give her small gifts here and there but they are few and far between.

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January 14, 2025 ;

And so it begins

Before I forget to complain about it... I got a jury duty summons! Ugh! I feel like I always get called for jury duty, and yet no one around me ever gets a summons. This'll be my third one in a few years. Luckily I didn't have to even go in with the first two, but I feel like I'm bound to have to go in with this third one! I THINK that jury selection is still online so hopefully that's the case because wow, do I not want to spend hours and hours in person just to have nothing happen. I also really hope they pick the courthouse closest to me... I don't know what I'm going to do if they pick the furthest one, because I looked and it's a 2 hour bus ride. When I filled out all my info I wrote that I don't have a car so..... yeah. Ugh.

Anyway, today I am officially onsite! It's going okay so far. I can feel my stomach is very unhappy with me, so hopefully it lasts until I can get back home. I think I'm going to leave soon because idk. This is exactly the reason why I don't come in much anymore! There's nothing for me to do! I mean there are SOME things, but there's nothing pressing. I ended up meeting up with my friend and we walked to one of the cafes and he bought me a donut, so that was really nice lol. My boss is out today too so yeah... I did get a couple things done though, and tbh it is nice to just like... have a dedicated day to go in and know that I'll be able to complete a bunch of stuff that I can only do when I'm actually at my desk. Maybe it'll motivate me so much to do stuff I've been putting off, because there's nothing else to do while I'm here... lol.

Tonight I'm planning to bring up EMDR with my therapist! I have no idea how I'm going to phrase it but hopefully it goes okay. I already have a draft written up but I might think about it some more lolol.

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January 8, 2025 ;

Dreadful

So much dread and overwhelm! I felt absolutely awful on Friday evening and all of Saturday. Basically just had a ton of health anxiety because I probably was so stressed about going back to work that it fucked my body up. I had this huge overwhelming sense of dread. Just feeling like "wow, there is something horribly wrong because my body wouldn't be feeling like this otherwise. I get why it's a great survival mechanism because man if you didn't have chronic anxiety, like THIS is how you get moved to act lol. What's annoying is that I tried all of the fucking tools in my fucking toolbox and none of it worked. I took clonazepam and that worked for most of Saturday but it came back in the evening. I went on a walk. I hungout with a friend. I distracted myself. I meditated. I DID ALL THE SHIT. The only thing that ended up working was smoking a ton of weed, but I can't do that every time. So I don't fucking know. And I can't remember when it started but my eyelid has been twitching for a few days. It usually only happens when I'm super super tired or stressed, but it's very rare. Anyway it's been like every day multiple times a day for several days so.... yeah. Hopefully that goes away lol......

Anyway, not sure if I've written it here but I decided that it's probably for the best if I go into work more often. One because I think I would just do my job better if I was onsite a little more often, and two because my boss is retiring in April and I think having an established routine in place for whoever her replacement is will protect my ability to be at least hybrid. I also just think it'd probably be better for me socially, instead of basically never leaving my apartment except on weekends. Though on that front, I've started taking walks every day again so.. that's been helping a lot. But yeah, idk. I am dreading it. I do NOT want to go into work, even if I only do half days. I don't want to see people. I don't want to ride the bus. I don't want to sit there and do nothing all day. I don't want to have to interact with people on the days that I DO have to do something. I don't know if I have enough clonazepam in the world to get me through. I'm also just desperately going to miss my cat. ugh ugh ugh. I'm worried about so many things! Getting mugged lol, getting sick when I'm at work, whether it's a chronic dizziness episode or getting an upset stomach/indigestion from stress. I'm worried about fire drills when I'm at work and panicking about what to do (even though I know what to do theoretically lol). And what if something happens when I'm away from home? What if there's a power outage and I can't get back into my building, or what if we have to evacuate and I can't get my cat out because I'm not home?

Oh, in chronic dizziness news, Dr. Yonit released a new video talking about symptoms and basically listed all sorts of symptoms you can have with chronic dizziness. Ugh it was such a good video and it's nice to just have a definitive list of symptoms because man, do I have a lot of them. And to know that a lot of them are actually chronic dizziness related? Insanely helpful. I think I am going to make a list of all my symptoms somewhere (maybe I'll put it on my list page I guess) so I just have it handy.

In new therapist news, this was my third appointment with her I think? And idk... we haven't done EMDR and she hasn't mentioned it and I just.. really want to get back to it. I didn't really have a good time to bring it up yesterday so idk.. gonna bring it up with her next week I guess. I just want to have a definitive plan and figure out wtf we're doing because MAN could I really use EMDR for my social anxiety and idk just everything??? Just fucking beam all of this shit out of my head please. Like what is the point of talk therapy (for me personally at this point in my life, definitely not talking about other people lol)? I just feel like I'm listing out all my problems and she validates me but like nothing is HAPPENING and I feel like I'm still just stuck. Idk it's a really hard adjustment. I really miss my old therapist and I miss how organized she was and how much she planned out. She always told me what the plan was. I knew what was next, where she wanted to go, what she was thinking about my treatment, etc. And now that's all gone and I just feel like I have no idea what's happening again and it's stressing me out. Idk.

I have an appointment with my psych nurse on Friday. I had a moment earlier where I was thinking, maybe I should go on medication again... But... yeah, I just don't think I can do it yet. But at the same time idk, with my boss retiring, maybe it would be good for me to be "stabilized" on something, because I know going on or off medication with a new boss is going to be horrible. Especially if I don't know how lenient or understanding they are going to be. But also also... I just really don't want to deal with potential side effects again. I don't want to be sick all the time. I don't want to have to trade uncomfortable side effects for stability. Idk. I need to come up with a plan of other things I can do to help myself other than just.. walking every day. And you know now that I've typed all this out, like this is why I am doing EMDR therapy? Because it actually helps me and reduces my anxiety and shit. So yeah. First order of business is figuring out how to ask my therapist about it lol.

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