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A less topic-focused archive of assorted thoughts on whatever I find myself thinking about that I consider share-worthy. The concept is basically similar to micro-blogging. Don't be misled by the title: this may be Smolog, but it often contains big moods. I often write about mental health experiences here.
The Universe doesn't care about my feelings, but some humans do.
I love Chipotle, but this particular location just didn't 'Chipotle' very well today. I feel like this could be a metaphor for a great many things, especially my own life. I don't know if it's entirely psychologically healthy to think of it that way, though, insofar as it parodies my self. Parodies of me don't seem to help with self-love.
Me, in the frozen food section at grocery store: Hmm, these $4.99 Amy's meals are kinda pricey, I'll find something else.
(I don't end up finding something else.)
Also Me, any given day on which I don't have convenient food at home: I guess I'll go spend $10-15 on a single fast food or fast-casual food meal.
The fast food is considerably more expensive, less healthy, and lower quality than the Amy's meals. Just buy the freaking Amy's meals.
I'm prone to being Eeyore-like. I get excessively cynical, pessimistic, and hopeless about my life. I might say things like "I wish I could be taken into a shop and be fixed like a relatively simple deterministic machine," in a half-joking manner. What I've noticed is that there seems to be a non-trivial element of magical thinking involved in the behavioral expression. I seem to subconsciously feel that /externalizing/ or /publicizing/ it will somehow prod the Universe into making it manifest.
Why do I resort to such magical thinking? Why does /anyone/ resort to magical thinking? I feel overwhelmed by the circumstances of my life, like my goals are beyond my capacity to attain, or certain things are beyond my capacity to change. "But you need realistic goals, Jeff." What, pray tell, do you consider to be realistic for me? I have mental health issues that limit me in very important ways that I think are often overlooked by people giving me advice. I want to have a full-time job in tech, be able to live independently, have good friendships, a deep emotional connection with a romantic partner. Are these unrealistic aspirations? What I need to do to attain these goals involves things that my mental illness makes next to impossible to do. "It's not impossible, it just takes hard work." It /shouldn't/ be that hard, though. And I kinda don't have the privilege nor even the energy to go through a trial by fire at this point in my life.
I know this sort of "learned helplessness" is like copping out, but come on. My only hope right now is to become so skilled with tech stuff that someone is willing to hire me under the condition that I work remotely and /all/ communication is done via text. And as far as a relationship is concerned, my only hope is that someone compatible with me will feel sorry for me enough to even consider dating me, and hopefully if that happens they will care enough about me to tolerate these abberations which most other dating candidates don't have. But in the meantime, the clock is ticking, interest is accruing, and cells are aging.
Sometimes I wonder whether make-believe races in sci-fi and fantasy implicitly enables racial profiling and "other-ing" IRL. Not saying that if it does, we ought to cancel sci-fi and fantasy races. I think many modern sci-fi and fantasy series do a good job of incorporating racial tensions in their stories in terms of a 'right side of history' narrative.
"It's none of your business what people think of you."
This is gaslighting. Stop repeating this nonsense as if it's some grand realization.
When you sigh passive-aggressively, or roll your eyes, or give weird looks in reaction to me or things I say and do, without the courtesy of being explicit about what you disapprove of, you are effectively /making it my business/. Not to mention the other minute aspects of interaction and communication where your disapproval bleeds through.
Aside from like ending world hunger, my greatest wish right now is for me to just be able to shut a certain part of my mind the fuck off and hyperfocus on getting work done.
In hyperreal culture, it's generally accepted/normalized for strangers on the Internet to message each other and ask questions pertaining to their mutual hobbies and interests without any need for introductions or small-talk. It is assumed that the strangers have kind intentions and are looking to develop potential friendships. It's also pretty normal to respond to messages at leisure, with the usual time between responses being a few minutes to a few hours and up to a day. But hyperreals also know that not every culture is like theirs.
I recently rediscovered how amazingly talented is the Wu-Tang Clan:
Wu-Tang Clan - Protect Ya Neck
Wu-Tang Clan - Da Mystery of Chessboxin'
The "stockpile" of content that my brain can draw on for paranoia is a function of everything I say anywhere at any time. Including this. Including the phone call with my mom last night. Including my brief routine interaction with the pharmacy technician the other day. If it involves any kind of interaction with anyone, it's stored in long-term memory and my brain can then use it as ammunition against me.
An example of how this paranoia function, as it were, works: A couple weeks ago I made a gemlog post about my past special interest in wrestling entertainment. Last week someone on Twitter, whom I haven't interacted with prior to last week, made a tweet asking their followers "What would be your theme song that plays every time you enter a room?". Given my insecurity/cringe about my past special interest + ideas of reference + thinking I'm being watched (thinking people know things which, in ordinary circumstances, they wouldn't know) + persecutory ideas of people mocking me (projection of low self-esteem/self-loathing/whatever) means that I thought the person on Twitter was baiting me to reply, so that they could conspire with other people/entities in constructing a video with surveillance footage of me entering some room and mocking me with the "theme song" playing in the background in a cringe sort of way. So my reply to them was "ambient rain forest sounds", because, to me, there is nothing really vain/egoistic about rain forest sounds that would give a cringe impression as a theme song.
This is maddening to me because (1) I have no explicit evidence that this is true; (2) it makes me vulnerable to abuse; and (3) if it *is* true, then I must be the biggest idiot/most cringe person on earth for people to actually spend time doing this.
Maybe if I were a spy or secret agent or something, this sort of thought process would be beneficial, because I'd be one step ahead of the enemy. BUT I AM NOT NOR DO I EVER WANT TO BE A SPY OR SECRET AGENT. I just want to be a regular person with a healthy social life.
So, how do I stop ruminating about things like this? Part of the solution is to continue taking my meds. Another part of the solution is to accept my past special interest as something not-cringe and thereby promote self-love. But how do I do that? Like, the thing is, I personally accept that past special interest, I consider it an enjoyable time of my life and I don't regret it. I look back on those days with fondness and affection. So the problem seems to be that I don't think *other* people will accept me for it. But there is no other way to move forward from here than for /me/ to accept that /some/ other people won't accept me for it, and that I shouldn't invest too much into worrying what /they/ think.
But why do I think other people won't accept me for it? Nobody has explicitly said anything or outright rejected me because of it. What happens when I experience a cringe related to this? Well, my values have changed considerably since those days. I now value rationality, intelligence, and logic much more than I did back then. These values weren't even on my radar back in junior high, and back then, my model of 'intelligent person' was simplistic and basically consisted of 'gets good grades in school'. I didn't really start valuing academic achievement until about the end of 8th grade and early high school, though my performance academically has always been inconsistent. WWE or wrestling entertainment in general is associated with "low culture" stereotypes (e.g., the Bible belt, low education, rednecks, etc.). It's interesting that every time I feel comfortable discussing it, I always make sure to say that it was a /past/ special interest, that only child/adolescent me was into it.
Ceiling cat is no more. The Panoptipigeon is in, and they're watching...
Am angy and sad.
GitHub Dating: "Single and ready to merge. Swipe right to submit a pull request."
Paranoia that happens to be accurate is still paranoia. Unfortunately, it creates an opportunity for gaslighting and plausible deniability.
This might just be another dumb quirk of mine, but sometimes I fear that I will commit a microaggression, then realize it moments later, and when I apologize for it, it would come across as facetious, as if I did it intentionally. I have done this on more than one occasion -- I've said things that /could/ be taken as microaggressions and then apologized for it before anyone even confronted me. I have no evidence anyone took it as facetiousness. But this is subject to infinite regress because people might think my acknowledging this to be sus, so any future microaggressions I might commit will be seen as intentional hostility or gaslighting -- and somebody please pull me out of this rabbit hole, stat!
Something I've noticed about when I describe my mental health issues: I seem to project my own doubts onto potential listeners/readers. This takes the form of describing symptoms in terms of observable behaviors, or generally trying to build a conceptual bridge via more/less common phenomenological experiences. I don't usually get feedback on whether others understand, agree with, or believe my experiences, but I suspect that even if I received positive/affirming feedback, it still wouldn't acquiesce the doubts and depersonalization. There would always be something doubt-apt, and I'd still end up going down rabbit holes and not seeing the image for the pixels. I really have no idea what others think about it. My default assumption (projection) is that people are doubting it. A common thread among the social conservative narrative is to dismiss and deny "wokeness" (about anything) as attention-seeking melodrama and people trying to get things they don't deserve (whether it be sympathy, money, affirmative action, "special treatment", etc). I've been surrounded by this narrative my entire life, so I'm not surprised that I've internalized it. I probably should try to stop caring about it, because it ultimately doesn't matter, and it is hardly in my capacity to change.
Why are these videos resonating with me so much? What kind of foul sorcery is the Universe playing at this time?
Conquering SOCIAL ANXIETY - Dr. K Interviews
Why you feel unloved - Dr. K Interviews
I still squint my eyes in suspicion whenever I see certain Facebook friends adjacent to each other in my chat list. I'm not sure I /really/ want to know how that algorithm works; I kinda prefer keeping open the possibility that it's a false positive.
I've been making mistakes lately that could have been avoided if I had read more carefully. This gives me big sad.
Okay, the trick-or-treaters on Halloween was one thing, but please, All-Mighty Universe, do NOT make me stand in the doorway and pretend to appreciate a chorus of Christmas carolers all singing loudly and staring at me for the duration of their song.
My new diet: don't consume more than 20 grams of net carbs after 3 PM.
Hello, Smolnet!