bluelander: A low-poly raccoon (Default)

Hard day. Therapy this morning was rough, but necessary. I skipped it last week. Life was too much. When I got to work, I had some good news in my inbox: they're finally starting the process of hiring me on full-time with benefits and such. Had to pore over some insurance information and fill out forms and make decisions that hopefully won't bite me in the ass. That was mentally draining on top of a rough morning, and then I had to work late to stay late to make up time.

All this will hopefully culminate in getting what I need more than anything else: TIME OFF. I haven't had an extra day off in three years that didn't require a grim trigonometry balancing my physical health, mental health, and financial stability. I hope they can get me hired before the winter holidays. I don't celebrate american or religious holidays, but if I can get a few days OFF-off, it might heal my soul just enough that even I, me, will carve the roast beast.

Teeth

Oct. 15th, 2024 14:14
bluelander: White scribbly human head with no features on black background (Scribble)

Content warning: while it's nothing graphic, this post dicusses trauma related to dental health, parental abuse and poverty.

It's after work and I'm in the emergency room. I'll try to speak honestly without self-deprecation. I went because my teeth are a disaster. I was in this position several months ago. They gave me strong NSAIDs and antibiotics, and I was better in a few days. I'm hoping that'll be the case again. It won't fix the problem, but it'll get me functional enough to get there eventually.

I could blame myself for my teeth, but I've done that my whole life and it hasn't helped. I didn't take care of them, but also we're all products of our circumstances, and I wasn't given a chance to take care of them. The story of my teeth is one of many traumas, ranging from early childhood to recent middle adulthood. One of the traumatizers was the US healthcare system, such as it is, which did not think poor children deserving of dental care when I was a poor child. The system made sure I could only get help in dark basements of schools where dental students practice their trade on living specimens. A place where the screams of the other children and the whirring of drills echoing through the cold tile halls scarred me before I could even open my mouth. Their hands in my mouth were shaky and uncertain; my imagination provided vivid previews of all gruesome outcomes should their hands should slip with one of their medieval torture devices in my mouth. The air was thick with the scent of what was probably fluoride, but in my anxious imagination I'll always think of as tooth dust.

At home, two notable incidents of parental violence occurred around and related to bedtime dental hygiene, so that instilled an anxious and avoidant attitude towards basic dental care that persists to this day.

Most recently, I had some problematic teeth removed, and the person doing the removal didn't use enough anesthetic, and didn't stop when I started screaming. So now I have a debilitating phobia of the place I need to go to get the problem fixed.

The emergency room is a sensory nightmare, it's a cacophony of unwelcome televisions and grumbling patients and announcements and general susurus, and I can't wear headphones because I have to listen for my name to be called, but at least I know I don't have to lie back and have a light shined in my face and hear drills whining and let some potential sociopath put their fingers in my mouth. I can get the drugs I need to make the pain go away for awhile. But it won't fix the problem and I'm going to have to figure out how to face the music if I want the problem to stop.

I don't have many of my original teeth left, and I'm probably going to lose those too. My head is swimming with anxieties, both on the surface and buried deep down. The terror of unbearable pain. The shame of my failure to take care of myself. The shame of the stigma. The internalized classism. The anger and resentment at the people and systems who caused me to become this way. The prospect of being unable to talk or eat for an unknown amount of time before I can get artificial teeth. The frustration of adapting to them. I can't do this and I also can't not.

...

It's now Tuesday. I was given a shot of toridol and a prescription for penicillin. 28 big pills, 4 per day for a week. I've taken two. They don't give anything for pain, not even naproxen. I have acetaminophen. The pain is still there but it's not dominating every thought.

The doctor was pretty brusque about telling me what I have to do, which made me feel bad and judged. I know what I have to do. But I get it. There's no way I can explain all this to him, and he has to assume I know nothing. We both wanted me out of there as fast as possible and he had to make sure he wasn't negligent in informing me. I just wish his demeanor was a bit more compassionate. But, you can't teach demeanor. I'm sure he's good at what he does.

Therapy was this morning. Only 30 minutes. I pretty much just talked about my teeth and the ER trip. The connection kept freezing and creating a delay that made it hard to communicate. It didn't do me a ton of good in the moment, but keeping my weekly appointments is important for momentum.

The one good thing I can say about all of this, and I'm going to cling to it like a security blanket, is that I got help as soon as I needed help. I didn't wait days or weeks until the pain was almost unbearable. I didn't let my anxiety stop me, I did the hard uncomfortable thing. I walked to the hospital after a hard day at work, filled out the slip, sat down and waited until somebody helped me, on my own, of my own volition, my spouse didn't have to talk me into it. It's not much, but when it comes to me and health stuff, that's a victory. And even small victories in aggregate lead to change. Writing this is expressing my commitment to change. No more hiding

bluelander: Drawing of a girl with short hair looking askance, sad or embarrassed (Mayo sad)

I wrote a couple hundred words of an entry about my ADHD, burnout, the hardships of the week, my mini-meltdown last night, my struggle to forgive and love myself and accept my limitations, then I got distracted by something and deleted it by mistake. On a better day I'd rewrite it, but I just don't have it in me right now. I have enabled the "automatic backups" feature of my notes app. I'll see you on monday

bluelander: Drawing of smiling person wearing big radio operator headphones (Headphones)

I said yesterday's entry would be short and I hammered out ninety thousand words about worms 🙄 500 words today, max

Fediworms league signups still open at rentry.co/fediworms. Two players on board for a potential game this weekend!

Ok that's all, thanks for reading my 500 words. Just kidding. Totally worth wasting 2.2% of my word budget on this dumb joke. Now 4.6%. I'll stop now

I realized Minecraft doesn't fit on my MP<—>ES spectrum because it's co-op. Well, there are competitive unofficial modes, but it's thought of as a cooperative game. My spectrum needs another axis. Minecraft at one end and... Idk, Among Us at the other? I haven't played it.

My monthly psych appointment is today. It's a video call, but these are a lot shorter than therapy (~20m) so I don't change my schedule like I do with therapy. I usually sneak off to the conference room and call it a break, but there's some official business going on, people have been having meetings in there all week. I reckon I'll go to the "break room" in the basement and hope nobody comes in. Nobody usually does, and when they do it'll only be for a minute. I probably won't be talking about anything super-sensitive, but it's still uncomfortable. I wish there was somewhere I could go to make a private phone call. Like, officially. Workplaces should privacy rooms, somewhere you can go to be alone for a few minutes that isn't a lavatory. I guess that's a luxury reserved for management only.

...

Okay, psych appointment done. I ended up going outside. He ended up doing a phone call instead of video for whatever reason, probably because his support staff is a little clueless. They called me 10m before the appointment and asked a bunch of irrelevant questions, then probably put the wrong thing in the system. It went ok. He's happy with my progress, no changes to my meds. I intended to ask for his thoughts about an autism assessment, but I didn't want to have to shout into the phone over the nearby traffic and big truck that pulled into the parking lot right after I stepped outside. We have an in-person appointment next month, I'll bring it up then. It doesn't seem as urgent now that my ADHD is treated. And honestly, I think it's less likely that an autism diagnosis makes sense for me. Probably I was experiencing the overlapping symptoms more strongly, and that was coloring my perception.

face the music

Remember how when new albums started coming out on CD in addition to cassettes, the CD always cost more? Even though a cassette is a complex machine composed of a plastic shell, reels, screws and magnetic tape, and a CD is just a plastic disc? But the record companies charged like 30% more for the CD, just because they could? Napster in 1999 was what the music industry deserved.

Okay that's it for today. Stay safe everyone and I'll

bluelander: Bucket of popcorn over a colorful starburst-style callout (Popcorn)

I forgot to mention on Tuesday, but my therapist wasn't available that day and scheduled me for Friday this week. It wasn't as rough as usual, I mostly talked about how much better everything is now that my ADHD is being effectively treated. I talked about being proud of my consistency with this journal over the last couple weeks, and how it's not just that I feel like I'm able to write, but I'm able to have thoughts that worth writing down, and how scary it is to think this might go away if insurance decides to fuck with my meds again. I compared my situation to Flowers for Algernon and was a little sad that my therapist was unfamiliar with it. It's not a perfect comparison (or a perfect book) but I think anyone who's had a mental illness effectively treated can relate to it on some level.

We're scheduled for Tuesdays for the rest of this month, which is good for my brain. Now that my ADHD is better and I'm out of pure survival mode, we're probably going to start talking about my trauma more, so Tuesdays are going to be rough again for the next little bit. But it's a good, necessary kind of hard, and I'm glad I'm in good enough mental shape to start working on it again.

Even if therapy wasn't that hard, today's entry will probably be on the shorter side due to having my morning routine thrown off. More of a diary kind of update.

lies and grind

Speaking of morning routines, I just watched this video about how social media stars lie to their audience, and I'm quite amused at how grindset tiktok influencers fake their morning routines. There's one guy where the whole point of the video is that he's in the "5 AM club", a supposed elite cadre of the ultra-productive who wake up at 05h00 to start their day with a battery of self-improvement tasks, and she explains based on his location, the time of year and position of the sun, he had to have recorded the video hours later than he claims. Like, enduring these morning routines is his whole shtick, and he couldn't even do it once to make a convincing video. His whole life is a lie. lol

I don't watch this kind of content, so I don't really need the debunking, but it does make me feel better seeing the extent to which these supposedly super put-together, hyper-productive people have to fake their lives. Also, my life may not be perfect, but at least I don't have to set up my phone to start recording me, get back in bed, and pretend to wake up for millions of people. I could be doing a lot worse.

I've watched a couple of Hannah Alonzo's "influencer" videos and they're pretty entertaining, although in some cases I worry I'm just engaging in the thing itself. Exposing how influencers do dumb shit on purpose to make me mad does in fact make me mad, and if I didn't watch the exposĂŠ, I wouldn't be exposed to it at all. It's probably fine in small doses though, idk

When I was a kid, I watched a TV special called Buy Me That that exposed how TV and print advertising lie to make their products look better, it was a pretty influential piece of edutainment. It set the wheels in motion for my anti-consumerist (and eventually anti-capitalist) attitudes, Influencer Insanity feels like a modern extension of that. I hope it gets seen by the people who need to see it.

workday cake

It was someone's birthday in my office today, which is always potentially exciting, but all they had was cake. I was hoping there would be food. One of my co-workers brought me a slice of cake, which was very kind, but it's just been sitting on my desk cuz I came in late and haven't had lunch yet. Sweets aren't my preferred junk food, I'm more salty/fried/savory-inclined. I mean I'll eat it eventually, but probably won't get much out of it.

I live in walking distance of my office, which is very nice, but food options in this part of town are dire. There's one pizza place down the street, and I've been here for 3 years now, so I'm thoroughly sick of it. There is a little employee cafeteria, and the food isn't stellar, but it is cheap, so I take advantage of it when I can. But (1) it's cash-only, (2) it's only open til 13h00 and sometimes I forget to eat before they close, and (3) it's very often closed due to staffing shortages. So it's not something I can depend on.

In contrast, we have a little vending area with drinks and snacks that's fully self-service. You grab items you want out of the cooler or baskets, scan them on the little tablet that's bolted to the wall, and insert your credit card. It's nice and convenient, but it's all overpriced junk food. That's why cake is so disappointing, I can go downstairs and get a 100% sugar snack cake any time, and a sheet cake from Kroger or whatever is basically the same thing. Sometimes people bring in donuts to share, and I hate to seem ungrateful, but that's also the same thing. It's supposed to be a special treat, but real food is a much scarcer and more special treat, to me.

cake update

I have eaten the cake. It tasted like sugar and chemicals.

two burly plumbers

I haven't seen the Super Mario Bros. movie, and don't intend to. But I have now listened to the official 45 minute promotional storybook cassette. "Theater of the mind", I like to call it. It's pretty good. The narrator is doing a reasonable facsimile of the 90s movie trailer guy voice. I wasn't bored. It passes the bechdel test. It sets up and pays off an important lesson about never leaving your tools behind. I wouldn't say I laughed at any of the jokes, because I didn't, but there were times the writing surprised me, and being surprised is similar to laughing. This is letterboxd, right? 2⭐/5. At least it was only 45m long

happy friday

That'll do it for this week. Thanks everyone for reading, I feel like I'm getting back into a groove. What movie do you want to experience in the form of a 45m storybook cassete? Comment down below, and submit any questions for Monday Q&A. If you enjoy my work and would like to support independent writing on the world wide web, I've got a ko-fi and a Patreon if you're so inclined. You can also help by sharing a post you enjoy with a friend or on your social media platform of choice. See you on the seventh!

bluelander: A cartoon cat saying "oh well" (Oh well)

Had kind of a rough one yesterday. Had to go to the grocery store after work, which meant I got home at 19h00 instead of 17h00. Those two hours on the bus and at the store put a huge dent in my executive function. I don't think people who drive cars understand just how much harder every aspect of life is for people who use public transit.

You know the old labor slogan "8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, 8 hours for what we will"? Well for me, "rest" has to be put in a different category than "sleep". I need 7½-8 hours of sleep a night just to function as a person, just to be able to work. But I also need rest, time to convalesce and let my brain recover and just think. I've never been someone who can get off work and spend the next 8 hours doing things until it's time for bed. Whether this is part of my neurodivergence or a PTSD thing or just part of my human condition is hard to say. But if I don't get 3-4 hours of rest, preferably uninterrupted, it takes a huge toll on the rest of my life. Last night I couldn't get an adequate amount of rest. When I get home at 19h00 I basically have 4 hours until I need to get to bed if I want to get 8 hours of sleep. And I couldn't use all that time to rest because I have other responsibilities as a married adult. I managed to get to bed by 23h30, which would've been about 7½ hours of sleep, but I woke up in the middle of the night to pee and had a hard time getting back to sleep. So I didn't get adequate rest or sleep, and I'm going to take it easy at work today.

Even when I get home at 17h00, that only leaves me 6 hours, which when you factor in rest and responsibilities doesn't leave me any time for self-actualization. So I have to steal time for self-actualization from work whenever I can. My therapist has more or less signed off on the need to engage in "time theft" to keep myself sane and as happy as possible under the circumstances.

"Time theft" in my case means figuring out ways to be super efficient at my job, so I can get all my work done in less time than they expect me to need, and then use the leftover time for what I will. It's not ideal, because I have to be discreet—I can't just set my laptop up on my desk and get to work, because people would see me and realize something unusual is going on. Phones are generally safe, and as long as I carefully manage my time and don't fall behind on job duties, I can write these journal entries, or work on downpour games, or read a book. Or play a couple levels of picross. Or post some jokes on fedi.

It's not ideal, because I have to do things in short bursts throughout the day, and it makes long-term projects especially difficult, but I try to be grateful for what I have. A lot of people are forced to work in dehumanizing environments where they're not allowed to so much as look at their phone, the kind of real jobs where they're told, with vile sincerity, "if you have time to lean you have time to clean". I have a comfortable bullshit desk job and I try not to take it for granted. If I had to work a real job it's very likely that I wouldn't be here today. But it's still hard not to grieve for the portion of my life that's been stolen from me.

Anyway, that's enough self-actualization for today. I have 6 hours to go and I'm going to try to get as comfortable as possible and listen to podcasts and work as slowly as I can get away with. Maybe I can find a little rest in the cracks of the day

bluelander: Cartoon person with long purple hair and huge eyes with weird narrow pupils screaming (Barber)

Correction



Apparently "special insert" isn't a newspaper term? Either that or there's no documented use of the phrase online, because when I search for it, all I get is pages about fastening hardware and an incredibly sad subreddit for cryptocurrency-related trading cards. I thought it was a term used when a magazine would would put a little special promotional mini-issue in with the newspaper. Not like Parade, that was just the "Sunday insert" or "Sunday magazine", but sometimes you'd get a miniature copy of, like, Good Housekeeping or something. Now I don't know what term they'd use for that, but that's what I was trying to evoke in the last post with "special insert": a special mini issue of Garbage Digest in your normal journal entry.

Christian media


Hey Christians, if secular values are so bad, why can Christian media only succeed within a very narrow niche, or with a huge list of caveats? If Christian values are self-evidently good, shouldn't way more Christian movies and books and music projects find mainstream success? Like you've got Chicken Soup for the Soul, the paintings of Thomas Kincaid, and The Passion of the Christ was a big crossover hit (not saying they should have been big, but I'll give you the Ws) (heh. "Cross" over)

And... That's pretty much it? At least in my lifetime. Heck, I'll also give you Veggie Tales. That's 4 in as many decades. Maybe Jesus fans should stop whining about society not appreciating them, and spend more time honing their craft so they can make something good enough to succeed on its own merits, rather than "succeeding" because they convinced enough weirdos to buy 5 tickets each. Either that, or embrace your niche. Having a small but dedicated fanbase is nothing to be ashamed of. Yeah, Christianity was the only game in town for a very long time, but tastes and trends change. If all you do is sit around and complain that no one appreciates you like they used to, you're never gonna grow. It's a vicious cycle of stagnation. Adapt or die, assholes Sorry, I know you don't like evolution metaphors, it's just really applicable here. Nothing against anyone reading this who is a Christian, this is squarely aimed at Angel Studios and their ilk. If you want people to like you, make better shit. It's not a mystery

Brain bad


That's probably going to be it for today, since I didn't have my meds, since for some reason it seems to be impossible to get my doctor's office to do the pre-authorization at any point before the day I run out. Like, my appointment was Sep. 10, they knew a dose increase would require a PA, they had nearly two weeks to do it, but they just sat on it until I tried to get my meds and couldn't? I guess next time I'll just have to call every day until it's fucking done, because this has happened over and over. I'm just trying to get back to the dose of meds I was on before when Medicaid made me start taking them and try some other bullshit instead. Now that the other two didn't work, I'm allowed to take the medicine that did work. How very kind of them. But I can't just start at the dose that worked before, I have to start with the lowest dose and increase it bit by bit, month after agonizing month, and it never occurs to them that I'm going to need the new meds when I run out of my old meds. They can't grasp this concept. I'm so fucking tired

Later that evening


Meant to post this much earlier cuz my brain is still oatmeal and I didn't anticipate having anything else to write. But then I ran out of data. Womp womp

After 4 or 5 phone calls to doctor and pharmacy and wasting several valuable minutes of brain time on hold, I got my rx filled. The pharmacy is in one of those awkward locations where it would take longer to catch buses than to walk, so I walked. About 30 minutes. Luckily it's cool enough that this is safe, unluckily it's raining. Luckily I had my umbrella. Unluckily I *still* had to wait for them to fill my prescription even though I talked to them an hour previously, so I missed the next bus I needed to catch to get me home, so I'll be home at 18h15 instead of 17h15. I'll post this as soon as I have wifi. I need a vacation.
bluelander: White scribbly human head with no features on black background (Scribble)
I saw my notes app on my home screen, so I thought I'd jot down a few thoughts. I don't know how things worked out this way. Serendipity, I guess.

I wish it was easier to clear the contents of the current note. I have to long-press somewhere on the screen, tap the three dots to expose the "select all" option, tap "select all", then press backspace. I guess it's not that burdensome, I just wish there was an "erase all" button I could tap. I can delete the whole note, but then I have to create a new note, which is another whole process. I don't want a process, I just want to clear the buffer. Rip the paper out of the typewriter and roll in a clean sheet. Actually I guess that's directly analogous to deleting the current note and creating a new one. Look, Tuesdays are rough for me right now. Apologies.

Tuesday is currently my therapy day, and for ease of making up time it's scheduled basically first thing in the morning. I normally have to be at work at 8:30, and therapy is either 08h00-09h00 or 08h30-09h00. She's usually able to schedule me for the full hour though. I have a 30 minute walk to work, so in theory I'm an hour late to work and I can stay an hour late, but in practice it takes me time to recover and there's usually *some*thing I need to do in the morning. This morning it was seeing the landlord about something I have to be there in person to sign a thing for, and that took some time, so I got to work at 10:30. My ADHD makes me sensitive to changes in my routine, so therapy is a little extra hard, but I'm being really brave about it.

One thing we've been talking about is whether I've been misdiagnosed and have actually had autism my whole life. My spouse suggested the possibility, and at first I thought it was unlikely, because there are a lot of symptoms I associate with autism that I don't experience, and in many cases am the diametric opposite. I don't infodump to people easily, I actually have a really hard time opening up to people. I don't get lifelong hyperfixations, my brain bounces around from thing to thing (for example, I might have a blog I update every day for a year and then lose interest for several months.) I don't struggle with empathy or telling how people feel by their expression, if anything I'm a little oversensitive in that respect. I'm reasonably okay picking up social cues. I don't stim or self-soothe (I like to fidget with things when my hands aren't doing anything, maybe that counts.) And I know autistic people aren't a monolith and don't all have the same struggles, and I know ADHD symptoms have some overlap with autism, I just thought I didn't identify with enough of the classical autism traits to qualify.

But I don't know if all of my neurodivergence can be explained by ADHD either. I don't know what it is. My therapist wasn't dismissive of the idea that it might be autism, but said she can't really help with the diagnosis and suggested I ask my psychiatrist, which I will at my our appointment. I asked my previous psychiatrist, who thankfully I only saw twice before he left for a different practice, and he was extremely dismissive. It was for practical reasons—he said the test is expensive, and an autism diagnosis wouldn't help me get any additional benefits or accomodations that I don't already qualify for with an ADHD diagnosis. And sure, fair enough, I'm not approaching this from a medicalist point of view where I'm like "I need an official diagnosis or I can't have autism", and in a perfect world, no diagnosis would be necessary. I could just be like "this is how my brain is, these are the reasonable accomodations I need,", and that'd be it. My current job is very accommodating. They let me work with the overhead fluorescent lights off (we have big windows that provide a lot of natural light) and they allow me to wear headphones all day while I work. But I might not be here forever, and wherever I work next might be like "Why do you need sensory accommodations? You're not autistic?" And maybe my psych can write a note like "my client needs these accomodations for ADHD" and everything will be fine, but I dunno. My current psych is a lot better, and he'll probably bring up the same cost/benefit warning, but I don't think he'll dismiss the idea out of hand. And hey, maybe I'm not! Maybe it's all ADHD or maybe I have some as-yet undiagnosed form of neurodivergence. I don't fundamentally care about the actual label, I just wanna understand my brain and get through life with as little suffering as possible. And I think I have an above-average understand of my brain and what it needs, I just need to figure out how to fulfill those needs in a social system that is hostile towards and punishes what it considers abnormal.

ExpandGarbage Digest special insert )
bluelander: A pixellated pac-manesque ghost reading a book (Reading ghost)
We're about ten months into the year of the journal and so far it's off to a rocky start. I wanted to post at least once a week, and my track record has been less than stellar.

The main factor I attribute this to is an absolute glut of work at my job. When I did my 100 consecutive days of blog posting last year, it was a time when it was possible to get caught up on work and have the tiniest sliver of downtime in which to goof off, and writing on my phone was a good use of that time. I can't use my work computer for anything fun, because everything I do on it is monitored and recorded. Sitting at my desk using my phone is acceptable, because we live in a reality where everyone does it, and no one wants to be the one to not do it to enforce the rule. As long as I'm getting my work done, and not flagrantly using my phone all day, I'm in the clear.

At the time, reading and writing were the only things I really wanted to do on my phone. I don't use any big social media platforms, and my fediverse timeline is tightly curated, so doomscrolling is thankfully a habit I was able to break. It doesn't take me long to catch up with the posts I missed while I was asleep, and then I'm done with the fediverse for awhile. That gives me a lot of time for creative activities.

Unfortunately, I realized that I could download retroarch and be getting retro achievements on my phone. So now that it's been a time of year that we're somewhat caught up, I've been spending time I might've otherwise have used writing playing Mario's Picross. Which I've learned is one of the best games on the gameboy. It came out in 1995, it should have been to the gameboy pocket what tetris was to the original gameboy. Everyone and their grandma should've been playing Mario's Picross, your local news should've been running stories about picross fever taking over the country, Andrew Lloyd Webber should've covered the picross theme under the pseudonym Dr. Chip.

The good news is, there's a very limited subset of games I can tolerate playing on a phone. It's pretty much just picross and digital board games. Even RPGs aren't playable for long stretches, because I have to slide my thumb around a virtual D-pad to navigate the world, which feels extremely bad. Digital board games are the best, because they only require occasional screen taps. Picross obviously isn't as good as playing on an actual Gameboy or something with a controller, but it's tolerable; and also, I've tried to play native android picross games, and I find the emulated gameboy game easier to control. On android, the boxes in the 15x15 puzzles are too small to consistently fill the way I intend. Moving a cursor with a virtual D-pad sucks, but it's better than the alternative.

I already got all the achievements in Monopoly for the megadrive (which I actually owned as a kid) and Life+Payday+Yahtzee for the GBA, so once I'm done with Mario's Picross I'll probably be done with phone achievements. I might check out Mario's Super Picross on the super famicom, but if it just ends up being the same puzzles on a different platform I don't think it'll hold my interest. (I might be in trouble if anyone makes achievements for the Itadaki Street fan translations.)

Picross is good for playing in small chunks, 10 or so minutes at a time (which is good because that's usually the amount of time I have) but I want to start jotting thoughts in my notes app, because that's how I managed to keep my 100 day streak. I would have sporadic thoughts throughout the morning, the time of day my brain is working, and just keep a log running throughout the day. Then when I get home, I have enough brain left to do some light editing, formatting, title-thinking-of, and posting.

I moved the notes app back to my home screen. I use a custom home screen app called oLauncher, which limits the number of apps on the home screen to a maximum of 8. It's a text list rather than a grid of icons. If I need another app, I swipe up and can either select from a list, or start typing the name of the app. This is so my attention is drawn mostly to the things that are important and I want to do. I *can* use other apps, there's just a little more friction to prevent me from over-apping. My top 8 currently is: (no particular order)

An audiobook player
An ebook reader
An instant messenger
A fediverse client
A music player
The notes app
The bus pass app
Weather

I can also access clock settings by tapping the time, and bring up the calendar by tapping the date. I think that encompasses most of what I actually want to do on a phone. I don't have a web browser on my home screen because using the web on a phone is kind of a drag.

The app I replaced to make room for notes is newpipe, which is super useful, but I typically download the audio from YouTube videos in batches when I'm home and listen to them in the audiobook player when I'm at work, so it's fine behind the swipe-gate.

Anyway, now that notes is front and center, hopefully I'll remember to use it more. I have ADHD and tend to forget activities I enjoy are a thing.

Like writing in this journal! Hello! I'm back and this time I'm hopefully going to remember that writing is a thing I enjoy. Please look forward to more loosely-connected bursts of cognition loosely edited together into whatever this is
bluelander: A pixellated pac-manesque ghost reading a book (Reading ghost)
Well, it's been an eventful (glances at watch) two and a half weeks?! I didn't mean to go that long without a new journal entry, but I guess that's how eventfulness goes sometime.

Ranking the Atari 2600


Recently I was talking about Jeff Gerstmann's "Ranking the NES" series, and expressed interest in potentially doing something like that with the Atari 2600. My friend Mike, who I've collaborated on and off with for years, saw the entry, said that he liked the idea and suggested we could so something like that together. I was initially hesitant, because I didn't know how well it would work as a collaborative project, and was going to decline but suggest we find something else to play and record together instead (which may not have ever happened, you know how life can go.)

But I thought about it, and I realized that a second perspective could be just the shake-up that format needs. One of the best things about Jeff's series is watching him play a game he knows well and can explain in detail, both the game itself and its place in history; one of the other best things is watching him be impressed by a game he knows nothing about (whether it's impressively good or impressively bad.) With two people, we can get the best of both worlds for each game.

The idea is this: every week, each of us selects 3 games to bring to the show. For my games, I study the manual beforehand and try to learn as much as I can about it, and Mike does the same for his 3 games. We each play the games and record our local play session while talking about them over discord, alternating between one of his choices and one of mine. After each game (which we try to play for at least 10 minutes, but we can go over if we need more time) we switch to the shared google sheet showing the list of the best game ever made, and decide where it goes.

I was worried about this part too, since I wasn't sure how much our opinions would diverge, but it turns out that even when we disagree, it's fun to negotiate. We can state our positions, why we think the game deserves to be in Xth place on the list, and either persuade the other person or not. The stakes are so low that neither of us is going to get super heated, and it doesn't take long for us to find a compromise.

I think the format works really well, and I'd have fun with it even if we weren't recording for youtube, but I also think this is maybe the most entertaining thing we've done together and it'd be cool if we maybe got some more viewers. Mike's recording of our first session, by some mysterious blessing of the unknowable algorithm, has gotten 1,700 views, a number which is still slowly climbing up. He got about 10 new subscribers out of it, which puts him at around 90. I was more active on youtube in the mid 2000s than him, so I have 2,300 subscribers from sheer "right place at the right time" syndrome; I was doing "let's play" videos just as that was becoming a thing. It's a meaningless number though, since my videos still get on average about the same number of views as his. Nobody actually looks at their subscriptions page on youtube, they look at the homepage, which doesn't show you new videos from people you're subscribed to unless they're popular. Even "ringing the bell" often doesn't work; my spouse should get notifications, but she wouldn't have known about the new videos if I didn't tell her.

So Mike's recordings of the first two videos have gotten 1.7K and 73 views, mine have gotten 115 and 38. Not bad, considering our most recent videos before that have gotten somewhere between 10 and 30.

Of course, youtube doesn't recommend videos by anyone who isn't already popular except for the occasional weird fluke, so the only real way to get new viewers is to upload "shorts". Mike had the idea first, and he spent a long time cutting our first 2-hour show down to a 1-minute summary, for which he got a respectable 118 views. (note: I wrote this over a number of days, so as of this point the preceding numbers are out of date.)

I've taken a different tactic, uploading a larger quantity of simpler videos related to the main ranking show, which have gotten between 56 and 277 views. Nothing seems to have translated into more exposure for the real videos, but I can't focus on the day-to-day number or I'll go bonkers. Maybe after doing this for a few months, I'll see the overall trend line go up and feel more encouraged.

Not that my motivation ultimately comes from views; it would just be nice. The main thing I get is hanging out with my friend and doing something fun. However, I think these videos are pretty good, some of the most entertaining we've done. I like them, anyway. They're the kind of videos I'd want to watch. And it'd be nice if we could get them in front of the eyeballs of people who feel the same way. I know it's not for everyone, but there's a respectable number of people out there who would like what we do. But the algorithm doesn't care about niche potential, it just tries to put attention on whatever will get the most billions of views. Oh well, I'm still gonna have a good time and there's nothing they can do to stop me. If watching a couple old friends goof around with some even older video games is something you'd be interested in, here's my channel. If not, I get it.

Garbage day


A couple saturdays ago, I spent all day helping a friend of a friend get their apartment cleaned up to avoid getting evicted. I think it succeeded for now, but this person is in a dire psychological state and I'm very worried about them. The less said about this, the better.

Garbage day for my brain


I have a new psychiatrist and therapist. When I first moved from [home town] to [current town], it was at the height of the pandemic and telehealth was becoming more and more of a thing. So I was able to keep the same doctors I've had in [home town], which was nice. However, at some point they told me I'd have to have an in-person appointment for them to continue prescribing my necessary medication, so I had to start looking for someone local. I really should have done this a long time ago; the clinic administration was very disorganized and had messed up my prescription refills on multiple occasions, and I hadn't actually had a therapy appointment in a long time because my therapist there wasn't able to help with my current problems. I'm not upset with her, when I first started therapy she was very good at helping me process the trauma I'd never talked about, come to terms with myself as an adult and become a person I like. I'll always be grateful to her for that, and I guess since she was no longer able to help me, I figured I didn't need therapy anymore.

Obviously I do, and I was sort of in denial about that because I didn't want to go through the arduous process of finding a new therapist and having to explain my whole life history again, what I wasn't getting from my last therapist and what I need. Well, I asked my primary local doctor to help with a referral for a psychiatrist. There was nobody taking new patients, so I got put on an indefinite waiting list, which sucked, because I had to have an in-person appointment with my psychiatrist in [home town] in April or they wouldn't be able to help me anymore. Maybe my primary doctor would've been able to continue prescribing my meds in the interim, I don't know, but I didn't want to have to find out and I hated having a ticking timebomb hanging over my head like a mixed metaphor after a bender.

One day in December, I got a notification from my "health care app" (still a relatively new concept to me) that a psychiatrist in my healthcare system was taking new patients, and since I was on the waiting list I could make an appointment if I tapped "accept" within the next 30 minutes. If I was in the shower or otherwise not available during that 30 minutes, I guess I would've missed my chance and it would've gone to someone else on the waiting list. But I didn't hesitate, and they made me an appointment in January. It was still a month and change out, but at least I knew I'd be okay before the April deadline.

So I went in for an intake with the psychiatrist, and it was... a video appointment. The nurses took my vitals and led me to an exam room, where they brought in a little tablet computer with a zoom window open, and I talked to him like that. As it happens, he works out of [hometown]. Cue laugh track.

I understand why I had to come in though, it was for all the vitals stuff and for me to sign all the forms the government needs for me to keep getting the pills that make my brain work. It just struck me as funny, especially since nobody told me I'd be talking to the doctor on a tablet; so when I was in the waiting room before my appointment, my healthcare app popped up a notification informing me that my video appointment would start soon, and I could go ahead and join the meeting and the doctor would talk to me shortly. I went up and told the person at the reception desk what the app said, and confusedly said "uhh... am I supposed to be here?" They apologized that nobody told me and explained how it would work.

The actual appointment was fine. Medicaid only covers 15 minute appointments for psychiatry, so it was really just going over my meds, making sure I still need them, any side effects, need anything adjust, okay we'll talk again in a couple weeks. Most importantly, I said I wanted to start talking to a therapist again, and he made me an appointment with someone who was physically in that building, the same week as my psych follow-up. So I'd get to talk to him again via telehealth, but I'd have to go in the next day anyway. I didn't care. I was excited to get to talk to someone again. I didn't realize how much I needed it.

There's always that initial trepidation because I'm not sure what the person I'll talk to would be like—I looked her up on the clinic's website and it didn't have much information, other than she had a couple specialties that aren't particularly relevant to my problems, but they're good specialties to have and I felt optimistic we'd be on at least a more similar wavelength than me and my old therapist.

And I was right, she's great! She's closer to my own age and I felt like she understands the world much closer to the way I do than my last therapist, who was a decade or two my senior. Nothing wrong with that, but I was so happy when I told her I'm nonbinary and she didn't ask what that means or seem taken aback. I know this should be the expectation, but my country has one of the worst healthcare systems in the world and I live in the most backwards part of my country, so my expectations are in the gutter.

For therapy, we got an hour-long intake, and I was astonished that I was able to bring up pretty much everything I wanted to talk about and answer all her questions for the intake within the time limit. She's a much more efficient communicator than my last therapist, but not so efficient that I felt like I was being rushed. She was very engaged and seemed genuinely excited to talk to me. It was such a relief.

We scheduled weekly follow-ups, three telehealth and then one in-person. We've had one of the telehealth appointments so far, and it went fine, but it did make it a little bit awkward. I'm thinking of going back to in-person for all our future appointments, because I've since discovered that I'm allowed to stay late at work to make up time for doctor appointments pretty much whenever I want. I like having a low-anxiety reason to go somewhere besides work in the morning, and since our appointments are only 30 minutes now, it'll be nice if we can talk as efficiently as possible.

Books


I played halfway through Omegaland again so I could capture the frames for my "ghost reading a book" icon when I post about books, but I unfortunately haven't read much lately. I tried to take Angela Collier's advice about finally actually reading Lord of the Rings in her video The Scourge of the Shire: I acquired the audiobooks narrated by Andy Serkis. The thing is, he does have a wonderful voice, and I love listening to him, but reading it as an audiobook only amplifies the problem I had when I tried to read the books: they. Are. So. God. Dang. Slow. I don't care that the books are long, I don't automatically hate long books, but in the long books I like, they tend to be long because a lot of stuff happens in them. LotR seems to be long because every scene is 2-3 times longer than it needs to be. In the audiobook version, I listened as long as the entire length of Peter Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring (theatrical cut) before we even got out of the dang birthday party. I dunno. I love The Hobbit (the book and the Rankin-Bass animated version) but maybe the full epic saga just isn't for me.

The other book I've been reading in fits and starts on my phone is a memoir, and it's interesting but I don't know if it's worth talking about because I feel like the majority of it might be complete horseshit. I'll talk about it when I'm done maybe.

I guess that's it for now. I'll try to remember to make bite-sized entries more frequently for ease of consumption.

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