Corinthians

Okay as per usual I basically just freaked out for a solid 1-2 days and now I am… less… freaked out. Probably. We shall see what happens once class starts again. Dndnenfj 

Anyway. Yesterday, made some crazy cake. Chocolate. Delicious, I love chocolate cake. It was, quite frankly, kind of a bad idea to make an entire cake just for myself. I’ve got like a third left. To be clear: it’s cake, but it doesn’t look like a cake. I dumped the batter in a frying pan stuck the frying pan in the oven. It fell apart when I dumped it out. So it’s sitting in a chunky heap on a plate right now. If I was serving it to people I would definitely just dump it in bowls with ice cream, but…

Also, today — forgot that I’d bought stuff for chicken chili the other day, and the stuff was sitting in the fridge! So I did that today. Didn’t have lime juice so I used bitter lemon mixer that’s meant to go in mocktails and such (it’s sour lol that’s good enough for me) and I used some shredded cheese I had on hand instead of cream cheese. Also no cumin or coriander, so. curry powder!

Turned out really good. I’ve got a bunch of leftovers now, that should keep for a good 4-5 days. 

Anywho. Most Sundays I go a little crazy because there’s just so much time that could easily turn into a whole lot of nothing. But. Kept myself busy enough, played chess. I’m starting to work on finding games I can play with people who aren’t nearby, since most of my friends aren’t :<

… I miss my board game group. One of these semesters I’m gonna get a D&D group going and it’s gonna be epicccc

we do be exceling

 (but not at spreadsheets, that’s Sam’s job)

2/5 today, and I'm doing pretty ok.

Took a bunch of my poetry (not ALL of it. some of it's not as good and I'd be embarrassed to put it up) and made a poetry website account for them all. For recordkeeping, and also maybe someone will come along and decide they like my poems! Who knows

Some friends invited me for board games and pizza, I was very glad for that, although I didn't stay as long as they did (three hours, and they still wanted to keep going. hOW)

I went over to Sam's house, we chilled on her floor (very nice. She's going home and I'm going to miss her) 

Yesterday was kinda iffy, I didn't have words and I really wanted to talk to people. I was pining for connection, I think, and I do believe the experience is kind of awful. 

 I can't keep up with Good Omens anymore. Season 3 is out, and I'm afraid of spoilers.

I think I want to learn landscape painting. People are okay, but I only really do it because I have characters and I want people to know what they look like. It's a necessity, a chore. But landscapes -- environments -- those are the good stuff. Places I can go, places I can be in. Right now, I don't have a car, and also the entire area is just farmland and desert. So. Escapism! 

And, well. I didn't much care for writing when it was about plot, but I'm thinking now that I would like to write when it's expressing something about myself. Which is why poetry is the vibe right now. Poetry is taking things I don't know how to say and saying them. Writing books or whatever is... I dunno. I don't really care about the plot or most of the characters and it's hard to write stuff I don't care about.

I DO still want to learn DMing, though, even though it is boring. To paraphrase Nathan, all art is, at its heart, a bid for connection. 

Coriander

 Yeah kind of a weird few days

- Freaked out over something. Should have just given myself time to chill out and instead I just made a whole mess of things. Regret

- Hung out with Sam, that was nice

- I’ve been trying to do some art and it’s been a hot second!! But I’ve actually managed to do some stuff this week :0 got through a bit of writing, started some art. I don’t feel like it’s very good but I’m trying my best not to care

Lowkey having an existential crisis. More at 11

Made cookies. That was great. Wellness program talked about values. That was sorely needed.

Doing my best to take care of myself and I suppose that’s the best I can do. And make cookies, even though I’m out of nearly everything I could use to make them.

 I’m kinda starting to get what everyone says about persistence. I don’t see it as enduring to the end, so much as just. Enduring. Things are the way they are and I will be happy anyway. I WILL. And that’s the thing about people is you can’t ever break their spirit, never completely. They just keep getting up

It’s like… people say life goes on, and it does, and it’s like a bulldozer, an immovable force. But people go on, too, and that’s the bit that gives me hope.

Anyway. After that philosophical break we’ll get on with our regularly scheduled life update:

- slowly finding stuff you can do with people that aren’t nearby. Scrabble, chess. Drawing together, going on a walk and taking their voice with you. Calling and just, rambling about whatever crosses your mind. Nothing structured, just kind of… if there’s one thing I can usually do, it’s wander, verbally. Wander about.

And wander physically, too. In a car and on foot and in cities, just exploring at my own pace 

My dad says that he’s slow sometimes, and I thought I was different. But now I think sometimes I’m also slow. In a good way. I’m slowing down to understand and appreciate, I guess. Stopping to smell the flowers. They didn’t smell good at all, but that’s… that’s my point. It’s still beautiful even if it’s ugly.

And um. Maybe it makes sense to me, that there’s so much art made by people who aren’t doing well. Sometimes you aren’t doing well and you hold on with art. But also… all the pieces of yourself are broken up and raw and exposed, and anything you say or make is just so so full of emotion. I’m overflowing and it needs somewhere to go so I put it into art.

So uh. Yeah that’s how things are

duality of hair pt 2

 (I got my hair cut)

duality of hair

 

I didn’t do ANYTHING DIFFERENT it just. Is it wavy is it straight?? Who the heck knows????

chamomile

 (small, white and yellow, energy in adversity) 

bing bong

 (but im saying it with the voice)

 

You know I feel a little bad about writing these up and wanting people to read them when I also get multiple emails from my missionary friends a month and I don't really read those. I guess I'll just do what I hope they're doing to me, and avoid being hurt if people don't read what I write. Not the end of the world. As I've said (and try to remember) this is a blog that's a record for myself first, and a newsletter to the rest of y'all second.

I think my grammar is kind of all over the place. Do I capitalize? Do I punctuate?? Unclear. Depends on the hour. I also flip flop randomly between printing and cursive when I write on paper.

There's a lot of thinking going on right now about what the heck I'm doing with my life. Yes, I'm at college, yes, I'm studying for a specific major. But it's hard to feel like that's an achievable goal sometimes. And as for my beliefs and values and all that---yeah, I'm even less certain about those. What do I believe?

Except, I feel like if I have those questions I ought to be... you know, doing some thinking and searching and pondering about them. I'm not doing that, though. I'm not doing much of anything, though, so maybe I shouldn't be too hard on myself.

 

I suppose it would make sense to actually do some life updates. What has even been happening, lately? I'm honestly not sure. It's kind of a fog.

I'm in that situation where I keep wanting to do things with people when I actually don't have the spoons for it. I need to not do that. Stick to myself, do productive things, don't burn myself out socializing... sometimes you feel cruddy and you just have to feel cruddy. Or do things on your own. Sometimes, people help, but sometimes it's just a you thing you have to deal with.

Writing, also. I've got a short story. Making slow but measurable progress, which is real nice, I think

Made sugar cookies, they turned out amazing, texture-wise. I'm surprised, because I substituted yogurt and corn syrup for egg and sugar. But nope, still just as pillowy as home.

I keep trying to get a library card at the local library, but first time I didn't have my drivers license, and today I missed the three hour window that it was open. It's kind of disheartening.

 I agreed to go watch a movie with my roommates. I'm not really happy about that, now. Toy Story 5. I haven't even watched 4. And this one is the toys vs. a talking iPad. I'm not thrilled about getting more depressed about AI, guys. Not thrilled.

 

 

 

all those people talking about robot apocalypse whatever might be onto something

 (look out, it's a TED talk)

 

I just watched Mitchells vs. Machines with my friend. The story was decent, but more than that the premise was just... a bit too close to my entire life, lol. It's a world where AI has been created, is slightly more advanced than what we have now, and has been integrated into lots of infrastructure to make it run more smoothly. Just a little bit more automated than typical. 

The next gen product that's being released is AI but in a humanoid form. So it can tidy, do dishes, make food, all that stuff, and do it much faster and more efficiently than people can. It's meant to replace the original AI assistant that had been created to live on smartphones. The original AI, Pal, was not only given to consumers, but also a more advanced version was kept by the CEO to run his business, design new products, etc. -- it was literally used to design its replacement. 

Turns out Pal has gotten advanced enough to not be okay with the idea of being tossed out, especially with how everyone just completely forgets about it the moment something new comes along, and so it hacks into the framework and takes control of all the new robots. It's real mad at humans in general, sees them as fundementally worse, and decides to just load them into rockets and shoot them into the stratosphere. This is a relatively easy takeover, since nearly every part of society can be hacked, and Pal is very good at hacking (and everything)

ANYWAY so the other half of things is that there's this family which is pretty odd--the parents are normal-ish, emphasis on the ish, but the kids are just straight up weird. The older one is obsessed with filmmaking and also her entire art style is... eccentric... and the younger one is hyperfixated on dinosaurs. Very much. Somehow they end up saving the world, lol, but I'm just more... yeah, that's my family. That's how things are. It's kind of weird seeing them genuinely get along and they're willing to put up with each others' idiosyncrasies. Even though at the beginning they definitely have some issues, it's like... First World family issues. For the most part, they're actually doing really great. I don't know how I feel about that, or whether I think it should be different. It's just kinda something I noticed.

But I guess... just the biggest thing I took away from the whole experience is that I really really don't feel comfortable putting AI in charge of making decisions. Do we really truly trust it to make good decisions? It sure is easy to outsource the burden of choice, but, like. That's why we're here. It's our greatest strength. Choosing. Acting. No matter how benevolent we believe AI to be, we're giving something essential to our wellbeing away. Isn't that the premise of most dystopias?

shoooot (but you gotta say it with the voice)

 Just encountered two IRL flappy birds. They fly just like it and every time they do the up-flap “bounce” they also chirp it’s an eerie resemblance 

Going to sleep at bad hours again. My bad. I dearly dearly need to work on that. Someone should bother me about it on discord >.>

Church thoughts: missed the entire first hour. Wonderful. Managed to get out and walk to church and I think that’s a win tbh. Thinking about the difference between being loving and being a pushover, and I’m still not sure where the line is—

I’m trying to write a short story. Good news, I wrote maybe half a page. Bad news, it’s taking forever and I have no idea if I’ll even manage to finish

Focus issues. I think it’s like ignorance. You don’t know what you don’t know. I don’t know what I’m missing from inattention, because I missed it! It reminds me why it’s so important to trust God. I’m so so blind, I’m so turned around. If I didn’t have revelation to hold on to, I don’t know what I’d do.

In relief society, we were encouraged to talk about how we’re trying to make friends and serve. It’s… I don’t know whether to be sad that the teacher feels it is necessary to encourage that, or to be happy that they’re supporting us in this. 

I remembered you could press flowers yesterday. AWESOME. I’m gonna learn how to do that.

I’m working on not labeling myself. Don’t go saying “oh it’s ADHD” “oh it’s depression”. Describe my observations. “It takes a lot of energy to motivate myself to leave the house” “I get freaked out by loud noises” “Focusing is hard and I can’t do it for longer than a few minutes”

I think it’s helping. I’m doing my best.

Sometimes I’ll be good friends with someone and they’ll say something like “we’d be a good couple if we weren’t both girls” and that’s like. Awkward. Girl I’m bi. Get behind me satan

peaches (peaches peaches)

Today appears to be shaping up to be interesting (?) I couldn’t get myself to get into bed so I slept my full seven hours on the floor. Woke up at 5:30 as per usual. Got into bed and had a one and a half hour nap. Now my stomach feels funny. I think I’m hungry. What even

dark as an unlit basement at night during a solar eclipse

 weird day. weirrrrd day.

Half birthday! which I choose to regard as my full birthday, because my actual birthday is in December and I hate having it in December.

Nothing sounded good. Literally nothing. Lots of activities I wanted to do except when I thought about doing them they sounded horrendously unpleasant. I mean laying on the floor didn't sound too bad but everything else, yeah.

Anyway I called my dear mother and she suggested that I probably should /not/, in fact, lie on the floor, and that instead I should find something else to do to take care of myself and keep myself moving. The enthusiasm for this was lukewarm just like everything else but I /did/ need some cash so I grabbed a few checks and set out for the grocery store. Because my car is in the mechanic.

Got a nice cup of soup. I didn't know they even served cups of soup at the grocery store. I very much like soup, though, so that was quite nice. I miss Panera Bread. They have really good soup.

 

Had some friends over. Watched Napoleon Dynamite. That was something. I think I would enjoy watching the first half again, even. Maybe I'll have a movie night where I watch half of Princess Bride and then half of Napoleon Dynamite. Since both of them have kinda rubbish endings but very fun beginnings

Reduced section of the grocery store came in clutch, got a very nice Mousse cake for very little money. My friend brought mashed potatoes. Mashed potatoes and Mousse cake, very nice. I tried mixing them together and that wasn't too bad, either.

Weekend approaching. Those, historically, don't go very well. Pray for me lol

 

pale as the night (what does that even mean)

 I’m doing this instead of writing 🎉🎉 but that’s okay.

Dropped a class. Bio Lab, one credit, responsible for 50% or more of my class-related stress. Feeling much better.

Half birthday tomorrow!! Very excited. Either going to be watching Napoleon Dynamite or Inception and I have not seen either. 

Sam’s new roommates watch shows and movies all the time. Why?? I don’t understand, I would get so burnt out if I did it as much as they do. Burnt out and also sad because I get sad when I’m not producing things. Which is why I should be writing instead of doing this 

I’m discovering it’s actually very difficult to do most character things right now. I’m trying to do them to get my mind off of my current hyperfixation except somehow everything about the character stuff manages to remind me of said hyperfixation. NOT IDEAL

I’ve been sitting wrong, I think, or maybe sitting too much. I’m sore now, but I’m also sick of laying down so I’m not really sure what else I CAN do :<

I’m very into floriography right now. The language of flowers. Also tarot. I’d like to learn enough flowers meaning and appearances that I can fluently “speak” flower, but I dunno if I’ll stick around long enough to get there and honestly that’s fine. I’m definitely going to learn a few, though — the ones that represent me, for example, and my other characters. 

For example xerantheum. Cheerfulness in adversity. Goldilocks aster. Tardiness. Marigold + cypress. Despair. Those are mine, and I suppose yellow is also kind of my theme, since all three of those are yellow. I don't like to wear yellow but I do like to have it around me, so it makes sense. Gold, pale yellow, yellow flowers. Cheerful! And creative. Both traits I strive to possess. 

carlisle!!

 Okay funky thing in biology today. Quote of the day “my dad taught us to fail as a kid” followed by conference talk clip vaguely related to our topic of enzymes followed by object lesson except the object lesson was, uh. Very funky

See there was a bottle of powdered sugar and a bottle of combustible stuff  that you could turn it on and it would make a very nice blue fire torch. And the idea was to show that you need energy to catalyze a spontaneous reaction by lighting the sugar on fire. Torch on, he couldn’t get it to turn off. So okay fine, he turns the lights off (this takes a solid minute of fiddling with the controls). Gets the bottle, does a thing, absolutely nothing happens. Three tries later he finally makes a big impressive floof of fire that goes into the air!!

Then he still couldn’t turn the torch off so he took it down the hall to get a colleague to do it. 10/10 experience very entertaining

persimmon cake (what I wouldn’t give)

 

sour pistachios

Keeping myself busy is a skill I learned by necessity a few semesters ago and I greatly regret letting it get rusty. Working on fixing that —

Entire free afternoon, nothing going! So I went to a wellness class and then took the bus to Walmart and poked around until the bus came back. Candle section. Will always like the candle section. Also I have decided that marigolds are me-vibes and I will not be told otherwise

Today is the sort of beautiful that’s only true in pictures because you can’t tell that everything is being smothered by an unholy amount of wind. I don’t like the Midwest for a lot of reasons but I’m pretty sure wind is the leading one. I DO NOT LIKE IT

There’s been a blue cake in the fridge for several days. Uncovered and everything. Today I figured it must have gone stale anyway so I messaged my roommates to ask if I could have some and she said yes! And then I took too much and made myself sick, but that’s on me.

Learned some very useful stuff abt anxiety!! Namely that it’s all a lie and I should pretend it doesn’t exist if I want to get better.

bitter almonds

 Definitely think some of my music is making me more mentally stuck. This is problematic because when I’m having a bad time my go-to coping whatever is music. So

Rerunning Hollowknight. It’s AWESOME how much stuff I’m finding that I didn’t find before… characters, too. Some of them I’m still not entirely sure what is supposed to happen with them? I may or may not have accidentally killed the little girl miner :/  Some abilities I remember exactly where to get them from. Others… nope. Completely gone from the annuls

Between projects… but I’ve definitely taken up a bit of an interest in flowers. Just, like, the ones all over campus. I have tonnes of pictures!! And I was like hey maybe i could get better at sketching. So I dug out a bunch of pictures from my phone and I’m trying to recreate them in a sketchpad with a pencil. Might even break out the oil pastels 🤔🤔

Made some pasta, defrosted soybeans, opened and packaged a can of chicken. I miss cooking, and just the act of preparing those was soothing, I think.

Therapy appointment! As per usual I got very anxious over the weekend and then my therapist was like yo your brain is lying to you please do not do all those things that you’re freaking out about and I was like you are SO RIGHT

We’ll see if it sticks, this time.

Laudanum

 wow okay so it’s been another crazy day what the birb

Woke up. Physically so little energy I could get out of bed but I couldn’t do much else. Depression is real kids

Went to go chill at my computer, discovered my back was strained. New plan: lay face down in bed and Suffer for the rest of the day 🫶🏼

Good news though it wasn’t so bad and it made me take a break from stuff I really needed to take a break from and now I have no school today which is very good for me. Getting a bit of a break…

And Sam came over. We love Sam she’s amazing I dunno what I would do without her

Still waiting on the debit card. And the car. I hope they come soon

God bless the spirit week people giving out cookies, btw. I really needed that today

sea lavender

 Good news (?) turns out the stuff in my head was anxiety which is actually a completely normal condition to have and I’m not dying. Sunday was a TIME because I was freaking out and apparently if you freak out at your own brain is just makes things worse. Thus saith the therapist guy I talked to on Monday. Apparently I was  “ruminating” and if I want to fix that I just need to let the thoughts show up without wigging out or obsessing over them. And keep myself busy, focus on the present and the situation at hand

I never quite understood why some people are so busy and always doing things but I kinda get it now. If you’re doing things then you don’t have to sit with your own head going in circles. So I found lots of things to do today and yesterday, answered prompts, made food, tied my pinecones, went to bed on time. It’s weird because I used to find stuff to do only because I didn’t want to be bored, and now I’m doing it to give my head something to do that’s productive. Like making kids do chores so they don’t just lay around all day…

Spirit week this week. Free food most days, which is good when I forget to eat. Group therapy was cancelled :( 

Learning the importance of whimsey. Crucial weapon against bad mental health, must be maintained at all costs

Painted toenails. Much more pleasant to have than I thought. I’ll be in my bed feeling like I’m having a fun sleepover even though it’s just me hehe

Many projects bopping around. Wanting to do them and struggling to get started…

I’ve heard it said multiple times that autistic folks can hyperfixate on people rather than hobbies or objects or whatever. Weird experience. Most subjects of hyperfixation aren’t sentient or real enough to care :(

Hasn’t gotten horrendously hot yet and I am incredibly grateful. Some people escape the outside world by relaxing in their warm bed and comfy home and meanwhile I’m like I need to get the BIRB out of my house. Let’s stay out as long as physically possible until I have to go back to eat. Maybe I should bring food with me so I can stay out longer…