self-diagnosis

It is midnight. I just screwed myself over sleep-wise by thinking that I could just fall asleep at 8 PM (because I had another headache that came out of nowhere and just wouldn't go away again) even though I knew this most likely would happen, and now I'm awake again.

I've been feeling off for the past week, even though I finally got past an anxiety-ridden hell-hole of the previous week that ended with a day of emotional catharsis and more crying than I would care to admit. And then I had to pick myself back up together just in time for a week of serially timed meet-ups with people as well as my career counselor, and I had to somehow remind myself how to socially function in front of others again and then apologize to the latter for my lack of progress because of ongoing stuff.

And I survived! somewhat.

I still feel emotionally fragile and volatile after all of that. And somewhat like a used sponge. It has taken me longer than I would like to "recover," although I feel like I face new struggles everyday that challenge my ability to function normally.

- I lost my car keys somewhere in a pile of bushes within the vicinity of my mailbox as I was checking my mail and they slipped off the keyring in my hand, and I heard them bounce off the pavement but didn't see where they landed.

Cue 20 minutes of frantic running up and down the sidewalk along both sides of bushes, panicked phone calls to Mom, and even more panicking as it was already getting dark and I was running late for a meet-up with Jade to head up to SF for a musical. After some help from a nice pedestrian walking her dog, I finally found them in front of a line of bushes, blended in with the shrubbery.

- Accidentally missed a phone interview call from UI people by a few seconds because my phone didn't ring (even though it made the "call missed" sound), and no one has responded or picked up on the line that I was told to call "within 48 hours" ever since. Killed my motivation to do anything for the rest of the day.

- Old social insecurities have started propping up again, only this time I feel like I can't afford to deal with this shit anymore on top of all of my other shit. Especially the anxiety of wondering what people are doing without me (because I'm not that oblivious and can sometimes tell when something's going on) and always feeling out of the loop, even though I know I can't handle that social atmosphere right now anyway given how out of it I've been lately, which is why I've been more distant in the first place.

And there's that inner voice in me that asks what's the point anymore, if you still feel this disconnected from people after all of these years. Why even bother keeping up anymore. Being in an environment where I can't be more open about my ongoing issues is exhausting (and for that matter, today was exhausting, and I wasn't sure if I could hold myself together for much longer).

- Food in general isn't as enjoyable to me as it used to be, to the point where eating now feels like a chore that I have to prepare for. Not that it hasn't been that way in the past, but nowadays even when I go out of my way to get something I like, it just... doesn't taste as good anymore.

- I haven't been able to consistently do anything I used to enjoy doing for more than 10-15 minutes at a time. Most of the time I don't feel like doing anything and end up settling for passing time uncomfortably, or end up briefly starting something I know I won't finish anytime soon. I started a game of Pokemon (Soul Silver) last night because I felt like it until I hit the first gym and started wondering what the hell I was doing with my life.

- I constantly feel like I have the onset of a cold and pink eye without the mucus, in spite of repeated attempts at applying eye drops and daily Claritin to address what might otherwise be my allergies.

- It is 72 (down from 74) degrees in my place right now and I'm still sweating like I'm in a sauna. And I feel spoiled for saying that, but honestly, [the perception] of heat even to this extent makes me irritable.

- After all of the above this week... I haven't actually been able to get back to any of the work I was doing earlier yet.

- One week of milk tea or some other drink variant everyday; one day with two drinks and enough hot tea to give me a tea hangover at 10 PM; and another day that ended with three drinks because why the hell not. I'm probably going to try and tone it down this week for the sake of my own health.

- I had a dream last night where Jonathan (Ross) and I were smuggling fireworks as part of a car caravan into NYC and got pulled over by the NYPD equivalent of border patrol(?), only to get caught up in a gun battle between them and local gangs, and we tried to get out of there as fast as possible. And then I found myself hiding inside a crawl space because Jonathan told me to take cover and people were fleeing everywhere, where I was finally crushed by the overwhelmingly oppressive "presence" of approaching recycling trucks going on strike.

I worry about turning into a shell of a person who is miserable to be around because everything is always the way it's described here right now: negative. That everything I'm going through right now is becoming the new normal for me. That it's something that I just have to "deal with" now.

Fuck that. There's no reason to settle for depression when you know that things can still be better.

It's just hard to live that out sometimes. Especially when your own mind is at odds with yourself.

post-processing

Thinking back over a conversation I had last week about not asking people for help, or not wanting to ask people for help. As my friend put it, "I think it's less about inconveniencing people, and more fundamentally about not trusting them."

The more I think about it... the more truly it rings in my ears. I just don't trust people enough to ask for help. I don't trust that they would actually be willing to set aside time for me if I were to ask. Or even if they did, it might just be that my expectations are set too high. That what I really want is someone who not only will reach out to me, but actually drag out whatever it is that's tormenting me on the inside while somehow cheering me up in the process (notice the number of "me's" in there). Which is a lot to ask even of a friend, especially when my self-perceived moments of desperation start to happen on a semi-regular basis. It's in part why I can't see myself dating someone right now.

It's also because I can see my own selfishness in this. I have these high demands that I don't expect others can fill, and moreover, I can't see myself necessarily doing the same for my own friends either. I mean, I'll be there enough to listen and be present in the moment, but if certain problems and complaints start to recur, I don't know if I could still be as patient with them all the time. And I hardly think of others except in terms of their relationship to me as it is anyway; I don't go out of my way to be present for other people when the opportunity arises unless I'm directly asked personally. I'm not as mindful as I could be.

A lot of times I'll have this notion of being "disappointed" in my interactions with people, although it wasn't until recently that I really tried to articulate what this meant to another person. The way I put it: simply hanging out with a friend isn't enough. Especially in a group (because the presence of 3+ people changes the dynamics of our interactions), but even in my one-on-one moments, just being together at the same time isn't enough either. What I need is "quality time," except what exactly that means or entails is often poorly defined and I won't even know what I want out of this interaction until the moment passes and I just "know" that I've experienced it. In college, this most often led inadvertently to talking until 7 in the morning, but that kind of lifestyle isn't sustainable for me anymore.

It is why I often can feel a sense of dissatisfaction even after an otherwise good one-on-one hangout with a friend. These days, I often only get a couple of hours at most to hang out with people. And a good part of that time is spent on less-serious/fun things because that's just normal, right? But at the end of the day, if we still haven't even broached something deeper or more fundamentally related to what I'm currently going through in the process, I may end up leaving feeling a little bittersweet or frustrated instead.

And it's unfortunate, because for me lately, a lot of those deeper or more meaningful conversation topics are tinged with negative emotions and experiences and just overall cynicism; sometimes I feel like my mind just can't help it. And I recognize that most people don't really want or need exposure to that, especially when it happens on a regular basis. Think of how you might respond to someone who you're used to seeing crying all the time. After a while, the novelty would wear off and you'd likely just grow more numb to their emotional expression, right?

But for the person lost in the thick of their emotions, every depressive moment or experience or trigger feels novel, even when their source isn't. It wasn't until I started reading over old entries on this blog that I realized that the roots of my problems were already apparent years ago; I still complain about a lot of the same shit today that I did then. But as time passes, I forget things. I read my old writings and it often feels like reading someone else's thoughts. And I don't remember so much what it felt like to write them back then anymore. (Sometimes I was being purposely vague, and now I look at those entries and have no idea what I was thinking about.)

But back to the relational frustrations, quality time is such a stickler for me. The less of it that I get in my interactions with people, the less inclined that I am to keep trying to pursue opportunities for it to show up. After a certain point, it just feels like I'm giving up on people because I have no faith in a future with them anymore. And it's so hard for me to start over again with new people that I'm more inclined these days towards just becoming a recluse minding his own business.

I'm practically living like one right now anyway.

---

I spent most of that day waiting for something to happen. For God to speak somehow even though I haven't been in a true posture of listening in years, or for someone to reach out to me even though I simultaneously turned off most other methods by which people could've reached me anyway, and either way I don't get spur-of-the-moment messages often like my more extroverted friends so I don't know what I was expecting.

I was fed up with the heat (90 in late September wtf). Fed up with the fact that my left knee starts to ache after walking a little less than a mile and has been bothering me all day today. Fed up with my inability to leave the house to study at a coffee shop like I've been intending to for the past four days. Fed up with my inability to focus or maintain some constant semblance of composure for the rest of the day until it was time for bed, and then I magically couldn't fall asleep again after three nights of having moderate success. By then I was so fed up I started sobbing again, except part of it felt almost forced which made me feel like I was just trying to put on a show to convince myself how messed up I really was.

I'm behind on all the little plans I made for myself yesterday and today, and I'm not really confident that they would've really gotten me very far anyway considering I'm still mentally stuck in mostly-theoretical-less-practical land (watching lectures and talks as opposed to actual tangible work and practice). And my state-of-mind these days has not made me confident about my ability to return to a normal working life again. And even if I were able to do that, I'm afraid I'll still be falling deeper into this abyss of growing more disconnected from people in general, of having less capacity to maintain the connections I still do have until I start giving up on those too.

To have been around for so long and still not be known. And unable to reconcile how much of it is because of my own limitations, or because of my own lack of initiative in places where I could've been present. Or if it was just because I never really fit in in the long-term in the first place, and all of my actions till now have just been to avoid acknowledging that fact.

I'm tired of trying to be in so many places at once. I can't keep up with people anymore without feeling like I have to pay some unsustainable toll that's becoming harder to pay these days. And now I feel like I'm shutting down little by little inside. 

I am the one making my own nightmare a reality, and I feel helpless to stop it. 

---

Do I really feel that helpless right now? To be honest, not as badly as the day before. But I'm still bothered enough to wonder if I really can handle this + the job search + crisis of faith + adulting all at the same time right now.

I'm reminded of a prayer my pastor had for me 3 years ago back when I was still in the middle of Healing Path-- over a sense of my having carried a very heavy burden for a long time. The original intention being that I might be able to, as the metaphor puts it, "drop my burdens at the foot of the Cross." And in a sense, I never really fully did so back then.

Regarding the metaphor itself, I don't think it really works like that in reality. To me, it's more like your burdens just become easier to bear, because you somehow know that you're truly not alone in them anymore.

Except I don't feel that sense of reassurance right now.

I've been listening lately to an audiobook of Michael McHargue (Science Mike!)'s Finding God in the Waves*. If you haven't heard of him, he's one of the hosts of The Liturgists podcast along with Michael Gungor (of the musical act Gungor). The book itself recounts his journey from evangelical Southern Baptist Christian to atheist to Christian again (but not quite the same as before).

Summarily speaking, it doesn't sound like it would be of much interest to anyone who's already firmly decided in their beliefs, and to that extent, I would say that it isn't really written for those people anyway. It's really more for people like me, Christians and atheists who otherwise feel out of place in their "home" communities because their beliefs or lack thereof makes them feel at odds with the people around them, to the point where they don't know who or what they are anymore. That, and it's for anyone who's open-minded enough to want to know what it's like to be in the shoes of someone going through a deconversion/crisis-of-faith experience first-hand, and to understand how to communicate with those people.

I'm only halfway through the book right now, but I have to say, Mike's description of that is spot-on. How often people misunderstand and think that it's because you're angry at God for some reason, when in reality, it's hard to feel emotions towards a being that you don't believe is there in the first place. How hardwired we are into our own perception of reality and where God fits/doesn't fit into it, to the point where we find it difficult to truly comprehend how people outside of our worldview can see things otherwise. He even delves into a lot of the science behind how our brains work in the process (along with a range of subjects from physics to neuroscience to cosmology to Carl Sagan to Dawkins to contradictions in the Bible and so on), expressing a surprising degree of scientific literacy and knowledge that I, unfortunately, don't see often in most other religious folks. I really appreciate it here.

Two things that stood out to me right away: first, his advice to Christians who have friends going through this experience as well. Don't proselytize or evangelize or try to talk them back into belief; you're more likely to drive them further away in the process. The best thing you can do is love and support them: whether it be through a hug, through letting them know that you are there for them, or other little things like that. People who are in the midst of a faith crisis are often at their most vulnerable, and tragically many church communities have responded by ostracizing them or publically condemning them to hell for their doubts/unbelief (which to me is more indicative of a problem in their belief system to begin with, but that's another story).

Second, his acknowledgment that it's okay to be completely skeptical of Christianity and its origins and yet somehow in the midst of that still want to follow Jesus at the same time. He makes an analogy in the process relating to past experiments involving medical patients who had their corpus callosum severed/removed (the part of the brain that allows left and right hemispheres to communicate). In one such experiment, a person actually identified as both atheist from one part of the brain and Christian from the other-- which begged the question, what is really responsible for our identity? How much of what we perceive as our "selves" or our "souls" is really just our brain and the ways it's neurologically connected or wired, as a result of all of our genetics and experiences combined? In the midst of that discussion, Mike explains his own state of being as if the Christian part of his brain were leading the atheist part forward, but at the same time, both are still fully at work in engaging with the moments and experiences he encounters. Trying to find value in the Christian experience doesn't mean that you can't also look at it with a critical eye.

I have to say, I am a little a jealous, though. A lot of Mike's story hinges around a particular moment alone on the beach in front of the waves, after just having had an altercation (with Rob Bell of all people), where he suddenly "experienced" God again, in a sense that can't fully be explained or conveyed. Moments like those are once in a lifetime. I still wonder if I'll ever experience something like that in my own context, or if that's what it would take for me to move forward from the place I'm at now.

Anyway, as far as the book is concerned, I have yet to come to a complete verdict given that I still have another half of it to go. But I'll just conclude here by saying that in light of coming across it, plus all of the above, this year thus far has been an interesting one.

I had a sense coming into 2016 that a lot of things were going to change. And well, the essential substance of my problems haven't really changed all that much or as fast as I'd have liked. I've just been forced to confront them much more openly (in all senses of the word) than I have in the past. And it's still difficult and depressing and sometimes I just want to collapse into a heap somewhere until I disappear or something, but at the same time, it doesn't feel entirely impossible to bear. Not anymore.

Maybe that's what being an adult is really all about.
---
*subtitle omitted because I'm not a fan of subtitles.

More Than Sundays

Warning: pessimistic views that may not entirely be in line with reality to follow.

So I have a confession to make. I hate church.

No, I don't mean THE Church or churches in general or whatever (and I actually still love my small group). I mean that I hate Sunday service, aka the place where most people get their first exposure to church anyway. Enough so to the point where I not only find it difficult to actually show up, but I also have days like today, where I actually made it to service (albeit 20 minutes late) but then wound up leaving at the end of it in tears.

It's not so much something that I have against the whole concept of Sunday service, though; I just personally don't feel cut out for it. Speaking as someone who has long struggled with trying to fit into most social situations and groups, church on Sundays often feels like just another one of those places. If you don't already have friends who you're regularly in contact with there anyway, it can become rather impersonal and a source of awkwardness, being forced to either say hi to or ignore people who you recognize but aren't particularly close with, and the brief conversations you do have to catch up with such people often peter out just as fast as they start (because one of you doesn't have anything else to say and then starts looking to bounce to the next person or location).

And if you don't have anyone else to turn to, or are someone like me who often just isn't in the right state of mind to be talking to people casually on a Sunday morning (often because of pre-existing mental issues or because the sermon this morning forced me to confront something personal) and finds it difficult to feign interest in conversation or maintain an air of social propriety or even just try to reach out to people who I don't talk to often, it can become very isolating. I have never felt more lonely than in the presence of other people.

I think part of my problem is that I heavily dislike small talk, and I often prefer to be more vulnerable or open about my issues or ongoing state of mind with people, even if I don't know them as well. But this doesn't really work with acquaintances or most people I run into on Sunday (...in an environment that somehow tries to be both conducive for reflection and still upbeat, because "Praise Jesus!"). In being hyper-self-conscious of that, I often end up just standing around aimlessly at the end of service, not knowing what to do with myself. I usually feel like someone who still needs people to reach out to him even though he's been around for years.

And then I have a day like today, where I push it a little bit and force myself into a position where I'll have to interact with people sooner or later. But a lack of acknowledgment or even a simple "hey, it's been a while!" (because really, I've been around, and we just haven't talked because there isn't a pressing reason to still be in each other's lives and it's probably mutual), and sometimes receiving an awkward look instead is enough to crush me on the inside and remind me of how much I don't feel like I fit in with this larger community and why I stopped bothering to come out as much in the first place.

It's hard to fit in when you don't fit into the typical mold of what an average attendee at this church service looks like (straight, married or in a relationship, God-fearing, good with kids, wakes up in time for 9 AM service, drinks coffee, etc). Even more so when you're still in a place of questioning whether or not you really believe in this anymore, and find it difficult to take the words spoken or sung in front of you seriously sometimes but still have to put on some air of reverence for it anyway.

But these kinds of problems aren't just limited to church for me. I have them with any and all kinds of social situations that force me to interact with people who I don't see all the time. And even with those I do hang out with semi-regularly, I think about often I shut down in front of them after a while because I just don't have the mental energy to be present anymore, or in other cases, how long it took me to even get to a place of feeling comfortable enough to be around them in the first place, and how these days I still don't feel entirely comfortable or perhaps even less so than I used to.

How if it weren't for other factors of situational placement or convenience, we wouldn't even be talking in the first place, because I am not the type of person easily inclined towards forming or maintaining relationships with people. Every interaction I have feels like a toll, and it takes just one misstep these days to turn my otherwise functional mental state into a mess and make me go fuck-people-fuck-social-norms-fuck-propriety-fuck-everything-fuck-living-(but-I'm-not-suicidal-yet).

And I hate it. I hate how volatile I am.

I hate how long it takes me to recover from one night's worth of bad sleep, one day's worth of committed social activity, one week's worth of back-to-back blocked-out-calendar engagements and errands, one year's worth of events that I can't remember happening anymore, one decade's worth of stagnation in my state of being emotionally and spiritually.

How it took me almost two decades to come out to myself and acknowledge that I can't keep going on like this anymore.

How this life I'm living isn't really sustainable.

How I have no healthy models from others of what it really looks like to truly "live," because no one else around me "looks like me" in the same sense, even though I've been conditioned for most of my life to look up to others: parents, peers, friends, authority, absolute truth, God, myself, anything else what-have-you, only to have my confidence in all of these to be shattered once I finally realized that I didn't trust in any of them anymore, because at the end of the day I was still stuck in the same place anyway because I couldn't live up to the ideals or models or molds placed in front of me of what a Christian or what an adult or what a straight-bi-homo-whatever or what a sane human being or even what a friend really looks like (and I never really fully identified with any of my home cultures so eff that). I don't really know who or what I am anymore.

All I have now are just waylaid plans for how to spend time in the meantime since I have other shit I need to worry about. And I've been so dissatisfied with the conversations I've been having lately (even the "good" conversations) that I don't feel like talking to anyone anymore, no small talk no random lol comments no whatever. I know something isn't right with me, but part of me doesn't want to do anything about it, other than perhaps acknowledging that something exists and leaving it there for now.

Dear friends and people who like to fix problems: I'm sorry for being so frustrating. I'm frustrated with myself right now, and I don't even know why, or perhaps I just don't want to admit it and I'm really in denial about whatever my true problems are, or perhaps all of this is just me blatantly overreacting to something really mild because I'm ultimately insecure with myself and my own state of being to the point where just about anything will trigger me these days, or perhaps I really was mostly okay until I started writing this because "I just had to" and then just unwittingly opened up a giant can of worms/subconscious-thought-vomit from my mind.

Pardon me while I try to cool myself off for the rest of the day instead of being productive like I was planning to do. I'm probably going to come back to this later and wonder wtf I was thinking, as usual.

Here's a song from The National that I like a lot.

(on another note... two hours to write. I think that's a record for me.)

the Investigator

My therapist this week identified my Enneagram personality type (type 5-wing 4) as one of those people whose issues tend to come from a sense of having a limited amount of energy (or to use the wizard analogy, "mana") available every day and thus actively struggle with figuring out how to allocate that energy without getting burned out too fast. On reflection, I'd say it's probably more-or-less accurate (I'm also apparently the type who questions personality tests like the Enneagram in the first place, but eh). I do find that I get "tired" really easily from a lot of things these days:

- planning meals
- figuring out what to wear today
- shopping for basic necessities and navigating stores
- physical activity
- not sleeping enough
- not sleeping well or in a bed/couch/sleeping bag situation I'm not used to (recalling that one time I tried hardwood floor and wound up not sleeping the entire night)
- sleeping too much and waking up with a headache
- sleeping enough but waking up groggy due to interrupted REM sleep
- work (but especially when I don't enjoy it)
- anything job-search related
- planning for things that don't have tangible end-goals/clear rewards
- budgeting and figuring out what to do with my money
- activities when I'm not in the "mood" for it
- talking to people
- mentally preparing to talk people
- talking to people who give me criticism even when I agree with them
- trying to justify the decisions and choices I make to other people
- all the things that occupy my mind and won't go away

Especially when those things are related to insecurities, which in my case leads to excess mental strain: doubt, anxiety, fear, paranoia, and all the extra energy needed to carry that load while doing normal everyday activities. That or the combination of mixed/negative emotions with having to perform in some manner is in itself by definition energy draining.

And when I run out of energy, I can't really function anymore. Out in public, I'm pretty much trapped or helpless if I can't get myself home for some reason. If I'm already at home when that happens, I might neglect basic needs like eating or sleeping, ironically-- well okay, it's not to the point of an eating disorder, but I'll admit that I've skipped meals before because of this. Otherwise, I'll just be unable to focus on anything I actually want to do at the moment. Like study. or read. or sleep. or leave the house. (see two posts ago about sobbing in my stairwell.)

And then I get paranoid or hung up about little things.

Case example: As I have to return my work laptop tomorrow, I decided to purchase a Macbook for myself for future personal work, for a number of reasons:

1. My current personal laptop is getting slow and unwieldy, and I mainly use it for gaming on the go anyway (although I'm also looking to refit it with an SSD soon in place of the CD-drive on it that I broke).

2. I'm used to the development environment on Macbooks cause of my work laptop (I'll admit, perhaps a bit spoiled) and prefer aspects of the user experience, like touchpad and keyboard features, over Linux laptops, although I still do remote work on Linux servers anyway. Bu in general, after working with Macs/Linux at work, I've found that I don't particularly enjoy coding on Windows anymore.

3. Other priorities include portability, RAM, having a decent amount of disk storage (for random reasons including running virtual machines and downloading stuff on the go-- so not feeling Chromebook here), and boot up speed.

4. I still have a $400 gift card from my old job that I haven't used yet, and I don't see myself buying other Apple products anytime soon.

5. A friend at Apple can give me a 15% discount.

6. I need to spend $4k within 3 months for the Chase Sapphire Preferred bonus, and I've pretty much already budgeted the eventual cost for the laptop within that range. (queue discussion on why I didn't get Reserve, but honestly, I didn't feel comfortable having a card with that high of an annual fee, and yes I'm aware of it being just $50 more cause of the $300 travel credit, but having no solid immediate travel plans or even intention to plan for a while, especially now that I'm unemployed. And I'm looking to cut down on spending for some time until I get a job, however long that takes.)

7. I'm going with refurbished cause it's a bit cheaper than new, but the quality assurance is even more strict for refurbs than new products, and I'm not looking to use the latest models anyway. Also, I've had a great experience with past refurbs direct from the manufacturer (like Nintendo's Wii U).

And I just wrote all of that on here now mainly because I had a convo the other day about wasting money on a laptop I don't "need" (and yet another thing to add to the list of choices that I have to defend in front of other people). I mean sure, I don't technically "need" a Macbook; if I really wanted to save the money, I could've opted for a much cheaper option. But I accept that I'm spending extra, in part because: of the added luxury, which I do actually want here; of the fact that it's within my means currently; and of my intention to not make any other major purchases for a while after this (unless the travel planning bug kicks in sometime in the next month or two, but that's what Sapphire + the points I saved in the last year are for).

But in the process of trying to justify all of the above to myself, I opened up another mental can of worms. I've been aware, especially more so lately, that I'm probably not saving as much or as optimally as I could be saving, and that I've made a number of stupid spending decisions in the past few months that have ultimately amounted to me wasting money (see tux rental that I didn't use during the double-wedding-weekend-madness and concert+music festival I didn't attend nor sell my ticket for because of planning mishaps and not emotionally being up for it). It kinda comes with my tendency to still make random choices on the fly in spite of all of the other planning that I actually do. Or rather, I tend to make stupid choices more often with regards to things that I don't actually enjoy planning for; especially when it comes to money, given that I'm not really motivated at all by the prospect of making or saving more money. But I'm still self-conscious of the fact that I could be doing more, because of the things that family and friends and ultimately society say to me about it.

And as far as insecurities go, it's not just money.

It's the driving decisions that I make on the spot (stop-no-I'm-going-no-never-mind-no-stupid-other-drivers-make-up-your-minds) when I can't think because I have a headache and people in the car are talking and this traffic intersection sucks and I am not generally assertive when I drive anyway nor confident in my driving skills given the long history of stupid mistakes I've made in the past months, no, weeks, no, days.

It's having to mull over the pros-and-cons of rolling over my 401k to an IRA and still not being able to come to a decision because I can't figure out if I'm actually going to take advantage of the Roth backdoor in the future, but the advisor from Morgan Stanley this week said not to keep your money in your employer's 401k because you lose most of the benefits that come with it once you leave your employer, and are lacking in investment options there. Not to mention that one month period in which my 401k was actually inaccessible because they were making a switch from JP Morgan to Fidelity; imagine if that were to happen again? (Apparently when Coca-Cola did it for their plan it took 8 months.)

It's running over and shattering a package that I was expecting because the stupid USPS man who mixes up my mail with my neighbors 10% of the time decided to leave it in front of my garage door instead of the front one, and I was in a rush running late to meet up with friends for dinner who came later than me anyway, and I didn't bother checking the foot-long driveway because I had just come home a few hours ago, wasn't expecting the package that soon, it was dark out, the package was too low/close to be seen on my rearview camera, and my usual view from the back of the garage was obstructed by my own car because my other tandem spot is now occupied by a friend's car for storage purposes; all that said even though I know I should've checked that the coast was clear anyway. And now the package sender isn't responding to my emails.

It's typing up long emails to my parents trying to justify and explain my views on Guantanamo and racial profiling and systemic racism in the police in the US because I couldn't articulate any of my reasons in front of them at the time and therefore came across as naive about the world, speaking only from perception rather than actuality, even though I know there is evidence to back up my own reasoning, just as I've already acknowledged to them that their views aren't completely unfounded either. But it takes time and research for me to actually put a real, non-BS argument together because it takes more energy to combat BS/misinformation than it does to generate it. And then I don't actually send those emails because ugh I don't really want to start another war anyway. (And then people ask why I bother.)

It's driving late to church again today because I woke up late for first service and otherwise have no concept of time when it comes to showing up for things I have mixed feelings about on a regular basis, only to decide yet again to ditch service altogether and go somewhere else. Today it was because the roads were closed for Viva Calle SJ, and even though I actually had instructions for an alternate route to church, I didn't feel dealing with the hassle of figuring out an unfamiliar route and wound up checking out Viva Calle itself instead-- starting around the neighborhood where I used to live 4 years ago for nostalgia's sake. And then walked along the bike route for two hours (one each way) just for the hell of it.

It's my recent spate of posts (including this one). Am I being too open about my problems on this blog right now? Am I giving away too much and just driving people away in the process? Am I just making myself out as someone to be pitied, someone who doesn't have it all "together" as much as other people thought, someone who just complains a lot without doing anything really tangible about it, someone who's just doing this for attention so that other people will pity him even though says he doesn't want to be pitied but secretly suspects he does on the inside? Will others (who I'm not as close to) even want to talk to me anymore after all this? Will they think I'm crazy or unhinged a little bit? Am I being vain for thinking all of this?

I make so many life choices on a whim because the amount of time and energy it takes for me to actually plan for things that I'm not good at drains me too much, and meanwhile people are pushing me on with advice that often contradicts with each other, and then THEY GET FRUSTRATED WITH ME ANYWAY FOR TAKING TOO LONG TO DECIDE (in caps because I got angry while typing it). At that point, I'd rather just risk making the stupid mistake and learning from the consequences rather than persist in uncertain confusion for much longer.

And then I'm still struggling with the question of why I still feel so perpetually frustrated all the time, to the point where I sometimes start walking around and talking to myself quickly with intense I-want-to-punch-someone-or-a-wall moments even though no one is there, like my brother does sometimes (minus the punching part but with similar energy) when he gets excitable and can't control it because of his disability. Just another little thing that we have in common.

In other words, life is okay. I'm still getting by, albeit slowly. I'm taking to heart this word I heard on the Liturgists podcast today:

When people attempt to shortcut or disavow the sorrow of emotional wounds, instead of expressing it, they might unconsciously harbor hostility or helplessness instead of forgiveness. They may experience more psychological harm. Experiments show that our intellectual, emotional, and even physical performance, can be affected by emotions denied breathing room.

And this part of the type 5 description that spoke to me the most:

The intense focus of Fives can thus lead to remarkable discoveries and innovations, but when the personality is more fixated, it can also create self-defeating problems. This is because their focus of attention unwittingly serves to distract them from their most pressing practical problems. Whatever the sources of their anxieties may be—relationships, lack of physical strength, inability to gain employment, and so forth—average Fives tend not to deal with these issues. Rather, they find something else to do that will make them feel more competent. The irony is that no matter what degree of mastery they develop in their area of expertise, this cannot solve their more basic insecurities about functioning in the world. For example, as a marine biologist, a Five could learn everything there is to know about a type of shellfish, but if her fear is that she is never going to be able to run her own household adequately, she will not have solved her underlying anxiety.

Dealing directly with physical matters can feel extremely daunting for Fives. Henry is a life scientist working in a major medical research lab:

“Since I was a child, I have shied away from sports and strenuous physical activity whenever possible. I was never able to climb the ropes in gym class, stopped participating in sports as soon as it was feasible, and the smell of a gymnasium still makes me uncomfortable. At the same time, I have always had a very active mental life. I learned to read at the age of three, and in school I was always one of the smartest kids in academic subjects.”

Thus, much of their time gets spent "collecting" and developing ideas and skills they believe will make them feel confident and prepared. They want to retain everything that they have learned and “carry it around in their heads.” The problem is that while they are engrossed in this process, they are not interacting with others or even increasing many other practical and social skills. They devote more and more time to collecting and attending to their collections, less to anything related to their real needs.

Thus, the challenge to Fives is to understand that they can pursue whatever questions or problems spark their imaginations and maintain relationships, take proper care of themselves, and do all of the things that are the hallmarks of a healthy life.

The struggle is real, yo.

once more before a break

This weekend is the first real weekend I've finally had to myself, with no pressing plans, in 3 months. It didn't really hit me until a few minutes ago... and I am so relieved right now.

One of the reasons I stopped blogging as much recently was because I never really felt like I had the time anymore, and whenever I tried to make time, I'd either get paranoid over how much time I was spending (because writing takes me 6+ hours, and I dislike interruptions once I've started), or I lose sleep in the process and end up going to bed around 3 to 5 in the morning. And these days it takes me 3-4 days to recover from one night's worth of little sleep, even if "little" happens to mean 6 hours. After that, I can't really self-process or partake in activities that normally would require some level of mental acuity, like reading, or job search prepping, or even starting everyday errands. And I hate it.

It is nice to not have to be so rushed for once.

Now that I've (more-or-less) recovered from emotion hell and have had some time time to look backwards and forwards... here's a lengthy post on four things I've had on my mind while in the process of moving on. Some of this may be more frank or straightforward than would be expected of a technically public-but-personal blog, but eh, I like openly processing things in this manner sometimes. I'm still in the midst of figuring all of this out for myself, so consider the thoughts and opinions represented part of an ongoing work-in-progress... because it's taken me years to come this far.

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On job searching, resumes, LinkedIn, positioning statements, and "building a personal brand": I've seen it often stressed by career counselors and in stuff I've consulted in my own research that you should emphasize your accomplishments, or what you achieved, rather than your duties or simply what you did, when talking about your past work experience on your resume or in other places that recruiters and potential employers will check. Things that you would be willing to brag about to other people if you had the chance. But well, what if you aren't necessarily proud of even the work you did do?

Barring the fact that I can't really quantify the accomplishments or the effect that my previous work had (since much of it was structured around simply doing what needed to be done anyway), compared to say, managers or people in finance, I find it difficult to really speak excitedly about my past work at work in the same vein; after a certain point, I felt like I was just working to get by. Ironically, I've found it more exciting to talk about what the overall project goal for my team was, rather than what my individual contributions towards that goal were. Part of that may be tied to my own self-doubt regarding how valuable I really was to my own team and some of the frustrations I experienced in working with them in the past, which hasn't been helped by fact that I did get laid off before our last project was completed.

If anything, I'm more proud of the little things I've done outside of work in the past years (schedule planning for friends and family; successfully conducting multiple Bible studies in spite of ongoing faith issues; individual conversations and personal emails; making headway with a number of friends, some of whom I've struggled to be present with over the years; this wedding I just officiated), most of which isn't really all that relevant to any potential future employer in the field that I actually want to find work in.

And that's not to say that I'm looking for work in the wrong industry or place. What few strides I've managed to make, exploring my options and working on side projects in my spare time, have made me feel more confident that I honestly do still want to work in software. It just feels harder for me to leverage my past in a way that may captivate potential future employers, the way all these career advisors and recruiters in the industry talk about it. The implications have even been imparted to me in more negative terms by some: spend too much time situated in one job, especially a job that you don't like, and it actually can reflect badly on you as a person or prospective employee.

That's honestly something I've struggled with for a long time. I like coding, but I'm not as driven to pursue new opportunities or developments in the industry (or at least historically, anyway) compared to other people I know, especially the ones I would look up to. I highly value the time I get outside of work to do other things, because I believe there is so much more to living than simply "what you do" as Silicon Valley puts it, but for me personally it often lopsidedly turns into prioritizing my free time above anything else... because in a normal 9-5 work environment, I don't have to "make time" for work like I have to for anything else.

Even more than that, I usually just feel like I don't have enough time outside as it is, because there's simply too much else I want to do in life. Even now that I'm unemployed, I still don't feel like I have enough time; I've barely scraped the surface of all the little things I've wanted to do since I got laid off, and that's not including unplanned time that I've needed to recover mentally and emotionally, and it's already been three weeks. Time just feels like it's moving faster than ever for me, and I don't know if I can keep up with it.

But that's enough musing about my professional life for one day.

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One thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is the limits of relationships-- my own limits in particular, as I've been a lot more conscious of how my desire to maintain connections with people in different areas of life comes at odds with my low tolerance threshold for being around people. Under normal (non-traveling) circumstances, two days in a row is pushing it for most people; by that point my mind starts to shut off and I just want to chill at home alone. And then I get disappointed when I experience a conversation with a good friend that breaks off into the silence of uncertainty, even though a lot of that silence reflects my own state of being.

Consequently, there are individuals who I've known throughout the years who I still think about sometimes, but haven't really kept in touch with for a long while... or was never really close to to begin with, but part of me still wonders what might've been if we did actually talk more than once at some get-together every year. In some of these cases, it doesn't even make much sense given that we lack apparent common interests, or opportunities to meet (did I mention I haven't really had a free weekend in months?) combined with physical distance. And then I wonder why I even bother thinking about it then.

Social media has a weird effect sometimes-- in the sense of fooling you into thinking that you're up-to-date with someone's life and therefore are still in some sense "close" to them, or close enough to be able to talk to them like you're still a part of their life. And I fall for it so often, failing to acknowledge how one-sided it is. Even while there's some part of me that still at least wants to know, at least wants to not be out of the loop the next time I might see them, at least not miss out on the privilege my other friends are getting in being able to still be part of this person's life. Because I am inclined to like (or think I like) being friends with people even when I don't really know them well... or only know them from the image they project online.

It's why I get excited sometimes when people reach out to me out of the blue. I like to think of myself as always open to people (given time availability), even though that's not really the case. But when another person is willing to give you a chance first... I guess it ultimately makes me feel good about myself. Like someone actually wants to talk to me!

Basically, I base a lot of my self-worth on how much other people validate me even though I shouldn't. It's what makes reaching out so difficult for me at the same time: because when I'm rejected, I take it so personally, as a reflection of something wrong with my own identity. It's something I really need to work on; I can see all the ways in which I've let opportunities go and relationships die by not acting out of fear. I just wish I had more energy to be present for others with the chances I do get.

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At present, I'm kind of in this weird situation where I happen to be more continuously involved with church, or particularly small group, than I ever really have in the past, while at the same time I'm also more distant from God than I've ever really been (or as I put it to my therapist: "we aren't on speaking terms right now.") I've been more-or-less open about this with most of my small group, in addition to a lot of other personal things that I'd never have imagined sharing with anyone even a couple of years ago. And they've been incredibly supportive in the process.

To be more specific: I don't really know what or how much I really believe anymore... although I say that with a very heavy caveat to follow. Ironically, I have no problem with conducting a Bible study for other people (in fact breaking down and analyzing Scripture is something I still enjoy doing a lot), but I have issues more with how we apply the messages that we take away to real life experiences. Perhaps I'm going too far on the academic side of things here, but I've found that the more I've learned about the Bible and its history and the nature of how it's interpreted across different churches and denominations in the world... the more difficult I find it to just accept what I read or hear at church at face value. At this point I'm more inclined to doubt the historical accuracy of much of it (at least up until David's time period), and even when it comes to the specifics of Jesus and Paul's lives, there's a lot that I'm skeptical about for now.

To add to that, church that we have today is not the same church that emerged two millennia ago, nor is it as monolithic as some people like to imagine. The fact of the matter is that it's possible for one Christian to come to a completely different interpretation of what they consider to be truth from another, with both using the Bible as justification, and it's not always clear which view is really more valid to everyone else (unless you have something like Sacred Tradition to define that for you, as I imagine Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox would expect). Even with the aid of contextual analysis, the Bible is not a one-size-fits-all reference for how to live your life; there are plenty of issues that are current today for which it is silent. But people will pick and choose what they consider to be right through the lens of their own experiences, more often informed by their own cultural context than anything else, often beginning with an assumption on a topic (see: abortion) and trying to justify that assumption by going backwards to Scripture instead of the other way around.

This problem is not just limited to the Bible either; I can see a parallel in say Supreme Court debates regarding the constitutionality of laws and whether we should care more about what what the original writers intended at the time of writing, or whether we should revise our interpretations as our culture evolves and new and unforeseen situations emerge for which past precedent doesn't hold as well anymore. But in that regard, I don't think Christianity could've survived till today without continuously evolving, and adapting to new and unforeseen needs and cultural situations, and as a result certain understandings and beliefs that may have been taken for granted in the past may make less sense today. And yet a number of people will insist that a statement made in one book of the Bible holds true for everyone in all situations. I mean, the Bible itself documents the evolution of a people's understanding of and relationship with God over time, so naturally there are already laws and ideas in earlier books that get annulled over by later ones anyway. And I'm pretty sure the same holds for the way churches come into being and operate today.

This is not to create a slippery slope for bad theology nor to try to completely invalidate the church, but rather to point out what I see as a reality that's too complicated to be restricted to a notion of complete and total acceptance or rejection of it. I would like to think that at least some of the Bible's authors earnestly believed in the purpose for which they wrote, even if some aspect of what resulted doesn't reflect the actual historical record.

I've seen the argument made from a conservative standpoint that if you disregard the accuracy or truth of one part of Scripture, like say the creation story or the fall of man, you have to disregard everything. That is to say, if the Fall didn't happen in reality the way Genesis recorded it, then Jesus's sacrifice is meaningless, and likewise if Jesus didn't rise and come back from the dead, then the continued existence of the Church that we have today is also meaningless. I used to worry about this all the time too, back when I initially started doubting: that if I came to some realization or conclusion of Scripture being historically false, then all the experiences I'd gone through over the years would've been invalidated and our continued striving ultimately futile and pointless... up until I figured out for myself that that sort of fundamentalist-driven mindset is more like digging yourself deeper into a hole to try and save yourself from the tsunami that is about to come. So much church doctrine that is followed today isn't explicitly spelled out in the Bible at all to begin with, but rather emerged over centuries of fine-tuning our understanding of both Scripture, as well as our understanding of how God works in the world at large. I don't believe it's fair to attribute the entire basis of the Christian life to a book that didn't even exist in its entirety during the early years of the movement; it obviously came from much more than that.

Even if I were to come to reject the church's teachings, I cannot ignore the impact that it's had on my life and perspective, along with the good I've been able to witness and experience in the midst of my worst doubts and fears. There are many things that churches do well that I wish I could see more of outside of them, to the point where I almost wonder sometimes if man was meant to only accomplish greater good in the world through an infinite series of misconceptions or misunderstandings of the way the world really is. How many people in the world would be as motivated to be thoughtful of others, to love and forgive their enemies, to sacrifice time, money, and hospitality for strangers in their midst were it not for the influence of religion in their life? How many people would be as intentional about building relationships and communities even when it inconveniences them?

Obviously, there are people outside of religion who do this as well. But I've seen enough in my experiences outside of Christian community to note that the exact or entire standard for what it means live a good life isn't always well-established or widely accepted even in those contexts. Some people are willing to forgive old grievances, and others aren't, but whose place is it to say who should or shouldn't? Whose responsibility is it to help the poor, and where do we draw the line before it turns into a waste of time and resources? How much of what we possess and own is really ours, and how much of our success in life is due to our own accomplishments as opposed to the privilege and opportunities we received because of what family or social status we were born into and genetics we were given? Is grace even worth considering? And what are we ultimately striving for or trying to achieve with our lives; or is it even necessary to have an answer for that question?

There are also many religious communities out there that work specifically at trying to cultivate an attitude of mindful awareness, particularly about the way we live and make use of our limited time on Earth, and in the end try to achieve something good out of that, even if their conception of why they do so may seem at odds with those around them. And I'm not convinced that they're just doing good "in spite of" the trappings of their religion or whatever cynical view that may be taken of their work. And to turn the chessboard around (sorry, Umineko reference >_>): to what extent does the Bible have to actually be historically accurate for the truths that people have taken from it to still hold? Is it really pointless if, somehow, its adherents still earnestly work at making the world a better place because of it? If they still strive to do better in the process?

Of course, there are plenty of ways in which Christians over the years have caused more harm than good as a result of problematic thinking or discriminatory practices and the divide between good intentions and good results. But as I said before, the church isn't a static entity. Understandings will evolve with time, and I believe more people will become more cognizant of these issues, just as our culture at large is becoming more open and aware of issues and injustices that have long hidden under the surface of society with impunity (like the current state of race relations in America). At least, that is also part of what I would like to try and help accomplish within my own church: an increasing awareness of the beliefs and behaviors that are often taken for granted in the community, and the impact those can have on the people they seek to reach, in the hopes of being able to mutually understand and build relationships with other people and communities, regardless of their faith affiliation.

As for what all this musing has to do with my relationship with God... I found it easier to talk to God in the past when I honestly believed the words in Scripture to be an accurate reflection of what really happened in the past and of what God really said to us. But now that I'm not so sure anymore... it's been hard for me to say much of anything directly to him anymore, other than to wonder if I'm still doing the right thing sometimes (which is kinda inevitable). Otherwise, I don't really feel much of anything, unless you call apathy a feeling. I also find it difficult to partake in prayer and worship these days, because I lack the conviction or faith to do such things honestly, and worship music is so often structured or written in lyrics that do not reflect what I honestly feel anymore. But I still try to take to heart what truths I do see in Scripture, the ones I see as more reflective of how life ought to be lived. As my therapist put it to me recently: the imprint of the image of God is still on me, in my desires and intentions, even if my specific beliefs aren't entirely in line anymore.

When it comes down to it, even with all of my personal issues regarding the nature of truth and Scripture itself, I don't see my life as any less enriched or wasted by still being involved with church. Perhaps I'm just lucky to have been able to find a community that still accepts me for who I am, even when I don't always feel like I fit in with what is considered orthodox or normal, and when I'm aware that many others have been ostracized from their church communities because of their beliefs. But in that regard, I believe that church communities that do so aren't living up to the standards set by the Jesus that can be seen in the New Testament, the one figure who they claim to follow, who went out of his way to be present with the outcasts of society in his day. There is more to life than simply trying to live it "correctly," and punishing those who fail to meet our standards of right or proper living; but unfortunately, that is what we are prone to doing most often.

All that to say, I'm still in the process of figuring out what all of this will mean for me in the future. Someday, our group will disband and people will leave, and I don't what will happen then, if my beliefs will have changed by then to the point where it no longer makes sense for me to remain anymore, or if I'll find a niche somewhere where I can still contribute somehow. Will I stay, or will I go? At this point, I honestly don't know. But I refuse to give up on it all yet.

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Little things I look forward to in the coming months (aka a giant list of lists):

- Finishing Ace Attorney 6 (Spirit of Justice). So far it's feeling a lot more "polished" than Dual Destinies did, perhaps because the current development team (which originally started with the spinoff Miles Edgeworth games) has finally figured out its groove on how to handle a mainline game. I like how it combines all of the investigation elements that have been introduced in past games: Psyche-locks, Ema Skye's crime scene investigation techniques, analyzing video footage, Apollo's Perceive bracelet, Athena's Mood Matrix, revisualizations, and now Divination Seances. It reminds me of how far the series has come from its early days. That said, the new character names thus far have been rather cringe-inducing (Pees'lubn Andistan'dhin and Tahrust Inmee... ugh), although granted this is the same series that started with Frank Sahwit and Sal Manella so I dunno if I should be surprised.

Other games in the long-term to-play queue: Trails in the Sky II, Fire Emblem 4 and 9-10, Arcanum, The Witcher III, Baldur's Gate II, Pokemon Sun/Moon, FFXV, Persona 5, Torment.

- Refreshing my knowledge of Data Structures and Algorithms in preparation for interviews-- okay I know, you can't ever be truly "prepared," but I just want get some practice in dealing with both familiar and unfamiliar problems and articulating my thought process, since it's been years since I last had to do a real live interview, and I still remember what it feels like to be frustrated with yourself over not being able to answer a question that you could've had you actually studied your basics beforehand. Like for one thing, I haven't actually had to analyze algorithmic runtimes or really been pressured to try and optimize my own solutions to a problem in a long time, and those are areas that I want to get better at for my own sake.

This probably sounds weird to some people, but I actually do like revisiting things I used to know, or potentially developing an even better understanding of them than I did before, as has happened in recent years when I've reread books or revisited subjects I've studied in the past, like American history or Japanese. Perhaps it's the sense of becoming a master of my own "domain" for once, since I'm so used to behaving more like a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none, as Ryan has called me more than once in the past (thanks a lot... even though it's true, sigh).

- Upcoming musicals: Assassins, Hedwig and the Angry Itch, The King and I, Finding Neverland, Into the Woods, HAMILTON, Roman Holiday, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, and possibly Rent. I may consider another trip to NYC next year once Anastasia starts running on Broadway next spring.

- Catching up on all the books I don't feel like listing (see goodreads). I haven't finished a book in a few months... which is a long time for me haha.

- All the online classes I've wanted to at least audit but never had the time to focus on cause of work. Currently going through: Probability, Astrophysics, Chinese history (empire to present), Italian opera, Linux, and Parallel Programming in addition to Data Structures/Algs Review and Interview prep. Also looking at both Medical and Computational Neuroscience, God and Consciousness in Philosophy, A Global History of Architecture, the Ancient Greek Hero, the Meaning of Rome, Human Anatomy, Paradox and Infinity, Justice, Shakespeare, European Paintings, The Quran, Visualizing Japan, and the American Civil War and Reconstruction era, among other things. And not currently in online class-form, but I'd like to look more into the history of Britain, the Spanish Civil War, and Southeast Asian conflicts of the 20th Century including Indonesia, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

Why exactly? Because all of these subjects have piqued my interest in some way at some point in the past few years or even decade, and in some respects reflect my overall desire to understand more of how the world works, in its full and total complexity. I quote this post from Wait But Why that I have yet to finish reading (woops), but which encapsulates my general feelings on learning about topics that are unfamiliar and difficult to understand:

A Wait But Why post can be a few different things. One type of WBW post is the “let’s just take this whole topic and really actually get to the bottom of it so we can all completely get it from here forward.” The ideal topic for that kind of post is one that’s really important to our lives, and that tends to come up a lot, but that’s also hugely complex and confusing, often controversial with differing information coming out of different mouths, and that ends up leaving a lot of people feeling like they don’t totally get it as well as they “should.”

The way I approach a post like that is I’ll start with the surface of the topic and ask myself what I don’t fully get—I look for those foggy spots in the story where when someone mentions it or it comes up in an article I’m reading, my mind kind of glazes over with a combination of “ugh it’s that icky term again nah go away” and “ew the adults are saying that adult thing again and I’m seven so I don’t actually understand what they’re talking about.” Then I’ll get reading about those foggy spots—but as I clear away fog from the surface, I often find more fog underneath. So then I research that new fog, and again, often come across other fog even further down. My perfectionism kicks in and I end up refusing to stop going down the rabbit hole until I hit the floor.

...I’ve heard people compare knowledge of a topic to a tree. If you don’t fully get it, it’s like a tree in your head with no trunk—and without a trunk, when you learn something new about the topic—a new branch or leaf of the tree—there’s nothing for it to hang onto, so it just falls away. By clearing out fog all the way to the bottom, I build a tree trunk in my head, and from then on, all new information can hold on, which makes that topic forever more interesting and productive to learn about. And what I usually find is that so many of the topics I’ve pegged as “boring” in my head are actually just foggy to me—like watching episode 17 of a great show, which would be boring if you didn’t have the tree trunk of the back story and characters in place.

- And to end: a long-term travel itinerary wishlist:

• Chicago
• Great Britain (London, Bath, Glastonbury, the Cotswalds, Peak District, Lake District, York, Yorkshire Dales, Hadrian's Wall, Edinburgh, Inverness, the Scottish Highlands, Isle of Skye)
• Spain (Madrid, Cordoba, Seville, Granada, Barcelona)
• Italy (Venice, Florence, Rome, Pompeii, the Amalfi Coast)
• Greece (Athens, Mycenae, Olympia, Delphi, Meteora, Santorini, Crete)
• Japan round 2+ (Yakushima, Kagoshima, Kurokawa, Fukuoka, Hiroshima/Miyajima, Naoshima, Osaka, Koya-san, Nara, Kyoto, Hakone, Yokohama, Tokyo, Dewa Sanzan, Yamadera, Sendai, Ishinomaki)
• China round 2+ (Lhasa, Jiuzhaigou, Yangtze River, Zhangjiajie, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai, Beijing, Mutianyu or Jinshanling Great Wall, Datong)
• Eurail trip (Zurich, Munich, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris)
• Turkey (Ephesus, Cappadocia, Istanbul)
• Peru (Lima, Cusco, Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca, Arequipa, Culca Canyon)
• Boston and Philadelphia

Basically I'm set for the next decade and then some lol.

Aaaand that took me 10 hours to finish. I'll have to take a break from this for a bit to actually get stuff done. Later.

a bundle of nerves

I've been having trouble figuring out how exactly to put the rest of this into words lately, as every time I try, I feel like I only vaguely capture what it is I'm really feeling, and only through the extremities or what could be seen if anyone were actually looking. Like I can only describe my symptoms rather than the cause of them. Perhaps this is just the only straightforward way to go about it. Words can only go so far in describing an emotion anyway.

Other friends have noted my tendency to avoid actually describing my emotions, which is more or less on point. It's not that I'm unaware of my emotions; I just don't trust them anymore (as mentioned in the previous post). I am incredibly fickle these days: in one moment I can go from experiencing pure bliss, to jealousy, to self-pity, to paranoia, to paralyzed fear because by this point I have no idea how to function in front of people anymore, only to have to try and remind myself of what was giving me joy hours earlier. In a social function I can happily respond to a query from a friend and then put on a brief smile for a picture, only to start mulling over what went on in the immediate aftermath because all I could see in my own face was an emotionally impoverished individual about to collapse under the weight of having to be "on" two days in a row. (And also frustration because the photographer couldn't get the lighting right on my phone's camera after three tries. -_-)

And then it takes me a full day to recover, a day I promised parents over the phone I would spend studying because they're worried about my health and my future. If I were still working right now, I would be somewhere in a quiet room whiling the time away till the day ended-- except oh wait there weren't many truly private spaces in the new building anyway.

I can't focus on much else right now except revising my music playlists to reflect my current mood because a couple of the guys told me they'd been trying to channel my music taste for this event and it hit my pride in the right spot (although I noted to them that if you really want to get people on the dance floor, you need to use more widely recognized songs; people don't usually get up to dance for songs they don't know.). I don't have many friends who share the same taste as me, and of the ones that do, I rarely see them because my closer social circles evolved out of other circumstances anyway. And I'm not sure if I'd even fit in with the demographic of people who do share my interests. I find it a multiple-year-long struggle to fit in with most groups of people anyway, and some of those connections still feel tenuous or seasonal at best.

A few months ago, one of my friends had the foresight to tell me that I should ask for help more often, because I'm often stubborn and hate asking people for help even though I have no problem when others do the same of me. In light of more recent events, I would say that half the time, I don't know that I need to ask for help until it's too late. The other half, I'm just tired of having people worry about me all the time... even though I often behave in such a way as to invite worry anyway, because that seems to be the only way I know how to ask people for help these days: out of desperation and pity, so that my own self-pity can feel justified by others' responses.

If I were to expound on why I personally don't feel like an adult (as opposed to my parents' opinion), I would say that I feel ill-equipped to deal with or respond to the complexities of an adult life. Or at least, relative to my own view of what that means, because I am aware that many "adults" probably don't meet that standard either.

I question my ability to function in a 9-5 weekday work environment when I frequently have days like today where I can't even focus on anything (oh, so much moreso when I was still working) and struggle to fall asleep at a normal hour, for no real reason other than my mind being unable to "turn" off despite not actually thinking about anything. I am easily overwhelmed these days by deceptively simple situations like shopping or the prospect of having to interact with people more than one day in a row. I don't trust myself being alone away from home for extended periods of time (more than a day), out of fear of having a breakdown in public or even in front of friends, even though I have wanted to be able to travel independently in the future for a long time now.

Sometimes I wish I could just disappear from the view of people for a long, extended while, just long-enough to get my bearings-- but then I fear for what will become of me when I come back after so long, if I will find it even more difficult to deal with people because of my absence and being out of touch with conventional social situations or whatever they've evolved into in the future. I wish more relationships were as easy as just showing up as if you both had never left in the first place.

And it's hard for me to plan for how much rest I would really need anyway-- ugh the notion of even planning for rest turns me off; rest should not be "structured" around. I might only be able to afford a day while I have work when what I really want is a month or semester, like I do now. In that respect, my current situation is really a blessing here. But it makes me worry for what might've happened now or in the future if/when I find myself stuck in a job I no longer want but unable to muster the fortitude or tenacity to just quit and figure out how to continue living from there.

In the times I've been able to get by recently, it's only been by temporarily shutting off the part of my mind that worries about all of the above until I can barely handle ignoring it anymore. Pressure to perform in front of other people? Just do it, you'll be fine. And I actually do perform fairly well under
some level of pressure in the spur of the moment, when I know what I have to do. I think my performance at work even improved significantly when I actually felt that there was pressure to finish by a certain deadline. I have trouble just making things happen on my own otherwise, even though part of me so earnestly desires to be able to do that.

And then I find myself a couple of hours later just sitting there, not knowing what else to do with myself now that I've finished my work. I have nothing pressing waiting for me at home, so I just wait and linger, not inclined to say anything but not inclined to leave just yet either, while little moments I am thankful for later still occur. And when I finally do manage to leave (because everyone else has has had their time), I just wait in my car, trying to allow my uncertain emotional state to settle before driving, because my awareness of my own fragility in these moments just makes me even more prone to falling into shambles. Why am I even crying right now? Oh right, because I feel spent and overused like a ragged doll that's been around for too long even though I still long to be needed by someone more than I already am. Because I can still see places in which I could've been available had I known, and had I been asked, but can't actually conceive being able to perform now that I'm wrestling with the doubts and insecurities that emerged from the newfound knowledge that neither happened in the first place (and this is not the first time nor the first group of people I've experienced this with).

I wish I could be more present for other people and not so consumed with my own internal affairs all the time. Perspective helps in providing a corrective to my insecurities, but at the end of the day, I'm still overly introspective, self-contained, and then self-conscious, particularly of the ways in which I'll never match up in the same terms. I know I've received a lot of advice from other people about needing to focus on improving my own circumstances rather than comparing them with others, because everyone has their own shit they're dealing with on their own terms. I've even given said advice.

But it still hits me hard sometimes. How long it takes me to deal with long-term problems that others around me have surpassed given the same opportunity in much less time, because I am easily distracted and preoccupied with every little detail along the way and otherwise purposefully ignorant of the reality of my own situation until I can ill-afford to remain so. How lacking I am in initiative, because a good percentage of the times I do initiate something, I end up killing myself internally with self-doubt and knee-jerk stress responses and actual physical cramping in the face of uncertainty that has yet to materialize into anything meaningful, even when it's for something I do actually want. How often I screw up and make simple mistakes, wasting money in unnecessary situations (like just now with the tux rental I wound up not using), and then receive remarks from other people no longer surprised at my capacity for clutter in all aspects of my life. How even more frequently I'm just not in the "mood" to do work, errands, and things that just need to be done when I actually have the time to do them. How emotionally ill-equipped I feel to deal with all of these unexpected moments as they come swinging at me head on, forcing me to try and hide my emerging sense of helplessness because most social functions (that I've had to be present for) are not the time nor place for those feelings to come out.

How even my happiest moments are tinged on the underside with thoughts I do not want to be having, but cannot help but have, and so have to live with the reality of being self-aware, of knowing that I am capable of wishing ill on even my closest friends, in order to make myself feel "better." And that I cannot voice it in front of them, because the last words I ever want to hear from a friend again are, "Why are you telling me this?"

I am a nervous wreck of a person, overwhelmed by the burden of the adult responsibilities I already have, wrestling with insecurities that have been eating away at me for years, telling myself I can't keep internally shutting down like this every time another life event happens. And I know I can't keep living the rest of my life like I have thus far, forced to carve out space and time I've had difficulty finding out of a pre-defined "schedule" for my life in order to actually deal with my mental health issues.

Enough is enough. I don't know what the future holds yet, but I'm only looking up from here.

---

I'm writing this now because I do not want to forget what I have felt in the past days, no, weeks and months-- semi-frequently trapped in states of utter, seemingly inescapable emotional despair, until I finally had spent enough time for them to feel distant, as periods of isolation coupled with (some amount of) sleep are apt to do for me these days. Unfortunately, this leaves me with little to process afterwards when I get around to it, because trying to conceive of those moments in retrospect often feels like trying to decipher the mind of another person who only shows up in your dreams. It all feels so foreign after the fact.

That, and I know I will likely experience all of these feelings again in the future, quite possibly at a time when someone else is actually paying attention for once. And I want to be ready for them then.

As an aside, because of this weekend I've unwittingly spent some time fantasizing what my future wedding playlist would be like if I ever were to have one. At this point I imagine it covering musicals, Disney, ambient IDM, jazz and swing, indie rock and pop, hip hop and R&B, oldies, video games, anime, and classically orchestrated, remixed, and normal versions of danceable guilty pleasures... because I have unrealistically crazy daydream ideas like that. (Okay, I know I tend to hate on popular songs, but sometimes if I like the main melody enough, there's a chance that I won't get sick of it as easily. though that may be in part from seeing such songs paired with inspiring dancers, as in these videos.

Also props to last year's Cal students for this. and shout out to my favorite Cal a capella group of all time, which I was reminded of today at lunch when I heard a speaker playing this.)

mind-vomit

I should be sleeping right now if I want to keep in line with the plan I have for tomorrow (first church service, meet up with Sammy, go home and get dressed for Anton and Laura's wedding and then wedding the rest of the evening), but I don't feel inclined to do so right now.

I don't feel like doing anything else aside from this actually, because I haven't written or even tried to write anything in months owing to a self-perceived lack of time available to write, or that is to say, write without sacrificing time to sleep or do other activities and errands, lest I fall behind in whatever my day-to-day-to-long-term schedule is.

It's gotten to the point where having to meet up or even talk with people, take out the trash, do dishes, do laundry, clean the house, show up and be present at work, and so on, feels burdensome and tiring... let alone the usual long-term needs like addressing my long-term professional and life goals, [lack-of a] love life, and coming to terms with whatever this quarter/spiritual/identity-life crisis I've been going through is.

The things I get distracted or preoccupied by: games, shows, music, books, podcasts and news, travel-planning, bookstores and museums, learning new things; these are all hobbies I enjoy regularly, but have focused on (read: made to-do lists of) unhealthily to the point where it would take me years to get through the combination of all of them without even taking into account normal life functions like those listed in the last paragraph. I've curated those lists to the point where I don't ever have an excuse to be "bored," because I always have something I could be doing that happens to line up with both an existing list and my current mood (and I can only have so many different kinds of moods before they start to cyclically repeat themselves. Right now I'm in a Fire Emblem/podcast/read-this-long-ass-article mood.)

And then in the back of my mind, real-life starts to kick in, and I remember that I too have life-responsibilities I need to keep up with:

- this project at work with an upcoming deadline that needs attention because everything that could go wrong feels like it's going wrong right now (although not all of it is my problem, and in fact I'm probably the least stressed on my team on that front).

- this upcoming open-ended small group that I have to prep for leading this week... and for which I still haven't figured out what I want to do yet because the ideas I have in mind need at least a week for me to prepare mentally, and I don't actually have a week because my family is coming up.

- speaking of which, this home I need to clean up for family coming up because I haven't unpacked or sorted out anything or done the dishes even since I got back from my trip a month ago.

- this wedding (the first of 6 this season) that I need to figure out how to dress for because my formal-attire wardrobe is out-of-date, because I've been losing weight (just cause I felt like it although I kind of also have body-image issues; stop telling me how skinny I look already) and never really had my suits fitted to begin with because I never normally need to dress up anyway, and the stuff my parents left me feels 4 sizes too large compared with my current fashion-taste/mood (and whoever invented the concept of formal attire should just go die in a fiery pit in hell ugh fml firstworldproblems nohashtaghashtags unnecessarystress depression)

- these friends I have to try to make some time for so that I don't look like I'm falling off the edge of the earth right now and I wonder sometimes how I can still function in front of them.

- these therapy sessions that I never seem to have the right thoughts prepared for because whenever I'm actually at therapy, that means I successfully got out of bed in the morning and was able to prepare to go to work (not that I haven't yet but still), so whatever frantic thoughts I'm feeling now feel completely alien to me then.

tl;dr: When I was running down the stairs tonight to head out for my friend's bachelor party-dinner/frantically running back up the stairs to look for the things I usually forget or misplace, like my keys or water-bottle or phone or jacket and it takes multiple trips to get everything, because (as my mom says) I'm scatter-brained and careless about where I put all of my possessions and can't even remember to put them in the same designated place every time, I collapsed in a heap in the middle of my stairway for about 5 minutes and broke down sobbing because I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't take being, or trying to put on the air of being, an adult when I don't feel like I behave like one, because I am the opposite of everything I value/have internalized as value in an adult.

I haven't heard myself cry that like in a long time. Usually I don't listen to myself when I cry (because I'm generally not self-aware enough to), but it was jarring to be able to both hear myself cry on a meta-consciousness level AND actually be engaged in the act of crying at the same time, all while drowning in the onslaught of thoughts I couldn't even entirely form into words yet:

- thoughts about how not "on top of things" I was (the way my old college roommate Jason used to put it) and how out-of-place I felt in the wider scheme of adult life when trying to buy my suit today and the (possibly-imagined) funny looks I got from the attendants for my lack of familiarity with all things formal fashion.

- thoughts coming from moments of feeling both alienated in the presence of others and unable to relate to their normal everyday experiences because my empathic senses lately have been out-of-whack and mostly self-centered. (Yes, that sounds nice but that has nothing to do with what I'm feeling right now.)

- thoughts and feelings of inadequacy and futility whenever anyone these days tries to ask me about my work and love life, because ultimately I haven't exhibited any sense of ambition or desire in those parts of my life lately, and haven't really in a long time, and I don't know why outside of a growing sense of being unable to force myself into that mindset of really wanting those things. I don't want anything right now other than the little things I already am pursuing, things that generally matter little to most other people anyway.

- thoughts of anger and frustration:

-- at the way my life itself feels artificially constructed from a combination of my baser impulses and societally imposed life goals (love, job, house, family), rather than what I really want, even though what I really want is still ill-defined right now.

-- at my general inefficiency in time management when it comes to simple things like shopping for clothes for myself (spent 6 hours today although half that time was figuring out where to go/eat) or leaving the house in the morning because I never know where I put things a half-day or a half-hour or a half-minute ago.

- thoughts of paranoia, that something is fundamentally broken or sick in my head right now because what normally functioning person breaks down uncontrollably right before attending a normal social function and successfully gets away with it without anyone noticing

- and don't even talk to me about God right now (I know I've said this here before but this still holds), because I have so many other unresolved problems with God and the church and basically the world at large (enough to fill up another 5-page long letter like the one I already sent my pastor earlier this year), that I'd have to address first before even considering bringing this up. (This John Oliver video, while not directly related, captures a similar sense of the frustration I feel, including my inability to trust my own feelings in dealing with any of this because my own feelings and emotions are fickle and at odds with reality.)

Don't ask me if I'm okay if you've read this post, because at this point I wouldn't know what else to say any more than what's already been said here (and I'm not suicidal, just existentially depressed). During the dinner tonight I was wrestling with conflicting emotions, happy (because the company and food were great), sad (because of earlier) and confusion at my own state of being because I don't know how to behave outwardly in that situation, other than to simply react to whatever's happening around me as I normally would. Sometimes I wonder what it would really take to make me crumble in front of other people, because I've somehow managed to survive for this long despite all internal mind-spasms to the contrary.

And I apologize if you're one of those people who've complained to me in the past about never talking/hanging out/reaching out anymore. Perhaps I'm doing a good job of putting on the air that I'm busy (well technically, I am busy too; see above), but lately I've been lacking the capacity to really initiate things with people unless it was already convenient to do so, like people who I already see around on a regular basis cause of circumstance anyway.

These days whenever I have free time to myself, I've been selfishly guarding it because I can only behave normally in front of people for so many hours in a given week. That and I can't handle the uncertainty of texts with no response right now (oh god I'll never survive online dating at this rate if/when I start). Even something as simple as a delayed overnight response about ordering dinner the next day made me go into fuck-this-I-hate-dealing-with-people mode for a few hours this week. No hard feelings towards that person, just towards the evil necessity that is the institution of texting and instant messaging at large, even though I am just as flaky at responding to people given that I can only respond when I am in the right "mood" and therefore am a hypocrite.

And with that, I need to sleep now if I'm going to survive tomorrow. This is why I haven't been blogging these days even though the process of writing this out feels somewhat cathartic. Good night.

Actually, I'm getting tired of ending my posts the same way every time, so I'll finish this by noting that the noise my air conditioner makes (especially at night) feels uncomfortably like the sensation of falling down a seemingly never-ending but possibly definite pit. Not that I've ever done so myself, but I've experienced something close to it at some point in the half-awake/half-asleep state while in bed in the past, which typically leads me to wake up in a jolt, because who likes the sensation of precariously falling and not knowing the moment when they'll crash into the floor.