soos_mite_ah

Depressive Hedonia I watched this video earlier and I have a lot of thoughts regarding American suburban life, corporate life, and the nuclear family. I feel like the thing that each of these things have in common is this notion of isolation from community and how we're just seen as individual little units rather than a broader collective. The suburbs and how car centric it is causes people to be in this situation where we don't really see eye to eye on a regular basis because we're all in our little pods when we're outside and when we're at home, we're all in our little boxes. There is a lack of serendipity and spontaneity in the suburbs. Not to mention there is a history of homogeny in the development of the suburbs back in the 1940s and 1950s that was built under the premise of exclusion on the grounds of racism and often homophobia. Corporate America also has similar issues regarding exclusion and homogenity. There is also the sense of alienation because most people cannot show up as their fully authentic selves at work without jeopardizing career opportunities or working relationships (lord knows I can't go on an political rant because my coworkers will probably look at me like I have a third tit). There is a sense of alienation where the worker doesn't have the same self interest as the management where the worker wants to do their jobs and then enjoy their lives (or do a little work as necessary) while the management wants to extract every bit of your time and energy for the sake of profit. This isn't just limited to corporate jobs, all jobs have this sort of dynamic one way or another. You're main reward for doing a good job is getting more work to do. But I feel like corporate specifically has a sense of coldness to it that cannot be said the same about working retail or working as a barista. I think part of it is the classes that are often found in either category and I feel like as you go up in class whether you're a middle class corporate person all the way to being a wealthy manager who is in the top 1%, people tend to get colder as the office politics, the power, and the money becomes bigger. In a way, while I do care about career progression, I'm kind of glad I'm in the bottom of the totem pole making a middle class esq kind of money because I'm around normal people rather than power hungry corporate pick mes (I've heard that while the lower parts of my company are chill that upper and middle management are MESSY). Then there is the nuclear family which suffers from both the isolation of suburbia and the drain of corporate America. It's heteronormative. It's cookie cutter in the sense that if you deviate from being a straight couple with a minimum of 2 kids people will likely think you're weird. Back in the day, it was seen as weird or a failure if you live with your parents and extended family, because why tf aren't you more successful and independent. While being child free is being seen as less weird now, there is a good chunk of people who will think that you're engaging in an alternative life style that they have no clue how to engage with if you decide not to have children. Hell, even if you decide to have a kid and just stop at one, people will think you're selfish because you're making the kid lonely because they don't have a sibling and/or they will think your kid is weird because there are a lot of unfortunate stereotypes around only children (girl, I've heard some crazy assumptions about me when people find out I'm an only). And there is this notion that if you don't have kids, you're basically going to die alone and unfulfilled because having kids is seen as the default ticket to community and fulfilling one's potential. And don't get me wrong, I do see family as an important component of community and I do see parenthood as something that requires a lot of time and effort and can come with a good pay off. But it's not for everyone and it doesn't gurantee anything. You kids can die or they can stop talking to you. They might not grow to be particularly close. There is a lot that can happen. Also, a lot of parents lose the light behind their eyes after having a kid. And I think a lot of it is the way that raising a kid can overwhelm you and how it can trap you in various life situations. I know my coworkers can just up and leave their jobs for example because they have families to take care of and a mortgage to pay. And because their jobs and childcare takes up like 90% of their waking lives, not only do they not have the energy to critically engage with a lot of things in life like hobbies, other relationships etc. but in a way, it's like they become like this zombie because work and childcare monopolized their whole lives and whole identities. I'm not saying this is all parents because I also know parents who are able to pour into their own cup and explore other interests along side with being a parent. But it's hard and not a lot of people are able to get to that point with no fault of their own. That monopolization of time, energy, and even identity along with any other stessors that might be going on in their lives, can cause people to feel like 5, 10, or even 20 years have passed by without them knowing. It's because they're overwhelmed and in survival mode for so long that they aren't even able to be concious and present as life is passing them by. Now going back to the video. At first glance, I thought this video was just going to talk about overconsumption and consumer culture. And it did talk about that but it also talked about other things as well. One particular concept that I found interesting was the topic of depressive hedonia. The video talks about this in the concept of people seeing shopping as a "hobby" because it is pleasurable thing to do but it doesn't really compel you to be mindful, grow certain skills, or engage with the people around you in the same way that other hobbies do. A lot of people use shopping as an escape from their difficult lives and often times, our quality of our work lives directly correlate to the quality of our personal lives in terms of work life balance. The video isn't black and white in the way that shopping can be part of a hobby but not the hobby itself. You can buy things in service of a hobby. You can also buy things out of appreciation for a hobby. For example, a person who is into working out and loves buying workout sets is not the problem nor is a person who is interested in the craftsmanship and the history of certain designers buying a luxury hand bag isn't the problem either. The compulsive shopping to find identity in the fantasies that are being marketed to you, to pass the time after a busy work week with the little time we have, to feel alive, that's the problem. Because there isn't much to do in the suburbs, sometiems I do think to myself after a long day of work that *maybe I should go to Sephora, Homegoods, and Target just to walk around and see what's up.* I don't really buy anything. I just think it's nice to walk around these stores because walking around in a car centric setting just feels depressing and walking on a treadmill feels boring because I want to get outside my apartment. It's like my alternative to living in a walkable area. But when I do walk around, I do find myself thinking about how weird it is that one of my forms of entertainment is just going to a store and shopping (even though I don't really buy anything since I'm pretty good about not making impulse purchases). And I know that there are people who are less mindful of their spending habits than I am who develop a shopping addiction or just a not so great relationship with consummerism with the same thing that I'm doing. What I'm trying to say is that I get on how people fall into the habit of mindlessly consuming especially when they live in a suburban area because it is a way to get some kind of novelty and walkability after a long day. The best way to describe the light going out in people's eyes when they get a corporate job or have kids and are burnt out is the concept of depressive hedonia in relation to the way they engage with pleasure and the world around them. I'll give an example regarding my coworkers and their vacation time. A lot of my coworkers when they go on vacation, they usually opt for a cruise or an all inclusive resort. I get that people's tastes in travel can differ and that not everyone wants to back pack around and stay at sketchy hostels like I do lol. There's nothing wrong with wanting to go to a different geographical location and just unplug from work, your responsibilities at home (i.e. taking care of the kids, cooking, cleaning etc.), and break from your regular routine. At the same time, this form of vacationing, when it's the main form of vacationing you engage in, feels kind of like you're disconnecting from reality and disassociating rather than actively doing something that challenges you, gives you meaning, and leaves you feeling energized rather than lethargic. Not to mention, there is a whole slew of issues regarding the ethics of going on a cruise and staying at an all inclusive because of the way that these industries exploit locals. I wrote about this in a journal entry a while back regarding luxury travel: And I get why people do this. People are exhausted at work while balancing a kid or three and they don't want to worry about the logistics of a trip with planning a get away. I'm not judging my corworkers when they talk about their trips. But I will say that as someone engages with travel as a hobby, this does feel rather empty. I'm also not going to rain on anyone's parade and talk about capitalism, exploitation, colonialism etc. after a much needed vacation. But I do wonder to what extent my coworkers critically engage with this topic as well as how much they critically engage with other areas of their lives. I'm not going to assume that the answer is that they don't critically engage at all because they're grown and they have the capability to do so but I do think that while they have the capability, they don't always have the desire to utilize that ciritical thinking. And it's not to imply that they're lazy, unconcious, or lacking in depth because that's who they are at their core, but it is to question the material conditions that can deter people from critically engaging with the world, whether it be about their life decisions, what's happening in the news and politics, or engage in meaningful hobbies rather than mindless scrolling on TikTok shop. I'm not exempt from this. I too can have the thinking pattern of a vegtable after scrolling on social media too much, I could probably use more meaningful hobbies in my life, and I could engage in life more by actively doing things to enact change rather than passively consuming leftist media and video essays. I'm not coming at this from a place of cyncism where I'm judging people as checked out sheeple because I find myself resonating with the sheeple tendencies as well rather I'm coming from a place of curiousity. It's also so weird working in corporate because I do find myself learning a lot in my job and while I'm glad that I'm not in a *head empty no thoughts* kind of menial job, I don't find myself fufilled by any of the learning there. It doesn't hit the same as learning things in school, even when it came to subjects I had no interest in. The information I'm learning on the job is not information that really applies to my life outside of work versus the information I would learn in school. While I was learning things in school, I found myself feeling like the world makes more sense and that I'm taking in the world with more depth and understanding. I feel like the four years between graduating from high school versus graduating from college has me feeling like the difference between seeing the world in black and white versus viewing it in HD and in color. Like I'm able to take in so much more and engage with the world around me through what I learned in my classes. That's how I describe the feeling of being educated. And I cannot say that I feel educated despite learning a lot at my job. And I can see how people see this dynamic and either get turned away from learning anything new after getting a job because learning is associated with this sense of meaninglessness and even exhaustion in a capitalist setting that prioritize profit over everything else or they do care about learning but they're too exhausted toengage with things in a meaningful way because they already used up all of their mental and physical energy at work. Whether it's seeing shopping as a hobby, lazing around a beach while a cabana boy brings you a mojito, being checked out global and societal affairs, or not doing things that helps you learn or expand your world view, I think that this is indicative of a collective version of normalized depressive hedonia. And it's not getting better because our material conditions are getting worse. People are thristing for a narrative and meaning to escape this depressive hedonia which sometimes causes people to fall down facist pipelines which then produces more of the conditions that created this in the first place. It's harder to maintain stability when it comes to work. It's harder to manage a household when capitalism bleeds you dry, sets the environment on fire, and causes chaos and existential dread. It's harder to maintain meaningful relationships and activities when your time and energy are being monopolized. It's harder compared to what things were like before in many valid ways which then leads you back to romanticizing the past and potentailly falling into regressive patterns of thought. And it's tragic the way that the people who need to be having these conversations the most, the people who need to actively engage with the world around them to fight for their rights, are the people who are the least likely to because they don't have the priviledge to engage. Even having these conversations and these thoughts are indicative of priviledge of being able to do so. It's kind of crazy on how more aware I am of my own sense of survival after graduating from school and "being out there in the real world" despite having better conditions from when I was growing up. I get why people fall into various addictions to cope. I get why people numb themselves out through compulsory consumption. I get why people lose their identies and their sense to fight as they get older (and it's not just maturation alone). I get why people stagnate in self growth and self education. I get why people feel trapped. I get why people turn into the cubicle fish from Spongebob:

Just created yet another journal since my other journal was getting too long. I've also been wanting a new start and a new space since my last journal was started way back in 2021 when my life was very different from where I'm at right now. Here are my two previous journals for a quick reference/ recap: Psychoanalyzing Myself: 9/1/2021- 12/25/2024 The Joy Journal: 7/19/2020 - 9/7/2021

The Problems In My Life At This Moment I just want to vent about the problems that are currently affecting my life in order to process somethings because I feel like March has been a lot in terms of the mental load I've had. I'm going to order this according to what I feel the most pressing as well as what I feel is kind of frivolous. On a scale of 1-10 for pain, 1 is something that is a minor and annoying inconvenience while 10 is like I'm having a constant existential crisis to where I want to rot in bed all day. On a scale of 1-10 for how frivolous something is, 1 is to describe some heavy, serious shit while 10 is like the Kim Kardashian diamond earring meme. 1. I'm going through a bad friendship breakup. (Pain: 7 Frivolous Level: 8) I would say that this was at a 9 or 10 about a month ago but now it has dropped down to a 7 pain wise. I find myself ruminating a lot at night and getting into these negative thought spirals. I've mainly been journalling abou this privately in my notes app on my phone because I don't want to cause drama. I've found myself self isolating from my friends because this situation has caused me to close myself off and think that my presance is draining and negative. The general sense of depression is gone, only appearing at like 11pm at night which we all know, your brain tends to act tf up when you haven't been physically taking care of yourself whether it's because you need to sleep or because you haven't eaten a vegetable in three days. I would say I mainly struggle with social anxiety and self esteem issues at this point. I put the frivolous level at an 8 because I feel kind of silly for dealing with this situation at my grown age. Like I have insecurities that I haven't dealt with because I have resolved back in the past when I was like 17 cropping up again. Also, I feel like a lot of my friendship issues are kind of frivolous in that a lot of the people I know are dealing with much heavier shit than I am such as abusive working conditions, job loss, death, etc. and meanwhile I'm sitting here with my biggest problem being *i wish people would hang out with me more and tell me that they like me UwU* 2. I hate being the main person reaching out to make plans with people (Pain: 5 Frivolous Level: 10) I feel like this issue goes hand in hand with issue #1 but I put it in it's own category because I was dealing with this problem before issue #1 came up. I feel like if issue 2 is Magikarp, then it eventually evolved into issue 1 which is a Gyrados (my pokemon nerds will understand). Issue 2 started out as relatively harmless but kind of annoying and then it evolved into a strong and threatening issue that severely impacts my mental health. Pain wise, I would say before issue 1 came up, this was at like a 2. But since issue one poured gasoline on this, I'm putting the pain at a 5. I'm putting the frivolous level at a 10 because it feels more frivolous than issue 1. 3. My job feels stressful at times and my career prospects feel blurry (Pain: 4 Frivolous Level: 5) I'm putting the pain at a 4 because I would say that my job is exhausting and annoying but not so much so to where I'm working crazy hours and all of the other areas of my life are suffering because of my toxic job. My career prospects feel blurry in the sense that I know where I want to go but the world around me currently feels too unstable for me to go about pursuing things in a sustainable way. And yes, that is existential crisis inducing but also, I have a sense of direction, I have a stable job, and I'm not under the hot water of being unemployed with no money or prospects. As a result, I'm putting this at a frivolous level of 5 because this is something that is important and it's understandable that I feel this way considering the outside conditions but at the same time, I'm in a priviledged place to actually think about higher values like fulfillment and I'm also not in deep shit right now. Nevertheless, I do find myself having the occasional Luigi moment where I'm thinking how nothing is enough for these parasites and they have it coming. 4. Existential political dread for the immediate future (Pain: 4 Frivolous Level: 3) I'm putting the frivolous level at 3 because there's some scary stuff happening in this country regarding the erosion of democracy, the rise of oligarchy, the crashing of the markets, the destruction of our rights, and the implementation of a surveillance state. The thing that's freaking me out the most I would say is ICE basically doing whatever the fuck they want and how apparently, if you're travelling internationally, your phones can be searched and if they find anything against Trump, you're fucked. The only reason the frivolous level isn't lower is because I'm not directly being impacted right at this time. I'm putting the pain at 4 because I definitely feel it but I feel like I'm coping well at this point. Again, this comes from a place of privilege because I'm not directly being impacted right now. And don't get me wrong, I definitely still care about what's happening to other people and communities and I'm not dissassociating by any means (if anything, I've been on information consumption mode). At the same time, I am grounding myself in what is directly in front of me right at this moment and staying present so I don't overwhelm myself with all of the world's problems. I'm also just telling myself that this is not going to forever but I do need to brace myself for the storm up ahead and that I'm going to be able to get through this because I'm fortunate enough to have the resources to help myself and the people immediately around me. 5. Recovering from surgery (Pain: 2 Frivolous Level: 10) Now that I'm past the 1 month mark, the pain of the procedure is minimal. Most of it has to do with how weird the swelling feels and how I don't like wearing the compression garments. So that's why the pain is at a 2. I would say earlier back when I got the surgery done, the pain was at a 5 where it was manageable physically mentally but it was creating a mental load on me because I had to return to work, I was still sitting with the *what have I done* feeling, and it was hard to do some basic tasks (not because I was physically restricted mobility wise but because I lacked the energy due to still recovering). Frivolous level is a 10 because this is something that was totally optional and something I chose for myself rather than something that is coming from a health concern. I'm not saying that just because it's frivolous that it means that my decision was bad or unnecessary but it is to say that this does fall into the champagne problems *I lost my diamond earring in the sea* vibe.

Surgery Update 3/27- 1 Month After Surgery Surgery reflections 3/23 It’s been 3 weeks and some change since the surgery. I’m approaching 1 month post op. The swelling is getting better and as a result, the binder is kind of comfortable now due to it fitting looser, but also I have transitioned into a pair of Spanx so they would provide more compression due to how tight they are. The Spanx are still pretty uncomfortable, mainly in the way that they roll down since I’m still swollen. And when they roll down, they dig into my skin. I’m also doing much better mobility wise as well as in my mental health at work. I got through most of the week without feeling resentful and I didn’t take time off. I was a bit overwhelmed this week but it wasn’t too bad. Over all, the week of the 17th to the 21st was me feeling 85% myself. I’m kind of looking forward to the week ahead to see myself get back to normal. My body image has been weird. I know there is a big difference from the surgery and they took a lot out but I still feel like about the same size because of the swelling. My body also feels distorted since I’m not used to my new proportions. I’m also feeling impatient with the swelling because I want to see my final results. I’m counting down to the end of May because I was told that at the 3 month mark, most, if not all, the swelling will disappear by then. I’m also counting down to when I can stop using the belly button ointment and the belly button plug. It’s coming up in a few days and I’m excited because putting on the ointment and plug felt weird. I’m also looking forward to the day I can stop wearing the Spanx and compression garments which is on 4/10. While I’m doing much better and I can see progress on a day to day basis, I do feel like this whole thing has taken a toll on me. I know I’m past the hard part with the pain and the drains and it should be smooth sailing from here but I’m feeling impatient. I just want to get to a point where I feel like a normal person again. I hate swelling. I hate not being able to sleep on my stomach. I hate the Spanx. And I hate just feeling off in my own body for an extended period of time. Surgery Reflections 1- Month Post Op 3/27 I was going to write in this journal only for my thoughts at the 1-month mark. But a few days ago I REALLY wanted to write and get my thoughts out. And I’m glad I did because despite 3/23 being a few days ago, I feel like there has been a vibe shift and I’m glad that I’m going to be able to capture that as I write this entry. The Spanx are not super uncomfortable at this point since the swelling went down more and they no longer roll down and dig at my skin. I feel like that was one of the big things that was irritating me a few days ago. I remember when I first put them on dreading how I’ll have to wear this for another 3 ish weeks. Not only am I one week down, but I think now that it’s more comfortable, the next 2 weeks don’t seem nearly as intimidating. I would say that on an annoyance scale from 1-10, 10 being unbearably annoying, the Spanx at like 3/23 was at an 8 and now it’s like at a 4. I would say it’s annoying because it’s hard to take off when I need to go to the bathroom and because it takes away from the feeling of normalcy. I'm also done with the belly button ointment today. I don't have much to add on that other than that I'm glad that's done and over with because the ointment felt weird. I was counting down to this day and I'm glad that this day has finally come. I'm also counting down to stop wearing the compression garments and I already know that this will feel even better than stopping the oinment. The swelling has gone down by a good amount to where I feel like now I’m seeing the results of the surgery. I mentioned before that my body image felt weird because the swelling made me feel like I was the same size as before. That feeling has reduced by a lot. I think also feeling like I’m seeing results has helped in the *what have I done* emotion that I have been experiencing in the last month. I feel like that feeling has reduced by a solid 60% since the time I first felt it back at the 1 week mark. I feel pretty optimistic going forward about what I have done and the final results at the 3-month mark. This has been a very much *trust the process* kind of situation. But I will say, my body image still feels kind of distorted since I’m not used to having the proportions I have now. I can kind of empathize with people when they fall into this addiction to “fixing” things through plastic surgery. Like after you get over the first hump of the recovery process (which can be pretty difficult to where I wouldn’t say that surgery is the “easy way out”) and granted you don’t have any complications, you get this feeling of *you know what, that wasn’t too bad* and that can lead to thinking *what else can I do?* That, combined with how it takes some time for you to get used to your new proportions, I can see how if you didn’t do this surgery with a sound mind how this can be a slippery slope. And that’s without you being a celebrity who ends up spending ungodly amounts of time fixated on what you look like on screen, pressures from the industry (your workplace) saying if you get things done you’ll increase your earning potential and get more opportunities, and being in an environment surrounded by people who normalize such procedures. Let’s just say, I’m pretty happy that I was like 90% comfortable with my size and body with the exception of my stomach before the procedure and that I’m a normal person with a normal-person job where my looks aren’t front and center in terms of the opportunities that I can get myself. My mobility feels pretty good to the point where I can see myself doing some light workouts. However, my energy levels don’t feel as great because of the mental toll this has taken on me causing me to feel more exhausted than normal. I also feel like for the first 2-weeks after the surgery, I did the laundry, a ton of meal prep, and had people helping me with chores there and there, that this kind of got me out of the habit of doing things for myself so now I feel like I’m exerting extra energy when doing something like cooking. I also haven’t washed any dishes since the surgery and I have been using the dishwasher the entire time which isn’t typical for me. I have a lot of things I’m looking forward to. In a few days I’ll have my 1- month post op doctor’s visit. In 2 weeks, I can stop wearing my compression garments. I don’t know when but one of these weeks, I’ll be able to return to sleeping on my stomach. I’m excited to see my full results considering what I’m seeing now. I’m excited to get back into working out with full force later. I’m excited to try on some of my older clothes as well as get some new things as well. I’m excited to see how this change is going to impact other areas of my life since in the past, my stomach did take up a great deal of mental space. But most importantly, I can’t wait to feel like a normal person once the swelling disappears completely.

I appreciate it @RendHeaven. I feel pretty good about this decision since I put a lot of thought to it and I have prepared accordingly. I feel like that has shined through in how easy the recovery has been so far physically, emotionally, and logistically. I would say I'm guarded about plastic surgery but not so much so to where I have demonized in the past and think it's inherently bad. I feel like, even as someone who has under gone such a procedure, that I have a healthy degree of skepticism towards an elective and invasive procedure. I think when it comes to engaging with beauty standards and the industries that profit off of said standards, for most women it's opening a can of worms because of all of the personal and societal baggage it carries. And for a lot of people, things can get out of hand whether it's in the form of a messed up relationship with food, being obsessive about anti-aging, botched surgeries, etc. And that's the overt stuff. It can also affect the general way you move through the world, the types of relationships you entertain, and even putting off various milestones or life experiences because you don't look your best. I feel like this video is pretty good at summing things up if you're looking for another perspective in addition to being a monkey-brained male . At the same time, our looks, whether it's through fashion, makeup, getting your hair done, or even plastic surgery, is a form of self expression. It's weird that some men think that women only put in effort towards their looks for male attention when that's not the case most of the time. It's also a form of self care for some people in order to relax. It's also a hobby or interest for people who take this to an art form. I also think about Leo's life purpose course. One of the exercises involves picking 10 values we resonate with and building our life off of that and having that be the guiding light. One of the items on the conscious values list was beauty which I thought was interesting. While it's not one of the 10 values I have selected for myself, it is something that I have thought of. And I think beauty can be a conscious value in the way that it can force you to slow and and appreciate consciousness itself. It's going out in nature and allowing yourself to be at awe when you climb to the peak of a mountain. It's focussing deeply on a craft that you love. It's admiring and romanticizing little things in your life even it's as mundane as making yourself a meal. And that is just to name a few. I feel like Rajiv Surendra's content really embodies valueing beauty in a conscious form: I 100% agree. I can't say that this decision came from a lot of higher ideals like creativity, authenticity, self expression etc. I did make this decision to deal with a insecurity I have had for years. I don't think that making decisions due to negative emotions or experiences are inherently bad but it is something to proceed with caution. I think a lot of major life decisions don't have a right or wrong in the decision itself but rather a scale of how much conscious thought we have put into it. It's not about the decision or outcome, it's about the processes and reasonings that led us to that conclusion. Now you're just stroking my ego lmao

I would describe it as chaotic and disorienting. There is a lot happening and also not a lot. Like there are some pretty alarming things getting passed and then a couple days later the administration back tracks. @DocWatts did a good job summarizing the really alarming parts of what's going on. Though I'm not personally being affected, I have friends who were starting their careers who now don't have a job or are struggling to pay for their education due to the financial aid / grant freezes. My desired career path apart from my current corporate job (which I don't really like but I'm holding on to for dear life) seems ambigous. I'm also just dealing with a degree of existential dread as the rich get richer, as we slowly lose our rights, as the measles are back like it's 1945 again, and there are proposals to dismantle the Department of Education while I'm expected to just carry on like normal at work.

I love this country. I don't love this current governement but I love the people in it. I love my friends and my family. I'm not going to abandon ship over some temporary political upheaval given that I'm not in a dire situation. I also feel like this video is an interesting perspective to add to this conversation:

Surgery Update 3/15 At Day 8, basically at the 1 week mark after the operation, I was able to get one of the tubes/ drains removed. I was really nervous given the stories I saw on the internet but it didn't hurt at all. Hell, I barely even felt anything. That felt good but I was disappointed that both didn't come out. I was a little anxious a couple days prior of whether or not by drains will be removed given the amount of fluid it was still collecting. At the beginning of the week, I told a friend I will be able to go to her birthday because I was confident that both drains will be removed by then. But unfortunately, only one was removed. Nevertheless, I was still able to make it to the party because I found a way to hide the drain and the tubes coming out of my body. I will say, it's significantly easier to hide one rather than two. But I will say, the fact that I didn't have to wear the foam along with the binder was a big step in terms of my comfort levels increasing. I had a good time at the party and no one really noticed. I felt like I was walking around a little stiff due to the binder but no one said anything. I prepared for potential questions and I figured if anyone asked about the stiffness I would just write it off as me sleeping in a weird position and getting back pain as a result. Work felt like hell this week, not because it was busy or because I'm in any pain or anything but because I'm uncomfortable and I don't really want to work. It's a mental thing more than anything. The week prior I worked from Tuesday to Friday with Thursday being a half day since I had to go to the doctor. This week, I worked from Monday to Friday but took a half day on Friday. By Friday I just felt fed up and I wanted a break. I just hate having to feel like I have to rush back into work after being out due to health reasons and it was causing resentment at my job. I also have other things going on mentally regarding my social life but that's something I'm going to journal about either (not sure if I'm going to post it here or not). And while I'm not in pain, I don't feel comfortable or like myself. So the resentment, combined with other mental health stuff, and my body feeling off all caused me to feel like the week was just dragging on. I gave it my best shot and I'm sure this next week will be better. Now that it is Saturday and I have had some time to myself, I do feel much better. On the brightside, I got the second drain removed on Thursday at the 2 week mark from the surgery. This time it was painful, not the drain removing part but the bandage removal process (it basically felt like getting your pubes waxed and basically it reminded me on why I would never do such a thing). I also got some stiches removed from my belly button. I would say afterwards, showering, getting dressed, and going to the bathroom has been feeling significantly less annoying, not to mention I'm glad that I don't have to pour out any gross liquid to clean the drains once or twice a day. I'm able to do everything I need to do to function on a day to day basis by myself. I still feel a bit stiff on my back which limits my mobility when it comes to bending over to pick things up or when it comes to getting up after laying down but it's been getting a whole lot better. The doctor also said I'm healing well and that I'll be able to do some workouts at the 3 week mark (so by Thursday 3/20) though it's limitted to walking, cardio, and light upper body weights. By the 6 week mark I'll be able to do everything (so around 4/10). I also have to use this belly button ointment and keep that bandaged up for another 2 weeks from now since that is still healing. I also have another appointment around that time since by then I will be one month post op. My only complaint right now is the swelling I'm experiencing around my stomach. It's not painful, just annoying. My stomach feels weird and I feel off. The swelling is going to reduce significantly over the next month and it's going to be mostly gone by the 3 month mark (so the end of May). I know the swelling isn't going to get worse unless I work out like crazy or eat a ton of salt in one sitting but it's mentally affecting me in a weird way. I know the doctor took out 3 lbs of loose skin and 2lbs of fat but because of the swelling, I feel like I'm more or less the same size. But it's weird because even though I'm the same size, I can't grab the fat and skin I would be able to before. My stomach is just kind of hard / squishy. I feel like since I first got the surgery from like day 2 and onwards, there is a part of my brain that's just like *what have I done?!?!* I mean, this is a pretty permanent decision and it's normal to feel that hit you. And this isn't something that I had to do out of medical necessity, it's all on me. I know that the swelling is normal and if anything, compared to the swelling horrar stories I've seen, I am faring pretty well. But because I'm not seeing the results right away and because my body feels like it has gone through so much, it's like I'm questioning if this was the right move for me. I know what I'm experiencing is normal and healing process has been very smooth but it's still a lot to come to terms with and I don't have the reassurance of seeing the results right away to convice myself that this was the right choice for me. I'm just trying to trust the process and be patient despite my body feeling weird. The hard part of the recovery, the first 2 weeks, is over. It's only going to get easier from here and the swelling is only going to go down.

Making Sense of Our Chaotic 2025 Political Landscape with Spiral Dynamics The second Trump presidency has been wild so far and in addition to that, we're still dealing with the impacts of first Trump presidency from 2016 to 2020 and the impact that and COVID has had in the cultural zeitgeist. We're incredibly polarized but the one thing we can all agree on is that we need radical change in our systems. This rift started before 2016 since there was this divide between the Republicans who were more Blue/Orange and the Democrats who were more Orange/Green. The clash and the exploitation of that division due to worsening material conditions that started in the 2008 recession gave way to the polarization in the 2016 election. However, since 2016, things just got weirder with absurd, iconoclastic presiden combined with a once in a century pandemic. The lockdowns happened 5 years ago to the day of me writing this post on 3/13 (I finished writing and posted it on a different day lol) and I don't think we as a collective really had a chance to process what the fuck happened during the first Trump presidency much less how our psyches were altered with a year or two of social isolation. We're amidst a very messy ego backlash where conservative ideology sometimes borrows the aesthetics and language of progressivism to lure people who want change in and radicalize them. It's very sneaky and I want to pin that down more in this post by looking into various subcultures. The Crunchy to Alt-Right Pipeline I've seen a couple of really good videos about this phenomenon and though none of them talk about Spiral Dynamics, I want to analyze the points using that lens to make sense of it more. There are many reasons why the crunchy/hippie movement is seeing more of a conservative rebrand thought it has been thought of as progressive and left leaning for decades. I think somethings both stage Blue and Green have in common are wanting to have a sense of community (Both collectivistic stages), insitutional distrust due to reacting against Orange (Blue is critiquing from below while Green is critiquing from above), a desire to return to something more natural (Blue does it to further reinforce a traditional rural way of life from the 1800s while Green wants more ecological solutions), and a desire for a slower pace of life (both are reacting against Orange capitalism and hustle culture where Blue wants to go back to pre-industrial life while Green wants socialism). I think that these points of overlap is why a lot of people who are both Blue and people who are Green find themselves gravitating towards this subculture. I also think that there are some people who were more Green leaning but because they didn't have the proper integration of Orange in the form of a decent science education, they got looped into weird shit like drinking raw milk, anti vax, and sketchy unregulated natural remedies. Don't get me wrong, I don't think people are wrong to mistrust our health care industry but again, you can critique it from above or below. And since this country doesn't have the best funding for education and even the best funding for researching things like women's health concerns, people are backsliding to conspiracy theories rather than having constructive opinions institutional implications. There is also a fear element to this as well since there are a lot of mothers who tend to lean more crunchy. It comes from this desire to want what's best for their kids but when you're in such a state of fear (and understandably so given the chaos around us), it's easier to be seduced by conservative and regressive attitudes since they are more self protective. The Incoherent Sexual Politics of the Right: The Stage Blue to Orange Rebrand This is a longer video but I feel like it can be more easily summed up by Spiral Dynamics (though I still recommend watching this whole thing because there is a lot of good information and analysis here). The video talks about how right-wing conservative values have shifted from this white picket fence image of a white nuclear family with a dowdy house wife who stays at home with the kids and the traditional values driven father figure to this Hugh Hefner esque image with surrounded by busty blond haired, blue eyed women, multiple divorces, and kids with 5 different moms. In other words, there is this shift from this principled stage Blue form of patriarchy that stresses a sense of duty and sexual repression to this unhealthy stage Orange form of patriarchy where people are more sexually free and crude, but nevertheless racist, sexist, and homophobic due to the absence and softening that stage Green brings. Nevertheless, both stage Blue and Orange, though riddled with constant contradictions amongst each other and within themselves, still link up in patriarchial domination. Sure, trad wives are back and you have the trad Caths not to far behind, but so much of it has to do with the image of Blue with the ideology and the fetishization that Orange brings. A Reaction Against 3rd Wave Feminism and Girl Boss Feminism: Sprinkle Sprinkle vs 4th Wave Feminism I see this tension much more in female dominated spaces. Before I start talking about the 2020 reaction, I think it's important to discuss the waves of feminism and girl boss feminism. The first wave of feminism is defined by the suffragette movement prior to the 1920s (roughly 1848 to 1920) that eventually led to White women getting the right to vote. Second wave feminism focused on abortion rights, access to the pill and sexual liberation, and economic rights for women such as dealing with work place descrimination due to gender and preganancy status as well as being able to open your own bank account without your father's or husband's permission. This was around the 1960s to the 1980s. Third wave feminism took off in the 1990s when people started looking at intersectionality more since first and second wave feminism was very straight, White woman centered. It was a reaction against and critique of second wave feminism that didn't take into consideration of LGBTQ rights or that even though we commonly say that women got the right to vote in the 1920s, really it was only White women whereas WOC didn't suffrage until after the Civil Rights movement. I would say third wave feminism had it's run from the 1990s to the end of the 2010s. Now, we're in the inklings of some thing different, a fourth wave of feminism. But since the wave hasn't been fully defined yet due to it's infancy, things are messy. In addition to social justice warriors and conversations around intersectionality circa 2012 Buzzfeed, you had a lot of people having shallow takes fueled by identity politics which led to the phenomenon commonly referred to as Girl Boss Feminism. It's the kind of feminism that advocates for more female CEOs, diversity in representation, women who have it all etc. And while on the surface this looks empowering, especially through the lens of second wave feminism which advocated for the economic and social rights of women, and through the lens of third wave feminism that emphazied the need for intersectionality, it didn't address the elephant in the room. The elephant is capitalism. Though women in the past wanted to have it all, the education, the career, the family, and balance all of that effortlessly, the women of today are realizing that having it all means doing it all, which is exhausting and comes with its own fair share of inequality. Sure, it's great that women have more equality in the workforce, but they don't have equality in households becuase we're expected to still take on the bulk of the chores and child rearing because men think it's girly to do basic adult things like cooking and cleaning or they are incompetent since they were never taught them these things. And while it's great that we have female CEOs, often times they are just as exploitative towards their workers and towards extracting wealth like their male counterparts. Not only that, but third wave feminism prides itself on intersectionality, but where is that intersectionality when it comes to women in the global south? Because having your "This is what a feminist looks like" T-shirt from Shein is more important than the lives of heavily exploited female garment workers in Bangladesh in the world of girl boss feminism because it is feminism that is interwoven with global capitalism. The 2020s brought the hypocrisy of the previous forms of feminism to light amidst the pandemic. It created a more stark contrast of economic inequality and people started craving a slower pace of life after their lives were forced to a halt by the lock downs. There were two reactions, Sprinkle Sprinkle feminism and Fourth Wave feminism. Sprinkle Sprinkle feminism is this form of feminism that wants to embrace femininity and a soft life, often by being provided for monetarily by a man. The girls are tired of girl bossing and everything that comes with it and they want to be spoiled. But this is largely reactionary because again, it doesn't address the issues with women in the global south, it doesn't address classism (hell it doubles down on it), and it regresses back to traditional gender norms. As a result, Sprinkle Sprinkle feminism is just the other side of coin the stage Orange feminism that brought out girl boss feminism. Much like the poor integration of stage Orange that we saw in the Crunchy movement that caused some stage Green leaning individuals to regress back due to these stressful times, I feel like you see the same poor integration of stage Orange for a lot of Gen Z women who buy into the Sprinkle Sprinkle feminism. Gen Z was largely raised by late boomers and Gen X, a generation of women who wanted to have it all and were overworked as a result. However, unless you're a zoomer who was raised by stay at home mom with little financial independence (much like myself), the reality of what life was like prior to second wave feminism is largely conceptual rather than a reality that Gen Z saw growing up. It's easy to blame feminism for the reason why you have to go to work long hours and study your ass off at school (rather than blaming capitalism and exploitative practices that cause us to be in this rat race), when you don't know a world where feminism didn't give you those rights. Since fourth wave feminism is in it's infancy, I have seen some people see this Sprinkle Sprinkle feminism as what people think fourth wave feminism is because it's reacting against third wave feminism in the same way the third wave came from reacting against the second wave, and how the second wave came up after reacting agains the first. However, because it is regressive and doesn't go into Green more, I don't want to say that this is fourth wave feminism. You can call out capitalism and the drawbacks of third wave feminism without getting into gold digger, trad wife, territory. Sprinkle Sprinkle often takes the ideology of Blue and sells it with a Green veneer of empowerment. To go further into Green, we need to integrate the lessons of second wave feminism from the importance of women in the work force, us having abortion rights, and the ability to have bank accounts, and the lessons of third wave feminism regarding the importance of intersectionality, and extend those lessons to class solidarity, socialism, and advocating for the labor rights of women in the global south. Wellness Girlies, Therapy Speak, and the new image of MAGA young women and pop culture Like I mentioned in an earlier section regarding the sexual incoherence of the right, the right is moving away from the dowdy stage blue housewife into basically Alix Earle. This video explains the Orange elements of pop culture today and how it promotes conservative values using progressive language. The old money trend started with people wanting to have more timeless stage Green pieces as opposed to the constant Orange fast fashion. But of course, the aesthetic also came with the baggage of Orange billionaire worship and undertones of Blue white supremacy. The Clean Girl/ That Girl / Wellness Girly aesthetic has the veneer of Green holistic wellness, therapy, and emotional awareness but it also comes with Orange hyperindividualism, hustle culture (though in the form of a 16 step skincare routine), along with the Blue puritan attitudes of modesty and effortless (white) beauty. Again, the right, while previously was split between Blue and Orange, is shifting further Orange. Therapy and exploring your feelings, though it is stage Green, has been copted by people who aren't aware of the nuances due to a lack of professional experiences and cilnical terms are being weaponized to promote hyper individualism. I wrote about this pretty extensively in another post: So basically, to bring Spiral Dynamics into this, because the average layperson doesn't have the best integration of stage Orange through the academics and research that you're required to go through in order to be a liscensed therapist, they are parroting stage Green but acting out a stage Orange shadow of sorts by misapplying Green. Stage Blue Facism vs Stage Orange Facism I can't for the life of me find the video that Vaush made a few weeks ago that basicaly constrasts the stage Blue fascism of Nazi Germany and Japanese Imperialism to the stage Orange facism we're seeing with MAGA without outright mentioning Sprial Dynamics. This is the closest video I found to those points. He has been making so many videos lately that the video I'm looking for is just lost in a sea of content. But basically, in a lot of his streams, Vaush explains how he doesn't think that Americans have "the sauce" to pull of what Nazi Germany did because we're too hyper individualistic, we aren't patriotic enough, and we have way too much distrust in institutions. We're also not principled enough, obedient enough, or loyal enough to the goverment to where even the most loyal MAGA supporter would probably throw a fit if the cops searched them (while in Blue Nazi Germany, the Nazis would probably be inconvenienced but satisfied with such search and seizure). In other words, American culture has too much of an Orange foundation to have the same outcomes of Nazi Germany. Vaush also talks about how the facists of the 1930s truly and ideologically believed in tradition, religion, fascism etc. and acted more from a place of sincerity and duty. However, the facist leaders of today are more influenced by the grift while the followers are LARPing traditional values rather than authentically embodying them. The grift and profit motive are much more stage Orange coded as opposed to the blind loyalty and sincerity of Blue. He also talks about how this round of facism has this veneer of liberalism in the form of meritocracy, and advocating for free speech (though all of it is completely insincere). And though he attributes this to the grift (and I'm not denying that), I also think it has to do with the difference of stage Blue facism and stage Orange fascism. A Silver Lining? I know with the mess that's happening with the government as Elon Musk is gutting all of our institutions, the measles are back as if it's 1940, and the plummetting stock market due to the trade war it's hard to be hopeful for the future much less think that we are progressing up the spiral. I have been struggling with this too. But ego backlashes help us integrate lessons we haven't fully absorbed. And on top of that, while things are incredibly chaotic right now and the right wing is still very regressive, I think there is hope in that the right wing is moving from Blue/Orange to more solidly Orange. And the left is integrating the Orange is either forgot overtime or never integrated fully, and it's also becoming more Green. At least that can be said with the constituency where if you go to most left leaning circles, conversations around capitalism are wide spread. That wasn't a thing back in 2016. We can't say about the politicians yet since they are very bought out by lobbyists and other stage Orange interests. The move from Blue to Orange in the 1930s and 40s came with World War II and the violence of the decolonization process and even dipped into Red at times. Moving into Green isn't going to pretty and we will regress at times. And I hate to sound like a broken record but while I don't have faith in the near future, I do have faith in the grand arc of history and the long term future. This isn't going to last forever. It will get better, but before then, it will get a lot worse. For now, I might not have a lot of positive feelings around my surroundings, but I do have curiousity. And I think that will have to suffice for now.

I'm not Muslim but I fasted for Ramadan last year. I was facinated by the tradition for a while and I wanted to try it out. I decided that it was going to be a month of me seeing what would happen and also prioritize my personal and spiritual health. I journaled about my experience for each day from page 13 to 14 in this journal below: I'm not going to fast this year despite having a good experience due to some health things that have come up. I'm planning on doing this next year though.

Conscious Plastic Surgery I got a tummy tuck procedure done a few days ago on 2/27. I have had an insecurity around my stomach for more than a decade and nothing helped on dealing with it ranging from having a healthy diet/ exercise routine, body positivity, body neutrality, getting therapy etc. This surgery was a last resort and I did a lot of work to prepare for it to ensure that I'm doing this in a conscious way. And that's what I want to write about today. Emotionally Preparing I had this idea to go forth with this surgery since like 2021, so about 4 years ago. I knew that I was not in the best emotional state so while I did take this option into account, it wasn't something that I was going to take seriously until some pre-requisites were fufilled. Those included the following: I have a good relationship with food. I have a good realtionship with exercise. I worked with professionals to get this stuff on track. I have graduated from college (my particular college was a weird environment for me in terms of body dysmorphia) I have lived alone for at least 6 months (my home life with my family was a bad environment for me with the way that my family nit picked my looks). I need to be in a neutral environment to get a better sense of where I'm at with my relationship with food, exercise and my body so I can make the necessary changes and gage where I'm at outside of home and college. I am otherwise happy with my body with the exception of my stomach (because I'm not about to be one of those people with the Hollywood problem of feeling like I need to constantly fix things) Basically, if after fulfilling the above, I still wanted to get the surgery, then I will consider the surgery. If I did decide to get surgery, I can only get this one thing done and it needs to be done in the safest possible way. So that meant that I wasn't going to deal with fat transfers or implants because putting foreign things in your body can be a huge risk. It also meant doing everything I can to shorten the recovery time and to ensure that I'm not going to be under unnecessary pain. I was originally looking into liposuction since it was less invasive but after the doctor looked at me, they realized that in order to get the results I wanted, I would need to get the tummy tuck. But since I didn't have kids, I could skip the muscle tightening process as it was uncessary in my situation and would be excruciatingly painful. Mentally Preparing I needed to know the recovery process of such a surgery and mentally brace for what that will look like. There is a lot that can go into it for this proceedure including being in pain for the first two weeks, having mobility issues, having tubes come out of you to drain fluids, being aware of various health risks etc. This also means looking into various testimonials from a range of experiences. I'm not going to go too much into detail but if you're interested in it, you can always search it up. I needed to talk to at least 5 different surgeons to see what will be a good fit and pricing for me. There are a lot of weird and exploitative people out there in the plastic surgery sphere and you really need to vet various doctors. There were a good handful of doctors I encountered where it felt like they were prioritizing sales, aesthetics, and a trendy, Instagram friendly, YAAASSS QUEEEN GIRL BOSS aesthetic. That is a red flag because of the way that it distracts you from the fact that this is a very invasive medical proceedure. There are also people who do procedures at a much cheaper or much expensive price range. Proceedures that are too cheap are indicative of a doctor not having as much expertise or the clinic cutting corners in some way. Proceedures that are too expensive are signs of a money grab. Either way, it's sketchy. I ended up finding a doctor who is very professional in the way that he deals with things like this. My meeting with him as well as the way the clinic felt, it was like having a regular doctor's appointment. Which is good because, again, it's a medical proceedure that that should be at the fore front of the discussions. This doctor is also pretty renowned for his services and has 100s of patients he as worked on and has a gallery of before and afters. Nevetheless, the proceedure was reasonably priced according to averages. The average cost of a tummy tuck is between $6,000 and $8,174. My surgery cost about $10,000. It is more expensive than the average but it isn't excessively so. I've had doctors also give me quotes of $16,000 and $20,000 before as well. And I don't mind spending an extra $2000 for a doctor who is very experienced, and has a good track record. I needed to figure out how to have certain conversations with my loved ones and how recovery is going to look like for me. This is not like a little proceedure and it's important to keep people in the know in case things go wrong (even though the likelyhood is low). I also have a personal rule for myselt that I'm not going to make any permanent life decisions until after 25 when my frontal lobe is developed. So I waited longer in order to be sure I was thinking through things well and that I'm making this decision with a sound mind. I feel like I also had to mentally prepare for my fear about having surgery and going under anesthesia. I wrote about it briefly in my last post. Financially Preparing The proceedure costs about $10,000. I told myself that I needed to have the following things in a row before scheduling this proceedure: I need to have 6 months of an emergency fund saved up independent of the $10,000 surgery cost. I need to be contributing 15-20% of my salary towards my 401k annually. I need to be maxing out my Roth IRA every year. I need to have travel money saved up. I need to get a promotion at work that will give me about a 10% bump in my salary from the time I got hired so I won't feel a big weight of this expense. Basically, I wasn't going to go broke over a BBL (I didn't get a BBL but I thought it would be more catchy and y'all get the point lol). I need to have a good amount of financial health by making sure my necessities are covered and I am on track for various long term financial goals. I paid $6,000 up front and the remaining $4,000 is going to be paid over the next few months interest free. I'm also not dipping into my savings nor am I going to be operating on a pay check to pay check basis while I'm paying off the $4,000. Physically Preparing I don't have any major health concerns nor am I on any medications other than birth control. I have PCOS while I have been managing well with the help of birth control for a few years. I also don't smoke or drink (and I don't have a history of doing so). This is important for any surgery especially if you're going with general anesthesia since there can be a lot of complications if you have pre-existing conditions or a history of using substances. I spent some time weight lifting and I focused on my arms and legs. This was really helpful during the recovery process since it was difficult to do anything that engaged my core from trying to lay down, sit up, get up etc. but because I have good form while working out my arms and legs, it was easier for me to get around since I knew how to engage those muscles to help me move around instead of relying on my core. I'm so grateful that I have enough strength in my body to make this process of recovery more seamless. I wouldn't say that I did a lot of cardio but i will say that the little that I did do and the the little I did to build up some degree of endurance helped me in the recovery process. I didn't know this but apparently anesthesia can mess with your lung capcity in the short term and leave you feeling out of breath when doing basic things and in the worst case scenario, if you aren't breathing right, you can get dizzy and faint. I didn't encounter the dizziness and fainting but I did encounter a little bit of shortness of breath. And I was so thankful that I had some foundation of building up lung capcity to be able to deal with this surgery in an effective way. Socially Preparing I'm not going to sit here and lie to myself and pretend that this was an empowering decision. Plastic surgery for purely cosmetic reasons wouldn't be a thing if we didn't live in a system of rigid beauty standards. And while my decision is something that makes me happy, I'm not going to pretend that it is empowering because my choices don't exist in a vacuum. I also want to mitigate perpetuating unrealistic beauty standards despite the path I have taken. If I have a close friend constantly hyping me up or they want to know what I did to look the way I look, I'm going to be honest with them and have an in depth conversation about this matter. I'm not going to sit here and lie about how I started drinking a gallon of water or how I'm going to the gym more because that perpetuates this notion that the results I got from surgery is something that can be achieved naturally by anyone. At the same time, I'm not going to advertise that I got work done. I don't want to normalize much less encourage plastic surgery and have my circle think that this is something that is okay to do without having a lot of critical thought behind it. I don't want anyone to look at me and think that *oh, soos_mite_ah got it done and she's like a normal person, getting plastic surgery isn't a big deal.* It is something that I want to keep private but also something that I'm not necessarily ashamed of. Similarly, since this is a private matter, I'm not going to discuss it with nosy family members nor am I going to discuss this with coworkers. I'm probably gonna continue wearing things that don't emphasize my waist so people don't notice or ask about it. Logistically Preparing This is just some standard stuff that I was supposed to get taken care of prior to having this surgery. It included clearning my apartment, doing an everything shower, getting my responsibilities taken care of at work, telling my boss that I will be taking time off, saving up my sick days, meal prepping for the next two weeks etc. I meal prepped in a way that I was going to eat high protein and low sodium. ---------------------------------------------------- The operation went well. The only bump I had was that my surgery time was delayed by an hour or so because of some administrative errors. It didn't bother me too much since it gave me some time to process what was going on. There were moments in the process of me picking out the date and making the payment for this procedure that made me feel like it was all happening too fast and got too real so that extra hour was more helpful than anything. I didn't have much pain after the operation. I mainly felt out of it because of the anesthesia. My sleep schedule has also been weird. So on Thursday, I woke up at 5 am since I had to get to the clinic at 6:30 am because my operation was supposed to start at 7:30 and I was told to get there an hour before the scheduled time. Then I was under anesthesia from like 8:30 to 12:30 because the surgery was like 3 hours and I was in recovery for 1 hour. Those 4 hours honestly felt like 1 hour of sleep. Then I came back to my apartment, rested for an hour, and then took a nap. By the time the evening rolled around, I felt awake, alert, and refreshed. Which is good but it also meant that sleeping that night was going to be difficult. I would say on a scale of 1-10 for pain, the first two days were at like a 3-4. It was mainly uncomfortable but slightly painful. It was more annoying than anything. The fact that I didn't sleep well the night after the operation also messed with things. I fell asleep at around mid night and then woke up at 5 am. I was uncomfortable and I couldn't sleep because my sleep schedule was fucked up. As a result, day 2 felt really long and annoying. Also, I couldn't eat solid food for the day of surgery and my appetite has been low since the surgery. So on day 2, as a result of not sleeping, not eating, and constantly being annoying and slightly being in pain, I felt like I was going through hell even though my recovery process has been going smoothly and without the common excruciating pain many people encounter. I was constantly asking myself if I had made the correct decision despite knowing that I thought this through carefully. I still find myself asking this on Day 4 since I don't know what my results look like yet and I'm a little impatient. Currently, I have some tubes coming out of my body to get rid of excess fluid and swelling and I am wearing a binder that compresses my body to where I don't know what my body looks like right now. I also had to walk hunched over for Day 1 and 2 to help the incision heal which was uncomfortable and not fun. Day 3 and now Day 4 has been going well. I'm really thankful for the stength that I have built up from working out and all of the things I did to prepare. I would rate my pain as a 1-2 where I'm not really in pain but rather I'm just uncomfortable. I feel like sleeping after Day 2 helped a lot and I think that the extra rest has been helping my recovery. I'm able to walk around as normal for the most part. My main challenges is sitting down, standing back up, and then getting up after laying down. But those have been getting significantly easier by the day. I'm able to eat solid food without a problem but my appetite is rather small (since there is a lot going down in there) so I'm pacing myself. I'm also taking my required antibiotics and thankfully, I haven't had to take any sort of medication for pain relief, muscle tension/ spasms, or nausea. I'm taking that as a good sign that my body is coping with all of this pretty well. I might do another update in a few days or so. -------------------------------------------------------------- Can Plastic Surgery Exist in a Conscious World I believe that the answer is yes. While the default view people have for plastic surgery is like getting breast implants, I do think that there is a benefit for plastic surgery when it comes to things like facial reconstruction after a bad accident, fixing cleft lips or other facial deformaties that affect people's quality of life, getting your breasts back after losing them to cancer etc. I understand the argument of people saying that plastic surgery is awful in the way that it normalizes unrealistic beauty standards and how it harms people. At the same time, I don't think that people who get these surgeries are bad, rather that they're trying to cope the best they can in a fucked up system. Nevertheless, that doesn't absolve them from being honest in their decision making process or honest in the way they decide to socially talk about this decision. I think that plastic surgery is going to be around even if we get rid of various beauty standards and it is something we need to have healthier, more productive conversations about so that people can make more informed decisions.

Taking Out the Trash I've had a lot on my mind swimming around I'm just going to write about it so I can get it out of my system. Overwhelm Trump's first 100 days has been getting to me. I'm not freaking out because I know that back in 2016 when he took office, he mainly did a bunch of executive orders in the first 100 days and didn't do much else after that other than create a chaotic media environment. I'm not saying that this Trump presidency is the same thing. It's worse because of the way that the govenment is getting gutted by Elon and because of the Project 2025 freaks. But what I am saying is that the first 100 days will likely be the most chaotic portion of this administration and then things will quiet down. I'm trying to keep prespective because it's their strategy to overwhelm us and make us feel like everything is happening fast and it isn't in our control. We are living in a minute by minute news cycle and before we get news that Trump's crazy proposal got blocked by a judge and get a chance to calm down, we get another headline of him doing something else that is crazy before getting a chance to process the first thing. The other thing that gets me is that I have a lot of friends who work with USAID and their schooling and jobs are getting affected. I'm trying to be there for them the best that I can and it sucks that the people around me are getting affected by all of this. I just feel really exhausted by everything that is going on. I feel like the world has been in a constant state of chaos since 2015 when Trump came into the political stage and it got much more intense after the pandemic. I feel frustrated and unheard because we have one party actively doing things to make the world suck more and another party that doesn't do shit to stand up for us because they're also bought out by corporations. Don't get me wrong, I will vote for being stagnant rather than voting for us to go 100 mph in the wrong direction, but I don't know how long things are going to go on like this and I'm feeling tired and impatient. And the worst part is, it feels like nothing matters in the sense that disruptive things feel futile in changing the course that we're on. I remember being in school and learning about the Watergate scandel and how the shame caused Nixon to step down and it was this big thing that people talked about for decades after the fact. Now, it feels like we're having a Watergate like every day but that doesn't do shit to hold this administration to accountibility. It doesn't matter how many ways they fuck up, they're still going strong. It doesn't matter that we had a president mishandle a global pandemic because it feels like a lot of people moved on without a second thought to process what had happen. It doesn't matter that we are seeing multiple genocides play out on our phones. It doesn't matter when ICE starts rounding people up even if they show documentation that they are citizens. We're still stuck in this trajectory because we don't have a left wing populist alternative due to politicians getting bought out. Like I need this country to hurry up and turn into 1790s France before they turn into 1930s Germany. I feel like this video tbh: Meanwhile, I'm stuck doing my fuck ass corporate job. It's tax season and we're understaffed so I have more work on my plate. Also, I got a promotion a few months back so I have more responsibilities. Which is fine, but there is a lot of fuck shit happening in upper management which is trickling down to us normal people and making our work days chaotic. I've been feeling a little burnt out and it's been affecting my sleep and exercise schedule. Like for the past few weeks I have been sleeping in til 11:30 on the weekends only to have to wake up at 6:30 am on Monday. There's also the whole thing with revenge bed time procrastination where psychologically, since I don't feel like I have a lot of time to myself in the day, I don't sleep at night because I don't want the next day to start yet. And these sleep issue combined with my stressful time at work leaves me feeling energetically depleated to where I don't want to work out. I often find myself sitting at work, doing my job as the world if burning, sending my silly little emails, and when I get tired I'm just thinking of how nothing is ever enough for these parasites. I wonder what the long term consequences of this is going to be in people's mental states. I don't think it's all bad tbh. I think working my 9-5 has given me a lot of structure which has helped me build a certain degree of resilliance and discipline. I'm sure if I didn't have this job, as annoying as it can be at time, I would probably have shitty executive functioning skills and I would be doomscrolling the news all the time. I don't think challenges cripple us rather they can be opportunities of growths so long as we consider the severity of such challenges respective to our skill level. Sure, I have days where I don't feel like working and I force myself to work anyways. That isn't crippling or traumatizing rather pushing through the "I don't feel like it" feeling and doing what you need to do helps build discipline and resilliance. And this can also be good because rather than ruminating of what's going on in the world, you have other things you need to take care of. In my opinion, you can be aware of a situation without actively focusing on it at all times. There's a difference between ruminating and processing. However, while that is the case a lot of the times, there are also times where I feel like I end up crossing a line where I force myself to work when I do in fact need a break but I feel like I don't have much of a choice to do so because *capitalism.* Sometimes I do feel like I'm writing off my own sense of humanity because I'm forced to send my silly little emails instead of engaging with what is actually going on in the world right now and being there for people. Sometimes I find myself feeling numb to what is going on in the world as I'm forced to continue doing what I "need" to do in my job. I put need in quotations because let's be real, I'm saving files at my job, not saving lives. My job is not that important in the grand scheme of things. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Coping I feel like I'm coping in a healthy way for the most part apart from the sleep difficulties. I really resonate with the sentiments in this video and I found myself already doing the suggestions in this video just by myself prior to watching: Being present and enjoying the little things in my life has been important in not only grounding myself but also accepting the reality around me. I go into this much more in depth in my previous post about the "Things That Make Me Happy" and the video about thinking about the end of my life. I also find myself thinking about death more because I have a surgery scheduled later this month. The surgery isn't anything dangerous or anything that would put me at risk of dying rather I'm thinking about anesthesia. I've never experienced it before and while I've conceptualized it as "going to sleep" I do know it's more comparable to being in a coma because the drugs in anesthesia basically turns your brain and consciousness off for the duration of the surgery. Which feels really trippy and has caused me to question what death would feel like after the process of dying. I went down this rabbit hole the other day about how anesthesia works and I think learning about it freaked me out at first and then later it calmed me down more lol. I'm trying to approach this with a sense of curiousity rather than fear since it is a new experience for me. Sometimes, when I'm faced with something I don't want to do, I play a little would you rather game. In this situation where I'm scared of anesthesia, I ask myself *would you rather not get the surgery at all, get the surgery with anesthesia, or be in a time or place where you're getting surgery and there is no anesthesia.* And though anesthesia doesn't sound appealing, out of those three options it does lol. Plus, the risks and stats around anesthesia is pretty solid where there's like a 1 in a million chance of having complications if you don't have major health issues. I've also been trying to use the busyness of my work, as stressful and annoying it can be at times, as a source flow states to derive some form of fulfillment and accomplishment from it. I also find myself listening to either Lofi music as I work, again to get into the flow state, or music from the old Pokemon games that I enjoyed as a kid. There is also a part of me that wishes I could go back to 2014, before Trump came into the public eye and back when politics was a boring thing. This sense of nostalgia feels weird. I'm not one of those people who overly romanticized my childhood or thinks that I didn't have problems back then. Sure some of my problems seem trivial from when I was 14 but I'm also looking back from the perspective of a 25 year old who had a better sense of perspective and significantly better coping mechanisms rather than the perspective of a 14 year old who doesn't have those tools in her tool kit. I'm also of the impressiont that a lot of people experience nostalgia deep down because the problems of the now seem like a lot and the problems of the past seems like a non issue because those have already been resolved, thus creating a situation where it feels like the past doesn't have problems since it doesn't have the problems you're dealing with in the present day. As a result, it feels like a simplier time. The nostalgia for 2014 feels weird for me because I remember what life felt like for me personally from my chaotic household and compared to that, 2025 feels a whole lot better. But culturally as a collective, I feel like things were better in 2014 than they are in 2025. I feel like I could have a whole post discussing the progressivism of the mid-late 2010s compared to the progressivism of the 2020s but in a nut shell, while there is some development especially regarding class consciousness, we're also in the middle of an ugly collective ego backlash at this time. Basically, I don't feel nostalgic for 2014 because I'm nostalgic of my own personal life rather I feel nostalgic because I miss the way society felt back then compared to what it feels like now. I remember looking forward to being an adult and having more agency over my life. And I gotta say, I love being an adult. I love having my own money. I love having more critical thinking skills and an ability to navigate various situations. I love having a plethora of healthy coping mechanism. I love the people I have around me. I love having a sense of responsibility in my life and the autonomy that brings. But as much as I love being an adult, I just don't like being an adult under late stage capitalism where we're dealing with constant unprecendented times. Another way that I cope is that I think of myself being an old lady and telling stories about the present day to a group of kids. In the same way that I look at the past, think of the things that bothered me back then, since those things have been resolved and I have gotten some space from them, it all just seems like a funny memory now. Or if it isn't funny, it's lore lol. Either way, one day I'm going to be in the future and I will be looking at my past, and on some level I'm going to have gratititude for what I'm experiencing right now. I also think about this clip from Spongebob:

I feel like this also sums up how I felt emotionally after journalling and contemplating everything that makes me happy.

Things that Make Me Happy About 2 weeks ago, I had a sudden impulse to list out everything that made me happy. No reason, just wanted to journal I guess lol. But I have had a lot of thoughts since then so I thought I'd explore them here. I typed out this list without thinking too much about it and just let things flow. I journaled for a bit until i got to +150 things. By then I felt like I covered everything. Since then, for the next few days, I would add a couple things here and there. After that, I had the curiousity to contemplate this more, to analyze common trends. I started with color coding the list and I came up with about 5 categories: food (green), socializing (purple), activities (orange), things I find beautiful (pink), and things that appeal to senses (blue). Then I wanted to analyze them further and I put this color coded list in a spread sheet. In the spread sheet, I broke things down into more categories: daily/ simple pleasures, self care, essential, fulfilling, luxury, special occasion, things I want more of and expensive. I also highlighted the cells for the things I wanted more of when it comes to things that I'm actively working on getting more of. Most of the +160 items falls into more than one category. Here is a screenshot of the top 30 in my list just so that there is a more visual example of what I'm talking about: Before going into the trends that I have observed and how I ordered my list after listing out over 160 things, I want to talk about each of the color categories and each of the columns. Colors: Food: Pretty self explanatory. Also includes food related things like cooking and trying new places. Socializing: Anything that serves connection needs/desires. Can range from spending time with people to cuddling. Things I find beautiful: Can range from things that make me happy by just seeing them like dogs or wild flowers to settings like third spaces Activities: self explanatory Things that appeal to senses: These are things that feel nice. It can be smells like citrus or clean laundry. It can be things that feel nice to touch like a weighted blanket. It can be pieces of media that I enjoy like music and movies. Those are just some ideas. Some of these can overlap with the social aspect but I put them in blue because it's more about the physical feeling itself over the connection needs it fulfills. For example, cuddling can be something that appeals to the senses but I put it under purple because it's more about the connection of who I'm cuddling while having someone give me scratches in blue because it's more about the sensation of the scratches rather than the sense of connection I derive from it. Here is the break down based on color categories and how much of the list they take up: Green: 32.6% Purple: 6.2% Pink: 16.9% Orange: 18.8% Blue: 25.5% I think that the food (green) section dominates in number of things but it's not like the heavy hitters in terms things I consider in the Essential and Fulfilling categories. My sense of lasting happiness does not rest in the ability of me being able to access avocados for example. But I do find a lot of happiness in food as it is an important part of my day to day and I like being present when I am enjoying a meal. On a similar note, I think that also rings tue for the blue section because various things that appeal to the senses also makes me feel like I can be present. I think that the purple section, though it only comprises of 6.2% of the list, is the most important because most of them are present in my top 30 as shown in the screenshot. I also later re-ordered the list to be indicative of how much certain things made me happy by assigning points to the columns each item marked off. There were a few items that ranked low which I then revisted to see where on the list they would stand since these numbers, though they can be helpful, aren't everything when it comes to determining things that make me happy. Columns Daily/ simple pleasures: Pretty self explanatory. These are what I call the little things in life that you encounter on a day to day basis. Self care: These are things that can contribute to self care. It can range from spending time with people you care about, bath bombs, certain comfort foods, activities that fill me up, etc. Essential: This goes along with self care but this category is like self care that is necessary to keep me sane lol. Not only to keep me sane but also things that I feel contribute a good chunk of my happiness to where I would miss said thing if I would have to cut it out. I guess essential is a little loose of a term but it's basically the things in my list that I would really want to keep if I had to pair it down. Fulfilling: Pretty self explanatory. I wanted this to be a separate column to differentiate between things that just make me happy vs things that leave me feeling fulfilled on top of that. Luxury: Luxury is a bit of a loose term like essential but it's basically anything that feels extra special to me and makes me feel abundant. It doesn't have to be expensive and in most cases it isn't. It can range from weighted blankets to travelling around. Special Occasion / Seasonal: These like the simple pleasures but these are often things that has a certain time of year that rolls around or comes with an occasion. Think snow, Christmas lights, going to a nice restaurant every now and then etc. Things I want more of: Again, prettty self explanatory. These are things I want to emphasize more or if they are highlighted, things I'm working towards. Expensive: This can be things that I have to make the effort to save up for or it can be things that I can afford but I don't indulge in super often for the sake of staying in budget. An example of something I have to save up for is to move to a more walkable city (since I live in the US and I have like 5 options and all of them are expensive lol). An example of something I don't have to save up for but I don't indulge in super often is high quality matcha since that can run you like $50 for a small thing of matcha. Here are some trends that I have observed from playing around with this graph and it's filters: Daily Pleasures: 138/163 Seasonal and Special Occasion: 38/163. Not Seasonal or Daily Pleasures: 4/163 Not to be cliche or corny but it's the really the little things in life that bring me joy. I think ever since I made the first draft of this list, I found myself more in touch with the happiness around me and my daily life. I'm sure this is the same goal that people who keep gratitude journals have. Not to be dramatic but there was a couple times when I started tearing up happy tears thinking about how I'm going to have so many croissants over the course of my life, and so many days where I get to smell clean laundry, and so many hours of me sitting in the sun. And I think that sense of gratitude and consciousness to the daily things that bring me joy is an element of what it means to die happy and fulfilled. As for the four items aren't either daily pleasures or seasonal/specail occasion things, they are the following: getting a facial, sound baths, ice skating, and thrifting. Getting a facial at a salon or spa is a self care thing that I spluge on every now and then to relax, and it's nice, but it isn't something that falls under either category. I do like a sound bath at my yoga studio like once a month, which again, isn't an every day thing, but also it isn't a super special or seasonal occasion either since it's as frequent as once a month. So unlike the facial that doesn't fall under either category, the sound bath falls into the middle of both at an awkward spot. Finally, with ice skating and thrifting, I don't do either of those things but I did really enjoy them growing up. So it is something that gives me joy even though I don't really do either of these hobbies on a daily or seasonal basis. Luxury: 20/163 Luxury and Expensive: 9/20 Luxury and not Expensive: 11/20 Like I mentioned earlier, the luxury category consists of not things that are expensive or hard to obtain but things that make me feel abundant. Some things that fall under the Luxury category but not the Expensive category are slow mornings, charcuterie boards, nova lox bagels, sitting in the sun, and weighted blankets. Some things that fall under both the Luxury and Expensive category are steak, sushi, visiting national patks, travelling, and being in a walkable city. Now, I can afford to eat steak and sushi but it wouldn't be a wise financial decision to be doing that on a regular basis, nor do I want to be something I do on a regular basis since I want it to feel special. However, things like visiting national parks, travelling, and moving to a walkable city are things I actually have to work to save up for. I guess it's good that I don't have super expensive taste lol. I'm less likely to fall into traps of consumerism and grow attached to things that financially be a sinkhole. Out of the 9 things that fall in the Expensive category, the three things I listed out earlier like travelling, moving to a walkable city, and visiting national parks, are the only things in that category that I have to actively work towards. I looked at those three things and I reflected on them, and I think that I have my priorities straight in regards to be spending money on things that align with my values. And also, these aren't like crazy unrealistic, difficult goals to achieve over the years so I feel confident in regards to the future of my finances and what I hope to achieve in terms of my life style. I also feel abundant in that I can afford some expensive things within reason and these are things that I feel really add to my life. Not to mention, I also feel abundant, at peace, content, and fulfillied that a lot of things that makes my life luxurious is relatively affordable. Fulfilling: 55/163 Essential and Fullfilling: 43/163 Fulfilling but not Essential: 11/163 Essential but not Fulfilling: 17/163 Essential: 60/163 Not essential or fulfilling: 92/163 > most ot these fell under the daily pleasures / special occasion categories > only 3 were expensive and 8 were luxury I think it's good that roughly 33% of what makes me happy is also a fulfilling endeavor. I think it's a good sign that I have a good chunk of things make me feel fulfilled but also it doesn't dominate the list since I can gather appreaciation from many areas of my life. I noticed that all of the social things I listed were present in the Fulfillment category and the category also had a lot from the activities section. A lot of the stuff that appealed to the senses in the Fulfillment category are things I would say connect me more to being or pieces of media I really enjoy. The same can be said about the foods that showed up under this category, albeit it was like 3 or 4 things. I feel the same way about how the Essential category also comprises of about 36%. I'm glad that I prioritize things that are important to me but these essential things don't dominate the list. I think it's indicative of me moving past survival mode in a way. I think observing the items under the Fulfilling and Essential categories was interesting because it showed me things that I don't want to compromise and what I want to prioritize when creating a happy life. As for the items that were marked as Essential but not Fulfilling, most of them were smells like citrus or lavendar, or things in my shower and skincare routine. It's not things that bring fulfillment but I do think that I need this to feel like I'm taking care of myself lol. As for the category of things that weren't marked as Essential or Fulfilling, most of them were under the Daily pleasures / Special Occasion Categories. Only 3 were Expensive (getting a facial, barbeque, and the wrap around porches in old style homes) and 8 were Luxury (included things like brie, nova lox bagels, and my perfume). I would say that food dominated this section. I would say that's accurate because while something like waffles makes me happy, it's not like a make or break for the quality and fulfillment of my life lol. I would categorize the things in this list that weren't marked as Essential or Fulfilling as things that I appreciate but I'm not attached to. Self Care: 74/163 Self Care and Luxury: 12/74 Self Care and Expensive: 5/74 (2 are things I need to save up on which are walkable cities and travel) Self Care that wasn't a seasonal thing or daily pleasure: 2 (facial and sound bath) Self Care that isn't a Daily Pleasure: 8/74 I think this was insightful in that I feel like it illustrated a good list of healthy coping mechanisms and categorized them based on what I feel like I needed (social, relaxation, activity etc) and how much money and energy I want to spend. I included a video about a dopamine menu earlier in this journal and while I feel like this whole speadsheet can contribute to the concept of a dopamine menu, I feel like it rings even more true for the self care section. I think it's also great that about 90% of the things in the self care category are like daily mundane things because I think a foundation of happiness is finding joy in the mundane instead of being sad and waiting for the weekend or any other special occasion. Things I Want More Of 29/163 Things I Want More Of and that I'm actively working towards 8/29 Expensive things I want more of 7/29 Expensive things I want more of that I'm actively working towards 4/29 (2 of which are things I have to save for which are walkable cities and travel) This section was insightful in terms of my goals and how to reach them. I think that it's good that that the Things I Want More Of category isn't a lot because it indicates a sense of contentment from my life. Out of the 29 things, 8 are things I'm actively working towards. As for the other 21, they are things I'm also content with but are things I wouldn't say no to when it comes to more (i.e I always want more cuddles and sushi lol). Out of the 8, 4 of them are expensive and 2 are things I have to save up for. This has helped me get a better idea as to what my financial goals are and where I can spend my money to really get my money's worth on enjoyment. As for things that aren't Expensive and Things I Want More Of, I would say the social stuff really dominates this intersection as well as some of my most important hobbies and interests. In Conclusion.... I feel like the results of this exercise has been indicative of happiness in my personal life rather than happiness as a whole. I think it's been good for me to reflect on my values, how they align with what sparks joy, how it can guide me towards the things I should prioritize and work towards, and things I can be greatful for along the way. It almost makes certain things that are going wrong in my life and things that I'm working towards but I'm having difficulty with easier to deal with because I have so many things to be happy for and content about in the life I have created thus far.

Processing My Anxieties Around Searching for a New Job I feel like I have been processing my anxieties around searching for a job for the past few days. And I think I just need to write things down and spill things out so that I can process, piece together, and resolve my negative emotions that are preventing me from taking tangible action. I think I got lucky with the job search when I just left college and I didn't get a chance to go through the trenches of the job search. Which is good, and honestly thank god because I needed some luck and light at the end of the tunnel at that time. But at the same time, I bypassed the anxieties and negative emotions around the job search as a whole. So now I'm going to list out the things that I'm worrying about off the top of my head and work through each of these. What if I get a job too soon and then I have to deal with breaking my lease early and my boyfriend is having issues with securing a job at his pace? We'll deal with it when we get the offer at hand. Let's not get too ahead of ourselves. What if I can't secure any interviews and I'm stuck in my current job? We haven't even started applying. We'll deal with this fear later. What if I can secure interviews but they are unpaying me compared to the cost of living? We'll deal with it when we get the offer at hand. Let's not get too ahead of ourselves. What if I get a job with my desired pay range but it turns out to be toxic and I want my old job back? We'll deal with it when we get the job at hand. Let's not get too ahead of ourselves. What if my boss and manager looks at me weird when I ask them to be my referrences or get me a recommendation letter? Dude.. it is what it is at this point. This is something you will have to suck up in the application process. Plus, you probably won't need a recommendation letter until like June so again let's not get too ahead of ourselves. What if I don't get good GRE scores and have difficulty with getting a job for my desired wage? That's why you're going to have to study for this. I understand that you don't want to because it's giving you SAT flashbacks but I'm sure you will do great. Hell, if you get a job, you won't even have to worry about this. Remember, applying to grad school is your plan B that you're proactively prepping for. I'm sure y'all can see the common theme of me getting ahead of myself lol. Best case scenario is that I get a job that I'm interested in, have work life balance in, and pays you enough in a timely manner so that I can coordinate with your boyfriend. Worst case scenario is that I don't get a job this year nor do I get great GRE scores. But, hey, instead, I would have saved more money and gotten a promotion and perhaps the promotion will aid in the job search and applications in 2026. I know I don't like your job right now and I would like to get an exit ticket sooner rather than later but the good thing is that I'm not in a desperate position, I have something to fall back on, and as a result I'm less likely to make rash decisions and accept jobs that isn't good for me. I have the upper hand and the deck is stacked for your favor despite the current economy. But hey, I can be aware of the economy without focusing on it. I shouldn't focus on the economy or stagnating wages. I need to focus on what I want and need. And no matter how things are going to fall into place (because odds are, your outcome will be something in between the best and worse cases), it will be for your highest good. This past week I have focussed on getting through this disorienting week where I had Wednesday off as well as processing my anxiety for this upcoming year. This week I'm going to focus on updating my Linked In profile, updating my resume, and getting my GRE textbooks. On the week of 1/12, I will take a couple of GRE practice tests to see where I fall and my lesson plans going forward and I will apply to at least 1 job. Also, in addition to the part of me that fantasizes about quitting my job without a back up plan, there is this part of me that wishes I could just be carefree and frolick around and avoid my adult responsibilities. I know that I can't just do that because well, it's easier to get a job while you currently have one, because I do need references and letters of recommendation (so I'll also need to be going a good job in addition to keeping my job), and I need an income. While I'm fortunate in that I don't have kids, I don't have sick relatives to take care of, and I don't have a mortgage I'm tied to, I am worried about my lease at my apartment, how things will work with my boyfriend logistically,the impacts of my current friendships, and general adult responsibilities like cooking for myself and paying my bills on time. So sure, I don't have a TON of responsibility (like I'm not tone deaf/ unaware) but I do have some. And part of me wishes I didn't have this responsibility at all so I can experience a childlike carefree state of mind. There is a part of me that feels like I didn't get to enjoy that carefreeness as a child because of the expectations put on me and because of my chaotic household. I didn't get to experience that as a teenager because of academic stress and the existential crisis of trying to figure out what kind of job I wanted. I definitely didn't get to experience it in college due to the fact that I was working through trauma, a pandemic was raging on, and nothing was guranteed from the job market. And yes, back in October, I had a whole month to myself on PTO that I spent travelling. That helped a ton. But also, I was doing a lot of work in that time from organizing my trip to the journalling and reflecting I was doing to answer important questions of my life. Yes, it was a break from my usual, but I wouldn't say it was a break BREAK. I know that I'm nervous about the job hunt and I think this is causing me to want to unplug as the pressure, anxiety, and dread are getting to me. To me, frolicking means I'm waking up at my own time, going on my little work outs, spending time with friends, and getting a little treat WITHOUT worrying about the stresses and demands of work, worring about the job application process, or worrying unemployment. The last part is the important part because technicaly I can enjoy these little pleasures right now even with work can capitalism looming over head. Basically, I guess what I'm trying to say is that I would like to stop feeling like this meme: As well as this meme because now that I no longer have extended breaks, my free time feels scarce to an extent: Like I get why the boomer adults around me told me to enjoy school because in the future I'll have responsibilities. Which didn't resonate back then because as mentioned before, I wasn't exactly a carefree kid. Maybe I would be care free if I wasn't in school during late stage capitalism as the adults around me put pressure on me to not fail like the avocado toast buying Millennials who didn't think their careers through when choosing their art degree. I guess my best case scenario is getting a job and then having some time between my current job and the new one just to chill the fuck out. Honestly, I think 2 weeks is sufficient.

Diagnosis I tried to get a Autism and ADHD diagnosis. The diagnostic screening process also involved me getting screened for bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, and general mood disorders. The final verdict this psychiatrist had is that I don’t have any of these things. To put in very simple terms, on a scale of 0-10, 5 and up meaning that you meet the criteria and threshold of the diagnosis in question, for autism I’m a .5, for ADHD I’m a .5, for borderline personality disorder I’m a 0, and for bipolar disorder I’m like a 4.5 to a 5. He explained that I might have a very VERY mild degree of bipolar disorder because I meet the criteria on paper but just barely. There is a good chance that external and situational factors are influencing this. For example, if I got rid of the wave of anxiety I’m experiencing, I would drop to a 3 for bipolar in the 0-10 scale thus disqualifying me from the diagnosis entirely. I’m going to start with the positives of my diagnosis experience. I do think it’s worth talking to a professional about this as opposed to taking online quizzes, consulting Dr. Google since Google never went to medical school, or going off of anecdotal experiences that you relate to when it comes to people who have been diagnosed. We talked about how situational and environmental factors make someone look like they have a disorder when that is not case. Because yes, things can come up in your life and you can experience mental health issues but unless what you’re going through is persistent and like a constant in your life, that cannot be classified as a disorder. For example, there is a difference between someone who is experiencing depression as a result of grief versus someone who has major depressive disorder. Someone might score high on a bipolar test screening when they’re going through a messy divorce but the symptoms and severity alone is not enough to diagnose them with bipolar disorder because you need to consider the context of someone’s life. Someone might be easily distracted in 2024 due to the prevalence of smart phones and the pressure to be on all the time even outside of work but that might not meet the threshold of being distractable enough to be considered ADHD even though if they had all the same symptoms in say 1970 they would have been diagnosed with ADHD no doubt. We also talked about personality as well, particularly in the case of getting diagnosed with autism. Sometimes you’re just more introverted than most people, or maybe you’re just little socially awkward and anxious, or maybe you’re straight forward and don’t really overthink the implications of what is being said rather you take things at face value. Those traits are not the same as meeting the criteria for being on the spectrum. Again, the broader context and specific things in the diagnostic criteria needs to be taken into consideration. Upbringing and culture can also affect your social patterns and it might coincide with some behaviors that people who have autism engage in but again, it isn’t enough to look at the symptoms and their severity, rather you need to look at the context of those symptoms. I also think that it is very likely that I don’t have autism rather I have social anxiety that might be causing me to act in “autistic ways.” I think the above are all valid points and I think it has been more helpful to have a more nuanced and professional opinion rather than spiraling on whether I have autism based on a Tiktok I saw and somewhat related to lol. At the same time, I don’t really agree with the final verdict this doctor has given me for the following reasons: Autism and ADHD can look different in women. Sure, both men and women do need to meet certain diagnostic criteria to be diagnosed regardless of how the criteria manifests, but I do believe personal biases can interfere with the final judgment of whether a criteria was met. It’s not uncommon for women specifically to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder when really is autism and/ or ADHD since the later is stereotyped as a little boy’s disease. On the same note of how this can manifest differently on women, women are more likely to mask and fall under the radar due to community building and cooperation being more emphasized in our socialization. I think that due to years of masking so that my symptoms don’t overtly present themselves. This doctor was basically like *you don’t have ADHD because you don’t fidget* and for me, I have learned over the years to control that really well. I have a general sense of energy and restlessness as a result of not fidgeting but rather than interpreting this as hyperactivity, a diagnostic criterion for ADHD, this guy is interpreting it as impulsive and anxiety which more closely relates to bipolar disorder. Also, this guy said that you can’t be autistic and have a desire for human connection or closeness. That felt weird because I do know people who are diagnosed but still like having friends and family. Like sure socializing and having those relationships aren’t easy and sometimes it feels easier to be alone instead because you’re not exerting the extra effort to decode social situations, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t like having people around you at all. I also think that painting people with autism as anti social or in some cases unable to express empathy can be dangerous in the way that it causes people to dehumanize neurodivergent people. On top of that, there is also a gendered aspect to this as well where women are socialized to prioritized human connection (and as a result they are more likely to fall under the radar) so the anti social bit is often something that is more closely associated with how autism shows up in men. I also explained that I have a mind that feels like it’s going a million miles per second and as a result I end up stumbling over my words, I interrupt people, and sometimes I have trouble falling asleep. He wrote all of this off to anxiety and as a result, a potential indication for mood disorder like bipolar. But the thing is that I don’t feel anxious when I am having a lot of thoughts, like they’re just there and how I process things. I tried to explain this but I don’t think he was receptive to it lol. I looked back at the diagnostic forms I filled out for both ADHD and bipolar disorder. Out of the 18 questions to determine if I have ADHD, I answered 12 of those questions as things I experience “sometimes” of “often”. For bipolar disorder, I answered no to the vast majority of the questions and the two things I said yes to involved being high energy. Now, it’s important to recognize that there is overlap between ADHD and bipolar disorder, the high energy being the main one. I have never experienced a manic episode and I would say that my mood is pretty stable. The doctor mentioned that there is a nuance on how hyperactivity is associated with ADHD but impulsiveness is associated with bipolar disorder. I explained that I took the test with the assumption that these two words basically mean the same thing since I don’t have the professional knowledge to differentiate between the two. As a result, I think some self-reporting might be at fault for the results in addition to how it’s being interpreted. That said, there is a differentiation between bipolar type 1 and type 2. Type one is the stereotypical bipolar disorder with manic episodes and mood swings. Type two is more depressive and experiences hypomania, which has similar themes to a manic episode but significantly less severe to where it’s not really interfering with someone’s life. And if I take type two into consideration, I can see elements of hypomania being present in my life. But then again, I very slimly fall into the potential of bipolar disorder and it’s not definitive enough for an actual diagnosis as there may be extra factors influencing things. Here is a article that details the types of bipolar disorder out in a very surface level: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/bipolar-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20355955 Given everything I written above, I wanted to re-examine my list of symptoms that I thought were indicative of autism or ADHD with the new information I have from the doctor. I also went over both of the lists with the doctor to get his opinion. The commentary under the list items includes this as well as my own input. I highlighted things in green as things that could indicate a dianosis Autism Symptoms: Difficulty reading social cues, being socially awkward at my big age, and taking things literally since you take things at face value. Could be autism, could also be social anxiety mixed with how you were brought up. Black and white thinking when it comes to trust in relationships/ time blindness (basically once you have earned my trust you have earned it and even if we haven’t talked in forever, the relationship was just frozen in time rather than deteriorating over the time we haven’t spoken). This is most likely due to my upbringing and the way relationships were modeled to me culturally since my parents come from a more collectivistic culture. Feeling overstimulated in loud environments This isn’t a super recurring thing. I think I experience this like a handful of times a year. This doesn’t meet the threshold for autism. Anyone can get overstimulated from time to time. Not liking mushy foods I thought this was a food aversion thing but then after talking to the doctor, he explained that food aversion causes you to reject a specific food because your brain tells your body that it's inedible. It also causes your body to react negatively by feeling nauseous or gagging, at the sight, scent or taste of the food. I don’t like mushy foods but it isn’t to the point where I’m gagging or nauseous. Again, it’s a threshold thing. Pattern recognition Might be an autism thing Having special interests I feel like my special interests over the years revolved around politics, psychology, and human rights issues. I feel like I have a detailed hobby when it comes to learning about these things and it is a little unconventional to care about this to the extent that I do. But what differentiates this from autism is that it’s not the interest itself or the intensity of which you enjoy it rather it’s when you struggle to have a meaningful conversation about anything else apart from that interest. And even then, it may not even be a meaningful conversation so much as a one-sided info dump. That is not the case for me. So basically, the only indicators that might point to autism and aren’t completely debunked is the pattern recognition and the difficulties with social cues. That is not sufficient for a diagnosis. ADHD Symptoms Executive dysfunction, difficulty getting started with tasks, organizing things, lack of object permanence causing food to rot in the fridge etc. This could be indicative of ADHD Interrupting people This could be ADHD or bipolar disorder. The doctor was leaning towards bipolar but I have my doubts. Stuttering because your brain is going faster than your mouth This could be ADHD or bipolar disorder. The doctor was leaning towards bipolar but I have my doubts. The need for external stimuli to focus That’s becoming pretty standard given the environments people live in with smart phones and the such. The need to walk around and get active to focus + pacing back and forth A lot of people do this and this alone doesn’t meet the threshold for hyperactivity. But also, one of the criteria to be diagnosed with ADHD is the fidgeting. I don’t fidget due to years of masking but I do think that my lack of fidgeting is the reason why I have to get up so often. I’m marking this in purple because I feel like it can go either way. Needing to get energy out after sitting for long periods of time and getting the zoomies after work You need two or more instances of high energy to be diagnosed with ADHD. If this happens only after work/ school, that isn’t sufficient. If it was ADHD, you would be having the zoomies even during work. Constant procrastination while growing up Considering that you grew out of the constant procrastination, it’s likely that you were a constant procrastinator due developmental stuff or anxiety (basically, you were a kid lol, your frontal lobe was still developing). Sleep issues due to racing thoughts and just constant thoughts in general. The doctor said this was more of a bipolar thing and linked to anxiety. I tried to tell them that I didn’t feel anxious when I had racing thoughts at any hours of the day but he like glossed over it. I’m more inclined to think this is more so ADHD. Sharing personal experiences to relate and empathize with someone when they are confiding in you. This might be an upbringing / cultural thing rather than an indication of neurodivergence. So I do think that there might be a case for ADHD but also the extent of which I think I have it are tempered with the nuances the doctor talked about. My main thing is the symptom overlap between ADHD and bipolar disorder and how the main thing I resonate with the bipolar is the high energy piece and nothing else really. I also think that gender and socialization does play a role in this as well and I think it's worth getting a second opinion.

2025 Goals Revised I was looking at the list above and just generally speaking have been anxious this past week because I feel like there is so much I want to accomplish in 2025 that I felt overwhelmed. I have decided to reorganize (or rather categorize) my goals so that instead of feeling like I have 12 big goals that I have 4 big goals with multiple subcomponents to help give structure to those goals and guide me. The bolded ones in black are the things I'm focussing on right now. Change my Career / get a new job Apply for new jobs to get a job that utilizes my major and makes $90k to $120k in D.C. ideas include jobs in journalism, NGOs, think tanks, etc. I'm not settling for less than this. I currently make about $75k in Dallas and I feel like this is an amount that enables me to feel fiancially secure/ comfortable. If I adjust this to the cost of living of DC, it amounts to something in between $90k to $120k. Study for the GMAT + start the application process for fellowships Studying for the GMAT is priority now and the application process will be more of a thing in June. The application process will involve getting financial aid information in order, 2 letters of recommendation, and a couple of essays. Figure out how the new job will work with your relationship and your lease Get a better wardrobe (I dress like Adam Sandler like 90% of my time due to my work from home job and i'm sure that after I change my life style that I will need to get new clothes) Figure out the last two bullets after the first two are accomplished and you have an offer at hand. Don't overwhelm yourself by getting ahead of yourself lol. Cooking try the list of recepies you have on your phone get comfortable making indian food by making something once a week Host Thanksgiving Hobbies get back into working out 3-5x a week (walking, weighlifting, yoga/ pilates) Read a book per month (preferrably fiction) Plan my next trip Social stuff Get over my social anxiety and get answers regarding whether I have autism or not and what to do about that. Make more friends who are fun weird and not questionable weird

My main journal is messy because I pour a lot of my contemplations and thoughts there. I read through the pages of my main journal and took note of the things I have been telling myself that I'll work on to compile a list of my objectives. I'm using this journal as a succinct way of tracking my progress. I'm going to roughly update this twice a month. I want this to be a more clean cut way of looking at my progress so that I don't have to read through my entire journal to get an idea. I normally encourage comments in my journal but because I want to keep this place clean cut, I don't want any comments on here.

The Dread I am feeling a sense of dread walking into the new year just as I did in 2024. Thankfully, this time around it feels less intense but it’s still here. Maybe that’s just adulthood? Or perhaps the way I handle it. Idk. This time around, I feel like the dread is mixed with underlying feelings of irritation and nervous anticipation. I think the following things are contributing to this: The Trump Presidency: I have no idea wtf is going to happen given that all 3 branches are red now and they have project 2025. I think as a country we will be okay in the long run but in the short term, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. It won’t be like this forever, but I don’t know how far this hole goes. I am confident in my ability to handle things and not to toot my own horn but I think I’m in a privileged enough position monetary and in terms of having my passport/visas updated to get out in an emergency situation and help those around me. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about what happens to the people around me or that my privilege blinds me from what other people are dealing with but it is to say that I’m not the type of person who should be worrying the most. My job: Things have been getting better at my job since I came back from my break in terms of me not being burnt out, anxious, lacking in motivation. I have been pretty consistently performing well and have been productive in the volume of work I do. However, I had a talk with my boss about the only metric that I’m not meeting and that irritated me. She’s fine, don’t get me wrong, and I know she’s just looking out for me. It’s really the pressures of upper management. Basically, I don’t log enough of my time at work because I’m fairly efficient. I can get 50% more work done compared to the requirement in like 3-4 hours in my work day and chill / wait for something to happen for the remainder of my time. Which is kind of the nature of this job from the time that I was hired. But now, with some changes to upper management, there is this expectation that you’re constantly busy even when there is no work around. And that annoys me because if you look at my other metrics, it’s very clear that I’m not a slacker and I do my job, and I do it well at that. It makes me feel like I’m getting punished for being efficient. That’s one thing that I hate about corporate, that doing a good job doesn’t reward you with anything other than more work. It’s not like I’m an overachiever either, I feel like I’m doing the bare minimum on my end to still show that I’m fulfilling my responsibilities. If I do any less, I will be neglecting my responsibilities, and it will show. I also hate the false sense of urgency and the whole thing around pretending to be busy (thankfully I work from home but still). I know this is going to sound naïve and childish of me but I can’t believe that I have to do this shit for another few decades. It’s the weight of that that fills me with dread while the bullet point about talking about my productivity with my boss is just the surface level irritation. Also, I think the dread for the new year is there because my 2 years in corporate anniversary is January 3rd. So I'm like having a tiny existential crisis about what it is I'm doing with my life since I'm here with this company another year. I am happy with my decision about doing a corporate job after college. I think it helped me save a ton of money to do other things with my life and it gave my life a sense of stability that I was really needing in order to figure out what I wanted to do going forward. At the same time, I feel this sense of shame that I haven't made major moves towards where I ultimately wanted to go because I didn't quite feel ready since there were things I still wanted to accomplish at this job. But the good thing is that now my existential crisis is causing me to really feel ready and the dread contributes to it. Gonna be honest, I'm kind of at this place with this job where sometimes I fantasize about quitting without having anything lined up and just giving myself the time to frolick through life for a couple of months or have the fact that I don't have something lined up to propell me into figuring things out sooner rather than later. I know that's a dumb decision and I'm not going to do that, especially in this economy, but that doesn't stop me from fantasizing lol. This is the year I will have to work towards a career change: I have to start applying to jobs and fellowships. I’m nervous about the opportunities that are out there and what I’m capable of qualifying for. I’m nervous about how long this will take, how my living situation will be impacted, and how my personal relationships with change as a result. This dread has an undercurrent of intimidation when it comes to long term goals. Watching my parents get older and thinking about the responsibilities that will come with that. I think the passage of time is just hitting different now that I’m older. I’m still scared at the thought of my dad passing before my mom even though it is likely that in this event she will move to India to be with her siblings. I don’t have a good relationship with her and I don’t want to take care of her when she’s old. I also feel juvenile for not having a good relationship with her, like I’m some kind of angsty kid who can’t let go of a grudge even though there are many aspects of this relationship that is broken. The thought of just taking care of my dad when he’s old still feels intimidating since it feels like a big responsibility, but it doesn’t feel like a burden I would grow resentful of. But if it’s both my parents or just my mom, I don’t know how I would handle that. Also, my mom’s eating disorder is still raging on and I can tell that it has made her frail, lacking in energy, and just over all dead looking. That sure as hell doesn’t help. I sometimes wonder if I have some kind of aversion to responsibility. I don’t want to get promoted at work because I don’t want to be responsible for more work. I don’t want to have kids badly enough to justify having them and being responsible for them 24/7. I don’t want to work towards owning a house. I don’t want to take care of aging parents (mainly my mom). I wonder if this makes me stunted in some way. So let’s address this point by point. I don’t want to get promoted at work not because I don’t work hard or because I don’t care about my job at all, but because I don’t want to burn myself out over something that isn’t super important to me. By that I mean that I do see virtue in doing a good job and being reliable but I’m not willing to bend myself backwards to where the rest of my life suffers and I have no work life balance. Not wanting kids or not deciding to have them is not indicative of some kind of moral failing. You’re not selfish for not wanting kids. There are plenty of parents who have kids for selfish reasons and being able to acknowledger your short comings in this situation and not wanting to bring kids into a less than ideal situation is not an indication of selfishness rather it is the later. You aren’t somehow childish for not wanting kids. And you’re not lazy nor are you resisting growing into an adult. Being able to acknowledge this isn’t the life path for you despite the world’s peer pressure and being able to stick to that is an act of self-awareness. And that takes effort and critical thinking which is the opposite of being lazy or avoiding adulthood. My main thing around home ownership is that I don’t think it’s as economically sound of a decision as it was for my parent’s generation giving how the price of housing has skyrocketed. Even if I can afford a down payment, I don’t want to buy a house for the sake of buying a house without thinking if this is a good financial decision for my life situation specifically. I don’t want to buy a house at the cost of my financial peace of mind to where I’m stressed out about a mortgage and I’m house poor. Sure I’m intimidated at the thought of taking care of my aging parents but I think it’s important to acknowledge the context as to why I feel this way given my history of abuse from my mom. I’m 90% sure that I would feel differently if my childhood had been different as well as my adult relationship with my mother. I think I’m also dreading the new year because I have a lot of things I want accomplish this year and I don’t know how I’m going to do it all. I kind of feel intimidated by 2025. See the following post: I referenced the following videos when I was writing about the dread a year ago. I feel like they are still applying now.

Grooming and Being Groomed I remember having a phase in like middle school (like age 12-14) where I got really into Pretty Little Liars. I think I mainly lost interest after one of the seasons started taking the plot in directions that got absurd and they were doing plot twists for the sake of plot twists. I feel like this video was not only a way of revisiting the nostalgia from a show that i loved but also analyzing it from the lens of my 13 year old self and comparing it to what I think now at 25 particularly in the topic of age gap relationships. I think looking back, many people look at this show as a text book definition of how NOT to portray an age gap relationship on screen for an impressionable audience. I think the video above did a really good job breaking down every element of this, from the way that the couples were portrayed in the plot, the settings they were portrayed in romantic lighthearted way, the way that the narrative was framed to get the audience to root for them, and common grooming tactics that were played of as normal in a romantic dynamic. I also learned more about the fandom and how they treated the age gap dynamic. I didn't know how creepy the writers were even off screen and how that translated in the way that they created merch and interacted with their fans on social media. I remember looking at both Wren and Spencer and Ezra and Aria as scandelous when I first watched the show at like 12/13. But I remember that the whole show felt scandelous because of the plot twists, the general drama between the characters, and the creepy murder mystery vibes. It's like the scandelous elements of those relationships blended in with the rest of the show. On top of that, I think it's important to recognize WHY I thought these relationships were scandelous at age 13. I thought Wren and Spencer was scanadelous because it's fucked up to sleep with your sister's fiance. And I thought Ezra and Aria's relationship was scandelous because it's a teacher/student dynamic. At that age, I was not thinking about the age gap at all and if anything I think I remember thinking the girls were fucked up for being in these dynamics because the show really does portray them as the pursuers rather than acknowledging these guys as the creeps and manipulators they were. Spencer and Aria didn't know better regarding the reprucussions of such relationships and the exploitative nature of them at their age of like 15-17 and neither did I as a middle schooler. I'm going to be honest, at that age, getting pursued by a guy whose in his like early to mid 20s did seem sexy because when you're surrounded by 14 year old boys, guys in their early 20s look like they have their lives together. Also, the actors in real life were closer in age with each other compared to the characters they portrayed. And as a result, visually the dynamic doesn't seem as jarring. Especially with Ezra and Aria, I remember thinking both of them were attractive and as a result looked great together, totally ignoring the context of that relationship. And the video does a great job in going into the ways that the relationship was portrayed to make it seem less predatory. I also caught myself thinking about the portrayal of another age gap relationship I saw on screen which is the movie Priscilla, about the story of Priscilla Presley and her relationship to Elvis. Priscilla did a really good job at showing why this age gap relationship would feel glamorous for a teenager while not glamorizing the relationship to the audience. You can see what Priscilla saw in Elvis while as the viewer feeling how uncomfortable, awkward, tense, and just down right weird and dark ther realtionship was. I think if I remember correctly, Priscilla was 14 and Elvis was 24 when they met. Sophia Coppola did a really good job of creating this nuanced atmosphere in the movie. I remember feeling groomed while watching this movie and recognizing the predatory, unsettling nature of it. But looking back at Pretty Little Liars and the analysis of it, at my age it feels unsettling, not only because I know better but because of the way that it sneakily was portrayed in a positive light that was undetectable to most of the audience during the time in which the show aired. Priscilla felt unsettling in the moment while Pretty Little Liars feels unsettling in retrospect. Relating this back to real life, even if you're not trying to catch a case, the thought of dating someone older when you're in your teen years seemed aspirational at the time. I have this memory of this girl that I was in the 8th grade with (so we're like 13/14 years old). She was like this stereotypical pretty girl who could probably get any guy she wanted. She was 13 and she was dating someone who was 16. I remember thinking that she was so cool and so pretty that she could fit in with and date older guys and meanwhile I'm here looking awkward and I can't even get my crush to notice me. Looking back, I don't envy this girl at all because of the number of sketchy situations she ended up in and how her parents were pretty negligent on so many aspects of her life. I don't see what she went through as cool or aspirational rather I just feel gross and awful for her and the trauma she likely got from that. Ii have been thinking about this since I hit 18 but preying on kids who are younger than you or in a very different place in life than you is peak weirdo behavior. I remember turning 18 and going to college, and thinking about how weird it would be if I were to date a 16 year old who is a sophomore in highschool. I remember turning 21 and thinking how weird it would be to date an 18 year old. And I think that as I get older, this visceral reaction to not prey on younger people gets stronger. I cannot imagine being 25 now and trying to be friends with, let alone date and have sex with a teenager like the guys in this show. Not only that, I can't imagine wanting to thrist after a guy who is significantly older than me, especially now that I have my own money, I am supporting myself financially with no problem, and I have stable life on so many levels. Basically, when I think of age gap relationships, regardless of whether I envision myself as the older or younger party, I feel like this cat right here.

I've been exploring my sexuality and what I do and don't find attractive for a while but I've been doing that more lately. I think about sex and intimacy WAAAYY more than I want to admit and I think I'm at a point where I need a outlet to lay out all of my thoughts. I don't know what kinds of posts I'm going to do or where this is going to lead but I hope that I can utilize my pent up energy and make something constructive out of it. A little background: I have considered myself asexual from the age of 14 to 21. That has had a huge impact on my relationship with my sexuality. Now I'm in a place where I'm questioning my orientation mainly because I'm on birth control now and the pill is messing with my hormones and my head. I thought I was very sure about my sexual orientation but I guess tf not. I'm just rethinking a lot of things tbh. Also, I find the topic of attraction really interesting as a whole and the way that different dynamics interplay with one another and how a lot of things regarding sexuality, though they may seem raw and unfiltered, don't exist in a vacuum. This has been kind of a side interest that I enjoy talking about with people but it wasn't anything that I looked into on my own until now since I'm getting interested in all of this more. So yeah... let's see where this journal goes

I wanted a poll version of Leo's topic lol.