soos_mite_ah

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:

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

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.

Self-Consent and Internalized Messages One thing that this website and pickup messaging made me feel was that sex and sexual acts were a requirement in a romantic relationship. That if you’re not pleasing your man sexually, then they have no point in being with you. And I am aware that this is very objectifying and transactional way of looking at relationships yet that is the messaging that I found myself internalizing after viewing pickup related content. I have debated whether or not to post this because I want to preserve the privacy of my partner even though this is an anonymous internet forum. But after writing this, I thought that this is important to share given the influence of pick up on this forum and because I did censor out the more private/personal parts of my sexual relationship. I have been with my current partner for 2.5 years now. We started dating back in May 2022 and we didn’t have sex until August 2023 even though we did do other things in the meantime. Much of it was down to me feeling anxious in my body and afraid of getting pregnant despite using protection and being on birth control because of the abortion ban in Texas. I was afraid of the possibility of something going wrong, like the condom breaking or me taking my birth control to early or late, and that resulting in a pregnancy that would ruin my life. I'm 100% sure that I wouldn't have waited this long had Roe v. Wade not been over turned. I felt ready to have sex in this relationship like 3 months in but I just didn't feel physically safe due to the overturning. We started having sex once a month, a week before my period. During the week of my period, when taking birth control, I’m on some placebo pills. The placebo pills don’t prevent pregnancy, so you can get pregnant on that week, but they are there to regulate your menstrual cycle and so you can have your period that week. We would have sex the week before the placebo pills so I would still be on birth control but I wouldn’t be waiting too long before I got my period. I knew that I wanted to have the confirmation of having my period within a few days having sex. That way I wasn’t going to be anxious for 2+ weeks after having sex to see if my period was going to come. The first 3-4 times doing this, I was anxious after sex. Despite taking precautions, I felt like I couldn’t trust my body since the safety net of abortion, the last resort emergency solution, was taken from me. After doing this a few times, I found myself feeling comfortable with my body and not being anxious about the possibility of pregnancy anymore. After that, my partner and I started having sex about 2x a month. I brought this up with my partner and how I felt about not having sex more often. I felt like this was fine for my sex drive, but I felt this pressure since I had this thing in my mind that told me that most couples have sex 2-3x a week. He told me that he wished that we could have it more often, but it wasn’t something that was particularly bothering him. To be fair, we don’t live together, and we see each other about twice a week. He spends the night at my place like once or twice a month. We’re not one of those couples who are attached at the hip due to geographical difference and due to having a life lol. I feel like we would be having sex more frequently if we lived together. But that is not to say we’re not affectionate with one another. We’re always kissing and cuddling when we’re around each other. He told me that us having sex like once or twice a month was alright and is what works for us as a couple and that we shouldn’t be comparing ourselves to other people. I think I internalized this fantasy of what a relationship should look like based on the experiences of what people in this forum expressed as ideal. It’s not that there is anything wrong with expressing that a person might want to have sex more frequently, like a few times a week, but it's more so this assertion that you can’t have a relationship without it. There were a handful of times where I felt like I had to have sex even though I didn’t feel like it, because I was afraid that I was depriving my partner since we haven’t had sex in a while. There were a couple times when my partner caught that I was forcing myself to have sex and had to tell me that I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do and we just opted to cuddle for the rest of the night instead. There were also a couple times where I was having some difficulties physically and I didn’t want to go on and he reassured me saying that he’s in this relationship because he cares about me and not because of whether he can have sex with me. He said that he would still love me and want to be in a relationship with me even if we never have sex again. I can’t say that this felt incredibly romantic. It isn’t romantic for someone to tell you that you don’t have to do anything you don’t feel comfortable with and that they will still love you even if you don’t have sex with them. That’s just being a decent person who doesn’t want to violate the person they love and doesn’t view the relationship as transactional. It’s the bare minimum. But, I will say, it felt reassuring more than anything else. It felt like a reality check I needed to cleanse myself of the misogynistic brain rot the alpha males of the internet have spewed. I understood early on before getting exposed to this content that sex means something different for different people. It can carry varying degrees of importance in a relationship, which is why it’s important to find someone who is compatible in that way. For some people, sex is a really important part of a relationship. For others, it’s not as important and it’s a nice bonus. But in the same way that pickup makes you think there is only one way to be attractive as a woman, it does also make you think there is only one way to be in a (let’s be real, heterosexual) relationship. That fucked me up for a while. I would say that my partner honors consent with me better than me honoring consent from myself. There were times where I felt insecure about my sexual performance because I didn’t want to have sex super frequently and because I had some physical issues here and there that made sex uncomfortable. And I always knew porn wasn’t an accurate depiction of sex. Most of those positions just look uncomfortable even if they look good on camera. But I still felt like I was somehow underperforming in this relationship or being a bad girlfriend because I wasn’t this confident and competent sex god that is capable to doing various acrobatics and twisting myself into a pretzel. It took me a minute but eventually I got to a place where I made peace that my partner and I are both alright with the frequency we were having sex and that I shouldn’t get wrapped up in the potential performance of expectations of what other couples may or may not be doing. It mainly took reassurance from my partner and me distancing my intake of the alpha male/ pick up type of content since it wasn’t healthy for me and was setting unrealistic expectations given the context of this relationship.

AAAAAAND THIS JOURNAL IS OFFICIALLY CLOSED I don't mind additional comments on here and I will respond but I will be moving my journaling to my new journal. There will be no new journal entries on my part here. Here is my new journal:

I’ve been meaning to start a new journal because The Joy Journal is getting too long and I want a fresh start. I also came up with a better title for my journal after a couple months of starting my first journal. I originally went into that one not knowing where my journaling would lead and as a result, I didn’t really pick the best title and I caught myself cringing a little lol. But yeah I’m fixing that problem as well as giving myself a new start since the last journal has too many posts to where I even have trouble keeping up with it and organizing my thoughts.

2025 Goals Apply for new jobs to get a job that utilizes my major and makes $120,000 in D.C. Study for the GMAT Get a better wardrobe Get back into working out (walking, weighlifting, yoga/ pilates) 3-5x a week Start volunteering again Figure out how the new job will work with your relationship and your lease Host Thanksgiving Get over my social anxiety and get answers regarding whether I have autism or not and what to do about that Get comfortable making Indian food by making something once a week Plan my next trip Make more friends who are fun weird and not questionable weird Read one book a month

Just added a 0 as an option. I didn't know that in the polls all the questions are mandatory lol.

Sorry for the late ish response. I took some time to watch some of their content. They seem pretty solid. Thanks for the recommendation Yeah.. I do think that this is urgent and a problem. I don't mean to minimize that but I think as a collective we have come back from larger back slides and I do have faith for the future in the long run. But short term, it's gonna get worse and a lot messier before it gets better. I appreciate this too. I started watching it and I'm like an hour in. It's gonna take me a minute lol.

Not Writing in this Journal / Cringe I decided to close one of my journals since it was getting too long and it was getting difficult to navigate. I also decided to close up that journal because I felt like I changed a lot from when I first started it and I wanted to start a new journal as a clear demarcation for this new place I'm at in my life. I also wanted to use the demarcation as a separation of sorts because I'm experiencing a healthy dose of cringe from my previous content. And now that I think of it more, yes that cringe was coming from that journal but I also feel like a lot of it is coming from here as well so I want to reflect on that. I read through much of my writing in this journal and I have some thoughts. 1. Sex feels very mundane and doesn't really occupy my mind much. I tried to watch porn for the first time in a while. Not surprisingly, it felt kind of boring because of the way it's not really shot in a way to appeal to women. I journaled about this in the past: But also, I think since I have sex more regullarly since first starting this journal, it just became part of life really. Sure it's enjoyable but it isn't this elusive, special thing that I want to psychoanalyze. I also don't usually think of sex anymore unless I have been away from my partner for a while. I remember before entering this relationship it was one of those things that was constantly on my mind but I'm glad that I have more mental space now lol. I'm embarrassed about horny posting a few times in this journal years ago. I'm going to go into talking about privacy in a minute but with a greater emphasis of privacy I have now in these matters, it feels kind of cringe to just be horny posting. Granted, I remember this being worse but as I read through this journal I probably found less than 10 posts where I found myself cringing at. That's not too bad since this journal has more than 180 posts. I'm not even going to bother deleting these posts becuase even though it's not an accurate reflection of who I am now, it was an accurate reflection at a certain point of time and I want to own up to it even though it is a little cringe. I think when you're in your late teens / early 20s it's pretty normal at that stage to be talking about and thinking about sex a lot even in more crude ways. I think it's more to do with sex being a relatively new thing for most people at that age and they're beginning to think more critically about it and figure it out for themselves. But I feel like as you get older, you have figured out much of this for yourself, and you have a more long term partner that discussing this feels like you're making a big deal out of the mundane and that you want to prioritize privacy more. 2. I'm hesitant to talk about my sexuality and my challenges when it comes to sex in this journal since I have been with my current partner for a while and I want to respect his privacy. I have encountered a few challenges here and there when it came to our sex lives from differing drives, physical health concerns, and just some of weird messages I have internalized from this forum and being exposed to pick up related content. I guess I have been hesitant to write about sex, not because I think it's dirty, shameful, immoral, or something I'm supposed to keep hidden away but because a lot of my experiences do closely involve another person in my life. I guess it's more about the way I go about explaining things and the amount of personal information I unveil on the internet. Maybe some things are best to journal privately first and then figure out how much I want to be open with. 3. I'm not as kinky as I thought I was way back when. I wrote about this numerous other journal posts but one thing I didn't really touch on is how the sexualization of fear doesn't resonate with me at all. I wrote in earlier posts on how there was a part of me that felt turned on by being a little nervous and tensed up and I feel like that's not the case anymore. I was writing from a place of anticipation and lack of experience and now that I'm more comfortable with myself and I know how I carry myself in these situations due to more experience, it simply doesn't appeal to me.

Table of Contents: Page 1 Dealing with Collective Trauma Liminal Stages Clicking with People and Trying to Make Friends Part 1: Leftists Clicking with People and Trying to Make Friends Part 2: High on Openness Gen Z Crackhead Humor Reflections: July 2020 to March 2021 Redefining Common Points of Self Improvement Feeling Profoundly Stupid Being Pushed in a Certain Direction Getting Back Into the Flow of Things Elements of Doomer Mentality Envy, COVID, and Rich Conservative White Kids HealthyGamerGG Temperature Check Part 1: Spiral Check Temperature Check Part 2: Ego Development Check Disassociation Imposter Syndrome Birthday Blues Page 2 Terrible Boomer Career Advice How Do People Even Get Themselves Into These Situations? Key Take Aways Part 1 Key Take Aways Part 2 Revisiting a Past Version of Myself Grounded Astrology and the Timing of My Own Life 555 Angel Numbers Personal / Professional Boundaries in My Writing Healthy relationships Part 1: Common Themes Who TF Would I Be Without the Internet Page 3 The Normalization of Drugs in Adult Life Cringing at Yourself in Your Formative Years My View of Long Term Goals Cringing at Yourself in Your Formative Years The Sad White Girl Trope Acknowledging that this Semester was Rough for Me Thoughts on Motherhood Goals for Next Year: Past Reflections Goals for Next Year: Where to Go From Here Parasocial Relationships Page 4 Relational Trauma Experiential and Factual Truth Autism and Neurodivergence: Unpacking Stereotypes Around Autism Autism and Neurodivergence: Neurodivergence =/= Mental Disorder and the Problems with Masking Autism and Neurodivergence: Unpacking my Ableism- You Can’t Have Bad Days Some Videos I Really Like I SHOULD’VE BEEN A WHORE!!!!!!!!!!!!! A Brief Life Update (1/11/22) How This Forum Influences My View on Men Zyzz Healing Your Inner Child Page 5 Media Consumption Analysis 2021: Life Experience Content? Media Consumption Analysis: Commentary Channels / Video Essays Media Consumption Analysis: Self Development Channels A Brief Life Update Featuring **Mild Depression** Mild Depression Learning from Old Relationships The Hellscape that was the Early 2000s My Current Routines Taking Stock of My Social Circle Who TF Are Y’all Hanging Out With???? I’m Getting My Hunger Cues Back !!!! Page 6 Finally Getting Over Myself Spiral Check April 2022 Kardashian Memes I Associate with Sections on this Forum The Beginnings of a More Spontaneous soos_mite_ah My Main Life Goals Random Little Thoughts Reflections From This Year 2022 What Does the Next Chapter of My Life Look Like Spiral Check October 2022 Ego Development Check October 2022 Page 7 List of Fears, Insecurities, and Triggers Ego Development Check Pt. 2 Thoughts on Graduating College Luxury Tiktok Compilations My First Job Out of College Posts I want to think about more The Happiness Spectrum Fake Growth v. Real Growth Surviving Capitalism How are Things Going with My New Job Coping Under Capitalism Part 1: A Desire for Meaning Coping Under Capitalism Part 2: A Grain of Salt Thoughts on Having a Kid Where do I want to Live Page 8 Ultimate Guide to Happiness: My Notes Pt. 1 Ultimate Guide to Happiness: My Notes Pt.2 Leaning into Boredom How Aligned Am I To My Top Values My Frugal Relationship with Money Listening to my Inner Teenager Impulsive Intrusive Thoughts Lefty Self Help The Men on this Forum and Why I Stick Around. Some Videos I Liked Page 9 My Changing Relationship to Writing My Hobbies and Interests Throughout the Years Mass Shootings Secondary PTSD: The Victims Coping Healing? That Funny Feeling Spiral and Ego Development Check Strategist, Construct Aware, and Unitive Stage Thinking of my 16 Year Old Self Page 10 I MOVED OUT OF MY PARENT’S HOUSE!!! Thoughts on Moving Out A Reflection on My Habits from Earlier This Year Things I’ve Figured Out Careerwise My Dreams Have Died How Aligned Am I To My Top Values A More Materialistic Phase in My Life? The 2000s The Toxicity of the 2010s The Toxicity of the 2020s Part 1 Thoughts on 1 Month Living Alone The Toxicity of the 2020s Part 2 More Thoughts on Motherhood Thoughts on Adulthood Thoughts on Womanhood Aging Page 11 Self-Infantilization 23 22 Palestine My Understanding of What is Going On Some Spiritual Thoughts Materialism Boycott Fatigue Cynicism and Desensitization The Mundane is Anything But Emotional Processing Update: Being Okay with Being Okay Emotional Processing Update: The Timeline of My Grief Part 1 Emotional Processing Update: The Timeline of My Grief Part 2 Thoughts on Advocacy Emotional Neglect Proximity to Violence The Aesthetic of Womanhood 1 Year Working in my Corporate Job My Trip to the North East Page 12 My Trip with My Dad Things I Want to Discuss in Therapy Media Consumption Analysis 2023 The Dread Additional Income Looking Back at Past Posts Reducing My Media Consumption Growing Pains Being Happy vs Being Right: Family Matters Being Happy vs Being Right: Plastic Surgery Romanticizing the Past (Again): 70s – 90s Edition But also, the past SUCKS My Dream Lifestyle My Inner Teenager and Her Bad Habits The Ways I Gentle Parent Myself An Update on the Dread Doomer, Gloomer, Bloomer Page 13 Some Videos I've Liked: I am not my type and that is ok Ramadan 2024 3/12/24 5:30 am: Reflections after Day 1 (3/11) 3/13/24 7:04 am: Reflections after Day 2 (3/12) 3/14/24 On and off from 6:30 am to 10 am: Reflections after Day 3 (3/13) 3/15 1:30 pm: Reflections after Day 4 (3/14) 3/16 1 pm: Reflections from Day 5 (3/15) 3/17 4:50 pm: Reflections after Day 6 (3/16) Lines of Development Lines of Development: Where to Grow from Here Not Wanting to Move to Stage Turquoise 3/18 6:05 pm: Reflections After Day 7 (3/17) and Day 8 (3/18) 3/20 9:15 pm: Reflections from Day 9 and 10 3/21: Day 11 Reflection 11:31 am 3/23 1pm : Day 12 Reflection from 3/22 3/24: Reflections after Day 13 (3/23) and Day 14 (3/24) 3/26 10 pm: Reflections After Day 15 (3/25) Page 14 3/26 10pm: Reflections After Day 16 (3/26) 3/27 7pm: Reflections after Day 17 (3/27) 4/5 2:15 am: Reflections after Day 18(3/28) through Day 24 (4/4) 4/5 2:40 am: Reflections from Day 25 (4/4) 4/6 6:40 pm: Reflections from Day 26 (4/5) and Day 27 (4/6) 4/8 4:45pm: Reflections from Day 28 (4/7) 4/8 11:00pm Reflections from Day 29 (4/8) 4/9 4:30 pm: Reflections from Day 30 (4/9) The Limitations of Leftist Policies A Wealth of Experiences Travelling to Every Country Places I feel like I don't have the guts to go to A National Park Wedding 3 weeks Post Ramadan May 2024 Page 15 Integrating the Life Purpose Course Found a few quote under a youtube video that I liked and wanted to take note of: The Toxic Hedonism of Male Travel Vloggers A Little Mid-Year Check In Upper Middle Class Mastery vs the Ordinary Material Things that Greatly Helped My Inner Work Feeling 17 Living in the 1999 Life in 2024 Zeigeist: Experiencing the Neoliberal Dream in Late Stage Capitalism How the Passage of Time In Adulthood is Fucking Me Up I Feel Stupid for Wanting to Prioritize Platonic Connections My Quarter Life Crisis Questions I Want to Contemplate / Answer with My One Month of Travel The Election Touching Grass Promotion Fame Why Everything is an Ad? Luxury Travel Page 16 You Think You Just Fell Out of a Coconut Tree? You Can Play with Your Friends After School Friendship Breakup Money as Freedom Post Travel Blues; Anti-Capitalist Angst Questions I Want to Contemplate / Answer with My One Month of Travel + Answers So Far Election Grief Loneliness and Social Media Addiction Career Thoughts Ambitions as an Anticapitalist Cozy Animals A Simpler Time Positives and Negatives for 2024 Deconstructing Self Help New Experiences While Travelling Part 1: Qatar and India New Experiences While Travelling Part 2: Vietnam and South Korea Wah! Luigi! Media Consumption Analysis Page 17 Starting A New Journal Table of Contents

Starting A New Journal I've been wanting to start a new journal for several reasons. Firstly, this journal is getting too long and I feel like I need to move for organizational purposes. I want to also have a table of contents section as I did with my previous journal titled "The Joy Journal" prior to closing that journal out. Secondly, I have been journaling in this journal for more than 3 years and I think I have changed a lot as a person to where I want a space where I can start fresh in. And what better time to do that than around New Years. I have been experiencing this degree of healthy cringe towards my older posts, think like back to 2021/2022 since I was in a different place in my life on many levels from cognitively, emotionally, as well as in my life circumstances. Part of me wishes I could scrub my activity on this website clean so I can start anew since a lot of my posts don't reflect who I am right now. But I'm not going to do that. They still represent my authenticity and what I stand for even though I am more private about a lot of things in my life now and present myself differently vs my posts pre 2023. Instead, I think having a new journal as a demarcation will be sufficient ,