The Ones Who Matter (Part 2)

I doubt I’ll be able to fit all these people into just 2 parts, so bear with me if this ends up being something like a 5-part series. I’ll try to keep all of these close to 750 words, though. Honestly, it’d probably help me organize things better as opposed to trying to make this one huge post.

In 2011, there was a huge snowstorm in Texas. So here’s Cameron having fun with icicles.

Anyway, Cameron was the one I met first. I scrolled through almost 6,000 Facebook messages to see if I could screenshot the ultra creeper message I sent to him when I found out that he would be one of David’s roommates, but apparently those messages only go back to sometime in the spring of 2011. Bummer.

Kudos to past me for being ballsy enough to message these guys in the first place and not care what they thought of me. Part of present me wants to say it was mostly because I had a boyfriend at the time, so I wasn’t really actively trying to make friends and impress people. Or maybe past me truly was more outgoing and bold. Or maybe it was because I was embarking on a new chapter of my life, and having gone through high school just waiting for college where I could meet a wider variety of people, I was just ready to start things with a bang. Anyways, I digress.

I have no idea what Cameron’s first impression of this creepy girl was, but I doubt either of us expected to become such close friends. In fact, I’d say that goes for all 3 of the guys who became my friends. But it’s just a little more surprising with Cameron given our awkward beginning.

I should note that David and I broke up within the first 2 or 3 months of freshman year. Long story short, he was very clingy. And then after we’d been broken up, I heard things that he’d done while we were still together that made it clear that he was clingier than I thought. For example, there was a huge thunderstorm one time, and he randomly showed up to my apartment. My roommates later told me he claimed that I called him over because I was scared or something like that.

Such a pretty princess. Or I guess he could be a prince, but that expression seems more like a princess.

Anyway, he was clingy, and he was my first boyfriend, and I had no experience with it, and I don’t like hurting people if I can help it. So the breakup was this huge messy ordeal where I tried to break up with him but he convinced me to do this trial dating period thing (like in Friends, if any of you watched that show). Cameron was there for all of that.

And he continued to be there for me whenever I’d bottled up my stress and frustration for too long and gone into a self-deprecating spiral of depression. He would sit there with me and just wait, even though most of the time I just sat there in silence because everything was too jumbled for me to even be able to vent properly. He’d sit there and hug me and wait, even when he was sniffling and crying and having trouble breathing because I had pets and his allergies are horrible.

And when I’d finally utter something intelligible, he’d give me his thoughts on the matter and not judge me for it.

It wasn’t really until junior year that we really started to become close. Freshman year, it was a lot of hanging out as a group. Sophomore year, we didn’t have any classes together, and as a result, I didn’t see him often outside of the sporadic group hangout. That was also the year I tried figuring out how to study, so I wasn’t very sociable that year, as far as I can remember.

We didn’t talk as often or regularly as I’d liked — mainly because in those periods of non-communication, I start to wonder if I’m being a bother, or if I did something to make the other person dislike me. But Cameron is the sort of friend where the relationship is just as strong as it always was, no matter how long it’s been since the last time you’ve talked to him or seen him. Of course, it wasn’t until the end of senior year that I finally began to believe and trust in that.

Expecto Patronum! Or something like that, yeah?
Somebody’s found themselves a wand. Which way to Hogwarts?

Anyway, Cameron also majored in neuroscience, and in junior year we had some of the same classes. Aside from talking about how cool neuroscience was and possible medical and ethical issues that might be applicable, we also talked about a lot of random stuff. Cameron is a pretty open-minded and non-judgmental individual, so I felt comfortable discussing a variety of different things with him.

It’s probably because of him that I’m more open about myself when meeting new people. More open and more capable of putting my thoughts into words (without as long of a waiting time).

He’s also probably the reason why I’ve become more comfortable with singing in front of people — I believe it was him who first heard me singing quietly while watching some other people play Rock Band during freshman year. Anyways, he told me I had a good voice; that combined with his unabashed singing and guitar-playing eventually gave me enough confidence to be comfortable with singing in front of him, which then made me more comfortable with singing in front of other people. (And now some people couldn’t shut me up if they tried.) So comfortable, in fact, that we occupied the gazebo on campus and sang random stuff when he visited during his spring break this past April.

Well, this post is nearing 1000 words and I’ve only talked about one person. I guess y’all can look forward to this being (at least) a 5-part series after all!

Until tomorrow~

DUN.

The Ones Who Matter (Part 1)

Ahhh, I went strong for almost a week. I apologize for missing my daily 750 word posts the past two days, but my parents were in town and I didn’t want to be sitting on my laptop blogging when I should’ve been spending time with them.

I hope you all had a happy July 4th! Mine was pretty much a regular day, with the added bonus of spending time with my parents. Meaning homemade food, having my gas tank refilled for me, and grocery and clothes shopping with my parents. That seems to be the usual course of events whenever they come to visit me here in Dallas.

Even though my parents had driven back home on Saturday, I spent the rest of that day plus Sunday catching up on sleep. I guess all the crappy quality sleep I’d been getting up until last weekend plus the return of Adderall on Thursday and Friday was just too much for my body to handle anymore. Today I slowly tried to get back into the swing of things with HRPG (I checked myself into the inn on Saturday to give myself a break).

I’ll try to wake up early enough tomorrow to take my Adderall; I really didn’t do anything productive aside from update recruitment posts and whatnot for my guild on AGG. And of course, that’s not truly productive — I mean, I still have to sign up for classes in the fall and find a job. If anything, I’ve just been procrastinating by using AGG duties. (I’m still in the process of convincing myself that starting with AGG stuff was my way of easing myself back into being productive.)

I apologize for the lack of images to break up the wall of text in this blog, but I neglected to take pictures of anything today. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to keep this post close to 750 words. (In true tl;dr girl fashion, half of my 750 word posts have been over 1000 words long.)

Somehow in the past day or so, I got to thinking about how I’ve changed while growing up, and the people who were influential in some of the major transitions I went through in life.

Beth was the first long-lasting friend I’ve ever had. I didn’t meet her until I was 13, when I transferred to her school. With both of us being in a small private school out in the middle of nowhere, our class was a whopping 9 or 10 people in size, and we were the smartest students in the class. There wasn’t anyone else nearly as smart as us, so I guess that probably had some part in us becoming so close.

When I transferred schools again in 10th grade, we didn’t talk much outside of holidays. But when we hung out, it was as if we’d never really been apart. At first, it bothered me, not really talking to her regularly throughout the year, but over time, I’ve gotten used to it. And now I know that our friendship won’t have changed in the slightest no matter how long it’s been since we last talked. That’s nice, as well as an important lesson for me to learn, since most of the other friends I’ve made have also turned out to be those kinds of friendships also.

David was my first boyfriend. I’m still not sure exactly what to think about that whole relationship. Past me kinda was on the right track back in the Xanga days when she answered this featured question about when a child should be able to start dating. Yet even though she had that kind of view about it, hormones and whatnot still let her do stupid stuff and there was just so much “what is this I don’t even” that went on in that relationship — particularly during the end of it. But no matter how unsure I still feel about having been with David, all in all, I’m glad I was with him for the time that I was. Without him, I most likely wouldn’t have met the guys who became my best friends throughout college.

And that’s an awkward story in and of itself. I was soooo creeptastic (and still can be).

The summer before freshman year, my college sent each student the info of their roommates so that they could communicate and get to know each other, decide who was going to contribute what kind of furniture to the common areas, etc. Well, after David had found out who his roommates were, I tried to Facebook stalk his roommates to introduce myself and tell them they would probably be seeing a lot of me and whatnot (this is painful to recall lol).

I think I found 2 out of the 3, but only one replied. That would be Cameron.

And now this post is nearing 800 words, so I will have to continue this story tomorrow. Until then~

DUN.

750 Words — Daily Effort

Look! There are no dishes in my sink!

Today was a “GOTTA CLEAN EVERYTHING” type of day. My parents drove up in the evening to visit me for July 4th weekend, so that plus Adderall gave me the motivation to do a more thorough type of cleaning. Things I did:

  • Finally washed the remaining plastic containers that I had let pile up over the months
  • Vacuumed the whole apartment (not as difficult now that I’ve been vacuuming semi-regularly since my last cleaning frenzy in May)
  • Wiped down the kitchen and bathroom with Clorox wipes
  • Collected all the trash in my car
  • Vacuumed my car

I also finally went through all the emails in my inbox. After assigning labels and whatnot, I went from around 120 emails to just 9 emails in my inbox. I don’t like having more than 25 or so emails in my inbox at a time. It stresses me out. Clutter stresses me out. Which is frustrating because (up until I found HRPG), I would let trash and stuff collect, and I would just retreat to a more clutter-free room of my apartment until that too filled up with clutter. And then finally, when I had no places left to retreat to, I would finally go into a cleaning frenzy and get rid of a majority of the clutter. And then, since that frenzy took so much effort I wouldn’t keep up with keeping things clean, which then just starts the whole cycle over again.

I know, I know. You’re probably thinking something along the lines of, “Praxling, if you just kept up with things daily, such as rinsing your dishes when you go to put them in the sink, you wouldn’t be stuck having to do a massive amount of cleaning all at once.” Believe me, I know it’s easier to just take that extra minute or two a day, rather than leaving it to pile up. But even if I say that to myself repeatedly, sometimes the rest of my brain is just like, “No. I don’t feel like it. It’s too much trouble, and I don’t see what I get out of it. Dun.”

And so I dun.

These are the custom rewards I’ve set for myself so far.

When I’m on Adderall, it’s a little bit easier. Sometimes I’m able to convince the other part of my mind that, yes, it’s not that much trouble. I’m already standing there at the sink, so why not just turn on the water and rinse my dish out really quickly.

Since I’ve been focusing on my health this summer and have gained a little weight back, now it doesn’t feel as tiring to do simple little things, and I’ve been able to convince myself to do things even when not on Adderall. Honestly, though, Habit RPG has helped significantly. Now that I’ve set it up, I can look at it each day and see the things I want for myself to do. Doing those things and checking them off earns me XP and money for my character. With that money, I can buy armor to improve my character’s stats (I’m a mage), or spend it on some of the rewards I set for myself.

It’s more motivating to do things when I use HRPG because I get to see the reward of gaining money and XP every time I do something. Having to pay in order to indulge myself in something — say, an hour of gaming — helps me keep myself more accountable. If I go over one hour, I have to pay again. I’ve also set up a habit for gaming. If I keep to my 1 hour limit, I get to click the ‘+’ button on that habit and get rewarded for my self-control. If I go over, I have to click the ‘-‘ button, which makes me lose XP and money, in addition to me paying for the gaming reward again.

I realize it’s probably really boring to hear me talk about this mundane thought process, but this gamification of my life just makes things so much more fun. Since I’m ADHD, I need a motivational push in order to consider doing normal everyday tasks that others might do out of habit. HRPG provides me with that motivational push.

I’m very much one of those “out of sight, out of mind” people. I can’t use the grocery/produce drawers in my fridge because I’ll forget about whatever I’ve put in there. I rarely use my freezer, so if I’ve bought frozen foods, I’ll forget about that too until I randomly open it. And then go, “Oh yeah, I bought that. I bought that a long time ago, didn’t I?” That’s why I keep collecting clutter. I have a thing, and I say to myself, “Hey, this is important so I’m going to leave it here where I can see it so I remember to take care of that.” But then I do that with lots of things, and then there are so many things to look at that I’m overwhelmed and don’t know which thing to do first. Prioritizing is another thing ADHD people have trouble with.

Anyway, that’s why HRPG is so helpful. Seeing an increase in XP and money every time I do something productive provides me with a measurable way to track my progress. Having something I can look at daily to know what the basic things I need to do to take care of myself helps make sure I do those things. And when I say basic, I mean basic. Brush teeth, wash face, eat breakfast, eat lunch, eat dinner. Take vitamin. Get out of bed. Take a shower. And at the end of the day, if I didn’t do a few of the tasks on my dailies list, my character loses HP. So trying to keep my character from dying motivates me to make sure I get those basic necessities done — which keeps me from dying IRL (lolz).

Part of me wants to feel ashamed that I need something to remind myself to do these things, but hey, I’m different! I’m not normal. So I should stop making myself feel bad by comparing myself to neurotypical people who don’t have to worry about breaking down these behaviors to this extent. Because there have been plenty of days where I mentally yelled at myself to get out of bed, to go do something. And when I didn’t, I started insulting myself. Believe me, I wish it were as easy to listen to myself as it is for normal people.

Well, I did not expect to talk about HRPG in this blog lol. Here, have a cat picture.

This is my mage in HRPG.

One thing that I wish for is that people try to be more understanding of mental disorders. It’s saddening when someone dismisses the problems of someone who has a mental disorder just because they don’t have those problems and they’re things that they consider simple and a daily part of life. Because that kind of attitude just frustrates and damages the self-esteem of the person with the disorder. And being frustrated, and having low self-esteem just makes it that much harder for those with mental disorders to work at the changes they want to make in themselves. I’m not one for using a mental disorder to excuse behaviors because that implies that no effort is being put into bettering that behavior. I am all for acknowledging that many behaviors and actions can be attributed to having a mental disorder; acknowledging it and understanding it allows for a way to work around it.

All right, I’m getting off my soapbox. I feel like that last huge paragraph was too rambling and jumbled to make any sense.

In any case, I hope you all have a wonderful July 4th weekend! (And that goes for even if you don’t live in the US.)

You should celebrate by dunning.

750 Words — Dreaded Drag’on of Dilatory

No call from Bath and Body Works today, either. I’m just going to go ahead and assume that I didn’t get the job, but I’ll probably call them sometime tomorrow just to make sure. In a fit of rage I applied to two clerical type jobs on Monster, so the quest for a job continues.

Look at that whopping 5 million HP. Defeating the drag’on will definitely take some time.

Habit RPG has started this new world event thing. A “drag’on” has appeared and is threatening Habitica. Every active user is automatically included in the fight against the drag’on, who takes damage whenever users complete dailies and to-do tasks. It’s interesting to see how lively the Tavern has become on HRPG as a result of this event. It certainly has motivated me a bit more to stay on track with my dailies so that I do the maximum amount of damage possible, and don’t contribute to the rage bar.

Filling up the rage bar triggers its Neglect Strike, which will result in some kind of damage to Habitica. However, that apparently doesn’t mean that we’ve lost or failed the quest. Since people were getting so worried about the rage bar filling up faster than the damage we’re dealing, one of the moderators stated that it’s been planned for that the rage bar will fill at least once. If/when the Dreaded Drag’on of Dilatory is defeated, everyone will get a mantis shrimp pet (which can be raised into a mount), plus 900 XP and 90 gold. Really, the only thing I care about is the pet/mount. I had to Google it when I first looked at the rewards, but check out this shrimp. DOESN’T IT LOOK AWESOME? I mainly like the color-scheme on it, but I guess it does look fairly intimidating as well.

In any case, you guys have HRPG to thank for this sudden daily blog posting style. I definitely recommend trying it for anyone who has been wanting to establish some new lifestyle habits. I mean, this is the cleanest my kitchen has been in months. I have counter space! And an empty sink! I’ve been eating 3 meals a day for 15 days in a row! And I’ve been cooking and eating real meals. I still only weigh 103 pounds or so, but that’s just a minor quibble and not that big a deal. The main thing is that I’ve gained weight and am finally over 100 pounds again.

So I’ve been going strong for about 2 weeks. I finally picked up my Adderall from the post office today, so we’ll see how that affects my habits. Will I become more productive? How difficult will it be for me to eat regularly on the medication?

Oh hey, look, I took this picture an hour before making this blog post.

Speaking of my Adderall, apparently my psychiatrist wrote me a 30-day prescription when I know I specifically asked for a triplicate (90-day). I called the mail-order pharmacy and requested that they send me a copy of the prescription so I could look at it (though I obviously don’t know how to read prescriptions, since I assumed that it was written for a 90-day when it was only a 30-day). I gotta admit, I’m pretty proud of myself for actually calling their customer service line when I realized that there was a problem. I feel like if this had happened while I was in undergrad, I would have balked at the thought of calling people. I may even possibly have just decided to accept it as it was and not make an issue out of it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still reluctant to call people and be confrontational even if the situation warrants for it, but I feel I’ve gotten better about it.

In other news (did I use this phrase yesterday, too?), I decided to stop by Walmart and just go ahead and buy some epoxy to fix my watch after looking it up on Amazon last night and finding that smaller, quick-setting bottles of epoxy were sold. If you look at the picture of my watch closely, you might be able to notice that I placed the ring a little bit off. I’m kinda hoping that I didn’t put enough epoxy on and that the ring will fall off again sometime in the future just so I can fix that. I wonder how long that is going to bother me. It feels like it’ll bother me for forever, but that would be a bit pathetic on my part.

I noticed that I’ve become oddly attached to my fail-of-an-arm-knitted-shawl that I made yesterday. Just as I had yesterday, I’m still sitting here with it draped around my shoulders and I keep fidgeting with it, so I’m assuming I like it even though I pretend that I kinda don’t. Maybe I’ll give arm-knitting another go sometime in the near future.

Here is another bonus picture of me sitting derpily with my shawl draped around me.

Until tomorrow~

DUN.

750 Words — Knitting Adventures

First off, no call from Bath and Body Works today, so I can only assume that they were busy and/or still going through checking people’s references. Hopefully they call by tomorrow, and hopefully I get the job so I’m not back on here whining and complaining about not being able to get a job.

It probably doesn’t look like there’s anything missing at first glance.

Today was rather uneventful, but then again, pretty much every day of my life is uneventful. I had planned on going to pick up my Adderall prescription and maybe go down to the Galleria to get my watch fixed at the Fossil store in there. It’s not malfunctioning or anything, it’s just that the decorative ring that denotes the hour, 15-, 30-, and 45-minute marks fell off. (Here’s what it’s supposed to look like.)This happened with the last watch I had — it was the same model, but I got a free replacement watch because one of their store employees derped when changing the battery, which resulted in my watch fogging up. The first time it happened, my boyfriend at the time had just reattached it with epoxy. I’d rather just do the same thing again, but I don’t really do anything that requires epoxy and wouldn’t want to buy some just to fix my watch. At the same time, I feel like even if I brought it to the Fossil store, they either wouldn’t know what to do with it, or the glue that they would use to fix it would only be a temporary fix. I wear my watch pretty much 24/7 and I’m not as kind to my jewelry as I should be, so I’m sure it would just be a matter of time before it fell off again.

I feel like there’s a potentially great watch pun in that last sentence, but I’m not gonna try to force it lol.

This was my first go at the pattern. It doesn’t look bad, but I realized when I was nearly done that I was repeating both the first and second rows for the pattern, when I was only supposed to repeat the second row.

Most of what I did today consisted of catching up on Dodger’s (DexterityBonus) daily “Coffee Time” vlogs while knitting. I had stopped keeping up with all my YouTube subscriptions sometime in February, so I’ve got a lot to catch up on. Thankfully, she started putting her uploads in monthly playlists, which makes it easier to watch and marathon while doing something else.

I felt a bit tired of working on my nephew’s blanket, so I decided to try something new: arm knitting. It’s supposed to work basically the same as regular knitting but with your arms, and projects work up much more quickly because arms are so much bigger compared to knitting needles. I decided to try this triplet shawl that I had pinned on Pinterest a long time ago. Well, after undoing my work 3-4 times, I decided that I’m not really into arm knitting. It’s probably partly because I had trouble dealing with 5 separate strands of yarn (for some reason some of them didn’t unravel from the ball as evenly as the others did), and then I kept ending up with 3 stitches on the last row instead of 2, so I dunno. I finished the project, but I’m not too sure on how it turned out. It might’ve also been the colors I had chosen; they just don’t look as pleasing to me as the various shades of blue that were used in the pattern instructions.

I had some leftover yarn pulled out from the first time I had tried the pattern (and done it wrong), so I decided to crochet a rectangle. I’m not exactly sure what I was planning on making when I started it, but I figured I could maybe make a hotpad — except hot pads are usually square. I often heat dishes up in the microwave to wear they’re too hot to touch when I go to remove them, so for now I’ve decided to use it as a derpy towel/oven mitt type of deal. Otherwise, I think it shows some promise for being a soft washcloth.

I’m really not sure what to think of my handiwork.

All in all, I spent about 3 hours working on this stupid shawl (the crocheted rectangle only took about 20 minutes max). The pattern creator said that arm knitting is amazing for some instant gratification and “it took [her] less than 30 minutes to make [it]”, so that just goes to show how fail this venture was for me. I suppose I should give myself some leeway since I’d never arm knit before, but still. This project took me what, 6 times longer than it should have? Super derp.

So yeah, we’ll see if I’m adventurous enough to try that again, but for now I’ll just stick to regular knitting with needles. Here’s a picture of what the shawl looks like when it’s not draped on me derpily, and here’s a bonus picture of me looking uncertain with derp dog charging in the background.

I tried sleeping on my stomach last night, and I think I was able to fall asleep more quickly in comparison to the past few nights. That may have also been due to me taking this zinc, melatonin, and magnesium combo in addition to my diphenhydramine sleep tablets. I tried lowering my thermostat to 80 Fahrenheit — it was too cold. I had to get up an hour or so after I went to bed to set it back to 83 because it was too cold for me to fall asleep.

That just about sums up my day. Fun fact: I’ve been sitting derpily with my derpy shawl draped around my shoulders even though I’m still not sure whether I like it or not. I keep repositioning it and probably looking all bewildered with an expression that says “I don’t know how to wear this what do I do with it.”

Anyway, I’mma go try to take a quick shower and make a sandwich before Nightmaren starts streaming P4: Golden in 45 minutes. I’ll be back again with a riveting post tomorrow.

DUN.

 

750 Words — Sleep (Or Lack Thereof)

It’s only 8 PM right now, but I feel rather exhausted. For some reason I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. It takes me a while to fall asleep, and I feel the quality of it isn’t all that great, either. I’m used to this sort of thing happening when I’m on Adderall, but I haven’t taken any for the past month or so because I ran out (picking up the new prescription at the post office tomorrow).

Here’s a picture of Jager. I am never going to be able to get rid of that Maruchan box now. He lies in it way too frequently for me to feel okay with taking it away from him.

I’m probably also tired from stressing out about whether or not I got hired at Bath and Body Works. I feel like it has become stupidly difficult to be hired for entry-level jobs. My sample pool probably isn’t big enough to give reasonable evidence of this, but c’mon, I’m more than capable of putting stuff on shelves according to a diagram, and while talking to people isn’t exactly my forte, I’m pretty decent at it when it’s one-on-one. If it’s because I’m “overqualified” since I have a bachelor’s degree, well that’s just even more frustrating!

Anyway, going back to the topic of sleep, a while back, my sister bought this lavender vanilla pillow mist for me as a gift. It’s an aromatherapy product from Bath and Body Works intended to enhance sleep, and when I went for my job interview at Bath and Body Works yesterday, I noticed they had a whole bunch of other products with that fragrance also; I’m thinking about maybe picking up  a bottle of their lotion in that scent. I don’t recall ever really having had trouble sleeping when not on Adderall, so I’m not sure why it’s being a butt right now. I guess it’s probably stress-related, and maybe I’ve just gotten so used to feeling stressed that I don’t even realize when I’m stressed anymore? In any case, I’ve noticed that when I flop onto the couch on my stomach for a rest, I pass out pretty quickly. I’m usually a side sleeper, but since I’ve spent the last few weeks flopping from side to side when I go to bed at night, I’m willing to try out a new sleep position and see if that does me any good.

In other news, I set up the plugin that automatically tweets when I’ve posted a new blog (Microblog Poster) to also post to my Tumblr. So if any of you came from there, welcome to my blog! I’d warn you that there’s not much of interest here on my site, but you should already know that from looking at my Tumblr.

This is my cute nephew, Owen! This was taken when he was about 2 weeks old — I went to visit him over Easter weekend. I’m just glad I like him lol.

I haven’t really done much today besides stress over my job application to Bath and Body Works and work on my nephew’s baby blanket. Oh, I don’t think I’ve mentioned on here that I’m an aunt now! My nephew, Owen, was born on April 11th. I’m actually going to be his godmother also! (I was really surprised when my sister asked me, so it’s a big deal to me.)

This blanket will probably be my biggest needlecraft project to date. The sweater I made my dad was pretty big, but this blanket shouldn’t be as frustrating since the pattern is so simple. It’ll just take a while to get it to a decent size. I’ll try to post pictures up here regularly to track my progress. (I’ll also post on my Facebook, so those of you who know me on there will see the same pictures.)

I’ve been trying to meditate more often recently, especially at night when I’m having trouble sleeping because I keep stressing out about all the things, but I’ve found knitting to be a pretty meditative activity. Counting and keeping track of rows and stitches keeps my mind focused on one thing, similarly to how in yoga, you’re instructed to focus on your breathing while doing the poses. It’s also nice to do while watching TV shows or gaming streams, since I usually choose fairly simple patterns that don’t require too much attention. I’d say that crocheting is also somewhat meditative, but it requires most of my attention since it’s so much easier to lose track of stitch count. I definitely enjoy knitting more than crocheting, but I still appreciate having the skills to do both. They each have their own projects where one method is more suitable than the other, so being able to do both just gives me that many more projects to choose from. Not that I need more. I still have a half-finished scarf that was supposed to be someone’s birthday gift last year. (They’ll still get it! Eventually . . . )

13.5 hours in, and this is all I have to show for it. I’m not sure whether or not to feel that I’ve gotten a lot done for that amount of time. At least it’s starting to look like a blanket!

I’ve been working on it more often, now that I’ve added “Knitting/Crochet” to my Habits list on HRPG. So every 30 minutes that I work on it, I reward myself, and since it’s already a fairly rewarding task, it’s like DOUBLE THE DOPAMINE. Or something. Ionno. Shameless neuroscience reference? Speaking of neuroscience, I’ve added “Read one ADHD article” to my To Do list since I have that folder of all these scientific articles I found when I first was diagnosed. You’ll probably be able to tell whenever that happens, as the content of my post for that day will most likely talk about it at some point or another.

Well, that’s about all I’ve got to talk about for today. The only other noteworthy thing I did was play Diablo III for an hour. The furthest I’ve played so far is the beginning of the third act (out of 4, and for only one character), so I need to finish that game. Since I originally started playing it with my brother-in-law, I felt like it was a multiplayer game experience thing, even though the previous Diablo games were single-player. Not to mention the fact that the Diablo franchise is kinda RPG-ish.

I’ve been going to sleep around 2 AM the past few nights, so I’m thinking I might be tired enough to pass out before midnight tonight. I’m sure tomorrow you’ll hear about whether sleeping on my stomach was a success or a failure.

Hopefully tomorrow or Wednesday, I’ll be able to blog good news about being hired at Bath and Body Works. Otherwise you’ll probably just get an angry rant about the difficulty in finding a job.

DUN. DUN ALL THE THINGS.

750 Words — Knowing What’s Important

Maybe with this 750-word daily task I have on HRPG, this blog may become a daily blog type of thing. I don’t think that’s particularly good or bad, but it’s just very different from the usual style and pacing of my blog posts — tl;dr and once every like, 6 months. So it might actually be a good thing overall; there would be content on here in between my really long, more thought-out posts, and since some of my longer posts have half been me just summarizing things up until the current time, those longer posts might not end up so long anymore. Ionno. I feel like I don’t do enough in my daily life to have a daily blog, but I guess I can always just switch over to a brain dump if I have nothing to talk about. If anything, it should provide some insight into my thought processes.

Maybe I should start carrying my camera around more often. At least then I’d actually use it. Plus, it would provide me with some media to insert into my posts so it’s not just a massive wall of text. Of course, I could always use my smartphone (and I’m pretty sure the camera on my phone has more MP than my camera), but my camera is in a perfectly usable state, and I feel bad for leaving it just sitting in a drawer for most of the year. That, and sometimes my phone and laptop don’t play nicely when I try to transfer files between the two through a USB cable.

Oh yeah, I’m pretty sure the majority of such pics would just be of my pets, so consider yourself warned.

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This is the cover of the Python 101 book I backed on Kickstarter. I only purchased the digital version, though now I kinda wish I’d gotten the physical book too.

Hmm, I should also try to do another song cover sometime. I should actually just practice my guitar more often, in general. I’ve added it to my “Habits” list on HRPG, but since it’s not a daily, I’m still letting myself get away with not practicing as much as I should. Same thing goes with learning how to program. That reminds me, I think there was an updated version to the programming book that I supported on Kickstarter. I’ve been dabbling in programming off and on for the past few years (I think the curiosity started when Nightmaren introduced me to Linux way back in freshman year of college), so buying an actual programming book was kinda a way to motivate myself to study it more regularly. I paid money for it, so I should use it, right?!

I’ve noticed I like to use a lot of dashes and parenthetical statements in my sentences. Since I have ADHD, it always annoys me when I come across such things while reading. However, those tend to be references in scientific papers, and so they usually don’t provide any additional insight to the topic being discussed. But when I’m writing a blog or something, I have thoughts interrupting other thoughts so regularly, that there just seems to be no other way around it — and I can’t just leave the interrupting thought out because I consider it to be worth mentioning also.

Speaking of reading scientific/educational texts, eeeeverything seems important when reading educational texts. I’ve started trying to read through the paragraph first to get the gist of what it’s saying, and then go back and highlight relevant information, but it still doesn’t cut down much on what I think should be highlighted. Sometimes I think, “Ohh, this is important because it gives the reason for why the study was performed, so I’ll highlight it. But the following sentence explains why they do this thing in the procedure, so that’s important too, right? Maybe I’ll just highlight it in this other color, then.” “Sometimes” was an understatement. That’s pretty much what I’m thinking all the time when reading through scientific papers. And then with all that multi-colored highlighting the paper is in danger of looking like a rainbow.

I know, I know, bolded words, section headings/titles, things in italics — those are probably things I should highlight. But that just doesn’t feel like enough to me. What usually tends to be the case is that I either highlight nearly everything, or I avoid the stress of trying to figure out what to highlight by just dunning it. I have started to take notes and whatnot in pencil, but it still doesn’t feel like a streamlined and easy process.

Well, that was an unexpected turn of topic. That was kinda fun. Just typing and not planning out what I wanted to say, or agonizing over wording and syntax. This was nice. I hope you readers enjoyed it on some level too, but if you didn’t, well it doesn’t matter (much)! It’s my blog, I write for me, and so I’ll do whatever the heck I want!

That being said, I do appreciate any comments, and thanks for even taking the time to read my blog in the first place. Until next time (maybe even tomorrow?!)~

I feel like I need to have a sign-off on these things. Maybe I’ll just end it with —

DUN IT.

(Fun fact, I just did a numerology thing on my name after reading the inspiration for Balance‘s online handle and this is what I got. How accurate does it sound?)

750 Words — Habit RPG

It’s been a while since my last post, and that was kinda a cheat post since it was copy-pasta’d from my Tumblr.

So I’ve recently come across an app called Habit RPG (click here for Apple version) to aid in my efforts to building better habits and getting rid of bad ones to work around my ADHD. I’ve tried a similar app before, but it wasn’t quite so fleshed out, and didn’t have a reward or punishment system, so there wasn’t much incentive to complete the tasks I’d put on the list. There also was no social aspect, and while I’m not a social person in general, Habit RPG (HRPG) has a very supportive social community; plus I’m trying to work on my socializing skills anyway.

I was pretty skeptical myself, but it has worked surprisingly well for me in the two or three weeks that I’ve been using it. You earn gold and silver for completing tasks, and use that to purchase rewards (which you can set for yourself). In addition, once you reach level 10, you can pick a class. There are guilds, and you can create/join parties to take on quests. Completing tasks does damage to the bosses in the quest, while missing an item on your dailies list results in everyone in your party taking damage. Each class has specific skills that come into play when fighting bosses, so the developers have really done a good job into making HRPG feel like an actual game.

The reason why I’m actually writing this post is because I took up a challenge in one of the guilds I’m in (you can join multiple), where one writes 750 words a day. The challenge described it as just having a 750 word brain dump session before the user gets onto actually writing the stuff they want to write for the day, but I’ll probably use it to help me write the thoughtful, planned out blogs that I usually post as well. Besides, it’d probably get tiring to see a 750 word post of senseless rambling every day. Or maybe you guys would find it amusing, I dunno.

750 words is turning out to be a lot more writing than I expected (approximately 3 pages, as per the task instruction). I might have to tweak it to be shorter, otherwise this might devolve quickly. Then again, the point of the task is to just type thoughts freely as a warm-up exercise, I suppose, so really, I might be defeating the purpose of the challenge by trying to actually write something meaningful. I guess I’ll stop the directed thoughts right here and instead type up my uncensored, scattered thoughts for the remainder of my 750-word quota.

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Here we go, okay. What should I type. Gosh, stop thinking about things to talk about and just type, already. Blah. Oh, people are talking in the HERPco Haven chat. Ahh, Ang thinks she’ll get to 110 for this SCQ event. I’ll be lucky if I can make it to 100. I really want the 100 level demon. She’s pretty and has a good skill, plus I need more 5* demons for my CQ team. It’s a shame that Hand of God has rather low stats and a low trigger rate for her skill, but I guess what else can you expect for the level 80 demon? Especially since more free players can get there, and Zynga would rather people have to pay in order to obtain the good cards.

Can’t believe I’m talking about AGG here, and that I’m thinking about it so much. But I guess that’s to be expected — it’s become a pretty big part of my life since I joined the +Anima guild in March. +Anima was a pretty good manga. I should reread it sometime. What what, in the butt. Fusk, I hate Dennis for showing me that song. Not that I necessarily dislike it, it had a pretty catchy beat in it, but I mean, it’s talking about butt sex. :/

Besides, it also reminds me of the Rick Roll, and while I also do not dislike that song, the what what song isn’t something I want to remember. And now I cry sometimes when I’m lying in bed, to something something all up that’s in my head, aiii! I don’t know the lyrics to that song, but thas fine. I doubt many do. Makes me think of Cameron every time lol, though I guess I made that association concrete myself by making that song his ringtone. And now I’m thinking of Jinkan no Tanaka, which just reminds me of Nightmaren. Jinkan no Tanaka is also really catchy lol. Can’t remember what ringtone I have set for Churrrlie, though I remember at one point it was the theme for the wise owl in Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. Oh look, 793 words, I can stop now yayyyyy.

Phineas Gage

So I’ve been studying for my neuroanatomy final for tomorrow. One of the topics covered in this unit is the functions of the various cerebral cortices. Higher-order function cortices, to be specific.

I have ADHD, which involves an impairment in the prefrontal cortex (PFC).

So while reviewing the slides on the PFC, I get to where we talk about results of lesions to specific areas of the PFC.

I mean, I was already aware of most of this stuff.

But then I saw the name “Phineas Gage” in my notes. He’s the go-to example for what can happen to a person after receiving damage to the orbitofrontal area (OFC) of the PFC.

And then it hit me – I’m ADHD = I have an impaired PFC = I have an impaired OFC = I’M FUSKING PHINEAS GAGE.

I know, it’s pretty obvious, but for some reason I didn’t make the connection until now. And I guess it just stunned me because in general, society doesn’t seem to take ADHD diagnoses very seriously. “It’s overdiagnosed”, “you’re just using it as an excuse to be lazy”, “you faked the diagnosis so you could get the Adderall”, etc. And most are only aware of its effects in an academic setting.

I was only diagnosed about a year and a half ago, and I still sometimes question whether I truly have it, or if I’ve just convinced myself that I do. So I guess suddenly comparing myself to a well-known patient who received damage to the same area in which I have an impairment just made me realize the potential severity of problems that people with ADHD can have.

Ironically, it’s comforting. Of course, I’ll still beat myself up over making impulse purchases, playing video games (or blogging on Tumblr) when I should be studying, being unable to control my temper, not being able to study unless when procrastinating (if even then), spending an hour on an email that should only take 10 minutes max, etc.

But it’s nice to be reassured that my problems aren’t insignificant, that I’m not a failure at life because I’m having so much difficulty doing things that other people do easily or out of habit (e.g., eating regular meals, doing the dishes, taking a shower, getting out of the fusking bed). It’s nice to be able to give myself proof that I have good reason to feel bad about myself.

Wait wat. That last sentence makes sense on some level, I know it does! :<

And of course, this post that was only supposed to take like 10-15 minutes ended up taking an hour (or more?) because ADHD. WOOT.

If anyone’s curious, here’s the link to the paper I used for those paragraph images about Phineas Gage and the OFC. And yes, those of you who came from my twitter, I made a post from the thing I tweeted like an hour ago.

A Sound Soul Dwells Within a Sound Mind and a Sound Body

 

I got this as a tattoo in December (2013) to remind myself that I need to care for myself both mentally and physically.

 

The title of this post (and the line in the image above) are a quote taken from the Soul Eater manga. It’s a central theme, and in the anime, this line is repeated at the beginning of each episode. I was first introduced to the series during my senior year of high school which was – holy crap – 5  years ago.

I had always appreciated the holistic perspective that this sentence presents regarding one’s well-being, but when I was diagnosed with ADHD and first starting medication for it about a year and a half ago, it became a sort of mantra. Since I was (and still am) prescribed Adderall, I had difficulty sleeping and a suppressed appetite due to the side effects. I still experience those even now, but to a lesser extent — and those first few weeks (or was it months?) were especially rough. In this post, where I first revealed my diagnosis and the sleep/appetite troubles I was having, I even stated that “[s]eeing as a healthy diet, good night’s sleep, and regular exercise are essential in maintaining good health for normal people, the same goes for people suffering from a [mental] disorder.” (Also, wtf, “revealed”? This isn’t some magic show, self.)

Well, I don’t exercise any more than I did back then (i.e., not at all), I’m doing fairly well at maintaining a consistent sleep schedule — or at least, I have been for the past few weeks — and while I still don’t eat as much as I should, at least my weight loss has finally plateaued. In terms of taking care of myself, I haven’t really improved much. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve made much headway on being productive, either. At least, not for my own sake. I’ve known this for a while, but I’m much better at caring for myself and being productive when it’s for someone else.

I never would have expected to spend so much time on a trading card game.

Which explains why I went so overboard with making spreadsheets and stuff for a guild I joined at the end of February. Seeing as it’s really the first guild I’ve ever been in, I’m still astonished at how much time and effort I’ve put into it, especially since it’s a phone game. I’ve mentioned once before how I always found it difficult to connect with people the few times I played MMOs, in spite of the anonymity that should theoretically allow me to look and act however I want. Apparently I’m as bad at talking to people online as I am in real life.

But I guess I’m not as bad as I once was. I seem to have gained some self-confidence, since it’s become easier to befriend people than it used to be. I’m more laid-back and easy-going than before — and if you’ve only recently met me and think I’m neither of these, then just imagine how bad I must’ve been in the past. I’m sure that holding an officer position during senior year in a student organization with a flamboyant president who has a flair for trolling — and just having them as one of my closest friends for 4 years — played a large part in that. But I feel that the majority of this progress was a result of coming to terms with having ADHD, and thereby being able to understand myself better from that perspective. Having become more accepting of myself in light of that, I’m more comfortable with the idea of talking about my personal shortcomings and struggles. This is partly to reassure others who are having similar difficulties, as well as to hopefully find a self-improvement partner who will keep me accountable and provide encouragement (and I the same for them). Because trying to bootstrap your way to a better you just doesn’t work when you have a bunch of things you want to improve.

And I think this is why I’ve become surprisingly close to a few of the people in my guild. One thing we all seem to have in common is our low self-esteem. We are all self-deprecating, and it makes me so sad when they talk that way. Having done the same thing many times, both on this blog and IRL, I know how mean we can be to ourselves sometimes. When we talk about each other, we focus on the good qualities the other has, but we are reluctant to let ourselves believe each others’ words, because “they haven’t seen how [insert negative adjective here] I am.”

So my main purpose in writing this post is to tell us all to stop listening to ourselves when we’re in the dumps and have only derogatory marks to say. Because we’re wrong! Everyone has their off days, and we’re not as lowly as we think we are. The things we dislike about ourselves, we can change. It’ll probably be hard as fusk, but it’s possible, and I’ll help in any way I can. And don’t even try to convince yourself that you’re not good at anything, because we’ve all shown that we, at the very least, have the capacity to care a great deal about others. The ability to accept and appreciate each other in spite of each others’ faults. And if your low self-esteem is anything like mine, you feel bad for making others worry about you, but feel glad that they do, and then feel bad that you feel glad about someone worrying about you.

So don’t make me worry about you, and just listen to me when I say that you’re better than you think you are.

Believe in me who believes in you.

And if all that was too tl;dr to read, then I think Pink sums it up perfectly.