tarobun

#16 small update and CBT reflection no.1

2018-05-29T02:45:10Z

Don't know how much has been going on since my last post. The usual socializing, etc. Went on a fun-ish and novel camping(*) experience but also been kind of wound up lately with work. One of my co-workers went on vacation for three weeks and left me as the sole engineer on a high-priority effort that has since kind of deflated but is ongoing. She's coming back tomorrow. Another guy, the data scientist, got married and had a week-long honeymoon. Once he got back, he quit -- or was fired, unclear.

I don't know if it's related to the work stress, but I've also experienced a resurgence of insomnia :( I thought it could be related but there seems to be more to it, since I also had a tough time sleeping on the weekend, when I experience significantly less stress.

Speaking of which, I've decided to co-opt this place to write some CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) journals since I can tell there are issues with the way I react to work and studying on the weekends.** Maybe I can work through these issues myself. Right now, I'm avoiding some work that I've put off for the whole Memorial Day weekend.

Factors which I think contribute to this / triggers:
- If I don't get started on work early enough (which is a happy feat if I do manage it), I start to feel anxious about how the day has gone and my mind resists the prospect of work (a stressful sentiment). There are some "mind distortions" (fears) around this: it's too late for it to go right now, the day has been ruined already, there's no hope of getting as much done as I want, etc.
- I'm not sure I do want to dedicate so much of my day to work, if I'm worried I will even get much out of it. The fear that I put in effort, but it'll be wasted time and feel bad in the end. That I won't feel rested and like I got much done, going back to work on a Monday, even if I tried and dedicated my time to it.
- ... ? Distractions can't focus on writing this
(This is taking a while and we need to go back soon to watch the Bachelorette anyway.)

Things to do:
- 10 minute breather break -- no Twitter or distractions. Just to calm down and deal with anxiety directly instead of bad, endless distractions that do nothing to directly address anxiety.
- Writing a journal to think about strategies and my emotions, like I am now.
- ? Take a walk, swim, or drink tea to reset?
- Just get started -- promise to work for a limited amount of time, constrain it so it seems less overwhelming.

Maybe after the Bachelorette, I'll try to swim to clear my head / since I haven't gotten around to it the whole weekend, and fit in just an hour or two of work. But if the premiere goes on for too long, there may not even be enough time for that. So if not, we'll see.

* Not sure it qualifies as a full camping experience since there were showers and amenities, but we did sleep in a tent!
** Hey, since I tend to write about my anxieties and ruminations here anyway, might as well (resign myself &) just do the same, but point it to a productive angle.

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#15 tarobun's post-mortem on balancing life

2018-04-16T15:11:29Z

Hey guys, I haven't posted in a while. I started using a moleskin journal and I can usually jot down a few loud thoughts there. Although I like the idea of writing often, I've been trying to balance the rest of my life first. And even then, I'm not sure whether I would write for Medium or for this blog.

Anyway, it is 7:14 a.m. and I am sleep-deprived and tired, hence why I am writing here now. My goal was to balance my life this weekend, so how did it end up like this? I should never have to stay up late or cut down on hours of sleep to get more work done, versus getting up early to swim and study a little bit or get a little bit of an early start. It feels like it deserves a post-mortem (in technical terms, though I have never written a real post-mortem so am not super familiar with the actual format). Maybe I'll write one each time it happens.

Anyway, here's what I didn't do that I needed to get up early to do:
- brainstorm ideas for my company's new teams, we're having a meeting today to kick off reorganizing our teams around core metrics
- work on a feature that was due last sprint, and some bugs from the previous sprint (bolding issue, the icon used for a notification)
[] also did not manage to swim / exercise over the weekend, was kind of hoping to yesterday
[] did not manage to make a dent in cleaning up the boxes of paperwork I have in the room, which would improve my relationship with Rachel

(What I did do:
- yesterday: watercolor in the morning, yoga, mostly study Ruby, play a bit of dappervolk, get back to people on tinder and facebook
- the previous day: spent 1/2 day in bed, having a hard time feeling motivated to get up and do anything. Rachel helped with her persistence; went to rec room and mostly dappervolked while reading a tiny bit of Active Records Associations. Went back to house due to rec room reservation & studied slowly offline, the same and a little bit about Ruby on Rails best practices. Also watched a movie at the end of the day with Mom and Rachel, East Side Sushi set locally in Oakland.
- friday: long-boarded, meet up with college friend for ayce hotpot, walked around San Mateo, quested for Dole Whip, went to the library and borrowed books. Got tired and dappervolked instead of crochet or watercolor or work or brainstorming.)

I'll admit, I am ambitious and I got a decent chunk done, thanks to the additional day I took off on Friday. But I should have had enough time yesterday to take care of work work stuff and not have to undermine myself this morning to compensate. I guess part of it is a matter of prioritization -- I wanted to get to a certain point in my Ruby studies (and didn't get there, but was satisfied with having made significant progress), but I let it stretch on for too long -- all the way to 6 or closer to 7 p.m., leaving myself tired.

A few take-aways:
- Focused energy and motivation is a limited resource that you have to build up, over time.
I thought I could work after dinner to take care of the work stuff, but "working" for a long haul - about 6 hours, even though I took it easy and had plenty of distractions, sapped up my energy and I don't fault myself for feeling like I needed to unwind and couldn't work (or even swim) much more after that. I ended up dappervolking, relaxing in bed, and reading manga.
- You tend to get sleepy and more tired after meals. It's just a pragmatic fact.
- Timeboxing things and prioritizing (hey, wanted to study Ruby a bit first? OK, 2 hours, then work since that is higher priority for at least two or so hours, and get back to studying Ruby afterwards if that's progressing fine)

I'm noticing resistance inside myself towards the third item, because I think my nature is to hate context-switching. It feels disruptive and like it breaks up my focus... but it is probably appropriate. The other reason why I resist switching to other things while I am in the middle of something is I often feel I haven't made enough progress, and that if I stop there, I probably won't get back to it and feel satisfied by how much progress I made. /:

Looking forward:
I want to leave work at work more often. I'm afraid long-term of running myself into the ground with these unhealthy work habits and burning myself out.* Studying is one thing, but I shouldn't have to work after or before work to compensate for my progress at work. It's been my goal for a while to do more hobby stuff at home, but I've noticed that in the past week or so, I usually end up staying late at work instead to try get more progress on something easy done (because I am slow and detail-oriented, and probably don't prioritize 100% correctly), then come home tired and sleep and my life isn't really that balanced in the end. I also had trouble sleeping a day or two because I would be stressed in the background, and play dappervolk at night, shining the cell phone light into my eyes.

I like watercoloring and gouache. I'd love to be able to:
- do one watercolor or gouache painting a day, after getting home before getting to bed
- if not watercolor or gouache, some other hobby like crochet or reading
- study hard-copy books (more convenient than digging out the laptop to try view downloaded documentation offline)
- washing garments and ironing other garments for the next day [... mending stuff sometime]

in the mornings:
- swim at least once per week for some fitness exercise
- longboard and roller-skate on other days with Rachel, to get better at fulfilling sport hobbies, before going to work
- shower & study or get a head start on work

in general:
- wake up earlier bit by bit in the mornings for the above goals;
- have good habits, like dental hygiene, being prepared for the next day, sleeping at a good time
- want to get back eventually to transcribing Mom's story. it will feel unfinished if I never get back around to it

An overarching problem at work is that I'm reluctant to be honest about my progress because I have an ego and don't want to admit I'm behind on a simple task because I shouldn't need help with a certain class of things.. predicaments I end up in just because I am stubborn about the way I work or what I want to get done. Also, abase your ego too often by saying you can't get stuff done or you're struggling with prioritization, and it damages your self-image and others' perception of you in the long run. A thing about avowal / disavowal. It probably easier to talk about these things with people I carefully select on a 1:1 basis. You have to carefully manage the way you express yourself and other people's perception of you.. at the same time, sometimes you just have to take a plunge.

---

Other comments:

I seem to be mentioning vague allusions to how I feel about work and my work-life balance to people I know often, probably as a way of cementing how I feel about work and gathering feedback from people I know. But at the same time, I don't really want that much feedback. I likely won't use it. I have a thing, where I let things be, and I sort things out on my own if they need sorting out. :P It's my stubbornness again -- I approach things the way I approach them, and I have confidence in myself to handle things on my own. Anyway, I just want other people to register how I feel and maybe get and hear a little bit of their response. But it actually sounds alarm bells in other people because I express this stuff a lot, so something to be cognizant of.
I often see posts on Twitter about making sure you get enough sleep, don't stay at work too late, etc. and like them, but it's ironic that I don't really adhere to the advice much in practice. Some posts talk about feeling this bullshit need to prove yourself in your 20s, and I think I feel that pressure in my life right now. (Proving myself as a competent and productive engineer.) I have to remember it's a marathon, not a race -- people have to accept me as I am, and help me get to where I want to be, without trying to rush things all that much.
Related to the point above, it's BS because in the end, why are you selling your life? for work, which you pretend you care about in the moment and you do, but you don't REALLY care about in the large scheme of things. Especially when you die, and you've sold your life to someone else's prerogatives. Life is finite and time is very realistically limited. Some people live to be ambitious, have a great career and be the best or well-recognized in their field. Honestly though, while it's nice to be a good engineer and I'd like that a little bit, it's much more important to me to have enjoyed a balanced life, lived well with friends and engaged in my creative hobbies and made some things of my own that I wanted to make, than to be a really good engineer. Rather be a mediocre engineer, if necessary.

* I also don't think I do as well at work if I am often sleep-deprived and stressed.

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#14 sick and workplace anxiety

2018-01-25T19:07:07Z

Lots of little eddying and swirly anxieties about being sick and missing work for several days in a row. Today is Thursday and I'm still not in the office. A little re-cap to keep track:

Saturday: started having dry coughs like my throat was irritated. Thought it was from inhaling second-hand smoke from hanging out with folks that day.

Sunday: fall sick in the afternoon with chills and little fever. Rest most of the day after yoga instead of going mushroom hunting with mom.

Monday: don't recall if I had a fever overnight but felt better in the morning. Even concluded on twitter that bulk of it was over (probably felt confident because cough seemed better and thought I broke through the fever). Tried to do a little work, was dismayed at how slowly it was going with all the tinder/acpc breaks. Heated up a little bit around 4:30 p.m. and took a break until 5, when I set off for ballet, where I felt fine enough.

Monday night: another fever and cough at night again.

Tuesday: told work I was experiencing a little dip and was potentially going to rest. Rachel made me a ibuprofen cocktail. I hauled myself to the rec room around 11 a.m. and did plodding work until 8 pm, even feeling not very great in the evening. Started having a runny nose. By evening had a temperature again. Another fever at night, with an earache and it felt like some fluid in the ear.

Wednesday: did some communication with my manager at work (first time I mentioned it was the flu) and said I would try to go see a dr to check on my flu progress and still conditionally get some work done. Instead I rested in bed all day, napping through light fever. Felt bad in the evening when I could have worked but didn't quite feel like it (was wet/rainy outside, limited hours in rec room, evening work etc... one of few occasions where I definitely feel wifi in apartment might have helped). Note: slight ache in left side of abdomen near pelvis, like lymph node or kidney area.

Wednesday night: no fever for first time. Not deep sleep probably because I napped all day.

Thursday (today): Still wasn't sure about going into work since cough / nose symptoms weren't entirely gone. Wasn't sure I wouldn't get another fever during day either. (Basically it would be wise to stay safe by staying home and evaluating today, at least the morning.) Checked on internet again: "contagious 5-7 days after symptoms start". Also still contagious if coughing/sneezing and still getting fevers. Don't go in until 24 hours since any fever has ended. Pregnant women at work (compromised immune system, implications for baby if they get the flu) definitely on my mind. Communicated with manager.

Go back and forth between "am I sick enough.." or "should I go see a doctor (worried abt long/lurking chest infection leading to pneumonia, occasional but mild chest & abdomen pains, whether my cough got worse or not)" ... Worried people will hate me for being sick and missing work for so long. A little aggrieved that I act optimistic (strain of my wish fulfillment syndrome) and keep on thinking I'm recovering but it takes longer than I project to others. Know that it's a bit silly that I agonize a lot over working and promise getting work done to others when I'm sick with the flu (feel like a workaholic/perfectionist, as a flaw). Wondering if it's starting to get late to finish all my work now. Mostly I need to put all of these thoughts away in the dumping bin since they're not helpful to me and just get some work done now that I'm at home anyway. 😤 I might want to get a face mask for tomorrow if I end up going (no fever today, and limited coughing and sneezing).

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#13 sick and ... (cont.)

2018-01-24T02:59:44Z

feebly / feverishly making haphazard code changes to try to just get some bulk done so I can worry about trimmings instead of the main bit tomorrow orz

so slow and plodding, something to reflect upon sometime orz

EDIT (8:07 pm): thank god I finished with that and can throw my towel in for the day and rest and--hurkgurk. that was probably a lot more of a torment than it had to be...

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#12 brainstorming on old company

2018-01-24T00:35:45Z

My mind often mulls over how I felt at my previous company and ways to articulate it, to myself and others. Here are some little mental highlights:

- stifling, corporate environment
--> we care about our work and meeting our targets, not about you (that said, they did invest in personal development and had good benefits, so not true in all aspects)
- stuffy, pretentious & egocentric culture
--> "meritocracy"
--> "working here is so great" "we are exceptional" etc.
- vaguely hostile (to authenticity, freedom of expression, happiness)
- formal, not casual work environment
- aloof co-workers
--> lack of real mentorship attitude (aside from maybe one or a few people)
--> some pettiness on part of some co-workers (at least one was petty, one was defensive, one had an ego; the people from France were plain hard to work with (perfectionist, uncompromising, lack of understanding). generally, some snideness, badmouthing and alliances was a typical attitude. conflicts were not well-managed or resolved. suffice to say, I didn't love working with the people there, although I could tolerate it.)
- related to subpoint above, politicking. felt limiting and that I didn't want to deal with it if I rose in ranks in the future
- a little bit of bro culture, e.g. oh we all like to party and drink and socialize ... male leadership and authority was the default / norm. I would have stuck out being feminine or myself in certain respects, which made me less confident to do so
- lack of transparency; feeling like they were happy to try to take advantage as me as a junior developer by paying me a low salary

What this translate to in what I look for:
- empathetic culture, where co-workers on a team genuinely care about each other as team mates and enjoy working with each other
- some mentorship attitude
- humility as a company value (not hubris or overinflating egos to make external impressions)
- lack of ego in individuals who lead the company or manage the team (and in general team members)
- an environment that fosters creativity (freedom of process, open feedback and suggestions)
- casual environments rather than one oriented to maintaining a professional outlook and conformity
- an environment where I feel comfortable being myself and feel empowered to grow authentically and act confident
...

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#11 sick with the flu

2018-01-24T00:08:32Z

Get your flu shots, all. It's proven to be a deadly year with the flu so far.

I'm working from home since I don't want to get my pregnant co-workers sick with this bad flu. Making plodding changes to copy a static HTML file over to React (a JavaScript framework for rendering website pages). It's quite a tedious task. I may have to think about a less detail-oriented approach to get this done for the other page much quicker, tomorrow/Thursday.

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#10 new year review + reflections

2018-01-02T03:37:34Z

It's been a while since I've written anything on here (seems like two months!). I lose track of what I've already mentioned, so forgive me if I repeat details.

We moved. We had the option of picking between a cheap one bedroom in Nob Hill, around 2000/mo, and a nicer apartment in an apartment complex along Embarcadero, for roughly a thousand more. We ended up picking the nicer apartment for a few reasons, but most of all that we just wanted to live somewhere nice for once. I don't regret it; I'm pretty satisfied with where we ended up.

I left my old enterprise company working on storage software to go to a little start-up in SOMA that has a little raw and early-stage platform for people to make arts/crafts and DIY videos on their mobile devices; their mission is to connect creators on their platform to brands willing to pay for their content to advertise their products, and enable those creators to make a little hustle from their hobbies. I'm not in love with the whole short-form content creation and brand stuff, since it doesn't feel 100% authentic to me (I guess I prefer the long-form format of youtube videos), but overall I've been feeling relieved and liberated since starting my new job.

The process of leaving my previous company felt pretty drawn-out and difficult. I had a lot of 1:1s with people on my management chain, from my tech lead, manager, CTO to the CEO to explain why I was leaving. At the time, it was hard to put in words. Now, I feel the best way to put it, bluntly, was that it felt stifling and stuffy at my old company. It was a decent enough workplace, but all the French people, the men, the fact that we were working on an enterprise product, made me feel like I was suppressing myself at work. The French-influenced culture felt pretentious and ego-centric, with all its emphasis on "meritocracy" and impressing the customer. Besides, there was a fair bit of drama, though managed, and I didn't like some of the people I was working with.

To put it simply, I wanted to work somewhere more casual, where I would feel at ease interacting with my co-workers, and work with people I genuinely liked and enjoyed working with. The culture, while tolerable, felt subtly masculine and French/European and white, due both to the people who worked there and the cultural values. None of these were such pronounced factors in and of themselves, which made it difficult for me to articulate to others, but given the chance to work somewhere where I had a gut feeling I had a better chance of being happier, I gladly left. That said, it wasn't all bad, work-wise and even with respect to the culture and people, and I gave up a lot in terms of material comfort, perks and stability. I was not happy, but I was comfortable. But I did not want to be complacent, either. It just goes to show what matters to people and their happiness--in other words, whether they will stay at a company, in the end, are often not factors which are so tangible, but in fact the soft factors that are harder to manage: things about culture, people.

Enough about work. I'm satisfied with my decision and looking forward to see how it pans out, despite the occasional doubts and shocks of cold water (most recently hearing our recent revenue performance :P).

In the last year, I didn't date much, because I didn't really want to. You know, yours truly, your local clam-like introvert who seeks refuge in her hermit shell. :P But since I just turned 24, I wonder if I need to put in a little more effort to seek someone to date, despite feeling so busy in the rush of the last few months. There's the semi-crush I still have on my previous co-worker. I'm thinking a few months down the line, I'll watch a movie he mentioned and use it as a pretext to message him and see if anything comes of it. (How calculated and evasively indirect! Worth cackling at myself.) In the meantime, I shouldn't limit my horizons, but the effort it takes is so much... Maybe it's futile to think about at the moment. :P

Despite the move and change in workplace, and my hope that those two factors could result in a change in my own disposition, I've still been struggling to muster drive and will to do much outside of work. Hobbies like watercolor and crochet are difficult to feel motivated to do, and I never get around to studying even though I have a lot of new things to ramp up on at work. Lately I've just been reading a fantasy book that I've been working through slowly, at a plodding pace. Reading a bit was a welcome change from the general book starvation I had been undergoing, but it was also an easy cop-out for me to resort to, along with Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. When I spend most of my free time doing either of those two things, or lying in bed, instead of taking care of my manifold errands or doing something self-improvement related, I start to feel feeble and futile, like my life is devoid of much meaning, or productivity (thanks capitalism for that mentality), and most of my life is going to pass me by in this manner.

So it's a good thing, that I just wrapped up that book (a decent one, by the way, called Spirit Gate, by Kate Elliot). Hopefully now I'll have more space to spend on more mindful activities. I want this year to be a mindful year, ideally. Here are some things I jotted down:

- I'd like to toy with starting another physical journal, this time with a painted cover and using the gel pens I got for Christmas/my birthday, to just jot down little snippets since I don't always have access to this blog. Maybe I can also blog a little bit more, on my cell phone, once I've gotten the data to work on it. If I can write more frequently here, then my posts can be about more daily mundane stuff instead of heavy, long ruminations about all the stuff that happens in a span of time.
- Daily evening rituals: handwashing clothes, brushing teeth, picking clothes; hobbies like watercolor & crochet or sewing (sewing little animals or embroidery)
- Other errands I could do in the evening: sorting paperwork, organizing the place, studying, little web projects
- (One day: like the idea of making soaps and candles, or doing small batik projects. Call it a stretch goal, esp. since I'd need to spend a little money on that kind of hobby.)
- Morning rituals: sometimes swimming (or at night if I'm feeling distraught enough), eating breakfast, making tea, making the bed

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#9 crushing on a co-worker

2017-11-12T07:38:45Z

P.S. I'm crushing a bit on a co-worker, but I don't think it's very likely anything will happen there. Maybe I'll write about it more sometime.

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#8 life updates

2017-11-12T07:20:07Z

I finally sorted through a pile of paperwork that had been sitting in a corner of our small room for weeks or months. Rachel was getting infuriated with it (and then I think she gave up and got complacent). Small victories.

On work and salary

My company did actually give me a 10% raise, out of the blue, without a formal review process. It was nice in that I didn't expect that much of them, given how little they were communicating with us about that process. What's funny is my manager told me I was the only one out of my cohort of junior team mates to get a raise, trying to impress on me that they were rewarding me for exceptional performance. Later I managed to drag it out of one of my co-workers that he also got a raise. Again, my company suffers on the transparency mark.

Anyway, 10% raise on 85k salary is 93.5k which is still below average for developers of my experience, and I didn't like that the company decided on how much my raise would be without having a more formal review which would leave room for negotiation. My manager said this was an independent raise from the normal company-wide raises in February, and I also dug out more information from her later that they're instituting a new process which will incorporate formal reviews, so I might have a chance to improve this number. In the meantime, I'm still extending out my tentacles to feel out other companies / opportunities...

On interviews

I was slightly pinning my hopes on getting an offer from a small start-up my friend recommended me to, that I really liked for their social impact mission and value-centric culture. The people seemed nice and smart (unlike the feeling I get from my current company at times), I felt like I could learn a lot and work on interesting things, and I'd get to be part of a small but successful-seeming start-up as it grows, since it was est. 20 or so employees when I applied.

It seemed like they liked my personality well enough, but I was lacking on the technical skills, mostly algorithms and whiteboarding skills, to progress past the second phone screen interview. It's a little bit of a blow, because I really would have liked to work at the company, and because I feel smart enough that the actual work wouldn't be a problem for me. That said, it was the first company I was interviewing at in a year (second total interview if you count the one I did for the company I got hired at a year ago). So, it's not so surprising that I have to work on my algorithms and whiteboarding a bit. Supposedly, the interview process at this start-up isn't even that hard, so yeah. Rusty.

I'd like to re-apply there in a few months, but a lot of things can change in that time -- e.g. if they hire more people, if I get hired elsewhere, etc.

I had one phone screen and two recruiter calls last week, on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and have another one scheduled Monday at 9 a.m. I switched my LinkedIn profile to be open to new opportunities, and have been getting lots of recruiter pings in the past week. I'm interested in one a little bit that doesn't seem to involve whiteboarding, and I'm supposed to hear back mid-week next week if they're actually interested in me doing an onsite. There's another one that's asked to do an onsite next week (what happened to the technical screening??) but I'm still struggling to figure out how I can take off the time I need to do all these interviews.

I'm still not confident about passing the technical part of these interviews but they will give me some practice and provide some incentive for me to study a bit where I can. I try to remind myself it's not super important to me whether I get accepted to these companies, so I don't put too much pressure on myself. I'm thinking after getting through the process at these companies, I'll take a little bit of a break from applying places so I can focus on using the time to study a bit. It's been a bit hectic with all the scheduling and interviews, etc.

On moving

We had given up on moving for a while because of limited income while Rachel isn't working, but we found evidence that the mysterious puddles that appear in our basement and the debris that come up the laundry sink that we use as our kitchen sink + the shower drain are definitely connected to the sewage. Graphic evidence, that is.

Our mom grew unusually urgent about moving, considering she's usually the one to clench her jaw and tolerate distress in favor of being frugal, and the one that has always dismissed the motion of moving while our income is limited. I think having to clean up the mess while knowing the reality got to her. Anyway, we set on a sudden new house search with the goal to move ASAP.

In the end, we had two options: a cheap one bedroom for $2000 in Nob Hill and a kinda small one bedroom apartment in a luxury apartment with lots and lots of amenities (three pools, three spas, three saunas, gym, rec room, kinda like a dorm more or less) in SOMA near the bay for $800 more. Again, my mom was unusually attached to the latter considering her typical frugality. I asked my co-workers for advice, and it kind of warmed my heart that they all looked out for me by advising me to be pragmatic and go for the option that would allow me to build savings.

Despite taking their words to heart, in the end I wanted to do what would make us happy. I think we've suffered a bit in our basement. I've mentioned living in the basement as a contributor to my depression before. I want us to be happy in our environment, and part of that is living somewhere nice. I won't be taking home real savings for a while, but I should earn enough to cover the rent and other expenses and put a little aside each month. That's also ignoring the fact that Rachel is supposed to work again sometime this year, and I'm striving for another raise.

In the meantime, Rachel and I will get to rollerskate near the bay, and my mom will have access to a recreation room with TV access. Rachel will get to exercise as much as her heart's desire, so she can be fit again. I'll have access to my beloved spas. Saving is important, but if you save all your life at the expense of your quality of life, you miss out. And my mom has been sacrificing her QOL for so long that I'd like her to live somewhere nice again.

I'm excited to move and see how my life feels due to the change. >v<

On dating

I met a guy that helped me study for algorithms a bit, and he seemed smart and sensitive enough that I felt he'd be interesting to go out with. The first date was fine. He was a little boring in his interests ("I like to watch video lectures" and "I like thinking about random questions like that") but nice enough. One thing that was a bit of a question-raiser for me was that he took me back to his apartment, without really telling me where we were headed (walking around the neighborhood), and then he just assumed it would be OK for us to drink alcohol and watch Netflix in his room. To me, that's kind of a questionable assumption for a first date. I feel like he pushes his advantage a bit without being conscientious about my boundaries, which is a turn-off.

We arranged to have another date mid-week (based on his lead) but there was a bit of back and forth after some mishaps and I felt like we were clashing a bit. Other things that put me off him was his tendency to act like he knew better than me when giving me advice,* a bit of snarkiness in his texts when he himself was put off (or as June put it, emanating vibes of "entitlement". could be me reading into his tone...) and his propensity to take lead and assert what we would do. What is it with a certain type of guy and their tendency to think they're more mature or something and need to take charge? I pin it down on culture and the way we make men think they need to behave.

The worst thing is they don't know. On the whole, this guy was probably an OK guy, in most other respects. It might even have been OK for some girls who like guys who show initiative or girls who are passive and need someone to balance that. But the fact that he had an ego of some sort on the downlow bothered me. And it tends to be guys who are smart who sometimes act like this, because they think they're smart too. Kill me now.

Long story short, I told him I wasn't interested in meeting up again in the end and we had more back and forth over it. Anyway, I'm stressed enough that I might put dating on the backburner again until after the move and the hectic part of interviewing + studying is over.

* Guys giving advice is not the problem. It's the attitude they have when they give advice. This subtle, instinctive belief of theirs that you're approaching them as a wiser, more knowledgeable figure instead of an equal. ... #mansplaining

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#7 what I really want out of life, or what kind of life I want to lead

2017-10-26T07:10:07Z

[published after time of writing; continued from prev. post]

So far I've settled, at this company, for just learning and growing and security. I'm worried I'm rushing into another situation where it isn't exactly what I want, but I'm baited into it so I can "learn for my career" and develop new skills. In the process of getting by, the life I want to lead is ill-defined and I give up the prospect of it as time slips away.

My boss, when he found out I was depressed (a while ago, I might be chronically depressed but not experiencing the major symptoms at this very moment), advised me to visualize what kind of life I wanted to lead and then make a plan for it.

On twitter, someone says their therapist said rituals are healthy and to form rituals. What kind of rituals do I want in my life?

It's hard to know what I want out of life. I ask myself, what would make me happy?

Happiness is so hard to define. That's because it's a nebulous concept, I think. You think it's something specific to attain, but it's actually just a feeling of contentment you have or an orientation. There can be nothing special going on in your life, but you can feel happy.

Usually my mind is mired in all kinds of random noises. Things like, disconcertment with mom or the lack of time I'm spending with her and how I interact or don't interact with people at work. How many people I socialize with. The health insurance, doctor's visits, budgeting, the errands I haven't or need to take care of. Oh, how I haven't been painting or crocheting. How I don't find the time to work on side projects outside of work in combination with work and spending time with mom and taking care of myself and spending time socializing with people. How I don't spend time with Mom. (Apparently, I have Mom issues.) And how do I be happy and what do I want in life to be happy?

I have all these hobbies, a lot of them actually, but I find that if I spend all my time on them I'm not actually that interested in it and I don't always feel like doing it or it doesn't bring me much joy. Maybe that's a trademark of depression.

What I think I might want, in the random act of defining it, is to work part-time. Monday-Wednesday, maybe. And then to have the rest of the days to work on whatever projects I want, so I can finally make some of the things I'd like to but can't manage to make myself when I'm working. <-- This would also give me some time for self-development that I don't have when working. Eventually maybe this would become a side-income or I can start a crafting/hobbying business.

I'd like to have all that free time to choose to spend with people, or walk around and go on day dates. I'd like to be able to travel if I wanted to, from city to city across the world at an Airbnb as long as I want (so it would be nice to be able to work remotely, eventually).

I probably do want to extend myself and go on some dates and meet people, to see who I can find and what connections I can make. If I could end up in a relationship that is enriching, for lack of a better word, that might be nice.

This is all maybe eventually. It doesn't have to be right away. But yeah, although Rachel and I look at the FIRE community and agree we don't want to work like we do for any longer than necessary, we also agree going full free-lance is intimidating and a whole other lifestyle we are unsure of. I think I would like to work some of the time.

When I think of rituals in the interim, I don't want to do hobbies so much that it fills up my whole life and scrubs stimulation. I think maybe once a week, to do one of my hobbies at night instead of going any where out. Maybe Fridays? And on weekends, to flexibly work on projects or hang out with friends (instead of perhaps fussing so much about hanging out with Mom, letting it happen naturally if so).

And the rest of the week, to do whatever I want, for lack of better decision, but maybe some reading could happen there. I'd like to live in an apartment, as comfy as the basement has gotten. Maybe I can plant plants and cook like we used to in southern California, watch tv, and bike around and roller-skate on some days. (Although I won't have days off until I work part-time.) Maybe I can stop trying to hang out with people so much, unless they want to hang out with me, so I have more time and space during the week. But yeah, I could hang out with them on weekends, and pick and curate who I want to be friends with, instead of trying to be friends with everyone in our broad circle.

Of course, in real life, there's laundry, and managing life well enough to keep things orderly, and this and that errand to clog up the day, and random emotions. Maybe I can dedicate some part of Saturday for that; run on one day, and try to wake up early to keep the place tidy. Rituals are probably hard to put in place. But it's worth thinking about.

It's late. I'm gonna rest and see if I can work a bit, or not at all...

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#6 bleary eyes, pondering and wondering about what kind of life I want to lead

2017-10-20T09:53:45Z

[published after time of writing]

It's late and I'm pretty tired. I think I drive myself to a wall sometimes, trying to work late at night to meet some deadline but making myself tired enough that I can't really work properly. It's the second night in a row where I've been staying up to try to work.

I'm trying to be more sparse with my words. Rachel told me I'm a forest from the trees kind of girl. It means that I feel the compulsion to articulate my life by describing a bunch of minute details. I guess it lends in a poor fashion to ruminative, overly minute introspection and makes it take forever to write one of my posts.

I guess it's ok to leave some things unsaid sometimes. Maybe it'll help me learn how to summarize.

I'm unsure I can work like this. When I try to stay up for the second night in a row to work on stuff, I feel the effort of staying up in my chest and my head is all cottony and heavy-feeling, and my eyes are numb. Even though a deep part of me revolts against the premise of missing a deadline, it makes me think it's not worth it.

I have a hard time going to sleep though. The work is on my mind. So when I do turn off the lights, I just lie there, and feel awake, like I won't sleep. In the dark, it's relaxing to just lie and I'm deceived into thinking I can turn on the lights again and work and feel normal.

In the dark I start to think about what it is I really want out of life. Or what kind of life I want to lead. [... continued]

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#5 rant on work pay stuff

2017-10-17T08:20:57Z

[spun off from the previous post]

It was my 1-year anniversary at work at the beginning of October! Time passed by, really quickly, but it also feels like it's been a year and I've gotten to learn a bit.

Sadly my cohorts and I who were hired from the same school were holding out hope that around now we'd be renegotiating salary, since we were given low offers to start out with and more or less promised salary adjustment after one year. But since I began poking around to get input and advice from co-workers and acquaintances about this, I got hints that negotiating my salary might not go as well as I hoped.

For one, it seems like they actually plan on giving us raises in February, without a formal review process (that is the time everyone in the company normally gets raises based on their performance, and we have this so-called "continuous feedback" policy, so annual reviews are no longer standard and must be specially requested). One ray of hope is that our boss did mention that "we've learned a lot" and that "would be taken into account" when we get our raises, hopefully meaning we wouldn't be capped at the normal company-wide percentage raise limit, which would do little to address our low starting salary. Also, the "raise" is retroactive and backdated to our first year anniversary, I think, so our paychecks would do catch-up for the months between now and Feb. when the raise should have been in effect.

Still sound a little weird to you? If so, I agree. It might be normal policy for this company, but it's not a lot to raise my confidence since we had to broach the topic of our salary raise ourselves (maybe normal)-- AND ALSO the friend of our boss who helped referred us to the company said he thought it was highly unlikely we would get more than a 5k raise (this was before our boss said our growth would be taken into account). He might not be part of the company and so might not know what's really up, but this offended me. Why? Because when he referred us, he also recommended that we not negotiate our salary -- this is literally the opposite of conventional wisdom! and the normal advice he offers everyone else who was not considering an offer at this company. Seems kinda shady to me...

Anyway, the point is, this mentor advised us not to initially negotiate our salary, which supposedly was "a good offer for our level of experience" (but is relatively low for the industry in general in this high-pay area for the position's role).. but it turns out that when it came down to it, he didn't think we would be able to re-negotiate our salary significantly to adjust for our growth? That means that when he gave us that advice, he was basically telling us to resign ourselves to being undercompensated for as long as we stay at this company, unless we hold out long enough for a significant promotion and pray that it will leap up to market rate at that point. ٩(`皿´҂)ง Only he wasn't actually transparent about that at the time.

He also (when we asked him for advice about renegotiating our salary) spewed some BS about how he didn't like us focusing on pay because he feels for your first software engineering job, you should focus on doing what you love, learning the most you can, and then the money will come in naturally afterwards. He made it sound like that by being concerned about our salary and compensation in the first place, we were being too focused on pay, which is not what matters for your first job. And you know what? It's not like I totally disagree. Maybe there's some reason to that. The most important thing you should care about is what you're learning and whether you like your job and the people you work with. If your job has all of those, maybe it's fine to be underpaid while you're still at your first job and still learning.

I just don't think that means your salary is unimportant and something you can just disregard completely. Actually, I think your salary is important and you should consider it as an important factor, even if it is not the most important. I just think I would rather weigh all the above factors along with my salary, and that if I take an offer where I won't be compensated at market rate for the forseeable future, I do it fully knowing what I'm getting into.

It seems like common sense to me that the pay you start out with establishes the baseline for the pay for the rest of your career. Maybe our mentor simply isn't the type to think that kind of stuff is important in life, but I feel like it's part of my job to look out for myself and make sure I'm being paid as much as what companies would pay others. As a woman, I hear all the time that a common reason women are not paid as much as men is because we do not negotiate enough, and I hate the idea of simultaneously undermining myself and letting others take advantage of me.

So if you're not going to pay me at market rate, I'm going to ask you why. I'd rather you be transparent about it -- whether the company can't afford it, whether it's because I haven't grown as much as you would like, etc. -- instead of making promises to adjust my salary and seeming less than committed to it when the time comes. Because as much as I would love to live in a society where jobs only reflect your passions, we actually live in a capitalist society. One where a company's lingua de franca for communicating your worth is how much they compensate you. If you do not pay me at market rate and provide no contextual reasons as to why, I'm simply led to think that you do not value me as much as other companies would.

And besides how much I'm learning, the people I work with, the endless amounts of opportunities I'm given at work... part of my happiness at work is knowing that my work is valued, and that I myself am valued at the company. I want to know my work is valued and that I am being compensated appropriately for it.

Aannnyyway, all that above rant mostly had to do with my mentor. It's not like I actually know whether the company will low-ball me again when February comes and they do the company-wide raises. It's just that... I don't know. The words of my mentor didn't do much to strike confidence in me, and the vague promises of my boss haven't done enough to inspire confidence in me so far. It's not a number; it's not anything in writing. Do they actually want me to hold out for four more months past my year anniversary to know how much they will compensate me, only to potentially find out that by "my growth being taken into consideration" I still am paid less than my peers? It's demotivating, to say in the least.

Although I could try to gain some more clarity by having a 1:1 with my boss on this topic, I know I might have more leverage in the case they aren't actually serious about adjusting my salary to market rate if I have other offers in hand and I know my worth. So because I lack total confidence in my company, I'm being prudent by researching the market and looking into opportunities elsewhere before I broach the conversation. Mostly to be well-educated about what I can negotiate for, but if it so happens another company is more appealing than my current one (even if pay were equal), I can't really help that, can I? I'd tell my boss to blame it on my mentor for not exactly inspiring faith in me, and on the company for not being more proactive to make me confident that they do want to compensate me well.

P.S. I know it was a petty rant that got spiteful towards the end. :P Gotta give in and express yourself once in a while.

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#4 updates on previous posts

2017-10-17T08:19:28Z

I read over some of my previous posts and thought it's interesting to see how things panned out in the end. So a few short updates in reference to those posts:

1) The team bonding went well enough. My presentation could have been better (humorous delivery was off for not having practiced it and feeling less at ease than when planning the jokes), but I brushed it off and acted like it was nothing because I assume that's what normal people do.

Although I hadn't gotten much sleep, I did enjoy most of the day. We watched Ironman at the end and I did enjoy the movie, thinking that I should re-watch it with Rachel and my mom sometime, and maybe start in on the Marvel material.

2) Vacation went relatively well. Lots of beautiful blue beaches. It was to the Virgin Islands, and we narrowly escaped before the hurricane hit. Now we have a bunch of pictures of the islands just before the scenery was demolished and changed for years to come. /:

There have been a lot of hurricanes. Actually, on the day we were going to fly to the islands, Harvey hit Houston, which was our connection, and we managed to get our flights re-arranged so we went through Chicago/Florida instead. It's been depressing to hear the coverage on Puerto Rico and the Caribbean.

3) For the Facebook recruiter stuff, I decided to contact her and ask for her to reach out again in a few months, after all. I couldn't put together my resume on a short notice, so two weeks (at least) had passed when I got back to her. (We had a lot of social stuff going on when we got back from vacation!) But at that timing...

[I ended up writing a rant about work pay stuff that I put in another post because it was too long]

Basically around that time I felt I had a revelation about negotiating my salary and it motivated me to apply to some other companies, so I have a phone call next Tuesday and Thursday with two different companies. I hope that it incentivizes me to study for algos a bit and brush up, but look at me here writing a blog post at 1:15 a.m... Hehe... orz

I wanted to write more about some mooniness on my mom's part that I wanted to process, and then work on work today and study for algos, but I ended up writing that long rant about salary instead. It's good to get feelings off your chest, but I'm not sure how things will go at this rate. I have to hang out with people once or twice this week, leaving mostly the weekend to study, and supposedly I'm doing some sort of casual 10k this weekend too. So that leaves one day??

Writing takes time. (ಥ﹏ಥ)

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#3 consolation for those with poor focus

2017-10-03T06:52:53Z

If it's any consolation, I have started working.

I'm working on something related to versioning for object storage.
It's 1:20 a.m. and now it's too late to be working on versioning stuff. :'(
I estimated 2 weeks for this feature and it should have been fine, but I guess I am slow sometimes due to days of productivity lost and just slow thoroughness.

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#2 poor focus

2017-10-03T06:44:18Z

Ah forget it I'm going with the numbered posts after all :3

My focus takes a terrible hit when I get home.
I'm actually usually quite productive at work. It depends if something happens, like a flustering team lunch or 1:1 meeting, that I need to process, or if something else is breaking my attention all the time, like a IM chat that I get distracted by and keep on participating in. But in general, I think I'm more diligent than most -- no need for reddit or facebook, etc. I might just send little status updates to Rachel here and there, but they mostly help than not.

But oh boy, when I get home. I think that at work, having all those people around to monitor my work (even if they're not really focused on monitoring me) helps. They're like external enforcers.

At home, whether it be tinder, twitter, or whatever I can find to break my focus, eeeep I'll go it every 5 minute and get almost literally no work done.

I have had a lot to journal about but that's another problem when I journal. I also take breaks when journalling and the process takes like a minimum of 5 hours. I couldn't manage it this weekend and only wrote part of a draft and published it privately since it was unfinished.

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musing: my look

2017-09-16T23:50:02Z

I've decided my "look" is black and pink, and some gray. Too bad I never go shopping!

I still need to get an ear piercing and have no idea what I would tattoo on myself. But I'd love to have some streetwear clothing. :x

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untitled #1

2017-09-13T12:39:14Z

Sorry for not posting in a while! I do have things to say and share, but it just takes too long to spend the time, especially when I find it hard to manage time and juggle different things in life already. My vacation was nice. I'd like to expand and write more, but it's the same issue. ^

I saw some people on my reading page were just numbering their entries, which seemed like an attractive way to sidestep having the name each post every time. But I didn't start my posts by doing that, and there are some entries which seem to be different in type than others (like some are just pithy musings and others are real posts) so I'm just going to label some posts untitled and number them when I'm lazy and no title seems forthcoming.

Disclaimer: this post may be hard to follow because of unintuitive flow and commentary, and I won't have time to edit it to make more sense to others for a while.

---------------------

Guess what time it is? It's 4:57 a.m.! (By the time I post this, it will be past 5 of course.) That was stupid, tarobun. I know that, so I'm going to acknowledge it and move on.

To give some context, my co-worker June gave me a spare steam access key to a dating sim game.*/** Why did you do that, June? It makes me deciding to make convo with her in the company instant messenger seem like a fatal move full of portent in retrospect. I'd lost stream towards the end of the day because I had stayed up late the night before to get some errands done (for once, being productive when staying up late instead of the other way around).

Ironically, because of that decision, I've neglected my sleep again, but this time for far more typical and dismal reasons. Sure, part of it was that it's titillating (get it?) to simulate interaction and achieve steamy scenes with 2d girls. Gosh, sorry you didn't know I was so trivial when you subscribed to posts. :p But really, the other bigger part of it is that the simple mechanics of a game which gives and feeds into a short-term gratuitous loop is enough to hook into my simple brain and hold it hostage when common sense ought to prevail.

Games in general, as well as other distraction methods like anime and manga, are generally a bad idea for me. I won't know when to stop, and I just won't stop, with each moment stretching into the next until I'm too far gone in the wrong territory (or hour of the day).

---------------------

When I finally did get around to stopping my clearly ill-thought-out behavior, it was 4 a.m. Basically, from 7 p.m. to 4 a.m., that was what I did. :>

A couple repercussions to mention:
- I did not reply to my Facebook recruiter, so it's going to be at least 2-3 days since she emailed me; and I should get back to her not only with times for my initial interview, but also my resume which I still need to update.
- I did not reply to a semi-professional lunch (for networking reasons) arrangement I had initiated with a casual acquaintance, so there will be a lapse of one day in my communications
- I did not do research to keep momentum going in a conversation about a get-together I am arranging wth some of my friends.
- The most immediate issue for concern: I'm supposed to give a presentation*** today for team bonding sort of thing; I need to finish it, and then figure out how to wing it to present it.

Due to the last point, I can't belabor this post too long.
I'm also a bit sorry -- I can't imagine why anyone would want to read these sorts of details about my life. (It's more of a catharsis post than anything else. I could have written it to myself and reduced it to "That was stupid. Some things now: [above list]" but I don't like having notes lying around in various places so I opted to write it in an entry here instead.)

I showered to reset my state. I'm going to have to work on the presentation now -- thank god I rough drafted it last night in my moments of productivity -- and pull through the rest. Definitely, I'll be pretty tired and in a poor state to enjoy the day's plans (today is slated to team bonding agenda, which normally would be fine enough but now will be a long day due to my choices). Don't know how I will stay awake through other people's presentations, and a team dinner/movie afterwards. Do you have a habit of sabotaging yourself with ill-timed poor behavior? If so, we have something in common.

---------------------

My final comment is that you'll see with this quickly-written post why I like the asterisks footnotes I use in most of my posts so much -- my unedited writing has tons of parenthetical asides and I use those footnotes to try and circumvent that. ;)

That's all for now, I'll leave it here like this until next time.

* The game was HuniePop, if you must know.
** June is into anime waifus. I was recommending Riveira: The Promised Land to her and she then offered this key.
*** Not a serious presentation, it's supposed to be for fun. But still, I don't like being unprepared.

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mundane journal entry

2017-08-25T07:12:10Z

So tired. I drank coffee yesterday (a small macchiato shot, they even did some foam art in that tiny paper cup!) and I couldn't sleep. I don't normally drink much coffee cuz it messes with my fickle sleep and it can make me anxious, so it's all the worse when I do.

I showered late and hoped to stay up so I could pack for our trip we're leaving on tomorrow and clean up the room, but Rachel threw a fit and made me turn off the lights and lie there in bed. She gets so nasty past a certain point at night when the sleep haze descends. It's like being hangry only related to being sleepy instead of hungry. Awful, awful tantrum child.

I lied in bed from 1 am to 2 am and then got up to read about Node streams, something I've been learning about at work, from 2 am to 4 am.

Went back to bed and lightly slept.. It's not really sleep when it doesn't feel restorative, right? I don't think I got into REM sleep.

I wasn't able to get much done at work today. It felt like slogging through cobwebs. I was dismayed to see I hadn't moved much in code by a certain point in the afternoon; I had barely done anything. My co-worker June and I were messaging each other constantly today and that's also part of why I couldn't get much done. I don't know how people get work done when they're like that. Do they not care? :O

I don't know what it is, but I felt lightly depressed today. A light form of June gloom (unrelated to my co-worker June, and yes, I know it's August). I've been doing pretty well regaining normal happiness since my last depressive episode, which was a few months ago now. But today it might be the combination of sleep deprivation and the fact that I've been moodled by work lately, so I haven't been able to do much outside of work / been unmotivated. I don't feel like I've mentally prepared and feel ready for vacation. I've just been hassling about work each day without the time or space to transition to another mode.

Sometime I think it'd be interesting to write about what made me depressed last time. How being just a little waylaid by different pressures and feeling inadequate to balance multiple pressures was enough to trigger a depressive episode for me. Hmm.

I don't know if I have everything I need for vacation and the trip tomorrow, and I feel like I kind of should work on work, but at the same time I'm tired enough that I can't really opt to do anything but go to bed at this point and be justified. So that's that.

(Oh no, this has become my anxiety / mood journal!!)

Watching:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FORKkWMQ5aM

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tattoo idea

2017-08-24T07:06:41Z

Maybe I could get a creeping vine on my leg, that crawls up in a circling spiral from my ankle?
Trying to think about what else.. I like gingko so maybe a gingko leaf or leaves somewhere?

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back to the grind

2017-08-21T05:31:15Z

It's now 10:30 p.m. and we're back in the office to grind again. We went home for dinner following my previous post since it was around 7 p.m., to keep Mom company and feed ourselves. Afterwards I showered and we dallied for a bit before returning to the office.

Yay for working when it's dark outside! Yay for staying up late to work! Fluorescent lights at work, to the rescue!

Update @ 11:58 p.m.:
/rage when fixing a small bug to even get started on creating tests takes at least 30 mins (ﾉಥ益ಥ)ﾉ

Translating all these tests is going to take a while... /sob ( ꒦ິ꒳꒦ີ)

Update @ 4:11 a.m.:
Oh no, I'm going to be tired most of today and when trying to watch the solar eclipse. D: I'm not as effective when I'm sleep deprived, I imagine. I'm also worried I won't wake up early enough to make it to work on time (nvm get to work early to get more work done).

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random ramblings

2017-08-21T01:37:43Z

All these things jostling around in my head. I have a habit of writing in a stream-of-consciousness style when my mind's state is agitated. I don't know when it started, but probably when I first started journalling in my first year of college and figured out that I could log all the ruminative, jumbly thoughts down and find some modicum of peace in it.

The problem is, it can be very time-consuming, taking hours, and sometimes the written rumination can go on and on, never stopping or ceasing, because my mind doesn't necessarily find resolution for all the problems that swirl around in my head.

I'm supposed to be coding again. It's past 4 p.m. on a Sunday and I haven't started on work yet that I feel I could sorely appreciate being done by tomorrow, Monday. When it gets late on a weekend day where I was hoping to start relatively early in the day on work (like at least noon-time, maybe), I get anxious. I start hearing the clock hands tick in my brain. You're not going to get any work done, my mental clock whispers. It's going to be evening soon, the day will be ending soon, and you won't have gotten what you wanted to do done.

Figuratively, of course. I don't actually hear clock ticks in my mind, but I do experience feelings of anxiety as time seems to slip away towards another day of unproductivity and unfulfilled intentions. The dark evening sky brings out a visceral reaction in me. I get anxious working when it's dark because of those whispering thoughts.

In college, I used to have my sister Rachel* close the blinds when it got dark and we were working late on an essay or other school assignment. We lived in a desert-like area in college, and it would usually get dark pretty early-- like 5 or 6 p.m., unless it was the summer. We share many dysfunctional aspects, but I don't think she had this particular psychological tick.

When I get anxious, I can't seem to focus or stay disciplined very easily. What usually happens is I'll start reading some manga to salve my anxious state of mind, or read article after article off of twitter, until more and more time slips by, and I'm no better off than when I've started, only having dug myself into a rut. Then, when I'm sick enough, I might start journalling in a very similar fashion to what I'm doing now, hopefully gaining some sense of resolution of how to tackle my problems in the most immediate context.

I don't really want this journal to just be a rumination diary, like the many physical journals I have lining my bookshelves at home, or a anxiety blog like the one I kept when I went abroad to study in Italy. But I don't know how other people dredge up the time to write more journal entries, just about their day or what they've been up to. I would like to do this, but it seems like a sizable endeavor to me to write a single post, and I always have things on the backburner that I'm supposed to be doing, crowding my plate. So, how do people find the time to write posts? I wonder.

The way I write probably also takes a long time, I guess. It's not like this for everyone else.

~~~

On Friday, we went out with some friends. It's the kind of thing that seems to happen a bit spontaneously. We were painting nails the night before with Rachel's friend at school, and she mentioned there was a outing she had been invited to but felt uncertain if she wanted to go if she were alone with the other participants. Meanwhile, Rachel had been hankering to gather some friends so she would have a context to invite a new friend** to hang out with her with other people around. So, we arranged to go to the said event, even putting together a dinner to go to before-hand and inviting other mutual friends.

The dinner before-hand was all right, but not as good as other dinners I had with a similar group of people. I ordered ddeobokki with chewy noodles, which was all right at first, but got a little too sweet with all the sauce at the end. Rachel ordered gizzards but they were not as tasty as other gizzards. They were just like marinated stomach or intestinal lining, nothing too tasty. I didn't have as much to say during the dinner with the conversational topics (or lack thereof with my seat neighbors) at this dinner.

We went to a gaming bar later (the original event that Rachel's school friend Lanie was invited to). Rachel disappeared after the dinner for at least an hour to hang out with her tinder friend Hunter one-on-one before joining us, which I thought was odd (and I'm sure our friends did too) since the whole point of inviting him to this friend gathering was to hang out with him around other people. I hung around my group of friends, feeling like I wasn't sure what I was doing there and not entirely at ease in the context, watching them play different games and joining in for a short round or two where I debuted my lack of skills.

So, the situation wasn't all that hot for me. After a while one of my friends suggested playing a simple multiplayer pixel platformer where the only commands are to shoot arrows and jump, and you only have one life and maybe three arrows (but you can pick up arrows where they land). The rounds are quick, so you play as many rounds as it takes until one of the players reaches 10 kills. It was a bit fun, and I did surprisingly well doing some rounds.

In the end I ended up going upstairs with Rachel to try and learn a bit of the controls for Super Smash Bros***, but her friend Hunter joined us and it didn't seem interesting to play more than a few rounds when we weren't much of a challenge for him. The remainder of our other friends were leaving by that point, so we decided to leave as well, and struck out for a quiet bar in the area where I could get to know Hunter better, with Rachel with us, since it was my first time meeting him.

Although most of the night wasn't super enjoyable for me, there were a few highlights close to the end: 1) my co-worker Peter, who is a sheepish and super-quiet 30-year-old that deceives everyone with his youthful appearance + bashful demeanor and that everyone adores, teased me by hiding my backpack behind him when I went to look for it. He did the same thing earlier in the night (I leave my belongings around a lot!) so I went to grab it from behind him, but he transitioned it to the front. I just looked at him in consternation and I think this amused everyone present. 2) Our cool friend Luke hugged us at the end of the night when we were leaving. Win! Luke is super cool and it feels nice when he acts friendly to you, for no reason other than he's a friendly guy. Yay. 3) Playing surprisingly decently during some rounds of the pixel platformer game I mentioned before.

I got along decently with Hunter as well, who's a bit of an eccentric himself, but I'll save the details. After getting to know him a little, we went to my workplace nearby to check out the view shortly and play some ping-pong (another game Rachel and I are horrible at) before calling it a night. It was around 1:30 when we got home.

~~~

The next day though, I lied around in bed a lot just spacing out and reviewing/processing the events of the previous night. Is this what introverts do? I bet not all of them, at the very least. The room was a mess, and I knew I should clean it, but I was lazy. After I ate breakfast, I excused myself saying I should clean it, but mostly what I did when I got back was sit in bed, gazing at the closed lid of my laptop and wrapping the blankets around me. It was like I could hear the bed calling out to me, calling my name. The bed is so comfy! After a while (during which I may have also laid down and lied for a while) I got up and very slowly tidied up, with intervals of spacing out.

By the time Rachel got back from her hike that day, around 8 p.m., I was reading manga and thinking I should nap before getting to work. We ended up watching the leaked episode of Game of Thrones and I felt unsatisfied by the end of the day, although Rachel claimed it was near bed-time since it was around 11:30 p.m. I wanted either to be entertained more, or work, but working was in doubt since it was late. So I pestered Rachel for more conversation before getting to sleep.

These days, I seem pretty low on motivation, for instance, to handle all the errands I had hoped to take care of this weekend. Our vacation trip is inching up this Friday, and I have a bunch of things I need to take care of before then -- shipping a package, picking my health insurance plan, etc. And of course, there's the work I mentioned at the beginning of this withering post that needs to get done. It's pretty disheartening to feel low enough on motivation that you feel it's difficult to get anything you want to get done, outside of work, done. It's been a while since I've painted anything, or tried to do any programming work -- like I want to code my own little virtual pets site, actually, I do! A while ago, I was trying to keep to a good schedule -- run, sleep early, pick clothes the night before, actually brush my teeth, etc. But it's dissipated since.

I know I should make choices that improve my disposition and my personhood, but when it comes time to actually make those choices -- like working or doing something constructive instead of watching episodes of Insecure after work, I feel my will-power on low reserve. It's hard for me to remember that if I don't want to work, I can at least do something interesting related to programming (like configuring my vim set-up), working on a virtual pets site / look into JS animation, watch talks/lectures about programming / do some leisurely programming exercises/reading, paint, crochet, watch roller skate or hair braiding videos [...]. When I'm behind in work, I feel like I don't want to work on an oral history project with Mom, so I ignore that it's been a while since I've done anything for it and I interact with her minimally. I guess I feel bedraggled.

I think I need to accept that I'm a naturally person of more ennui than is typical for others. Acceptance is the first part, so says a lot of self-help advice and Buddhism. I also have to go back to aiming to be a more composed person, at a simple level. I probably need to look at it in the lens of habit-forming, per the advice of Mark Manson regarding discipline and willpower. If I form habits, it will be easier. I should at least brush my teeth and pick my clothes, and try not to dump old clothes everywhere on the floor so they need to be cleaned up later. And every time I make the choice to watch episodes of TV at night, I should know I'm building up a habit that makes forming other habits I want to form harder too.

~~~

I guess finally I can work now. When my mind is ruffled, I don't feel I can do anything until I get these thoughts out of my head. It's a bit compulsive. It's 6:30 now.

*Rachel is a codename. When we were little, we used to look in the mirror and muse about how certain name seemed to suit certain people, inexplicably. I'd look at her, and we'd say she looks like a Rachel or Sarah. I was an Emily or Hannah. --If I recall correctly, that is. I asked her to recall, and she said she could be a Hannah now if I wanted -- it sounds kind of a like a cool girl's name now, more than Rachel. But Rachel suits her, however unfortunately, so I'm going with that.

**She made this friend off of tinder. He was interested in either being fwbs or friends, and she was interested in either being friends or a relationship, so the only situation that seemed mutually palatable was being friends. But since they admitted they're both slightly attracted to each other, it seems safest if they hang out in platonic contexts if possible.

***We used to play Super Smash Brothers relatively often on a n64 emulator as kids (think: 7 or 8 years old), but I don't think we learned the real mechanisms for the controls well-- we just mashed buttons. And of course we weren't used to playing it on real controllers. So we never really got good at Smash, and got the eventual revelation that we actually suck at it really badly. XD

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#meAt23 (2017)

2017-08-19T22:43:03Z

cont: slowly picking up discarded clothes and refolding them to stuff in my organizational cubicles while listening to Maplestory (circa 2006) ost on the Amazon Echo. Slow as slow can be, spacing out my efforts over an hour at least. Maybe zapping my Neopet on Neopets.

I can write a cute little anecdote about lying in bed doing nothing a little later.

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Me right now, at 23

2017-08-11T07:06:14Z

I dunno, I've been thinking about being 23 and my age lately. Old enough to feel older and like I'm trying to adjust to being an "adult", working, not being in school any more. Getting on the cusp of my mid-twenties (I'll be turning 24 soon, in a few more months), but still hanging on to the young-adult title, racing towards the rest of my life as I head towards my thirties. No longer a child! Exactly, anyway. I'm not in college any more, at least.

I got a bit of a cool extension of being a student and having a young social group by going to a coding school after college. That was pretty neat and I enjoyed it, especially because I got to socialize with other people than just the small women's college I attended. Including guys! Wow. All my life, struggling to interact with guys past middle school, it's nice to have some guy friends once again.

Anyway, I struggle a lot to define what I want the rest of my life to be like. But that's a topic for another time, I guess, if not for my morbid journalling.

Feels nice to be 23 as well because I can sometimes be nostalgic about a decade past, when I was 13, and what the web was like then and who I was as a child. And to know how I ended up a decade later, surprisingly lucky and doing well enough, despite my daily travails. Surprisingly!! Because, although I always thought myself intelligent and something who ought to achieve status as an adult (like being a doctor, a lawyer, etc. or having an article in Wikipedia), in college it looked like things were relatively undefined and that I'd be settling out for a more uncertain, average life experience. It's not like I was pursuing science or was able to major in something lucrative, or that I'd been able to do prestigious or helpful internships. Nah, we struggled more than that. (Me plus my sidekick twin, who's pretty similar to me.) Another topic.

I wonder if I'm redefining my adult identity and growing more comfortable with it. It probably depends on a myriad of things, and goes through some fluctuations. In college, despite being depressed and anxious, I always felt secure that I retained a core of identity that helped me cope with everything else. I think that eroded over time, though, maybe after I studied abroad and returned as a junior--like I lost my roots in the past, a decent part of my core, by growing more distance from them and my past self. And then as an adult, it felt vague and hard again, at times. About how people view me, about who I was as a person (interacting with others, for example) and what I liked about myself, about what I wanted in life...

What's probably helping at the moment is just ice skating, growing a thicker skin to politics and what people think of me, and maybe my enjoyment of simple coding at work. And that the social situation at work is slightly improved at the moment, maybe. I really like ice skating, by the way! Ice skating helps me feel like there's something I enjoy, something that's worthwhile, aside from everything else in life, including whether or not I'll ever date and meet / end up with someone.

Anyway, I'm supposed to be coding at the moment. I just meant to find something to simultaneously procrastinate on, because it's late at night and I was feeling grudging about coding after work late in the day. For work, because I'm under some grind to finish some work stuff. You know, for work, which somehow makes me feel a little self-important. That aside, this is fun, but I probably shouldn't write too much more. It's already later at night now (close to midnight), and I might have to stay up if I don't give up (on coding).

I haven't quite figured out how I want to keep my narrative style for this ~~livejournal~~dreamwidth stuff, like more like narrating a story or not. I guess I will figure that out with time since I'm not too uptight about it at the moment. I just wanted somewhere I could write anonymously about the details of my life that would be relatively obscure and unlikely to be traced back to me. Obviously, there's a plethora of recognizable personal details in my writing so it'd be easy to identify me if you really wanted to, but I'm counting on no one really wanting to or no one I know coming across this. You know, I just want to write about my thoughts and perceptions about people I know, where I work, etc, in a casual manner but not necessarily just to myself. It's hard to find another outlet for doing that, but this seems nice and workable for that purpose.

Anyway, I'm (supposed to be) coding, and probably messing around on Neopets a bit, and might be giving up soon to head to bed to be pragmatic--we'll see. That's me at 23.

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Wow! A livejournal for 2017!

2017-08-11T06:33:57Z

I took the name tarobun because it was something easy to remember and it wasn't taken. Normally I'm a lot more particular about names, especially if there's a chance to pick something I really like, but why fuss when this is supposed to be an anonymous outlet? I don't want my account name to cross-link to anything other web presences that could be tied back to my real identity. So I just went for something easy.

I actually signed up for a livejournal a few moments ago, but was surprised tarobun wasn't taken. Was there a name sweep? I looked up a few articles since I glimpsed something about a Russian livejournal, and I guess there was some fuss about it being moved to Russia with its political censorship laws. I wasn't going to fuss about that, either, but the articles mentioned the laws being anti-lgtbq and after thinking about it for a few moments, I guess the risk wasn't worth trifling with. I'm not super political about that kind of stuff, but I am sorta bi in disposition and pretty bi in personal identity. You never know, why bother risking future hassle if there is a decent alternative?

The article mentioned this alternative and I'm glad I signed up here in retrospect. I like the barebones, throwback aesthetic. Livejournal seemed pretty crummy in comparison, with its corny if outdated branding.

I never actually had a livejournal in the past, or if I did, it's not like I blogged on it. I wasn't much of a livejournal or xanga person, didn't get the appeal of that stuff much. I preferred trying to have my own website on freewebs or customizing my Neopets look-up. I mean, I don't think I was a big writer in the past. Maybe I considered writing stories on fictionpress. But livejournal and xanga seemed corny since they had tools for you to customize it, you know, like myspace a few years later. And if I wanted to write about myself, I'd probably try first a personal website, and then a blogspot or wordpress.

I did end up creating some blogspots and wordpresses later. But there's a weird tension with blogs and how you want to present yourself on it; how much you want to expose your real-life identity, etc. My blogspot ended up being an online form of my messy journals where I wrote anonymously, mostly to myself, about my anxieties and real-life ruminations. Having a disorganized journal isn't that much fun, although it was helpful when I needed it, but I stopped eventually when I didn't have as many ruminations to write and wanted a cleaner presence. But my other blogs were too composed, or I didn't have time to maintain them. Now there's medium, but that somehow is linked to your professional identity.

You can't just write informally, on there, like you can on a good old livejournal. Ah, what a good idea I just had to randomly create one. Anyway, I do like just writing to other people long posts on the forums of my favorite scanlation groups, but there's only so much you can offload in a thread where people aren't obligated to be interested in your minute travails about your life. And it's not something that belongs to you, that you can update and maintain as some archive of your own life. So, here we are. With a cool dreamwidth, the new livejournal for the 2010s and close-to-2020s. Nice throwback.

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