Taking a break from stuff

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So yeah I’m deep in a pain flareup right now. I made sure that all of the critical bugs in bandcrash are, to my knowledge, fixed, but I just am not in a situation where I can really work on stuff right now due to a massive pain flareup.

I was just starting to work on some music for a game jam game and Novembeat but I don’t think that’s really in the cards for me this year.

And of course now that I’m in agony, suddenly a lot of folks want to interview me for engineering roles that I’d normally be very interested in, so, thanks for twisting the knife on that one.

At least choir is going pretty well and gives me stuff to look forward to.

Everything feels awful

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Today I went to Bartell’s to pick up a prescription there for the last time. Because Rite-Aid bought them out a while ago, and after making things there worse and worse, they’ve decided to just shut down all the Bartell’s locations that are near Rite-Aids, which is most of them, and I suspect their next plan is to convert whichever ones remain into Rite-Aids as well.

Whenever I walk to a store here I just see all the boarded-up storefronts, half of them from places going out of business, half of them shut down because of crime. Lots of shops have been hit by repeat burglaries, or arson, or who knows what else.

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Basement studio reorganization

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I have a lot of project stuff that goes on in my basement. Unfortunately, my basement is extremely cluttered and disorganized, and I kind of hate being down there, which makes it so that I have a hard time actually doing anything creative down there either.

When I moved into my house two and a half years ago, I didn’t really have a plan for how to lay stuff out, and I just put stuff where it made sense as I unpacked it. Which means that there’s no real flow to things, and stuff tends to accumulate in piles, and things are just really badly disorganized.

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Driving anxiety and music for 8/10

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I’m still having some pretty bad anxiety while driving, but the choir has started up rehearsals again which gives me a reason to drive at least once a week. Last night I felt anxious on my way there but totally fine on the way back.

Anyway, today I finally made my way out to the Renton Uwajimaya, which I’d been wanting to go to for a while, mostly as a driving acclimation thing but also to get some ingredients that I haven’t found at any of the Asian groceries in White Center. Most of the drive, as it turns out, is the same as the drive to the church the choir’s rehearsals are at, which makes sense since Renton is just a bit further down Rainier Ave. And I was anxious but I made it just fine, and on my drive back I was anxious in a few spots but I made it just fine.

I think if I keep doing this stuff I’ll feel fine faster.

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Music finds for August 4

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Getting back on my “listen to music to calm my shitty brain” thing, because it was helping and then I started to forget to do it again.

I might add more as the day goes on.

Oh well, a well

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I feel like I’m trapped in a gravity well and am having difficulty motivating myself to do anything at all. I’ve been sleeping way too much, and it isn’t actually helping with anything. I have a severe case of anhedonia when it comes to actually doing things I care about. I’m pretty much just hanging out at home with my cats and occasionally getting on VRChat and plinking away at the same trivial things I usually do, and I’m having trouble keeping up with my chores or my gardening. I’m barely getting out of the house except to go grocery shopping.

It sucks and I hate it.

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Music as a salve

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I used to be a voracious consumer of music. I would listen to as much music as I could, in as many different genres, from as many different bands, as I could handle, for nearly every waking moment of every day. My music collection has over 53,000 songs with a total duration of over 130 days. My choices in listening devices and methodologies have always been informed by how I can enable myself to listen to as much variety as I could, without needing to actually choose what to listen to at any given time.

Music also helped me to focus what I was working on, and was possibly a big part of my self-medication regime for my ADHD and executive dysfunction. Having music playing made it so much easier for me to focus on what I was doing.

I also developed a peculiar habit: every time I came across a song I really liked, I’d buy the entire discography of the artist as a “surprise gift for my future self.” It’s a big part of why my music library is so big, and it’s given me a lot of delight from always having something new to listen to.

But yet, over the last few years I have barely listened to any music at all, aside from the stuff I’ve been working on myself. Most of my day has been full of silence, pretty much only listening to music when I drive — and I hardly ever drive. And the silence has been overwhelming, maddening, and is possibly a big part of why my brain’s been in vice grips as of late.

How did this happen?

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Super burnout

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So, yesterday I had a major panic attack while driving, for the first time in several years, and the worst one I’d had in over a decade. So, that was fun.

Right now I’m in this weird split mindset, where on the one hand I feel like I need a day job to be motivated, but on the other hand, every time I find out about a job that I’d be qualified for, I have no interest whatsoever in doing it, like at all.

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