busybee fluffy rambles

Chronic pain

I’m in so much pain right now. Fuckin' sucks. There’s the usual wrist and hand shit, but also my knees and feet are especially bad lately. I also have lost a lot of grip strength in my hands and am having trouble doing stuff that I used to have little trouble with.

I really should find another rheumatologist because I suspect I’m developing rheumatoid arthritis on top of everything else.

Pottery

I have finally done two successful slipcasts of my calibration pot, and I’ll be getting them fired in a couple weeks. Then I’ll be able to start the real fun of designing actual pottery to sell.

TV

Somehow a fly has gotten in between the backlight and screen of my TV. Mostly it just flits around near the edges of the screen. Hopefully it’s just attracted by the backlight (which I have set always-on because the local dimming on my TV is pretty crappy) and it loses interest and goes elsewhere next time I turn it off.

Music

I’ve been doing my usual making a lot of music for a game jam thing and I’ve ended up overcommitting to things. Oops.

For as much as I talk about getting extrinsic motivation, right now I’m finding that feeling obligated to do things for others makes me feel ashamed for not doing stuff quickly enough, rather than motivated to. But I think this might also be beacuse of the pain shit.

Car

I’m still very happy with the Niro. It’s a much nicer drive than any other car I’ve had and I feel a lot safer driving it.

Wednesday afternoon I’m driving out to Duvall to pick up a MIDI keyboard from a friend, which will be my first long-ish drive (about an hour each way). That’ll be my first real test of driving this thing for a nontrivial amount, as well as mitigating my anxiety (which I still experience while driving to an extent).

When driving at very slow speeds I do sometimes hear a distinctive click-click-click which is indicative of the hub bearing possibly being damaged, but that’s why I got the extended warranty on the car (since paying $2000 up-front is better than paying $6000 when things go wrong). Supposedly it’s not an urgent issue and just results in an annoying sound, anyway, so I’m not too worried about it.

Oh, also, I bought a wireless CarPlay adapter, which is surprisingly nice. Basically it means that I can always access CarPlay without having to physically plug my phone in (and if I do need to charge it I can just put it on the Qi charging pad or use the charger in the center storage console), and I’m finding that the music starts up way more reliably and with better quality than over plain BlueTooth anyway. It was $50 well spent.

VR

I’m enjoying my Tundra trackers. It adds a lot of immersion to VR.

The Bigscreen Beyond is also an amazing headset with a couple of mild annoyances (but I’m way happier with it than the Pimax).

I want to make more textures for my critter.

I also need to tweak the AudioLink.

I want to make more avatars.

I also applied to a vendor booth at Furality this year, primarily as a musician with other stuff. Hopefully that leads to something.

Disability

I’m working with a disability attorney for my appeal and (eventual) hearing. She’s optimistic that I’ll get on disability eventually. I’m not in desperate need for this to move forward (my investments are still somehow giving me more income than I’m spending right now!) but it’ll at least be nice to have it taken care of.

I hate being disabled and would much rather be Doing Things (clearly I don’t have any lack of things I want to be doing!) but I definitely do not have it in me to be employed anymore.

Cats

Fiona’s been a real sourpuss lately. Tyler’s been a cuddlebug.

Bathroom

My bathroom still hasn’t been fixed. The original contractor decided he couldn’t schedule me after all so he said I should find someone else and he’ll reimburse me for the costs. So I reached out to the contractor who did my kitchen, who gave me a reasonable estimate and said he’d get me scheduled. That’s still taking a while. I need to ping him again.

This has been going on since December. Ugh.

Mental health

I think I need to take a trip somewhere. Not really a “vacation” per se but like, I’m looking for spa resorts to get a nice rest away from home at, and get pampered for a bit. I definitely need a pampering.

I also could use some help getting my house cleaned up. There’s a lot of clutter that’s really bringing my mood down, and it feels so intractable right now.

Most of all I hate this feeling of isolation. Aside from weekly choir and VR and ADHD group I basically don’t see anyone, and both choir and VR feel kind of hollow a lot of the time.

There’s a vicious cycle happening. A few vicious cycles, really.

I want to feel useful and needed and cared about and I’m not getting any of that right now.

Something big needs to change.