Feel like there’s no one I can talk with

It’s kind of crazy to think of how completely alone I feel in-person right now, in that I feel like nobody near me understands me. Everything’s building up. I have nobody face to face that I can talk to about it. My psychiatrist is awesome but won’t really communicate outside of the office except in extreme cases, but seeing her is very expensive, so I don’t do it often. The psychologist I was seeing as of late … I’ve never really been sure that we clicked. He doesn’t understand me at all whatsoever, actually. But only within the last month or so did something REALLY come up that was very bad and now I can never trust him again. He thinks it would be healthy for me to at least share with him what exactly is bothering me so much. But speaking it to him would be very difficult and painful for me. Blah blah blah.

I’ve met lots of people from playing Pokémon GO and some of them are great to hang out with for the 20min – 3 hour time period that it can take.

Sometimes when I Pokéwalk along the water line with my friend “Joe”, I think, these are the days that I’m going to look back upon as some of my better days. The sun, the friendly people, the sea birds and sometimes other sea life, the hours of walking along the water.

But I’m neurotic and eat away at myself.

I’ve been studying lately. Study. Exercise. Eat (expensive foods, lately). I need money. I need to get a part time job.

I’m going to be traveling again soon. I’ll be gone for a while. I’ll have Internet access but don’t know if I’ll be too distracted. I wish I could talk about it here but I cannot.

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I’m back and getting re-centered

Hi all, I was gone out of town for a while. It was awesome in every way. I saw tons of family, including my parents. I walked the beach. I met my little cousins-once-removed or whatever they are.

Then, my mom and I went to a music workshop that was so wonderful. We also had two members of my mom’s music group join. I learned a ton and the area was nice and the food was great and the instructors were SO nice and blah blah blah. Wonderful.

Now I’m back and I’m still retaining motivation to practice music and I’m still motivated to play Pokémon Go but I haven’t gotten back into gardening yet and I haven’t gotten back into schoolwork yet. I’m volunteering at the animal shelter still, though, but I haven’t been very timely as of late.

I also need to clean up this bedroom. What a pig sty.

The garden has gotten ignored by me for a couple of reasons. One, when I got back, the lettuce has all become huge and kind of … old. I think it needs to be trimmed back to 2 inches and allowed to regrow. Maybe the new leaves won’t be bitter?

Mmm peas

Second, the peas have been allowed to fall forward and become completely, unmanageably tangled into the plants in front of it. So I can’t even get into them anymore. It’s just a low tangle of pea plants now. If weeds grow inbetween, I can’t get to them. If there are bugs that need to be picked, I can’t see them. I can’t even see all of the peas themselves that are growing. So I don’t know what to do with them. and thus have kind of been ignoring them. I have forgotten to water the garden twice and the lettuce suffered. 😦 But, one of these days, I’ll at least deal with the lettuce.

Wood duck

I still Pokéwalk with “Joe” each Monday and that’s one of my favorite things to do. I’ve been meeting tons and tons of people due to the new Pokémon Go Raids needing certain minimum numbers of people in order to achieve them. It’s been great. But I did meet one person who has physical boundary issues and I’m going to have to address it verbally next time he and I happen to be walking the same areas. “Stand/sit at least 3 feet from me at all times.” I guess when you meet enough people, some are bound to bring something challenging to the table.

I have a head cold right now but I still have energy so I’m still going out. I wore a mask when on public transit yesterday, just in case I were to start coughing (didn’t end up coughing, thankfully).

Note to folks who like to have empty seats next to them on public transit: Wear a very obvious mask. You will likely have a lot of space left just for you.

Okay. Goals for myself:
* Laundry
* Water garden (cut some of the old lettuce?)
* Get halfway into Topic2 homework
* Try another Moltres raid 😉 (PokémonGo)

Long-Overdue Update

Hi all,

Deer crossing

I haven’t checked in or updated here in a very long time until just recently when I had a little emotional emergency. So I thought I should go ahead and try to fill in some gaps, briefly.

Since I last really updated on here, I quit my awesome tutoring job and the in-person school and went fully online. I also started volunteering at an animal shelter. The online schooling is boring as **** and I’m kind of regretting the decision, BUT it is going faster than it was going when I was trying to juggle tutoring, classes, and more classes at the same time (tutoring is tied to taking several additional classes).

First flower! Pea plant

I’ve also started gardening, which I used to do years ago. It’s great. I’m growing peas and lettuce. I’ve started some flower seeds but super late, so I’m not sure they’ll do anything. I tried beans twice but they were immediately eaten by something (I know I hand-killed a ton of thrips but I suspect more than just them were at work).

Also, as you can tell, I found a psychologist and was seeing him once a week. It took at least a month before I decided I could trust him. Obviously, I am not as sure about that right now.

But whatevs. I have a dental appointment today. Next week, I have a psychiatrist appointment. I am only seeing her twice a year now, but I might try to increase to 3 times a year since just recently I’ve been having more trouble again.

Stolen: Child’s sandwich

Oh, and I exercise a ton still! And I’m eating a little bit more healthfully, much of the time! It seems that whenever I exercise a LOT in a week, I feel emotionally good. Whenever I don’t exercise, due to illness or just getting swamped with other things, I get depressed. The correlation is INCREDIBLY strong. Exercise = emotional stability. Sedentary-ness = instant hopelessness. Obviously, I need to use this knowledge for good.

Once a week, I see my friend, “Joe”, who some of you may remember I dated for a while, like two years ago? I don’t know how long ago. Anyway, he’s probably my best friend now. We go on a long Pokéwalk every week. It’s often along the piers, where I can see the birds and sea lions and sometimes a harbor seal and some fish. Sometimes, we go to different parks, including a particular lake that always has tons of different ducks and birds and squirrels. I’m very grateful to have him as a friend. Also, because he has Asperger also, and has dealt with therapists and group therapy and more, he really understands when I have my downs and instability and has great insights.

ALSO, he’s as into wildlife as I am, so he doesn’t mind one bit when I stop 800 times to photograph slugs and squirrels and birds and rocks and everything.

Water reflection in eye

He and my SO (significant other) have met twice but only briefly. I really hope they become friends because then we can all go hiking together and stuff. We’re all attending “Joe”‘s b-day dinner this weekend, and I hope it all goes smoothly. I’ve had terrible experiences in the past with my ex who hated my friends. I’m not at all concerned about my SO hating “Joe” but I know that “Joe” has difficulty around other males. There will be up to 15 people and I’ll have met like 1 or 2 of them. Hopefully it all goes well.

What other news? I’m still living with SO and his mom. I had a rough time with it like a month or so ago, but since then I’ve been working on establishing what I consider more boundaries. She’s awesome and very generous but can be a little bit controlling about certain things, and I have a hard time knowing how to shrug it off. So I’m learning and I’m working on it.

Ducklings (from back in April)

I’m considering getting a part-time job at a coffee shop. I want something nearby, not too intense (although busy is okay, and I enjoy customer service). But my feelings of self-worth slip every day that I’m unemployed. I didn’t think it would happen, since I know that finishing school more quickly will get me a higher-than-minimum-wage-job more quickly and thus is productive, but it doesn’t FEEL productive. Even when I volunteer at the animal shelter twice a week, I love it but I still feel rotten about myself. Also, I’m focusing less well on school the longer time passes since I was at the in-person school. Bummer.

I set up a bucket to catch water in the shower as we wait for hot water. I also bought grey-water-garden-safe laundry soap and hooked up some tubs to catch my laundry water. There’s a plant out back that is a water hog, so this grey water really helps.

All right, that’s all for now.

Mundane Update

I’m calling this a mundane update. I’d say that I normally only come on here when my emotions are high or out of whack or something’s eating me, etc.

But I logged in for a different reason this evening, and thought, perhaps I would go ahead and write. Because writing helps me stay stable.

And I feel completely stable at present. I.E. I normally wouldn’t be writing. So here I am.

I’ll give a day recap. I had a big exam this morning in computer programming. I hope it went okay; time will tell. Tutoring was really challenging because students from one of the other classes came in for emergency help (their exam is tomorrow) but it was from a class that hardly anyone asks for help for, so I don’t remember the content very well. And I hadn’t brought the right notes; I didn’t realize some of those classes were that far in the book. I don’t bring my full notes because they’re so heavy.

I actually went across town after school/work. That’s not my norm. But last night, I got an invite to dinner with my SO and some of his friends, one of whom I have met a couple of times now and I enjoy his company. So we went even though it was for a very late dinner and we only just got back a bit ago. It’s late. I’m super sleepy.

I’m getting over a virus. I had to take like a week off of school. I missed the exam review and the last bit of new info for it and everything! So I studied a lot this-past weekend.

Pokémon Go is pretty exciting right now. They re-balanced the gym prestige. And this week, or for a few days anyway, they’re running these crazy double-poké stop goodies and double (or more) spawn rates of critters. This is tied into my getting-over-my-virus because I finally feel a bit of energy returning so I’m probably going to go out on a Poké bike ride tomorrow after work, or at least a nice walk. I walked a tiny bit extra today, and it was really nice. The sunset was amazing.

I’m super, incredibly behind in my online school. Well, only a week or 2, but it feels like a lot. It’s because my current class is a writing-based class and I suck at writing papers. I have one I need to revise TOMORROW (I’m telling myself that) and then I need to write one more paper. Then I can move onto a different class, thank goodness.

Well, I’m incredibly sleepy beyond words, so goodnight. Voting is tomorrow here but I already voted.

Close friends (no)

I’m assuming it’s mostly the Asperger deal but this lack of close friendship is killing me right now. I’m going through a lot internally and I feel so terribly lonely. I wish I had someone to go on walks with, and bike rides. I was bicycling nearly the whole day today, and it was lovely and beautiful and felt good physically, but I’ve entered into a depression as of late and things are pretty hard because of that.

A wee bit of mania

So all I can say for this week is… IF I were a wee bit toward bipolar, this would be my wee bit toward mania. I’m thinking back and finding that my physical weakness is what stops me from doing so much, and that’s a good thing.

Pancakes taste best when they’re the same color as the skillet, right?? 🙂

Today, I actually got up “early” for me (it was 8 or 9 am, when my bf got up for work; it was a late start for him). I chatted with my phone via phone for 35 minutes (she was driving hands-free; the phone was hands-free, not the steering wheel). It was a fun conversation and my bf got ready for work. Afterward, I asked him what he’d like for breakfast. He had 15 minutes left before he had to leave. He suggested gf pancakes. I jumped up and started making them (I had a mix). They didn’t turn out (my batter was too thick; I kept waiting for the tops to bubble but they didn’t; the bottoms burnt up while I was waiting for the tops). Anyway, a few turned out all right so he ate and ran (the REALLY burnt ones didn’t take place until after he was gone and I was making the rest of the batter).

Anyway. Me cooking = pretty extreme. That doesn’t happen. Me, in a super cheerful mood, rushes upstairs and realizes I still have time to put away half of the clean laundry before taking my shower and heading to class. And I did so. I bicycled there and was on time. (Unheard of.) And I managed to have all of the bits and pieces organized for the day. [THIS HAS BEEN NOT HAPPENING WELL LATELY. I have a different schedule each day and have been grabbing or not grabbing things very poorly for the day.] I also planned to maybe bike to the beach after school.

After class, I was hungry. I ate a snack bar and went to a food place on campus to search for food. No luck. So I was still playing with this idea to bike to the ocean. And find a taco place on the way. So I swapped out my bike locks so my lighter two were in my bag and my heavy one is left on campus (when you see random locks left on posts and such — no longer assume they are left there by people whose tires were stolen; it could be left there by people who park there frequently enough and don’t want to drag the weight back and forth with them anymore). The bike shop guy told me about that. So anyway. I packed up from school and headed out toward the ocean. Yeah. Awesome. This crazy city has bike routes every which way, it seems. I really don’t understand why more people don’t bicycle around here.

Sanderlings are present there… tiny little dots in a backlit photo

So I made it to the BEACH!!! It was SOOOO WINDY. I was being PELTED in the face with sand. It kind of stung. But I saw some sanderlings down along the water line and wanted to photograph them, so I dragged my bike down through the sand, do or die. And then pushed/walked my bike along the shore for a while. Then discovered the bike paths up above the shore. The sand blasting was worse up there but I stayed and rode along there for quite a while. Eventually I went back toward home but stopped first at a bike shop:

“How much would you charge to clean the sand out of my gears??? It’s making an awful sound…” haha.  It turned out my break pads needed to be replaced as well as my stretched chain. (I’D FORGOTTEN THAT YOU NEED TO REPLACE YOUR CHAIN EVERY half year or year or however hard you ride your bike. It’s really important because when it gets stretched, it then doesn’t fit on the cogs as well and starts to wear them down. Eventually you’ll need expensive fixes all because you didn’t just buy a new chain once or twice a year!!!) So yeah. Today was expensive.

But I’ve got to tell you. My bike is riding so much more smoothly now and my breaks are amazing. LOL

Ice plant

Hey so in light of this feeling awfully suspiciously like an innerdragon wee bit of mania phase (my body ran out of the ability to move so I just sat in the bike shop for 1.5 hours while they worked on it), I took my PRN night medicine. It’s for sleep but it’s technically an anti-anxiety medicine. But I haven’t been sleeping well lately. I keep waking up very alert. Last night, I couldn’t fall asleep because my OCD flared up and I couldn’t get past this loop of this one thought that played over and over and over again in my head and was making me really mad at my bf. (It was something trivial along the same lines of when people squeeze the toothpaste tube from the middle or something. I literally don’t recall what it was anymore – that’s how unimportant it was. But OBSESSIVE THINKING OBSESSIVE THINKING. I couldn’t get my mind to switch to a new topic. Anyway, I don’t want to think about it.) Tonight, I’m going to sleep. This medicine is prescribed originally for my restless leg syndrome but it also helps me fall asleep and stay asleep. And that I can think more clearly without being stopped constantly by anxiety is a wonderful side effect.

Ice plants, gull, moon. Along the shore

Oh yeah. So I’ve already had dinner (bf’s mother saved me a portion of salmon! I had some more things as well). I’ve watched a bit of TV with her this evening. Now I’ve run another load of laundry (bedding and a towel this time) AND put away everything. Bf’s clothes, my clothes, and remade the bed. I’m just waiting now to see if he notices. He’s not always observant about certain things. I think if I left the pillows on top of the clean sheet, he’ll notice, but if I tuck them back under as usual, then maybe he won’t notice. Ah the way we entertain ourselves in life.

One of my beloved cousins in visiting my folks right now. I have a beloved photo of my baby dog greeting her gently, her with suitcases still in hand. ❤ My old man baby dog. He may have something serious wrong with him health-wise but the vets haven’t ruled out that maybe it is something that can be corrected with diet changes. So he is on a new diet and loving it. But is still skin and bones, my poor baby. It is hard to be away from him. No moment spent with him was ever or could ever be a wasted moment.

Oh yeah so back to the sleep medicine. I’m on this and it’s fully kicked in. I decided it was called for because at this point, I obviously could only benefit from something grounding like a solid sleep. Tomorrow, I need to focus on studying. I played today.

MONEY MAKE-BACK COUNTDOWN

Okay, this is half joke, a quarter revenge and a quarter serious.

TARGET GOAL: 67 avoided bus rides

Joke: I just learned about “Sunk Costs” in Accounting
Revenge: I had to pay a bogus citation plus a HUGE late fee (okay, the late part was my own fault). The citation was for allegedly not swiping my card on a bus. But in truth, I did swipe it but the reader was busted. I protested it unsuccessfully through writing. Then I gathered tons of documentation and things for an in-person hearing but took them downtown 4 days late. My fault but the late fee was HUGE. Ridiculous. For a bogus citation. So I’m going to make back the money by not using them for my regular routes.
Serious: I do want to spend less on transportation.

My updates to the remaining number of avoided bus rides will be in the COMMENTS to this post, because that’s easiest for me to update when out and about. It’ll be a “stickied” post on my front page until I complete the 67 avoided bus rides.