Talk about friendship… I just sent this message to someone who has only more recently entered into my life:
Please, take this the best way possible:
1) I purposely fully undressed before brushing my teeth (before showering) tonight, because I felt like you would be proud.
2) I likely will think of you close to 90% of the time I walk around without underwear on from now onward.
Just wanted you to know 😂
Clearly I love and trust her.
Well, some stuff happened, some stuff shifted, and some stuff was removed entirely. And, you know, I feel loads better already. I’ve gotten myself more out of my head in the first place, and it helped even further to have everything happen as it did today to shuffle things around. I put things into place today to help me prepare for some of the more stressful things over which I have control, and that has been extremely helpful. My brain is very tired right now, though, after so much having happened today, and I’m struggling to make sense even of these thoughts right now… alas, I shall sleep… I am grateful I set things up to get me to bed early enough for a decent night of rest.
Post-a-day 2021
I enjoy waking up ridiculously early each day. I accomplish much before the hour that most people wake up, before they usually make it to work. And I love it.
I go to bed extremely early, too: by eight-thirty, usually. And I love doing that, too.
You see, when I get up so early, I have no distraction from the rest of the world yet. They neither reach out to bother me directly, nor distract me indirectly, as I wonder what they might be doing and if I shouldn’t be doing something similar. No, I know they are sleeping. Period. And that knowledge gives me immense freedom of focus for wherever I want to direct my attention. So, that’s what I do most days.
And then, later, when my alarm goes off at six pm to remind me to start getting ready for bed, I feel no sense of sadness, no desire to get out and do something, no need to fiddle around. I have done so much, I am truly satisfied with my day – I can go to bed with an easy mind and heart. I can go to bed not only excited about the upcoming rest, but also excited about the joy and focus that await me tomorrow morning.
Who would have thunk! I, the sleeper, who never even got to watch the good cartoons on Saturday mornings, because I slept too late…
P.S. Happy Christmas in July Eve!!!
Post-a-day 2021
It seems my brother has finally made the official move back to the USA. I picked him up at the airport tonight, and dropped him off at his dad’s house (after a stop at Whataburger, that is), before heading back home myself. It was a lot of driving, to be sure, but who else would do it in the middle of the night (quite literally: midnight 03 was the scheduled flight arrival time)?
In a way, his expat days are over, yet, have re-begun.
I wonder how hard it will be for him. I spent a year in Japan, after having lived in various European countries for various amounts of time (though each less than my time in Japan), and it was tough for quite a while for me at first. He’s never lived in another country and come back home before this, and he was gone for eight years, almost exactly. (August would have been eight years precisely.)
Fingers crossed!
And I’m here for him.
Hopefully my sister-in-law will take advantage of my being here once she arrives. She has a whole ‘nother world coming to her, for sure.
Post-a-day 2021
While drama is certainly stressful, it is always helpful to get moving on something I’ve been resisting/avoiding. When time is on you, start, and the pressure will be off, sure. But even when any pressure is on me, if I start on something, it lifts a whole lot of pressure…, even if it isn’t the pressure from the drama.
So, though I still feel stress tonight, I feel much better than when I went to bed last night.
Keep chugging, Banana – you’ve got this. 😉
Post-a-day 2021
Today was wonderful. I tidied and ate decently. I had a stretch session for my splits and kick training (which also helped my lower back). I had a lovely workout this afternoon (rare for me to go anywhere so late, let alone to work out!) alongside a newer friend. And then I finished off with some coding fun after dinner and a shower. The family friend, upon seeing some screenshots of what I was doing, declared that, if I live what I am doing now with the training so far, I will love working in coding. He also says that I clearly have a mind for it. (Perhaps I am one of those brainiacs, after all…)
I look forward to lots more similar days in my near-ish future.
Oh, and by the way, I spent almost five hours reading a new book. It’s a top-rated romance novel – giving the genre a real go -, and I am loving it. But the main character has Aspergers. And I can related to about 90% of her thoughts and feelings and ideas and ways of thinking. For real. I don’t have difficulty succeeding in social situations or in reading people, but just about everything else she mentioned was relatable for me. She’s even my same age, and in a very similar relationship situation (at the start, anyway). Very similar. And with a similar attitude towards it all.
After about two hours of the book, I asked my mom her thoughts on it. She thinks that I definitely qualify in certain areas and to varied degrees, and definitely not in other areas. In other words, she and I agreed. No one likely would consider giving a label to any of my traits that align with Aspergers – they always just come across as slightly quirky, if they are even noticed at all (which, they usually aren’t). My OCD is the only thing people ever seem to end up knowing about, and, these days, it’s mostly because I tell them about it and how bad it had gotten before I started sorting things out with the holistic nutritionist. Anyway… haha
So, I’m a lot like this character. Including the things that are part of her Aspergers. And then, further into the book, I find out that the main character also works in coding… talk about timing and coincidence. 😛
Hopefully, the part where she makes oodles and oodles of money in her work will be a commonality we one day share, too. ;D
Post-a-day 2021
Tonight, I want to sleep. Hard. And I want to wake up tomorrow with an open and free day.
And yet, tomorrow will not be that. It is a full day, mostly filled with things I do not love enough to want to do when I am so tired.
But, in order to get to that point where I can fill my days with what I want to be doing, I must weather these days like tomorrow first. And, the more heart and love and joy I put into them, the better it all will me.
So, I shall sleep now, and hope it is deep and restful. I shall wake up to an alarm in the morning, and get going quickly. I shall bring my best self to the table, and create a wonderful day, even and especially if I am feeling exhausted. I am here to love and to learn, so let’s love and learn, baby. 😉 I can sleep tomorrow night, as needed, and all I want.
Post-a-day 2021
I began last week learning something entirely new to me. Okay, so it isn’t exactly entirely new to me – I first learned some foundations for it back in middle school. Mrs. N**** taught us in computer lab. I think most of the other kids, the girls especially, weren’t huge fans of it and didn’t really get it too well. But I was and I did. It was HTML.
Hypertext Markup Language, that is.
And, you know, though I didn’t ever realize that I could pursue learning HTML, I did pursue learning other languages. Remember, languages and math are all the same thing to me. So, a computer language just feels like a fun cross between the human spoken/written languages and the math ones. No wonder it was easy for me to pick up, and no wonder I loved it back in middle school.
But I never knew that this was the foundation upon which all of this ‘computer programming’ and ‘software engineering’ was based. Don’t ask me how – I don’t know how I didn’t ever make that connection. But, finally, I did last week.
And I’m doing beginner work on it all now, starting off with a course on HTML. Though I’m in this course to learn HTML, I kind of feel like reading the comprehensive list of code for HTML would be easier for me at the point. The blocks of text that attempt to explain things to me are often much more confusing that just looking at the actual code itself. I regularly go back to the text after reading the code, and decipher it that way – the code makes more sense seen than talked about. Does that makes sense, how I said that? I guess it is like just about anything else: you can talk to me for days about it, but, until you show it to me, it is just words and ideas, and doesn’t fully make sense or click.
But this stuff is clicking. And I’m liking it. A lot.
I’ll finish the HTML foundations course tomorrow or the next day, I think, and move into CSS or iOS app development training next. Or both…
It’s funny, though. I can tell this is important to me, because I won’t let myself cover too much direct information in a day, so as not to confuse it all later. And I am excited every night before bed, as I plan out when I will be working on it all tomorrow.
Man… did I mention that I’m a nerd? Well, it just got a bit more obvious. 😛
Post-a-day 2021
I went down the rabbit hole of my photos on the computer tonight, and it felt like it lasted forever. Sure, I had a blast from the past in there – and a mostly very good blast -, but I went down that hole deep.
And so, it must be close to two a.m. now, right?
I check the clock. It isn’t even ten fifteen…
Man, I operate on such a different level from where I was a year ago. 😛
Post-a-day 2021
Do you ever have a sudden 180, and go from feeling proud and confident and comfortable to feeling absolutely undeserving and unworthy?
One of my best friends connected me with someone last year. We got along well, but he wasn’t about being not in the same location. Okay, fine. My friend and I both were surprised by that, but it is what it is, and he wasn’t open to options.
Nonetheless, my friend encouraged the connection, and the guy and I stayed in contact, and I even went so far as to have him be a sort of fitness buddy, with whom I discussed this and that around our similar workout regimens. It was cool and fun.
So, we finally meet in person, at my friend’s wedding. And we get on really well. And I feel great about myself and confident and comfortable. And it’s an amazing time.
Even after the wedding, I am still in that space and the guy and I are still getting along.
Then, my friend wants to know what I thought after meeting the guy in person. I share. We discuss. It is silly, yet fun. She then speaks to one of the major drawbacks I had crossed with the guy. And with that information, she unknowingly blows my mind.
Yes, that drawback is still the same drawback. But now, this guy is more attractive than ever…
To the point that I, confident and comfortable I, feel as though I am not on the right level for him, that I am not worthy of him.
And then begins the positive feedback cycle, swirling ever downward… he doesn’t like me, and no wonder: I’m not good enough. I’m a failure in so many ways already, and, now, because of them, I’m a failure with this, too… And so it continues.
I have listened to my responses, and I have let them go each time. I have felt the physical reaction to such an emotion, and I have allowed it to be just what it is. And I have looked inside to see what had me lose my value as a person, simply because of money (because that’s what it was really about).
I’m not all the way there yet. But I am improving. I was in a significantly worse space only hours ago, than I am now. I don’t feel great about it all – not at all. But I am feeling less and less crap and anger, which is a beautiful sign so far.
Now, to sleep through the night and see what steps I will take tomorrow. Those steps will be toward clearing up this struggle for myself. I feel inadequate, because I know I can do better than I have done, but I let something stop me, somewhere along the line. So, let’s figure out who or what it was, and get past it already.
Post-a-day 2021
hannah ananas 