A digital journal
I don’t think anything is bad enough to warrant being upset to be honest. No one near me has poor health, I don’t have drama right now, and realistically I don’t have insane stress right now. I think there are some things that cause some stress, but nothing bad enough to make me discontent in any meaningful way. This experience is coming to a close this week, so I should enjoy it and experience completely.
Just before I pulled off the highway on my exit for home, I got flashed down by a police officer and told to pull over. He said he was following me for about 3 miles, and I was going around 95 and he gave me a ticket. Since I was honest about it and respectful, he dropped the official speed to 84 mph, so I would be able to get it struck from my record by doing driving school. This won’t affect my insurance premium, since I can get it struck and so the only real consequence is the fine and the fact that this is now in the system so if I get pulled over again they will know this has happened before. All things considered, this is a fairly good outcome as it is more of a slap on the wrist, and it’s not like I got pulled over for going 130 yesterday lmao.
Honestly, the thing that affects me the most is how someone honked as I was getting pulled over. The cop said that person honked because he was happy I was being ticketed, and that made me really reevaluate my actions. I’m definitely not cutting it up or anything like that, but I do change lanes fairly frequently when I have a sizeable open space to go through, and in my eyes I am not inconveniencing anyone or affecting them since I am changing lanes without cutting someone off. But the fact that someone was upset and frustrated by me is something that really affects me, and I don’t want to upset or inconvenience others. I guess if I’m driving at the speed limit and I see someone who looks like they’re driving in a rush with changing lanes and so forth, I would see myself somewhat frustrated because they are doing something very different from what I’m doing. It probably doesn’t help that I got a Tesla, which people aren’t huge fans of already. I think I’m going to be a lot more conservative with my lane changes going forward, and it’s not even because of the fear of a ticket (which is another factor of course), but more because I thought that by changing lanes when I have plenty of space it wouldn’t affect others or upset them, but I guess it does. It’s probably for the best, but I do feel sad because driving fast is something I really enjoy. I guess I still can drive fast, just have to do it at the pace of traffic, and be a lot more sedentary with my driving. I hope I can find like a track or something like that near UCSB.
The first and last game I ever played was pokémon Platinum. It was somewhere around the fourth grade, and I had a small Nintendo DS lite. The day I got it, for the first time in my life I stayed up. I hid my DS under my pillow, and would quickly close it and put my head down and act asleep if my parents walked by my room. That first night I got all the way to Erika, with my trusty turtwig: Turdy. A few months later my best friend would tell me turd was the word for shit, and I damn near lost my mind denying that was true.
When I finally reached the end dimension to capture giratina, I remember being lost. For nearly a week I could not find my way out, and the end dimension frankly scared me. The most hope I had was being able to talk with my friend at school with only my memory to guide my questions. When I finally saw giratina, I used my master ball on him after getting him low enough and not capturing him with 20 ultra balls. When the ball finally closed shut I kept shaking from joy.
That small Nintendo DS cartridge contained a world. Since then every game, no matter how powerful of a system I run it on, has fit within a 3x7 screen on my phone. Every piece of wonder and magic has been distilled into a prepackaged video or walk through on my computer screen. In that Nintendo DS, those struggles were as real as these new ones are fake.
Since then I have not played a game. When I played Minecraft for thousands of hours, that was wonder went instead to some name on YouTube, showing me how to make a nether portal. When I killed the dragon, that was someone else figuring out what the crystals were. There was no magic, no wonder, and no triumph at the end.
As an adult I don't think I'm alone trying to chase a familiar nostalgia of the magic that games captured when I was a child. In an age of information where any questions can be trivialized in a matter of seconds, I have forgotten how to struggle. But I truly believe there's nothing great in this world if it is not worth struggling for.
Don't read any reviews, Don't look at any other content. Don't even read the description on the game. Just buy the game, get a controller with vibration if you can, and play the game fully blind throughout. You can only experience things for the first time once, do not squander this beautiful chance.
Today I put in 9.5 hours at work all overtime, since it was the weekend. Last Monday I also went in and worked, so that’s even more overtime since it was labor day. Tomorrow I’m going in to work a full day also, and so my paycheck is going to look fuckin FAT. 10 hours of overtime is $680 pre-tax, holy shit. But also I just enjoy it so much, spending a full day writing code and addressing PR comments, it’s genuinely just like homework and I feel so productive. I went to Dunkin Donuts in the morning and got two donuts and two large drinks with caffeine, and that was all I had for the next 10 hours lol. I was so happy when leaving because I felt like I did so much good work, and I can’t wait to do more tomorrow. I just love working.
I’ve not had much sleep this week and today its fucking hitting me, I guess no caffeine and no adderall this morning probably don’t help. I’m falling asleep right now.
Around half a mile my side started cramping but I kept going. A little bit past a mile I started to hit my limit with my shins hurting and my left hip pinched. My brain said this is hell, and I responded by trying to remind myself what hell was. I thought about the SA, the traumatic moments with old friends, and the months of just numb sitting quiet on the bathroom floor. But eventually the pain got louder than what I could think and so I just started bashing my knuckles against the metal railings of the treadmill. I started with my forearms and wrists, but it hurt more and the pain was sharper so I kept hitting the knuckles on my hands. Every time the pain went away, I would swing my arms into the sides until it hit the knuckles in the right way to make me fully recoil. I started just chanting to myself “I want the pain”, and every time I could think I would hit my hands again until the burning pain took over everything else. Around 2.4 miles I noticed the knuckles on my hands were bruised, and I would barely have to hit them once for me to involuntarily clutch them against my chest. I realized I had been crying involuntarily from the pain alone. I didn't even feel my legs or lungs, it was just the sharp pain in my arms. Near the end my body wanted to give out, but for the last half mile I just kept hitting my hands until that was the only thing. 3 miles. Where's that bitch I hate so much, the one that's afraid of pain and that's so ready to just fall over and die. I fucking hate myself sometimes, and at least now I have this pain to show for it. I hate that version of myself so much. How's this for change. On the drive home once the rest of my body stopped feeling on fire I realized how all of the cuts on my face were on fire from all of the salt in my sweat. In highschool that was enough pain for me to be afraid, and now it wasn't even an afterthought. I hate that bitch so fucking much. No one has ever judged me for that except for myself, so this hate is genuine. This isn't because I feel like I need to conform or anything else like that, but just out of pure hate. 3 fucking miles. It hurts to close my hands now.
The only things I can think about on my bucket list are two main things right now: skydiving and seeing Cleopatrick in person. In my head, I give myself a margin for forgetting something by saying 3 bucket list things, and I guess I could say going 150mph in my car. I was worried however that Cleopatrick wouldn’t go on tour, but earlier this year they were opening for a festival in Europe, and I was really considering saving up to fly out just for them. I ended up not being able to regardless because of school and other stuff, but by some stroke of god, they are touring in November! They are also releasing brand new music, and they are playing their first show in LA. I am going to skip a day of school on Wednesday and drive down two hours to see them in person and I cannot fucking wait, when I got the tickets I was shaking so fucking bad, I even started hyperventilating, I had never done that before. I was so excited that when I took Hash out since I just woke up, at one point I got such a twitch of energy from excitement that I fully missed a step and did a fucking fix-it-felix jump in the air. I’m so excited, that's something I’m looking forward to so much.
My brains frankly empty so I guess I’ll just put down my list of instructions for how to break out of a slump with the gym:
Take plenty of caffeine / a good pre workout
Don’t use tiktok or reddit between sets, and set small breaks
Play high energy music loud, with good headphones
Do myo sets if possible to push your body incredibly hard
Go for hypertrophy so it hurts
Run as far as you can and then some more
Tweak just a little bit
Drink water so you sweat
Thats it brain empty can’t think more goodnight
Today while I was running on the treadmill at the gym I saw the TV talking about the SF pride golf event, and it got me thinking about community as a whole. I know that there are a good amount of pride events, and those do give a community for people of that group. But also I think that the larger a community the less you can connect with it. I was thinking about how as a group I don’t typically think about as a minority – a man, the groups are much wider, and I think because of that there is less of a pressure to really connect. When I think about my communities, the more niche or small, the more connected I’ve been to them. To large groups I feel way less connected, but at the same time, it’s much easier to find. However, with the smaller groups, there is less of a pressure to conform and it is much more dynamic as you get to grow as a group, instead of growing into the group itself.
It’s late at night and I should be sleeping but instead I stayed up watching clips from the podcast bad friends. I just laughed for a while while getting ready for bed, and I think it’s kinda funny how that’s all that I really remember or think about from today. I don’t actively think about the things I laughed about a few hours ago, or the experiences I had. Is this what it means to live in the moment?