An Open Letter

https://youtu.be/oU8Q27yvFuY?si=jF7XL8Wc0C3240Wc

This ad is something I feel everyone's seen at some point in their life. It popped up again for me and I watched it, and God damn it hit again.

I always seem to lose sight of this, but I really do feel like radical love is one of the most fulfilling ways to live life. One goal I've had for a while now is to do something nice for no recognition every day, and it's devolved a lot since then. It defeats the purpose if I mention what I do, but I think I've lost sight of why I want to do that. It's been a while, I think I'm gonna try to log onto TFM and pay it forward again this year.

I am a firm believer that only love can overcome hate. I think stuff like right-wing vs left-wing is a great example of this. I don’t know how anyone expects the other group to communicate if they are both constantly villanizing each other. But I’m also saying this because I was in the wrong today. I realized I did something bad; the worst part was that I didn’t understand why it was bad mentally. Since I know myself relatively well, I feel confident saying that I don’t have any ill intentions – but rather the mistake I made was a shortcoming that I think a lot of men particularly fall victim to. Since I’m talking in vague terms I can’t exactly go more into depth on that part of it, but I ended up applying some REBT techniques and did some research to bridge the gap between my actions and intentions.

I think that most people won’t do stuff like this – and I realized that a lot of things seem obvious to people when it upsets them, but we always forget what it’s like to not know something. In an ideal world, everyone would learn healthy communication and comfortably help each other grow, but instead in practice, I think that there’s always the fear of someone judging you and ruining your perception.

In an extreme example – which is worse. Imagine if your friend was a straight-up neonazi. Or at least they made a joke or comment that aligns with that. Which would you think better of? The person who just immediately apologizes, or the person who apologizes and then asks several follow-up questions to understand why it’s bad. I think most people would prefer the former, as it gives the benefit of the doubt to a miscommunication. But in both situations, they’re the same person: just one person doesn’t end up changing their beliefs and rather just adapts their behavior in certain situations, namely interacting with you. I think it’s best for everyone if the second case happens, where you genuinely talk in a non-aggressive way about why certain things are problems. But at the same time, if people don’t see things the way I do, the hypothetical neonazi is incentivized to not change their behavior in order to not damage their relationship. Isn’t that a weird, counterintuitive result?

Or who knows, maybe I’m just rambling. God knows if what I type is even coherent, it’s 3 am in the morning and I’m covered in brain fog.

Ever since I was young, I would always have great moments overshadowed by immediate bad moments. Usually, they were consequences of reckless actions or just unfortunate luck. I later realized in therapy how this is a fallacy – good moments must be succeeded by bad moments, as things can never stay good forever they must eventually end and bad moments will happen. I then tried to convince myself to focus on the counterpoint: good things will follow bad moments. I’ve had some very very bad moments in my life that are followed by amazing moments – and so I call this the rainbow after the storm for me.

I felt happy for the first time in a while today, and yesterday night also. There are a lot of things that I’m stressed about and terrified about – but I can’t control them too much at this point. I had a good workout, and I danced in the car on the drive home to some high-BPM music. Music sounded good again, and I enjoyed it. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve enjoyed music like that. I hope I’m back for at least a while more.

I ended up spending around 10+ hours writing Tetris with a friend, as I’ve been finally learning react (web dev). I also applied to like 25 internships. Christmas also passed without me being depressed about that which was sick. I have my DBT book I’ve been putting off, along with other projects. I still want to rewrite this blog myself – but that’s for another day. No CBT tonight, its 4:20 am (heh) and I’m going to pass out. Goodnight!

I’m technically writing this on Christmas day, but it’s my entry for Christmas Eve so I’ll consider it so. I’ve been so stressed and overwhelmed with other problems where I didn’t even notice it’s Christmas, so that’s kinda nice I didn’t have to worry about feeling bad about that this year. I had a lot of things happen, but I don’t exactly want to think or talk about them if I’m being honest – at least not now. At least AoC is over – I don’t have to do something every day at 9 pm for 2 hours.

God, I just hope everything works out. Nothing to CBT today – I just don’t want to think.

I’ve kinda been shutdown for the last few days, any waking moment is crippling anxiety and stress to the point where I can barely move my body. I don’t feel like eating or anything like that. I just kinda wanna sit here and rot.

Situation: I am shutting down

Thoughts: This is it

Feelings: Im tired and giving up

Behavior: I give up

Thoughts: This will pass, and it will seem trivial in a bit.

Feelings: Scared, but a bit more hopeful

Behavior: Unironically I thug this shit out

Man, the problem with becoming nocturnal is I have no energy to do this, I feel like I’m disrespecting myself with this half-assed journaling. I hope I get out of here.

Oh boy, I’ve started to push my bedtime to roughly 3 am, and I try to wake up as late as possible. Hopefully, this is just because I don’t want to interact with family or stuff like that, but this does end up with me surprisingly not having much free time.

I noticed I’m weirdly self-isolating, not seriously but more in the way where I’m not really reaching out to people or texting that much. I am spending a lot of time with online friends, which is definitely fun but it’s an interesting observation for sure. I kinda am in a state where I don’t want to think about the problems in my life right now.

AND I JUST CHECKED MY EMAIL, AND THE OFFER LETTER FROM CS IS GONE. IT TIMED OUT. I’M GOING TO KILL MYSELF!!!!

Situation: CS offer letter timed out, and ECE department hasn’t responded after sending angry email.

Thoughts: I could be catastrophizing thinking the world is over.

Feelings: I’ll just kill myself

Behavior: I break down and shut down or something idk

Thoughts: Worst case I have a quarter where I don’t TA for now. I will survive -10k in the long run, thankfully I’ll be ok.

Feelings: I feel like shit, but not like killing myself

Behavior: Life goes on, and so do I.

God I want my richard siken book to come already. I’ll get through this.

Just finished AoC for today, and am waiting for a friend to join the call at 2:41 am to play some Valorant lol.

Today I again had my only boundary ignored for the 4th time, and I kinda lost it. It was the second time in my life I’ve ever gotten physically angry (I very aggressively threw away things (dog treats) and punched a bottle of Gatorade across the room.) I ended up just walking out of the house, turned my phone on Do Not Disturb and just walked off into the hills. I found a pretty cool hike/spot! I then went to the gym for 2-3 hours before it got nighttime. And now here I am lol. I haven’t gotten that angry in a long time. I couldn’t help but think about how I feel bad for people with anger issues. That must be horrible to have to deal with.

Situation: Mom disrespected boundary again

Thoughts: Nothing ever changes, she intentionally did this stuff due to her lack of empathy

Feelings: Anger, and like I need to leave now

Behavior: I isolate myself from family more, and lead to a very lonely life around breaks even more.

Thoughts: She is an incredibly immature person, and so she needs more patience and support than a normal person.

Feelings: I feel upset, but more upset like a child you raised making a mistake. I understand a bit more why she’s like this, and that I need to give her more chances to learn.

Behavior: I help her, and don’t fully cut off all family.

God I can’t wait till the next quarter starts, or at least when I can go home.

My sister decided it would be a good idea to offer to dogsit for her friend, and so now she is bringing a random dog home. I learned about this the day before she arrives, and Hash does not do well with other dogs. He is afraid of other dogs and ends up getting aggressive because he was attacked before, and so now I’m horribly anxious because I don’t know what will happen if they don’t get along.

Situation: I am incredibly stressed due to a lot of factors, and now my sister purposefully didn’t mention she was bringing another dog and now I have to last second try to figure out what to do.

Thoughts: I have to figure out a solution otherwise the worst possible case will happen

Feelings: Overwhelmed, and I feel a lot of dread

Behavior: I stress like crazy, and it might even self-fulfilling prophecy because Hash will recognize I’m stressed.

Thoughts: Apparently my parents brought Hash to them when I was in Canada, and they fought a little and then got along – hopefully that’s the case. After all, if this goes well that may mean Hash can be friends with other dogs!

Feeling: I am nervous, but also I am optimistic!

Behavior: I don’t stress as much and hopefully get some good experience out of this.

Just get through these few weeks and life will get easy again I promise. You will live no matter what, remember that. Good luck!

Heyo. It’s ya boy again. So I had an issue with the CS and ECE departments, as the ECE department offers TA positions several months before CS. Last second I got an email saying I have an offer letter from the CS department to TA for a CS course that I absolutely LOVE, and that I specially requested. I talked with the professor I agreed to TA for, and he also was on board with me dropping the contract to work for the CS course. I sent an email asking if it was possible to retract the contract, and I made the HUGE mistake of adding this PS at the last second:

PS:

If I can be released from this contract I am more than willing to get you a gift basket – that is how much I love CS190A. Please let me know if there is ANYTHING I can do to make this easier for you!

So if I had thought about this a little bit more, me saying IF makes this bribery. I did not intend for this. In my defense, I assumed that this was a fairly definitive thing, as the department regularly does this. I wanted to mention this as an offer of gratitude for doing this extra work, especially since it was so delayed due to how late I got the offer from CS. I woke up this morning to a strongly worded email talking about how unprofessional and unethical this was, along with how bad it is for them to have to scramble now to do this. I felt, and still feel absolutely horrible for both causing undue work for them and also for the implication of bribery. The person I offered the gift basket to had helped me out earlier this year, and while they were relatively unprofessional and sporadic – I attribute this to them being incredibly busy. I am very thankful for their help, and I assumed that this wouldn’t be as much of a problem as it turned out to be.

I really do feel horrible about this, but on top of it the department person who sent the angry email mentioned “The way you have handled this situation will certainly be a factor as we consider any future employment.” I think it’s obvious why I’m also close to losing it.

The more I think about this entire situation, the more I feel like throwing up. I just want to die, for this problem to go away. I have been consciously trying to not think about it, not to avoid it but because I think I already thought about it enough and processed it, and now all I’m doing is scaring myself and beating myself up excessively.

I think it’s fairly clear to me the consequences of never being able to be wrong growing up because making a mistake where I am at fault makes my mind immediately convinced I need to commit suicide. That doesn’t sound ideal or a good strategy for self-preservation lol.

Situation: I made a mistake, and upset people at the ECE department.

Thoughts: I could think that my life is over, I won’t get any more TA positions, and this will cause so many problems with my entire master’s degree.

Feelings: I feel overwhelmed, like the world is ending, and that I must kill myself.

Behavior: I probably don’t kill myself, but I sure shut down and feel like absolute hell for a while.

Thoughts: I made a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes, and they aren’t the end of the world. I sincerely apologized, and am trying to fix it any way I can – that is all I can reasonably do at this moment, other than learn from this mistake.

Feelings: I still feel upset about this mistake, but also I don’t feel like the world is ending.

Behavior: I take accountability for my actions, and continue living.

In 2 years this will matter virtually nothing. I will live, everything will be ok. I will get through this. I love you, stay strong Suman!