svnsettia

I was sitting outside a shopping center yesterday when a young womon walked by wearing no bottoms except leggings. She was slim but she had what looked like a disproportionate amount of fat on her backside. But it wasn't actually disproportionate; she had a normal female body. That's what most of us look like from the back. It just looks disproportionate to me.

I hate having so much fat in that area. It looks weird and unbalanced to me. But I'd probably have to diet down to a skeleton to get rid of it, to make it look balanced. It's a good thing I cannot see myself from the back most of the time. I don't often think about it, but the person I saw reminded me.

The female body is just too fatty.

I weighed in at 122 lbs. this morning. So I have 7 more pounds to go. Probably only five and a half or six actually. Even my underwear are becoming loose. Maybe I can get down to a men's small. The fact that I wear a men's medium in boxer briefs at my size illustrates how fatty is the area between my waist and knees. I wonder how my thighs will look once I reach my goal weight.

I'm annoyed that I spent a lot of time troubleshooting computer stuff today. I need my software to do things it currently does not do, but I don't really have the time to become a python developer so that I can extend it. It's very frustrating; I use this software every day, so I keep noticing its limitations. There's never enough time, and what time I do have is eaten up by stomach cramps. I try to keep working through the cramps, but it isn't easy and I'm not efficient. Thinking is difficult. The cramps still aren't completely gone, I've just noticed. Just receding.

I have blog topics that get put off for weeks because pain and/or drowsiness sap my energy and give me brain fog. There's a creative backup in my mind and then I forget some of the topics.

I listened to a very moving podcast episode last night. I really needed something like that because I was super tired/sleepy when I first went out for my walk. It was an episode of Relatos de la Noche, and it was about the soccer team of young Uruguayans + friends/family that crashed into a mountain high in the Andes and nearly froze and starved to death. I had heard of the tragedy before because of a movie based on it. I'm fascinated by wilderness survival stories (particularly since I can't stand any cold), and the extremely hostile environment made this one extra special. Negative thirty degrees at night is incredible, doesn't matter whether it's Celcius or Fahrenheit.

The host of the show is a very engaging storyteller (not mentioning the cannibalism until the end, after the rescue, was masterful) but when he's really on a roll, I have trouble understanding him, plus my vocabulary is terrible, so I'm motivated to improve my Spanish. But how? and where do I find the time. I need to think about an efficient improvement method that can be done in five or ten minutes per day.

It's sounds aren't very varied, so a lot of it sounds the same. Sometimes when I hear a word in the language, I'll swear that I recognize it, but I wont' be able to remember what it means; at those times, I think I'm just hearing a similar-sounding word.

There are some characters that have a simply ridiculous number of different meanings, and so far it's not been easy to figure out which meaning is intended because most of the meanings are all possible given the context.

Some of it seems like baby talk. The word for university is literally made up of the characters for "big" and "school."

There's a kind of impreciseness in meaning that's not easy for me to express. It's not just the phrases and sentences having multiple possible interpretations due to so many words each having so many meanings. I think it has something to do with the language having developed in the context of a culture whose communication style is very, very context-dependent. Various parts of speech can be dropped from a sentence without rendering the sentence something that would be considered meaningless or incomplete.

Autumn is my favorite season. Early autumn. Things are cooling off but not cold. The rains are light and short-lived. The sun breaks through now and again but doesn't blast us with heat. Bright but not hot. The sky looks more interesting, I guess because it isn't as clear as it is in summer. Theoretically, autumn should be analogous to spring: a transition between the hottest and coldest times of the year. But autumn seems more gradual. Spring seems like, it's chilly and then it's hot.

I've got to stop with the chocolate bars. The caffeine arousal is torture. I can't achieve satisfaction; I can't reach the places I need to reach. I go through too many pairs of underwear. And I was still too drowsy to do anything in the afternoon after two bars today.

I used to be satisfied with shit what're they called? Vulvar orgasms? Labial? I never felt the urge to have anything in my vagina until I was in my thirties. I tried putting stuff in there, even when I was super young. Twelve years old, first time, pencil. It was always boring, never felt good, not necessarily bad either though. I wonder what changed in my thirties.

Well, I got a toy now but it's not cutting the mustard. Something is missing, and I'm not gonna buy another one. This is why I need a boyfriend. Such a crazy-making need, like an intermittent itch in the middle of my back.

It rained lightly last night around midnight. Caught me on my way home at the end of my evening walk. First rain of autumn. Today was the second.

I feel kind of weighed down and sad. I was looking up troubleshooting information for sound issues on my laptop when I ended up on the online communities metafilter and ycombinator, which led me to a transcript of an interview about Charlie Kirk's suspected killer Tyler Henderson. The interview was about Henderson's personality as gleaned from his online footprint. According to the interview, he's a "Reddit kid," someone who memes in place of telling real jokes, which is something people do in place of having a personality.

Thinking about online communities made me think about not getting along with people in them. It's not a terrible thing, mismatched personalities butting heads online, as long as it doesn't reach the level of serious disrespect, abuse, doxxing. But it makes me kind of sad. I guess sadder than the offline equivalent makes me.

I'm not sure why exactly it makes me sad. I guess it's just unfortunate that finding enjoyable social interactions is so difficult. It's a pity that the opportunity for people to come together and learn something, accomplish something, etc. gets derailed by personality traits. That's it, that's what's sad about this: personality differences seem like they should be relatively trivial, at least something people can overcome enough to productively participate online. And I guess some people do find a way to participate productively. But some don't. I didn't. I gave up.

Sometimes I think about returning to the last forum I was on and just restricting what I post so as to not get annoyed. I actually logged in, read one of my old threads, and saw the stupid comments the latest posters had left. So I logged back out and haven't been back.

Another thing that kind of depressed me (and motivated me to stop wasting time reading random shit) was all the memes and notorious online groups referenced in the Henderson interview. It was like all the time somebody had to spend browsing garbage online to even know anything about furries and Groypers and the Slav squat suddenly became a weight pressing down on me.

Actually was the name Tyler Robertson? Can't rememeber, not looking it up.

Maybe it makes me sad partially because I don't have much hope of meeting anyone I like online even though I really need to meet someone this way.

Also it's sad that at least one person is trying to pigeonhole someone's personality with social media activity. That's a different kind of sad actually. Sad as in "Sick, Sad World," is the best way I can put it at the moment. That fictional tv show from the old MTV animated series Daria.

I remember Daria fondly, but it just occurred to me that the show might annoy me if I were to watch it now. Daria was kind of jaded, cynical, sarcastic rather often. Nothing wrong with being jaded, actually, but the other two, maybe they would bother me because, now that I have a lifetime of shit to be cynical about, I'm trying to think positively. It was nothing to watch cynicism and sarcasm when I was younger because I didn't have this life I have now for comparison.

I need to focus on something else.

Well, there's dinner and a walk coming up. The highlight of my day was finding my usual chocolate protein bars in a new flavor this morning. Peanut butter, my favorite complement to dark chocolate.

I stopped using the computer at seven pm last night, two hours earlier than I'd stopped the evening before. I didn't notice any difference; I was still drowsy at the same times and I still woke up earlier than usual. Falling asleep was less difficult than the night before, but still a bit more difficult than usual.

It sure would be shitty if this had no effect whatsoever on my sleep. Or a negative effect, if that's even possible. I need to try it for longer, but I plan to continue limiting screen time regardless because I feel more focused and productive when I'm off the computer. Well, during the time I'm not drowsy anyhow. I also feel motivated to be more productive throughout the day.

I bought another bag of walnuts. Ten bucks for half a pound. I guess life is too short to live without these nuts.

Suddenly I looked and felt slimmer again today. I don't know how or why this shit happens. Why do I seem to get thigh bloat?

My attempts to thicken my waist have failed. I don't know what to do, which exercises to use. Deadlifts would supposedly help, but they put too much muscle on the lower body, that's why I switched to rack pulls. Maybe I just need to lift heavier. I've been stuck at 160 lbs for a long time, and I don't expect to surpass that plateau any time soon.

Another migraine today, started right after lunch, no idea why. I tried to wait it out but it's worsened so I just took my medication for it. I'm not supposed to take more than two of these per month, and I've exceeded that in less than a week.

I have a persistent tickly, fluttery feeling just under my left knee, as if something is crawling underneath the skin.

Yesterday I changed my interest/availability in the state job application website to part-time only. There are effectively zero part-time state jobs, so I'm not expecting to get one, but, if one ever becomes available, I'll be ready for it. I've given up on trying to work full-time. I'm not going to kill myself trying to fit the full-time work mold.

My life is actually rather decent the way it is now, living in poverty; a lot of people, employed people, would probably kill to have my life. I have a stable home in a nice, safe town, enough food stamps to eat well, free healthcare, money left over for some cheap amusements, and the freedom to do what I want all day, every day. I don't have to do anything for this stuff but fill out paperwork. (Granted I had to be chronically homeless and I had to have signed part of my life away to the military to qualify for the housing voucher, but that's in the past and it wasn't too horrible). I have some semblance of tranquility in this life and I'm able to prioritize my health, somewhat unlike the people slaving away for forty+ hours per week. I'm not going to throw this away to try and likely fail to hold down a nine-to-five.

Yes I'm in this situation largely because of my health issues, but I'm not dying, my body isn't wasting away (on the contrary, it's in great shape from all the exercise I have the time/energy to engage in), and I'm not in agonizing pain. I still have the use of all my limbs and digits and senses. On the other side of the hill, where people have no control over their daily schedule, struggle to maintain their weight in sedentary jobs or risk injury in manual labor, lack time for hobbies and relationships, and suffer in traffic, the grass isn't greener over there for most of them.

For years I've been really indescribably disappointed in the government for denying me disability payments. Not just the denial, but the raw unfairness of the application process, has weighed on me heavily. But lately I have come to see that, effectively, the government is paying me disability in a way. It's just the local government rather than the federal government. Taxpayers are paying my rent, paying for my food, paying for my healthcare.

One way or another, disabled people get money in this state. If we can't find work and don't get disability, we end up a drain on various kinds of social services. We end up in emergency rooms way too often, the cops come out to deal with us more often, we're on food stamps and free healthcare programs instead of paying our own way. Taxpayer money builds our shelters and gives us hotel vouchers. The Department of Rehabilitation, a state agency, has spent thousands of dollars on me, and I'm still unemployed.

If only work could be split between us and the overworked employees. It's crazy that some people are chronically unemployed while others are working ten hour days. I would like taxpayers to know that it's in their best interest that we get some type of employment, because our living expenses are coming out of their wallets otherwise. We may go homeless, but the state won't let us starve to death or go without medical care at least.

Thinking about how grueling full-time work can be lately, there are some changes I'd like to see implemented for everyone: a full-time work day should be six hours, and employers should be required to make every effort to ensure that as many employees as possible have both sedentary and physical work tasks each day. In the case of the latter, there should of course be exceptions for people who cannot do much of one or the other for whatever reason. And it'll require a lot of restructuring of jobs because a lot of them are 100% sedentary or 100% manual labor. But the changes will be worth the health gains. It's insane and pointless for some people to get no exercise because they are chained to a desk, while people in construction and other trades destroy their bodies day after day.

For example, instead of hiring a secretary, construction companies can have laborers take turns answering the phones, faxing, etc. There can be incentives for cross-training employees, colleges should be refocused for training students to have both trade and office/scholarly skills. Productivity might take a dive, but the health of the workforce is more important.

And another thing: a full-time work day for people in high-stress occupations absolutely should be shorter than the standard work day. That goes for interns and residents as well. I was reading an article last week about medical residents being expected to work like 48-hour shifts?! Doctors have one of the most important and delicate jobs that exist, and they're expected to do it on no sleep? What a broken society this is.