Cacophony

june 15th

watching salad fingers complete series and waiting for my cat to be ready to come inside

it's crazy how like everything is a statement in surveillance world. the cognitive dissonance required to be publicly online while also being someone who feels exhausted by the weight of the other's gaze is no longer tolerable. i feel infected by other people's thoughts and opinions and words filling my head from basically the moment i wake up to the moment i sleep. i feel so afraid of getting stupider and losing my mind (for lack of a better term) and I'm sure constant saturation with meaningless bullshit isn't good for the brain. so i am leaning into blogging more to scratch the itch to share and to engage in internet culture, but there are some key differences. mainly, i can only blog from my laptop. i deleted IG from my phone (so i don't have constant access to internet [redacted]) a couple days ago but today i deactivated because it's just not worth it. if people forget about me because they can't creep on me whenever they want, so be it.

despite the relative decline in my social life, being back in school has actually felt like such a good conduit to direct my energy towards that gives me a sense of meaning and accomplishment. it's all completely prescribed- do this assignment, take this quiz, answer this discussion post. in a way, the deeper thinking part of my brain has been stimulated ,mostly by the law classes, but it also feels relatively rote and simple. so, now that the quarter is over, i have more space in my mind to think and feel and be and it's leaving me feeling somewhat unmoored. i like to stay busy, it keeps me.. sane, i guess. that feels like an overstatement but i'll roll with it. i find my free time usually just gets filled up with tending to my friendships, which feels nice at times but also sometimes i just say yes so that i'm not forgotten about. that's sort of sad. :/ it's such a dangerous dream to entertain- wanting to be missed and wanting to be forgotten at the same time. how could you ever be happy wanting that? you either go up in flames and become missed but never forgotten, or waste away to become forgotten but never missed.

it does feel unbelievable that i've lived here for a year. at times, i feel particularly proud of the growth and all the changes and everything i've done for myself here. i can say i don't think this was a mistake. i now understand the whole, 'wherever you go, there you are' thing.. the angst i felt in CA mirrors the angst i feel here. i'm not really sure where i stand on staying here past graduation. that's another year here, at least, maybe more depending on what work looks like by then. distance makes the heart grow fonder, and i have been feeling especially fond of CA lately, and have felt so much fomo seeing my old friends together, enjoying their lives and forging new connections and making memories. i'm doing that too, before i get too ahead of myself. most of all, i just miss the simplicity of my life back then. it just feels like every aspect of my life has increased in complexity and difficulty, across essentially every realm. i have to keep reminding myself that pressure makes diamonds.. but i don't feel that i have the knowledge or tools to complete that transmutation just yet. so for now, it's just pressure. am i moving on too quickly in life? lately i struggle remaining here in the now, and i know that can sort of exacerbate my anxiety, which exists as a constant dull hum in the back of my mind, like a fly tapping against a pane of glass.

this circles me back to pursuing moments where i feel completely present in body and mind. i guess gym does that for me but god i feel like such a boring freak ass person telling people their favorite thing to do lately is go to the gym.. ugh.. but i just don't want to engage in any of the social aspects of any other physical activity. going back to volleyball sounds nightmarish right now. obviously, my perspective is skewed antisocial right now. maybe this is a subconscious preparation mechanism for my trip to CA coming up in a few weeks. i have this perception that it'll be social onslaught, but i'm comforting myself with the notion that i will just only spend time with people i actually want to see. duh.

which leads me to this line of thought i've been revisiting all week, which is the practice of giving and receiving feedback that feels both radically honest and measured. i think it's easy to swing too far into one or the other, or to just avoid it altogether, which is the direction i've leaned in for most of my adult life. does everything dictate a response? no. how do i draw the line on what needs to be said and what can be handled internally? i get this sense that the avoidance is a selfish way to resolve my problems completely internally, without having to consider the impact that my avoidance may have on the other pary. still, it all goes back to this deeply flawed mechanism of saying nothing and carrying on with a war raging inside of you. the ability to push mental unpleasantness away becomes maladaptive at a certain point. in fact, doing that too much can sometimes have the opposite effect on me- the harder i push a thought away, the more all-consuming it becomes. i'm frightening myself just thinking about that. i have so much to cover with my therapist and i'm trying to get some other things in order so i can mentally take a load off, but it will be a while before the gears start turning and we have motion.

i think i'm finally getting sleepy.

It's strange how you're sometimes forced to assume an unsympathetic view of yourself through borrowed eyes. - thomas ligotti

june 14th

recusing myself from social activities for the time being. i'm tired of being around people.. i'm just going to stay in til next weekend, i think. i just want to spend my time reading, listening to music, working on this site, watching movies, etc.. i just feel super introverted right now and need to let that part of me have its space until the feeling passes. this post-spring dread hits me every year. i think i hate summer. maybe i'd hate it less if i had air conditioning... x_X

june 13th

i feel this inescapable and recurring sense of being a total waste of air but then again maybe i'm being a bit too harsh on myself who can really judge i think i do alright for myself but sometimes i wonder why i feel the need to justify my existence by creating or contributing to something with value meaning beauty etc when it seems so clear to me that the same shouldn't be required of other people and then all these questions start arising such as why do i consider myself exempt from the admittedly perhaps overly generous standards i hold others to and why do i question myself so rigorously without ever coming to any conclusions beyond just accepting that i will live with that sense of inadequacy forever and was there ever a time i didn't feel it i think yes but were those moments of lucidity or delusion it's so frustrating to feel like i can not always trust my senses or my own perspective on things. i have so much to do tomorrow and yet here i am staying up so late doing little aside from exacerbating my own doomerism. i need to read a book or something. sometimes i feel like the real me is buried under so many layers of self-preservation and i wonder what it would be like to be someone who is normal like someone who doesn't anxiety spiral about the most random shit ever. how do you make yourself stop worrying about something you can't definitively prove won't happen? is that not an impossible task?

anyways in less neurotic news today i got coffee and went to the gym and cleaned my house up a bit and rode my bike and talked to kk on the phone and watched a 3 hour long movie and worked on my site and watched urbex. i ate yogurt with granola and blueberries and raspberries, leftover broth with rice, a bagel with cottage cheese, and 2 maybe 3 lacey cookies, i drank a lot of water and i took a fiber supplement and creatine today, have been battling a bit of a headache so i had some ibuprofen and tylenol oh and a beer as well