july 31, 2025 // birthday, medical annoyances, and finding joy away from my phone

it's been quite the month! i celebrated my 27th birthday, gardened, identified bmy gluten sensitivity, struggled with my medical situation, and i decided to work on reclaiming my life from my distracting phone!

my birthday was so lovely this year. matt took me to pet a VERY social and curious capybara (who let me give her belly rubs!) and my best friend threw a birthday party for her fiance and another friend, and to my surprise included me in the celebrating! before this, i was stressing a lot over aging as a woman, and also kind of ruminating on my health getting worse. it's hard to feel excited about your birthday if your optimism about the future and aging is weighing on youo. it's been a very challenging 2025 for me, but i'd like to have faith that this second half, jam-packed with plans will be the redemption half.

gardening has been fun! i was not into it when we started in the spring with our community lot. but weeding, growing an army of mammoth sunflowers and tasting our homegrown veggies has really transformed my motivation. i LOVE weeding... i find it so meditative and even addictive once i'm in the groove. hours go by and i'm not thinking about my phone, how i look, or any stressors. and i can confirm - homegrown tomtoes (and all other veggies) DO taste better. :-)

as for my health - i discovered that avoiding gluten is improving my tummy health, so i have been adapting to that. it's actually not that bad - i think it's harder to be a vegan. i am feeling optimistic that when i am in england later this year, "gluten-free" specialties will not need to be a consideration due to the difference in quality to US food manufacturing. i feel like every day, any feelings of parioltism i could possibly have dip further into the negative zone lol

i also have a great new psychiatrist that i've met with a few times now, and i am struggling with continually finding out how much better my care can be with her, but I am also gaining the unfortunate knowlege that my previous psychiatrist and the neurologist i JUST pushed to work with are a little unknowlegable about lithium! the insanely old, insanely studied psych med and best treatment for bipolar. it is frustrating, but i am just trying to stay optimistic and be thankful these things are being caught now when i have preventable health issues in the future.

lastly, i kind of realized recently that i'm spending a stupid amount of time just staring at my phone and then feeling like i have no time for working on maintaining my website, reading, creating art or even playing video games, so i got a little app that makes it annoying to open stuff, whch has been helpful so far. i also deleted streaming apps, including the youtube app, and am just trying to minimize checking of things on my phone or the laziness of not even using my laptop to watch a movie sometimes. i'm feeling really hopeful about this and feel that this is what allowed me to finish britney spears' memior finally after it's been sitting in my car for months. i would really like to make creativity a part of my life again too, and miss the time when i was 18 and could start drawing anything without even thinking almost daily, and be happy with the end result. i am trying to get this back.

june 24, 2025 // heatwave, loneliness epidemic, and the bridal shower

i'm currently dealing with a heatwave - like 100 degree farenheit weather - and it is making me very stupid and grumpy! apparently this is a real thing that happens to the brain; your body is spending less time maintaining cognitive function the same way it can in normal circumstances. so i am currently moving in and out of my bedroom, which is the only place in my apartment with air conditioning right now. i'm grateful that the sun is out and the day is longer, but i really hate not being able to rip my skin off to cool off and being wet and disgusting!

i've been thinking a lot recently about the loneliness epidemic we're currently in, and some of the people in my life that it is affecting. it is very hard for me to wrap my head around the many young people now who are missing what is a huge chunk of what makes my life personally feel worth living, that being socialization. i've always been kind of a social butterfly, but in my childhood i experienced a fair amount of bullying and retreated to the internet often. still, with this socialization outside of standard groups at school, girlscouts, or otherwise, i hit a lot of standard developmental milestones at relatively appropriate times. i dated people, tried on different identities as i explored different social scenes, maintained close friendships, succeeded in job interviews, and today i value my family moreso than ever. i don't often think of myself as someone that is greatly adjusted socially with the anxiety i can feel and hear as i speak to my boss at work or someone i don't know well, but it seems that i'm pretty normal in my social habits, and i'd even call myself a bit more of an extrovert.

opposite to this are the many people, some you may know too, that didn't have their first relationship in highschool, don't have any close friends that they spend time with, or seem to have the social skills to compete for a job or meet new people now. it makes me very sad to think about and it is one in the growing list of the million things that makes me fearful for the future. it seems like this is becoming the norm now, and i feel that these people are often depressed and isolated, in search of something they don't really know or have the desire to work for. it makes me sad to imagine living like this, and i don't want to see the disconnection increasing into a world of hyper-individualism with jobs being the only major point of intersection. i don't think humans are meant to live the way we are now, and something as practical and joy-creating as maintaining relationships to others feels to me like an essential part of the human experience - if not for the communal values, then for the many emotional highs and challenges that relationships make us grow from.

on another note, i attended my best friend's bridal shower recently and had a pretty layered emotional experience as a guest. first and foremost, it was beautiful to see my friend showered with love from so many people beyond her fiance. i think she is a lovely, beautiful person who deserves many lovely, beautiful things, and i am happy to be watching her dreams come true and for her to have a strong start in her life with her many blessings. however, there was a quiet part of me that struggled at this shower.

i didn't struggle for any reason that i believe to be emotionally inappropriate, but it was hard to watch these feelings pop up in the middle of the shower and for me to now have to focus my efforts on appearing happy and not letting my challenging feelings impact her special day. i think i was able to successfully pull this off since no one said anything to me, and i felt kind of proud of this as soeone who struggles with mood dysregulation. but once i could really look at how i was feeling at home and away from everyone, i fell apart feeling the gap between me and my friend. this isn't to say we aren't close or she's going to grow apart from me, but i truly feel that she is on a different level than me. she is beautiful, kind, artistic, elegant, funny, caring and soothing. she is being showered in love by friends and family who adore her enough to put this together for her, has many beautiful gifts to go inside her beautiful home, and she is well-prepared for the future. i feel below her - not in how i think she views me or treats me, but in my value as a woman and in my bee-filled apartment that i fear i will never leave sometimes. the feeling exists completely outside of our relationship, and i can't really boil it down to envy, since it feels more like she has what she deserves and so do i. i am a dandelion and she is a rose. i don't want the same things she wants and i don't make the same choices as her - i just wish i was something other than what i am.

may 31, 2025 // first post! privacy & med challenges

yay - my first journal post here! this seems to be the way i'm writing more lately... i think this might be a good way to get me to update this more, write more, and not have the same weird pressure to be *creative* all the time. maybe this will end up taking over the status page, but i'm envisioning this as a more detailed side to current stuff in my life that isn't just erased the next time i decide to write how i'm doing.

the only void left for me in my site and all the writing and other sharing i've enjoyed through it is more personal situations. i made the decision a year ago when i got this website to a decent place to share it with my friends because i was excited, proud, and i think a website is an inherently public medium. it feels unnatural to put this much energy into a project without sharing it with anyone irl.

unfortunately, i'm in the awkward place now where i cannot vent because even if my friends/partner/anyone else in my life have opened my website once, they have the url now and this isn't social media. i can't selectively private a journal post that references something i don't want someone i've shared this with to see. i can't really post about any relationship challenges without accepting the reasonable possibility that he might read it, and there might be things i am processing that i want to write out but don't want him to see in this form.

i get that i don't have to share all journaling here, and i can absolutely have boundaries with the journaling about mental health or whatever, but the idea of being able to vent here, with someone able to read it that doesn't know me, feels comforting to my mind, like i'm not just struggling with these well-constructed thoughts alone. i'm sure anyone else on neocities can relate to the joy of creating this thing that anyone could see - someone that doesn't know you irl and never will, but could engage with something personal that you spent time with or holds a little snow globe of your life. or maybe this is just what i have to tell myself to be motivated to do longer-form journaling. idk

regardless, it's been a challenging month for me, and i think a lot of the problem has been the new psych med that was added to my usual daily 2 medications. i was in a good place with my mental health, but i struggle with hormonal mood fluctuations, and i wanted to be as stable as i can be all around. i'm currently withdrawing from the medication and i kind of want to just be happy enough with being happy every month minus like 3 days, as this has shifted my perspective and i now remember how it felt to not feel as stable as i have lately most of the time. psych meds are exhausting - i highly recommend not being mentally ill!