Mega mega THREAD THREAD 
AernaLingus
joined 3 years ago
Wonderful to hear from you!! Wishing you the best with your new treatment 
Guess for #1
Little Witch Academia. Somehow even just the title made me think of it, and then seeing Akko and Luna Nova instantly confirmed it for me—took all of 15 seconds.
I've continued to maintain my 400+ day streak of going on a half hour walk every day, which has really served as the foundation from which I've built my other improvements on. My personal care and hygiene is undeniably the best that it's ever been, and unlike before it's driven by my desire to take care of myself and to keep my momentum going rather than the fear of being judged by others. I won't go into excruciating detail, since it's ultimately pretty mundane stuff that I think most (neurotypical) people are able to do without a second thought, but the main revelation for me was simply cutting out any opportunities for me to get distracted in the transitions between tasks. This involved rearranging my routine to make things flow more naturally into each other, doing prep work to reduce friction (e.g. laying out clothes the night before and making sure all devices are charged), and avoiding opportunities for me to get on my phone.
While I am now totally locked in on my morning routine and there's not much I'd change about it, I'm still struggling to follow through with my longer term goals^[Japanese is a notable exception—I've been really putting in the time and consistent effort with my flashcards and I've already started seeing the benefits in my comprehension] and I end up frittering away most of my free time. I think I'm going to try keeping a daily time diary to keep track of how I'm actually spending my time, since that has helped me stay more focused when I tried it before (it's really humbling to see in black-and-white that you spent three hours straight on random YouTube videos or whatever). Should probably ratchet my app timers back down as well.
On the social front, there's been some very minor progress, but in relative terms it's still something to celebrate. I reached out to a friend who I had been dodging for nearly two months—it was basically just a quick functional reply to something, but it lifted a huge weight off of my shoulders. Trying to keep my goals very modest...honestly, just sending a meme or a song or something once a week would be immense progress. I tend to get wrapped up in sending the perfect message, then not sending anything, then anxiety builds up because, well, if I'm breaking months of silence I'd better have something amazing to say!
Also trying to get better about replying to people on Hexbear...sorry if you're reading this and I've ghosted you before. Believe it or not, I used to be much, much worse, but that's still not an excuse to be rude. Talking to people is scary, and I've gone so long without regular social contact that I think I've fooled myself into thinking I don't need it and can just run at the first sign of trouble. But deep down I know I want to connect with people even if it means I will inevitably hurt people and be hurt. The hardest part is not self-sabotaging by letting my inaction do the hurting and immediately torpedoing any progress.
One thing that isn't yet a major concern but is worth keeping an eye on is my calorie intake. I am a tiny person and (daily walks aside) quite sedentary, so I've become accustomed to just eating two meals—a light breakfast and a heavier dinner + dessert. For the longest time I completely cut out snacks, but lately they've been creeping back in and I've even been having (gasp) lunch, and I think my waistline may be starting to show it (to be clear, it might be a couple of pounds). I've never struggled with weight in either direction, and I'd like to keep it that way. My roommate and I usually share most of our food, but I may talk with them about artificially having them claim the snacks and possibly even storing them in a separate location so as not to tempt me. Honestly, though, I think a big part of it is simply eating out of boredom to get a quick hit of dopamine. If I work more on my long-term projects and social goals, I suspect that the mindless grazing will abate.
So, concrete actions I'd like to take over the coming week:
- ~~send a dumb meme to my friend~~ ✔
- reply to Hexbear messages within 24 hours of receipt ✔✔
- start daily time diary
- cut back on snacks with the cooperation of my roommate
Shockingly, I'm actually playing some games this week!
I finished Case of the Golden Idol and started on the DLC. Highly recommend to anyone who likes detective/logic puzzle games—just check out the demo now, and wait till it goes on sale again in a month or two (GOG has a better deal for the bundle with all the DLC). The pixel art is really charming, and it's so satisfying when you crack some of the tougher levels. Bit of advice: taking notes outside of the game will help you a lot when things get more complicated, and it can often be useful to refer to notes you took in earlier levels. Will definitely check out Return of the Obra Dinn when I'm done with the two DLCs.
Continuing with the detective theme, I also resumed my playthrough the first Gyakuten Saiban (Ace Attorney) game on DS in Japanese. I played through the intro case a while back, but since I've gotten back into studying Japanese again recently I wanted to take another crack at it. I'm pleasantly surprised at how much I'm understanding—sure, there's plenty of words I don't know, but I can usually figure things out from context. To be fair, I played through the first two or three cases in English even further back, so I'm operating with extra context. We'll see how I do when I get into uncharted territory.
The way I prefer to experience baseball is through Jomboy breakdown videos and randomly deciding to watch a compilation of Ohtani hitting dingers every now and again.
Here's the playlist for Season 5 (the episodes in question are the first two):
THEY'RE COMING FOR YOU NEXT YOU DUMB MOTHERFUCKERS. AAAAAAAAAAAGH
The thing is, it's more efficient at doing a job that really shouldn't be done except in rare cases. Like, in practice, the vast major of "leaf" blowing is getting grass clippings off of sidewalks/driveways/roads, but those lawns shouldn't exist in the first place! In a better world, all those stupid-ass lawns would be replaced by native gardens/xeriscaping.
Goddamn, though, I really hate gas-powered leaf blowers especially. It's unfathomable that they're even legal, considering the noise and pollution they spew from their horribly inefficient engines. I've read about municipalities and counties banning them here and there (and they're banned for sale in California along with gas-powered trimmers), but it would be nice to just rid ourselves of them in one fell swoop.