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.

At around six pm, I decreased the bluelight on my screen. I usually do that much later in the evening. It seemed like it did something because I was yawning shortly afterwards.

I stopped using the computer at about nine pm, had dinner, then left for my walk. I had a small dinner, and, as expected, no crushing drowsiness afterwards. I wonder why large meals cause drowsiness. Once I got home, I read for a bit instead of using the computer, which I normally do, but soon I was as drowsy as usual. I had my slice of bbq tofu and went to bed. Once I got into the bedclothes, I noticed that I still felt rather awake. A had more quick-dissolve melatonin, but falling asleep still took a bit longer than usual.

I woke up much earlier than usual this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, although I probably dozed a few times. The blackout curtains help with dozing more than they help with actual deep sleep. So for night number one of decreased screentime, no improvement in sleep.

My morning was as usual, I got up late in the morning and went for a walk. As of yesterday, however, I have a morsel to eat before going out. I had a few raisins today. As usual, I got back at noon and had lunch. I usually have fruit, nuts, seeds, oats with soymilk, and a tofu sandwich on rye. I had everything but the sandwich. I feel a little sleepy and slightly hungry still but, once again, no irresistible post-meal drowsiness.

So I've established that I cannot have large meals. Shitty. Well, it's nice to have these health breakthroughs at least. Maybe if there was more protein and fat in my meals, I could have them large. Carbs are more satisfying, though :(

I ran out of walnuts a few days ago, and it's been heartbreaking. One ounce per day would cost damn near forty dollars a month. They are just so good.

I need to transfer some of my study time offline so that I can avoid screen time. So instead of drilling my grammar sentence examples as digital flashcards (which I could never get through anyhow), I'm going to print out the sentences and read them along with the audio in the evenings, after computer time is over. I'm OCRing the PDF textbook now. Takes forever. These pages will be better reading practice than that reader I bought. I'm just not quite ready for it yet, too much new vocab.

My blood glucose sensor will end in two days, so I won't get much data corresponding with my new eating schedule. Now that I think about it, I had a migraine after dinner least night shortly after I started walking, something that usually happens when I try to walk after not eating enough. So I might not be able to continue with the small dinners. My body just won't let me lose any more weight.

I just gave myself a headache rushing to the library after eating too little for the midday meal a couple of hours ago. This shit never ends. So no walking except after dinner or before lunch? It makes no sense because I can walk right after I wake up, on an empty stomach, for hours, with no problem. Plus I usually lift weights + cycle just before my next meal, on a more or less empty stomach, with no problem. There's something about exercising just after a meal that must be the problem.

No, that's not it either. I have no headaches when I walk after a non-small meal. It's walking after a small meal or a missed meal. I can walk on an empty stomach first thing in the morning, but not in the afternoon or evening. So goddamned weird.

I got my Mandarin sentences printed at the library, but the text is too small to read comfortably, so I went through all that shit for a rather small payoff.

I'm trying to not take any more migraine meds; I just took a Rizatriptan last night after dinner. I didn't even feel hungry. I felt great. Until I noticed that my head had begun to hurt. And I had another pill two or three days ago because I needed to do something on the desktop, which is connected to the Migraine Monitor.

I'm trying to be off the computer come sundown. I was afraid I'd be unhappy with less computer time, but I'm looking forward to reading a novel and studying Mandarin on paper.

I gave myself a haircut today and I look so dapper. It's a pity other people probably don't think so. I'm supposed to be figuring out another way to get a date. I don't know what to do. Everything gets put on hold when I'm in pain. Oh I was supposed to find some alternative dating sites. There's kinda like zero chance I meet someone offline.

Flashcards are done for the day, so it's offline time. My head still hurts, so I'm not sorry.

I have to have my caffeine with protein or it won't really work to give me energy/wake me up. Instead of going back to the store for my third chocolate protein bar this afternoon, I baked some bbq tofu to have with my coffee/cocoa mix. I feel better, not terribly energetic, but no longer dozy. I need to remember to do this every time I need caffeine. It's cheaper than chocolate protein bars.

There is so much shit I need to remember to function and stay in good health. I got a decent amount of sleep last night/this morning, so I'm thinking that I was feeling tired and drowsy because I've been forgetting to take my vitamins like every other day. Low D3 catches up with me quickly. I just took a double dose, wanted to take a triple but I'm not sure I can even absorb that much at once, plus I'm afraid I'll be up all night if I take it this late in the day.

I've been struggling to get anything done these past few weeks as I recover from the disruption of switching from four meals + one snack per day to two meals + two snacks and acclimating to using this laptop instead of my desktop. I think I'm now settled to just about where I was before in terms of functioning.

So I'm getting back in the groove of studying Mandarin as much as I was before. Today is the first day I'm back to drilling sentences for grammar. I can't focus lol. The continual barrage of medical problems really hammers away at my routines.

Well, three hours later and I'm tired again. I'm gonna have more cocoa. I'm not even sure that cocoa works. It's not the same thing as dark chocolate. But the kind I have is unroasted, so I'm hoping that being less processed makes it more like dark chocolate.

Fortunately, today's workout takes very little focus. I just pick the weight straight up and put it back down.

I would like to add a rowing machine to my home gym. Usually I use the spinning bike for cardio, but sitting on the seat is uncomfortable when I'm on my period because of the menstrual pads. And, amazingly, that extra fraction of an inch between my groin and the seat makes reaching the pedals noticeably more uncomfortable. The bike is already slightly too big for me without that. So I would use the rowing machine for cardio when I'm on cycle. Accidental pun.

I'm tired of summer because I don't feel hot, my skin doesn't feel hot, but then I start sweating. I frequently end up over-dressed when I go out in the evening. My insides are hot but my outsides are not.

I used to be good at taking care of reusable menstrual pads. Now, one by one, it seems they are mildewing beyond the point of return. I stopped soaking them after use, and the washing machine never got out all the blood apparently, so they smelled terrible for a while because of the blood. Then I started soaking them sometimes, and just keeping them in the shower sometimes; in general keeping them wet for too long, and they started to mildew or something, and no number of wash cycles can bring them back into commission. Plus they're old, and, one by one, they've been losing their closing snaps.

They're expensive, very much an up-front investment, and I'm reluctant to put money aside for them because I'm so bad at caring for them now. I don't have the energy anymore. I don't want to have them smelling up the bathroom because I've left them soaking for too long, I'm afraid of knocking over the soaking bowl and having a puddle of bloody water to clean up.

I'm ready for menopause! Feels kind of stupid to be putting money into reusable pads so close to menopause. At least, I hope I'm close to menopause.

Took me forever to find a new Mandarin podcast. I kept finding empty podcast feeds, then I found a couple that were just pictures instead of audio files. So weird. Finally, I found TEDx in Chinese. I'm counting on it not being as pretentious/cringe as the English version. It's so nice to have something to look forward to during the evening walk. Otherwise, going out when I'm tired and worried about being assaulted can be so dreary, especially when it's cold out. I finished an interesting sci-fi podcast yesterday, so I don't have that any more.

I tried so hard to focus after lunch but the drowsiness won. I went out for dark chocolate bars. Four hundred extra calories. I'll have to cut back on dinner, which is an uncomfortable thing to do.

I didn't feel nearly so drowsy before lunch, so I thought my blood sugar had just dropped. The blood glucose reader said that it wasn't low. I did a finger prick test and the blood reader whatever it's called indicated the same thing. No idea what's going on.

I'm bleeding heavily today, soaking pad after pad. I went to the library for some free menstrual pads on my way out for the chocolate bars. There are so many nice things I can access here, and I'm giving them up to move back to the poor county I came from. The poor county I came from has better humidity than this place, and I cannot live with the skin issues I'm having. People also don't treat me as weird over there, and accessing SF and Sacramento is much easier. But the payment standards for my housing voucher are also lower, so I may not even be able to afford to rent anything there. What shitty options.

I can't even think straight, the menstrual cramps are so distracting. I'm waiting on ibuprofen to kick in. I was supposed to job search again today but I didn't have the brainpower. I can make flashcards though because it's mostly just copy-and-paste.

I've worked out a flashcard-making system that doesn't take up so much RAM: instead of inputting directly into the flashcard software, I type the data into a CSV file that I later import into the software. That way I don't need the software open at the same time as the web browser, the PDF reader, the text editor, and the audio editor. The websites where I get the audio and images for the flashcards don't load properly on the lighterweight browsers, so I handle those after I've finished using the lighterweight browser for the translations and pronunciation. The audio from wiktionary.com is a nice change of pace from the voices that come with my textbook audio.

While I was out getting the chocolate, I listened to one of the native Mandarin podcasts I mentioned before, the one with the host whose voice sounded sleazy to me. I'd been avoiding this podcast even though I don't have a lot of alternatives. I cannot say that I like the guy's voice, but it doesn't sound so bad now. I'm glad I feel better about it because this podcast is easier to listen to than the other one I have. I found a Mandarin podcast whose (female) host does not have an insanely high-pitched voice, but men are just always easier to listen to. This podcast is quite motivating; they use more vocabulary than I recognize and I'm quite curious about what the hell they are talking about.

I guess I could try to look for more Mandarin podcasts, but it's just kind of a weird thing to do because I know so little of the language. When I look for Spanish or French podcasts, I type a particular topic into a search engine. I don't know how to spell enough Chinese words to type much of anything. I don't know enough vocabulary to express any preferred topics. I guess I could type out food or something related to school. My results are gonna be a far cry from the sorts of podcasts I typically listen to.

The goddamned cramps aren't going away.

Oh yes! a package was just dropped at my door. It's probably my new headphones. I was afraid they wouldn't arrive today, as Amazon said they would.

I get clip-on headphones and these are a better fit than the previous pair, another Panasonic product of a different model. These are cheaper, and Amazon ships some shady bullshit sometimes, so I was afraid these would be lower quality. I'll have to wait and see how long they last, however.

Today I learned from somebody's blog:

The 2025 Gender Census is available, for people who want to pretend that man/woman are genders (rather than sex-based categories) that are intended to represent people's entire personalities, so census-takers can talk about how speshul they are for having personalities beyond manhood/womanhood.

https://www.gendercensus.com/

An article about the concept of Queer Time, which refers to not meeting typical milestones of adulthood such as marriage and spawning children. Except, like all things queer, same-sex attraction, gender nonconformity, and the completely invisible/entirely psychological forms of "queerness" (such as nonbinaryness) and the politically irrelevant types of "queerness" (such as asexuality) are all lumped in together, thereby obfuscating the fact that the heterosexual and/or nonsexual "queer" people never have to worry about being on queer time because same-sex marriage doesn't exist, same-sex couples adopting is illegal, or being openly gay is too life-threatening for anyone to even risk coupledom. Much like the gender-conforming "queer" people never have to worry about suffering the fate of gender nonconforming people.

In other words, we have an example of why the concept of queerness should not exist.

https://daily.jstor.org/queer-time-the-alternative-to-adulting/

The following article is several years old, but I somehow got to it through a bunch of these sorts of links:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/

It's another person comparing physical brutality to mean words. And so often, these people use the mistreatment of adoas as their example. Why? Why does no one use the internment of Japanese people for their specious comparisons? Indigenous American genocide? It's always American slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings. And the author's bullshittery doesn't end there: the article includes a link from his assertion of the Trump administration's "ethnic cleansing" to an article about Trump ending the temporary legal resident status of certain migrants. The parents being sent back to their home countries somehow ethnically cleanses ther American-born children.

I keep seeing overblown bullshit like this, today, not just back when this article was written. What is up with this dishonest rhetoric? It's so blatant. Do people like this manage to convince themselves that their straight up lies are helping anyone?

Shit, time for a walk.

I've been using my earbuds because my headphones died a couple of days ago. As of yesterday, the earbuds are also dead. Great timing. So that's another thing I need to buy. I think the headphones and the earbuds lasted longer than usual because I used them for separate activities, so I'm going to keep doing that.

The blackout curtains worked as expected but I did indeed have trouble getting up and feeling fully awake, even after I turned on the sunlamp. The sunlamp ain't got nothin on the actual sun. Finally I had to just mentally snap myself out of it and force myself up out of the blankets and things.

I had a very colorful dream this morning about people modeling clothing. The men's clothing style was fairly standard, but the women's clothing was stuff I'd never seen before. I don't follow fashion and I like rather conservative men's fashion, like jeans, button-down shirts and slacks, so I don't know where the content of this dream came from.

I feel worse about my limitations now that I want to date again because I think about what I can offer to another person, and someone who struggles just to keep an apartment clean is not something I want to offer. Oh but I've been in pain lately because I've been undersleeping, so I'm not as bad off as I was thinking today as I looked at the food caked onto my stovetop.

I had no glycine but I'm still tired. Coffee hasn't been working lately, which is extra strange because I had time off from it.

Eighty pages into the Asimov novel, there's still not much more happening than a bunch of talking, and it looks like political intrigue is brewing. What really made me put the book down today (and possibly forever), however, is a description of the main character's space ship as changing mass. MASS. Not because bits are falling off of it, not because it's approaching the speed of light. JUST BECAUSE IT'S LANDING. No, dammit.

Sci-fi novels that don't even obey the laws of physics are things I will not abide. If sci-fi authors don't want their fictional universe to work like our universe, they need to create and describe the alternative universe in which their alternate physics exists. Well, Asimov hasn't done that and the previous eighty pages suggests that he won't. I was already annoyed by an earlier, unexplained description of the ship as "gravitic," operating somehow without regard to gravity. This disappearing mass is going too far.

I'm a bit exasperated that this is the second sci-fi novel I've recently tried, thinking I'd found something worthwhile in the trashbin of English-language fiction, that turns out to be more trash. I had a vague idea that Asimov had some actual scientific qualifications, probably because I read science books of his when I was a kid, and these fictional details are disappointing coming from a scientist, if he actually was one.

I think some people don't understand that science fiction needs to actually be science-based to qualify as science fiction. There are limits to how foreign, how technologically advanced things can be before the story veers into the realm of fantasy.

Today I finally started reading the philosophy of quantum mechanics text I bought months ago. The writing is not as clear as I'd like but I feel some relief at beginning to finally get some clarity about quantum mechanics.

I actually took a quantum mechanics course in college, and I've always felt that I know next to nothing about the subject. The textbook made a lot of vague assertions, then we the students did a lot of weird math that was somehow connected to these assertions. Chiefly I remember that the book would always refer to particles without specifying which particles were under discussion. I don't know whether the stuff pertained only to subatomic particles (and which ones?) or included atoms and/or molecules. I could tell that something was off with either the teaching or the theory itself at a very fundamental level, but, to my exasperation, I couldn't put my finger on what.

My new text confirmed my suspicions. The author says that quantum mechanics, as it's typically taught at least, is not a physical theory. That means that it's not a theory that clearly stakes out a particular type or set of physical object(s) and describes the behavior of that/those object(s). So it's no wonder that the authors of my college textbook never specified which particles they were going on about.

So my problem as a student was that I subconsciously expected all the physics curriculum to pertain to physical theories. Quantum mechanics is apparently a wildcard, and nobody told me so, and I didn't know enough to get to the bottom of that myself. I kind of feel like I'd been gaslit in a way.

After I'd transferred to a second university, I spent a lot of time in the science section of the school library trying to find discussion of quantum mechanics that would...actually explain quantum mechanics. Or just shed some light on what it's fundamentally about. But even the history of science books just repeated the vague statements I'd been fed in my degree program. The fact that tracing this discipline to it's very origins turned up no answers was rather bewildering. Book after book that seemed to say nothing. It was like being trapped in some kind of a nightmare. Not the scary kind, the kind that are weird to the point of driving the dreamer insane.

I'd been afraid of starting this book because I suspected I might have to face the harsh reality of being so sick and tired that I couldn't even understand it. The pain and the chronic insomnia have left me duller than I used to be. But I was motivated to open it up because I'd put down Asimov's book after reading less than one page and because I think I'm back to my usual five hours of sleep per night (and the associated level of cognitive function). And now I'm motivated to keep going.

I feel nauseous now and occasionally and I don't even know why.

I think that my blood glucose sensor reader may not be functioning properly. It shows that my blood sugar hasn't dropped in days. I don't see why I'd suddenly be so stable. Plus I saw an error message on the thing earlier today. I closed the message and haven't heard or seen anything unusual since. Maybe I knocked the sensor loose. I was scratching the skin around it a lot the first few days after I installed it.

I want to keep adding more and more shit to my blog posts. It's not healthy. I'm avoiding my offline life. But now that I think of it, I also have problems switching tasks and focusing when I'm hungry or have even mild pain. My life is rather boring, though. Composing posts is more interesting. Ok I'm going. Potatoes, rice, and soy chorizo for dinner tonight. I feel weak with hunger but apparently I'm not actually undereating because I don't seem to be losing anymore weight. I'm hoping that I'm just losing super slowly.

It's kinda sad. I need to get more stuff going in my life. Studying Mandarin takes forever though.