09 december 2022
boy howdy. boy and also howdy.
well, i ran out of space in my journal. usually i handwrite, and i've had a journal since the end of september (and many other before it but this specific one has been since late september) and i filled it over the course of two months. lots of writing! writing every 3 days or so actually, sometimes more often.
ran out of pages around the start of december so i suppose i'm back to good ole fashioned feelsblogging. it's a bit different since i know it's in a public space, but like, i know i could bury them/private them but i don't want to. i think the differences in the medium are something to be embraced in my case. (but i'd really like another notebook, haha.)
whirlwind of emotions this week! shit happening to me that made my therapist's jaw drop. i mean i was already driven to madness by what happened but the validation of her acknowledgement of all that mattered a lot.
it was really a one two punch of a weekend, and i've been told to allow myself to feel the whirlwind of emotions that wreck me because the alternative is supressing them which is not the move. like. like all the emotions are here!!! there is no place for rationalization or suppression or any of that shit because that is not the domain of emotions. gotta feel them authentically.
SO HERE I AM. unhinged. look honestly probably the singular thing that was holding me together after all this was advent of code lmaoooooooooooooo. like deadass. side note i have loved advent of code so far. got all the way through day 6 doing them daily (as daily as possible over a busy weekend but like still) and this is in no small part to the absolute groove i would get into while coding which would take my mind of Things and Events and Occurences. the problem solving was nice to get invested into yknow. also i literally have not had experience programming before this so this was super great as a way to get my teeth into all that. i mean, really, aside from html/css, the absolute most i had done with programming before this was a smidge of javascript, cobbled together after a friend helped me figure out how to send an API request, and a bit in JS where i fixed someone's tutorial and made it work better for me for site-wide navigation bars, and print() input() in python to create typed effects, and defining one function in python to get it to type letter by letter. the only function i had ever done in python up to that point was that function i found somewhere. so diving into advent of code really took me up headfirst! i think we're at the point after a week that the skill has outpaced the things i've been able to teach myself in one day's time every time but it's been a lot of fun in problem solving and working with an answer and hammering it into functionality. transmuted a lot of my Life Frustration into Code Frustration which was then kinetically made into Code Euphoria when stuff would actually work. i still clap and go woohoo when my code works after a particularly hard bit of debugging, usually involuntarily, cause it just feels so great. so yeah! python! learning python! really finding my legs in it.
anyway yeah. i uh. i hit my limit when i realized i needed to learn how to code a general tree in python which I Could Totally Figure Out How To Do but it's a bit more than a day's work and i do have other projects and things i'm working on. but as far as practicing the art of problem solving it's been great, and i actually do look forward to bigger puzzles that i might really be able to sink time into when i have free time to spend. it's fun!
now when it comes to feelings i had some really great conversations with my best friend. so... basically, a situation that i was in got the bandaid ripped off of it this last weekend, and really dissolved, and that has been like a Source Of Misery but it also got me thinking about what it was bandaiding over the top of, which is a lot of emotions from longer times ago that i have been grappling with for years. and i realized that to "get over" this longstanding situation i was trying to move on by focusing on this present day person. but the bandaid is gone now and i return once again to facing the situation head on with no buffer. anyway. when i was talking to my best friend he told me that all this rationalization of my emotions, everything i was suppressing, was totally... just not helping the emotions actually be felt. logic is not in the domain of emotions, i have to feel my emotions without trying to force them into a logical box. like. i do not have control over my emotions. they are simply present. and so my sweet best friend's advice was to lean into it. it'll take practice to uncork and to feel but i will feel. its also scary to lean into the madness because in recent years it has translated to Actual Literal Madness through various forms but like.... yknow i think i just practice again and again and each time i come closer to peace. but peace will not be forced and i will not logic my way to peace. for as long as i'm insane about it, i will be insane about it, but... it won't be forever. at some point i will reach peace if i let myself fully feel the emotions, even if it comes in waves, i will feel all the waves of emotions and get where i want to be on the shore.
anyway! i'm sleeby. see y'all later.