chronosaur.us

I really and truly hate the post-event drop.

Post-concert drop. Post-con drop. Post-vacation drop. All of it. The older I get, and the more I focus on fighting my anxiety and depression, the more I notice this and the worse it feels.

Two weeks ago, I spent the week in Atlanta in an AirBnB with two of my best friends. We got to see ATEEZ together, we saw other friends who came in town, we went shopping and cooked meals together and sat around and laughed and joked and generally had a fantastic time. When Friday came along, we did not want to leave. We literally stood in the livingroom hugging and whining about how we did not want the week to ever end.

The day before, we met up with so many other people to have lunch at an AYCE hot pot and k-bbq place. We laughed and joked and squealed about the concert the night before, we talked about good food and good music and good things. I sat at the end of the table and watched everyone – everyone who had come together over a common love of K-Pop, everyone who I’d invited to my teeny tiny little Discord server who yell about their assorted fandoms, everyone who’s become friends and who bring joy to my life in so many lovely and assorted ways.

I sat at that table, and I smiled, and I did my best to not cry because I was just. So. Happy.

And then I came home, found out I caught COVID at the ATEEZ concert, and have been holed up at home ever since. And sure, I’m still chatting with everyone online, but it’s not the same. I miss my friends, I miss the freedom of vacation and staying somewhere new, and the joy of seeing one of my favorite gro0ups in concert.

I tested negative today, finally, and have a day off on Wednesday to get a haircut and am planning on going to the library to do some studying and take some pictures while I’m out, but this post-vacation and concert drop has hit me hard. I’m sure the COVID didn’t help, either.

I need to plan something soon, something to look forward to. It’ll help, I think.

Hi. It’s been a while, but I’m back.

I really do need to stop by here more often than I do. Journaling in any way is therapeutic for me.

Hot take:

I don’t like working from home 5 days a week.

My office is under construction and so there is no place for me to sit until that’s done, so I was told I could work from home until then. I know a lot of people who would be absolutely thrilled for this – but I’m not. I’ve learned a lot about myself since 2020, and one of the things I found was that I DO NOT do well mentally when I’m cooped up at home 24/7. My anxiety spirals, my depression is harder to stave off, my frustration and anger starts creeping up on me and is harder to control, my stress levels skyrocket and I want to run screaming into the sunset, as far away from where I am as possible.

During the pandemic it wasn’t THAT bad – mostly because since I was the IT person in the office, I was considered an “essential” employee, so I had to go to the office twice a week in the mornings to handle tasks. No one else was present, I didn’t see or speak to anyone since everyone else was working from home. I rolled in and took care of what I needed to take care of, and then I left. It allowed me some normalcy during that crazy time. I would get up, get dressed – makeup, hair, and all – commute the 30+ minutes to the office, do what I needed to do, and go home around lunch to log in the rest of the day.

But now the best place to do my job is at home. 5 days a week, all day. With doing support, it’s harder for me to work with only the single laptop screen. I’ve become accustomed to using two monitors both at work and at home. Also, since I attend regular meetings and have to get on calls for support issues, sitting at a coffee shop all day is difficult. So I can’t really go anywhere to work other than my house, and I’m steadily feeling more and more down.

This weekend has been helpful – my brother came to visit yesterday so we took him and his girlfriend to lunch, and this morning I went to have breakfast with my friend K. Tomorrow afternoon I have a therapist appointment across the lake, Tuesday I have a nail appointment after work, and Wednesday I’m meeting K for dinner. So I’m trying to find things to do and to look forward to, which is helping.

But I am still counting down the days until my full week vacation at the end of July, when I’ll be going on a road trip to Atlanta for the ATEEZ concert. That’s my saving grace, my big thing to look forward to this summer. The big thing that’s helping me hang on.

A full week of not this house, not these walls.

I mentioned on Mastodon yesterday that I’ve got a craving to just completely wipe this blog and start over. I don’t want to do that, though, because I don’t want to lose all the work that went into my other sites and this one.

But I do feel the need to change some things up. Maybe it’s just because the season has officially changed, maybe it’s just me procrastinating so I don’t have to study. I’m not sure what it is, exactly, but I want to mess with something.

I added a “now” page yesterday to talk about what I’m doing in life these days, and I’m probably going to add an “ideas” page with things I’d like to do with this site or just tinkering online in general. I also want to do a redesign, but I’m not sure what I want to change – I like this site style, but maybe the layout just needs some adjusting. I may move most of my sidebar stuff to separate pages, not sure yet.

But the biggest thing is that I’ve been eyeballing Ghost as a new blog platform. I know, funny how I’m looking at that since WP’s birthday was just yesterday. But I really want to streamline the CMS I’m using, without having to go to a full static site build. (Although learning how to make a site with 11ty is on the ideas list.)

I guess site ownership is like home ownership – you’re always working on where you live.

I find it hilarious that I woke up today wanting to do something with my site and then I find out that it’s WordPress’ 21st birthday.

Let me think…I’ve been using WordPress to blog since…maybe like 2003-2004 or so? I originally started truly blogging with Greymatter – before that it was all just built in MS Frontpage and uploaded with FTP. I know I switched to WP before Katrina in 2005 because I was updating the site pretty frequently while I was evacuated.

Anyway, happy birthday, WordPress. You’re legal now, go have a drink.

(pictured, Wapuu, the official WordPress mascot)

I started studying for my CompTIA A+ Core 1 class this weekend. This is harder than I thought. Lots of discussion about cabling and voltages and connector types and speeds and such. All good things to know in the IT field, sure, but realistically…do I need to know ALL of these details? Sure, if I was building an intense gaming desktop system, I may need to be aware of these things, but when it comes to connectors and the like, I don’t really need to tell a Molex from a Molex KK connector, I just need to know where it gets plugged in to and what it’s connected to.

The awful thing is that I’m semi-familiar with these things. I’ve never built a computer from scratch, but I’ve watched Doug so many times and he’s showed me what is what so I have a good general basic idea of what goes where. Although I will say that reading up on this is really making me consider building something, maybe a Linux box? I do need to become more familiar with Linux and I have been considering moving my laptop to a dual-boot system to work with it, but I’m hesitant to do so in case it may cause more problems than solutions later.

I also am noticing that the majority of the things discussed in this class is building DESKTOP PCs, NOT laptops. I wonder if they’re going to get into the internals of laptops. Desktop PCs are becoming less common and most people are moving to laptops, so it makes sense to familiarize what the parts look like in a laptop as well if you’re going for a support certification, which is what the A+ is.

Also…would be nice to see some women in these demonstration videos. Just saying.

I GOT TICKETS TO SEE ATEEZ IN ATLANTA WITH TWO OF MY BEST FRIENDS. Managed to snag them in today’s presale! I’m looking forward to seeing them live again, they put on such an astounding show and they’re my absolute favorite K-Pop group ever. Not only that, but some very dear friends from my Discord server are also going to come into Atlanta for that week, which means we’re going to have an amazing time seeing each other and hollering about our respective blorbos, biases, and other weird fun things.

I have not only completed all four courses I had in this school term, but I also added a fifth class and passed that exam today! I have eight weeks left in the term so I’m going to focus on my IT Foundations class, which is the first half of the CompTIA A+ certification. I’ve got some good momentum going and I’d rather not lose the drive to move forward I have going right now. Plus, finishing these courses early means I may get to graduate earlier than I expected.

I like this feeling of accomplishment and having things to look forward to over the summer. It’s an enjoyable change.

Three good things that happened today that I am happy about:

• I passed my Fundamentals of Cybersecurity course, which means I am completely done with all my first term classes, and passed all four of them. I’m very, very proud of myself.
• I stayed up late last night to watch ATEEZ at Coachella and it was SO GOOD. They also announced their latest comeback today, their new mini-album drops on May 31!
• After running errands today, I came back home and took a REALLY GOOD NAP. I normally can’t nap during the day but I was OUT (probably because of the two above things). I woke up feeling very refreshed and in a good mood.

What good things happened to you today?

I’m exhausted. Bone-deep, utterly exhausted.

The past few weeks have been really good. I’ve seen friends, gotten chores done, met up with people, etc. But I cannot shake this complete and total wiped feeling I have when the end of the day comes. I can barely drag myself out of my chair after I clock out from work, much less bring myself to read and focus on school stuff.

I’m tried of doing chores. Incessant, forever, non-ending chores. Washing clothes, vacuuming dog hair, putting things away, cooking dinner and cleaning up from dinner, making lunches, making breakfast, organizing and shifting and picking things up. I’m so goddamn tired but I can’t live in a dirty house.

I love my friends. And to be honest, I haven’t seen most of them since I met up with people from DivaCon. My best friend is coming over tomorrow to sit around and read/study and we’re gonna eat crawfish and as much as I’m looking forward to seeing her, I’m SO TIRED. Oh, and husbando wants me to help him with installing a split-unit AC in the garage tomorrow. Why can’t he call his brother, or his cousin, or a friend? I don’t know. So there’s that, too.

I just feel like the weight of everything is piling up on me lately, and it’s driving me bananas. And when that happens, I want to do one of two things:

• Dig in my heels and bury myself away from everyone
• Run. Leave and go somewhere. As far as I can. Disappear for a week or two. Travel, get on a plane, and don’t look back.

I’m beginning to get those feelings now, and I need to do something about it. I don’t know what. I guess the first thing is to talk to the husbando and tell him that I need him to step up and start helping out more, start getting groceries and washing clothes and running the vacuum and cooking dinner and picking up after himself.

Ugh, the more I think about it, the more frustrated I get, and the farther I want to run.