Weight is up 20 lbs from my low at the start of the year. Part of my brain knows that's normal and acceptable as I try to bulk, and that some of that is muscle I did not have before. But a much more reinforced pathway in my brain is despairing because "I'm getting fat again"

"Matt Christman's Ravings" in one circle, "My Chemical Romance" in the other, "Everybody wants to change the world but no one wants to die" in the middle. There are pictures of Matt Christman and Gerard Way in the corresponding circles.

the same sentiment expressed through two different MCRs

also I have trauma inflicted by people that unreasonably demanded perfection and it's hard to unlearn that because it's not at a level that can be reasoned with

One of the self-improvements I've got in progress is strangling the voice in my head that says "but what if it sucks?" whenever I think about doing something

I have made progress but sometimes I don't have the energy to push through it. And sometimes it really does suck, but less often that I think

the cover of "A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity" Volumes 1 and 2 by Edmund Whittaker

Book finished: A History of the Theories of Aether & Electricity

A book only a physicist could love. Fascinating with derivations I hadn't seen or history I didn't know, especially vol 1. I'd draw from this if I were teaching a course. But it can get tedious and math heavy with antiquated notation

but is the iPod polka-dotted?

the trick is to either have so little money it's not worth their time, or so much money that you can hire people to make it not worth their time

Historically this has not gone well. The past two jobs prior to this one seemed like good opportunities when recruiters reached out, but they didn't go well. This one I actually found on my own, which might be why I've lasted as long as I have

you can tell how enthusiastic I am about work on a given morning by how long it takes me to check linkedin hoping some better job falls into my lap

A street sign that reads WIPE YOUR FEET! Are you giving ghosts a free ride? When you walk over their graves, the ghosts who reside there can cling to your shoes, then come off later and haunt where they are unwanted. Help protect this fragile boundary between the land of the living and the spirits of the dead - don't accidentally introduce invasive ghosts. PLEASE USE GHOST BRUSH BEFORE LEAVING THE CEMETERY Chests were Tha ou, City of Portland Bureau of supernatural Containment NoX

Wide shot of the sign with the boot brush

Love you Portland

you'd probably be amazed at the gaps in my knowledge of how normal people live. What do people do in the evenings after work? All I ever learned from my parents was eating food and watching TV

it always seems to be bad timing for it so maybe I should just go for it in 2027: quit my job, sell my house, spend a year hiking, and then move someplace less oppressive

maybe the reason you feel like you're stuck in a bad video game, dog, is that you judge yourself based on quantitative stats and treat everything like a quest to grind or an achievement to unlock, and so you push too hard until you physically can't keep going, while neglecting the characters and art

that's a mood, sorry

"we're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
and the machine is bleeding to death"

well done but really we should be funding and staffing Aircraft Tussle Control better

a guitar amplifier with a KEXP Amplifier 2026 sticker on it among others

see it's funny because it's literally an amplifier

when I die, I will be shown the times I appeared on local broadcast TV as a child in the 1990s and I will know I'm in hell (Fox 55/27 central illinois for my stalkers)

red hippeastrum blooms

yay I didn't kill all of my hippeastrums when I repotted them

Emergency taking the rest of the week off work because I just can't anymore and I'm actively coming apart
I know I've been trying to avoid this site and I know good vibes are in short supply but I could use anything you can offer thanks

the moon, waning gibbous

instead of doomscrolling (as much) I got my telescope working again with an upgraded camera. I have a lot of software to learn but it seems to have a lot of promise. Here's a raw photo of the moon

like I want human connection and all I get are heart emojis and reminders of how shallow my friendships are

I may have to quit this site or take a break because it just makes me miserable to come on here

I forgot about that! They were in all sorts of nerd-adjacent stuff back in the late 90s but that only raises further questions

the nerd in me likes putting knobs on the signal processing thing but then I continually relearn the lesson that only narrow combinations of settings produce good results

I think I just gotta go full on abstaining from the work snacks for a while because the recent stress broke my ability to stop eating them once I start

dang do I feel way less stressed out today even though it's not really done
probably helps that I took it easy and haven't done much yet this morning beside work out (again) and drink coffee

Geez, look at my post history (no don't really). Sundays are increasing distress, Mondays I'm spiraling, Tuesdays things aren't so bad
Okay, so I gotta do something on those days. Maybe not full on gym but I can take half an hour to ride the stationary bike or go for a run

I feel better but not about the dietary damage already done.

Maybe I need to gym on Monday. Work on Monday always seems to knock me off balance, and exercise helps me not spiral
Commute, gym, and guitar all in the same day would be rough but worst I can do is try and see how it goes I guess

a trippy compositing of multiple rotated and translated and zoomed copies of the same photo of the Raymond fursuit

messing around with WebGL shaders to try to make fractal art but I don't have the math or the compositing working quite right yet. Still a neat effect for some combinations of settings though