princesscatstronaut

[princesscatstronaut]

cool just all of my greatest fears at once awesome love that for me

so my heat hasn't been working for a few days. another relevant fact is that my apartment is a huge depression hole of messiness and trash. so before I called the maintenance folks, I wanted to have things more cleaned than they currently are. another relevant fact is that my lungs are so deconditioned bc of the multiple (and sometimes bi-yearly) bouts of pneumonia that I got during grad school due to stress. cleaning and/or taking out the trash is really hard and now I'm somewhat disabled and need help with these tasks. I hadn't started getting someone to come cleaner for me, bc I had just started at my job and wanted to save a little before that. but now that my heater needs fixed, there's no time.

to be logical, I have no data that says anyone at the management company for my building cares at all about how messy my apartment is. I've lived here 7 years and have always paid rent on time. but in the rental situation I was in before this apartment, I was renting from a private individual who threatened to evict me bc of not cleaning enough. I managed to clean enough that they had no problem renewing me for another year, so it must not've been that bad. either way it was a huge shame and I have landlord trauma about it. being seen as so messy that I shouldn't even be rented to, this is one of my greatest fears.

so when I placed the maintenance request last night, I assumed it would take a day and that I would have a little time to redd up more. however, the maintenance person came within an hour of posting it so I had to frantically make a path to the furnace. and then when he asked if there was a clear space in the bedroom for a space heater (so that it wouldn't catch fire), I couldn't provide one. and since I've been living with the temp at 61F for a few days, I have plenty of blankets so I'm fine with it. one more ping of shame. the guy then called the hvac guy and they're supposed to come around this afternoon.

the minimum I want to get done before they come around is to clean the little boxes and the bathroom. other than that, I'm not going to push it. I still have to work today, after all. I have to get a summary slide deck to our collaborators by the end of the day and have lab meeting around 3. I will have all of the analysis done in about an hour, then I just need to figure out how to interpret the results. but I think I can get that done by 3, so I'm not super worried about that. the hard part (running this program that I've been fighting with for 2 weeks), I did yesterday. luckily I'm so good at bash scripting that I can run all of this stuff in a script and do work *WHILE* I have a major panic attack about how messy my apartment is.

so yeah. last night was all fight-or-flight. didn't sleep super well. haven't taken my brain meds yet. haven't started working on the bathroom yet. my work-work is in progress and seems to be going well. I think that's pretty well automated at this point.

I woke up early-ish so that I could have time to clean a little, but now that I'm working on work stuff, I don't want to stop and do something else, even if it is automated. hopefully they can fix the furnace today, its supposed to be like 15F outside next week, and I don't know if the ambient temp will be warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing.

but this panic made me realize that I need help to get this cleaning taken care of. and yes it'll cost money, but I do have a decent income now. and with the new money coming in every month, I can make this happen. a few years ago, I had a cleaning company come around and dispose of a lot of cardboard and trash that I couldn't take out bc of my lung issues and occasionally my bad knee. they were really kind and fast. it costed a bit of money but it was well worth it. I'm going to call them to come around again. normally they work with hoarders and so they have to go through every item to see if the person wants to keep it or not. I'm not a hoarder though, so I bag everything up that needs to go out and then they take it out and bing-bang-boom, we're done. I'm like an anti-hoarder, I know what I want to keep and toss, I just don't have a body that lets me do that easily anymore.

as I said, I have no indications that the rental company would evict me for the messiness. but my internal shame about it is so high, and my past landlord trauma, that these facts are not registering very well. if they do ping me, I think I should have some amount of time to make it better. like a week would be enough, I think? and I can ask for accommodations for my disability in the form of the time I need to get cleaners to come help. or, worse comes to worse, I make enough money now that I can just get a different apartment and call movers. I don't have a backup apartment ready, but I think it would be possible. probably very expensive right now, but what can I do about that. but I hope it won't come to that. we'll see. hopefully the hvac guy won't care that much. and if the landlord does get mad, its not like I'm damaging anything that's a permanent fixture, its all *my* stuff that's gross, so like, whatever.

so yeah, its basically all of my fears all at once and I'm trying not to panic, but its not working very well. the cleaning tasks I want to do before the hvac guy gets here should take less than an hour, so it won't be that bad. and then I can focus on work. bc that's what pays the bills.

[princesscatstronaut]

at the office but need something to hug

at the office. its nice to have a clean desk. although someone took/disposed of the amazon box I was using as a laptop riser which is a bummer. I still have a nice big second monitor though, so its ok. I had tea (raspberry hibiscus) and lunch (easy mac) and I guess I need to get to work now, so I'll have something to show for lab meeting in 2 hours. I started the day with resetting all of my autopay stuff since my old account got hacked. I hope I got everything. all of the alerts about things trying to pull from the old account are getting old. I think I got them all.

I wish I had a stuffed animal to hug. I think in my next trip to the office I'll bring one. maybe the sea bunny. or the llama. either way it would be nice to have something when I'm coding bc sometimes its scary and I need to soothe child-me from the fear of being completely wrong.

I really just don't want to do anything. I had to email old-boss to tell him that the draft won't be ready, and had to email the dept admin too, since she asked. and those are not fun emails to write. old-boss doesn't seem to care, which is fine. but I feel like garbage bc I feel like everyone is saying "why aren't you done yet?" but like, you try working on something that gives you panic attacks while also working 40 hrs a week in a slightly different field where you have to learn new things all the time. like its not easy. I'm not having fun. well on the weekends I do, bc that's when I get to play video games and not feel bad about it. I still play during the week (bc stardew valley) but I feel much more shitty about myself then.

I got a lot of positive feedback about my work over the thanksgiving break and it was so nice. I wasn't even trying that hard. there's so much I could do with my time and instead I listen to Ethersea again and play stardew valley. at least I haven't started a new stardew valley game, that tends to be the indication that I'm not ok. this was just continuing the one I have going.

in Ethersea, Devo/Travis' voice breaks my heart. his character is someone who was raised by people who constantly manipulated him and so he is constantly attacking others and rarely trusts and I'm just here like.. yeah, same. and from his other characters, you can kind of tell that Devo is a different thing. also: it shows you can be terrifying with a french accent lol.

I've been listening to The Adventure Zone bc its a family playing a game where anything is possible. you literally fight dragons. I don't think my parents would ever do that. the fact that their dad plays and tries really hard to be the character he's playing and I love that. I wish my parents cared that much about something I wanted to do.

Today is the observation of St. Nicholas Day (in my family we call it Belsnickel Day, which is just the old german way to say it), which is a holiday lots of european countries celebrate, where on Dec 5th you put your shoes out and the next morning (today) you get a little treat if you are good, or a bundle of sticks if you're not (from krampus). my godmother has always gotten me Belsnickel day presents, even though I'm 42 now. she's so kind to me.

ever since I emailed mom about not wanting to come home for xmas (bc the aunt's house we do it at, I don't feel comfortable around them), I haven't heard anything at all from her. which is weird. in my email I had offered to host them on xmas day (family xmas is always on xmas eve), but since I haven't heard anything, I likely won't be prepared for that. and I think mom might be mad at me. not that we talk all the time, but it does seem like she would've responded by now. another possibility is that gramma isn't doing well (she's 100 so needless to say, her health is precarious and mom is her primary caretaker outside of the nursing home).

but yeah. I feel weird. I feel empty. I feel like garbage that I couldn't get my thesis edits done before this deadline. honestly it took so much to get myself to complete the analysis (which is mostly done, just a little more to do), that it took days to recover after each time I was able to engage with it. and, as my therapist keeps reminding me, I am working full-time now. but I guess I still expected I could do it faster than this. I will get it done. hopefully over the winter break I'll have more time. there's a lot I want to do then. new-boss has this really great boundary that she told our clients not to expect much from us after mid-Dec. all my years in academia are screaming at that lol but I'm so thankful that she has that sort of view point. I will learn a lot about having boundaries professionally from her, I think.

[princesscatstronaut]

I got positive feedback from new-boss and collaborators today and I’m just sitting here thinking about my grad school life and how much more supportive my old boss could’ve been. It could’ve been so much better if he actually gave a shit about me. It could’ve been like this the whole time.

[princesscatstronaut]

post-therapy-thursday-thinky-thoughts

one of the big things we talked about today was the split between my inner child and my inner adult. as a child I was tasked with making sure my diabetic mother was safe, which is parentification and not a fun way to live. and I learned to manage the emotions of the people around me to make sure mom didn't get too upset and have a low blood sugar reaction. the underlying themes of that time in my life are two-fold: 1) oh my god can't anyone see that I need help? why is no one helping me? does no one else recognize how fucked up this is?, and 2) don't let anyone see how emotional/sad/depressed/anxious you really are bc they'll hurt you. so you see, I desperately want help and am simultaneously petrified of being seen and therefore vulnerable.

there were times in the last week where I was able to work on my thesis a little bit. its not getting done in time to be submitted for this semester's deadline and I'm sure I'll get flack for that, but like, what are they going to do? if they say I have to defend again that wouldn't be terrible, from the 4 months of job interviews I did after my defense, I've got the talk down so much better now.

and we discovered that during the times leading up to when I would engage with the thesis edits, I was bathing in cortisol-induced anxiety hormones, and this was like embodying the inner child. she's afraid. but at the same time she also desperately wants someone to understand how hard all of this is. but when I finally get myself to sit at my desk and work on it, that's when I can turn off the anxiety enough and actually get things done. at that point I'm adult-me. I am able to get a lot of hard things done in a short amount of time, but then I'm absolutely drained and go back into avoidance behaviors (my favorite trauma response).

and I keep hearing this monologue in my head that I'm not working hard enough, both at the new job and at my thesis edits. we all know about imposter syndrome. but in this case the imposter I'm playing is the version of me that everyone wanted me to be. and I'm not doing super great at maintaining that right now. and this refrain of not working hard enough has been in my head my entire life. if only I was more vigilant, mom wouldn't have had that low blood sugar attack and had to go to the hospital. if I was a better grad student, I wouldn't have gotten kicked out of grad school the first time. if I was a better grad student the second time (or chose a better boss), maybe this time wouldn't have been so terrible. this voice is inner-child-me. I guess I didn't recognize that until therapist pointed it out today.

I've been in the inner child headspace a lot. its why I've been listening to The Adventure Zone non-stop. bc it shows a family playing a game together and having emotions and dealing with those emotions in a safe and productive way. and it makes it sound like there's people around me, which as a single person in the pandemic, this is very comforting. my parents would never play dnd with me. bc you have to play a character and really embody them and its a safe place to work through feelings that you can't do otherwise (also its a place where you can actually have an effect on the world and make it better). and my parents are emotion-phobic. I wasn't allowed to show that I had them growing up. which, expecting a 13-yr old to not show emotions is like asking napoleon to be taller, it's damn near impossible. but that's what they expected of me. and I was never good enough. it's why I cosplayed Data (from ST:TNG) so many years for halloween. he didn't have emotions. he was the kind of child they wanted.

I have a lot of work to catch up on and I need to get to that but I want to eat something and do literally anything but that right now. I think I will allow a dinner break and make myself come back to the desk later. making myself sit here doesn't actually help, especially when I haven't really eaten much today.

[princesscatstronaut]

ughhhhh I'm the worst. I haven't done anything since wedn and I was supposed to get so much done this weekend and I just didn't. bc I decided to listen to the Ethersea season of The Adventure Zone bc McElboys and dnd are comforting things.

I got to visit with my friend who lives out in the suburbs (we were in college together). her life is very different than mine and she seems happy, but tired, but then she has 3 kids under 6 yrs old so like, that'll make anyone tired. she had some rough times as she built her family. but she has a big family now and (I think) all the support she needs to be ok. but it was so nice to get to talk to her. its funny, we have gravitated to the same side of tiktok (at least on the spiriuality/therapy side). we shared the names of accounts we really liked. we both think we're neurodivergent (I think I may have a touch of the 'tism).

I look at the the things I have to do to make my thesis ready for boss to read, and I know everyone keeps saying "why can't you just do it? why is it taking you so long?" and that's bc I know to my old-boss nothing is ever good enough and he will tear everything apart. and I already have ptsd from the defense itself (which was last March, almost a year ago), and opening the documents throws me into hysterical-crying-panic-attacks, which makes this difficult and scary. so like, there's reasons why its scary. but no one in my dept cares about that. they just see a loose end that needs to be tied up and don't understand how hard it is for me to find the strength to do it myself.

And I look at my friend, who I've known for over 20 years, and I try to explain to her why its so hard and I can't seem to find the right words. but she knows me. she doesn't need to understand why its hard, she can see that it is. there are a lot of things she has gone through that I have never experienced and can empathize but don't completely understand.

through tear-stained spectacles, I'm trying to work on the final analysis that I need to do for the thesis edits. my old boss will never understand why its hard for me. he will not suddenly develop empathy, I know this. no karmic retribution will show him how cruel he was to me, bc the universe doesn't care. and he will never care.

the files take a long time to load onto the vnc on the supercomputer so I occupying myself with this in the mean time. I don't know how I'm going to get through this, but I feel like the window of time I have to get it done and approved is very short (first week of Dec? and it has to get past my committee after boss is done eviscerating it).

the actual work I need to do involves aligning structures in an MD simulation to a reference structure and seeing how they compare to the open-reference structure and the closed. I have to get that data and then I can use jupyter to graph it and then that'll be done. the second task involves docking the glucose molecule with my pipeline and see how it compares to the positions of the ligand in the simulations. this is all doable I think. but the files are very large and so they are still loading. its hard when the files are so big bc I lose momentum. I mean, I made myself put the video games down and sit at my desk (and take my meds and eat something), but hopefully I can get this all done soon. I think I can definitely get the alignments done. the docking-then-alignment might be doable too. I just have to see if the web-docking interface will work for that. it probably will if its just a quick one. boss did suggest that, so I can just make it easier on myself that way. he always says to not make it harder on myself but he has no concept of how hard even simple things are to me when it comes to my thesis. and his edits are mostly about the sentence structure and grammar and rarely about the material, but then, after 6 years of abject neglect I don't know why this is still surprising to me.

I can see what life looks like once this document is done and out of my hands, and I can't wait for that. I just have to do these couple of hard things and then I'll be closer. I don't know if boss will be able to get the edits back to me in time for this semester deadline, and if not, then it'll happen next semester. I feel like I can get him something soon. everyone cross your fingers. I want nothing more than to never see/speak/interact with him ever again. I want to focus on putting myself back together. there's so much adulting I need to do that I haven't been able to do bc of this goddamn thesis.

but yeah, I don't want to be here. I don't want to do this. I don't want to participate in this life.

[princesscatstronaut]

I’m very lucky that the new job isn’t nearly as stressful as the old grad lab was. All I had to do today was go to a zoom meeting (it would’ve been in person but it’s snowing here today). So I’m going to have a nap bc I feel like utter garbage (like physically but also emotionally). Maybe I’ll do more work later on.

[princesscatstronaut]

McElboys

Listening to Adventure Zone for the 100th time bc the mcelboys help me get through the day

[princesscatstronaut]

Post therapy thinky-thoughts:

From growing up with self-focused parents (guess what generation they are) I’ve always had this assumption in my head that when I’m in a bad way mental health wise, I should protect others from myself bc obv I’m no fun like this and if I’m not entertaining people they won’t want me around. Jerkbrain is being a jerk. Therapist keeps saying that nothing will get better if I keep making the choices that aggravate my mental illnesses, and I’ve been isolating from my social groups bc I don’t want to inflict myself on them and it’s real bad. It’s all I can do to keep myself out of a grippy sock vacation. My executive dysfunction and total lack of interception is really fucking everything up. I’m barely getting my work-work done let alone trying to work on my thesis edits where just opening the word doc triggers my ptsd so bad I have a panic attack and have to gradually work up to being able to interact with it for any amount of time. I get this rarer type of panic attack where you just cry hysterically. Love that for me.

In other spheres of my life I am getting a little better; I told my mom I didn’t want to go home for xmas, on Tuesday I got off at the wrong bus stop and had to walk like 3x the normal distance home and it really fucking sucked bc my lungs are so deconditioned from pneumonia. So I’m making small bits of progress but I want to be better already and I’m frustrated with how long it’s taking. But there’s nothing I can do except keep trying.

[princesscatstronaut]

lol I'm the broken-est

so my sleep schedule is absolutely fubared bc anxiety (bc work and grad school/academia ptsd, and cptsd from life) so I decided to just stay up and try to get some work done. and it was actually kind of chill bc there's much less people on the supercomputer at the middle of the night. but like there's this one part of the analysis I'm supposed to be doing that it throws up an error that I don't know how to fix yet. but I'm trying to be better. I asked new boss for help, so we'll see what she says to do.

I keep hearing my therapists words in my head that if I don't make different choices nothing is going to change, so I'm trying to be better at asking for help. new boss is really great and not an abusive dickbag like my grad school advisor.

speaking of that, I'm supposed to be working on my thesis edits, that are likely due at the end of this month and I'm not really ready to send it to old boss yet. I still have a little bit of analysis to do yet but I finally found all of the files for the analysis that old boss did (from the paper, I'm supposed to recreate it for my thesis). he likes to hide things so this was an accomplishment. and the fact that it took me this long to reproduce a thing he did, that's not great (but not a me-problem, more of a him-problem). I'll make a post later to tell the story of old boss and why he's an abusive dickbag, but not tonight. for tonight I get to rest a little before attempting more work stuff in the later-morning. le sigh.

the thing about twitter was that the 280 character limit was a fun challenge, but this is nice too. I hope it stays fun. we'll see.

[princesscatstronaut]

So...

twitter is dead, long live tumblr?