Aquarii

A lot of studies seem to indicate that happiness is largely tied to a sense of accomplishment, general well-being, and social connectedness, at least from a more psychological/neurological perspective. Philosophically, well, the meaning and pursuit of happiness has been debated for about as long as written history exists, and probably longer. From my personal experience, I would say prioritize the job. Finding a job I enjoyed improved my stress levels, which improved my sleep, workout consistency and effort, and eating habits, which improved my health and body composition. It surrounded me with people who actually cared about similar things and producing quality work, which gave me a social sense of belonging despite working with people who are different than me. For the first time in my adult life, when I get home I feel like I can just have fun. Whether that be working out, creating something, or just relaxing; by the time I have finished the work day, I have felt accomplished, felt like I contributed to something bigger than myself, and felt like I helped other people. So instead of going to work to just grind through for a pay check and then scrambling to find a sense of accomplishment outside of work, I get that from work and can use the time outside of work to just experiment (or look for a house, as is the case right now, lol). So, instead of putting the job last on your list, I would consider putting it first. Because from what I have seen, a job can often be a linchpin element. Doing something you find meaningful and giving you a sense of accomplishment and contribution can create a ripple effect that positively impacts everything else you are wanting to work on. Even if it isn’t the end goal job - maybe it is just a stepping stone or a part-time thing - taking yourself out of an environment where people don’t care, and putting yourself into an environment where people care about the same work-related things that you do (in this case, helping people), it can make a huge difference. As well as introduce you to other people who may be more passionate, ambitious, and generally more suited to the types of people you want in your life. It can also make it easier to stick to other goals, especially if you current job mentally and/or physically wears you down. Not to sound all Nike on you, but just go for it! You have the skill, you have the passion, and there is definitely a need for people like you in the field. There are always going to be a million reasons to wait until “a few months from now.” You have totally got this. I know, it is super rough to step out there when you confidence is low. But I remember how good you were at this stuff during your internship and how fired up (in a good way) it would get you every time you would help someone who was struggling to get help. I am not going to discount how hard it is to take that leap, but dude…you are literal a natural at this career path. You put in the work. You got the degree and license. Go for it; you got this.

I also don’t plan on celebrating tomorrow. I might do something this weekend because it is the weekend before my birthday, but definitely not going back to what I was doing over the holidays, lol

I am having a similar experience. Sometimes I might have a bad day or night, but not drinking means at least I can get a jump on the next day instead of riding the hangover struggle bus.

I am sorry to hear that you and some of the family have Covid. I feel like it is inevitably in my future despite trying to take as many precautions as I can. My mom and two of my siblings have managed to get it twice (they seem to take precautions only when mandated to do so). It is such a crazy world we live in. i hope you all feel better!

I am seeing outside of Christian communities too. I work at a public university, and we have had Covid cases going through the office. Just a couple days ago, I found out the guy in the cubicle next to mine tested positive, because he posted it to our Slack channel, and there is no quarantining or anything. It has been going through the office since like Nov of last year at least. They did do the first two weeks of the term from home for the students, but for faculty and staff it was more at the department’s discretion. They do allow people with health conditions to work in some of the smaller meeting rooms to be isolated from everyone else, but aside from people who are sick being required to stay home, there is no shut down or self-isolation of people who may have come in contact with someone who tested positive.

Everyone is just crushing it!! My favorite benefits are that I feel like I have more time, especially on the weekends, no hangovers, and a better sleep schedule.

if that turns out well, I might need a recipe…

We are down to the last week, y’all!! We are in the home stretch. How is everyone feeling? What have been some of your favorite benefits of an AF month?

Definitely. Especially the difference between wine and other alcohols, but I feel like each alcohol affects me a little differently than the others.

so how I missed this. Rofl!!

You have a headache AGAIN?!?! My psychiatrist has never outright said this to me, but I am sure he has thought it before 😆

For a long time it was tolerable to ignore, especially because it kinda got put on pause for a few years because of an ED (it is so ridiculous that getting HEALTHY made the pain come back, lol). But, over the past few years it has increasingly become a LOT worse, and now I am just like, "please, someone put me out of my misery" each month, lol. I am not the only one! So, my grandmother is a retired OBGYN and still volunteers at a women's clinic down in FL, so I contacted her about it, and she was like "I have never seen someone react that way." So, I was kinda at a loss. I mean, my sis is on a med that has the same active ingredient, except she is on a dose 6x higher than what I started with and loves it. I have no idea what went wrong 😩 I honestly don't know what my next steps will be. If you don't mind me asking, what did you do? Just try a different med/ingredient? Go with a different treatment all together? Decide to just suffer until your liver or kidneys die from pain meds?

Oof, I am sorry, that sounds like a very unpleasant weekend. Glad to see you back for a new week, though.

Rofl, that is amazing, and I will definitely accept the inspiration roll. I actually found it extra hilarious because when I first tried to read it, I was tired and their was a glare on my screen, and I read the second line as "She felt all her curves were in vain" and simultaneously thought "wtf does that even mean?", "I feel that", "bahahahahahaha, that is amazing", and "wait...did I read that wrong?" Yes well, I wasn't anticipating on having to respawn only three weeks into the year, lol. Thankfully the source was just the medication messing up my system so much that it couldn't handle anything. Now that the med is gone, the inflammation has gone down, things have started healing, and I am able to start adding foods back in. Thankfully it was much easier than trying to pin down my gluten sensitivity, where it was just like WHAT IS CAUSING THIS??? lol

I am sorry to hear Mr. Harriet is being so difficult. Something to consider is that he may perceive it as a threat to your relationship and is acting out in fear. I think because of the social significance of food and shared meals, it ends up being a far greater point of contention between people than one would expect. I know from my background of having grown up with a religious dietary background, as well as being vegan/vegetarian for awhile, having an out of the norm diet can have quite a negative social impact at times, but you feel like it is worth it because you feel like you are doing the right thing, even if you have to look like the weirdo when eating with family and extended friends. So, when you are faced with either changing or at the very least accepting other options as valid, it can make it feel like you have given up so much and been the odd one out so many times all for nothing. Plus, if it has gone on for long enough, it is common to be isolated from those people who thought you were weird and surrounded by people who agree with your current lifestyle, so you would be required to be the "wrong" one and the isolated weirdo when with friends again.

I don't know if this applies to your brother, but I thought it might be an interesting study to read because of the dairy link. These researchers were studying the difference between high and low fat meals and how they effect people with type-1 diabetes. In the study, they found the people with the higher fat diet required more insulin. But, they happen to be feed the subjects pizza for dinner: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130327190328.htm It appears they hypothesize that fat may play a role on insulin needs as well as carbs and proteins. I don't know how much fat is in the dairy your brother consume, or if the fact that the subjects were being served dairy played a role (or the fact that the subjects who received higher fats also had higher calories at one time, since the proteins and carbs had to be identical), but it might be something to look into.

Oh, I could DEFINITELY use a healing potion right about now. Thankfully between doing more balancing stretches, paying more attention to my posture, and using my standing desk more, My back has healed a LOT faster than last time. That I am. I felt like my IRL character was dying there for a second (aka, me), but I survived and I am still here, lol. ------- ------- So, when I chose the wording "no sweets" instead of "no sugar," that was originally designed to make it where I didn't have to worry about sugar in like sauces and stuff. Little did I know that it would save me from having to choose between abandoning my challenge and enduring the last few days, lol. Usually I would avoid gatorade and juices during a challenge like this, but they have temporarily become my very best friend. My body reacted so, so, so, so, SO badly to the new birth control. The first week was uncomfortable, but side effects are expected, the second week SEEMED like things were improving a little, the third week, things spiraled downhill so fast I didn't know what hit me. I quit halfway through the week, but it was too little, too late. You know when your abdomen looks a few months pregnant and your intestines hurt 24/7 that you done f*cked up. In the last 72-ish hours, my hormones, electrolyes, and who knows what other physiological systems just spiraled. The tank in those systems caused immense body aches, joint aches, and skin sensitivity that was so bad, even the change in temperature of taking a blanket off or the moving of clothing hurt. I could barely sleep, barely eat...it SUCKED. Thankfully, with some electrolyte drinks, juice, rice, and applesauce, I have been able to bring my poor brain and body back online. In the last 48+ hours, I have only eaten oats, applesauce, rice, bananas, and liquids. And the oats were still too rough, so I am kinda limited to the others now. The pain and inflammation have gone down a ton, and I am feeling a lot better, so I am hoping that by tomorrow I can start reintroducing other foods. Long story short, this week WRECKED me, haha. That being said, I stuck to most of my goals fairly well with a few modifications. Instead of rolling for heal, once things got really bad, I let hot baths and music count for that goal instead of rolling for something. Considering how much of a blur the last day or so has felt like, I don't think I was really capable of much beyond that. I got one workout in, but for obvious reasons, I did miss one of those. And, without all that much work I have stayed away from the alcohol and sweets, because those would have made my life 100000000000000000x worse, lol. So, I missed one heal day, and one workout, but hit the rest of my goals. Considering what a week this was...imma call that a win.

Ughhhhh, it is 2am, and everything hurts. EVERYTHING. This round is definitely shaping up to be way more challenging than I anticipated.

3d printing is fun. It is kinda mesmerizing to watch. If you get a printer, make sure you put it in a well-ventilated area, since you are working with melting plastics (if an FFF/FDM printer) or resin (if using an SLA printer). I worked for a desktop 3D printing software company that had dozens of printers for testing and required all employees to learn the software and FFF/FDM printing.

Two weeks left!! How is everyone feeling?

At the very least, I have a better idea of what to stretch/target, so the healing is going faster and hopefully I will be able to prevent this from happening again? Well, I asked someone to massage my back and they took one look at it and was like "um, your back is all jacked up." But then I also googled some methods to check for it. It seems to be a lot better now that it is healing, so I think it was as extreme as it was due to the injury. But I am definitely being more careful to stretch out each side evenly before and after doing stuff. Yeah, it is only within the last year or so that I started having issues with it, and I think it is from the heavily sedentary nature of my work over the last few years. At my new job, I have a desk that can automatically convert into a standing desk, so I am going to try and use that more going forward on the weeks I am in the office. And get up and move more during my work-from-home weeks. I am definitely open to any recommendations. I definitely don't want this to become a long-term problem. ----------- ----------- Contrary to recent evidence, I have not rage-quit my challenge and am still alive 🤣 The past two weeks have been rough. Lots of pain and frustration with my back. And two weeks ago I decided to finally go on the pill because I am like 90% sure I have endometreosis (runs in the fam and have most the symptoms). I avoided it for so long because I HATE the idea of introducing even more pharmaceuticals to my bloodstream (they are not even the fun drugs 😆), but it has become necessary. BUT, it SUCKS. My hormones have been all over the map, the starting side effects suck, and I hate the world. And apparently it takes 3 MONTHS to full adjust to this little pill of doom. I keep trying to remind myself it is better than nearly dying of pain every month. Anyway, despite not updating, I have been keeping my poor, infected RPG character alive. I decided the last week I would count a stretching/light movement routine in leu of the workout. I have done one workout this week (very light, almost entirely bodyweight), but last week that still was not an option. Despite a few days where I really wanted to cave, I have actually stuck to the no sugar and no alcohol as well. Which I am sure is probably helping my back heal faster and the side effects aforementioned be not as bad. I missed a couple of the HEAL goals twice (because I forgot) and lost a Hit point to one of them, but overall, last week was fairly successful; I was just too busy hating everything and not wanting to deal with being a social being to update, lol Don't Feed (14XP) If you feed, you will begin your transition to a Dhampir, robbing you of your elven heritage and cursing you with eternal hunger. No sweets (7/7) Dry January (7/7) Keep up Your Strength (40XP) If you die, you become a vampire spawn, which binds you to the one that bit you. Work out (2/2) (stretched instead) Walk for 15min (2/2) Heal Your Wound (25XP) Create and administer a healing potion to cure the bite and set yourself free of the vampire's clutches. Roll 1d6 per day (5/7) 6 - Pick any 5 - Listen to music for 10 min 4 - Draw/color for 10 min 3 - Stretch for 10 min 2 - Journal for 10 min 1 - Meditate for 10 min Total XP so far: 163 Remaining Hit points: 9

These things happen. You still got in quite a bit of time! Sometimes I just totally blank on my siblings' girlfriends' or boyfriends' names. And then I am like, social media, SAVE ME. Sounds like a good day to stay inside. We got some snow here, but thankfully missed the bulk of the storm that rolled through. Don't get me wrong, snow is pretty...but I don't want to deal with driving to work in it, because people here act like snow is the END OF THE WORLD when they drive.

Congrats on the new house! I am interviewing buying agents this week, about to join the absolutely insane house hunt. My area has been absolutely insane for probably a decade, and the past two years have made it even worse. Still really hoping to find something and be able to move before spring is over.

Yeah I hope you're right! And thank you for your kind words. I had dinner late (full disclosure: a large burrito) so maybe that was part of it? I do hope that I see some results next week though. I didn't have a good day today but am ready to get back on track tomorrow. Another thing to note, outside the effects of a heavy meal, is that high sodium can cause temporary fluid retention. I know Mexican tends to have pretty high sodium levels, and I pretty much always see an uptick in the scale after eating it (or any high sodium meal). It usually drops off in a day or too when the body releases the excess fluid.