Moody and I don't know why
September 14th 2024
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The academic year starts in 9 days and still feel so anxious and
unprepared (even though I'm orders of magnitude more prepared than I
was last year). I'm very, well, moody I guess? I know I'm often a
grumpy seeming person so this isn't super out of character. Sometimes
I get like this because I'm chewing on something, when I'm trying to
think through difficult things. So that's probably part of the issue:
I'm thinking through a lot of things at the start of the year and that
means I'm grumpish.

I've been dealing with the grumpiness by focusing on cleaning this
rundown apartment, trying to make it as nice as I can. While I've been
doing that I've been listening to an old podcast/audiodrama called
Alice Isn't Dead, a limited run series written by the head writer of
Welcome to Nightvale.

It's fun! Like the acting is a little noticeable in places but also
it's pretty hard to be mad when it's literally a one-woman performance
of a horror story radio drama with the actress having to do different
voices for different characters as the conceit is that she's relating
the stories of things she's seen over CB radio while she's out on the
road as a trucker and conveying the conversations she had.

Just from cleaning for five hours yesterday I got halfway through the
series so it's not a *long* listen. Once I'm done with this I'll
probably listening to the other limited series they did called Within
The Wires, which is a horror series as told through a series of
"guided meditations". I listened to the first episode like *years* ago
while doing dishes and it was fun but I didn't stick with it.

I've been exercising more lately. Like I generally get A Lot of
exercise in terms of walking for miles and miles and riding the
exercise bike but I'm trying to rebuild my upper body strength now
which feels *complicated* because of how gendered we treat having
visible muscle in your arms and shoulders. But! Okay I'm trying to
make myself do more in part because I'm jealous that my partner Tor
has been working out and getting more muscle and feeling good in their
skin from it and I miss feeling that in my own body. I also really
think it'd be nice to get back to being able to do pullups like when I
was a teen and other things like that so that I can feel a lot more
free and capable when hiking, more confident that I can catch myself
when slipping or able to scramble more confidently. Because of my leg
strength I can hike up hills carrying a lot but my back and shoulder
strength has started to be my limiting factor for how much I can have
on me.

I just want to be healthy and strong and get everything I can out of
life for as many years as possible, y'know? I know that's ultimately
out of my control: I could get hit by a car later today and never walk
again. I know that. But fortunate favors the well-prepared and I'm
hoping that I can at least give myself the best shot I can at being
strong for decades.

It's one of the reasons why I've been so restrictive when it comes to
covid. Longterm effects from a covid infection are exactly the kind of
thing that would slow me down just as I'm starting to feel like I'm
really building a life I could be happy with. Keeping the ability to
hike or walk to downtown and back is more important to my happiness
than the opportunity to eat inside a restaurant, y'know?

This post is getting long enough that I probably won't go into a big
topic that's been in my head lately, but maybe I'll soon I'll have a
long ramble for this space.

It's a little after noon now and I think I'm going to drink some tea,
hit the exercise bike for awhile, and then write out some of my
lectures for the systems programming class.

Feel free to email me at left_adjoint@inconsistentuniverse.space