Men are violent.

I seem to have a cold, which is odd because I almost never have colds, flus, or any other infectious sicknesses. I haven't had to use the allergy medication since I started taking the iron supplement regularly; my nose stopped running. So I wondered today why it suddenly started running again, then it dawned on me that I have a cold. I feel cold, as well as fatigued. That double dose of iron seemed to do nothing. I put the blackout curtain back up last night to block cold coming from the bedroom window, but I felt colder than ever.

The nurse who was supposed to call me didn't call, and I'm sick of listening to that whiny Filipin@ accent, so I went into my clinic today to find out what's happening with my liquid iron supplement. I had to sit and listen to the music playing in the waiting room while a staff member messaged a nurse, so, I noted bitterly, my auditory sensitivity would have been triggered no matter how I'd initiated contact with the clinic. Eventually I got them to try sending the prescription to another pharmacy. None of us know whether this pharmacy will have the product, so I still can't say when my condition will improve. I was given the option to buy an otc version, but I have only forty-six bucks left for the month plus a fifteen-dollar phone bill to pay.

I looked up iron anemia and found something that suggested that hair loss, dental pain, fatigue, insomnia, basically every mysterious medical problem I have, is associated with the condition. So if I can get the supplement, I can potentially recover from a lot of medical problems.

After climbing through my bedroom closet, I found in a moldy box of fiction a novel called More Than Human. It looks like sci-fi, the synopsis on the cover suggests sci-fi, but the blurb says 'fantasy.' I started reading it this evening. Reading physics is too much for my sick brain.

Having a runny nose and being unable to afford tissues is a terrible combination.

I'm back to taking a whole extended-release melatonin capsule. Although I've been sleeping deeper, I wake up more times during the night. I'm not sure what's down to melatonin and what's down to temperature, but I'm taking the safer route.

I wanted to buy a packet of spaghetti seasoning and a jar of gravy today. Both contained sugar, as did a bunch of other products I returned to the shelf.

I'm not particularly concerned about my refined sugar intake because I don't eat much refined sugar; I'm concerned about taste. I don't want sweet spaghetti nor sweet mashed potatoes and gravy. I know those products probably don't contain a lot of sugar, but I don't generally add sweets to savory meals, especially not to pasta or gravy, so I might be able to taste however little sugar there is in them. Plus I avoid non-vegan sugar, and, if I cannot tell whether the product is vegan, I tend to automatically put it back on the shelf.

I think there is also a little alarm that goes off in the back of my mind when I read these sorts of ingredient lists, something that says 'this is just wrong regardless of taste; don't trust this company/product, if they'll put sugar in something that absolutely should not contain sugar, who knows what else they'll spring on consumers.' The sugar is usually near the beginning of the list of ingredients, so the little alarm saves me the trouble of reading further.

I really wanted that damned jar of gravy because I can never find vegan gravy and I really miss potatoes, green peas, and gravy. The product had added oil too, a fat that would be completely useless in my diet. Either oil or sugar is added to everything.

I'm rather happy with the way my upper body looks but I'd still like to lose a bit of fat off my thighs and backside.

I missed the bus home today yet again, so I had two hours to burn while I waited for the next one. I spent the time reading some more of Maxwell's book and was frustrated by all the details that were left out; however, there were references to a work by Faraday that, I hope, will describe the actual experiments on which the theory is based. I hope that will clear things up but I'm afraid that it won't. There's like a huge pile of seemingly unfounded assumptions in physics, and I'm ever struggling to get to the bottom of it.

I'm quite tired from all the exercise I got today, hauling groceries around.

I hope my DOR counselor sends me a check. If she does, I'll use it to buy my own liquid iron. I'm supposed to be getting monthly reimbursement for my phone and internet costs because I use them to search for work. Actually, I use only the Internet. My counselor stopped sending this money and I never want to ask for it because I feel that I'm misusing it since I job search so little. Given all the months that have gone by, the check would be huge. So I asked for just a couple months' worth of reimbursement. She hasn't responded and I don't expect her to respond.

I have cut down on reading Department of Homeland Security Press Releases, but I still horrify myself by looking at them. There are just so many dangerous criminals from Mexico, Cuba, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, etc., and ICE is sending them back to those countries, that I feel bad for the people, especially the womyn and girls, who live there. I wish our government would do something to improve the quality of life for these people instead of stupid shit like plotting to take control of Greenland and repeatedly bombing any vessel that appears in the Caribbean. Or letting random refugees into this country. And I don't believe that Trump gives a damn about the Venezuelan president potentially having been involved in drug trafficking. This bizarre international arrest is about oil, money, control.

I finished reading Bird Box last night. It was surprisingly good given that it was all build-up for the end of the book. Actually, I guess the build-up is precisely what was good about it. The writing wasn't particularly moving. Only a few of the characters even ever began to become interesting, and the book ended shortly after that point.

I started to look for another novel, but I'm more likely to get through my history/philosophy of physics studies if I focus on that reading only. The novel distracted me when I tried to read both.

Suddenly I'm nauseous again, so not much will get done this evening. Today was a good day, so it's a pity it'll end this way. No studying Mandarin today. Feels bad.

The first reference I'm going to read is Faraday's On Static Electrical Inductive Action.

While sitting outside thinking about what I was reading today, I considered how helpful it would be to have professors of the subject matter. And that made me think about being a student of the subject and then graduating, becoming someone somewhat well-versed in the subject matter, and how incredibly satisfying it would be to have colleagues in the domain of the philosophy/history of science, people who share my interest in the subject, people capable of stimulating further interest, people I could bounce ideas off of, people who would perhaps understand my frustration with physics, my stickling for precision, my drive to go back to the foundations, to these old experiments, people who could appreciate how curious it is for us to speak of vacuums given that vacuums don't exist, people who probe and question the metaphors in physics theory and see that these ways of speaking and writing shape our view of the natural world in ways that aren't necessary and perhaps aren't even useful. It would be amazing.

But that'll probably never happen.

The current plan is to try for a full scholarship to study some sort of math in Taiwan. Even if I can't/don't stay in Taiwan, a math degree is within my sphere of interests and is marketable. And the courses should be easier to handle with my low-intermediate Mandarin. Which will be a solid intermediate or low-advanced by the time I leave this country.

I really need sleep. Bedtime is an hour away still. I'm going to take a double dose of iron tonight, whenever I wake up (because I certainly will); I need to know whether I can feel warmer than I do on a single dose.

Chocolate oatmeal has become my new favorite meal. I've been having it for breakfast every day.

I got excited last night while make Mandarin flashcards because I thought that I'd come across my first non-Mandarin term: 人家. I'm studying an episode of this guy's podcast https://www.ximalaya.com/album/246092 because he's easy, even a bit pleasant, to listen to. He's based in Fujian province, I think, where Hokkien is spoken. I had mis-copied the term into the Wiktionary search bar, and the Mandarin section was completely missing on the page that loaded. The Chinese dialect at the top of the list (where Mandarin usually is) was Xiamen, a type of Hokkien, so I thought he'd slipped a Hokkien term into the episode. But today I found that it was just a typo.

This is a good thing because I really don't need to be mixing up Chinese languages. Xiaman podcaster guy's accent is enough variety. He pronounces the 's' sound like 'sh.' It doesn't bother me.

Today I found two free philosophy of science books online: https://descartes-agonistes.com/category/textbooks/

I don't think I'll read them, as I prefer to focus on the history and philosophy of physics, the breadth of which would take me a lifetime to get through. I guess I just got so excited to find free textbooks that I didn't at first notice the broadness of the subject.

I was super excited to find that Columbia University offers a Master's degree in the philosophical foundtions of physics.

https://philosophy.columbia.edu/content/master-arts-philosophical-foundations-physics

But. Again we run into the problem of references, and, worse, at least two of the references must be academic references. I almost don't want to look into the program further, I feel so burned by the unfairness of this policy. It's like discrimination against anyone who's been out of school for a while. I could take a couple of philosophy courses at the community college and ask those professors for references, but the policy is just so unjust that I'd almost rather send a letter railing against it than trying to conform to it.

Oh, it can't be done online and it's in cold-ass ny. Whatever. I'm better off studying philosophy of science as a hobby and taking courses only for things that can help me in a career/earn me money.

I got a lot of sleep last night, so I was not surprised that I had a normal bowel movement this morning, no meds necessary. I was a bit surprised, however, that I had stomach cramps immediately afterwards. Strong ones. I've had them for over an hour now. I try to avoid taking meds for the cramps because of the side effects, but at this time I don't have the mental reserves to deal with the pain, certainly not for several more hours, which is how long they usually last. So I took half a dose of dicyclomine hoping that I get enough sleep again tonight such that my body can somewhat override the constipating effects.

I slept well last night because it wasn't cold. It seems like the things I do with melatonin and sleep hygiene don't matter, and that my insomnia is all down to temperature.

I'm done with Cell. Last night was the second time I read the author do a thing racists do: the non-white characters get referred to by race and/or ethnicity. The white characters are just people, but the non-white characters are Pakistani guy, etc. I really dislike quitting novels, especially if they aren't bad, but I'm no longer going to allow myself to be immersed in the white privileged psyche. It's a toxic, sickening place.

Anyways, the book isn't very good. After the spectacular beginning, the story became plodding. The dialogue has become comically unrealistic. The author has a slightly annoying habit of naming places, and, worse, highways, as if they are familiar to the reader. I read "highway 103;" I have no idea where that is. It may as well be a number randomly printed in the story. This tendency shows up throughout his body of work.

And the author continually refers to a fifteen-year-old girl as beautiful in Cell. It's creepy. It's not part of the plot. After the mayhem at the beginning of the story, the girl mentioned wanting to change out of her sweaty, blood-stained dress, and the main character (a guy) immediately thinks of this in sexual terms. Of course there's no such mention of the twelve-year-old boy's physical appearance, not so far anyhow. He's a newer character, but it's been quite a few mini-chapters since his introduction. I'm not sticking with this to verify, however.

This book was published in 2006. It's not old. King should know better. He's been writig for decades, thinking about characters for decades, he should be able to write better than this. I'm tired of white-privileged people lounging around in the depths of ignorance. I'm tired of men thinking that femalehood is all about looks and sexual appeal.

Now I have nothing to read in terms of fiction.

My pain has lessened while I've been composing this post. I feel less wound up now. But I think today will be another day that I put off my lifting workout. Yesterday, I was too weak; today pain has sapped my energy and motivation. I could lift later in the day, but I never feel like doing that. Morning is always the best time.

I would like to read more physics, but with pain and lack of sleep, it's so much more difficult to read than fiction.

I got back from the library about half an hour ago. I spent a lot of time looking for another novel even though I needed to eat and had a headache building. I settled on Bird Box, a short horror novel. I didn't read the entire synopsis on the back of the book; it says something about the past and the present entertwining in the plot, and I hate stories like that, so I may not even read this. My headache got worse, but it's not terrible. Actually, I'm quite miserable at the moment so maybe trying to read a bit would do me some good. I don't know how I'm to go on living when my own mind is not a safe space.

I read about thirty pages. It's good so far, good build-up. There's no description of what there is to be afraid of and it's not even clear that the main character knows. The only explanation is that the horror cannot be looked at or it'll drive one to violence and suicide. There's a dystopian feel to the story because the world seems to have been hollowed out by the deaths of the people who saw. The main character has for years been cooped up in a house with blanketed windows, going out only with a blindfold. Her young children have never seen the outdoors. And now she's trying to escape. All that in just thirty pages; a good beginning indeed.

This morning I dreamt about a guy from the asian social networking site. It wasn't even one of the guys I find really attractive; it was the one who has wild hair and looks like he's on steroids. In the dream, I didn't seem to mind his abnormally large arms.

The dream was kind of awkward because we didn't know each other well and neither of us was sure how the other felt. But he touched me, towards the end he finally kissed me, and I liked it. I guess I just wasn't crazy about him. I seem to remember that he felt warm, made me feel warm, but that could very well have been my heater blasting in the bedroom as I slept. At the end of the dream, my older half-sister showed up, and I think we were in her house, although it was a house I'd never seen before. In real life, she died over a decade ago, of colon cancer. In her kitchen, I asked her something about...maybe about the adventure that was going on? That or some business venture she was involved in. She didn't seem surprised to see us in her home.

The dream was split between this scene and some kind of outdoor adventure. I remember seeing some type of wooded vista spread out before me at the beginning of the dream, as if I were watching a nature documentary or the beginning of a movie set in the woods. Or paragliding over the place; the scene was that realistic. I had the sense that other people were there but I couldn't see them; maybe I had only seen them walking away from me at the very beginning of the dream, I cannot quite remember.

I don't know what any of us was doing there, but I had a vague sense that we were exploring and/or looking for something, like we were on some type of quest. But this scene didn't last long, or maybe this was a separate dream that ended, and then I was in a bedroom with this guy, lying on a bed talking to him, looking at the large expanse of skin that covered his arm. Or maybe just seeing his profile picture copy-pasted into the dream by my unconscious. Maybe both. Things are so confused in dreams.

It was a pleasant dream. Pleasant dreams always stand out to me because I feel like shit again when I wake up. I deliberately, albeit not entirely consciously, shift my mind to stressful, unpleasant things. I subconsciously feel like I should mentally stay in battle mode, to protect myself. And sometimes I guess I cannot help but compare the dream to real life. The comparison never favors real life.

I did not like that this dream made me think of dating again. It's not a happy subject. It's curious that it's always a happy subject in my dreams. I'm glad that my subconscious isn't being negatively affected by my not-very-hopeful thoughts on the subject. I have been trying to not think too negatively about it. Maybe that's working more than I'm aware of.

I'm tired today; I didn't get as much sleep as I could have gotten because, when I woke up early, I couldn't think to turn down the heater, as I usually do, so I was too warm to fall back to sleep until after six am, when I had the dream(s).

I waste a lot of time waiting for painkillers to kick in. Especially when I underdose and have to take more medication to get rid of the pain. But today at least I did time on the treadmill while I waited for my ibuprofen to start working.

Today I was out running errands during the time at which I usually having my afternoon caffeine, which keeps me functional/not overly drowsy throughout the evening. I never got that afternoon caffeine and now, at eight pm, I'm quite drowsy. Bedtime isn't for another three hours, so I'll be struggling to be productive until then.

If I'm fortunate, perhaps the lack of caffeine will help me sleep tonight. I haven't noticed the afternoon caffeine interfering with my sleep, but one or two people on the insomnia subreddit claim that cutting back on caffeine, even early in the day, helped them to sleep.

I went to my bank today and was caught off guard when the teller asked for updated ID. My DL expired recently. I haven't replaced it because I don't have the forty-five dollars it costs. I'm hoping to find a charity that will help me.

I went back to 3/4 of a melatonin pill last night and my sleep improved again. 1/4 of a pill makes such a huge difference.

The Czech Republic is mentioned on the podcast episode I started studying today, and it make me think about studying Czech. I miss the language. Such a nice language, a zillion times more pleasant than Mandarin. What am I doing with my life, giving up on a language I love to study a language I don't even like to go to a country that's going to get invaded? This plan is sprung from a mind that hasn't slept a full night in literally years. But I feel like, even if I go to Taiwan for only a year, it would be better than staying here. Which is not exactly true because, even if I have a great year, I'll be homeless when I get back. It's possible that I'll find a job at the end of my studies. I just have no good options. And I cannot really think right now.

Hearing Mandarin is extremely important for retention; I'm studying my article, not only by creating flashcards for the unfamiliar vocabulary, but also by having a text-to-speech (TTS) service pronounce the text. I can save and download the resulting audio files, and I've put them on my audio player so that I can repeatedly listen to them, just as I do with podcasts.

Although the tts voice sounds slightly unnatural, it's way easier to listen to than high-pitched female voices and lisping, poorly enunciating human speakers: not only is the enunciation clearer, the tonality is far more bearable.

I noticed this as I listened to my first tts article this afternoon on my way to the grocery store. On my way back, I was listening to an episode of Taiwan with Local, a podcast with a host whose airy, lisping enunciation gives me the sense that she rarely fully commits to pronouncing anything, when I couldn't take it anymore. As a learner, I have enough work adjusting to the sound of the language itself, but having to fill in the sonic gaps created by this host's refusal to fully touch down on any consonant that isn't a sibilant has become a burden I'm unwilling to bear. And my having recently remarked on the clarity of the Taiwanese Mandarin tts voice gave me the idea that I can use it, not only to pronounce text that lacks accompanying audio, but as a replacement speaker for audio created by unpleasant-sounding human speakers. I could, for example, feed it my textbook lessons instead of using the screeching audio that comes with the textbook. I can feed it podcast transcripts. Anything text-based is the limit.

I feel freer. I felt tied down by my reliance on these Mandarin podcasts. I do need practice with a variety of enunciations, but now is a bit early in my aural comprehension development to deal with these kinds of issues. It's familiarity with clearly-spoken content that makes less-clearly-spoken content comprehensible, so I need to focus on the former.

I was craving chocolate for lunch today, so I put cocoa powder in my steel-cut oats and sweetened it (them?) with coconut sugar (mostly I sweeten with applesauce, fruit juice, and dried fruit instead). Very satisfying. After that I had vegan frozen pizza, something I've been craving for about a week. I treated myself to the seven-dollar pizza, not only because I'm about to get paid again, but also because I have too much fiber in my diet.

I think excess fiber is the cause of my current bout of ultra-constipation (which is worse than my typical constipation). I looked up the appearance of my recent stools (narrow and grooved), and fecal impaction came up in the results. Causes included too much fiber. I certainly eat shit tons of fiber, and my constipation meds aren't working properly, and I'm tired of the discomfort of all that fiber sitting in my stomach, so decreasing my fiber intake is my next attempt to resolve this. My food stock, however, is almost all fibrous foods: fruit, oats, legumes, polenta, seeds, veggies, etc. The only low-fiber foods I have are rice, tofu, soy milk, and half a package of rice noodles. So I sprung for the pizza. I also decided to not buy the glycerin suppositories I'd originally planned to buy. They aren't working and I cannot afford them so why bother? Plus it's largely the gastric upset after (high-fiber) meals that makes me so desperate to have a bowel movement that I turn to suppositories. With one serving of oats and half a pizza in my belly, I don't feel that discomfort, so I'm fine without trying to have a movement.

Success. I just tts-ed my first podcast transcript. I had to split it up into thirds for processing, no big deal. Bonus: I can now listen to the content without the music in the background. Technology has progressed so far that learning a foreign language (well, the content-heavy ones anyhow) is almost too easy.

I've noticed that it's when things go well like this that I feel most strongly the need for companionship. I guess I'm too miserable the rest of the time. "Misery loves company" is probably another neurotypical thing. I have plenty of social interation in my mind, but it's almost all negative so why would I want much more more. I haven't put a ton of effort into having a social life, but there haven't been many opportunities that I'd like to put effort into. I just need to keep busy and get sleep for the forseeable future. I'm waiting to hear back from another social networking website about my account.

I think menopause is finally, finally upon me. Last cycle, I barely bled at all. It ended less than a week ago, and today there was light blood again. That's never happened before. Cycle timing going haywire is one characteristic of menses ending, if I recall. I hope this is truly the end.

I slept for most of the night last night. I woke up three times but got back to sleep without much trouble. I think the trick was keeping the heater on all night and turning it down after I woke up the first time. I've been waking up in the middle of the night feeling a bit too warm lately.

It's bothersome that I still need the heater because running it costs a fortune, but expensive sleep is better than insufficient sleep. Given my latest heating bill, I'm not doing too badly.

If I can keep this up, I'm expecting IBS to resolve completely. That'll be three medical conditions resolved, and then I'll just have autism to contend with.

I have considered that the anxiety my neighbors give me has become a factor in my medical conditions. I'm thinking that's not the case, but, if it is, I might not achieve complete resolution. I might have to adopt some tactics to get them to leave me alone. People avoided me when I wore a mask, so I've considered doing that again, but masks aren't that comfortable. Maybe wearing one wouldn't be too bad in winter, especially one of the soft cotton ones I have, but I'm not going to wear one in summer. Or I'll just start telling people to stop talking to me. Not an efficient solution because I'll have to do it several times, and then yet more if I run into new people.

IBS symptoms usually improve after I wake up from better-than-usual sleep, so I'm disappointed and a little surprised at today's constipation and mild stomach cramps.

Perhaps a month ago, I read something on Reddit about Americans not appreciating the opportunities that our society affords us. The more I revisit that idea, the more it annoys me because those opportunities are available very unevenly. One has to dodge child abuse/neglect, sexual assault, racism, ageism, poverty, cronyism, and disability. The stress of trying to avoid crime, of being unable to trust anyone, offsets economic and education opportunities. Social opportunities are lacking.

There's not a whole lot of opportunity to get ahead here in California because governments allow landlords to charge exorbitent rents, which leave renters either homeless or without the funds to do much else besides pay rent. People cannot move up in jobs because the entry levels don't put roofs over their heads. Employers have a bag of tricks they use to avoid giving employees stability and benefits, such as never allowing full-time hours and hiring applicants as contractors instead of as employees.

I read somewhere that the postal service is hiring, so I checked out the careers online and found one for which I likely qualify: Maintenance Mechanic. I was excited because I almost never find promising jobs for which I'm qualified. I looked for the test prep book on my county library's websites. There was a listing for the book but no copies are available. That was disappointing because I'm used to public libraries having test prep books and because I can't afford to book. I thought about asking DOR to buy it for me, searched online, and ended up on the postal service web page for the position. There were practice questions for the test, and I went through a few of them.

As soon as I looked at the first one, I was hit with the fact that I didn't care about that particular body of knowledge. It's practical mechanical and electrical stuff and that's not something that interests me professionally. I want to know why things work; that's why I studied physics. The job would be ok if it were mostly stuff I already know, but there's an element of training and growth involved with the job and I don't want to commit to learning that boring stuff, nor do I want to endure the social interaction involved in being trained or, later, training others. It's not just boring, it'd be frustrating because I'd want to go beyond the 'what' to the 'why,' and I wouldn't get those answers unless I studied physics, which I wouldn't really have the time/energy for. I felt the same frustration in the military. I'm no mechanic.

Also, postal service positions are really careers, not just jobs, and I respect that to the extent that I won't waste the service's time vying for a career that I'm not going to be engaged with. My attitude towards a mere job would be different.

I decided that I'm going to give up on spending all this time and energy looking into jobs I don't actually want. Finding a job is so onerous that I may as well spend my life doing what I want (math, physics, and the history/philosophy of physics), and doing what I want is more likely to lead me to a job or career that I actually want. If it doesn't lead there, oh well, I'll just keep living off of taxpayers. They're benefitting off of a system that has disadvantaged me in several ways. I'm hoping that doing what I like will help me psychologically recover. Being in the headspace of this endless struggle to find work in an impossible economy and giving up on my actual interests and areas of competence is doing the opposite.

So, instead of a test prep book, I requested a book on the history of concepts of space. I was excited to find that book because it's a Dover book, and Dover Publishing has put out some really clearly written books. Once I get through that, I have a textbook on space physics lined up. While I'm waiting for the Dover book to arrive, I'm going to do my damndest to finally finish this book on philosophy of quantum mechanics, plus I have a beginning astronomy text I'd like to look over to prepare myself for the space physics book. I feel relieved and a bit overwhelmed. Also a bit apprehensive because it sort of feels like I'm abandoning the job search. But I'm not abandoning it, not entirely; I'm just not going to waste so much time on unsuitable jobs. I still have a practical skill, editing, that is marketable, and that's the kind of job I'll "settle" for if I cannot find anything that actually interests me.

I feel like I have to shift gears to get back into reading long-form non-fiction, especially the dense STEM kind. It feels a little scary to step away from the distraction of the Internet, to be alone with a book and my thoughts, which at this point in my life tend to despair. I don't want to be clobbered by my intrusive memories and then have to additionally face my failure to engage in my own interests. It was so much easier to focus when I was younger, before I had accumulated this life experience that weighs me down, when I actually had hope of being some kind of scientist. Now it's almost like nothing but escaping assault is worthy of my attention.

Posting in this journal is another distraction; posting is good to an extent but I drag out the entries to avoid facing life. So right now I'm pulling myself away from this entry.

Today I spent a lot of time online trying to find a somatic therapist, and, once I'd failed at that, I spent perhaps an hour researching self-treatment. The therapy directory websites weren't functioning. I could have tried a little bit more, but I don't really want to go into therapy, it seemed unlikely that I'd find such a niche therapist who accepts my insurance and fits my demographic preferences, I'm sick of websites malfunctioning, and I was kind of depressed at that point, probably because I was imagining telling a therapist my depressing problems.

So I'm focusing on sleep-maintenance insomnia again. I looked into general diy ptsd treatment, but it didn't seem focused or relevant enough. I want to try cutting out more melatonin tonight. Since the extended-release melatonin doesn't seem to keep me asleep for an extended period of time, it seems like the logical option; however, every time I stop taking it, I don't sleep at all. It's like it functions to keep me asleep at all, just not for long.

I'm hoping to try adding coconut oil to my bedtime routine. Something about lauric acid plus oil helping with blood sugar issues. I've tried having more fat just before going to bed, and it didn't make much of a difference. I cannot afford a whole jar of coconut oil, so, unless I can find a sample packet, this solution is a non-starter. If I had more money, I'd try lemon balm and valeryian root as well.

I'm super depressed this afternoon/evening; thinking about my unending misery, unending poverty, lack of opportunities, and lack of power to do anything about any of it, my life seems hopeless. For now, I can focus on treating my insomnia, but a problem that always comes back to mind is my inability to leverage the social capital I apparently need to land a job.

Taiwan has become distasteful to me now that I don't need the warm weather, and I continually see people only mention its miserable summers. To give up on expatriating is depressing enough; to give up on Mandarin after I've put all this damned work into it is like staring into a black hole. But it's not even a useful skilloutside of moving to a Mandarin-speaking region. Even if I became fluent (which I wouldn't achieve for years), I'd never be competitive in employment against the population of native speakers we must have in this area. And I cannot handle jobs that require a lot of speaking and/or listening anyhow, because autism + auditory processing issues, which are currently enhanced by insomnia.

There's like no point to doing anything. No amount of education or hard work will get me a job that I can actually do.

My skin isn't looking better; my chronically congested pores are disgusting.

I got up at five forty-five am this morning. I miss early morning walks, although I get sick of them if I go for one every day, and I know it's never likely that I'll fall back to sleep, especially without quick-release melatonin. So I went for a two-hour walk. It was rather warm and I ended up over-dressed. I knew that I would likely be too warm, but sometimes I cannot bear to remove certain clothing items, tops, because having my upper body too free triggers depressing body memories. I cannot remember how the walk was except that I was uncomfortable at the end because I was very hungry. I wanted to walk further, but I had to come home to avoid feeling ill.

Maybe I will treat myself to a pizza tonight. Then I'll have the mood+energy to do a longish aerobics session. I've been trying to avoid buying more quick-release melatonin, but I'm not doing well without it, and it's the only thing that gives me any hope of getting back to sleep when I wake up early.

So I took a two-hour walk across town and found a small can of coconut cream for a couple of dollars. I also sprung for another bottle of quick-release melatonin. No money for pizza. Mood is much better. I treated myself to some sci-fi shorts on odysee. Most of them were amateurish but sci-fi is almost always inspiring. Now that I'm getting my Mandarin flashcards mostly done early in the day, I can spend the evening studying something else. Astronautics. Who knows.

Enough time wasted on this post.

It rained almost all day today, so I didn't go out except to get drinking water.

For days, perhaps a week, I've been struggling through a Mandarin podcast episode that I started without knowing that it included an interview. The guest has a whiny voice with unfamiliar and extra choppy pronunciation (Mandarin is inherently choppy because of the tones), and she sort of merges the syllables of certain terms such that they are completely unrecognizable. The host's voice is trying enough.

I hate giving up. I've been thinking about giving up on studying this episode for days, and today I finally did. I continually find myself unconsciously tuning out the guest's voice, so my ability to learn from this material is doomed. The amount of effort I'd have to put in to focus and understand is not worth the potential payoff, given the hundreds, if not thousands, of other podcast episodes I can use. Plus, the episode's topic no longer interests me. Perhaps I'll come back to this once my aural comprehension has improved. I need to be able to understand a variety of voices; that's part of why I was so hellbent on continuing.

Yesterday I wasted hours trying to get AI to explain how I could access a speech-to-text service. If I can create my own transcripts with STT, I won't have to settle for podcasts with unpleasant voices or background music. The software kept directing me to non-existent web pages and spitting out encyclopedias' worth of instructions in answer to simple questions. I didn't accomplish my goal, plus I ran out of my free AI time for the week, so today I'm back to my old podcasts.

Rainy days are warmer than non-rainy days, and so far I don't need to run the heater at all in the evenings of rainy days. That'll save me a lot of money, and I'm looking forward to this being the first winter here that I don't receive a shutoff notice from my energy company.

I still have sleep maintenance insomnia, and I'm thinking it can be traced to my time homeless. I was afraid to sleep during that time, and I had a few frightening awakenings. Perhaps I have a sort of lingering hyperarousal. I still don't feel totally safe even though I live indoors now. I don't think I'll ever totally feel safe again, certainly not in this country.

So this evening I researched treatments for hyperarousal. I didn't find anything relevant. Online psychologyinformation irritates me because it seems to mostly revolve around problems that are in the past or entirely in the mind. I've never found much concerning coping with ongoing stressors, especially not misogyny.

I'm updating my journal from my study vm now, so I can type in Chinese. I'll be posting at hua_u.