Category Archives: Personal

Stress Reactions

Stress sucks.  I know, I probably don’t have to tell you that, since you live in the same modern era that I do.  Like anyone else, I do my best to avoid getting stressed.  But of course, I’m not always as successful as I’d like; something about there being exterior factors outside your control or something.  I get stressed often enough that I’ve noticed a common set of symptoms keep cropping up.  Like headaches and lack of sleep.  Or canker sores.

Of course, these reactions aren’t warning signs that I’m getting too stressed.  No, that would make too much sense.  Instead, they’re warning signs that I’ve gotten too stressed.  It’s too late to do anything about it, by that point, so why not pile on the added stressors of chronic pain and discomfort?

Help deal with stress by piling on more stress?  That sounds like a GREAT idea! </sarcasm>

I think that’s one of the reasons I’ve been feeling so down this week.  Work deadlines stressed me out last week (I’m still within my new-hire probationary period, so am especially worried about appearing incompetent), which blossomed into wonderfully annoying symptoms this week.  It’s hard to be in a good mood when every time you go to speak, chew, or swallow it sends a sharp shooting pain through your mouth.

I suppose I should consider myself lucky; canker sores are fairly mild as far as these things go.  I don’t get migraines, for instance.  I don’t have “an ulcer the size of my fist,” as my girlfriend is fond of pointing out.  I just don’t like that my body seems to be saying “You screwed up.  Let’s make sure you remember and feel bad for as long as possible!”

I will say this: my girlfriend introduced me to the wonderful thing that is topical oral painkiller.  For as often as I get canker sores, you’d think I’d have sought out something like this years ago.  But no, I usually suffer in silence and wait for the things to pass.  But no more!  Using the stuff has allowed me to eat relatively pain-free (I was letting my blood sugar get low because eating hurt, further exacerbating the stress issue), and made me a much more pleasant person to be around.

I still hate my body sometimes, though.

Uncomfortable Realizations

I’m finding it really hard to write lately. Whether it’s lack of sleep, or just mental exhaustion from my new job, I find it very annoying. But at the same time, I don’t want to stop writing. What is one to do?

I originally started this blog so that I could have a mental outlet that my job at Costco wasn’t providing me. And it was great for that! Even if I put off writing, I could still get a relatively interesting post up fairly regularly. I even managed to hold on to the occasional buffer!

But since I started working in the architecture field, I find myself with a lot fewer resources, both temporal and mental. It used to be that I could write after I got home from work at 2pm and still post close enough to my self-imposed deadline of noon. I basically had the afternoon to myself, free of distractions (well, aside from those I made for myself). But now, I get off work at 5, and my girlfriend is generally home within a few minutes of my arrival. And while I tried writing in the morning, being creative and/or thoughtful while still waking up was less than productive.

I am also using my brain a lot more at work these days. Sure, CAD and construction documents can be fairly repetitive, but I’m new enough (and rusty/inexperienced enough) that figuring out what needs to be done is a challenge in and of itself. More often than not I find myself mentally drained when I get home from work, with barely enough gumption to decide what to do for dinner, let alone what to write about (the irony of this is I often feel better after I eat, but that doesn’t help me make a decision).

Like I said, I really don’t want to have to put this blog on hiatus. I’ve set a goal to write every day, and that is important to me. And for the most part, I’ve done it. Sure, “posting every day” and “writing every day” aren’t the same things (which is how I’ve burned through whatever buffers I’ve been able to conjure up lately), but it’s still pretty close. I guess I’m just going to have to make peace with the idea that if I want my blog to continue (I do), it might suck for a while.

But really, this is only a concern if I’m worried about what other people think of my writing (which I clearly am, otherwise I’d keep a private journal). But if I’m writing primarily for myself, then the act of writing should be enough. And maybe it is, if I’d just let myself see it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, Agents of SHIELD is coming on soon, and I didn’t get a good night’s sleep to start off the week, so I think that’s all I’ve got.

Holes In The Offense

After watching me fight at a recent heavy practice, my knight asked me a question: why wasn’t I throwing shots to the front leg? Was I just not seeing them? Was my helmet obstructing my vision and creating a blind spot?

This got me thinking. Now, I really like my helmet. It’s a flat-topped, closed-face helmet, which I think really looks the part for my persona. The caveat to this, of course, is that I’m looking through a 1-inch slit, and visibility is thus impaired (at least compared to an open-face bar grill). I’ve gotten used to it, and it sits close enough to my face that the visibility isn’t as limited as one might think, but that hasn’t stopped people from giving me grief about it.

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The Hydra Reared Its Ugly Head(s)

My Impostor Syndrome flared up last night, leaving me feeling overwhelmed and generally in a bad mood.  I was able to work through it (more or less), but I think it was triggered by a few different things.

For one, work was fairly stressful yesterday.  It wasn’t that things were particularly hectic or busy, just that I felt overwhelmed by the immensity of the project before me.  I tend to be something of a “big picture” person, so it’s all too easy for me to forget to try and hold all parts of a large project or assignment in my mind, thus being paralyzed by the immensity of the task before me.  In school, for instance, if I had to write a 20-page paper, I’d think “ZOMG I’m going to have to sit down and write for an entire day straight!  There’s no way that’s happening.  I have no idea where to start!” rather than taking it a page or section at a time.

I was also dealing with issues that I didn’t fully understand, which is always stressful.  I’m still within my new job’s probationary period, and thus sometimes worry about seeming incompetent or unprepared.  I know logically that that isn’t the case, but anxiety is not always rational.  So I spent a lot of mental energy trying to wrap my head around things that I didn’t have a good grip on, worried that my lack of experience (because that’s really what it boils down to) would cause me to make some sort of egregious mistake.

And to top it all off, my blood sugar got too low.  Turns out that strenuous mental activity drains one’s reserves the same way that physical labor does.  Of course, by the time I realized this, it was already too late.  To make matters worse, it was also not quite dinner time; close enough that I was hungry, but still a bit too early to feel right.  So what did I do?  Well, in my infinite wisdom (I wasn’t thinking very straight by this point) I decided to try and stick it out.  Big mistake.

I know about all these issues.  But every once in a while I forget, and they rear their ugly head.  Often many at once.  Luckily I felt better after a good night’s sleep; it had gotten late, and I decided I couldn’t trust my brain anymore, so I went to sleep.  And it did help.  I’m feeling better today.  I made some good progress on my projects at work, and the deadlines feel more attainable.  I ate more today, so I didn’t get as low.  And even better, I realized what was happening and didn’t let it drag me down into a complete Funk.  So that’s progress!

The Envy Marches On

The tech envy is really setting in, and I think it might be here to stay. I really wanna build a new computer, but I’m not sure I should.

This is probably one of those things where there’s never really going to be a “good” time to spend that kind of money. Every time I think I can spend the money, something happens. Last month it was my car. This month it was the credit card bills from my pre-new-job shopping spree. Next month, who knows? Maybe it’ll be adoption costs for a dog, or some crazy sale that I just have to jump on. Or student loans. Or car insurance. Or Christmas shopping

There always seems to be something “better” I “should” spend my money on, is what I’m saying.

But I can’t help myself. For better or worse, I’ve started doing research, and coming up with options that may actually be feasible. Nvidia just released a new generation of graphics cards, for one. What does this mean? Well, the previous models are steeply discounted, of course, but even the new models aren’t that pricey (for a mid-to-high card, that is). Suddenly, I’m able to start coalescing around a target budget.

I also ran across this chart on Tom’s Hardware, ranking multiple generations of graphics cards into various performance tiers. Think of it as a Rosetta Stone for the byzantine naming conventions hardware manufacturers use. And for some reason, I thought it was a good idea to spend a good chunk of my free time this past weekend parsing the data and looking for trends (you know, as one does). During the course of this tedious yet compelling work, I came to the realization that the graphics card in my 6-and-a-half-year-old laptop is not nearly the beefy performer I thought it was. In fact, it’s more than halfway down the chart.

I know I should be a responsible adult and pay my bills. But the siren call of new hardware is getting stronger, and I don’t know that I want to be good. But at the same time, I don’t know that I can let myself splurge.

The Buffet Conundrum

Do you ever find yourself wanting to do something, but also wanting to do something else? Do you ever find yourself torn between the two decisions? Does everything seem like a good idea, even though you know you can’t possibly do it all? Are you slightly annoyed by your inability to DO ALL THE THINGS? Well,, I do believe you’re familiar with what I’ve just dubbed the Buffet Conundrum.

Why do I call it this? Because I have this problem when I go to buffets: everything looks good, and I really want to get my money’s worth, but I know I’m not a big eater and there’s only so much space in my stomach. This often ends one of two ways: either I end up getting small samples of everything and leaving unfulfilled, or (more likely) I fill up plates with a bunch of stuff that looks good and then find myself too full to really enjoy myself. And I still can’t seem to get my money’s worth!

I’ve recently faced the Buffet Conundrum when it comes to gaming. I know, I know, I’ll be the first to admit that this is the pinnacle of First World Problems, but it’s an inevitable result of me getting a proper job like an almost-respectable adult and not having as much free time as I used to.

See, I have a lot of video games, most of which I haven’t even played. But for the most part, I picked them up because they sounded like something I wanted to play. So what if I haven’t gotten around to them yet? So what if I’ve bought games that my computer can’t run? I’ve got enough of a backlog to keep me occupied for years!

But I digress. Right now, I find myself wanting to play a game in my collection, but also wanting to finish the current game I’m playing. What do I do? Do I try to play both, thus impeding overall progress and dragging the stories along? Or do I suck it up and finish the game I’ve become less excited about but have sunk a lot of time into, before moving on to something new and exciting? Or do I play this little flash game that I just came across, pushing off both of the others?

In the past, I’ve found myself in this conundrum in regards to books. In those cases, I try to be reading only one book at a time, and line up my queue accordingly. But my free time is so limited now (seriously, I have one night to myself during the work week) that I don’t even have time to really read!

Part of this is the fact that I now have a job where I actually have to do work. I know that sounds bad, but when I worked in computer labs I had a lot of downtime where I could putter around on my laptop, and working early mornings at Costco left my afternoons wide open. I’ve also apparently become busy, with some activity or another filling up my evenings. Oh, and a girlfriend who wants to spend time with me for some reason.

I don’t really have a conclusion to this, just a gentle rant about having too many options and not enough time. Add to this the annoyingly-ingrained background thought that video games are a “waste of time,” and you can probably see where I’m coming from. Not to mention all the other interests, hobbies, and interpersonal relationships that vie for my attention. Oh well, I guess all that I can do is keep plugging away at things, and reminding myself that “time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”

Dog Sitting

So, my girlfriend and I are thinking about getting a dog.  It’s something that we’ve both thought about for a while, but both individually decided that we weren’t home enough for an animal beyond a snake or fish.  But between the two of us, we thought it might be doable.

Like any good group of too-smart-for-our-own-good introverts, we’re of course massively overthinking this decision.  After all, what if we decide on the wrong breed, or can’t give a dog the attention it needs?  You know, that sort of back and forth.  But this weekend, we have a chance for a trial run: dog sitting!

One of our friends was heading out of town for a long weekend, and needed someone to watch their laid back little lap dog.  After a couple of days, we could really get a feel for how things would go while having a dog.  And so far, it’s been pretty good.

One of the biggest things to get used to is something else moving through the house.  Sure, my girlfriend and I live together, but the dog makes a distinctly different set of sounds.  Much lower to the ground, too.  It’s a little unnerving, hearing something moving around when you realize that you’ve already accounted for the usual troublemakers (the snake and guppies aren’t exactly loud).

Both our workplaces are dog friendly, so that’s been interesting too.  If nothing else, having the dog in the office with me makes a good excuse to get away from my desk for a few minutes and go for a walk.  Like I said, the dog’s pretty laid back; after a short barking session with my coworker’s dog, it spent most of the day sleeping on the floor.

But the biggest lesson for me has been that it doesn’t pay to be too nice for one’s own good with a dog.  I’m generally quite eager to please, and thus often find myself going along with other people’s plans or desires.  And at first, I started doing this with the dog, too.  But then I realized that “Hey, I’m the one with the opposable thumbs here!”  Maybe being more assertive with a canine companion will be good practice for me when it comes to standing up for myself in general.  It’s an interesting thought.

Although there’s not much more amusing than a little lap dog being put out because you had the audacity to sit in “its spot” on the couch (even though that’s where you usually sit, and it’s only been there an evening) so it decides to sit on you instead.

The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

I’d like to talk more about the topic from yesterday, but not right now. Writing that, and thinking about those things, put me in a weird mood, and I’d prefer to enjoy the rest of my day. Hey, I’m glad I talked about the topic as much as I did!

So what should we talk about today? How about the weather; that’s always a good change of subject, right?

I love the weather this time of year. It’s starting to cool off, which means ample opportunity to curl up under covers with a good book or entertainment of choice. But at the same time, it’s not too cold that you can’t wander outside in just a long-sleeved shirt. Autumn weather occupies a Goldilocks Zone for me: not too hot, not too cold, but just right.

I being able to wander outside in the sunlight and not feel like I’m baking; as a pasty white nerd, I don’t get out nearly enough, so this time of year feels great. I’ll admit to liking it a few degrees cooler as a general rule, as well. Growing up, my bedroom at my parents’ house was in the basement, which was always a few degrees cooler. Always. This was great in the summer (in fact, I think my dad still has his office downstairs for much the same reason), but could be problematic in the winter. But fall? During fall it was just cool enough that I could be comfortable with a light bundling, like a fuzzy blanket.

My bedroom is my current apartment is also in the basement, so I get much of the same effect. Of course, Colorado being Colorado, the weather isn’t the most consistent. It could be 50 degrees one day just to shoot back up into the 90’s over the weekend. So I enjoy the cool temperatures while I can.

I also enjoy the rain we’ve been getting. While too little sunlight can make me a little SAD, it’s definitely a nice change of pace from our state’s ever-present sun. It reminds me of the Pacific Northwest. Fun fact: I almost went to college in Seattle! Of course, that was back when I was still an overachieving high school student that planned on pursuing a dual science major.

Anyway, long story short, I like this time of year. I should remember to enjoy it more often.

Tech Envy Redux: Not The Kind You Think

I’ve written about tech envy before, and how after a while I’ll begin to feel the upgrade itch, that my current technology infrastructure just isn’t what it could be. And while it’s true I’ve been drooling over the prospect of a new computer, my current bout of tech envy is coming from an unlikely source.

When using my work computer, I find myself jealous of my 6-year-old laptop.

On the surface, this doesn’t make sense. After all, shouldn’t a brand new workstation be blowing an aging gaming system out of the water? Maybe it is, but it doesn’t often feel like it. Get a few AutoCAD drawings open, and it starts getting bogged down. And it takes a relative eternity to boot up and log in. But it’s got better specs, right? Faster processor, better graphics card, and more RAM…

It does have those things, right?

I looked into the system specs of my work computer (as one does), and was surprised to see that it doesn’t have any more RAM than my personal laptop. Admittedly, my sense of things may be a bit skewed from having to try and sell people computers at Costco, but I would have thought there would have been some progress on that front. And while the processor is indeed fancier, AutoCAD is largely a single-threaded program, so there isn’t much to gain from having multiple processor cores. The work computer has a faster processor clock speed, so that shouldn’t be an issue.  And I’m not sure if the graphics cards are comparable, since one is workstation-focused and the other is (or was, back in the day) gaming-focused.

Maybe it’s just a matter of scale, and I don’t remember getting bogged down in AutoCAD in school because I was using smaller, less complicated files. It’s definitely a possibility. But earlier I had an epiphany (those seem to be going around). Not all of my laptop is stock any more. While I made good use of the warranty while it was still available, that merely swapped parts of equal performance. There’s one upgrade I’ve done since then that wasn’t a straight swap: my SSD.

Can a solid state drive really make that much difference compared to a platter-based hard drive? Apparently it can. I do remember commenting on just how snappy things were on my laptop after the upgrade, and how slow things felt when I had to temporarily boot to the old HDD to retrieve some data. So maybe I’m just spoiled now.

Even if I am, it’s definitely something I’m going to have to remember when I get around to building my new PC. I had briefly considered skipping the SSD to save some money, but now I’m not so sure. Would I just end up lamenting that my brand new gaming baby felt less snappy than last week’s (read: half-decade’s) news? I don’t know, but it’s definitely food for thought.

Either way, being jealous of an old computer still feels weird, no matter how unlikely you are to go out and spend money as a result.