No progress

 I can't seem to get back to being motivated. I'm exhausted and experiencing anhedonia again. Just want to stay in bed and fast forward time. Thankfully I have class tomorrow, so I'll have something to do... I don't even feel like using any dating apps right now. I should probably reply to a few people. I guess we'll see, if I feel like crap tonight I'll probably just leave everything unread.

Whoops, I didn't do the thing

This is going to be short. 

I started going back to sleep at a more normal time, somewhere between midnight and 1am. No more nighttime shenanigans. Unfortunately that means less art. I have made progress on the little cat, he has hands, feet, a mouth, a tail... currently giving the poor guy some eyes. 

I continue to be frogless, dateless, and I forgot to finish this post yesterday.

Not a great week

This hasn't been a great week. I actually have been feeling somewhat depressed, which isn't an emotion I've felt very strongly for a while. I guess I'm just really overwhelmed. ADHD is a difficult thing to deal with, my "work for reward" system is all messed up. That sounds confusing, but let me explain...

Let's say the work is writing an essay for school.

The work is finished. You feel like you achieved something.

The next day the reward is a good grade and a sense of achievement.

...at least that's how it works with normal people. For me it's like this:

The work is writing an essay for school.

The work is finished. You don't feel like you achieved anything because there is no reward. You go to sleep.

The next day the reward is a good grade without a sense of achievement, because you know you will have to write another soon. You feel like your work has not ended, and the reward has very little meaning.

Living like this SUCKS. Doing things like cleaning, vacuuming, cooking, or just about anything mundane isn't rewarding, so there's barely enough motivation to do them. After all, I'll just have to do it all over again soon. The work is never done, and will never be done until I die, basically. The only time I actually get the motivation to do one of these things is when I can't handle its current state anymore. Too many dust-bunnies? Okay, fine, time to vacuum this shit. Room is a mess? Time to organize it. It's a really frustrating way to function, if you can even call that functioning.

So here we come to the problems. I did a shitload of work to set up my frog enclosure. The reward is supposed to be frogs. Our Florida trip set that reward in the future. What happens to me? I feel like I did work for nothing. I know all I can do is wait, but the lack of reward is crushing. I just keep thinking "why did I do this so early? I didn't have to do it this early. Holy shit, I did so much work to get this together. It's empty. EMPTY. It should have frogs in it."

Oh, and the other frog? My new pacman? Supposed to be a reward for finally unpacking my boxes, but I once again can't get a frog until after vacation. So what's the point of unpacking now? Why do the work now when I can save it for later? If I get things done earlier there will still be a wait for the reward. Why should I bother?"

So yeah... It just wears on me. This is only one part of why I'm feeling depressed lately. The other is ace dating.

I can't begin to explain how frustrating dating as an asexual is. Get this. You're like me, a sex-repulsed heteroromantic (basically just straight without wanting sex) on an asexual dating site. They're all going to be like you, right? WRONG. Some asexuals hate sex. Some asexuals love sex. Some asexuals don't care either way. That cuts down the possibilities significantly. But wait, how could we forget, you're hetero! Asexual women outnumber asexual men, so let's cut the possibilities down even more. You have a pretty small pool of choices now. We're not done yet though. Don't want kids? We need to cut out all the single fathers and guys who want to be one. You want to date someone that lives within 2 hours of travel from your home? Your choices are now very very few. Lastly you need to cut out some people who you would never date. People you find unattractive, people who look like they're going to kill you in your sleep, people who are polyamorous and want you to be their unicorn plaything, whatever. You now have maybe 1 to 5 choices, congratulations. Now let's see if any of them will even like you. Oh no, they have to message first because you're not subscribed! Fork out $60 for 3 months to message now! Oh wait, but you have a message?! Who could it be? Oh it's just your pen pal. False alarm.

I'm pretty sure that would frustrate just about anyone. You know what else is stressful? Having to reply to all your pen pals! I'm finding it really difficult to juggle all of them at once, there's just so much writing. It can take me up to 3 hours to respond to everyone. I'm not saying I don't like having pen pals, I think I just bit off a little more than I can chew.

Lastly. Finally. Looking through all of those school papers really did a number on me. I've realized that my entire public school experience was like one long abusive relationship. Every day I had to go knowing that I could be bullied at any moment. That I will get less attention and help if I don't get good grades. That I'll make a teacher mad or be ignored if I got a bad grade. There was no room whatsoever for proper mental health treatment, if you were going through a hard time, tough shit. You fucking failed. Everything about it was messed up. I'm glad I graduated and got the hell out of there. Even better, I discovered that all the hatred everyone had for me was bullshit since nobody at college gave me any crap at all. I just really hated school.

That's pretty much it. What has the result of all of this been? Stress migraines. PTSD nightmares and waking up in a pool of sweat. Depressed mood. No desire to do art. Not going to class. Just a mess.

I really hope I can put myself back together.

Upset about frogs

 

Welp. The frogs are up on MorphMarket, and there's only 8 left. I'm so bummed out. Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to our Florida vacation, it's going to be a lot of fun. I just hate the fact that I have to miss this opportunity to get amazing quality frogs at a reasonable price. These can go as high as $150. There's also no guarantee when he'll offer these guys again, if he ever does. He suddenly stopped breeding pacman frogs earlier without warning. 

Oh well. Guess I have to just wallow in frogless sadness while I unpack more crap.

First I got all the reptile room stuff out of the way. I cannot for the life of me get the right humidity in the frog enclosure, so instead of struggling with that, I decided to just bring the humidity of the entire room up. I just need to get it to 40%, that's a comfortable humidity for both the frogs and Stumpie. I moved the humidifier there and filled it up, plus I added some more water to the frog enclosure. I then checked in on the critters.

The mealworm beetles seem to be eating the surface of the jungle vines. Pretty sure those vines are made of foam, rubber, cardboard, and wire? It can't be healthy. I'm providing leaf litter, moss, a big piece of wood, but nope. They like the vines. Whatever.

The springtails are having a pool party, probably feeding on biofilm on the surface. They can literally stand on water, like bug Jesus. Glad to see they're congregating, they're probably mating too.

I checked the mound of dirt I dumped in from the isopod cup. I'm ecstatic to see that my isopods are alive and happy! May they multiply and spread across the tank. Someone's got to eat the poop, you know.

I also fed Stumpie. She actually came out of her cave to get her worms! After that she took a little stroll to the plants near the cave, checked it out, and then slunk back into the hide. Proud of you, Stumpie.

I spent the rest of the night sorting and organizing a box of old school stuff and art. (It's all mixed up, ugh.) I almost got through the entire box, but I honestly just couldn't take it anymore. It was still nice seeing all these old drawings from the peak of my drawing ability. I wish I could still draw like that. Oh well.

Also listened to a lot of music tonight. A lot of Dance Gavin Dance. I'm trying to get through the entire discography from first album to latest. Also been listening to some Pinback because I'm going with one of my friends to see them in concert!

Unpacking for a frog

My tropical isopods and Stumpie's springtails both arrived dead and frozen. Not like it's any surprise, but I'm just a liiitle concerned that the mailman would shove a box labeled "LIVE ANIMALS" on it into the mailbox without a care. He knows whatever is in there is going to freeze to death if it sits there overnight, and it doesn't bother him one bit. Thank goodness most of the reptile community refuses to use USPS, imagine if it was a frog...

So here's the scoop. First let's establish that my parents don't like reptiles and amphibians. With Sprout's passing, I signed up for a restock alert on Ceratophrys ornata on Josh's Frogs. I just don't trust Ceratophrys cranwelli anymore. They're inbred to death to make mutant morphs. I'm scared I'll have another feeding issue with a new cranwelli. My ornata (Mike Matson's in 2017) was also a beast. The most aggressively hangry frog I've ever seen. Cranwelli pacman frogs come in regular morphs, albino morphs, mutant morphs.... Ornatas come in three regular morphs: green, green and red, and red. That's it. Their genetics have been only minimally fucked with. So yeah, that's what I'm aiming to get, a nice red ornata.

The restock alert came and I was overjoyed! I'm going to order a baby frog! Well, turns out that's not what my parents had in mind. Let's go back to last year. I had Sprout and Stumpie, which I saw as two "pet slots." When our house sold my dad exclaimed, "I'M SO HAPPY, YOU KNOW WHAT, YOU CAN GET A NEW PET!" I told him I wanted White's tree frogs, but they really do best with a buddy. (Yes, they can live alone, but apparently they're more active and interactive when they have a tankmate. They like to climb all over each other and often stack up.) My dad of course asked "isn't there any... non-frog pet you want?" and I said "blue-tongued skink" and he immediately said "OK, TWO FROGS." (He hates reptiles more than amphibians.) I was under the impression that the two White's would count as one pet slot, meaning I'd have three pet slots. However, when I informed them that I was going to order a new pacman, my parents were like "uh no, where did you get the idea you can have another frog?" Turns out that they expected Sprout to die, which would leave me with Stumpie, and two tree frogs. Two pet slots. Of course this was something I adamantly argued against, and we finally decided to negotiate. My dad said I could order a new pacman, but not until... I unpacked everything in my room. 

My room is a fucking mess. I have boxes everywhere and haven't bothered to unpack much because I just haven't needed the things inside yet. Plus ADHD, procrastination, executive dysfunction, "it's not a big deal," yada yada. This is going to be a huge undertaking, one that I actually started tonight because I had an unusual burst of energy tonight. 

I started with the easiest box, which was the tech/wires box. All I really had to do was untangle and sort a bunch of wires in the top drawer of my 4-drawer dresser. Old tech went into the second drawer. (I'm pretty sure I have a charger for almost everything ever.) One box down. Next I took my winter boots out of its box and put it into my bathroom/closet. Two boxes down. Random empty box? Three boxes down. I then got distracted by a delivery bag, which I decided to open. My citrus lights and an asexual flag pin were in there, score! I put the pin on my schoolbag, and with my newly found USB charger outlets I wrapped the lights around my video game shelf. I didn't really do a great job. 

Once that was done with, I realized I hadn't shut off the lights in the reptile room. I have a ceramic heat emitter for each enclosure that runs 24/7, on the frog enclosure I have a timer for the UVB and the daylight bulb. (Still debating whether to keep using the daylight bulb because it's kind of redundant.) That leaves Stumpie's UVB, her basking light, and the grow-light for the frog enclosure. Those all have to be manually turned on and off. Stumpie's enclosure was super dry, so I got the watering can, filled it up, and watered all the plants inside. (The damn mealworm beetles killed both my spider plants, ughhhh.) The humidity in the frog tank was way too low as well, so back to the sink to fill the watering can. I watered the plants and just poured water into the soil. I have a completely dry drainage layer. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be that way. I also sprayed down the bottom of the tank to get the humidity higher. Before I left I checked the dirt I had poured from the isopod cup, and I saw a bunch crawling around in there! Yes my little ones, make babies! The springtails are already doing great too.

I procrastinated a bit again, but went back to dealing with my boxes. Box that only had a bottle of glaze in it? Fourth box down. Big box that only had art on the bottom? Fifth down. Uhh... sixteen to go. I got distracted, this time by my stomach. I went upstairs and ended up getting my meds and the new mealworm bin my mom set up. I then went through the very painstaking process of picking baby mealworms out of the old beetle bin. The mealworms in the "current" mealworm bin are all near their pupa life stage, so I'm worried that they'll turn into beetles before the babies in the new bin grow big enough for Stumpie. Thankfully Stumpie loves pupae. 

At this point I did my nightly ritual of responding to messages on dating apps/sites, and being fairly disappointed. Then I went to bed.

Back in Facebook Jail

Guess who's in Facebook jail again!! Meeeee!

I was talking about dating apps in an asexual group, and I said "Ugh, the heterosexual men are the worst. They send gross messages."

WELL GUESS WHAT? Calling straight men "the worst" is considered HATE SPEECH.

I have seen the most disgusting and vile anti-woman posts not go against the Community Standards, so how on earth is this punishable hate speech?

Ah well, caught a 2 day site-wide ban. Not my worst. Just kind of sucks because I like to wish people Happy Birthday.

Trudging along

I forgot to write yesterday, whoops. Nothing much happened, I only had therapy and worked on the mini needle-felted cat. I got all four limbs done, not bad in one night.

Tonight I only added hands. I spent too much time concerning myself with dating apps/sites. You know what really sucks? It's nearly impossible to figure out whether another asexual is interested in you unless they say it in plain words. Our "flirting" is just being friendly, while regular people just make vague mentions of sexual things. (God, regular people have it so easy.) 

So yeah, here's the little guy. It's coming along.

I also put together a new playlist on Spotify. My sister and I both make playlists that we send to each other every few months. It was my turn, so I had to pick and arrange songs that I recently discovered and liked. I always end my playlists with one instrumental song. It's tradition, hah.

You can take a listen HERE. Be warned that it's pretty much all post-hardcore.

Well, that's all for tonight. I'm absolutely starving.

Just surviving

Today I really felt like crap. I woke up at 8am with crazy anxiety. I had an 11:45am appointment with the nose doctor, all is healing well. Afterwards I just wanted to go home, I just wasn't feeling well enough to go to class. I was dizzy, headachey, tired, and anxious all at the same time.

I finished Into the Deep tonight on Netflix and started working on a much smaller needle-felted animal.

The dreaded cat for scale. This will be much smaller. Just a head and a body for now.

It's now time for breakfast!