...But I'm pretty darn surprisingly close.
I'm taking the day off of mafia stuff (as I normally do on Saturdays), and health stuff continues to not be the best of things, but I am mostly on top of my life right now, because I just felt inspired today. It sounds weird to say, but it honestly feels like a mixture of simultaneous mania and depression coexisting for different areas.

Maybe a touch of autism/adhd in there as well.

Basically.

I started the day working on the civ 3 mod--the most worthless of the worthless thing to do. I made very very good progress there, but I got burned out from working on it so much so I didn't want to work on it more today.

But the usual timekillers aside from it I felt apathetic about. I don't feel like playing League tonight, or TFT tonight, or Epic Battle Fantasy 5, or offline Chrono Trigger, or Stardew Valley, or offline minecraft work. That leaves precious little on the list of timekillers.

So what came to mind that was left?

Two things. Neither a waste. Both which I should be trying to do more of anyway. Not mutually exclusive, either, as one is better later at night when my family is asleep and the other can be done before then.

I basically...came up with streaming (probably building minecraft), or...working on Phyrra and Cyrus. I was thinking of things to do, and the folder with my Phyrra and Cyrus stuff just...caught my eye. I kept staring at it, going back to it, and the inspiration just...struck me. Because it called out to me.

I don't even know what I am going to do there, yet. I think it'll be script-work though because it all starts somewhere and there is a very good place to begin.

​Wish me luck.

I've actually been fairly on top of my emails, and I've been doing well in my job interviews, so it just means that I'm doing a lot of what I need to do.

Now admittedly.

Still falling short in lots of places.

But I'm mostly on top of things.

I'm even finding the time to do a little bit of extra.

Granted, the extra I focused on was the most worthless of the extras I could focus on. There's no way to make the Civ 3 mod be useful, but I've done a lot of work there. I've still got a lot of work to do. Resource tweak, terrain tweak to accommodate said resource tweak, creating all the units with initial parameters, creating all the buildings with initial parameters, creating/modifying the wonders with initial parameters, adding in the new governments and tweaking the existing ones, doing the entire tech tree, and after having done all of that:
Retweak civilization starting techs, retweak resource requirements, set the unit final parameters, set the building final parameters, set the wonder final parameters, and set the final government parameters.

After all of that? Then I can start building the map.

Is a lot of work to do, especially the map, which will basically be made on the fly, from scratch, by feel, with me "feeling" what is appropriate by having the land masses of each scenario before me and me making approximations of it. (I've tried to build a map before but I was a bit too rigorous and scientific with my approach. An approach that relies more on feeling is better in my opinion. Also, that was for a base-8-civ version of the modified-Rise-of-Rome so each civ had a lot more than they should have, being a bit too cumbersome. By dividing the civs up more appropriately I get things to be more manageable.)

Another bonus thing to do is to check each civ's city/leader names to make sure that I didn't include them multiple times (probably gonna use a word counter that can check for word frequency for that), but that's a lower priority thing.

​Anyway feeling pretty good right now.

I did the interview, did the physical part without issue, and have been mostly on top of stuff today. It's been a good day! Granted. Still not doing everything I should. But I've been doing as much as I can.

I probably should have more to say here but honestly I have a case of writer's block for blogging. And for that matter, don't know what I want to do. Might end up streaming after my sister goes to bed, but we'll have to see.

I'm fairly certain I've left an unfavorable impression on every single job position I'm interviewing for as a lifeguard. Still, though, in spite of this, I still have interviews lined up meaning I'm not a total disaster. Just, 90% a disaster.

I've also slacked on health stuff, quite badly so in fact.

And while I've kept pace with most daily stuff.

I'm, mostly: not focusing on the right things.

Granted, the things I'm focused on are mostly things that can be productive.

For the mafia site I play mafia on, I am 95% done with creating a, repeatable, adjustable, setup which combines aspects of the Town of Us mod and the Other Roles mod in Among Us, along with a cameo role from Project Winter (Identity Thief) and some local spice from roles common on the mafia site itself.

As this is a setup that could be run by anyone, adjusted/modified as they please, so that's not a waste of time. It's actually a worthy endeavor. It's probably the most productive thing I could do from the list. Which is saying something rather unflattering.

The other thing I am working on is Castle 4-0 in minecraft. I'm actually considering, when not faced with job interviews every single day, streaming me building it more. Which would be productive technically speaking. Beyond that, if I ever did complete my work on Castle 4-0, I could port it over into a minecraft world, provided I have the funds to do so.

And then open that server up for others to play around in. That'd be productive.

I've done a fair amount of Epic Battle Fantasy 5 farming--fun, but pointless, albeit technically working towards steam achievements. (Which isn't nothing but isn't much of anything.)

​But by far the least productive of the things I'm working on.
Would be another go at a Civilization 3 mod.

Another go at a modified Rise of Rome scenario. But also incorporating other scenarios in:
A little bit of the ancient Mesopotamia scenario, and having all the eight civs (Rome, Carthage, Persia, Greece, Egypt, Goths, Celts, 'Hordes') from Rise, but also having key civilizations from other scenarios: Turks, Russians, Germans, English, French, Spain, Portugal, and Vikings (for 16 total).

I have the tech tree, approximate technology, approximate units/buildings, etc. all more or less figured out.

The main thing to do would be to build the map.

Which would be something done a little bit by feel; I'd need to make room for two cities that are in the same location, to not be in the same location, as to allow those cities to have two different owners. (Key example of this: Londinium for Rome, but London for England.) I'd keep the approximate loose topography of the areas for all areas, but I'd need to play it largely by feel in order to get it right.

This amounts to a gigantic waste of time.

​But I still want to make it...

I've been adulting every day. I've had nonstop interviews, emails, calls, scheduling, etc. literally every day this week. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I will continue to have it tomorrow on Sunday and again on Monday, with more to probably follow.

On the other hand I've also lost a lot of time, slipped on personal hygiene, blogging, etc., by barely staying afloat in most other fields.

Granted, still done stuff, just...not the stuff I need to keep doing.

Yes I realize it's 3 am, what better time to start adulting than in the prime time for me when I am awake, have energy, am not too sluggish, am not too tired, am fulfilled, don't have much else on my mind, and am mostly thinking of what needs to be done before tomorrow?

Anyway. I do have a lot on my mind and a lot to do.

For medical stuff, I still need to return one test that I haven't done yet. I want to not make the trip be for just one thing though so I also want to accomplish some shopping. Things I want:
-Therapeutic Gloves and/or wrist immobilizer
-Chokers
-Thigh bands
-some form of Bra fill
-completing makeup kit.

Therapeutic gloves and/or a wrist immobilizer are due to how my right wrist keeps on flaring up, specifically at the wrist, right on the bend joint on the side. Pinkie-side rather than thumb side. This is a recurring issue, not new. It is also something that has a fairly obvious culprit: spending 16 hours a day in front of the computer using the mouse.

Basically confirming the source of the issue is how on days that I use mouse-intensive games, it is much much worse than on days that I use games that mix keyboard and mouse or are just keyboard or don't use the mouse basically at all.

Games like Epic Battle Fantasy 5 and Minecraft (both have a ton of repetitive clicking) tend to wreck my wrist, whereas games like Chrono Trigger (controller), League (half-half) and Stardew Valley (mostly keyboard with only a little mouse) seem to not agitate the, for lack of a better term, injury.

It's almost certainly a repetitive motion injury of some kind. Minor, but something that I deliberately need to force measures into place to mitigate and prevent from getting worse. I find that quite often, I need to alternate days for games that I play. If I play a click-intensive game I almost always need to wait one day or else face it getting worse.

I also try to elevate my elbow to match the elevation of my wrist. Right now my chair is up extra high, sacrificing some of the mobility I get from it being lower, just so that I have the armrest of the chair level with the keyboard where the mouse is, so that they're aligned, allowing for less necessary wrist movements.

I also pull out the keyboard so that there's less motion needed as when the keyboard is fully in, that requires a lot more motion, especially side-side motion which hurts a hell of a lot more than up-down (thus, extra-important to limit).

But these countermeasures are proving insufficient. I want to be able to game what I want, when I want, and not have the worry of wrist injury worsening. I looked up possible measures to counter this and found out about therapeutic gloves and also found a video from a professional who gave a quick fix of sorts that, while not 100% effective, should be basically 100% safe.

Basically, taking a single strip of electric tape wrapped once (not twice or more) around the wrist, to help immobilize it but not cut off circulation. I did give a minor modification (the video was applying it to bare skin, I applied it over my love), but while my modification means slightly less accuracy, it still seems to do what was promised. My wrist mobility is by my estimation halved. Not immobile, but still limited from the extremes, which is what I need. Plus, if I feel a tug, that's a reminder.

It's still a stopgap measure though. This DIY might help, and the exercise shown in the video may be useful, but there's still some sort of nerve, tendon, or something that feels strained and I need a better measure to prevent worsening of the injury.

On other might-require-doctor news, when the doctor drew blood for tests, it left my arm sore--normal, right? What's not normal is how a week or two later, there's still notable discoloration (many icky green spots) marking what is undeniably a bunch of very very obvious bruising in the area. I get the impression that is not the norm.

I'm glad that I don't have any lasting damage from my physical section of the interview, though. I made the mistake of drinking water while changing into my swimwear, as I knew I was already dehydrated. By the end of the physical in-water section, my legs were absolutely dead-tired, my head was spinning, I was lightheaded, terrified I would pass out, collapse, that I wouldn't be able to stand.

My legs felt like lead, I did indeed struggle to stand, I struggled to carry my bag to the changing room (and couldn't carry anything except the bag), every step I could have fallen over due to the imbalance I was feeling, and I basically ran into the changing room, heavily nauseous and exhausted and ready to collapse.

And then, the urge to vomit hit. At first I suppressed it, because I really didn't want to vomit, but ultimately, I gave in, and after vomiting a little bit of the water out (that's all there was to vomit), I felt good enough to take a cleansing shower. I wasn't 100%, but I was still passable.

Until I got out of the shower and collapsed again, the urge to vomit overtaking me once more. This time I didn't resist, and the rest of the water I had drank came up. But then, I realized something. Once all of the water had been removed from me...all of my symptoms just went away. No lead-weighted feet. No spinning head. No dizziness. No lightheadedness. I felt not only normal, but great. I felt arguably better than I had before the water testing.

Well, the lining between my stomach and my throat wasn't good, it burnt from the acidic vomit, that was disgusting, but physically and mentally I was great. Lesson learned; drinking water before physically exerting yourself is a very very bad idea and WILL screw you over. Had I not drank that water, I'd have been much better off and wouldn't have spent 5-10 minutes vomiting. (Thankfully, the vomiting wasn't seen by the people interviewing me, as I imagine that wouldn't look promising for me to be able to do the physical aspects of the job. However, I feel like they could maybe at least understand that it was due to a mistake on my part of drinking water, but it'd still suck to explain that to them at the time.)

On that note. In further work news.

The interview I was meant to have today never happened.
I need to check on that and ask why, see if there was some form of mishap there. My own phone never rang. Other phones did, my mother's and our home phone, but my father answered the home phone and hung up so it couldn't have been that as the call.

I also need to follow through on the interview I had earlier since they got my corrected email.

Work to do, references to collect, busy busy times.

I did good on my job interview, received validation of my gender identity, and got a lot done.
I think that's a good start!

Now granted.

Still got more to do and tomorrow I have another interview.

Butstill.

​Progress! Lots of it!

In my defense: I have been busy. I've got three interviews that I scheduled today which will be over the course of the week. I had a dentist appointment today, too. All in all, it's a very very very good thing to keep busy on. Health stuff and work stuff.

Granted.

It's gonna suck.

Early times getting up almost every day this week, along with a ridiculously long drive for the in person interview.

But it needs to be done and I want to do it.

I want to keep moving forward in my life.

I'm surviving, but not thriving. Still doing only the bare minimum and continuing to fail to progress.

Depression has somewhat gotten the better of me today.
I've kept on top of job search stuff, but I've still not done medical stuff.
I've again slacked on mafia stuff. (This is becoming a recurring issue.)
I'm only somewhat managing daily self-care stuff.
I'm also not progressing productive projects like the card game idea I have.

It's not a total collapse, so depression hasn't completely consumed me.

But the depression is still there, strongly enough to be crippling in effect.

I'll take the little win that it hasn't consumed me entirely but I'm worried that if it's this bad now, it could get worse if I don't get better at staying on top of things.

On the bright side tho.
I have maybe figured out how to make a proper drawbridge. Maybe. I've not tried out the science behind it, but if I can figure out how it works, what makes it tick, then I might be able to incorporate that into castle 4-0 for the castle gates. Probably not for the multi-leveled keep, unless I can make it compact.

Still though, castle 4-0 is coming along quite nicely. I'm most of the way towards completing one of the four walls in its entirety. I still need to do one side's tower, and I'm working on chiseling out the archery level and the cannon level, and I haven't done the outsides yet (the moat, the palisade, etc.), but completing that will give me the template for completing the rest of the walls and once I finish the walls, I can get a gate, and from the gate, build the moat and palisade and barbican and after that, I can create the contents within the castle.

Well, I'll probably be making the keep once I finish this wall (as my mental map of castle 4-0 has the keep be on the wall I am making right now), but most of the interior of the castle I want to craft after the exterior. Castle first, interior of the castle second as it's not much of a castle if there's no walls in the first place.