5 hours of sleep (if I rush there), here I come!

(hoo boy...)

I don't really have anything on mind in particular. Lots of random things, need to brush teeth, need to shave, have a change in work schedule, am working a shift tomorrow as a sub that I thought I was going to work originally so it's no change anyway, haven't gamed today, probably just a bunch of random stuff.

Doing better mentally overall, but not resting as much as I should on a Saturday, maybe.

I guess I'll risk mentioning that I am working on a new profile picture for my twitch, twitter, and discord. I've become a little more cations ever since learning that there's art thieves going around trying to claim credit for the ideas of others by literally completing their art before they finish it and such, but like.

I'll risk it. Nobody reads my blog, anyway. So like. By the time an art thief would come along to try, I'll have presumably long-since finished it. Or, they'll try to steal from the unfinished product too soon and later my version has radical differences proving mine came first. Or whatever.

My point is, it's probably safe to share this.

The thing I wanted to comment on is the mask. The mask. Because WHOAH. The MASK.

Do you see how good it is????

Like--the shading's not perfect, I'm not quite sure how to fine-tune it but realize I might need to adjust it to be better. So that part, could use some adjusting.

But the rest of the mask is just...like...WHOAH. It's so good!

Do you know how hard it is for me as an artist to be proud of my art???

I'm proud of that mask! It's SO good. Like, the more I look at it the better it looks. It looks EXACTLY like the genuine article does. So I nailed it.

Still got a ton of work to do, mind you. Gotta do what I did for the mask, to the collar.
Gotta do what I did to the mask and will do to the collar, to the shirt.
Gotta add in the skin.
Gotta add in the hair.
Gotta work on details.

But like.

I already have done a huge thing with that mask and it is good.

Like--I like the eyes. Hazel eyes are notoriously difficult to draw, having a mixture of gray, green, blue, brown, and gold in them, with the exact color changing in the light. (And yes, I'm quite certain it's those five, we've seen all five in our lifetime under different lighting.) Trying to capture that in art is notoriously difficult.

But like--while I really like the eyes and I feel like we nailed it, my perfectionist self-doubting self may fine-tune them some more later.

The mask?
The lighting/shadows, maybe. But beyond that, it's just...it's perfect. And I love it.

I can:
Stream,
Wake up in time to watch what I want to watch tomorrow (starts at like 1-1:30 pm),
Shower,
Get 6+ hours of sleep,

...But not all four.
I think I can only get a maximum of 3/4.

If I stream, that takes me to a time where I need to give up sleep, a shower, or be late for the thing.
If I don't stream and go straight to bed now tho, then waking up at like 10:30 or so gives me the time I need.

I think I need to go to bed, now.

I'm a little bored, anyway, and kinda want the sleep. No energy for more drawing. Not really feeling the writing. So like. Gaming or bed are the only options. I don't feel like more tft, I don't feel like booting up steam. Which leaves only one game, minecraft, as possible. And I'm not feeling it to be honest.

So like.

I think I just am going to go to bed here once I finish a system scan I have ongoing. (My computer's been having huge internet lag spikes even when I'm low on stated memory/cpu/etc., trying to see if I can fix that.) So like. Meds, bed, seems like a plan to me.

Is the norm when I stream, because I need bed. Was a pretty good stream, made decent progress on my art, so like. Good use of time, but now I need sleep.

I did something today that freed a lot of the burden from my shoulders. Genuinely, before I did it I was literally in a spot of darkness, misery, anger, and utter exhaustion. I couldn't remember being happy. I was just tired in every way possible, and angry at so many things. And I wanted it to just...stop.

So I did. I did something which made it not be an issue.

And once I did it, it genuinely was a weight off our shoulders.

Immediate relief. And I mean immediate relief. Within five minutes, a flood of positive emotions.

Feeling giddy, happy, upbeat.

For the first time we can remember in weeks.
Calm, relaxed. Just, serene.

We were happy. We were free. We were good. We suddenly had the time and mindset for working out, and to actually knock out life tasks.

All good, right?

Sounds like it should've been a good thing, right?

And, well.

It certainly would have been!

...Except for one small issue.

We ADHD'd our way back into doing the same thing. It has become an obsession. A very unhealthy one at that.
We let go. We were free.
And then we weren't. Because we are stupid. We are dumb.

Even now we're thinking of that thing and it is taking every rational part of us to go, "NO. No. Bed. Not that. BED."

Which gives an idea for how bad it is. It's genuinely an addiction--and yet.

In spite of knowing how unhealthy it is, in spite of knowing how it is making this hellish week all the much worse.

We keep going back.

For god only knows what reason.

See also, we are stupid. And we hate it.

I am sick physically.
I am sick mentally.
I am sick emotionally.

Genuinely.

Nothing is going well for me right now.

I'm exhausted on every level.
I'm tired.
I'm sick.
I just...I'm losing so much.

My health is going down. Physically, especially.
But also mentally and emotionally.

I am worn down.

I am tired.

I am genuinely not okay.

I'm not doing so much I should be.

I'm struggling.

I feel like I am breaking down. That I am broken, that I can't continue on.
I just feel like I'm so done with life right now.

But like. Can't exactly not live it. So in spite of feeling like I'm just done--obviously I'm not actually. Which arguably makes me feel even worse because I feel like quitting something that there is no quit option for.

(Well--technically. But. Y'know. I'm not going there. There's no quit option. Period.)

I'm struggling to remember how to be happy.
I'm struggling to remember how to function.
I'm just.

I feel like collapsing.

My whole life is just. Tension building, no release.

I genuinely don't know how to keep going.
I mean, I will.
I just don't know how.
And there's a very real--justifiable--fear that I simply...pass out. Behind the wheel.

I'm not healthy in any way.
That bad health adds up.

Something's gonna break bad.
Physically would be the least damaging, but most annoying. Sickness would be a way to force rest, but would cause so many small issues.
Emotionally would be the most destructive. When I break bad, I burn bridges.
And Mentally would be the most dangerous. If I fall asleep while guarding, it's dangerous to other patrons. If I fall asleep while off the stand it could cost me the job for sleeping through rotations. But mostly and obviously: if I fall asleep while driving...

...When I drive on some of the most dangerous highways in the state...

...Hoo boy I don't think I need to say how dangerous that is.

And I've come close to all three mentally before.

Very very dangerous.

And it's getting worse.

It's not the work schedule in of itself.
It's just a perfect storm of everything wearing me down.
So many events going on that I am juggling.
The extra work I felt I had to take.
The time-limited things I am struggling to try and get on time.
The picking up of things that I am invested in.

It's all adding up. It's all piling up.

I don't think it'll have the effects of the worst burnouts where I genuinely left areas of my life I loved permanently in the past. That shouldn't happen.

But.

I am just. So so dead inside.

I mean, physically, not so much. It did leave our foot blistered when normal workdays don't, but that's minor. In of itself, yesterday was fine otherwise. Altho the fatigue is definitely felt--today's drive home from work felt alarmingly dangerous, because tiredness built up from exhaustion.

Emotionally, well yes but we've recovered.

The main way it messed us up was scheduling-wise and all the fallout which follows.

We were meant to do a minimum of 7 things today.

Watching one video.
Watching two vods.
Brushing teeth.
Going to bed on time.
Taking a shower.
Keeping discord talks up to date.
And catching up on mafia games. (We usually take Saturdays off. Which is normally fine, because we have eight hours of free time on Sunday to devote to the game. Not yesterday! Yesterday we had a maximum possible of two. Two hours, IF we were doing NOTHING BUT mafia. Suffice to say, we did not get that done.)

We tried to do them all.

You know how many we got done?

Well if we brush our teeth, that'll be two.
Otherwise?

One.

One, of seven.

These are genuinely all things that I could've gotten done if I had my normal amount of free time.
If I didn't have a double shift yesterday, if we didn't work ten hours yesterday, if we worked a far more sane five, then we'd have had five hours to devote to knocking tasks out.

We wouldn't have needed to even watch the DRX vod, because we'd have caught it live. (Maybe the very beginning we'd miss, but the most of it we'd catch.) Instead, we came in on the ending of game 4, meaning we had 4 games to watch and then some. (In our credit, we did get to near the end of game 2, but we honestly should rewatch that game since we didn't even notice when DRX got the edge there. It started with an EDG advantage and we knew EDG won the first two, so we kinda figured "oh EDG just won this from that early play, match wrapped", except actually no, it was an EDG win but DRX had the lead and I didn't really notice when or how that happened, so like...we clearly weren't paying enough attention to game 2 meaning we need to rewatch it. But I digress. Point is, we didn't finish that.)
We would probably have had time to watch the Paranormal Detour second episode.

We'd have had more time to catch up on discord.

And we'd have had more time to play mafia, meaning a lot of the work we did today could have instead been done yesterday, when we actually promised it. (We still haven't done things we promised on Saturday we'd do. Can't elaborate, ongoing game rules, but since the info is public in said games I think I can safely say that much without violating site rules by keeping it vague and not explaining.)

Granted, still wouldn't have gotten everything we wanted to do, done.

We'd still be late for bed and still not have finished everything.

But we'd have finished more.

Because today we still didn't finish. We're nowhere close.

We took a shower, miraculous as that in of itself is. But that's genuinely it. Everything else we planned to do, we didn't do to the amount we had planned to do. Or even remotely close.

All off the back of a single double shift we really didn't want to work, but worked anyway because we felt we had no choice but to.

The sad part is, we knew this would happen; that's why we didn't want the shift in the first place. We KNEW it would mess us up in this exact way. It's just that, well. We got stuck with the shift anyway, and now the consequences: we are suffering, because everything is out of whack.

There's so many things piling onto the to-do list.

We're neglecting League and TFT, in spite of time-sensitive missions there.
We were planning to stream today (oh that makes a minimum of eight, not seven), we didn't do that--and to knock out the to-do list for today we'll have to give up streaming tomorrow, too.
We haven't worked on our art since Saturday (our day off).
We haven't written since our last stream.
We have barely scheduled youtube videos, staying afloat at uploading one per day and releasing one per day in spite of the idea being to schedule several in a day that release every day. (I need a buffer. I have none.)

And our health is not great.
Every workout is a struggle. We barely did the 59 knuckle pushups today (broken up into two sets because we're too weak and pathetic to do them all in one). We only did the 59 jackknives on a technicality, doing like six sets of 10 or so. (Actually, 5 sets, since two sets were 15.) Again, those are meant to be one continuous set. And they had half-hour gaps between them.

Realistically speaking, time constraints mean I can't do an entire workout in half an hour, so doing one set of 59 jackknives is unrealistic, but I introduced a concept of a "soft-reset" where I keep some progress but roll it partially back if I have a half-hour break. So, 20 becomes like 16, 16 becomes like 10, something generically in the area but which accommodates for how you're not supposed to get that much rest between sets.

Today each set of jackknives--10 to 15--was separated by a half-hour...and I couldn't use a soft-reset for any of them. We did pretty much on the dot 59, both officially AND unofficially. No soft resets involved. Which means the ab workout was sub-optimal.

We didn't do proper arm stretches.
We didn't do extra ab work to target the side-abs.
We didn't do extra arm workout to build the muscles up not activated by knuckle pushups.

​And we are so tired. So exhausted. And it's only going to get worse. We're late for bed three days in a row now. We work 31.5 hours officially (33 with lunch accounted for), over five days this week. We're dangerously tired as-is and our workouts are increasingly hard to do, likely thanks to lack of rest to properly build the strength back up.

It has all snowballed from what amounts to one thing we felt like we had no choice but to do. One extra shift, and our whole week is dangerous, miserable, tiring, and getting worse and worse and worse and worse.

Granted, it's not like everything is bad.

It's just that: genuinely?

We don't have time to appreciate the good. We don't have time to celebrate the good. We don't have time to enjoy the good.
​There is good happening, it's not literally all bad--but we just...well, we see it, but it's hard to, I guess, perceive it? Observe it? Feel it? We objectively recognize the good when we think about it and in the exact moment of the good...

...But we are so overwhelmed right now that genuinely any time outside of the good, we can't actually think of the good.

So while the week isn't all bad and has good within...

...The good kinda gets buried under the pile of exhaustion, fatigue, and business, from work and a continuously piling up list of things we are meant to do that we aren't doing.

It was entirely eaten up by work.

I woke up and prepped for work.
Left for work.
And then worked my normal shift.

And then I basically got volunteered to work five hours more. Technically speaking, I could've said no. But realistically speaking, I couldn't.

So then, I worked a second time.
Drove home for work.
And now I am prepping for bed--because of work tomorrow.

I know I could've said no, so I know I have nobody to blame but myself. I know that I am being a (pardon the language) bitch. I shouldn't complain, I have no right to complain. I did it to myself, effectively.

But that doesn't mean I am happy about it.

I felt like I had to do it because I am a lead lifeguard and I was already there and leads fill in when nobody else can and nobody else could. I genuinely had no reason to plausibly refuse. I really didn't want to, but I basically had to. I know, this is unprofessional of me--it makes me sound like I am a victim, that my workplace is to blame, etc. They aren't. It's my doing, so like.

My frustration is my at myself. For working a shift I knew I'd hate, for missing the things I know I missed, and now after the fact: for complaining about the day that I was able of not having.

​But I need to go to bed.

Mostly "no thoughts head empty" but also, family is over for family night, massively distracting, and my head is just...

...I've had thoughts but I don't know any of them right now, not really.

I had a thought right now that I might get around to, but let's review today accomplishment-wise. We did a fair amount of progress on art. We did a youtube upload of a vod and scheduled some extra ones. (Not the amount we wanted to tho. We wanted to schedule a full week.)

So like, given that this is a short day for us, that's pretty good, to be honest. It's not as much as we want, we didn't get to watch the latest paranormal detour video outside the premiere (we watched the entirety of the premiere live, but because it was live, we missed a few details here and there that we need to watch the video to catch), we didn't finish the collar on our drawing, 

But we're happy with the day overall.

It's a good day. Not great. But good.

I did have a thought earlier tho, that I feel I should express.

"You will be alone, you will be by yourself, you will not have another, you will not obtain fame, you will not obtain fortune, none of those things are in your future--and you need to be okay with that."

Not exactly the wording used, but it was not a negative. The message was more like. A prevention of the negative. A need for acceptance. A need for acknowledging the bad in us, but also, that the dreams we have are just dreams, that realistically speaking, we won't obtain them and we need to be okay with not having obtained them.

​I got the vibe it wasn't a doomsaying of "don't try". That it wasn't saying to give up altogether. But more like, that I need to be okay when trying doesn't amount to much. There's nothing wrong with the failure. I will never obtain those things, and need to be okay with that, but not trying to obtain them would still be a mistake, if that makes sense?

I suppose my go-to way to describe it would be the ending of Socrates Jones: Pro Philosopher. (Note: we received an on-the-nose tarot/oracle as typing this which was genuinely the "embrace the flow of life" card, so like: it was genuinely 100% on the nose reaffirming we're right here. But, I digress.)
Basically at the end of that game, it more or less says, "there is no definition of morality, but the search for one is still worth pursuing", essentially. (Need to replay the game to remember it more specifically.)

In this context, it's the same basic idea.
No, I'm not going to get any of the things that I want.
But I need to be okay with that.
And then still try for them anyway.
Because the attempt to do so is something worth living for.

I'm not sure if I'm wording that well. I have the concept in my head and I know the concept in my head is right, but finding the words for it isn't easy. It's a message of acceptance and being okay, of being realistic but also idealistic. (Just got another tarot/oracle card reading confirming that I am on the right track, dealing with effectively: "do it anyway".)

Basically: I need to not expect to succeed. I need to not think I will. I need to know that I likely will fail, and be okay with it. To have peace with the failure, acceptance of it. The realism part of that. But that I should remain idealistic. Not get delusions of success, but rather, my idealism is more in keeping to try in spite of knowing there will be a high chance of failure.

If I don't try at all, success is a guaranteed 0%. But I need to be okay with knowing that my dreams of success aren't going to magically manifest. They need work and even with that work they almost definitely won't work out. It's a reading that is telling me that I need to keep going, but with an acceptance of myself.

​I am flawed. I am going to not succeed. I have issues. I won't manage to amount to much of anything. And this is okay. This is acceptable. I know what I am doing is right. I know that my mindset is headed in the right direction. I need to remember this, moving forward. What I wrote today. Because it's so easy to cave in.
​It's easy to get lost in the delusions of the future, which makes actually manifesting the future nearly impossible, as well as increasing disappointment when it doesn't. It's easy to get lost in despair of having not accomplished things and feeling like you never will. It's so easy to become lost and get overwhelmed by the pain.

I need to remember what I had revealed to me tonight. It's a lesson I've taught myself before, but I couldn't hold onto it. I need to have it stick this time. A shift in mindset and approach that sticks. I am okay with living the life of mediocrity and loneliness.

Well, no. Not really. I'm not okay with it, but I am okay with it, and need to be okay with it.

Emotionally, I am not okay with it. How could I not feel the pain of isolation and loneliness? How could I not feel crushed by my own failures to manifest my dreams? The emotional sting of knowing I am the only one to blame for my shortcomings is one that I can't freely discard. Emotions are emotions, feelings are not things that you can rationally discard.

In that sense, I am not okay with it.

But rationally, I am, and I need to keep that mindstate. To calm my emotions. To reassure my emotions that it's okay. I'm okay. And I am. I am okay with being on my own. I am okay with my ideas dieing with me. I am okay with never having the company of others in a more direct way. I am okay with never achieving my dreams of being a teacher, a mother, an influencer, a writer, a content creator. Those are things I am unlikely to ever obtain, and I need to be okay with this.

And, largely, I am. I just need to remember that I am, and that I'm okay. I'm no great beacon. I need to be okay with being who I am. Now, I do need to take caution. I should not fall into apathy. I should not be careless. I should not be reckless. If I am too okay with who I am, I'll end up progressively becoming a worse and worse person. Some checks/balances are needed in order to ensure that I don't become despicable without having noticed.

It's easy to lose sight of important things, so I can't forget who I am. Which is why I need to strive to be better. I need to keep doing what I do, in the aim for being better. To keep doing what I do, in the hopes of achieving what I want to. Keep doing what I do, in order to strive for the dream. But to be able to accept I won't reach the ideal.

Betterment is a process where I may never get any better. I may end up exactly the way I am now, and I need to accept that, and be okay with that. That 20 years from now I may be precisely where I am right now. Alone and without having succeeded. But I should still try anyway, because the trying helps stop me from being worse.

I need to accept who I am, and accept who I become, and accept I won't be who I want to be. But still try to be who I want to be.

I hope that makes sense. It's not a bad thing. I'd say it's actually a good thing.
​I just need to hold onto it.

It wasn't much of a stream, mind you! In nearly three hours of streaming, we wrote a meager four paragraphs for our novel. The rest of the time was pretty much exclusively one ADHD tirade after another, launching into ramble after ramble after ramble, about all the things we need to do, all the things we're planning to do, etc. (Speaking of which, on that list: uploading our past streams to youtube. We have a channel for it, we need to actually DO it now.)

Basically, one of the things we discussed is how we're planning on streaming six days per week.
Short day stream on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday; night streams on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday; Saturdays as our day off, and maybe dedicated to uploading? I don't know.

The rest, would have to actually watch all of the vod to see what we talked about. But, 'twas a lot.

As a reminder, on our main weebly blog, our twitch is displayed there, with a link to it, but I don't think we've set that up on the wix mirror/backup blog.

So because our twitch isn't displayed on wix yet, here is a link to it. Unsurprisingly, our handle there is the handle we've adapted as our standard across the majority of the internet (aside from a few holdouts), rBree2.

There's probably more to talk about, but we kinda want to go to bed now, so like. I guess this works as a blog? It's not discussing everything, I'm sure, but it's good enough, I suppose.
We need medications, to finish electronic stuff, and then we can sleep for six+ hours. (Allegedly. We try, it's just that we're having issues sleeping these days.)

So I guess this is it.

​Hope it's sufficient!