I would say "in my defense, I have been busy" doing a lot of things, which is true!
...But mostly the lack of blogs has been pure sheer nasty depression sticking its ugly face out and taking control of my life.

I am however, trying to fight back. It's not an overnight process where I will suddenly magically have a fix for everything, but I'm working on it, trying to get more and more on top of it. I've actually done a ton of stuff, gathering makeup supplies, shopping, etc. But I've got a lot more work to do.

I started with a list of activities, divided up into one-time things, daily/weekly things, and additional/optional things on top of those, and then added in a need to remember login information for various different important things.

So far, this is what I've got;


ONE-TIME THINGS:
-Catch up on emails
-Do tax stuff
-Regain access to any sites I need to (at least one but see below)
-Restart unemployment (I messed up by not doing it so need to restart it)
-Seek psychologist (so that I can begin transition)
-Pursue namechange
-Finish makeup collection

DAILY/WEEKLY THINGS:
-Shave (daily for face)
-Comb hair (do with shave)
-Makeup (daily once I've got the supplies)
-Shower 3-4x / week + change (Monday, Wednesday, Friday?)
-Dental Hygiene (2x/day)
-Unemployment once restarted (weekly?)
-Shave (chest Wed, legs Fri, arms Mon)
-Pills once gotten (at prescribed time/method/etc.)
-Checking email (daily+)

ADDITIONAL DAILY THINGS:
-Once on pills, exercise:
*Daily: jackknives/crunches alternating
(start 10, increase by 5/week up to 100)
*Knuckle Pushups Monday / Wednesday / Friday
(start 5, increase by 1/week up to 100)
(use corset or similar for back form)
*Squats Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday
(start 10, increase by 2/week up to 100)
*Walk/Jog/Run;
Walk 1 mile/day, increase by 1 mile/week;
After up to 5, add jog for 1 mile on top of walk (6 total);
After 5 jog + 5 walk, add 1 mile run;
Max out at 15 miles / day

BONUS ADDITIONAL/OPTIONAL ACTIVITIES IN A DAY (Possible activities):
-League of Legends
-Teamfight Tactics
-TFT Hyper-roll
-Chrono Trigger
-Stardew Valley
-Epic Battle Fantasy 5
-Minecraft
-Art
*Finish self-portrait
*Finish Elemental Ruby
-Phyrra and Cyrus (scriptwork, songwriting)
-Job Search

-Storywriting (the below are stories I have a recent desire to work on)
*Coat
*The Bandit Seven (supervillain/"hero")
*Vetra (superhero/villain)
*The supervillain trio story
*Threadripper and Kinesis (supervillain) story
*Requiem (supervillain)
*Projection (superhero + supervillain) story
*Heroes 4 Hire (superhero)



ACCOUNTS I NEED ACCESS TO:
(I probably should not list these publicly even on a blog nobody reads so, uh...there's a bunch here just not to be listed)

So that's what I've done.

It's not enough, but it's at least a good start.

...So much as there is, continued, "I didn't do as much as I wanted to do today", today.

However, it notably wasn't nothing.

I may not have streamed.
I may not have played Stardew Valley.
I may not have won a game of League of Legends.
I may not have done my daily things like mafia games.
I may not have done anything on my new to-do list with a deadline of July 23rd (my birthday).
I may not even have blogged about the above in spite of having planned to, due to me being too tired now to do so.

All of that is stuff I didn't do that I wanted to have gotten done.

But critically, today was not a wash.

I did manage to unlock some of the event content in League of Legends.
I did manage to finish the base of Castle 4-0 in minecraft.
I did do a little bit of farming in Chrono Trigger and tie up a couple of things I wanted to do there.

But biggest of all?

I did go to shop for more additional clothes, something I was in desperate need of, as I was putting off taking a shower for the last few days in part due to a lack of clean clothes to change into.

So tomorrow I can take a shower and change, but beyond that, have access to more of my preferred clothing now.

It felt really good to do.

So I've got a lot to do tomorrow.

I've got a lot of progress to work on.
​But I still have done some stuff that was good. Which is better than nothing.

Okay so that title may take a little bit of clarification.
I do not feel like I am invalid.
I know I am valid.

I feel like I am being invalidated by my family--an entirely different thing.

They are not seeing me as Bree. I have the power to accelerate this being forced...but I've not grasped it, so I am frustrated at myself for how slow I am, how stupidly not assertive I've been.

I've not once said "that's not my name" to my deadname.

I've not once said "my name is Bree" to my deadname.

I've done some passive resistance to the deadname by refusing to answer to it in some cases, but after my family bypasses the name I answer anyway without them having validated me...and this is the best of my responses.

The others? Me trying, when they use the deadname, to emphasize, "I have/haven't done X", in a way that to me emphasizes that I am not responding to them using the deadname, I am responding to them...but this is something so subtle that it is something that they do not validate me with. They probably don't even notice.

Or worst of all? Instinctively responding to the deadname. 27 years of responding to a name is not something I can undo over a short amount of time, but the number of times I do is outweighing the number of times I don't. I'm not really progressing in pushing those to the minority.

I've not progressed on changing my name legally.

I've not progressed on job search stuff.

I've not sent emails to my mother and older sister containing resources I was given...by now, close to two weeks ago.

And yet, every day I am feeling less and less validated by them.

And it'll get worse on July 23rd.
What name do you think they're going to use to sing 'Happy Birthday' to me?
What name do you think they actively tell other extended family members is mine?
I'm not even being called by my real name on phone calls to our dance group. Yet alone our extended family on either side of the family.

And I've no real way to reach out to them beyond what I have done in making it public in the places I have.

So I am feeling awfully frustrated, both at myself for my utter lack of having pushed further and at my family for doing literally everything to invalidate me.

I tell myself every night I go to bed, 'tomorrow, I will change this'.
I tell myself every day I wake up, 'today is the day that I change this'.
I've yet to do so in about two weeks.

I am aware that this is more on my family than it is on me--
But if I do absolutely nothing, I won't be able to do anything to influence them, anything to affect them.

So I need to keep moving forward here.

​I cannot afford to not.

I can't go into full details, but as it is public that it was me I can at least mention this much; today made at least one consequence of a screwup I did yesterday official. (It is possible there may be further repercussions down the line. Given it was an accident and it was unintentional, I am obviously hoping there won't be, but given the nature of the offense and how I was already on thin ice before, it's definitely possible that I could face further punishment down the line for the messup. It'd suck, but I cannot say it'd be unwarranted, because I did genuinely screw up, so the punishment I received is the absolute minimum. I do mean it when I say I will count myself lucky if it is the only punishment I get because I mean it when I say it was worthy of being punished, accident/unintended or not.)

Basically, while I still cannot share the full story, I can go into the basics. On the site I play mafia on, I was in a mafia game. I believed myself to be within the rules with my posting--a first clarification in the rules, there was extenuating circumstances which led me to believe that I was still within them thanks to a case of unfortunate events. (In short, a private communication was similar, but much shorter, to the public communication. I believed, erroneously, that the private communication was just a shorter summary of the public communication. It was not.)

This led to the rule needing to be clarified a second time, and I received a minor punishment for the first with it being expected that future violations of the rule would give no such leniency because after both rule clarifications, the policy was as unambiguous as possible.

So how did I screw up?

Well, I was typing a post made that I believed to be within the rules between the first clarification and the second. I was unable to post it before the second clarification, and the initial draft of said post, while it'd have been fine if posted prior to the second rule clarification, was not okay to post after the second rule clarification.

I knew this.

So I revised the post, to make it fit within the clarified rule.

I double-checked it; I triple-checked it; I was absolutely sure that I had fixed it, fixed the post typed before the rule clarification to fit within the guidelines set after--and to be fair, true to the Spiderman Homecoming 90% meme, the post did in fact mostly fix the original issues! I caught most of them!

...Most, but not all;

I missed...one.

I missed one spot, that violated the rule that was clarified a second time.

It was, obviously, accidental! It was, obviously, unintentional! I did revise the original post and tried to remove the rule violating aspects of it...but missing one spot? Completely and totally my fault. And I had already been warned and punished for the rule violation.

Again, to reiterate--this is completely and entirely my fault. It wasn't deliberate, but not being deliberate does not mean it didn't happen. It did. Accidental or not, it still transpired; unintentional or intentional, it still occurred. And once it did, once I failed to spot it, once I had broken the rule that I was immediately told not to break again, I needed to face the consequences, face the punishment for it.

It sucks, but when you screw up, it does carry consequences. I literally have nobody to blame but myself. The punishment I have received is the least amount of punishment I could possibly receive. (So if I receive more, while that'll suck, it'll still be warranted. I cannot argue against punishment. I can explain the circumstances behind it and I can explain my viewpoint but my viewpoint is that whatever punishment I get will be justified, not be too harsh, and be absolutely what I deserve because of my mistake because again, mistakes carry consequences and I made one. Knowing I made a mistake and regretting that I made it cannot undo it so all I can do is live with the consequences of my error.)

I obviously can't explain more than that (this much should be acceptable), but that was one thing which happened today; action punishing me for the mistake I made yesterday night. I knew it was coming, obviously; there was no way to possibly justify not punishing the action because it's a cut and dry clear unambiguous situation with no other possible resolution, with no other possible punishment to give.

Knowing it was coming, knowing it was justified, didn't mean it doesn't sting tho. It absolutely does. And it was one of the first things I woke up to see today. Not the way I really wanted to start my day, but I had to face the music sooner or later because again. I messed up, so there were going to be consequences to having screwed up. Unfortunate as the accident may have been, regrettable as the unintentional breach was, punishment was unavoidable because there was no possible leniency to be given and it was warranted and justified and if the punishment I got is all I get then I am in fact to be considered lucky.

Still sucks tho and again. Starting my day that way? Not exactly pleasant.

There was some good to counterbalance that, tho.
Today for the 4th of July I got to wear another dress! I took a shower, which I desperately needed, and changed into the dress. My family, who were all there, were by and large (being who they were)...less than impressed. Nobody said anything but when all of them realized I wasn't wearing my favorite (because it's long enough to basically act like a dress) T-shirt and was in fact wearing a dress that gave me notable curves, I managed to catch them having some rather...unfortunate expressions on their face.

Suffice to say, most of them did not approve of my apparel of choice.

And, yes. There was in fact tension to be had, there. Conversations were mostly natural but there were still occasional pauses--this is normal enough, but in this case the pauses seemed "different" to me somehow, in a way that felt directly resultant from me.

​Then there's again the fact that the entirety of my family aside from my younger sister deadnames me and misgenders me actively...and also the self-loathing every time I respond to the deadname rather than telling them "that's not my name".

Again, nothing really specific to the date in question, but something that there's a disconnect between what I tell myself and what goes on in reality. I tell myself, "every time they deadname me, I will tell them 'that's not my name'". Every time they actually deadname me (well, almost; I do occasionally have the smarts to not respond at all), I respond out of habit.

After all, I've used my deadname for 27 years in real life. It's literally instinct to me, especially from voices I know, in tones I know, asking questions that are normal from them. As someone with autism, inertia is unfortunately, working against me here; I've built up 27 years of inertia ingrained within me to instinctively respond to them on demand when they use my deadname.

So far, good to bad is two to two if you count 'good dress' and 'shower' as two separate goods.

​More in the bad; I had only one meal tonight and it was two hot dogs. Admittedly, hot dogs with chili and bacon, but my normal hot dogs in a night? Four. I didn't have breakfast; I didn't have S'mores (I couldn't stomach them), I didn't have hamburgers, and I had half my normal amount of hot dogs. (I also didn't have corn on the cob but I never have corn on the cob unless there's melted butter with the butter-spread-stick and the hold-corn-without-mess-prongs, which we had neither of.)

I did have a plate full of barbeque chips, which by my estimate is somewhere in the .75 give or take .25 range for meals (as in, could be as small as half a meal's worth, could be as much as a meal's worth; it was a lot of chips but individual chips aren't that filling), but given 2 hot dogs is half of my normal meal, that meant tonight the maximum amount you could say I had was 1.25 meals' worth of food.

You're meant to have three.

And while I admit, I was more thirsty than hungry.

So a lot of the time, I wasn't hungry at all.

A fair amount of the issue was digestion. I wasn't feeling 'full', I was feeling like I couldn't stomach more food.

Normally, this is easily solved by, ahhhh...so to speak, emptying the system. Using the bathroom productively and flushing from the system something more than fluids. But I couldn't do that all of tonight, which meant, to my body, I had too much within me in spite of often wanting more.

I suspect the issue was circadian rhythm based.

My circadian rhythm is all out of whack, due to my rather not-the-best sleep schedule, but as of late, I've had a sleep schedule that is at least somewhat consistent if unorthodox; going to bed in the 5-7 am range, and then waking up in the 1-4 pm range. Today I was woken up a full 40 minutes earlier than I was planning, which I suspect may have contributed.

Unusual sleep schedule that's maybe not the best for digestion anyway + disruption to that sleep schedule via being woken up early + me not having food immediately (it took 1-3 hours or so for me to get the food) = suspected culprit for me having had less room. Also, maybe being thirsty all day may have contributed, with my only fluids being coffee (which isn't zero-calorie so does have some fill value even being liquid in nature).

Basically, lots of things could've caused it, hard to say the exact culprit, maybe multiple adding up, but it happened so that means I had less than optimal.

​Later in the night though, I decided to stream...
...And I got my first-ever raid! It was amazing! It was mostly lurkers aside from the broadcaster, but the broadcaster who raided me remained active for the vast majority of the stream and they and I had a fair number of similarities so I really enjoyed chatting with them and bonding with them.

Which means my night has ended on a bit of a high note. So, so​ glad I decided to stream on what amounts to a whim!

Anyway, bed now.

We'll have to see what tomorrow brings.

I sent in my job application to every single YMCA in my county.

I'm not sure if doing so is redundant, but rather than assuming one application specifying my ideal location would apply for them all, I was rather safe than sorry and sent in an application to all of them.

I'm...probably going to miss a lot of phone calls in the near future which mayyyyy screw me over, since my phone is currently in an entirely different room than the one I sleep in, but hopefully with luck I can respond to any interview requests and such.

I'm not quite on top of everything, but hey. Much much closer, and huge progress is progress!

Still not the best at home though given the continued misgendering and deadnaming but that was to be expected and it's not the worst case scenario I had feared so...better than what it could be.

All in all, I may not have taken control of my life yet but I'm on my way​ to having done so.

Let's see.

I promised my family to try and help them understand me within 72 hours after coming out.

We're long past that mark and I've not even started there.

I promised myself that I would start job applications Sunday or maybe Monday.

Tuesday is finished and I've yet to do so.

I haven't blogged in four days.

I've not done my tiktok.

I've only done one stream.

I've done no art.

I've done...nothing.

I'm pretty much failing.

I've no excuse, no justification.

Just. Am not doing well mentally.

I've told people who have asked me how I am doing after having come out that I am good. Because they are asking about my family and their treatment of me, if I've run into trouble, if I am in need of help thanks to them being harsh, etc.

My family is definitely more awkward. They're not talking to me by name at all. Which is an improvement over calling me my deadname but none of them are calling me a name at all because they can't bring themselves to actually say 'Bree' out loud but don't want to drive me away with the deadname. All things considered, that's not bad!

So when asked, I truthfully say that I am not bad because I am not bad in the way they are asking about me.

...But if they were to ask me about how I am doing and specify that they are asking about my mental health beyond my family, regardless of my family, disregarding my family, about me without taking into factor my environment?

Hoo boy am I badly depressed. I am at a very very bad lowpoint and struggling hard to capitalize on my momentum. I need to be strong, I need to be staying on top of my game.

But I'm not.

I'm slipping into...complacency. And that is very very VERY bad.

So. Downward spiral activate.

​Yaaaaaaaaaay.

I have a lot to say on the subject.
It did not go well with my family, to say the least.
​It went really poorly.

I am scared of the half hour my brother and father were talking outside and what it may mean.

I am scared that even my older sister and mother may not support me because they are trying to preserve the family and are not happy at me for instantly forming a rift in the family.

I am scared now that I have lost my safety net, cast it aside, and that my family is no longer safe.

But it is the first step towards truly taking control of my life and living my life as me.

It is not done and dusted.

I have taken the first step, but it is only the first step.

I need some downtime to rest/recover, but I also need to springboard into actually taking moving forward. The next step; a wave of lifeguard applications, and then looking further into an area I was given a tip to potentially being good for me.

The stars could not be more perfectly aligning in telling me to be working on the prep stuff for coming out.

I have done all my mafia stuff for the day, so I don't need to go there.

I have finished the important tft quests, so I don't need to do that.

I have played as much League of Legends as I can bear to play in a day (am burned out there), so I don't need to do that.

I don't feel like playing Stardew Valley or working on Minecraft right now.

I've done the maximum possible amount on Chrono Trigger offline, so all that's left is advancing the plot (requiring a stream).

I've reached a point in my artwork piece that the next steps are all incredibly long and grueling things to start, so I don't feel like beginning that work.

I've done everything I can on twitter and reddit and looked at everything I can League-related that's available.

I've intense boredom so I've an intense desire to do something.

So literally.

I've nothing to do...except the work that I am supposed to do.

I wanted to have everything on my checklist 'located' before going to bed.

And yet.

Instead of working on it.

I'm.

Doing nothing, in spite of the intense boredom, and in spite of literally every activity to procrastinate not being viable.

What the hell's wrong with me.

​I am an idiot.

I am literally coming out in...four/three days (depends on your cutoff I suppose).

I should be doing stuff.

Instead, I am working on League and TFT quests.

To be fair. If things go well and I can continue to use the internet after.

League and TFT quests have a time limit. I've less than a week to play like 50 League games for the final PROJECT quest to get me to the 300 tokens (which I actually have something to buy during) and I want to get the tft quests done. (I'm playing Normals because it's a bad idea to force quests in ranked or hyperroll if you care about your LP which I do. Also I'm kinda burnt out in regards to tft in general.)

So if things go well.

Not a waste of time.

...But.

If things don't go well.

Which is a better use of my time right now?

Planning for things not going well as to have things all in order when they don't...

...Or playing a game that you won't even get to play after said things not going well?

I am...not a smart person.

And no daily activities for the last day at least, maybe two.

Which also means no planning for the coming out day which is...literally 6/5 (depends on your cutoff) days away.

Welp.

I need to prepare more.

I've not been wasting my time, I'd say. I have streamed a couple of times, and streaming Chrono Trigger is very fun and I've gotten to very close to the endgame. (Speaking of which, note to self: I've three streams to download now.)

But I'm entering the crunch zone.

I'm not nearly prepared enough.

There's so much I've yet to do.

I need to make sure that I can use the car. (Which, ironically enough, requires talking to my father, the one most likely to strongly negatively react.)

I need to work out what to say when I do come out.

I need to write out my checklist of things for the day which I can then check off one by one.

​I need to do so much, and I've a lot less time to do it now.