I was required to swap from google automatically logging in to an entirely different service, so if I suddenly stop being able to update this blog at some point (especially post-October-8th), you'll know why.

We'll have to wait and see if things are okay since I've no clue.

I'm beginning to increasingly fear that every day might be the last day for my blog.

If I were really smart?

I'd create a backup, step by step, meticulously copying over every entry.

I should look into doing that eventually, but for now?

I'm not smart, I'm dumb.

I will say tho that today's not been very fun with repeated power hits. Each made me feel like it was the last, each knocked out my computer, and one lasted for what had to have been almost two hours. When it finally came back tho, I took the opportunity to start being smart in a different way.

I have eleven windows of Google Chrome tabs. It might seem excessive and a horrific nightmare to people, but each of those windows actually has a dedicated purpose. One window is a resource for streaming, a different window is a dedicated tab I use for streaming (the two need to augment each other and cannot be combined), I have a window for work-related stuff, I have a window for things that I read, I have a window for my default window containing my original window that still contains most of the important stuff, I have a window for my online games, I have a window for skype and stuff relating to my good friend, I have another window that is basically 'future projects' stuff, I have a "this is the window I open new tabs in" window (which also serves as my hub for a fandom I'm a part of), a window for discord (as well as really important emergency links, which is what discord is for me), and then a window for watching twitch.

Each of those windows has multiple tabs. The lower end is 3-4, the average is probably closer to 8-12, the highest like 20-30 (that'd be the future projects tab since I uh...have a lot in mind for my future obviously), but today I did some reorganizing, streamlining, and basically cleaning up of them, in addition to having actually saved the links to literally every. single. one. Of the ones I was using. (And that allowed me to actually close some that I wasn't expecting to actually really use in the future barring really really specific urges returning, like Kingdom of Loathing.)

Basically, I recorded, documented, and otherwise archived a bunch of my Chrome stuff, while going through and streamlining/cleaning/organizing it as well. Which will definitely help me a lot. (I also basically developed an official order for the tabs, although every time explorer does the soft-reboot it messes with the preferred order.)

Anyway, I feel like I am mostly better from my initial sickness, although I am very very very worried about a followthrough infection developing. I'm recovering, each day better than the last, but I need to be continuing to do good things in order to ensure no infection, including recovering swiftly.

I really want to be better by tomorrow so that I can return to work, and I really don't want to miss my endocrinology appointment this Thursday.

​Still tho: I'm cautiously optimistic.

Just lost a blog that was 90% complete, but too tired and too angry to repost it so just going to bed.

There's really not that much I can say, today. I got up at one, having slept basically nine hours. I went to work a couple hours later, where I've been since then.

And I don't really have anything beyond that.

Aside from weebly, annoyingly enough, yet again...logging me out, interfering with me making a blog post today. Apparently 'remember me' means "remember me for a couple weeks, then highly inconvenience me".

...Did I mention I'm not very good at this whole blogging thing?

I suppose I should mention I blocked out an idea for the game that retells the story of Disease only modified for the flash-game format. (A TD game, more specifically.)

That's really it.

(Well, I was raised coming up on Garfield comics...)
I managed to pull it off, getting my paper in on time...barely. By telling a lie ("I forgot to print" = "I didn't finish, thus, never had the chance to"), I was able to have the chance to finish it (in class, mind you) and turn it in...with a myriad of problems. The chart was in black and white rather than the color it should have been in. I made multiple factual errors that I realized on the drive home. It's riddled with issues, and wasn't proofread at all. I just slabbed things on and hoped I met the requirements. (I went down the list and tried to BS stuff that made it sound like I was meeting them, but who knows if I succeeded.)

Fun stuff.

But it gets better.

Chrome crashed.
I've yet to get the kongpanion of the week since I've been too busy with schoolwork.
And I've got not only a quiz, but also an assignment, also due today in addition to the dyadic encounter paper.

Oh. And that's not going into obligations, for which I said I'd be posting today since I took a fairly relaxed weekend.

Today sucks.

I don't know what I want to do in order to pull it off, but I definitely want this blog to be more than what it is. It's an alright blog right now, and when I set out to make a blog, I knew rather explicitly that there'd be nothing special about it, but that doesn't mean I don't want it to be more than what it currently is. Maybe I'll go into the details of stuff I've been promising, maybe something else, but I should be doing SOMETHING.

That's how I'm mainly feeling right now, anyway.

Edit: I have no clue why, but this was my first entry for the day, not the second. Weebly's previously been fairly good at getting my posts in the right order, so I don't know why this one's showing up after the "not exactly more" post, when this one is chronologically older (as evident by the title which the "not exactly more" references), but it did, so I needed to make this edit informing you.

I'm really terrible at this whole blogging thing. I don't have much to report. This morning, just as I was going to leave, my main browser, Chrome, crashed. So I suppose that "fun" experience is a noteworthy experience from my day, and about the highlight from it. (What was I doing, using the internet five minutes before I was to leave? Why, what else? Games. I was attempting to do HotR, but the whole crash thing put a dampener on that.)

That forced me to use Firefox at the college in order to not have to go through the pain of sorting through chrome on a painfully-slow internet...especially when the main browser I use to establish a connection is Chrome. Using Firefox was at first a huge pain since I couldn't get through by trying Google; it took me visiting the site I wanted to go to anyway to trigger the wifi login.

I suppose also noteworthy is that I forgot my cell phone today, which would have been helpful for getting into contact with my dyadic encounter partner, who texted me. I'm reasonably certain we didn't agree to meet today, but she was under the impression we did. We decided on a future date when we met, though.

Hmm...what else? Oh, yeah. I suppose I should mention that I skipped out on a workout today, in large part because I could feel my body still being alarmingly sore from the Friday workout, but there may be an opportunity to make it up tomorrow. (We'll have to see.) I discovered that in kickboxing, which if there's one thing it's good at, it's at finding out how my body is doing.

Another thing I'd like to bring up is a minor concern my pills aren't working, since while I'm taking them every night, they seem to have lost their edge: I'm not getting to sleep very easily, not sleeping so well, and my mind is extremely prone to wandering. It'll only be something to be concerned about if it continues.

...Oh, and speaking of which, my dog is going to the vet because there's noticeably something wrong with him, too.

That's really it, aside from HotR and some Clicker Heroes. To talk a bit about Heroes of the Realm, I'm in an interesting Arena setup. I'm consistently at spot number two...yet spots number one and three seem to have shifted on the second day. Number one took a dive to third by losing to me today, and number three shot up by winning against me today, with the inverse having happened yesterday. I should also tell you that right now, I'm hanging steadily around the 3,000s. I'm mainly focusing on building up my infrastructure, maxing out my buildings for my level. (21.) Right now, I've got everything except the Oracle (working on that--I think I'm in the middle of a final upgrade, if the Oracle is anything like the Wall), Party Portal, Portal, Market, and resources (with some housing not there) fully upgraded. I'm upgrading the Oracle and Party Portal, I'm not upgrading my Portal until my army is strong enough to 3-star clear Curitelia (this will take a while, seeing as how getting a SSS-rank on Difficult--my personal requirement before trying Heroic--isn't even finished for the second zone, yet alone, Curitelia), either.

So right now, my main fixture is that once the Oracle and Party Portal max out, to go with upgrading the Market and housing. Since there is an XP-gain event going on right now, though, I'm doing a fair amount of adventuring with my army so that they can get that, even though I don't need the items (I mostly buy my items since what I buy is better than what I find), gems (what I get is mostly optional at this point), or really even the XP.

Steady as she goes.

My computer goes into hibernation every 6-8 hours. (It's one of the two; not sure which.) The time that takes will momentarily register as the user being active, as if I had personally been there to bring the computer out of sleep mode, unlock it, and was around to do tasks and answer prompts. (Even though I am not.) Including...to the system prompt for a restart. (You can see where this is heading.) A timer that won't continue if the user asks for it to be delayed...yet will continue otherwise.

...Including during the hibernation itself. The timer doesn't pause for the minutes, hours, or potentially days that a computer can be left in hibernation. (Keep in mind it only needs ten minutes total to say, "Well, if you were gonna object to this, you would have done so by now!" And about half of that time is used up in the hibernation process anyway.) Meaning that by the time I woke up, ten hours after last using my computer, it was already too late. (What a pain.)

Ah, well. It's done now, at least. Still a massive inconvenience, though.

Anyway, I've got more to blog about. There was an article in reader's digest about "Alive Day". It really, really struck a chord with me. Why? Because while I never was on any battlefield...I have had a near-death experience before. It was in January of this year, even. I was in a car, driving at highway speeds--likely about 55 MPH, so while not terribly fast...fast enough that if you think 'auto accident' at that speed, you're not going to think of any positive results. (Keep in mind that other cars were likely going 65 as well, and you can get a better idea for why it was so dangerous.)

And yet, there I was. I lost control of my car and ended up crashed in the ditch. Every moment of that incident was burned into my mind. At first, it was traumatic. So much so, that I thought my memories of it were nothing but a blur. Yet a couple of weeks later, I realized what I was thinking. During those moments, above all other thoughts I was having, the thought in my mind most was, "Oh, God...(not some trivial prayer this time)...please don't let me die. (I mean it. I want to live. I don't want to die!) There's so much that I have to live for...please don't let me die before I have had the chance to discover who I am!"

And when I realized that, I realized how--whether you believe in God or not, and Him answering the prayer or not--what's undeniable is just how lucky I was. There are so many ways that day could have ended horribly, horribly differently than it did. This was an auto accident at highway speeds. I could have died in half a dozen ways. I could have swerved into the oncoming traffic rather than off the road to the right. Off the road to the right could have been a cliff--if not immediately, then within crash-rolling difference, plunging me into a river. (I had just passed a river, so it was possible.) Or if not a river-cliff, then a cliff for a road below, with the rather nasty drop I imagine being instantly lethal. (As with the river, I had only recently passed somewhere which had precisely that.) I could have crashed into something that brought my car to an abrupt halt when it was still going fast, violently bringing me to a stop. Heck, I could have rolled the car over, which itself has a low survival rate.

None of that happened. Instead, the swerve off the road robbed me of a lot of my momentum, and when it corrected again, robbed me of some more. Some baby trees I ran over triggered the airbags, but slowed the car down even more. The bumpy terrain made it a rough ride, yet kept my momentum gradually falling down. And the angle at which my car went off the road meant that I basically slid into a nearby bank--said bank is what finally brought my car to a stop, and was on the left side. While the door was angled upwards and the bank I was in was tight enough for it to be a concern, I was able to make a hasty exit from the car. And through this all...the worst I got from it was a bruised knee.

There are so many ways I could have died, yes. But...I didn't. I lived. And while I was initially traumatized by that event, wanting to move on with it, to forget it...now, I can never do that. Because it's the most important moment in my 21 years of life. That moment, even if it took me a couple of weeks to recognize the fact, is the moment that I figured out that I was trans. It has shaped my life since then, in so many ways that I don't think I can describe them all.

It renewed my drive and determination to succeed. Before the crash, I was wavering. After it, I knew precisely what I wanted in my life. It renewed my vow to live a happy life. Before the crash, I was struggling with depression. After the crash, I was euphoric for a solid month. And it helped me raise my awareness. Before the crash, I might have thought depression was something that I might have, but not something I'd be unable to handle by myself. After it, and with some research, I realized that if I was being perfectly honest with myself, I needed help for what was likely bipolar disorder, so of my own free volition, I sought said help, with aid from my mother. That moment, where I almost died, is my own personal Alive Day. Because on it, facing death, I learned what it'd be like to be alive. And now, every moment that I can, I think about that and seize the opportunity.

In some ways, there's no notable difference. My routine is actually almost identical to what it was before the crash. Yet in other ways, people have at times been blown away by the remarkable differences I've made in my life. Because while in some ways, I am the same person who likes doing the same stuff...in other ways, I was undeniably changed for life by that incident, and my entire outlook on life altered by proxy.

On a previous blog entry, I talked about how there's certain things I do because I feel obligated to do them. Then, I asked...what would my life be like if I didn't feel those obligations? My answer is both happier and much, much sadder than my current life, because it has some advantages and disadvantages.

I decided that if I held no obligations, I'd not have many set events I'd need to go to...which you could think would mean that I'd wake up whenever and go to sleep whenever, and that'd be fully possible, but to some extent I already do that, in part thanks to my obligations. No, I think that if I held no obligations, I'd actually be setting a rigorous routine: getting prepared for bed no later than 2 am, to fall asleep by 3 am, and then waking up at about 10:45 (give or take 15 minutes) for approximately 7.5 hours of sleep, the amount I consider ideal. (Better than the alternative, which for me is 6.)

I would therefore have about 16 hours to spare. Of those, bodily requirements (such as 2-3 meals, showering, brushing teeth, changing clothes, and so on) would eat about 3, spread throughout the day. I would set aside an additional 2-3 for working out during the weekdays, and have those hours available for me to use during the weekend. Now, that's 10 hours I'd have. I would still dance three days a week, if I could be accepted as a woman that just so happens to dance the man's part, but that'd mainly be thanks to my desire to keep those skills sharp and avoid rusting. Add in TKD, and you've got me losing about 3 hours of my total, leaving about 7 left. Of those 7, I'd prefer to spend about 2-3 on games, and then that'd leave me 4 hours left, where I'd write and draw. Any spare time would be assigned to reading, be it TVTropes, manga, or a webcomic. (Television requirements may adjust the total on a particular day., I may spend only half the above amount on the games/writing/drawing, in order to allow for up to 4 hours of shows on a busy night of TV. Doesn't happen often, though. At most, once a week for a couple of months. I am not a big TV watcher. Aside from anime on Saturdays, I typically average only one or two days a week, for ~2 hours.)

That's my ideal obligation-free life. Yet it'll never happen. Even if it could, I'm not sure I'd want it to. I'd be a leech. More than I already am one. A lack of obligations also means a lack of social ties, too. I'd do TKD and dancing, so there's that, but again, that's only if I'd be accepted as a Miss rather than Mister, and while to some extent in TKD it's a family in the upper-ranks, it's not that tight of a bond. So it's fully possible I wouldn't have them, anyway. And if I did, that I'd be obviously distanced from them, whereas now I'm at least attempting integration as a part of the obligation.

Plus, you might note that in the above, mafia games and webcomics take a back seat to other leisurely activities. That'd be thanks to them being obligations--obligations I absolutely LOVE doing. I can get enthralled in a webcomic, absolutely devoting myself to reading it and supporting the community behind that comic and making the artist feel awesome and really getting invested because I truly adore the work they have made, and the world they have built. I can get obsessed with the game, losing hours meticulously dissecting the details of the game when I only was obligated to give five minutes. I do that extended time out of love and joy for the game, truly happy to duke it out...yet in both cases, while I do it for me, while I have those reasons to do it, I mainly do them to support the community, as an obligation. (As can be seen by the number of games where I am invited, rather than joining of my own free will. I might join one or two, maaaaaaaaybe three, games voluntarily throughout the year. I'll be asked to play in probably two dozen games throughout that same year, if not more.)

And the loss of that community, simply because I no longer feel an obligation to it, is one I'd never wish to feel. It is very much similar to a subject covered in my Interpersonal Communications class about emotions--I'd be without a lot of negatives, at the cost of so many positives that I'd never wish to give up.

So earlier today, I was worried that I would end up having nothing to blog about. Aside from my workout, what could I possibly talk about?

Well, the workout I could talk about, sure, but it was driving home from the workout during which I stumbled upon something I instantly knew I could talk about: looking at the absolutely gorgeous scenery on the drive home, and thinking, "You know...I think this works."

Because I think if someone were to ask me what my favorite season is, I can now without a moment's hesitation answer Fall. There's a ton of reasons why, too. It's warm enough to not be freezing, but cool enough to not fry me. It's wet enough that everything has a brilliant sparkle to it, yet dry enough that it's not constantly raining. (Contrary to popular belief, Washington does not, in fact, consist solely of rain.)

But most of all is the absolute stunning imagery that Fall generates. Washington has some of THE most brilliantly beautiful natural scenery in existence (a surprising fact you might not know when visiting, as you may be biased towards the stereotype, but as a native who's lived in a forested section of the state for 14 years, I can tell you it exists), and this is true during all seasons. Yet never is it at its most true other than the vivid pictures that Fall provides.

For instance...the sight of the sun setting creates some truly stunning shades of red, yellow, and orange--even in plain sky, this is a sight to be seen, yet when there's light reflecting off of the clouds, it is truly a thing of pure beauty. What makes it even better is how you can slowly see the purples and blues come into the clouds, in hues that don't exist anywhere else and are rarely captured in any artistic depictions I have ever seen.

It also applies to the beauty of the trees. This is something many people don't seem to see, yet when the sun is setting, it absolutely lights up the trees, painting all of the hues of the sun on the already-large spectrum of colors the trees themselves possess.

This continues into the night. When the moon is at its brightest, it literally serves as a second sun, with everything illuminated in crystal clarity (albeit through a heavy dark-blue/purple overlayed hue, which only adds to it!), and I do mean it: you can see just as well, just as far, just as clearly, as in day, entirely by the moonlight. Trees cast SHADOWS that--while not visible in a car as you drive--can be observed when you pass through them and the moonlight vanishes in an identical manner to how sunlight does during that transition. The glistening light of the moon on water is something artists can capture decently-well, yet it's something that still stuns me every time I see it. Better yet is when there's that low-rolling fog, creating what appears to be lakes on the ground when you climb above it. (This is true for dawn as well.)

And did I mention? With the lightest of light cloud coverings, the clouds (instead of blocking out the moonlight) effectively serve as a lens to amplify the moonlight, making it even brighter! By the way, we get that most nights. Oh, and it's even better when there is almost no moon at all. Yeah, it's basically pitch-black...yet the tradeoff for the lack of clarity on the ground is that the sky lights up with a serene canvas of marvel.

Again...humans have taken pictures and drawings of the stars for countless generations. Yet you really don't get to know the stars unless you've been out there on a new moon, cloudless night, with only the dimmest of lights around you, surrounded instead by the stars and even nebulae visible to the naked eye, of which there are plenty.

The life of the world seems strongest in the fall to me, and I absolutely love it. Yeah, some of this may be true for other places, but few if any have them all be true for basically a whole season. (Which, around here, lasts for a long time, generally.) Heck, even when it rains, there's a ton of beauty, because we get a ton of sun through the clouds, thus, plenty of rainbows and sun-radiated drenched areas, which are illuminated in a way I don't think any camera can capture the essence of.

It's all there, if you know to pay attention to it. It doesn't even have to be in a forest; these things occur on buildings and in cities, too. (I just so happen to have a preference for the hilly forests, since it gives a bit more diversity and ease of visibility.) I love it all. Yeah, it does rain, but even then, the rain is often warm. Even if it isn't, then the rain is just something that I see as a part of the lifestyle around here, so if you don't think of it as depressing...then it's not going to make you depressed. So during those many times it's not raining, or raining in such a way that it's not pure dark-gray cloud coverings, if you're open to viewing things, you can become as happy as I am to live here.

(Yep. I think I proved I am both an artist and a writer with my description above. But it's true. I may be a bit biased, but I do not exaggerate. If you don't see what I see...chances are you're letting your own biases prevent you from seeing them. Just let go of your preconceptions, and try. And try the whole time you stay here. Pay careful, close attention. You'll see it. Trust me.)