August 15, 2025.
I've spent the past two days ignoring all my actual work to spend time here. I'm glad to be doing something other than doom-scrolling, but my productivity is still shot. My actual work does involve programming at times, which I've never been good at. I'm okay enough to copy someone else's code, try to tweak it to my needs, realize it's not working, and then exhaust myself looking for solutions on stack overflow. Which is exactly what I've been doing with this site. Still it's been gratifying.
During COVID lockdowns, I spent a lot more time online, and then tried to pull back by picking up more "analog" hobbies, like crochet. The challenge with being home is that my things were always getting borrowed, moved around, or discarded, to the point that I moved anything I cared about into storage. I'm hoping that I can move out soon, even if it's to a short-term rental, just so I can have my own space with some of my own things again. Until then, I'm back to being on my screens.
August 14, 2025
It's been a little over a month since my mom died. As time passes, it becomes more painful to think about her. I think I was numb to it for the first few weeks. It hadn't completely registered, even though I knew it was coming. She had been on hospice care for three weeks and rapidly deteriorating for two months. When she was first diagnosed with endometrial cancer three years ago, I had looked up the 5-year survival rates for her subtype and knew early on her odds were bad.
Her cancer battle was also complicated by what appeared to be early-onset dementia, or worsening psychiatric symptoms (we couldn't tell). My mom, with whom I already had a difficult relationship with, turned into someone unrecognizable, gripped by paranoid delusions and unpredictable bursts of rage. Yet, in the aftermath of her passing, I still feel consumed by grief. Many days, I don't leave the bed. Time passes in large chunks without me realizing. I have no interest in seeing others or keeping up habits that would probably help me. I feel hollow and hopeless.
It doesn't help that I'm living in our family's home that we moved into when I turned 14. I originally came back here three years to be my mom's caretaker and since then I haven't been able to afford to leave permanently. I'm in a graduate school program and while I'm thankful to be receiving any stipend at all, it was barely enough to cover my living expenses in my old city before the pandemic. I feel stuck. If I can push forward and finish my dissertation and find a job, I can have enough money to finally live comfortably. But it feels impossible to get anything done in this current environment. Whenever I'm here, I so quickly regress into my teenage self. I find myself turning to my hobbies and interests from that time, probably in part because it's all I can afford to do.
Truthfully, I don't know if this is something I'll keep up. I love to start a blog/journal/project, but maintaining consistency is not one of my strengths. Still, I have some ideas of things I could at least store here for my own benefit (resources I've found helpful, running lists of things to look forward to, records of what I am able to achieve). I am trying to be hopeful at least.