me without you

Day 17

June 6, 2025

I think I'm seeing the end of this blog project. I know 17 posts doesn't make for a particularly long or well-developed blog, but it served its purpose. I might still fix a bug in the individual pages. Otherwise, this really helped me get back into development, as simple as it was. It inspired me to host and participate in a game jam. I found at least a shred of self-confidence by bearing myself and my work to my public GitHub, although no one reads my posts except my dutiful boyfriend.
I liked making this, but I wish to make things that are harder, more complex, involve more moving pieces and new technologies. This was fun, and it will remain on my GH for the time being.
Finally, I appreciate the journey I got to explore on this blog. A small but not irrelevant chapter of my life, spanning two months. I moved into a dorm room with view of Mount Baker and cargo ships across the Salish Sea. I visited a new city and accepted a co-op position there just a month later. I spent a lot of time with people, I worked on myself, and I made a few key choices that will impact the rest of my year and even my early 20's. I hope this pattern of significant change and effort will continue. I can decide to do things, and decide to follow through. I am not simply a victim of the branches of time; I am its controller.

Day 16

May 22, 2025

School has started. It is difficult to focus because I feel like I'm constantly looking back instead of forward. I feel as if I have been living in a continous string of mistakes for the last 10 months. Is life just mistakes and failures, over and over again, until something finally sticks? To be honest, I have spent many hours fantasizing about retrying huge portions of my life; the thought of having a second chance feels euphoric. This also scares me- I do not want to make mistakes and generate regrets forever. I need to make less regrettable choices. How do I know until after I've done it? There are an infinite number of ways to arrange your life. Each way may be better or worse for one person or another. How do I compute a better way of arranging my future life? I have a lot of questions, and not many answers.

Day 15

May 11, 2025

All I wanted to announce today was that I conquered some of my anxieties. I felt strong and resilient for once. Yes, at first you feel the pressure of fear against you, and yes, sometimes you feel sick of having to so often push past it, but you push past it anyways. There are only more open doors on the other side.

(Not sure how I'm feeling about the "Day X" format anymore honestly, but I'm gonna sunk-cost fallacy this and just stick with it.)

Day 14

May 6, 2025

Today I watched La La Land for the first time. It reminded me of other movies about love that I'd seen recently like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 500 Days of Summer, and Past Lives, and how they all portray love in a non-linear fashion.

The lead man in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind re-experiences his past relationship as he tries to have memories of it removed from his brain. He relives these memories backwards, and as if he is experiencing them for the first time. Both characters in their couple have all their memories of each other erased. However, at the end of the film, when they learn what has happened and again relive their past relationship together, the two decide to try dating again. Their love happens over and over again, in chronological order and in reverse, and yet the movie suggests this as potentially strengthening it.

500 Days of Summer jumps around in its narrative; they also do not let you see the couple's story unfold chronologically. You see the past and future interwoven. You learn who the characters are by sometimes seeing the consequences of their choices before they make them. What effect does this have on the audience understanding their love?

While Past Lives only employs a brief usage of flashbacks and actual non-linear storytelling, the idea of experiencing a "past life" is what makes their love appear "non-linear". It is non-linear across dimensions, and this concept appears in La La Land too- their love story crosses through universes or "worlds", just like it crosses through time in the other two movies.

I think the inherent nature of love is to be non-linear, or at least, that is how we like to imagine it. We like to think that the past references the future- much like in the chronological viewing of a film. We like to think that every moment matters, that it builds on itself in a way that we might not understand now, but we will in the future, somewhere down the line- or in another dimension. Ultimately, I believe that best way to go about life is thinking that Love is a non-linear narrative.

Day 13

May 4, 2025

I was feeling overwhelmed with my work and obligations today. I felt insecure in my abilities to do things, and to do them well. In this moment of vulnerability, I noticed a mindset I've been using lately that staves off feelings of inadequacy. It is going to sound very simple- and it is that comparing myself to others does not make me better. I ask myself, "does thinking about how much better/stronger/more successful other people are help me get better/stronger/more successful?" That is a resounding "no." Visualizing the accomplishments of others does not help me achieve my own accomplishments. I can remember this, acknowledge my sadness at my percieved weak points, and move forward. There is work yet to be done.

Day 12

May 1, 2025

Welcome to a new month. I hardly feel refreshed.

One thing I have noticed in the last month is that avoiding fear doesn't benefit me. This may sound obvious until you realize what mainstream culture encourages us to do in the face of fear. If you are feeling too stressed, too overwhelmed with your tasks, too burnt out, you must immediately rest and take a break. I understand the inclination to want to stop, and there are definitely times you should stop, but not every moment of stress should lead to rest. Sometimes you have to keep pressing on in the face of your fear of the task. I usually find it better to do things when I feel overwhelmed instead of taking a break- I will usually come back from that break feeling even more overwhelmed since I now have even less time to accomplish anything that day. Finishing things feels good.

Day 11

April 26, 2025

I read through some old journal entries tonight, spanning up to 1.5 years old. I found a lot of sentences similar to what I have been writing and thinking recently; I must be repeating something.

This was not a pleasant realization; ideally, you are reaching back 1.5 years to notice your improvements. There is a bit of that. I notice that I write better now and I am less afraid of the truth. It is easier now for me to skip concealing reality with a thickly applied layer of my own desires. And yet I find myself in a similar situation.

A lot of people say that we should follow our intuition. That is true. I also believe that if we always follow our intuition, we will be doomed to repeat the same patterns until the end of our lives. I need to put my intuition away.

I leave you with a journal entry from ~8 months ago, a time I was very lonely. I went to a tightly packed club with friends after spending two months alone and it felt like I had rediscovered humanity.

Day 10

April 24, 2025

I grappled with acceptance today. I found a way to make room for all of the complicated feelings about my past decisions. It turns out I have a lot of room, actually.
Everyone has different little capacity containers for different things. If you get very close to the top or overfill your capacity, certainly some alarms will be activated and you can begin to feel burnout, exhaustion, or collapse.
What I wonder is, what happens if you aren't sufficiently filling your capacity? I imagine capacity as a stretchy membrane one can exercise, if one is aware of its existence. So if you aren't filling your capacity very much, perhaps it will shrink, and if you find yourself in a situation that requires your formerly high capacity, you will not succeed.
I also theorize that you may begin to feel unsatisfied if you are leaving yourself empty. Can the gape of unfilled space, things you have the potential of doing, especially where you might have above average potential, cause negative consequences? I believe so. You must try and use all that is given to you- and you should play with it! Allow yourself to explore the limits of all your capacities. Feel and push into every wall and see how it bends out of shape!

Day 9

April 23, 2025

I saw something on Twitter today that pretty much says that if you do not believe you are good enough for someone, that you will sabotage your relationship with them. This can happen conciously or subconciously. If your body simply cannot accept a good person or a good thing, then it will naturally reject it, and find a way to eject it out of your life, too. I found this to be very true for my particular set of life experiences. I am still discovering the way to hold and cradle good things instead of rushing to break them apart.

Day 8

April 22, 2025

I've been known to struggle with my finances a bit. Here's my attempt at changing my behavior through a well-known psychological method: public shaming.

Monthly Expense Chart

Yep. It hurts. I can feel your judgemental gaze even through the protective veil of time and screen. Go on, laugh. I will use your energy to fuel my change.

In the great words of my friend:

Day 7

April 21, 2025

I asked for input on what to write about on this blog post; I was enlightened with the word "giraffes". They are very majestic animals. When I was young, perhaps 4 years old, I saw them at the zoo in Washington, DC. Since then I always believed giraffes were as tall as 6, 7 floor apartment buildings. When I looked at giraffe images at the start of my internet journey, I was disappointed to see their actual height. Maybe my tiny toddler statue biased me.

I added quite a bit of CSS to the website today, including a lovely lime green gradient, inspired by HTML Energy. More to come on that!

Day 6

April 20, 2025

I thought about kintsugi today. How whenever you break something, you cannot ever put it back together regularly again. It is impossible to put it back to how it once was. Kintsugi, however, allows you to turn it into something new, something maybe beautiful.

Day 5

April 19, 2025

I had my wisdom teeth out on Monday. My mouth is very sore. I get to spend long hours at home and by myself. Strange that when I feel like I have a chance to fully unwind and mess around, it's due to a medical procedure.

I saw Spider-man recently and it made me feel a bit inspired.

Day 4

April 10, 2025

Sometimes I feel as if I've gone down the wrong timeline. I feel like somewhere down the line, I made a misstep or some strange decision that put me on a path far rockier and significantly different than the majority of the other, "regular" timelines. Although, perhaps everyone thinks this about their life; that it has taken some weird fork in the road, gone somewhere it should not. We usually do not get the things we desire in life.

Day 3

April 9, 2025

I spent a lot of today thinking about regret. I think this website is now too colorful to represent my true feelings right now.

However, I ideally want this website to be about healing and progressing. So I spent time playing with my cat, I listened to two new albums, and I wrote in my journal. I tried. I really tried.

Here's to another day.

Day 2

April 8, 2025

To Do list for this website includes:

• use Python to generate `index.html` from a set of .txts automatically
• same for `quotes.html`
• create some sort of sidebar
• create a page that keeps track of frequently mentioned words or topics, like a word cloud page
• create an appealing and cohesive aesthetic

Everytime I remember what I could have done better, what I could have changed, I feel a deep pull toward regret in my body. It is very difficult. To deal with the feelings held by the body, I will reply equally by moving my body and letting it express itself.

Day 1

April 7, 2025

This is day one of 'me without you'.

I am starting this blog for two primary reasons:

• To create my first personal repo & project on GitHub
• As a form of self expression during a strange time in my life.

(Forgive my overuse of stylization; it feels like the "Hello World" of web development.)

Today I went for a long walk in the rain. I haven't been having a particularly cheerful time. Maybe my next entry will be more interesting (although I prefer it when life is slightly boring).

I leave with a quote that has been on my mind lately: