Kept you waiting, huh? Sorry about that. As you can probably tell from the other parts of the site (unless you're from the future, future-folk!) I have been very busy and burned out. I know that's a terrible excuse for almost missing two months in a row after the first blog was already finished the month after it was written, but hey - I have yet to abandon this post I put myself in and this blog is a testament to that. Ideally, this was published on November 30th - not because I intend on publishing these at the end of the month only but because I also started this on November 30th. If I put this up in December I will be very mad at myself. Either way, I've got plenty to write about today, and just like before, I don't intend on putting these in any particular order.

(If you're reading this, I didn't finish in November and I am, in fact, mad at myself.)

(Like, super-mega-didn't-finish-on-time, oops. Most of these thoughts are from January 2023 about the topics I picked in November 2022.)

Hopping Trains

Honestly, I don't know if this is a completely normal experience to have, but I've been REALLLY having the urge to just leave. I mean like, it takes a conscious effort to not hop a train and find myself in some city across the country and figure out how to get by there - or save up a bunch of money to buy a little house in the middle of fucking nowhere and vanish from my social life entirely. I think it mostly stems from my personal disdain for a conventional lifestyle, I have the need to just do something new and have a story to tell, y'know? I wanna get out there, see things, do things; just not in the rich retired old white guy on vacation kind of way. I like to imagine all of the people I could possibly meet and all of the sights that few have seen - I feel like I could really get a better view of the world with such a diverse experience.

Maybe one day I will just go somewhere and do my own thing. In my ideal field of work, I'll be able to do that and use it to enrich my writing - I'd get to hop trains and tell the world all about it. But until then, I'm where I am now and where I am now is where I'll be for a while.

My Brain is Grilled and Breaded With Cheese

Burnout feels disgusting, as if my brain is filled with grease and sludge and melting inside my skull whilst a hot wax begins to seal around my mind as though it was an embryo of my thoughts that refuses to be birthed. It feels like all that I can do is sleep so that my brain can leak out of my ears and I can wake up empty-headed. I felt that way for all of my first semester of university as a wannabe engineer - I realized just a moment too late that I hated every class I had and I was stuck with them unless I wanted to lose my scholarships. That semester killed my spirit and my mental health, and in the end all of the effort I put it didn't even matter.

At the very least, I'm a lot better off now than I was mentally and I've taken the time to reorient myself and my goals. I'm still recovering, mostly academically, but I wouldn't wish that much burnout on anyone. If you, the reader, are going through burnout - just remember to take care of yourself first and foremost, and that if no one else does, I love you. Thanks for reading.