d.manuk

I ended up canceling plans with my friend (but at least I told her why).

My self esteem is quite low at the moment. My acne is a little better, but it still looks bad. I am confused and getting desperate about what I can do. I need to find a way to be less stressed at work, and also I am going to start tricking myself into being in a good mood by only listening to calming and happy music. I like to listen to metal music but it always puts me in a bad mood. Music can affect how you feel a lot which then might affect your hormones. I think I had a stressful week last week. I'm hanging out with my friend on Saturday and we can only hang out a few times a year... I'd hate to show up looking ugly and with acne redness. It makes me feel not want to go outside and not to talk to anyone, and it adds even more to the stress. Ahhh!

I liked the Garden of Words but I thought Your Name was boring. I have been watching Ao No Exorcist most recently, which is a typical and predictable shonen anime but there's nothing wrong with that. The newest Cardcaptor Sakura series starts airing in 2 weeks.

I feel better, physically at least. I did a short 25min yoga session today. I haven't been my cheerful self lately these past few months. I realized this after watching a new anime. And then I realized I haven't watched any anime in that same amount of time. I think I just need to watch more anime to maintain my happiness levels. Anime is life.

I’ve been sick for the past week so I’ve been feeling very frustrated. I watched an entire series of Gotham and started watching an anime. I’ve been very grumpy because I ordered a lot of soup. Some of the soup had sugar added to it without my knowledge, so I had some unnecessary acne because of this. I still have a big pimple that I can do nothing about but wait. So I feel a bit unhappy. Why do Americans need to be so fat to add sugar into a vegetable soup? When I was sick I did not paint or do any creative writing, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was so tired, I just wanted to consume and be distracted. I had the heat turned up to 85F. I drank a lot of tea though which was nice. I also found a new song I like:

I need to work on dreaming bigger too — it’s very easy to continue improving mundane aspects of your life and constantly giving those things priority in the name of efficiency.

Idk if I would want to be in a car with you based on what you’ve been writing in your journal lol

My face is almost back to normal, I'm starting to look really good again!! My careful attention to my diet and proper care is finally paying off. I realized I hadn't done much on Saturday night or Sunday morning. I blame the fact that my building had the heat turned up a lot so my brain got way too cozy. So I opened the windows to let in some cold, 35'F motivation to move my ass! Afterwards I went to a yoga class at a yoga studio in my neighborhood I've been wanting to go to for a while. It ended up being very lovely, the class was the perfect pace for me and exceeded my expectations. I feel really good now. Then I remembered that I promised I'd be more gentle with myself. So instead of cooking a full dinner, I made a reservation for 1 person at a sushi restaurant I've been wanting to go to with boyfriend but we never got around to it. It's a late reservation, but I'm going to go and enjoy! I feel like I just ended the weekend on a very good note, and I'm happy. I feel very taken care of, I did a good job.

My acne seems to be beginning to clear up, so my confidence and happiness levels are much better. @Brad_Hurst is motivating me to do yoga much more frequently. He is so fit, doing heavy cardio exercises so often. I don’t think I have the energy for that, at least not yet, but I should be able to do my favorite exercise more frequently if he is able to do that. I used to be in much better shape, and I want to exceed my past highs. I’m having tea now, then I will do yoga and make dinner.

Does your computer usage activity tracker track it automatically or do you need to click a button that says you are about to do the activity so that it can track it?

This morning I had a maid come and clean my apartment. I gave her a list of specific things to do; the chores I hate doing the most. I was so happy when I came home after work! I asked to receive a gift certificate to a maid service for my birthday, which is how I paid for it. I pretty much finished a big project at work. I cooked pasta for the first time in my life today! It was okay. I also did this good yoga workout. It was the perfect difficulty level for me, I will be doing it again in the future since it did some stretches I need help on. It was a pretty good day considering it was a weekday.

I had another healing day today. I drew for 5 hours after work yesterday, drank a tea in a great clay teapot, had a great vegan dinner at ABCv, and gave myself a facial. Perhaps focusing on consistently healing myself is another way I can be like a holy priest in real life. Trying to debuff the consistently recurring poisons of daily life, until I become such a high level that it’s not an issue. I just have to regulate myself to make sure this mindset doesn’t lead me towards going full shadow priest instead.

I almost always eat a piece of fruit after dinner, and recently I started putting small pieces of fruit in some of the things I cook for dinner and I noticed I didn't really have a craving for something sweet afterwards.

Try to find a meetup.com group based on an activity you might like.

It started with a podcast Cam stickied about drugs. I listened to part of it, and pretty quickly closed it after I judged it as something that didn’t have much relevance to me since I already went through a pretty heavy stage of drug usage in my late teens and got most of what I think I could get out of those substances. Drug usage is not something I look favorably on, but this is mostly because I think I’m past that stage and don’t think drugs should be a regular part of someone’s mature life but are ok as a growing tool and can be especially helpful when transitioning to adulthood. But something about the podcast triggered me when there was a comment about marijuana usage. In mid-September, I was feeling kind of unhappy. I felt bored, I was tired of “being good,” I was lonely because my boyfriend was on a lot of business trips. This is stupid but the turning point for me was needing to do the chore of lacing the new shoes I bought. I really didn’t want to do it. It’s boring, it’s stupid, and it was going to take a lot of time to do properly the way I would want so I had been putting it off because I didn’t want to do it. I still haven’t done it properly. So on my way one night to the park to work out, with these thoughts in my head, I decided to turn back around and go home and order some weed. I turned on the computer, downloaded League and World of Warcraft and essentially conked out for 2 months. After noticing my gums had receded a bit and tired of looking like shit and having bad sleeping habits and feeling cold all the time because of the hormonal imbalances that were accumulating, I decided to stop. I went through a mild physical detox, and I kept playing videogames through to keep myself comfortable and occupied, but of course once I was sober they weren’t interesting. Games + weed are a great combo and when I previously relapsed earlier this year, it was a similar situation. I’ve since stopped playing both games and they faded out of my life quite easily because I didn’t really have a desire to play them. To be perfectly honest, I have a history of marijuana usage problems. If I have it, I need to use it until it’s gone, and as quickly as possible. I just want it “out of my life.” But then a few days later, I often find myself deciding it wasn’t a big deal and then order it again… and the cycle repeats for a time. It has its benefits though, especially when I first come back to it. I become very introspective and think a lot. Thoughts that have been floating in my subconscious bubble up to the surface, and I often make improvements in my life as a result. This time, my relationship with my boyfriend improved as well, and I made some good decisions that I had been holding off on doing. But overall I view the experience as a net negative. Because of my lack of control, the positive aspects that could come out of it devolve into a negative. I simply like to use it too much, and because it’s not a healthy substance (unlike tea for example), it becomes a problem in multiple ways. During the 2 months I was in this mindset, I didn’t exercise the entire time. I didn’t do a good job at work. I started to cancel some plans I had previously made with friends. I went back to square zero in some ways, but nothing permanent or damaging. Just a setback. I’ve been starting to heal and go back to normal. I’ve begun working out a bit more heavily than I did earlier in the month. My skin still really looks like shit and I had really bad breakouts the past few weeks, but it’s starting to get better. How I look really, REALLY affects how I feel about myself. I don’t feel good about myself right now. I think I will become whole and back to normal in another 2-3 weeks. It feels like the time the drug took away from me now still needs to be paid out in full in order to get my life back to the way it was. It’s clearer than ever before that this journal isn’t really a game quitting journal, it’s more like “a journey to find things I like enough that can distract me from doing bad things that waste my time or harm my health.” Overall, I feel like I was reminded of something I had forgotten, my attitude towards marijuana and video games are the same because they are fairly interlinked: do your best to completely abstain, until you can no longer take it and give in, after which your goal should be to get on track as quickly as possible and remember to treat yourself gently throughout the process because if these are your greatest vices then you’re already in a great place.

No, I've never even heard about it actually. I'll check it out if you find out the name

Here's a video on how Game Quitters is changing the world I'm going to post a real journal entry soon, I'm still trying to get my thoughts together for a longer entry.

What are ways that I can be like a priest class video game character but in real life? They have nothing to do with religion. ideas: wear white and be surrounded by natural light eat clean and healthy plant based foods Minimalist don't flake out on your friends and try to meet with them regularly Read books Keep a sketchbook - hand drawings and carefully written things - putting time into this craft (inscription) gardening (herbalism) gong fu tea ceremonies (alchemy/potions) yoga (mediation/prayer) listen to classical music

Australia has a huge drinking problem

Today I feel like being alive is hard and I wish I could just stop everything and rest for a few months.

not sure what to write

I'm doing a good job spending money this month, lol. But I'm improving my life in some places that have been lagging behind so I am happy. These are the sneakers I decided to buy. It took me about 5 hours of research and work to settle on these (perfectionist...). I'm still researching how I'm going to lace them (probably bar lacing?). I've also been working on applying a lot of the techniques and skills I've been researching for both writing and painting. I'm cutting down on my color palette and I think I'll buy different colors in the future to get a basic color scheme that reflects more of my personality instead of just buying off a list of what paints someone recommended for beginners. I've also taken the plunge today and finally started handwriting my first draft of my writing. I've been procrastinating it for about 9 months... I'm just going to try to enjoy the process and not have a specific goal in mind like "I'm going to write a novel so that I can sell it and have extra income." I think that kind of goal made me not succeed in getting a finished product and made me write in a slightly different way. It's interesting because each time I pick up writing, I add another layer onto the same plot I've been trying to push out of my system but have never been able to fully complete. Let's see if my fantasy story finally comes to life this time! You can see how much I love my avatar. It is on my pen, on my home screen, I have a piggy bank of it, it is so cute. I told my boyfriend I was feeling lonely because we haven't had many meaningful experiences together for a few months because he has been traveling a lot for work. It made me feel better to say it aloud, because a small voice in my head was saying it for the past month and it was making me sadder and sadder. Thus I get to award myself a point. Shining Heart Goals: Initiate conversations with 10 people I haven't spoken to. Progress: 4/10 Be open with 10 people about things I would normally be embarrassed or self conscious about. Progress: 4/10

Honesty time: With my present mindset, I will relapse once Maplestory 2 is released in North America. The game will likely release in early 2019. It might be a short relapse, or it might be a long one. It depends on how fun the game is. It's true that I don't really care about any other games at this point. I don't feel the need to play them to fill my free time. But Maplestory 2 is different, perhaps I won't be playing it "just to fill time." It's a sequel to a game I loved and that I grew up with. It was also the highlight of my teenage years that helped me escape from an otherwise psychologically traumatic home situation, and a way to hang out with friends after school on days we didn't hang out in person. Why would I relapse? Well, because I want to play. I haven't disassociated myself from wanting to play this game. It also might only happen once I actually play it and I see the reality of how playing the game actually is. I need more self discipline and set my priorities.

I always thought it was weird that some cities make drinking water by filtering sewage...