How are you doing? - Kiwi Farms Wellness Check

Let's see...


Depression.


Impostor syndrome.


Procrastination.


Depression.

But seriously, you may be suffering some mild depression or burnout. Try talking to a professional if you have a chance or if it gets worse.
Yeah, I think depression/anxiety the main issue. Maybe burnout. Impostor syndrome no, I came in about the best prepared (at least among the ones I interacted with) and always did a lot better than them. There was only one other student besides me who even passed their comp on the first go. It's getting different now because we've started doing stuff I really lagged behind in (you're supposed to read an academic paper a week, I don't read an academic paper ever so I'm a second year student who has done basically zero literature review in my field; also, networking with professors and such), like really good at coursework and exams but awfully backwards in research and the independent aspects of what I do.

I was trying to medicate myself with the Devil's Lettuce and that wasn't going real well, so I'm going to go make a counselor appointment on Monday.
 
I've been taking a walk every day, whether I want to or not, and made a cat bro. There's a bench next to the library, and I sat down on it. This cat has usually been on this route and I'd seen her before, so I didn't really notice. But when I'd sat down on the bench and was doing whatever autistic phoneshit I was doing, I suddenly had this cat head butting and purring.

The main worry I had was the cat would try to follow me, even though she had a collar and a tag indicating an actual domestic cat, and she did try to follow me. I did not want to draw a cat inadvertently into a dangerous area, so I was considering actually finding the owner, but she apparently did have some kind of sense of territory and not to leave it.

I always worry about outdoor cats.
I feel that way about a cat on my walk. (Or, a number of cats, but only one of them actually greets me). It's an apartment complex, and one day I saw one sniffing around the back of a rear car tire. That's how they get killed, along with crawling into engine blocks, which can also get them carried off. I've seen it happen before. Have coyotes and hawks around here too. In a large yard it's okay but in an area with busy traffic it's a terrible idea. If a person can they'd be better off just building a cat enclosure.
 
Maybe burnout. Impostor syndrome no, I came in about the best prepared (at least among the ones I interacted with) and always did a lot better than them.
I was trying to make a joke by attributing some disorder to every sentence in your post :)

I was trying to medicate myself with the Devil's Lettuce and that wasn't going real well,
It's a short term remedy at best and can make things worse in some cases by worsening some symptoms (i.e. rise your mood but at the same time lower your motivation to do anything).
 
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Since people are talking about their crazy, I'll chime in.

I have ShoeOnTheHead Syndrome aka hair pulling. I've had it since I was five years old. I get treatment and such, but nothing has ever been able to stop it. I have better years and worse years, but never fully quit.

While unsightly, it also causes a lot of practical problems. It's hard going out in cold, snowy, windy, or rainy weather with no eyelashes to protect from the elements. I get frequent infections all over my head and body from pulling, really deep ingrown hairs, and I'm always itchy. If I manage to curb it during the day, I'll end up doing it in my sleep.

Many people recover, especially those who develop it as teenagers, since the teenage brain is naturally haywire from all the hormones (and some teens adopt behaviours to attention-seek, and the need to do that generally fades away once they get older), but the prognosis isn't great for people who started as kids and progressed into adulthood. I have another disorder in the BFRB family (I bite chunks out of the inside of my mouth and lip), and that's been going on since my baby teeth came in. A lot of my relatives from parents to cousins have trichotillomania or skin biting behaviours, they seem to run in the family on both sides.

On a good note, I've pretty much managed to stop eating the inside of my lip, but it does still happen occasionally when I sleep. Nothing like waking up in a puddle of bloody drool. I wear a mouthguard now (also due to grinding holes into my teeth while asleep) which curbs most of that, but sometimes I manage to pop it off when I'm asleep/half asleep.

As for why the pain doesn't stop me, the sensations don't really register as painful for people with my type of crazy.

Most people with a BFRB get nail-biting. Lucky bastards. Though it could be worse, since the family of disorders also includes compulsive and unconscious nose picking. Hair loss can be hidden with scarves, wigs, sunglasses, and cosmetics. That, and lacking hair isn't too taboo provided people don't think you're a skinhead. They just think you've got cancer or some crap. Pretty hard for folks to ignore booger fingers.

My head hair is coming back in now. I'm trying to stay off it the best I can in hopes that I'll have a normal looking head of hair by summer. Since it'll be too short to pull in my sleep, it's doable, provided I'm vigilant.


BFRB- Body Focused Repetitive Behaviour for all you sane people out there.
 
Got pulled over recently and talked my way out of ticket. Winning!
My favorite I didn't even talk my way out of ticket involved getting pulled over doing 90 on the highway so I am obviously fucked. Plus there are beer cans all over the place in the car although, for a change, I was actually sober. This was like literally the day after the Rodney King riots.

So I get pulled over. I do my usual drive at least a mile while signaling I'm about to pull over thing, because that always gets things off on the right foot. The cop is pissed, he looks like he wants to drag me out of my car and kick my ass right then and there, which is sort of the point of that technique. But then four more cop cars pull in behind him. This was not what I was thinking of.

You can't possibly just pussy out completely in this situation, though. So I interrupted him in the middle of his intro with "what's up?" I don't know what he was intending to ask, probably something along the lines of "do you know how fast you were going?" Like I wanted that question. What answer would I give? "Because I'm too drunk to read the speedometer." Nope. Also I was actually driving legally other than the speed part anyway.

"Do you have any drugs or weapons in the car?" "No." "Well what about that tire iron?" "It's a tire iron. You know, for tires?" "Well, what about that billy club?" "That's not a club, that's just something to check my tires." "And you really need that flashlight?" Literally a 7 D-Cell MagLite and he had one too. "Do you?"

And then there was suddenly a call that every single cop car got and every single one of them zoomed off and I got no ticket at all. They didn't even formally disengage or tell me anything, just zoomed off. My assumption is they were looking for some other nerdy-ass white cocksucker and went off after him after realizing I wasn't him. Literally getting nothing whatsoever for doing 90 is unheard-of.
 
My favorite I didn't even talk my way out of ticket involved getting pulled over doing 90 on the highway so I am obviously fucked. Plus there are beer cans all over the place in the car although, for a change, I was actually sober. This was like literally the day after the Rodney King riots.

So I get pulled over. I do my usual drive at least a mile while signaling I'm about to pull over thing, because that always gets things off on the right foot. The cop is pissed, he looks like he wants to drag me out of my car and kick my ass right then and there, which is sort of the point of that technique. But then four more cop cars pull in behind him. This was not what I was thinking of.

You can't possibly just pussy out completely in this situation, though. So I interrupted him in the middle of his intro with "what's up?" I don't know what he was intending to ask, probably something along the lines of "do you know how fast you were going?" Like I wanted that question. What answer would I give? "Because I'm too drunk to read the speedometer." Nope. Also I was actually driving legally other than the speed part anyway.

"Do you have any drugs or weapons in the car?" "No." "Well what about that tire iron?" "It's a tire iron. You know, for tires?" "Well, what about that billy club?" "That's not a club, that's just something to check my tires." "And you really need that flashlight?" Literally a 7 D-Cell MagLite and he had one too. "Do you?"

And then there was suddenly a call that every single cop car got and every single one of them zoomed off and I got no ticket at all. They didn't even formally disengage or tell me anything, just zoomed off. My assumption is they were looking for some other nerdy-ass white cocksucker and went off after him after realizing I wasn't him. Literally getting nothing whatsoever for doing 90 is unheard-of.
Times sure were different back then. My father told a story of him in the 70s getting caught with beer at a drive in with his underage friends and all they did was pour the beer out and mock them. Then kicked them out of the drive in.
 
Intense, crazy, yet "this is reality" feeling dreams left and right all last night. It's been happening more and more and I wake up as exhausted as I went to sleep.

I hope this means everything is breaking down. My brain or reality it'self, I'll take either at this point.
 
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Since people are talking about their crazy, I'll chime in.

I have ShoeOnTheHead Syndrome aka hair pulling. I've had it since I was five years old. I get treatment and such, but nothing has ever been able to stop it. I have better years and worse years, but never fully quit.

While unsightly, it also causes a lot of practical problems. It's hard going out in cold, snowy, windy, or rainy weather with no eyelashes to protect from the elements. I get frequent infections all over my head and body from pulling, really deep ingrown hairs, and I'm always itchy. If I manage to curb it during the day, I'll end up doing it in my sleep.

Many people recover, especially those who develop it as teenagers, since the teenage brain is naturally haywire from all the hormones (and some teens adopt behaviours to attention-seek, and the need to do that generally fades away once they get older), but the prognosis isn't great for people who started as kids and progressed into adulthood. I have another disorder in the BFRB family (I bite chunks out of the inside of my mouth and lip), and that's been going on since my baby teeth came in. A lot of my relatives from parents to cousins have trichotillomania or skin biting behaviours, they seem to run in the family on both sides.

On a good note, I've pretty much managed to stop eating the inside of my lip, but it does still happen occasionally when I sleep. Nothing like waking up in a puddle of bloody drool. I wear a mouthguard now (also due to grinding holes into my teeth while asleep) which curbs most of that, but sometimes I manage to pop it off when I'm asleep/half asleep.

As for why the pain doesn't stop me, the sensations don't really register as painful for people with my type of crazy.

Most people with a BFRB get nail-biting. Lucky bastards. Though it could be worse, since the family of disorders also includes compulsive and unconscious nose picking. Hair loss can be hidden with scarves, wigs, sunglasses, and cosmetics. That, and lacking hair isn't too taboo provided people don't think you're a skinhead. They just think you've got cancer or some crap. Pretty hard for folks to ignore booger fingers.

My head hair is coming back in now. I'm trying to stay off it the best I can in hopes that I'll have a normal looking head of hair by summer. Since it'll be too short to pull in my sleep, it's doable, provided I'm vigilant.


BFRB- Body Focused Repetitive Behaviour for all you sane people out there.
My God, you're a mess. You have a disease that makes you look like a 12 year old, and you pull out all the hair on your face and bite your mouth insides until they bleed. So basically, a bald, bloody mouthed 12 year old with no eyelashes. Idk, man, I think I'd rather just deal with booger fingers.
 
So basically, a bald, bloody mouthed 12 year old with no eyelashes.
When you put it that way, I would make a good horror movie villain. Don't know whether I should be dressed in a white dress or a Chucky doll outfit though... Decisions, decisions.
 
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Last night I said goodbye to my fourth friend who left my country. It has been like that for like 3 years now, and it doesn't really feels sad anymore, it's just weird and odd to know you are being left behind, that the smart thing is to leave the country because ours is so full of shit that there is not a future, maybe there is, but everything is so dark and hopeless right now. Kiwis, if you got friends, try all you can to stay in contact. Life might not be easier with friends, but it's a bit happier.
 
I have a bad case of Esophagitis, it's like having the worst sore throat in the world and its actually worse than a sore throat caused by pathogens. Because at least then you can take medicine for it and get relief, but since esophagitis is caused by an injury to the esophagus none of the usual methods of treating a sore throat will work. You can only let the body repair the damage on its own and the healing process is paved with pain.


Ironically this whole thing was caused by me taking a pill that was too big without enough water. It got stuck at the base of my esophagial sphincter (don't laugh it's the actual term, cervical can also refer to the upper neck bones) and as it dissolved it got forced back up along the way it caused scrapes in the tissue which are now inflamed as they heal. A pill I was taking to stay healthy has caused me grief oh cruel cruel irony.
 
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