What did you do this week?

First week at my new job!

I have no idea what I'm doing!

Intern onboarding stuff, jury duty on-call after bumping mine up to avoid a conflict with my internship starting Monday. I had to order some shirts in case my internship needs me to be on camera four or five days a week, because I honestly don't know what to expect (I have like two button up shirts).

My internship class also started in earnest. The professor is super chill, and we're all just sitting in front of our computers shooting the breeze in a guided discussion. For this class we're reading Dale Carnagie's How to Win Friends and Influence People and it's actually a really good book on how to encourage smooth, positive interactions between people.

I ordered a Dreamcast on a whim. Always wanted one as a kid for some reason; not really sure why in retrospect, since I had a GameCube and a PS2, but it somehow came up in a conversation with some coworkers, and I went ahead and bought one a week or two later, since it doesn't seem to have climbed up into the collectible, more than it cost when it was new, price range. Got a few blank CDs to burn games to, but I'll probably end up replacing the disk drive with a GDEMU board to read games off an SD card, both to save the hassle and because some CD images are cut down to fit inside 700MB, since the official Dreamcast disks were a sort of variant of standard CDs that stored 1GB. Not sure what all I'll play on it, but for the initial disks, I think I'll roll through the greatest hits, Jet Set Radio, Sonic Adventure, Skies of Arcadia, etc.

Had a pretty eventful week.

Monday I went to the psychologist and dentist.

I asked the psychologist to elaborate on what she meant by things occurring naturally and I think what she told me that what she means is that people often become friends by stumbling into something that happens to interest both of them and things can often develop from there. (Kind of similar to the beginning of @petrichor's reply to me here.) I personally have had a few experiences like that in the past to generally understand what she means by stumbling into small things like that, albeit none of them ever developed because I don't think the people at my first school were too alike me and I've written a lot about how many childhood wasn't that great and I often played the role of naive kid who didn't learn the new word for [insert genitalia] so it's not like we were starting on neutral ground a lot of the time. It also gives me a general takeaway as to what to do, which is generally to make your interests accessible to others. Something kinda noteworthy is that it doesn't need to be really active, albeit, the way I understand it, that usually helps if the context is favorable for doing that. You don't necessarily have to put yourself "out there", just somewhere relatively accessible. (This also partly adds some sense for me to the latter half of petrichor's reply to me, because it's about where people can reasonably "access" you, which is definitely not in the classroom.) There's still the problem that a lot of the stuff I watch is in English, and that drives a wedge between me and basically everyone because, even if they like that I know English (which I'm pretty sure is most people in Brazil), knowing English isn't a hobby or personality trait or anything worth bonding over.

Anyway, I went to the dentist, she stretched out my lower (clears throat) palatal expander I've had for a year and a half and (I think) snipped some excess wire from my top braces which I've had for a few months.

Tuesday, my father had the idea of unlocking my new debit-card and sending me to buy my mom some birthday gifts, after floating a few potential gifts in the form of clothing, books or a mixer.

After going to a store where they sold a mixer for 600 R$ I realized I should have asked my dad for a budget. I went through a few clothing stores but I realized I didn't really know how to describe the type of clothing I remember thinking about getting as a mother's day gift with my father so I settled on getting her 2 chocolate boxes (I felt we buy 1 too often for it to be meaningful) and after funding a library, a Brazilian history book because she reads that type of book pretty frequently. After that I went back home via bus with some change from some live money my father transferred out of the card. (I think? If only they taught this at school.)

Wednesday I basically spent my (afternoon) doing schoolwork. One of the tasks was to make a 3 minute minimum audio explaining what biological determinism is and I got a draft that made it halfway-⅔rds of the way there.

Thursday I spent a lot of the afternoon and night finishing a project about making a drawing that represents your identity after buying the recommended paper and a new compass after the one I have lost it's pencil and there were no compass-made pencils in the nearby store I went to. The new one just has an area to put in any given pencil which I frankly find more convenient. Then I got the draft audio up to 3 minutes and posted it.

Today I honestly did nothing other than download the next month's worth of schoolwork. Perhaps to rest, but admittedly I'm struggling with procrastination that ended up making me do some schoolwork late at night.

I continued my research on how people misinterpreted Wilhem Wundt, and I can still empathize with those misinterpretations 100%

I took some aerial photos of my house, my sister's house, my parent's house, my brother's house, and various other locations.

I worked a lot, most good. We're moving out of our current offices, and I got a fair amount of the work done for that.

I played a few rounds of disc golf - just tonight I shot +5 on 18 holes at our little local. That's fairly good for me, though it's notable that I got birdies on two holes that I have never birdied before, which was great. I have to practice the first hole at the course, though, because I never play it well, and then I start every round just annoyed with myself for getting a bogey and then I start the round annoyed.

I spent my week in the hospital. This year has been hell on me, and this week in particular. I had my third surgical procedure last Thursday, and it was a painful recovery during the weekend. Not uncommon considering the previous two, but it was a bit… extra.

Gross stuff happened. Possibly NSFW/L

Sunday there was a blister, about the size on my thumbnail near the wound. It became finger length by the end of the day. So I checked into the ER, was admitted to the hospital and had a procedure the next morning. Another two days later to remove all the necrotic tissue. Another this morning to ensure they got it all.

So, in all I have had six surgical procedures in the past four months. Every other one before todays I came out of the haze normal and OK. Not so much today. I woke up crying, swearing, confused as to where I was, having to pee but unable, and just thoroughly miserable. I kept saying my sisters name over and over again. I haven’t seen her in about six years. We are roughly 13 hours drive apart. I texted her and asked if she would come up, and was bawling my eyes out, terrified I already knew the no that was coming. It did not come and I cried even more. She is currently driving here to see me, be with me, and just do whatever. I have never been this low in my life, and having my somewhat estranged sister say she would come help me was a huge thing for me. Since that notification, I have been spending more time out of the bed in my hospital room (I actually care enough now to not want blood clots), eating the food and drinking the water (I actually care enough now to not starve myself to nothing). As I type this I am listening to music and despite all the pain from the antibiotics, the wound, and all my other issues, I am in a not-to-terrible mood.