It's been a while

Sorry! It’s that time of year when everyone updates their blogs for a few weeks before they sit dormant again until the next big holiday season (maybe that’s just me), and I want to give you guys some updates.

(Content warning: mental health.)

Most of 2024 was kinda whatever for me. Really, since 2022 every day was basically the same: work, listen to, watch, or scroll through whatever, and sleep. I didn’t feel like I was in control of my actions. I cleared entire backlogs of multiple years-long comedy podcasts while endlessly scrolling TikTok and surfing the web, and I eventually moved on to YouTube video essays, Twitter (R.I.P.), and Instagram, spending ~6 hours a day across them at my peak. I worked because my life would’ve fell apart otherwise, but I didn’t do much else; I had no hobbies and even just getting off my phone to eat was hard. I had friends (like < 5), but it was hard for me to maintain the friendships because I regularly took days to reply to their messages, and reaching out to restart friendships made me anxious, so I just didn’t do it. I cried out into the void about this but got embarrassed and deleted it¹. Near the end I felt physically uncomfortable when I wasn’t being constantly stimulated by something (e.g. listening to podcasts). As if this wasn’t bad enough, while all this was happening, like every few months there would be a span of a few weeks where I just felt miserable every day. Reflecting back on it, I had bits and pieces of these symptoms since 2018, and it just slowly got worse and worse.

After a depression assessment with my doctor in September I started on 25mg of sertraline. It legitimately changed my life. My symptoms basically completely disappeared. I never realized how many hours a day I could spend doing… well.. whatever I wanted! Over the last few months, I’ve rekindled old friendships, picked up new hobbies (e.g. reading, learning Japanese), and started dieting (already down > 10 pounds). I think I still consume a bit too much media, and my days feel kinda chaotic now (my therapist tells me I should make a daily routine; I’ll write about it when I do!), but overall I feel so much better. I feel like how I used to feel 10 years ago.

If you need help with your mental health, don’t put off talking to a doctor about it. Seriously, just fucking do it. Your friends and family may not understand what you’re going through, but your doctor will, and they’ll treat it just like any other health condition. I wasted years of my life because I didn’t get help sooner. Don’t be like me.

(Warned-about content ends.)

Anyways… I’ve spruced up my site a little bit. I added a sandbox section where I’ll capture notes about random topics I’m interested in. Think of the pages in it as living documents that will be eventually be snapshotted in the form of blog posts. I’m probably also going to change the site theme soon, not sure to what though yet (my friend Syd has some ideas). Oh, and I broke some links while playing around with tags; I realized I don’t want to have very many.

I think that’s it. Thanks for reading. Sorry if this wasn’t what you were expecting; it’s my site though so deal with it. :D