Hey y'all. Been a while, huh? Thx to izzy417 for the reminder that it's Wednesday :) So what's been up with me? Jesus, what a question. Isolation? lol. In the early days of the pandemic, I spent a shitton of time with my best friend in the dorms here, and now we still hang out almost every day, although it's become less and less. I have new roommates, which is cool. Both of them are future music teachers so we hang out and talk/play music all the time <3 University remains stressful, in that the semester still has not started and I'm getting very tired of having so little to do but I also have absolutely 0 interest in another online semester. The last one was v rough, I couldn't focus at all and ended up dropping quite a few classes. Which is extra fun because it means now I have to do even more this semester. But I'll survive, I guess. On the personal front, a few weeks ago I wrote some new "rules" for myself (under the heading DISCIPLINE) and hung them up next to my bed. With the exception of the week that I had a head cold, I've mostly managed to hold to them: - Wake up before 9 - Get out of bed before 9:30 - Exercise once a day, ideally in the morning - Limit myself to 1 coffee per day - Alcohol and other substances only on the weekend - Go to bed by midnight It helps me feel a lot better, I think. Of course I'm still stressed and anxious and the world is fucked, I'm often homesick or feel directionless or scared of the future, but having a bit of structure despite the circumstances feels good. I'm proud of myself and how healthy I've managed to stay. We'll make it through this, I think. I missed you all.
Not sure whether I shared this here or not. We used to have coffee provided free at work. Nothing fancy, just a bog standard drip feed, but I developed a habit. I noticed I was getting tense and irritable and common wisdom says caffeine can cause that. Still I never suffered from any other consequences from drinking coffee. As an experiment I quit coffee completely expecting headaches and other symptoms of caffeine withdrawal - which seem to be suspiciously similar to symptoms of too much caffeine. Somebody should look into that. I didn't have any reactions though, except for the mental cravings you can get from any habit, in my case whenever work was calm or quiet I'd go and fill up my cup. Several months go by. Out for dinner one evening, everyone was served a cup of coffee without ordering it and after the first sip, I had quite the emotional response. A warm, tingling sensation at the top of my scalp that spread like a wave down my body along with a deep feeling of bliss followed by goosebumps all over my arms. I was stunned. I realised how much I liked and missed coffee so I spent some time each week looking for recommendations or places with good reviews of the coffee. It became a beautiful, solitary ritual I looked forward to every week. I'd go wherever my research pointed me to and order an espresso along with some other coffee based drink - sometimes just a regular cup of black or cappuccino, sometimes whatever ridiculous speciality dessert in a cup of coffee they offered. I've never enjoyed coffee so much in my life. Once I'd removed the self imposed denial I began to love coffee. I've never had problems sleeping due to coffee in the past, but these days I can't seem to drift off if I drink any after about 3 in the afternoon. I'll have a cup in the morning and occasionally in the afternoon but I'm not snobby or obsessed with coffee. I did buy an aeropress and experiment with it but it's not suitable when anyone else wants a drink. The aeropress lets you easily adjust the most important parts (probably) of making coffee - the dose, the immersion and the time and the flavour is extracted under pressure which subjectively seems to be a great improvement. I've settled on the inverted method with some other adjustments I've read abuot and adopted. Seems I'm just into coffee rituals. <3. Limit myself to 1 coffee per day
I can't imagine how difficult it must be to be enrolled in university right now. All of the "extracurricular" aspects that are now cancelled were what got me through my time there. It sounds like you've got the right approach figured out to surviving this. Discipline and socializing are key.