September 27, 2025 8:09pm

My 4th gen iPod Nano only works when it's plugged in, meaning it needs a new battery. I saw online that Best Buy services iPods so I took it to Best Buy and bro the man laughed me out of the store and told me iPods are obsolete. And told me to just buy a new one on eBay. But I said NO! I took it to a kiosk in the mall that does phone repairs and asked them if they could replace the battery and he said absolutely not. But I refuse to give up on anything... I took it to a battery store near my house and asked them if they could. First of all they were very gagged to see my iPod Nano haha they were like WOAH!! thinking it was really cool haha. They're going to try to fix it. Key word "try" considering these iPods are notoriously extremely difficult to change the battery of- you have to use a heat gun to even access the battery, and then the battery itself is soldered to the motherboard. Basically the guy working there said it was probably going to take him two or three hours and I could see him in real time weighing the pros and cons of spending three hours of his day working on one singular iPod. But in the end he did agree to do it!! Happy happy happy I really really really hope he's able to do it. He had to give me the disclaimer that it's very possible that trying to remove the old battery causes some damage, since like I said it's soldered.
I really like listening to music on an iPod, though, and I have a lot of nostalgia for this iPod specifically. Also, the guy at the battery store showed me where people were reselling used ones and the guy at Best Buy totally lied to me, it ended up being cheaper to get the battery and pay the battery store guy to fix it than it would have been for me to buy one secondhand. Plus you can't put a price on all the memories I have with this iPod. I'm too impatient to wait to use it, so I've been listening to it while plugged into my computer (which I know is really bad for the battery but I'm getting a new battery in like nine days anyways so it'll be fineeeee) and it's so wonderful. Something about listening to Paramore on my iPod with some wired headphones is taking me straight back to 2012 in the best way possible. OMG I LOVE MUSIC I love music so much.



In other news I have been looking at jobs and sort of trying to gaslight myself into thinking that retail wouldn't be too bad to go back to...... retail did make me literally actively suicidal but I would like to believe I have at least some (??) more autism coping mechanisms than I did the last time I did retail full time. So maybe it wouldn't be so hellish?? Trying to convince myself. There's a coffee shop that's hiring but they have like thin blue line patches on a cork board in the shop. And I've seen someone with like a "we stand with Israel" patch frequenting the premises. So is it a SAFE SPACE? No. But I'm not sure where I stand in terms of my morals when it comes to working at a small, locally owned shop versus working for like a corporation. I think if I swear off working for any company that might potentially be lining the pockets of a zionist I'm not sure if I would have any options left. As shitty as that is to say. Sighhhhhhh at the very least if it gets way too dire I do know that the thrift store would probably hire me again. I'm just literally traumatized by the autism burnout that happened the last time I worked there. Like who knew it was even possible to cry in your car that many times a week lolz...... Never felt so damn dehumanized in my LIFE and the music they play is so shit. And y'all know how I am about music- concerning the autism of it all. Having to listen to bad music is genuinely a form of torture for me and it ruins my mood and kills my spirit. I get SO happy when I listen to good music and you can imagine that means I also get SO depressed when listening to shitty music. Girl, they played Ed Sheeran and Luke Combs and all manner of questionable pop songs. I asked them if they could change the radio station because it made me insane and they said the owner wouldn't let them :^| I almost killed myself on the spot.
Enough about the thrift store though. I severely hope it never comes to that. But if no one else wants to hire me I think I might need to suck it up and just try the thrift store again and do some sort of autistic rituals every day before and after work to help me compartmentalize and process. BC I literally just started tearing up sitting here THINKING about working at the thrift store it impacts me that intensely. Anyways. If this battery store guy breaks my iPod it's all over for everyone.



A broken iPod battery and a little unemployment will never be enough to stop me from fujoshing out btw

September 26, 2025 3:40pm

Okayyyyyy I blocked Twitter's url on my phone browser lol, I was spending way, WAY too much time doom scrolling these past couple of days and it was starting to wear my spirit down. Also, I ended up on mcrtwt because I was interacting with a lot of tweets and it was putting me in a bad mood... some fandoms just drain all the energy out of you and seem engineered in a lab to ragebait you and that was me with the MCR fandom. I love their music but I'm perfectly content to love them from a distance, I don't need the constant updates and the constant content and hearing people's bad takes. Like that Summertime is a bad song... girl PLEASE do not piss me off.
So anyways, blocked Twitter, set a 15 minute a day time limit on Instagram, just generally trying to get off of social media (again. for like the nteenth time at this point) which has led to me spending more time working on this website. I put a bunch of work into my MCR shrine and that was really really fun, I also posted a new poem the other day called "Hurricanes" which is all about my trip to California to visit my brother. I wrote a crash out poem about my brother called "On Sacrifice" a couple months ago I think. "Hurricanes" is like her sequel poem that's full of optimism and love and happiness whereas "Sacrifice" was full of hatred and anger and fear. Lol. The duality of having a brother.
I've been decorating my room a little bit and trying to clean it... we are now going on month two (I think???) of trying to clean my room don't piss me OFFFFFFFFF. My executive dysfunction versus an ever-growing pile of clothes in the middle of my floor who will win?! (The clothes. The clothes kick my ass every single time.) I've also been playing the piano. Engaging with hobbies again. Anything to get dopamine to my brain sob sob sob. For some reason there are some hobbies (crochet, Warhammer) that I do not mind spending money on in the slightest and some (piano) that I will try to avoid spending money on like the plague. Like I spent $0.99 on sheet music and I felt like I was being stabbed in the kidney. But anyways now I know how to play the first four measures of Cancer by MCR so it was worth the dollar I think.
As I'm sitting here looking around my room I have the feeling that I really do want to keep cleaning it so I think I'm going to do that now. Still heavily unemployed and not wanting to talk or think about it. Still fighting demons every single day of my life that tell me I am the laziest and worst person to ever live and I have no drive or passions (low key true!) but I can't wait to not be 23 anymore and be able to look back on 23-year-old Julie with fondness and think to myself, "Aw haha! She thought her life was over and it hadn't even begun yet!" But can we hurry up and begin already????? Anyways. Gonna put clothes away sob sob sob

August 15, 2025

Just thought I would share that I graduated from college blehhhhh here are some of my grad photos :3




June 7, 2025 2:47pm

Lol sorry about that last post. Turns out it was two days before my period started (every month for the two/three days before my period I can't fathom any light or joy or happiness in the world and become passively suicidal. I probably have PMDD and it got a lot worse once I went off of my SSRIs but it's definitely not worth it to go back on SSRIs just to prevent one week of misery every month). My physical health has been all fucked up at the moment with chronic acid reflux that I've been trying to deal with by cutting out trigger foods..... which are pretty much every food I like. No more coffee, carbonated drinks, tomatoes, or super acidic foods for... an indeterminate amount of time and GOD I didn't realize how many of the best foods on Earth are made so much better with the inclusion of tomatoes, onions, and vinegar. It makes me feel like such a weenie to order a sandwich and have to ask for it with no tomatoes and no pickled red onions. AND I have to avoid spicy stuff. Basically I've been surviving off of apples and peanut butter for like two meals a day which isn't the end of the world. But yesterday I went out for brunch and ate a lot of greasy food and then spent the rest of the day throwing up buckets of stomach acid and taking little sips of water. I avoided tomatoes but I guess I need to add fried eggs and hashbrowns and sausage and bannana nut bread to the ever growing list of foods I can't keep down painlessly. I also am on my period which is probably adding to the misery.
On the plus side, though, I've been reading a LOT since all I've been doing otherwise is lazing around. Also watching the new Dimension 20 season but not paying too much attention or getting TOO into it because it's like steampunk or something. I read Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin which was INCREDIBLE, the second five-star read of the year for me, and I finally got around to finishing Walking Practice by Dolki Min which was also really good. Very tonally different and not, like, the most amazing thing I've ever read but it was very enjoyable. Then I read Several People are Typing by Calvin Kasulke which really surprised me. I was expecting it to be fun purely because of its format but it was actually really well-done and the story justified its gimick in my opinion. That's the book that's told through Slack messages which I guess is like corporate Discord. And now I'm reading another book that has a similar gimick but a VERY different tone and subject matter, The Sluts by Dennis Cooper. It's told through forum posts on a website for reviewing escorts and it is extremely sexually graphic and disturbing but it's definitely compelling. I need to know who is telling the truth and what is going on, even though I'm horrified by every new piece of the puzzle that comes together. So far it's been the summer of short fiction and I couldn't be happier to be flying through these books especially as they distract me from how miserable I feel (usually by putting me into the miserable mind of someone else that I can be detatched from lol). As of right now I'm on track to meet or even potentially surpass my goal of reading 25 books in 2025 and a lot of that is in part to joining a book club which has been a new experience for me but it's been funnn.
Anyways, whatever, I'm just yapping at this point. I just wanted to post something to be like sorry about the last thing I posted that was very dramatic and I got over it. If I come on here like once a month saying life has no meaning and nothing matters and I will never be happy just ignore me, I'm probably just two days away from starting my period and dealing with my monthly bought of suicidality. All's well. I'm back to feeling like nothing matters but in a neutral, bordering on positive way rather than in a severe and life-destroying way.

June 2, 2025 2:01pm

Yeah no, I didn't graduate from college.
I did actually pass my calculus class, which is kind of insane, but I actually had one more class I needed to pass for my major that I failed. To be glass-half-full about all of it, at the very least it's a class that I can easily pass now that I have time to fully dedicate to it. To be glass-half-empty about everything else ever, though, I feel like shit all the time for any and every reason.
I'm so exhausted every day. I wake up with no motivation and just living at home is good in a lot of ways but just points out how much I want to live in my own space and have freedom. I'm so tired of feeling like I'm stumbling along in my own life, rushing and tripping to catch up with where I'm "supposed to be." Yeah I know there's not an actual deadline for anything in life, but it's one thing if you're living at home because you're not emotionally ready to move out. But I'm more than emotionally ready for my own place. The jobs I'm currently applying to, I have no hope for myself ever actually getting hired for or even hearing back from in any way whatsoever. I feel like my spirit is already crushed even though I haven't even started yet. Also these jobs literally pay a poverty wage so even if I was hired I could not afford to live anywhere anyways. I'd barely even be able to afford the rent my mom charges to live at home. Basically I feel like my options are all horrible and my passion isn't strong enough to make it worth it. I feel like I don't have any hope to get out of poverty wages and customer service and I'll probably be spending the entire rest of my life being bullied and demoralized by customers and managers and bosses and feeling passionless towards my life and being paid an insultingly low wage. Nothing excites me about that process and honestly why would it???
I have to do homework now. I'm sitting in the library trying to hype myself up to be functional but nothing is working. I cannot envision a future AT ALL and it's paralyzing me right now in the present. Not to be cliche but GENUINELY, it feels like nothing matters or means anything and I don't even have something to incentivize myself to work hard because it's a means to some end I really want. All the ends are depressingly grim and I only half want them anyways. Whatever.

May 8, 2025 3:53pm

So there you have it, I have taken my dreaded calculus exam. I genuinely have no idea how I did. At this point it's completely out of my hands, other than the extra homework assignments that I may try to get finished some time tonight, but honestly... I may not. I feel completely burnt out from it and like maybe even if there is technically more I could do I don't feel like it's worth it. Like if I have done enough to get a C-, then amazing, I don't need to do any more homeworks. And if I haven't, well, I wasn't going to pass this semester anyways and doing a couple trigonometry homework assignments isn't going to change that anyways. I feel weirdly calm about the whole thing and honestly, whether I pass or I fail, I feel equally very proud of myself for how dedicated I was to my goal. The desire to graduate pushed me to keep slogging through things that made no sense to me.
Which, speaking of, do you want to know the deep Julie lore that helps explain why I'm so horrendous at math? When I was in the fifth grade I went to a small school that was a combined middle and elementary school, so it had grades K-8 all in the same building. We also had a gifted program that was like a teacher who would come around and pull gifted students out of class twice a day, during English and then alternating between during Science and during History. She would pull the """gifted""" fifth graders out of fifth grade science and take them off to a different classroom to do "gifted" science, whatever that means. However, she made the executive decision that I was somehow too advanced for gifted English, so she decided to pull me out once more per day to go to the gifted SIXTH grade English class. Basically, without anyone ever asking me what I thought about it, without even my parents being consulted, I had essentially skipped a grade but only for one subject. The problem is, gifted sixth grade English class happened at the same time as regular fifth grade math class, and I just never went to math. For an entire year between the ages of 10 and 11 I had TWO advanced English classes a day but ZERO math classes. And I don't know what the hell they teach in fifth grade math class, but it must be pretty foundational because ever since then I have felt completely unmoored in math classes. I don't know how to do what feels like basic arithmetic. But I think the skill all of my peers must have been learning that I'm missing the most is the knowledge and experience on HOW to learn math, how to study it, how to get it to click in your head. I've never done better than like a C or a D in a math class, except for statistics which I actually got an A in in high school and a B- in when I took it in college. For some reason statistics work in my brain in a way algebra never has.
But anyways, that's that. College is all done (maybe). At the very least the semester is done. If I really did pass my class that means I'm graduating in less than 10 days, which is... genuinely insane. Can't think about it.

May 7, 2025 8:21pm

Okay so tomorrow is my calculus final exam, it all comes down to this. If I pass, I graduate! If I fail, I'll be graduating at the end of the summer. Not too big of a deal at the end of the day, I haven't really been panicking about it because I feel like I'm mature enough to recognize that in the grand scheme of things, the difference between graduating in May 2025 and graduating August 2025 really isn't that big of a deal. With that being said..... GOD I want to graduate. I want to be doneeeee I need to be finisheddddd.
I'm not procrastinating right now actually I'm just taking a little break. I honestly feel really good about the content from the beginning of the semester, especially linear functions, nonlinear functions, and graphing functions because I did that for, like, three hours straight today. I gotta lock into logarithmic expressions now....... but it's okay! It's okay.
Something happened to me today that truly threw me off and I fear I made a mistake. This guy was talking to me and he seemed extremely nice and friendly and was talking about how he was new to the area and worked from home SO when he asked for my number and said we should go out and do something some time I THOUGHT HE MEANT AS A FRIEND bro I feel so stupid. I had to text him and tell him the second I realized that I was so sorry but I'm not trying to date him. I feel like such an ass I totally led him on UGHHHH why do I have to deal with heterosexual problems??! What about me signals to a MAN that I would be open to dating him. Other than the part where I literally agreed to it and then gave him my number before realizing that's what was happening. Is this the autism?? Is it crazy to expect that someone should say the word "DATE" when they're asking you on a date.... am I a moron. Anyways. I'm so mortified and bro this man's number is still sitting on my phone I'm scared so I put him on do not disturb because I did text him and tell him I'm in a relationship but he just left it on read God why is this the situation I'm in ugh I did think perhaps lesbianism would save me from this but noooope. I guess I need to femme it up more and be less appealing to men although I can't say there was anything appealing about how I looked today I've literally been sitting around doing MATH all day long. Which speaking of I do need to get back to. I'll report back after the test tomorrow and let you know if I think I'm graduating or not lolz.