Non-humans welcome!

I haven't written here this week, and to be honest, I almost skipped doing the slice-of-life update today. I've been overwhelmed and drained and not the best company. But life is always a mix of good and bad, so some fun things happened that are worth looking back on.

• Work. Work has been busy, which is good as it made the days fly by and proved to be a good distraction on the days my anxiety would spike a bit more. I joined 2 teams in my company's AI hackathon and one of the projects is going full-force. I adore that team and the bouncing off of ideas and collaboration have made it a true pleasure. I was able to use another design system which is always fun and even used AI extensively to streamline my work. One way I used it was to turn the code from an HTML table to csv code to have the raw data, and I was able to easily import that data with the csv into my Figma mockups. I also copied the SASS color variables from the theme into json code that I imported to the new design system via a Figma plugin 🤓

• Music. Lots of new music this week. A friend sent me Death Wish by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. It was lovely but so very sad. It reminds me of how incredibly isolating depression is. There have been times in my life when hopelessness eclipsed anything beautiful and wholesome in the world. On a happier note, I was excited to hear the new ATEEZ music that dropped today. Work is good but I'm falling more for Blind and Empty Box. The overall vibe is quite Latin which as a Latina I fully support! I've been into XG's new song called Woke Up which is almost guaranteed to boost anyone's confidence!

• Fave conversation. Someone on Reddit requested messages based on full anonymity. So no details re: age, gender, etc. They even stated that one didn't have to be human! It was very refreshing! My favorite conversations are based on interests (I'm autistic after all) so this was a breath of fresh air. The reality is that navigating the search for a penpal is risky, as everyone has different needs and intentions going in and it doesn't matter how much one puts what one is looking for because a lot of people ignore the ad content. I'm incredibly naive too and I forget that, always. The (possible) person and I discussed a wide range of subjects, from history book recs to uncanny valley to Ghibli music and SNL skits. I don't know how long the correspondence will survive but it was a wonderful interlude.

• Art. I made one drawing. It wasn't my favorite but I did enjoy the process.

• Books. I've not been able to focus on books. I keep looking around listlessly, trying to choose a book and failing. Everything seems to remind me of things and make me sad.

That's it. It was a boring week. Which is fine, I'm pretty boring so a boring week fits with me.