various

I had forgotten that my pre-sleeping time used to be taken by my brain processing the day's events. But, now that I'm going to bed closer to 11 than 10, I seem to take about an hour doing that, then sleep. Which is way better than taking two hours to fall asleep!

I think I'm starting to adjust back to this sleep schedule, although the fact that I've taken anti-migraine meds the past couple mornings - which include caffeine - make it harder to be sure if that's the case.

Unfortunately, there were a couple of things I wanted to write down right before sleeping last night, but refused to get up and do so. And now I can't remember. Ah, well, they'll come back. I think. :)

It's funny that chatting with the receptionist on a regular basis means that I just got half her blueberry muffin, which was very tasty. Dunno; that just seems like such a lonely (and often boring) job, especially at a company full of introverts!

Car goes to regular maintenance tomorrow. I love that the place I go, recommended forever ago by catya, is about a 10-15 minute walk, at max. So on days I WFH, I can drive there, drop it off, and walk home.

Starting work on essays; I'm having a difficult time remembering that it doesn't matter if I necessarily have what I think of as required experience in Psychololgy - since my undergrad was not Psychology - it's still worth applying. Especially to programs that are precisely what I'm looking for. Will be hard to not sell myself short, as I hate selling myself in the first place even when I _do_ feel qualified.

Still highly uncertain about the HCI program, since it _will_ involve at least some programming. But, it's the one I'm most confident about making it into, since my undergrad was in CS and all my experience from the last almost 10 years is in computers. It's also the most likely option with which I would be able to find a relevant position after getting the PhD, since psych research would tend to mean academia, and those are not easy positions to get. Will apply, mind you, but... programming. And also a distinct lack of a break from CS, although it will still be a break from QA.

GRE in early October. Taking a break from studying to give my brain a rest. I'm fairly sure that I'm not going to do as well as I did when I was still in college, which is somewhat frustrating, but a fair amount of the math on the GRE involves things I have trouble with - word problems, visual representations of anything at all, and such. So it's frustrating to think that it will not actually reflect my math ability (consider that I had a TA in college try quite hard to convince me to change majors to math from CS). Ah, well. The verbal stuff I don't think I've worstened on, although anything additional gains in points will be difficult as I'm down to words that I'm having trouble memorizing. And I always have some trouble with the questions involving interpretation of the reading passages, since their wording is often perplexing.

Rambling brain

What if fireflies only look like bugs when you get really close because they don't want you to know that they are fairies with glowsticks?

Or if the ghost plant really _is_ where fairies dance, and they light up oh so slightly when you aren't looking?

Maybe the wind and everything it moves - leaves, clouds, birds - are playing, dancing, putting on a show. How do you know they aren't?

Maybe rivers are talking to you as they rush past and yet stay where they are, or singing, or laughing. Maybe they're tickling the creatures which live in them, seeing if they can make them giggle.

Sometimes I need to be reminded to play, to stop being so stuck in what's likely or realistic or expected, to enjoy swingsets and trees and clouds and wind. Sometimes 'let's pretend' is the most important game I can play, no matter what I call it.

I've never been sure if it matters if energy work, astral travel, things like that are real or not, if they are useful tools or ways of thinking about things. If they have good effects, if they calm me.

I ground, I center. Why? Because if I don't, I lose my calm and can't get it back again.

Sometimes I wander around the insides of my mind, or maybe the insides of the astral plane. I don't care if it's real or not, although that was a very difficult thing to come to agreement with myself on, because it _helps_ me. Maybe it's a form of meditation, although that's not what I would call it.

As a child, I would sing to the creek in the backyard, because it was singing, too. I can remember long duets, although I remember no notes nor words. I still talk to and hug trees, and when I forget how to ground, they can help me to do so. Birds in flight, especially swallows and swifts, look like they are having so much _fun_, even though they are also hunting for their food. And maybe they are.

Silence and stillness help me to see what's around me, rather than just moving quickly through it. I'm no longer passing through, I'm part of things, and that's important to me. It's far too easy to forget to look, forget to listen, forget why it's so important to me to do so. And then I'm unhappy and I don't know why. I think this may be why I am so insistent on sharing bits of beauty and amusement with people when I notice them. Because I forget to look, so other people likely do, too.

This entry most probably brought to you by some combination of creating a Changeling character and attempting to start work on grad school essays. Also perhaps a certain amount of lack of sleep.

(no subject)

I have no shoes, a park with a nice stream, lovely trails, and lots of trees.

Ok, the no shoes is because I needed to escape the neighbor vaccuming his porch Right Now. And my feet are not up to walking on pebbles.

But good park, even with Mosquitos which seem to be everywhere anyway!