I'm going to try something new with this post. I'm going to put any non-relationship stuff at the top and all the relationship recovery stuff at the bottom. Everything will be clearly labeled with headings. So if you want to skip a section, feel free. This is likely going to be fairly long with sections some may be interested in, and others not. As a TL;DR warning, this is probably the longest post I've ever written at just shy of 4000 words.

Holidays

It's the holidays. I'm off and at home with my family. It's been good so far, but I've had a lot of time to think. That's both good and bad. I'll get to that later. We've been making cookies again. It's been fun and a good distraction. My sister, mother, and I have made spritz again, more cutouts, and gingerbread. We didn't make a 700 to 800 piece gingerbread Optimus Prime, but we still had fun. I brought down all my nice baking sugars for decorating, and we made some great looking stuff. I posted the photos here if you want to see them. On top of cookies, we went to see two movies: the Hunger Games: Catching Fire and 47 Ronin. Both were great. Otherwise, it's been a lot of family time and a lot of snow.

Travel Adventure

I headed out on Friday evening on the long, 5.5 hour drive to visit my family. It had been freezing rain the night before. So I had hoped that by the evening it would be fine. For the most part, it was. The drive, itself, is quite dull. From the Des Moines area all the way to Dubuque, it's very flat farmland with nothing of interest. Dubuque is where things change. That's about where the driftless area (the only place where no glaciation occurred during the ice age) starts. At that point, there's some really beautiful bluffs and hills.

About 13 miles in to Wisconsin, things changed. I hit black ice. My car decided that it wanted to go sight seeing. It started fishtailing around, and I ended up butt first in a ditch. When I came to a stop, I noticed the engine had stopped. So I tried to start the engine again, and it thankfully started right up. My tires were spinning though. I got a little traction here and there, but nothing solid. I ended up calling 911 to let them know I was stuck, but that I was fine. They were going to send someone out to find me if I needed it. So I spent some time trying to get out of the ditch. I didn't expect anything, but surprisingly, after some rocking back and forth, I ended up getting enough momentum to get out. It was exciting and scary all at once. I called 911 again to let them know I was fine and that they didn't need to send anyone. The roads had refrozen, and were not very safe. I was watching other vehicles spin out. I decided to slowly make my way to the next exit and spent the night in Platteville, WI. I think it was a smart move.

My car is 14 years old and has almost 170,000 miles on it. It's been very good to me over the years, but it's small and is starting to cost me more money than it's worth to keep up with the repairs. I've wanted to replace it for a long time, but I just haven't been in a financial situation that's made that possible. I want something a little bigger, like a crossover size. Unfortunately, those are some of the most expensive vehicles out there right now. I think I'll be stuck with high car payments no matter what. Still, I think it's probably time. Sometime in the next year I'll be replacing it. I know what car I'll end up with: the Ford Escape. I really like the car and the technology that comes with it. Once all my current debts are paid off, I'll make the leap. One of these days, my current vehicle is going to die, and I want to make sure I have the replacement before then. Here's hoping that little Focus makes it.

Anxiety and Weight Loss

I was surprised at how well I responded to the spin out. I wasn't cursing or angry. It was really just "Well....that happened." I wonder if it's because of the medication I'm on. About two months ago, before the breakup, I spoke with my doc about anxiety. Anxiety is an issue in my family. My mom has high levels of it, as do my siblings. It's affected me too, and as I get older, it seems like it gets worse. I've been kept awake at night by my own worries. I worry about things that are outside of my control. I have had minor panic attacks with things here and there. I felt like it was starting to negatively impact my life. So I chose to go on an anxiety medication to help me control it. It's not a very heavy drug. I don't feel like I'm not myself. I feel like I don't worry about things as much anymore, which is exactly what I wanted. I think my stress level isn't as high because of it, and that's good. The drug is also an anti-depressant, and I'd say it's a very good thing that I chose to be on this drug before any changes occurred in my life. I'm thankful for it.

My weight holding steady at 158.5 lbs, though had one day at 157. I think being at home is helping because I'm eating more. Bigger breakfast and bigger dinner. My appetite for sweets is returning. That's good. I think another thing that's contributing to my weight loss is the huge decrease in intake in soda. I used to drink Cherry Pepsi all the time. Back in El Paso, I was a little shocked by how much I actually drank. I cut back, but was still drinking a little bit here and there. A month or two before the breakup, I got hit with some serious acid reflux. It was so bad that I woke up with a nasty taste in my mouth that lingered all day. I was dealing with weeks of pretty severe reflux. I'd never experienced this before, and it had me very concerned. I went to the doctor for it, and got treated, but ultimately I ended up cold turkey cutting soda from my diet for a good month and a half. All I drank was water. As much as the heartburn experience sucked, I came out of it finally kicking my soda addiction. I no longer crave it, which is fantastic. I drink water more than anything else now, and I'm really happy about that. I can't help but wonder if that's contributing to this weight loss.

Steam

The Steam Machine is fun so far. The actual machine itself is nothing more than a custom gaming pc running a variant of linux. To me, there's nothing special about it other than it's a very dense, unique case that's fun to have. The controller is what everyone is interested in, and it's different than I expected. It takes some adjusting to. I'm surprised by the fact that video games don't consider it a controller. They actually map it to keyboard and mouse. The left touch pad is mapped to the WSAD keys for movement, and the right pad is the mouse pointer. It changes things because you can use it like a controller or like a touch screen. It has acceleration like a touchpad if you swipe it. There's force feedback that feels a bit like a mouse wheel. It clicks as you move around to give you a sense of movement. It also has two buttons on the palm that add to the controller experience. It's very intuitive, and the more I use it, the more I like it. For anyone that's interested, I shot an unboxing video with my phone. You can see that here. There are also a few photos I took of the devices here.

It so happens that right now the Winter Steam Sale is going on, and for any gamer out there, that means a drain on the wallet. Thankfully there aren't that many games I really want. So I don't think I'll spend as much this time. Still, it's always fun to check on the sales as they change throughout the day. I know some people aren't that interested in the trading cards. I didn't think I would be, but I have gotten into them a little. Maybe it's the collector in me. If you're interested in friending me on Steam, my steam id is janiukjf.

One thing that I find interesting, ever since the breakup, video games have been totally uninteresting to me. I'll play a little bit here and there to test out the machine and report any bugs I encounter, but nothing seems to interest me. I'll look through the games and end up with a "meh" feeling, and I'll turn it off. It's kind of surprising to me because I'd figure I'd want to escape into something, but I guess that's not the case. I'm sure my desire to play will come back at some point, but for now, it's not there.

Website and Internets

One thing that has been on my mind lately is this very website. I haven't touched the code or the layout for years. It's starting to show. There are some issues with the style sheets on some of the pages. I've just been neglecting it. I've thought many times through the years that I want to build something from scratch, and I think now is the time. Why not, right?

Warning! Coding nerd talk ahead! I've been uncertain about what language I want to use to build it. I've wanted to spend some time with Ruby over the years, and I've never actually done it. I might do that. I could also use Golang, which I spent a lot of time with in the recent past. It's a functional language, which is different than what I work with every day, and also seems like a direction the field is headed due to the multithreading capabilities. Still, it'd be fun to do something new. Maybe I'll try Scala. I do know for sure that I'm going to TDD the crap out of it, that it's going to be responsive design, that I'm going to build it around something like Angular.js, and that it's going to be open source. If you're a web dev reading this, I'd love your input on languages and why.

Another thing that I've grown tired of is the focus of my site. For a long time I thought maybe one day I could make a career out of professional speaking on gender issues, but I've really started to grow tired of it. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy it when I do get to speak, but that part of my life is in the past now. Unless some things change, and I get reinvigorated, I'm starting to feel like it's time to pass the torch to the younger, more interested folks. I definitely still care about my community and want to see people get more educated on gender and the transgender community. However, I think there are others out there that do this better than I ever could. I'm still going to mentor those that come to me with questions and what not, but that's gotten less and less over the years due to my lack of visibility for a while. I'd like to turn this site into a more personal site about the rest of my life and my interests: Gaming, Coding, Photography, etc. I'll still leave everything that's currently present on the site there for the most part, but it might be refactored somehow. I'm curious on people's thoughts on this. What do you think?

I've also been giving thought to either podcasting or vlogging. Vlogging would get me back into video work, which is something I used to do for fun, but it's also a lot of work. Podcasting would be fun, but podcasts are way more interesting with more than one person and a topic to focus on. In fact, the topic would be something I'd have to consider. I write about everything I'm feeling or thinking. I don't think that'd work so much for either a podcast or a vlog. What do you think? Would either of these be interesting? What should I talk about?

Living Situation

Living alone is starting to feel a little more ok. I'm remembering a bit more of what I used to do before my relationship. It was a lot of Netflix and a lot of internet time. I don't know that I want to fall into that trap again. I'm really enjoying going out to these meetups. It's really helped me feel social and gets me out of my comfort zone. I'm thinking of adding to that. Maybe I'll get back in to fencing again. I haven't fenced in a good 3 years, and I'm sure there's an SCA group in Des Moines that would take me. I've also been thinking a lot about heading to Area 515, which is a makerspace group. They have a biweekly arduino group, which is something I've wanted to learn more about for a long time. Arduinos are small, inexpensive, open source, programmable logic boards that can be used to make all sorts of things. I have one, and I've played with it a little, but nothing major. So it would be fun. I have yet to meet up with a photography group, which would be fun too. Hopefully I can find one before it gets warm out.

I haven't decided on a roommate yet. I'm torn between having someone in the house that provides company and helps me save a bit of money on rent, and giving up a little bit of my privacy, peace and quiet, and personal space. I have time to decide as the ex won't even pick up her stuff until the end of January. So, until then, I've got some things to think about.

Breakup Stuff

OK, here's the part where I talk about my former relationship. Let's start by saying I'd really like to scale back how much I talk about this. It's been over 5 and a half weeks now, and I really want to be moving on. I can't guarantee anything, because I guess I write about what I need to write about. But I can try, I guess.

I can tell I'm depressed. Sleep comes later than it used to, and I'm very tired in the morning when I get up. I would rather be asleep than awake. My dreams tend to be better than dealing with being alone, though less so recently. I've had several dreams with her in them this week. One involved me begging her not to leave me, and the other I'm having trouble remembering me. In both cases, I couldn't see her face, which is weird. My appetite is getting better, but it's still low. I'm kind of ho hum all the time. I rarely get high moments. I feel like I am wearing a mask now. It sucks.

The holidays don't help. During the regular work week, I can focus on my job. That gets me through the week just fine. I enjoy it, and I feel like it's fun. When I'm at home, I have a little time to myself, but not so much that I feel terrible. The holidays have had me around family, which has helped. This time, though, I'm feeling more of the loneliness than last time. I've had a lot more time to myself than when I was here a month ago. I'm thankful I'm surrounded by family though. I've just had a lot of time to think. I've been thinking in particular about the past three Christmases in which I spent it with her. I've also found myself thinking of her family. During the Steelers vs Packers football game, I couldn't help but remember that her dad roots for the Steelers and the Saints. Her sister's family roots for the Packers. Almost every time I visited, there was football on. I miss them. Her family is really nice. I hope they're having a good holiday.

So yeah, the holidays are sad without someone close to celebrate them with. A friend of mine is going through a divorce, and we've been chatting a bit about how crappy we feel. Both of us shared the same sentiment about just wanting the holidays to be over. They are wonderful if you have people you love to spend them with. I have my family, but it's not the same as having someone. I miss the joy of years past. Now I just get the constant stream of memories of the last several years and of how happy I was. It's such a stark contract to how I feel now that it takes a bit of the fun out of it. Of course...there's a February holiday coming up that I'm really not looking forward to either, but we'll take things as they come, I guess.

One of the things that kind of regressed my progress this weekend was Facebook. Yeah...did that stupid thing again and checked out her Facebook profile. She looks good. I really wish that temptation wasn't there. The problem is that I have mutual friends with her, and her family had friended me too. So, even when I don't see a post by her, I may see posts by others that include interactions with her. So I took steps to protect myself. I didn't unfriend them (despite seriously considering it), but I did unfollow them. That means I won't see any of their posts in my feed. I also created a no-chat list so that they wouldn't show up in my chat. Jess has two twitter accounts, and I went so far as to completely unfollow her there. No more reminders. Fewer temptations. I think it's a smart move and will help me a lot.

I've dealt with some extreme jealousy lately. Jess and I had a mutual friend. She recently came out to Jess, and it's drawn them closer. I feel like this young lady has essentially supplanted me as Jess' best friend. I sometimes wonder if there's something else going on there too. When Jess broke up with me, she said she never even looked at anyone else, and that it was only recently that she felt herself attracted to others. One can't help but wonder, but it's really none of my business. Either way, I find myself very jealous of her. I want Jess to be happy, but it stings to know you've been mostly replaced. This has been the focus of my negative feelings lately. Needless to say, this person is also on the unfollowed and no-chat list.

Another one of my friends posted on my Facebook wall a picture that states "Subconsciously it takes at least 6 - 8 months for the brain to process complete forgiveness for someone who hurt you emotionally." I'd like to know the source and the facts behind this quotation, but it wouldn't surprise me if this is true. All this anger and sadness inside will go away eventually. How long will it take me? That says at least 6 - 8 months. So it could be longer. At that point, will she even be around Iowa anymore? Will there even be potential for friendship? I don't know, but I do know that right now, I don't think of her as a friend. I think of her as a pleasantly painful memory. I think of her as a bit of a betrayer as well. She is like the searing pain right after a burn. I just hope I can heal and move on sooner rather than later.

I'm a cat person, and my sister has a dog. I spent some time over at her house, and her dog was always happy. I found myself thinking "I could get a dog..." a few times. My dad was quick to point out that I just want to fill the void that's left behind, and he's absolutely right. I probably won't get a dog, but if I did, I'd probably go with a Welch Corgi. They're small, which is good for me, and they're very smart. I'm definitely not making that decision quickly though. I'm hoping that with time, I'll find something better to fill that void than a dog. If I did follow through on the corgi, though, I'd have to name it Ein. After Cowboy Bebop, I'm sure there are so many corgis out there with that name.

Dating has never been easy for me. I've always been incredibly shy. Rarely have I been able to say anything to those that I'm really attracted to. Exceptions seem to be online, which is probably why I met my last two girlfriends via dating sites. I'm really not looking forward to having to re-enter the dating world. I really suck at it. I have very little confidence, and essentially feel like I have nothing to offer. I blame my lack of confidence on grade school. I was bullied a lot, called names, beat up here and there, and told I was a loser. After years of that, I eventually believed it, myself. In fact, during my freshman year of college, my friend, Seth, sat me down and told me that women looked at me because I was attractive, not because I was a freak. It opened my eyes at the time, but I can't say that it really changed that feeling. I have continued to harbor that feeling my whole life both consciously and subconsciously. It saps my confidence, self image, and self worth. Any time I've ever made a mistake in my life, I've attributed it to my being less than. I think it holds me back from true success. I don't believe in myself like I probably should. I don't believe I will ever be as good as my peers at what I do for a career. Unfortunately no amount of people telling me otherwise will ever make me believe any differently either. It is ingrained in me at this point. I fail at a lot of things in life, but this is my single greatest failing.

I know there is something I truly desire, and that is what I thought I had. I thought I had a close, deep, lasting bond of love. I thought I had started my own family. I was, and still am, ready to start a family. I thought I had someone in my life that loved me as much as I loved her. We used to play the "I love you more" game, and let me tell you, it truly sucks knowing you won that game. What I find myself wondering, though, is was I more interested in having love than who I loved? Is it possible that I was less attracted to her physically too and it was only a matter of time until it was over? Was she right? These are questions I probably won't ever have answers to. Although, it's quite possible I may be asking myself these questions to reduce my own cognitive dissonance about everything in the first place.

All I know is that I don't feel emotionally well. I'm depressed, sad, hurt, lonely, and I'm sick of it. I just don't want to feel this way anymore.