Looks like I'm sensitive to SNRIs in general; after starting duloxetine, I got teeth clenching, weird visual effects when trying to sleep, mild hypomania, and now I have stuck in my head Neil Sedaka singing "I love my little tentacle girl! Squiiiirming tentacle girl! I love my sweet tentacle girl! And each and every leg on her rear!"

I was standing cheek to jowl with two others - Autumn on my left, don't know who on my right. "It's merging time, woo!" was exclaimed, and three triangles were formed with our fingers - each person creating a half with the two others. When we finally got all three triangles to overlap, the physical merging started; as I could feel my cheeks starting to adhere to the others, we intoned "We have our mouth!" As the cheeks melted away and we grew closer, I marveled at wiggling my tongue in the now-cavernous area, not being able to touch the sides. Again we intoned, "We have our mouth!" There was a flash of light, and the combined entity was revealed - lying on the green riverbank, looking up at the stars.

It's now just shy of two months since moving back in with my parents in Chicago, and just over a year of funemployment.

Mom really has been getting more forgetful and confused by things, although she's always been vaguely ditzy in some ways; there's no question that she's the source of ADD in the family. While it's definitely gotten notably worse in the past year or five, it's hard to tell if it's "natural" (i.e. she's in her mid-seventies) or if she'll follow in her mom's Alzheimer footsteps. No cognitive defects AFAICT - just a really terrible memory.

Dad has been on a mess of drugs - statins and blood thinners and who knows what else - that screw around with his sleep and give him leg cramps and probably a bunch of other things that he doesn't talk about; while he's gotten squirrelier over the years and his driving has gotten even more frightening (pro-tip: you shouldn't keep tailgating people like you have the reflexes of a twenty year-old when you're in your seventies) overall he hasn't really changed much. He shows a bit more stiffness than he used to, but otherwise he's the same old sperg-engineer Dad.

Me... well.

I'm still pretty depressed (as expected) but there's less ideation and I'm engaging more; in that sense moving here has been at least somewhat successful. I still have little motivation to go out and do much of anything, though, and I find myself stewing over what the future could or should bring. The tech industry seems to be continuing in the directions I haven't liked - that is, rapid deployment and change without regard to stability combined with the deprecation of sysadmin in favor of deveops - so that seems like an unlikely direction to continue in, unless I were to move quite far laterally or down.

While I've started rearranging my room more to my liking, boxing up the stuff my parents and sister have left here, it still doesn't really feel like mine and there's the chronic thought running through my head of "How long will I actually remain here? And if so, does it actually matter if I change things?" and sometimes continues along to the heat death of the universe and other bits in the Nihilist Arby's vein.

I tried to book an appointment at a counseling center about two weeks ago; while they said that the first slots would open up in about three weeks, I also got the impression that the person taking my info was kind of dubious at my responses. In some sense, this is true; I put on my cheerful "talking to bog-standard humans" voice and refrained from going into my laundry list of woes, keeping it short instead.

I suppose I should go and poke around Chicago more, but that involves getting out of the house (and getting out of bed.)

As it turns out, Amtrak Express didn't call Mom *at all* about my packages; she called them on her own to check up on the status of my shipment. And in my later email to her, when I said "second shipment" she thought I was referring to the stuff I sent via UPS. So she called them again, and found that my boxes are still there. I went upstairs to get dressed, and came back down to find... they had left without me.

Have I moved back into a sitcom?

First night's dreams in Chicago included crying, my bicycle rusting and falling apart as I was riding it home, and collapsing and vomiting on the front lawn; I'd say I have some issues with moving back to my parents' place in Chicago. My stomach (physically) hurts from the in-dream retching, too.

I wasn't my usual self, either, but a blonde-grey haired woman (whose eyes turned pink after I barfed) so that's extra-unusual.

This page about "Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria" has been making the rounds on Facebook; while I have yet to find much of anything elsewhere about what that page claims, boy howdy does that describe a lot of my behavior. When I was a little kid, sitting by myself and feeling somewhat upset, the sounds of other people laughing or clearly enjoying themselves often brought me to tears; this has not changed much over the years other than me being baffled by my own reactions (while still remaining super upset). My spergy difficulties with correctly gauging intended expression almost certainly exacerbate this, and probably add to the feelings of alienation I have much of the time.

All sorts of cheerful "What will I be missing in the SFBA after I'm gone?" packing thoughts, bah.

Ran into my pal/landlord in the hall, and told him that my sister was going to be visiting next week, and that I was likely to move out sometime July-ish. He was slightly surprised, but seemed OK with it, and was extremely sympathetic to the reasons I gave for going. We spent a while longer chatting and lamenting the state of what San Francisco has become, and he mentioned that because he actually owns the place he's somewhat locked-in to living here now - although he did mention moving elsewhere and renting the place out as a possibility.

He's one of the few friends I have left in SF. Pretty much everyone else has moved out, have faded into being acquaintances, or are people I've never been especially close to. The same goes for the Bay Area in general, I suppose; I have precious few roots remaining, and between my inabilities to leave the apartment (or get out of bed on a regular basis, har har), to engage with people without careful spoon-planning, or going somewhere that takes more than half an hour of transit... well, that's not making my interpersonal connections any healthier.

I feel like I should add more, but it seems like all I have to say is just the same old recapitulation.

SpaceX called and said that they're passing on hiring me; the position has shifted and they want someone with more Windows experience and background (not that they interviewed me on that at all.) Guess it's back to plan B, "fill out applications for grad school". In retrospect, I'm not that surprised; the positions I've had (or applied for) that have had long delays in the process have indicated internal turmoil, a bad fit for me personally, or both. Still quite bummed about it, though.

I suppose while everything else is tumultuous I may as well designate DW my primary journal site now and only xpost to LJ. Not sure whether I want to bother importing my journal entries or mostly let them lay where they are. (Might update and repost my Japan travel ones here, though.)

Oh, S2 style customization, my old nemesis. Nothing like having to bust out the "take screenshot"+photo editing software to figure out which color produces what in http://www.dreamwidth.org/customize/options?group=colors (especially since some styles render a bit differently than others, yay.)

LJ still isn't dead. I'm surprised.