General
News
It feels really weird: I have an evening off! My anxiety levels are sky-high in spite of that, but that's just because I haven't had a chance to sit and relax yet.
As soon as I got home from work, I shoveled the WRX out of its snowbank on the property, cleaned the foot of snow off of it, started it, and pulled it forward a car length in preparation for it to be flatbedded into town tomorrow. It had some kind of catastrophic failure when I was driving it home from work a couple of weeks ago-- "cylinder 3 misfire"-- along with a flashing "check engine" light.
In any event, I crawled beneath it tonight and very quickly discovered that the exhaust pipe literally came one hundred percent disconnected from the driver's side muffler! Not only do I think this caused backpressure, which then resulted in the cylinder 3 issue, but I suspect this long-developing exhaust leak has been responsible for the poor engine performance and "bank 1 too lean" intermittent codes me and my mechanic have been fighting for over a year now!
Hopefully it won't involve a brand new cat-back exhaust system or something, because that would be super expensive and, well, I'm broke. But if it's a simple weld or something, that would be a great outcome.
Now I'm making dinner: two frozen chimichangas and some tater tots, in the air frier. After that, I think I can just chill in bed and continue Isaiah-- I got like two chapters in maybe a week ago, and have been so busy and stressed out that I've basically just been collapsing in bed whenever I have had a spare hour or two: no reading, no scripture, no video games, nothing.
At first I worried it was depression. But then I found this YouTube channel, and realized that I'm just deep in "autistic burnout". This makes so much sense, because it fits my symptoms exactly! I've actually been in a really good mood-- enjoying the cool stuff I'm doing at work, had a lot of fun serving my church community at all of the liturgies over the weekend, and so forth.
So I didn't feel like I was laying in bed out of a lack of interest in doing other things-- it was more that I just felt overstimulated, and frankly just wanted to stare at the paint on the wall. I mean, video games? That's music, and flashing lights-- yuck! And as it turns out, that was exactly what was going on! So I've actually been feeding into that these past few nights, just doing sort of "sensory deprivation-lite" with the free time I have had, and it has been helping me at work the following days.
Tonight and this weekend, I'm just going to focus on taking it easy from a sensory perspective. I am sacristan at Mass on Sunday morning, but otherwise have the weekend thankfully free.
In other news, my Commodore 64 Ultimate should be here in a matter of days! Everyone also chipped in on an RX 9070 XT for Duncan for Christmas-- yes, he already knows-- so we're getting in before any major video card price hikes probably inevitably hit.
I should find out about whether I'm progressing in the diaconate formation next week. The panel met yesterday I believe, so I think they are in deliberation mode over the paper packets everyone-- including me-- submitted. I was wondering why I'm feeling so nervous despite the fact that I totally trust God with this process, and I realized it wasn't because of the outcome per se, but more about dealing with the uncertainty-- which is another autism thing! I won't be upset if I get in, don't get in, or whatever happens-- but it's more like I just want to know one way or the other.
If they do like me on paper, I'm curious to see how the psych eval will go, because my anxiety and autism stuff will show up and undoubtedly be a huge point of conversation for them.
Anyway, my food is done, I'm going to go eat.
As soon as I got home from work, I shoveled the WRX out of its snowbank on the property, cleaned the foot of snow off of it, started it, and pulled it forward a car length in preparation for it to be flatbedded into town tomorrow. It had some kind of catastrophic failure when I was driving it home from work a couple of weeks ago-- "cylinder 3 misfire"-- along with a flashing "check engine" light.
In any event, I crawled beneath it tonight and very quickly discovered that the exhaust pipe literally came one hundred percent disconnected from the driver's side muffler! Not only do I think this caused backpressure, which then resulted in the cylinder 3 issue, but I suspect this long-developing exhaust leak has been responsible for the poor engine performance and "bank 1 too lean" intermittent codes me and my mechanic have been fighting for over a year now!
Hopefully it won't involve a brand new cat-back exhaust system or something, because that would be super expensive and, well, I'm broke. But if it's a simple weld or something, that would be a great outcome.
Now I'm making dinner: two frozen chimichangas and some tater tots, in the air frier. After that, I think I can just chill in bed and continue Isaiah-- I got like two chapters in maybe a week ago, and have been so busy and stressed out that I've basically just been collapsing in bed whenever I have had a spare hour or two: no reading, no scripture, no video games, nothing.
At first I worried it was depression. But then I found this YouTube channel, and realized that I'm just deep in "autistic burnout". This makes so much sense, because it fits my symptoms exactly! I've actually been in a really good mood-- enjoying the cool stuff I'm doing at work, had a lot of fun serving my church community at all of the liturgies over the weekend, and so forth.
So I didn't feel like I was laying in bed out of a lack of interest in doing other things-- it was more that I just felt overstimulated, and frankly just wanted to stare at the paint on the wall. I mean, video games? That's music, and flashing lights-- yuck! And as it turns out, that was exactly what was going on! So I've actually been feeding into that these past few nights, just doing sort of "sensory deprivation-lite" with the free time I have had, and it has been helping me at work the following days.
Tonight and this weekend, I'm just going to focus on taking it easy from a sensory perspective. I am sacristan at Mass on Sunday morning, but otherwise have the weekend thankfully free.
In other news, my Commodore 64 Ultimate should be here in a matter of days! Everyone also chipped in on an RX 9070 XT for Duncan for Christmas-- yes, he already knows-- so we're getting in before any major video card price hikes probably inevitably hit.
I should find out about whether I'm progressing in the diaconate formation next week. The panel met yesterday I believe, so I think they are in deliberation mode over the paper packets everyone-- including me-- submitted. I was wondering why I'm feeling so nervous despite the fact that I totally trust God with this process, and I realized it wasn't because of the outcome per se, but more about dealing with the uncertainty-- which is another autism thing! I won't be upset if I get in, don't get in, or whatever happens-- but it's more like I just want to know one way or the other.
If they do like me on paper, I'm curious to see how the psych eval will go, because my anxiety and autism stuff will show up and undoubtedly be a huge point of conversation for them.
Anyway, my food is done, I'm going to go eat.