Tina's not-so-secret diary 📓🔓

[17:25] I hope this new used car changes my fortunes. I hope I'm not piling all of my hopes and dreams onto something that can't take the weight. This car has had at least 2 owners, possibly more; what am I going to do if I get a worn out car that's going to break down 3 days after I get it? I've logged so much time in Lyfts and subsidised medical transports over the past 9 months, I could have washed a 747 by myself by hand with a shower loofah. I'm accustomed to not having a car, but that doesn't mean I like it. This is a motorised society that's only going to get worse. We're not going to get trains and busses, we're going to get single-passenger Teslas with hallucinatory AI autopilots. We're not going to get better sidewalks, we're going to get the ones we already have torn up to widen the roads. We're not going to get more grocery stores, we're going to get 1 grocery store with fleets of AI-piloted delivery drones. We're not going to get more jobs, we're going to lose the ones we have to AI. Honestly, AI isn't the problem here. It's just my brain is taking me down a flight of fancy because I'm worried about the car. I remember being worried about the sedan; about how I had to spend $200 every month getting the newest problème du jour fixed. How the constant stream of small things were taking money away from the big problems. How a new vibration would start every other time I went to the store. How I couldn't get even the least of the problems fixed after I coronaquit my job because the calling centre wanted to install fucktillion megabytes of spyware onto my computer to monitor how I spent company time and the voice-talent agency was going to start making AI duplicates of everyone's voices to sell to Google for a cool million and everyone's non-profit organisation uses WordPress plugins instead of actual code now so I had to scrape by on charity and whatever I could pick up from Bandcamp sales. How everyone's solution to every problem ever is "get a job, ya deadbeat". You try getting a job when your car breaks down and the bus system loses 2 more routes and gets 10 miles trimmed off the ones that stay because the city decided to dump an extra $30M onto the police department. Is a functional car so much to ask? Just something I can go to the park in, that I can take to the store, that I can commute to work in, that I can buy the occasional thing in? Is that so much to ask? I just need this one small change. I won't promise never to ask for anything ever again, but right now I really need this 2007 SUV to last at least a year before encountering any problems.

[01:54] I've seen some pretty amazing breast growth over just the past couple of days; at least a couple inches around. HRT really is magic.

[14:35] I know that "staying alive to spite the fascists" isn't the greatest reason to get up in the morning, but please don't kill yourself. Anyone reading this, just don't do it. If you were looking for a sign to stay alive, here it is.

[11:17] I don't know why I'm trying to pry into this person's life so much. Or these people's lives. Don't let's pretend I'm not trying to pry into several people's lives all at the same time. Life would be a lot easier if I didn't do this, but I always wanted to be the Sherlock Holmes/James Bond type when I was in high school and so I trained myself to be observant. Sounds good on paper doesn't it? The problem is that, as I got older, my observations wove into my confirmation bias and now it just makes me depressed, frantic, and panicky all the time. So maybe it doesn't matter what this person spent the past year doing, or why this other person had so many kids over at their flat yesterday, or whether this other other person drove off with a man this morning. Maybe it's their business, not mine.

[19:04] I feel like I intentionally isolated myself by not going for a walk this morning. I woke up at the right time, but I found excuse after excuse not to go. I used to be able to make myself believe that there was some karmic reason or something for me not doing a thing, like, if I'd done x thing, then y bad thing would have happened as a result. That hasn't worked in quite some time. I guess I know better now, even though I know I'm going to make this mistake again and again. Tomorrow is sunday, absolutely no one will be about. Hell, I could even take one of those early morning, sun isn't quite up yet, night side of morning walks that I used to take. I know I'm not going to be abducted and taken to El Salvador, I only used that as an excuse to stop taking walks or even going outside for prolonged periods of time. I used it as an excuse to detransition everytime I went to the store so that I could feel like a victim. Yeah, a victim of my own stupid choices maybe.

[19:41] I really can't skip my walks ever again. Look at me! I'm a wreck! I've been on edge all day for no apparent reason, ever since I dreamt about adding div classes to my homepage this morning. I feel like the dream was about something else too, but I can't remember what. R was there, so was S. But I felt at the time that the only way I could ever be happy was if I added div classes to my homepage. Like... I guess. I mean, if div classes will make me happy, then I'll do it.

[22:35] I just had a really loud orgasm with the windows completely open. I'm not sure why I'm feeling guilty about that, but like, it's obviously too late to do anything about now. You can't put the cum back in fhe girl, you know? I know at least 3 people on my side of the building were home and their windows were open too. Oh well, it's Saturday night in middle america, you're gonna hear some sex sounds. That's just the way the biscuit doughs.

May 15 2025

[14:56] I had an odd dream last night. It was quite cinematic, to the point I felt I was watching this film for the umpteenth time. In this illusory film, a woman wandered out in front of a chariot and got decapitated by a metal piece on it, but I saw all the camera cuts and everything, being exactly where they should be to quickly disguise the fact that the actress got replaced by an articulated dummy. I even remember analysing the over-the-top cracking sound and deciding it was someone breaking a bunch of dry spaghetti, mixed with the sound of someone biting into an apple and a wet rag slapping against a stone countertop. Incidentally, this was the same bit of foley I had to do for a project once. Mix all those sounds together and fucktuple the bass multiplier and you have an over-the-top melodramatic sound effect for the illusion of someone's head flying off. Not sure why I decided to dream about screen tech, but oh well. Why does anyone dream about anything?

[15:15] I had a doctor's appointment yesterday. I wore my most feminine non-dress-related outfit that I own, eyeshadow, lipstick, and my hair in Louise Belcher-style pigtails, and never once was I glanced at sideways or forced to justify my own existence. The only question I had was about a guy I rode in the lift with, but he seemed more interested in his phone than anything else. My deadname is on my chart, but everyone I asked to call me Tina did. Certainly there are bad things happening to trans women, like what the State of Florida is trying to do to Marcy Rheintgen, and these are important to know about. But I think that, more often than not, what ends up happening is that we sit here and scroll through our social media feeds, getting a steady stream of bad news, and we just sort of marinate in it. It makes us decide to postpone a trip somewhere, or cancel an appointment, or present as our non-preferred gender before going outside. The thing is, a lot of cispeople haven't actually met a trans person, or they have without realising it. Even a lot of cispeople who tend to agree that there's something wrong with trans people, if they actually met one of us, we'd both make smalltalk like anyone else. "Hey, nice day. / Sure is. Gonna be hot tomorrow. / Yep, time for the air conditioning again I guess. / Yep. Have a nice day. / Same to you." Sure, you're probably going to meet Fascists Georg at some point, but more often than not, the guy at the bus stop isn't going to think anything less of you for being there. Someone on my neocities dash (to my eternal shame, I can't remember who) was talking about meeting your neighbours by being outside regularly, with the basic idea there being that your neighbours are just as afraid of you as you are of them. If they know everyone else on the block except you, that's a big question-mark they have to deal with, which is usually done by gossiping. Then we get back into prejudice and bias again. If anyone new arrives, they're going to be half out of their mind with worry about whether this new neighbourhood is safe, so you've got to be there to show them that you're friendly and they don't need to worry about you. I'm trying to do that now, after about 10 years of not even attempting it. And I'm on "smile, wave, and say 'how're you doin'?" terms with the new person across the carpark.

[07:42] One thing i forgot about, walking in the winter. Walking in the summer, it always feels like my exposed skin is in a microwave oven. I used to sunburn really easy. Now I'm taking 4 medications that all tell me to cover up better before going out in the sun. Any direct sunlight at all makes me feel like some kind of photophobic lizard who accidentally found its way out of the cave. Everyday before going for my morning stroll, I post an abduction canary on my walking journal: "I'm going for a walk at [time]. If you still see this notice at [time about an hour later], assume I've been abducted by ICE." The prevailing logic being, if the generative AI system that Elon Musk replaced the NSA with hallucinates my name on a list of undocumented immigrants, I won't be able to delete that notice and you'll know why I stopped posting. Except, you're probably not even looking at my walking journal, and you probably wouldn't even notice if the updates stopped. I guess I do it more for my friends. R used to be a nationalist and A is from Russia and understands the score. "Putin" is remarkably similar to putain, the French word for "whore". Anyway, time to post my abduction canary and get on with it.

[07:55] Actually, I feel like shit. I'm not going to take a stroll today.

[08:30] I hate the fact I have to look at all of my food with suspicion these days. Quite honestly, I'm surprised listeria and E. coli aren't a worse problem than they are considering how Prime Minister Elon Musk downsized every health inspector in America at the same time. You get a bad case of listeria from a box of cereal that was allowed to sit outside in the sun for 3 days, so you go to the hospital where you get the flu from the nurses who all quit wearing masks for any reason in 2021 because it was too much of an infringement on their freedom, go viral on Tiktok because one of the nurses was making fun of your weird coughing and there's no more HIPAA enforcement, then you catch MRSA from equipment that hasn't been sterilised since November 2024, and then your heart stops and when the doctor does open-heart massage so he can charge more, he restarts your heart whereupon you promptly die of peritonitis because he hasn't washed his hands in a week. Oh well, you die content in the knowledge that the doctor's new yacht didn't go through quality-assurance inspection and he'll die of carbon monoxide poisoning belowdecks from the faulty motor, which will cause the boat to crash right through the boathouse because the safety inspector who was going to recommend a full rebuild of the splintery old docks at the marina got laid off by the state legislature before he could write any citations.

[10:22] But more than that, I hate that all i know how to do anymore is bitch and whinge and complain about shit, entirely by myself in this stupid flat, waiting for clients who will never come, or sales that will never happen. The rest of my graduating class is full of happy families who look forward to what tomorrow will bring, so is the graduating class after that, and the one after that, all the way up to the current generation of people who all have their shit together while I waste away in this room doing fuckall and second-guessing decisions that i made decades ago. Oh fuck, we're back on this tilt again.

[16:22] I used to love Star Wars when I was a kid. I wasn't too interested in the non-film canon (ie. what goes on between films or at the same time in a different place), but I really liked the films. I would watch the original trilogy on repeat pretty much, which was quite a feat considering it was on VHS. But, I never usually got to the end of the film. I would get to a point where it was just starting to lose my attention, then I would stop it. But I distinctly remember the Cloud City interiors when Luke and Vader were fighting. I loved nighttime cityscapes back then; looking at them, drawing them, making them in MS Paint; and the interior of Cloud City piqued that interest. I just finished watching Empire Strikes Back and... nothing. Back when I was a kid, the wind, the depth, the lights, the very idea of being on that catwalk in Cloud City was one of the best things ever. Today, nothing. I was just watching a film. Looking back at it, I think it was probably Pokémon that put a stop to my Star Wars obsession. Whatever. Star Wars doesn't spark joy anymore. Hell, I haven't even watched the prequel trilogy since I got it into the datahoard. For that matter, I've never even seen Episode III. I kinda had to force myself to go to Episode II when it was in cinemas, I never even rented a DVD copy from Applause Video. Basically, the only reason I still watch the original Star Wars trilogy is so I can remind myself of what I've lost. Whereas, I only started watching the complete Star Trek programmes as an adult— like, I remember watching TNG and Voyager on TV when i could pin it down and when it wasn't on too late when I was a kid, but I only discovered the library had all the shows on DVD when I was 21. That was the first time I'd ever seen the original Star Trek from the '60s or any of its films. I'm still in my Star Trek obsession, and now, because I'm so old, I'm gonna stay in it. I've formed my whole adult existence around the reliability of my annual Star Trek rewatches, and nothing is going to snap me out of it. But, it's too late for Star Wars. I'm too old now, incapable of childlike wonder. Cloud City is just a painting, not an adventure.

[15:06] How do we attain a balance of staying informed and staying sane? This regime is wall-to-wall insanity, and keeping up with every single fricken little thing is going to drive us insane. Where do we draw the line? How much insanity can one take before needing to set the phone down and cool off for a while? I tried to shut out all news altogether when the year started, but this turned out to be not only unwise, but also impossible. The only way to shut out all news is to cancel your internet subscription, hurl your smartphone off a tall building, and stay inside forever. On the other side of it, marinating in bad news by finding reporters who continue to treat Donald Trump as just any other president is going to lead to a complex. It's important to remember 2 things:

     1. Trump is a class-A bullshitter
     2. Regular people aren't fascists

Does Trump have supporters in amongst the regular people? Yes he does, but so does the Church of Scientology. We all knew the guy in high school who wanted to join the army so he could go kill people and get paid for it; the only thing I have to say about that is he should stop eating so many spiders. Fascists Georg is an outlier adn should not have been counted. Once you quit seeing people as potential enemies, your overall stress level goes down. I'm not saying "stop being on guard against bad people", I'm saying stop giving Trump's propaganda a seat at your table. The media loves to report on Trump because they're underpaid and overworked, and hate drives engagement. Once you become incensed about something enough to engage with it, the corporate feudal state wins. You get fed more hate engagement, and more and more, until you finally internalise the propaganda and you can't function without thinking something bad is going to happen to you.

[06:50] Oh what, so I can't have the neocities code editor open without my computer's heatsink fan preparing for takeoff? I never had this problem on Windows.

[02:21] About yesterday's entries. Am I truly in love with the new girl in #2? Probably not. I was probably just hormonal, since I was late with my oestradiol again yesterday. It's just, I'm not accustomed to these emotional rollercoasters having to do with anything but sorrow and despair— i've had more crying fits than I care to think about since I started HRT, but I've never had really anything else happen. I think what happened was, my oestrogenised brain decided to fall in love instead. This is probably why so many girls start puberty and then suddenly have these flashes of desire for seemingly random people, followed by intense despair and swearing they'll never ever fall in love again, then the next week coming back with a new crush. Chat, I have the hormone concentration of a 14-year-old girl right now, so yeah. I'm going to leave those entries where they are, because I've never deleted an entry that I made in the middle of a faux-depressive episode so why should I start now? It'll be good for me to see how my mood swings, this way I can predict when the next one happens, how I'm likely to act, and be able to identify it when it happens. I'm still open to being friends with her, because friends are good to have, but I'm not in love with her.

[08:57] Cool! Randomly nervous again! Fuck this shit! :D

[11:34] We've got a problem, chat. I think I'm falling in love.

[11:39] #2 moved out last month, I think I said that. Well, the flat turned over REAL quick, and now there's this really butch girl with the cutest ponytail ever moving in there. She's built like a construction worker and like... I'm smitten. I don't know yet, but if I fall in love with this girl, I fall HARD. I was downstairs getting the post and she was coming inside with an armful of a disassembled coffeetable or something, so I got to hold the door open for her. Secretly, I was hoping I would meet her because I wore my Linux Lesbian Lanyard and I never do that unless I'm going to a doctor's appointment. Oh, I'm all fluttery. My hands are shaking, my heart is playing pattycake... what should I do, chat? Idfk.

[11:50] Usually what ends up happening is, I find a cute girl and discover in short order that she has a generic-looking boyfriend. I never say anything or acknowledge that I found her attractive at all, then I go slowly mad. I never pursue anything because I want to be safe and never have my heart broken. But why shouldn't I be happy? Why have I decided it's my fate to stay single until I die? Why can't I cuddle someone under the blanket on the couch and watch Sleepless in Seattle or something? Come on, universe; you brought her to my building, can she be single too? Please? I won't ask for anything else ever again.
OH GOD I'M IN LOVE IM IN LOVE I AM I AM...... HOW??? SO FAST???

[12:00] I said once that I'm aromantic. I said the reason for that was how my mum's friend from work was acting around her boyfriend; how she was being all coy and hint-dropping and doing all this symbolic shite with Facebook and Youtube, and how it reminded me of how I used to be in high school. It seems to me that, if you like someone, you tell them. Act normally around them, don't pretend like you're in fucking high school. I held the door, so she knows my voice; it's pretty common for people in Middle America to talk to someone on the ground from their deck. I can be on the deck drinking a cup of coffee or just leaning against the railing when she's coming home, and I can have a short chat with her as she's going inside. No one's personal space is being invaded, I'm not in her face, she can end the conversation by going inside. How much safer can you get? Start small, work up to friendship, it's just like The Sims. Well, at least I'm not panicking anymore, that's good.