• mood: tired
• listening: dead silence. maybe the whirring of my laptop's fans

I'm fucking exhausted. I stayed up late last night dicking around with my .mp3 library, trying to get everything put together so that I could upload all of them to my Sonim and use that as an .mp3 player. there's been a bit more of a learning curve than I'd like to admit, though not much of one. I probably make things a lot harder for myself than they need to be by using programs like foobar2000 for file management and shit. idk. I'm turning into an insufferable digital hipster about my gadgets.

I've also been just really psyching myself out staying on top of the news about tech. I learned about that study where they tested several LLMs to see if they would choose to blackmail and/or murder host employees for self-preservation. (spoiler alert: they did.) this took me to a video about a nightmare scenario in which AI essentially kills us off by 2030. I couldn't finish that one. I can't handle it.

it's beyond anxiety for me. anyone who has OCD knows how the OCD brain responds to stress. it's not just "wow, this is scary". it's not even normal anxiety: "wow, we're all gonna die". it's "wow, we're all gonna die, and I bet I'm gonna turn into one of those cult leader family annihilators who kills everyone I love to save them from robot overlord death". I legitimately hate having OCD so much. but I will never shut up about having it or what it's like, because I think it's important to destigmatize and bring awareness to this terrible condition. if I'm frank and I say that my intrusive thoughts are about horrible, gruesome, violent things, and then I explain that I don't want any of these things to happen and they are my worst fears ever, hopefully those who aren't familiar with OCD can learn that it's like being shown a personalized horror movie on repeat without my consent.

lately, my OCD has been of the pure O variety. OCD is really cruel. for the past few years, it's mostly been about contamination--which, like, of course it has, in the aftermath of the pandemic. I have successfully overcome that one by about 80% thanks to skillful ERP and a week in the Hawaiian jungle with loved ones. (nothing like living off-grid to remind you that dirt don't hurt.) I also realized I was using my phone to seek reassurance--"will XYZ kill me?" on repeat to Google--and so doing without a smartphone has been great for that. naturally, then, I'm stuck in my own head with the intrusive thoughts, and they're all about hurting the people I love the most in my life. like, physically hurting them. it's really terrible. there was a TV show once that showed a guy trying to check himself into a psych ward because he was convinced he would kill his pregnant wife. I couldn't find it for the purpose of this post, but I also once read an article about another man who attempted to take his own life, convinced he would otherwise take his wife's. yes, to have OCD is to live inside of a brain that convinces you that you are capable of murder, even if it's the last thing you ever want to do.

so anyway, it's naturally a bit hard to sleep in these conditions. I turned to my smartphone for relief and distraction when I still had one, but now I don't. I'm glad to be back on reading books, but that only goes so far. here we are again, sitting in front of a screen trying to pretend I don't live inside my head.

at least I'm up to shit here.