Tag: rage

‘Burned out’ doesn’t even come close to describing how I feel

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

On any given day, here are the things that I like to accomplish in my free time:

  • Write
  • Run
  • Watch wrestling
  • Watch tv in general
  • Play Fire Emblem Heroes and/or Pokémon Go
  • Do surveys

Coincidentally, that just so happens to be the list of things that I so rarely get to do anymore, on account of the fact that I’m just so endlessly busy, with a plate so perpetually full, that I’ve been feeling on the cusp of anxiety attacks at just how much stuff I feel that I have to do on a regular basis, with practically no help at all.

The fact that I’m writing now is a miracle in itself, and I mentally would really like to accomplish a whole fuckton of writing that’s been backlogging in my brain as well as on the living document I keep a list of topics and things I’d like to write about but the reality is that as much as I love to write, there’s only a certain amount of it I can do daily before the topics begin to run into each other and I put out a bunch of bullshit that I’m not happy with.

Over the last few weeks, my daily schedule hasn’t really changed so much as it’s just had things added to it, as some of them have finite timelines in which they should be accomplished.  However, it’s these extra things that have nickeled and dimed their way into overfilling my plate on a regular basis, and the’ve all been constantly bleeding into all facets of my time not spent working and/or raising a child, that I’ve hit the point where “burned out” doesn’t come close to describing how I feel so much as I just simply feel like I’m drowning.

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Pour one out for my dead treadmill

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My treadmill died this weekend.  I feel like I’ve lost a limb.

Ever since the start of the coronavirus pandemic really began, one of the first things to obviously go, was, the gym.  Something that I’d been consistently doing for literally ten straight years, and if I were factoring in the sporadic working out I did intermittently while I was freelance, butted up against the time before that when I was working and had a gym membership, then probably 15 straight years.

It was not an easy pill to swallow, but it was made easier by the fact that it also coincided with the birth of my daughter, so frankly I was too busy to even consider working out in the first place anyway.  But once things starting settling down (for the time being), I began to notice that my shirts were starting to feel a little loose in the arms, and tight in the stomach.  Obviously my body was beginning to revert back to a lesser state because I wasn’t exercising at all, and most definitely not aided by the sleep schedule of a new father.

Eventually, I reached a point where I couldn’t take it anymore, so I dusted off the treadmill that my mother-in-law bequeathed to us, and began running on it.  I remember the first time I really did a lengthy jog on it, I did probably about 40 minutes at a light pace, and I felt absolutely incredible afterward.  I was soaking in sweat but my body felt alive again, and I most definitely felt elation at the endorphins that were popping anew in my system for the first time in a long time.

Needless to say, running, and running on the treadmill has been the only real substantial exercise I’ve been doing since like, April of last year, and it’s been the only real saving grace to my rapidly shrinking and deteriorating physical state, since I haven’t lifted weights in quite literally, almost an entire year.

My angst and rage at the legions of ignorant fucks who couldn’t be bothered to wear masks and eradicate all this bullshit in just a month and that ‘Murica is still in this fucking predicament to where I still can’t work out, knows no end.

Anyway, I eventually settled into a pretty good every-other-day running routine, and I always feel pretty good after running, because as I’ve always stated as one of my personal exercise mantras, is that time is never wasted when exercising.

But a few days ago, I noticed that my treadmill was starting to make a really loud sound.  Typically I wear my AirPods and am often times watching shit on the WWE Network, so I can’t really hear the ambient noise of the treadmill, but when I was winding down, it was noticeably loud.  I chalked it up as an anomaly, and hoped it would be gone the next time I ran.

It wasn’t.  I popped open the mechanical panel, to see if there was anything obvious about why it was making such noise.  Nothing seemed amiss, and I ran it on a low setting, with the panel open to see if there was any loose parts.  If anything at all, it sounded like body noise that was causing things, which I guess with the aging, vibrating, and the fact that I probably run with an elephant’s stride, shit had jarred around throughout its age.

I closed up the panel and decided to just run anyway, and brace occasionally on the console, to see if I could settle the noise down.  It seemed to be okay at first; but then three minutes into my run, everything just kind of clunked to a stop, and I’m surprised I didn’t hurt myself in the process being brought down from 6.5 mph to 0.

I got off the treadmill and watched it abruptly reset and made a noise, reset and make a noise.  Obviously, something was wrong with it, so I pulled the plug.

As far as I can tell, the treadmill was dead.  I haven’t ran since.

Obviously, I’m at a crossroads where I definitely want a new treadmill to replace the dead one, but I’m not sure if I want a fairly inexpensive direct replacement of what just died, which would probably run me around 300-400, but mythical wife is really suggesting that we spring for something way nicer.  But at the same time, I want to believe that maybe 2021 will be a year in which with vaccinations, I might be able to return to a gym, to which in those instances, my running at home will definitely reduce dramatically as I would be working out at gyms again, to which why would I want to have an expensive treadmill collecting dust?

I don’t know, really.  For the time being, I’m going to have to resort to running outdoors again, but I’m at the mercy of the elements, and the fact that there are still occasionally fucks without masks out there, and I definitely don’t want to catch their coronaHIV while I’m just trying to exercise.

But I’m super sad that my treadmill died. 😢

Love him or hate him, Tom Brady is a winner

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not that I’ve been paying that much attention to the NFL this season other than the ironically entertaining aspects of a season that I maintain probably shouldn’t have happened in the first place; if it were up to me, the upcoming Superb Owl would be the Washington Redskins Football Team versus the Buffalo Bills, so that we could have a repeat of 1991, but a team with an idiotic interim name and a 7-9 record would, give the Buffalo Bills a loss in the Superb Owl, for old times’ sake, and the season would end in an ironic combination of some things change, some things stay the same.

Instead, we have the heavily favored Chiefs, which in itself is a little difficult to comprehend, because for the longest time the Chefs (yes the Chefs) were that one team that always made it to the playoffs, but would always get bounced in the second round, usually losing to like the Steelers or Broncos, and nobody would ever really take them seriously as legitimate contenders, especially since Andy Reid took over, and that guys manages timeouts like he manages cheeseburgers, which is to say he devours them all, and then there’s nothing left at the end.

And opposing the Chefs, is a team that hasn’t sniffed a championship since 2002, but at the very helm of it is a guy that has sniffed more than his share of Lombardi trophies in his time, in none other than Tom. Period. Brady. Period.

Just about anyone with a sports pulse knew of the general story of how Tom Brady left the New England Patriots, and instead of retirement, he just kind of inexplicably signs with, of all the teams in the NFL, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  A team that had gone 59-101 over the last decade, and was coming off of three straight losing seasons, with two of them placing last in the pitiful NFC South division.

For a guy that literally had nothing left to prove, as he already has six Superb Owl championships, an underwear model wife, and lord knows how much money earned in his career, another season for a cellar-dweller like the Bucs seemed like a really sad way to end his career, and likely injured on the way out as a shit team usually can’t protect their QB.

But I guess Brady really wanted to prove that he could win without Bill Belichick, and put to rest permanently the answer to the question of who really was the talent behind the Patriots’ success throughout the last 20 years, and seeing as how one has reached the Superb Owl, while the other didn’t even make the playoffs, I guess the answer is pretty abundantly clear now, but it really shouldn’t have been a surprise.

Love him or hate him, Tom Brady truly is the GOAT of football.  It doesn’t even matter if the Bucs win the Superb Owl or not, although me personally I can’t say that I kind of would be rooting for Brady, despite the fact that I’m most definitely no fan of the Bucs, but I’ve never really had any issue with Brady, and I respect the greatness.  But he’s already proven his point and one that really was inconsequential in the grand spectrum of things but was clearly still very important to him to stamp his claim over Belichick as the real reason for the Patriots’ success.

But really, I just kind of sadistically enjoy how everyone fucking hates Tom Brady so much, but it’s like he feeds off the hate and burning rage that his existence incites within haters, and it only makes him that much more effective.  Patrick Mahomes is a legend in his own right, being someone who was capable of lifting the once-hapless Chefs into becoming the respectable defending champion Chiefs, but in two weeks’ time, he’ll be going up against the literal god of professional football, and he’ll be back to square one at having his own thing to prove.

In the end, I don’t really care who wins, because the NFL is kind of a sad sack of an organization, and I resent just how much pull and influence it has on the entire, well country.  Which is why I’d like to see Tom Brady hoist up yet another Superb Owl Lombardi, because it’s the closest thing to a giant middle finger to all the haters there possibly could be.

It’s a good thing my machete came in

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Because boy, do I have some anger I’d like to take out on some unruly shrubs and wild growth that need to be scaled back anyway.

I don’t really like to brog about my job, because it seems so cliché and there used to be this off-chance concern that someone who doesn’t know me could piece two and two together, identify where I worked, and do something unpleasant with that information.  But I keep things rather vague enough to where that aspect of it has gone away, not to mention the fact that I have like, zero readers, so I don’t have to worry in that regard anyway, but it still remains pretty cliché to bitch about work.

Regardless, let me tell you a story about how I am rather displeased with my job these days, and this is a very specific reason to add to the lengthy list of things I’m keeping documented for if and when the time comes to where I ever can bounce out of there.

I asked my bosses (because I have 1.5 bosses, as in one person who is the actual boss whom I shall refer to as “boss,” and the spineless puppet husk under them who is technically my actual boss, whom I shall refer to as “puppet”) if I could have next week off, as I believed I had a week of vacation left, and was feeling pretty burned out from the combination of being a first-time father on a 24/7 daddy schedule, combined with an unnecessarily, artificially busy holiday month.

Boss said sure, I felt a little bit of relief and satisfaction at knowing that I might finally get a little bit of time to relax and to not be so, on, with a combination of work and baby duty.

A couple of days later, I get an email from puppet, saying “they thought I had used all my vacation, but could be mistaken, please give me a list of dates you took off,” which is pretty easy, because I only had three substantial breaks throughout the year, given the fact that because of coronavirus, I’ve been working from home since March.  I took a week off prior to the start of my paternity leave to extend my time, and I took three days off back in May when I was really fried from being a first-time dad, and I took two days off to celebrate my first-ever wedding anniversary.

I cited the week off as vacation time, and declared the five other days as the sick/personal time that all employees are entitled to get.  Puppet responds back to me that they’re “fairly certain” that salaried employees (like me) sick/personal time doesn’t act in the same manner in which it works for hourly employees (which I used to be), which is basically auxiliary vacation time, if you’re not prone to getting sick.

They’re going to check with HR.

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The Mandalorian Season 2 Thoughts

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Mythical wife and I just caught up with The Mandalorian’s second season, which is kind of miraculous in its own right, as we’re both on new parent schedules plus we don’t want to introduce our child to screens, so our general television consumption is probably a tenth of what most of our friends and family tend to watch.  The fact that we’re only a week removed from the finale is a miracle, since there’s a litany of shows and movies that we’ve stated interest in wanting to watch but the realism is that it’ll be eons before we do, if we even remember to watch them in the first place.

However, a week removed wasn’t nearly enough time for the shitheads of the internet to spoil a ton of shit for us in advance of our opportunity to watch the show.  Between all of the excitable fuckwits on social media who couldn’t shut the fuck up even if it there were guns held to their family’s heads, and now actual sci-fi/pop culture sites themselves just outright blow covers and spoilers under the guise that there’s some appropriate official statute of limitation when it comes to being allowed to talk about shit, it’s been impossible for mythical wife and myself to not get spoiled to varying capacities.

Mythical wife apparently got it worse than I did, because of her choice of people she connects with, but even a relative shut-in like me was still spoiled to some degree when someone posted a gif of X doing Y, revealing a pretty substantial moment of the show (was that so fucking difficult, no), so we agreed that before it could get any worse, we needed to buckle down and watch the show before I declared jihad on everyone I know for when they would inevitably spoil more shit for me.

Yes, it sounds like I’m making my problems the problems of others, but at the same time, do people really lack the common sense to just shut the fuck up about things for just a little while?  Yes, the answer is always yes.

Regardless of quality of acting, plot, and other superlatives, one of the greatest things about The Mandalorian in general, is that they’re fairly quick and short episodes, and it’s a very easy show to stay on top of, provided the effort is put forth to actually start watching it.

And just like that, I’ve conveniently blathered on long enough to create a meaty post that hasn’t actually gotten to the point, and now I can comfortably tuck anything else that might be considered spoiler-ey behind a cut.

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New Father Brogging, #030

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Take whatever I’ve said was the worst thing about new parenting, and throw it out the window.  Because the 9-month sleep regression has been the worst thing to have ever happened.  Seriously, I’m pretty sure I just had the worst night as a new parent last night, as my daughter woke up at 8:30 pm, 9:40 pm, 12:30 am, and then at 2:20 am, not going back down until around 3:30 am.  Needless to say, my longest stretch of contiguous sleep was three hours, as my alarm went off at 6:30, in preparation for the workday.

Seriously though, this takes the case for the worst experience in new parenthood so far, because it’s not like sleep regressions of prior periods where her awake windows just changed, but she would ultimately still actually go to sleep; no, this particular sleep regression is where she sleeps at her usual times, and sleeps for a little bit, it’s just that she wakes up in the middle of the night, wide awake as a Karen on speed, and will not go back to sleep, and repeatedly stands up against the railing and screams, no matter how many times I reset her on her back and try to soothe her to sleep.

When she was still a newborn, waking up in the middle of the night was expected and mostly on our terms, as we set alarms to go off in order to wake and keep her on her feeding schedule, but right now, we have no idea whether or not a night is going to be zero wake ups, one, two, three or even four times waking up, wailing and needing some intervention.  I can go into her room, calm her down and set her back on her side or back, but often times I’m one foot out the door before she goes ballistic, and I’m left feeling so shot, so beaten and just so frustrated with everything that I have a hard time thinking straight, most of the time in which I’m pretty sure I’m not.

Without question, this has been the worst part of new parenting yet.  I know that title is only as secure as the next worst thing about new parenting to come around, but this one feels especially nasty, and it’s put me in this exhausted state of being where I don’t look forward to the evenings anymore, when I might get an hour or three of some time to myself to do me shit, but lately all that’s been encroached upon by an ornery and crying baby most of the time.

And nothing I do, or mythical wife does, is seeming to work during this regression.  No amount of soothing, keeping company or even picking up and rocking gets her to sleep or stay asleep, and it’s only a matter of time before she’s screaming bloody murder and I’m left feeling like a failure clown of a parent who can’t even keep his kid under control.  I’ve never lost my cool or felt so defeated and frustrated as I’d ever felt during the last nine months, and I know I’m far from the only parent to have ever endured this, but I can say without any hesitation nothing so far has been as demoralizing as the nine-month sleep regression.

Although seldom do I want time to speed up while I’m with my daughter, I sure as heck wouldn’t mind if I could just skip ahead to when this regression period is over, and I can actually get some slightly below-average but at least still six hours of sleep, just once.  I’d take explosive diapers and getting clawed by baby nails repeatedly, over this particular sleep regression, any day of the week, because at least I can still have some predictable down time to decompress and get some actual rest from time to time and not feel like a zombie as a result.

Frankly, I feel like this is a fraction of the words I had swirling in my head between the hours of 2 and 3 am last night of an unhinged and exhausted new parent, and I don’t feel like this is really conveying the frustration and rage I was feeling, not at my daughter, but at the horrors of the situation that is the nine-month sleep regression.  Obviously I know that I’m not the only parent to ever endure this, but damn does it suck, and at least I can provide a more accurate and honest reaction to the concept, versus all the clinically sociological explanations of it found all over the internet that make it sound like a minor inconvenience that just needs to be patient through a little while over.

Seriously, this has been the worst part of new parenting, hands down.  The genocidal thoughts that were going through my head throughout the evening that wouldn’t end aren’t even close to being expounded upon by my exhausted words of frustration captured here in my brog.

I need to just not leave my house anymore

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today, mythical wife and I went out so she could find some holiday decorations for the house.  As it is our child’s first holiday season, she felt it was important that we make the house somewhat festive and relevant to the seasons, and I’m okay with that idea.

While we were driving to our destination, you’d think there was no pandemic still going on, based on just how slam-packed the shopping centers and surrounding streets were.  Parking lots getting backed up, because the access roads were being congested by the volume of cars getting stuck at lights, causing this colossal domino effect of typical traffic that I’m appalled but not surprised is going on given the whole pandemic thing that’s supposed to be encouraging people to be staying home when necessary, but we are in the midst of the holiday shopping season, and coronavirus or no, people are absolutely out and about.

When we got to the store, naturally my daughter shit her pants in the car, as is the usual routine, and it seems apparent that for the first years of her life while she’s still in diapers, that I’ll have to build in an extra ten minutes to any car ride at all, to account for the inevitable deuce that happens like clockwork whenever we go anywhere.

But anyway, when we got to the store, it took all of five seconds of being inside of it, did I spot the first no-maskers milling about, acting like nothing at all was wrong with ‘Murica and the air they breathed was as clean and pure as it probably is at the highest altitudes of the Appalachian trail.  Not long afterward, their shithead sons joined them, also wearing no masks, and the feeling of disgust immediately began bubbling up within me.

And while we were there, this one family was hardly the only cluster of people not wearing masks, and I saw several other individuals and families also shopping sans masks.  The ones that bothered me more than the no-maskers were the people who were wearing masks; around their necks as not on their fucking faces, obviously having said “I wore my mask to avoid scrutiny coming in, but now that I am inside, off with it until I’m reprimanded.”

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