[CW] Tackling depression, weight, and transition

Life's in an odd spot for me right now. I can't really think of any major threats to complain about, but it still feels crap.

Recently, I've gotten the feeling I'm not doing enough to transition gender. I don't shave often enough and I don't like how it looks, I still haven't learnt how to do makeup, I've not done any voice training, and I've made very little progress in understanding how to source hormones.

Addendum regarding the latter point, I found out that a clinic recommended to me costs £500 for video call consultation. What a fucking rip-off. £250 for each subsequent, and probably charges a lot for under-dosed prescriptions. Which means I have to do the work of researching and wrapping my head around the endocrinology and sourcing of HRT, fucking great.

Another thing I've noticed is that my depression is really bad at going away, I've missed a week of lectures at uni trying to fix my sleep schedule, I have zero motivation to do any work, and I'm pretty damn lonely. If I do a postgrad degree, I'm gonna see if I can do it in my home town instead of away, but that means I have to do well in my undergrad.

Related to depression is weight. Last year I got to my heaviest, around 119 kg, which is quite heavy even for my wider heavyset 180cm frame where I shouldn't exceed 90 kg. I'm down a bit since then, and I think I gained it due to depression and stress eating, while also never really noticing since looking head-on at a mirror I don't appear that overweight. But my gut and side profile is tragic compared to a few years ago, thanks to the aftereffects of the slow, drawn-out, lockdowns (which could have gone by quicker with proper pandemic planning, but oh well).

I've started going to the gym again. Last year I stopped going due to boredom and lack of motivation. I think my main mistake was that I decided not to focus on my favorite exercise. When I started working out through powerlifting a few years ago, I really enjoyed deadlifting, and that allowed me to keep motivated until I had to cancel my membership due to financial reasons. But, last year when tried starting again, I decided to focus on something else. Thing is, if you choose one thing to focus on, you'll make good progress. So, I had decided squats should be my focus at that time. I got bored, I went less and less. This time I'm going to focus on deadlift, even though my cardio needs the most work, purely because I would rather have a slightly unoptimal workout plan for improving my cardio where I'm using a lot of deadlifting to keep myself motivated enough to do other workouts, than do nothing at all. Basically, with fitness, it's better to do something rather than nothing at all, even if not 100% optimal for my goals.

On more fun notes, I've messed around with keyboards more and now have a main board at home, an ISO TKL with Gazzew Boba U4T 68 g switches, and a frankenswitch for the Spacebar that uses the bottom housing of a JWICK T1 tactile bottom housing, as well as a 78 g spring from a Zeal Purple switch. Only just need to tape the stabs to prevent see-sawing due to the short throw of the switch leaving a lot of the stem up high after bottom out. I had the JWICKs on hand due to getting them for my 60% I used to have Kailh x NK Box Jades in, which I may swap in and out depending on how I feel. I don't really like the way my 60% works, btw, the Mizar mz60 has so many flaws, like the configuration software being hot garbage and not allowing Esc to be default on the Backtick key, having a few function layer things not even listed (F, G, H, are Fn layer media keys, but the caps don't indicate it and the configurator doesn't show that they are, how the Fn layer works on this board is a mystery to me).

I hope to try out a full-size ortho layout, eventually. The BFO-9000 PCB seems like a great platform, and I've prepared a good layout for it already. Though the ID75 might be an easier starting point that would require less work to set up, but it won't be perfect for me since it's 15 by 5 instead of a potential 18 by 6 grid like the BFO is.