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Working in the Shadows (10th House Scorpio and the Curse of Being Perceived)

Scorpio dominates my tenth house. Sun, Moon, Mercury, Pluto, all tangled in her web. Of course I struggle with everything. This placement demands secrecy, especially where career and ambition live. For me, it's not just preference. It's survival. Whenever I reveal things prematurely, the energy corrupts like a failed file transfer. Doors that were open suddenly 404.

There's a job I want. A state position, so naturally the process moves at bureaucratic speeds. Things are progressing, but I haven't told a soul. Last time I shared an opportunity like this, the momentum evaporated. Like exposing a developing photo to light too soon. Some things only develop in darkness.

Maybe that's the lesson of this placement. My ambitions are shadow processes. They run best when shielded from the public API, when they can compile without outside interrupts. It's not superstition. It's debugging lived experience.

From the outside, my life looks static. A blank terminal screen. But beneath the surface, endless processes run:

ambition.exe iterating silently

self_reinvention.dll loading in the background

career_path_finder.py recalculating routes

No visible progress yet. Just the hum of processors working.

This time, my silence isn't fear. It's protocol. Some code only runs clean when it's not being observed; don't ask me why, I just accept it. Similarily some data trains best without live monitoring.

So I wait. Let the algorithms run. This scorpio learned the most powerful transformations happen where no one's watching.

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Etiquette with Istvan Banyai

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Digital Stockholm Syndrome: Love, Loss, and No Lossless Audio

I took embarrassingly too long to cancel my Spotify subscription, but I finally did it today. I even tried talking to customer support about it, only to be blown off. And still, I hesitated over the “cancel subscription” button. It wasn’t that I was unsure; it was that I was saying goodbye to something that had been a part of my life for over a decade. Spotify was my constant companion, my soundtrack, my escape. It was the thing I turned to when I needed to feel something—or when I needed to feel nothing at all. But sometimes, the things we love the most can turn toxic. When I saw that Spotify was platforming podcasts that taught men how to traffic women, I knew it was over. How could I stay with something that betrayed everything I stood for? Leaving wasn’t easy, though. Spotify was more a relationship than a service at this point. A messy, complicated, all-consuming relationship. Walking away meant confronting the good, the bad, and the ugly.

In the beginning, Spotify was perfect. It knew me better than I knew myself. It introduced me to new artists, crafted playlists that felt like they were made just for me, and became the backdrop to every moment of my life. Studying, cleaning, showering, riding a bike, running, commuting—it was everywhere. It was love at first listen. I was a shill for Spotify, defending it to anyone who dared criticize it. (I’m still not going to Apple Music, though.) I’d rave about the algorithm, how it just got me, as if an algorithm could ever truly understand the chaotic mess of a human being.

But then, things started to change. The playlists became repetitive. The recommendations felt stale. The algorithm, once a friend, began to feel like a manipulator, pushing me toward content I didn’t want—podcasts I never asked for. Then came the price hikes, the constant upselling, laying off employees despite record profits, and the freaking limit on audiobook listening. But the final straw was the podcasts themselves. Endless, invasive, and eventually, horrifying. Andrew Tate’s podcasts giving human trafficking advice under the guise of business advice? Really? It was like watching someone you love slowly reveal their true colors. And those colors were ugly.

As a survivor of domestic abuse, I couldn’t ignore it anymore. Spotify wasn’t just disappointing me; it was actively harming people. It felt like staying with a partner who kept crossing lines, hoping they’d change, until one day, you realize they never will. And yet, I hesitated. Why? Nostalgia, maybe. Convenience, definitely. The thought of starting over with a new app felt daunting. A decade of playlists, memories, and carefully curated music—gone. But staying felt worse.

So, I left. I haven’t fully committed to a new app yet. I’m still weighing my options, asking friends for recommendations, and trying to figure out what’s out there. But even the act of canceling felt like a step toward something healthier. And yet, I can’t help but feel a pang of loss. Not just for the playlists or the algorithm, but for the version of me that believed Spotify was something it wasn’t.

Leaving Spotify made me realize how deeply emotionally entangled my life is with technology. We form attachments to apps, algorithms, and platforms, often ignoring their flaws because they make our lives easier. But at what cost? Sometimes, the hardest thing—and the right thing—cancel your subscription.

Love shouldn’t hurt, whether it’s with a person or an app. Spotify was my first streaming love, but it won't be my last. While the thought of starting over is daunting, it’s also liberating. After all, if Spotify can’t even offer lossless audio, maybe it’s time to find something that doesn’t just play music—but actually cares about the people who make it and the people who listen to it. Here is a petition to remove Andrew Tate's sex trafficking courses from Spotify.

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I Am the Architect of My Digital Ruins

Lately, I’ve been obsessively tweaking the theme settings on my Tumblr. Fonts, colors, layouts—tiny details that feel essential to the way I present myself online. But here’s the thing: no one even looks at the actual blog sites, I sure don't. So why do I care so much about something so… invisible?

Maybe these adjustments are more than just aesthetic choices, like a form of self-expression, though I’m not sure what they’re expressing. It’s not about trying to set a domain on the internet that feels like me—I'm just enjoying the act of tweaking itself. The satisfaction of aligning pixels just right, even if it doesn’t matter (tbh, I don’t even really care). It’s def not about being seen; it’s more about the quiet, almost mechanical need to get it right.

This obsession with the digital surface makes me wonder: how much of our lives are spent building things that no one will ever see? I feel like I just said that in Carrie Bradshaw's voice ha. We pour ourselves into projects, relationships, and identities, crafting them with care, only to realize they might crumble into obscurity. We are the architects of our own ruins—digital, emotional, existential. But maybe that’s not the point. Maybe the point is that there is no point.

The Colosseum, for instance, wasn’t always a ruin. It was once alive, its existence dedicated to entertaining crowds through violence and death—a pointless spectacle, a grim reminder of how we fill our spaces with things that don’t really matter.  (Fun fact: it is a huge reason lions in the area went extinct. So, you know, not exactly a noble legacy.) Now it stands as a reminder of what once was—a beautiful, hollow shell. In the same way, these digital spaces I create are my own little Colosseums. They might not be seen by many, and they might eventually fade into the background of the internet’s endless noise. But they’re still a reflection of… something. Not necessarily something meaningful, just something.

In the end, these small things—the font choices, the color palettes, the layouts—don’t have to be seen to be valuable. They’re a testament to the act of creation itself. Maybe these digital ruins we’re building are part of something bigger than we realize. Or maybe they’re just ruins. Even if they crumble, even if they’re forgotten, they still exist. They’re proof that we were here, that we tried—not because we cared, but because we couldn’t help it.

And maybe that’s how we got here: a series of random, senseless acts of creation, like evolution blindly pushing forward, like a species branching off only to fade into extinction—each one leaving behind traces of what they were, just as we build ruins that no one will remember. Not because it matters, but because creation is what we do—even when it’s pointless.

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me and my github lately

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The 1% Life: Power, Responsibility, and Perpetual Low Battery

It’s been raining for days, so my boyfriend has been home more than usual. This morning, we’re scrolling in bed, swapping funny or interesting posts. At some point, he looks over and says,

“How are you still on your phone? Last time you showed me something, you were at 5%.”

He always teases me about my phone living on the edge of oblivion, existing in a state of near-death at all times. So, ✨ I coyly smile, ✨

“With great power comes great responsibility,” I tell him. “That’s why your phone is always charged.”

Anyway, since he’s home again today, it’s looking like a lazy day. Civ 7 just came out, so we’ll probably play for a while, and I want to binge-watch Empresses in the Palace. He goes back to work Saturday through Monday, rain or not, so hopefully, I can use that time to reset—get some real writing done. I’ve actually been writing pretty consistently online and, in my journal, only skipping a day or two, but I want to make it a daily habit, even if it’s just a scribble.

At this point, I’m not even going to fight it. Tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day, so realistically, I won’t get much done then either. Instead of treating this like a system failure, I’m just calling it what it is: scheduled maintenance. Some processes need to be suspended, some background tasks put on hold, but it’s not a crash—it’s a necessary patch. A temporary s h i f t in priorities before normal operations resume.

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Chaos Theory and the Art of Falling Apart

Sometimes, I feel like I’m a glitch in my own system—a d i s j o i n t e d algorithm trying to process too many inputs at once. Every project, every idea, every new thing I want to learn screams for attention, and I’m pulled in so many directions that I’m not sure which way is forward. It’s like living in a state of perpetual c h a o s, where the noise of everything I “want” to do drowns out the signal of what I should be doing.

I spread myself thin, scattering tiny pieces of progress everywhere. A line of code here, a paragraph there, a half-formed thought scribbled in the margins of my mind. It’s messy. It’s inefficient. And yet, it’s the only way I know how to m o v e .

My computer is a patchwork of operating systems—Linux for gaming and coding, Windows for the rest, each groaning under the weight of too many programs running simultaneously.  My brain feels the same way: compartmentalized and f r a g m e n t e d, with different browsers open for different projects, each one bloated with a million tabs. Every time I try to focus, another alert pings, another idea flashes, and I’m yanked into a new rabbit hole before I can even bookmark where I left off.

It’s paralyzing, but it’s also exhilarating. I thrive on hyper-focus. When I let myself fall into the flow of one thing—whether it’s coding, writing, or chasing a random thought—I can move mountains in an afternoon. It’s not linear nor orderly, but it’s mine.

I’ve learned to stop fighting the chaos. Instead, I’ve started to w o r k with it. I sacrifice long-term goals for short-term o b s e s s i o n s , because the little wins keep me going. I surround myself with projects that could lead somewhere bigger, even if I’m only dipping into them for a moment. It’s not about neat, organized progress. It’s about finding the rhythm in the mess.

Maybe that’s the beauty of it? Even when it feels like I’m falling apart, I’m still creating. I’m still moving. The road is disjointed, g l i t c h y , and full of detours, but it’s still leading me somewhere.

Chaos isn’t the enemy. It’s the fuel for the hyper-focus that burns bright and fast, the spark that turns tiny progress into something bigger. To the art of falling apart, and the strange, f r a g m e n t e d beauty of putting yourself back together, one pixel at a time.

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If any girlies are up for collaborating on some Github projects, hmu. I’m thinking of using some standard datasets to run basic models, just to balance out my chaotic school projects with something a little cleaner and more aesthetic! Would be cool to do fashion or artsy type of analysis (not generating art though). Thanks! Should probably specify that I am most comfortable with Python, and a little with MATLAB, but I am open to learning Rust too.

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G L I T C H OVERRIDE: Redirecting Energy to Core Systems

Booting up. Recalibrating. Restoring default settings.

Two days of unexpected interference—a g l i t c h in the system. My carefully coded routines f r a g m e n t e d, c o r r u p t e d by the presence of another user in the shared space. The quiet mornings, the slow and deliberate pacing of my day, the indulgent mix of hyper-focus and mindless scrolling—all s u s p e n d e d . My boyfriend works hard and deserves to rest when he can, and since he pays for this space, he has every right to exist in it as freely as I do. But when he’s home, the balance shifts. Now that he’s back at work, I initiate the override.

My mornings are predictable in the way I like. With my cats ! ✨ Jupiter, who was abandoned too early, purrs loudly against my face before settling in to knead and suckle on the blanket. Juniper sits on my chest, radiating silent judgment over the tiny, glitched void in an otherwise full food bowl—anomalous data in her perfectly calibrated system, flagged for immediate correction. That’s my signal to get up, feed them, make breakfast (for my boyfriend and the cats), make coffee (for my boyfriend and myself), and help him get out the door.

Once the apartment is mine again, I move through the day on my own terms. Small wins stack up—writing, reading, patching away at my backlog—without another person’s presence pulling me into a different rhythm. I let my attention drift when it wants to, doomscroll just enough to satisfy some part of my b r a i n before snapping back into something 'productive.'

Interruptions don’t just pause routines; they rearrange them. There’s more to clean, new tasks that weren’t on my list, and a lingering sense that everything is slightly out of place. The s p a c e , like me, needs to be reset—maybe saged .

So, I adjust. Shift things back into alignment. Redirect energy to the core systems: writing, creating, existing in the quiet. This isn’t just passive recovery—it’s an o v e r r i d e . A manual rewrite of the code until the rhythm syncs back to my pulse.

THE SYSTEM STABILIZES.

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SYSTEM ERROR : digital girl interrupted

When my boyfriend stays home, the apartment vibes shift. My c a r e f u l l y calibrated bed-rotting, lazy girl, stay-at-home-girlfriend routine d i s s o l v e s into something unrecognizable. Doom-scrolling feels less indulgent, catching up on trash current events loses its appeal. Work doesn’t happen, but neither does full relaxation.

The space feels messier, like entropy speeds up in his presence. It's like we generate more c h a o s together—or maybe I clean less when he’s around. Either way, the balance tilts.

Yesterday, the rain kept him home. One of his jobs is outside, and they can’t work in the rain. Today, the f o r e c a s t is uncertain—there’s a chance he’ll be back. The glitch lingers, the gynoid m a l f u n c t i o n s . 

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I woke up at 4:30 am today

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to journal more, and I’ve actually been keeping up with it—writing in my physical journal almost every day since the start of the year. I can already see a huge difference in my writing. I mean, I’ve been journaling for a l o n g time, but somewhere along the way, my writing became… s t e r i l e. Blame my STEM degrees, my lab work, and the research (some even published 🧠). It was so apparent in my personal journaling—like I was just collecting data on my life instead of actually e x p e r i e n c i n g it. Even some of the most amazing events of my life were recorded in a strangely detached, c l i n i c a l tone even though they were absolutely BONKERS.

So, I made a list of 60 random writing prompts I found online, and now I’m about halfway through. My writing voice feels stronger, though I can still hear the academic tone creeping in. But honestly? I paid a lot of money and put in a lot of effort for that voice, so I might as well keep it sharp.

I didn’t put much thought into the writing prompts I chose—pretty sure I just pulled random lists from Reddit and Google and copy-pasted them into a ‘To-Do’ list. So, naturally, some of them completely miss the mark. I’m looking forward to finishing this batch so I can create something more i n t e n t i o n a l. The introspective prompts have been the most impactful so far, but I might branch out into themed lists—maybe something more structured, maybe something entirely self-indulgent 😈.

Staying on the theme of compartmentalization from my previous post (posts?), my physical journal probably won’t touch on the existentialism of our amphibious lives—existing both physically and digitally, moving between the two like it’s nothing. It reminds me of that Kurt Vonnegut story Unready to Wear, where people learn to leave their bodies behind and exist as pure consciousness, just floating around. There’s a line about how all of them could fit on the head of a pin, which feels strangely relevant to this blog but not so much when I just want to t o u c h grass.

I’m still searching for online spaces to inhabit and questioning what it even means to exist in them. I’ll report back once I’ve shaped my thoughts into something coherent, though I should probably stop spamming the journaling/blogging/diary hashtags. I want to post more in music communities, unfortunetly I have a habit of doing too much, and I should probably chill before I overdo it there too. 💀

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Laying Down Digital Bricks

For a long time, I’ve avoided putting too much of myself out there. Not out of fear, exactly—but because it felt cringey. I never wanted to be scattered across the internet, too exposed in ways I couldn’t control, or too curated in ways that felt artificial. But lately, I’ve been thinking about how I exist—not just in the physical world, but in the online spaces I occupy. How we shape different versions of ourselves, depending on where we are. It’s not l i n e a r like a Russian nesting doll, where each layer fits neatly inside the next. It’s more like a web—a neural network of identities, each one connected in ways that aren’t always obvious.

So today, instead of just thinking about it, I’m going to do something about it. I want to be as intentional about my digital spaces as I am about my physical ones. Tumblr can be one horcrux, but what about the rest? Maybe it’s time to polish up my GitHub, explore long-form platforms for writing, or find new Discord spaces that align with my interests. Not in a “networking” way, but in a “let’s see what happens when I lay down each digital brick and see what it builds” kind of way.

Because as I figure out where I fit in these spaces, I have to wonder—am I also figuring out my own shape? Identity isn’t something fixed; it’s something we map out over time. Each space I explore, each connection I make, adds another point to the map. And maybe, by mapping small sections at a time, I’ll start to understand the structure I’ve been building all along.

It’s like running a mapping algorithm: you start with a few scattered data points, and over time, the connections between them begin to form a clearer s h a p e. The yellow brick road wasn’t built all at once—it was laid brick by brick, each one creating the path before the destination was even known(or was it? idk, I didn't read the book 💀). Maybe that’s what I’m doing here: tracing the roads that will take me somewhere worth building—laying down the foundations before I even know what they’ll become

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I met with my new t h e r a p i s t for the first time today - she mentioned BPD a few times. Am I cooked?

I have writing to finish 💜

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I am hermit-maxxing.

‘ You’re a radar. Built to scan the deeps of o u t e r s p a c e ’

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If social media is a costume party, can we wear our real faces?

It’s strange—even on this blog, where I can be a n o n y m o u s, I still find myself thinking about how I come across. I want to be honest, but there’s this subtle pull to craft a version of myself that feels more polished. I catch myself editing my words, curating the vibe of my blog, and choosing the aesthetic that feels just right. It’s not about how I look—more about how I m o v e through the world, the parts of me I show, and the parts I keep to myself.

In a world that’s increasingly filtered through screens, I sometimes wonder how much of myself is actually me. Digital spaces offer this strange power: I can choose how I present myself, how I engage, and what pieces of me I want to share. F r e e d o m comes with it, but so does a quiet uncertainty. Even with all this control, I’m still navigating the same internal landscape. The only difference is that now, it’s through a screen.

These s p a c e s draw me in because they let me express things I might not say out loud—thoughts that feel too complicated or vulnerable in the real world. It’s comforting to know that if someone resonates with me, it’s not because I’ve bared every detail of myself, but because I’ve been honest in the way I’ve chosen to show up.

But even with that, I still hold back. I don’t take photos or videos at concerts or music festivals, even though those are some of my favorite places. To me, those experiences are too pure to be filtered through the lens of social media, turned into something for clout. So, while I show up in digital spaces, there’s still a piece of me that stays off-screen—not because I’m hiding it, but because I want to keep some things just for me.

Maybe that’s the real tension I’m trying to navigate: in a world that asks for curated selves, how do we balance showing up authentically while keeping what’s ours—what’s p r i v a t e—and what’s worth keeping to ourselves?

In the end, it’s about connection, right? I crave that moment when someone truly resonates with me. Maybe that’s what it means to be real: showing up with your imperfections and contradictions, even if they’re left unspoken. It’s not about having everything figured out, but about being willing to explore who you are—digitally or not.

As Kafka once said, “I was ashamed of myself when I realized life was a costume party and I attended with my real face.” Maybe that’s the hardest part—finding the courage to show up as you are, even when everyone else is hiding behind their own masks. In this digital space, maybe showing up with your real face is the truest act of rebellion.

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Girl Rot Update

My boyfriend is on his way h o m e 💜

Some real-world enrichment for the mentally overqualified house pet.

Maybe we can play ‘Cult of Lamb’ or go for a walk in the nice California weather. 👾

I can take a quick break from o v e r t h i n k i n g my next ramble post about digital existentialism—or whatever half-formed thought I’m chasing this time.