#leetcode be grinding my a**

[notolaf404]

finally got it accepted T-T

[hey-heigo]

not to get too real but we're reaching that phase of the job hunt where i can feel myself becoming less human with every application

[luigisleftshoe]

Frat Boy/College Luigi headcanons

Essentially what it would have been liked if you dated him in college 

I feel like he was a bit of a social chameleon back in the day. Like he can party and be the loud, fun, beer-pong god when he wants to be– but also once the final call of “IF YOUR NOT A BROTHER OR FUCKING A BROTHER” hes in his room grinding leetcode.

I feel like he's lowkey super cocky but in a very lovable way. Like talks big game but is a total sweetie pie when it comes to you. He's always super earnest and tries really hard not to mess it up. 

Is super anal about the rules during beer pong. “YOUR ELBOWS NEED TO BE BACK” ass bitch. He trash talks the entire time too. 

Will absolutely flex during beer pong if you’re watching.Over-the-top dramatic tosses just to make you laugh. Then grinning like a dumbass when you cheer for him.

Gets stupidly cocky when you’re winning. Points at you across the table like "THIS ONE RIGHT HERE. SHE’S A KILLER. SHE’S DANGEROUS." Chest out, grinning like he just invented beer pong himself.

Trash talks to the other team but immediately turns soft to you: Leans down, low voice in your ear: "You look so good when you’re competitive, babe. Kinda wanna take you home right now."

Lowkey he's the unofficial tech support of the frat house. Sets up the Wifi, fixes the smart TV and replaces the sound system. Whenever the brothers break something digital, they come knocking like “Bro you’re in CS fix it please”

Has an absolutely janky gaming setup in his frat house room. Like I feel like we all knew that one guy in college who brought his entire gaming setup with him and that was him. LED lights everywhere, cords tangled like a small jungle, and like monitors on too small of a desk. His room will be pretty spik and span tho. Like he does not give me messy vibes tbh. 

His room is the “safe” room. His personal room is surprisingly clean, smells good, has a half-dead succulent on the window sill, and is always stocked with energy drinks. He will absolutely pull you away from the chaos at a party to “take a break” in his room...and definitely hopes you’ll stay over.

Brings you to tailgates and makes you sit on his lap the whole time.(You’re wearing his oversized frat hoodie because you “forgot your jacket” — he 100% orchestrated this.)

You’re trying to study seriously. He’s trying to code. Every 15 minutes he gets bored and pokes you like "Babe... pay attention to me... look I made a stupid script that says I love you over and over." If you actually get mad because you’re stressed, he gets quiet for a minute...then gets up and brings you a Red Bull and kisses the top of your head like "Sorry. You're gonna crush it. I'll shut up now."

Every time you wear his hoodie to class, he texts you dumb, filthy things like "wearing my hoodie just reminds you who you belong to, huh babe?" followed immediately by "sorry that was horny, good luck on your midterm tho."

Pulls you into the coat closet at a party just to make out, then yells, "OCCUPIED!" if anyone tries to open the door. 

Takes advantage of "one bed" situations on frat formals like "well babe guess we have to share... what a tragedy... crazy how that happens."

Tries to act chill, but you catch him coding in the dark at 3AM, hoodie up, headphones in, completely tense. You have to climb onto his lap, steal his laptop away, and force him to take breaks because he literally won’t unless you make him. Once he realizes you’re taking care of him he melts, leans back into you, buries his face in your neck, mumbling "You're too good for me. I’m gonna marry you."

The “Designated Social Chair” (But Pretends He’s Not) He's not officially in charge of parties... but somehow he's planning 90% of them. Knows the bouncer, the bartender, and the delivery guy by first name. Will drunk-plan an entire formal event around "what theme would my girl look hottest in." (Fully votes for Casino Night just because he thinks you in a cocktail dress will ruin him.)

Sober Monitoring but Bad at It. Takes a turn being the "sober monitor" at a party. Takes his job way too seriously for about 30 minutes. By midnight he’s tipsy and yelling at a freshman about how to properly do keg stands, dragging you into it like "babe show him how it’s done."

Wear your hair tie around his wrist like it’s a friendship bracelet.

Tell the bartender you’re celebrating your anniversary even when you’re not just to get you free shots.

Will not let you walk home alone. Ever. Even if he’s blackout, even if you live two feet away — he's walking you.

Pulls you onto his lap at a party and lowkey grips your hips harder than necessary when you start to get up —growls in your ear like "Where you think you're going, baby?" (completely ignores the 30 people in the room.)

You dare him to go a whole party without touching you —he lasts maybe 20 minutes before hauling you into a dark hallway, caging you against the wall, and whispering,"You win. Happy? Now shut up and let me kiss you."

Makes out with you sloppily against the fridge at a party because he’s drunk and needy and has no shame.

At parties, he’s grinning and teasing and being everyone's favorite, but his hand is always somewhere low on your waist, thumb slipping under your shirt — just enough to keep you feeling it without anyone noticing. 

If someone flirts with you? He doesn't start drama. He just pulls you back against his chest, leans down all slow, and murmurs in your ear: "Think you're funny teasing me like that? Wait till we get home." (All while smiling like an angel.)

A very clingy drunk. Half-whining, half-muttering shit like: "You have no idea what you do to me, babe.", "I can't even think straight when you wear my clothes.", "Swear to god I’d skip rush week just to stay home and fuck you all night."

Sends you stupid texts like "wya" -> "i miss ur face" -> "also ur ass" -> "mostly ur face but also ass"  in rapid succession.

Oh but if your the one to flirt with him and make moves at the party man is a blushing mess. He doesn't know what to do. You flirt aggressively at a party? He blushes like a virgin and immediately forgets how to form sentences. Stammers something dumb like "babe don't play with me like that" while internally combusting.

Gets into “philosophy debates” drunk. Will randomly drunkenly corner you at 2AM like: "Babe... babe listen... what if life is just one big recursion function we’re stuck in."Has absolutely argued for 30 minutes that “love is just the optimal solution for biological survival” and then kissed you like his life depended on it.

[whokilledjared]

Your idol is your ceiling.

Imagine an Undergrad whose only dream is to intern at Google.

Undergrad grinds his days on LeetCode, obsessing to himself, “Oh my god. I just have to work at Google. I'm so determined. Don't know how, but I'll make it."

I argue this is the opposite kind of candidate you’d expect to land a job at Google. 

I argue this because Google recruitment is an efficient labor market—or, simply put, a competition.

Google, on the receiving end of this efficient labor market, incentivizes recruiters  to snag the best candidates money can buy, and genius talent is in no short supply. The real challenge for a recruiter, then, is to attract those candidates from the front of the pack—the guys who treat Google as if it’s their backup plan.

An efficient labor market, by definition, is one which pairs the reservation utility of high-value candidates with the firm-side willingness-to-pay boundaries. Meanwhile, our oblivious, Google-crazed Undergrad puzzles over who those "cracked" engineers were, how they secured their offers, and why they acted like it was no big deal. What he misses entirely is that their indifference wasn't performative—it legitimately reflected their outside options. They had their sights set higher.

I imagine our chosen candidates have a couple of buddies at Jane Street who'll go on to make 7-figure bonuses this quarter. Or perhaps they’re thinking, “Damn. If only I could get into Y Combinator, where I’d raise venture capital for my $1,000,000 idea.” 

“Alas,” they might say, “I guess I’ll settle for Google.”

A great friend once told me “Your idol is your ceiling.” She argued that the champions we idolize never reached their success by putting their predecessors on pedestals.

As she and I see it, if you’re chasing your tail in the shadows of your idol’s “impossible” success, all you’ll do is spin in circles. But if you ruffle your feathers, and you pretend like those shadow-casters are your equals, then you might just see the truth they saw: success doesn’t come by following someone else, it comes by walking out into the light. After all, your idols did it—they’re casting shadows.

I’m not advising you to “fake it till you make it”, rather, I’m imploring you to ignore the credentials of your idols. At one point in time, each of them began without credentials themselves. My advice is simple:

Credibility is borrowed until it isn’t—you can’t cast shade while you’re standing in someone else’s shadow.

[unpremeditatedstudies]

Intro/pinned post

Hey.. uh, it has been a minute and a half so heres what I am up to now and heres a proper introduction.

I recently hit 500+ followers which is kind of insane because this blog is such a mess, reflecting my state of mind, but I am very thankful.

So hello, I am unpremeditatedstudies she/her (because nothing is premeditated because I dont plan), and I graduated from university in the US in May of 2025 with a double degree in Computer Science and Mathematics.

For the last year I documented the trials and tribulations of my last year in uni on this blog but lowkey went MIA but I made it through!

Now I am home in the US, unemployed, tired, drained out of my mind, and trying to figure out what is next. My goal is to land a software engineering position and prepare for grad school. Because I am wasting away at home, I hope this blog becomes a way to stay accountable.

So that's me- here's some other stuff:

I am 21, I feel so old even though I know, logically, it is young.

I am South Indian

I want to be a better coder- I am pretty bad at it I think I enjoyed by Maths studies more but I will be grinding leetcode.

My profile picture is Katakuri from Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun which a segway for me to say I like anime, I play video games, and overall love engaging in media, so I don't have to deal with my problems.

Feel free to send asks/dms I'd love to be mutuals

[lasttwobrainlesscells]

“How difficult it is to be simple.” — Vincent van Gogh

10/05/25

4:06 am: woke up because I thought it was 5.

6:26 am: woke up devastated because I missed 5. Ah. Anyways.

7:15 am: setting up my desk, checking what was for breakfast.

8:45 am: Thinking life choices? Maybe I should start with the day.

9:30 am: Calender is set, tasks are ready for today, and I need to start grinding in the leetcode.

12:07 pm: made my internship ppt, now I will make my report, but before that let's do something different like studying?

1:40 pm: when you're 20 mins into the video and fall asleep. Unhinged afternoon nap before lunch. 😅

3:16 pm: making progress in the video feels good, gotta finish this one today along with notes.

8:10 pm: That one hour video was so fucking long. It is over and I understand stuff all good but damn, my eyes need to look at the sky because they've been sucked in the laptop.

9:13 pm: enthusiastically starting making the internship report.

9:53 pm: Give up on the Internship Diary, how the Fuck should I remember what I did In last 10 months week by week!? Insane.

[twocubes]

I have a tarot reading request about my work + social life situation. I am basically burnt out from my job to the point that I'm unable or unwilling to accept even thanks or praise. Most of it relates to my manager, who has an imprecise yet emotionally blunt and at times exacting manner of communication that feels tailor-made to make technical discussions nearly impossible (I am a software engineer, and a fairly sensitive person. He is a military veteran who believes strongly in doing the fastest thing that works, and has been known to critique people to their face openly in group settings.) So I know the "correct" thing to do is grind up my LeetCode and start job hunting … but that would mean sitting down with a traditional data structures & algorithms text when I feel like I would much rather invest myself intellectually in my pipe dream of learning mathematics / getting, someday, to participate in the new univalent foundations of mathematics (maybe even as a programmer.) At the same time, the usual outlets I might have of getting to go for long walks / socialize on weekends feel increasingly out of reach, since I live in the outskirts of my city and the public transit authority there has been cancelling the trains for shuttle buses for most weekends, for what is going on 2 years now (at least since after the pandemic.) Having to ride buses instead of just hop on a train on weekends, for promised signal improvements that feel like they will never come, is slowly killing any sense of spontaneity and connection with casual human society outside of work for me. And even thinking about moving feels impossible (I have a housemate, my sibling, who I love dearly but I'm just not sure I want to commit to another 3-5 yrs. of cohabitation with.) Every direction in which I might reasonably turn for some vision of life outside of the cramped, artificial one where our company is super great! and everything is super exciting! despite the burnout and the constant reorgs and the whole new managerial clique we just got that's in charge of everything now, and, and, and … feels increasingly closed off. Would love any interpretation you could offer.

thank you for volunteering your fate to be decided by our still experimental divinatory process, here at dorothy twocubes' 24-hour bad advice hour™! as always, i must remind you, that this should only be taken seriously if it's good advice; otherwise, it's a joke, haha, why would you take it seriously? anyways let's get started

you seem to have some idea of what you want, and you seem to need advice regarding what to do next, so i will try with that mainstay, that good old spread that everyone likes and uses, Sun Tzu's five factors that decide battles. also i haven't done this in a while and this one i used a bunch before so maybe it's appropriate idk

alright.

Purpose: ONE OF FISHES, reversed Purpose here means what you're trying to do, your goals. If you were like, a leader of a group, it would be the reason that other people follow you. What keeps you going as like, an entity. FISHES are to do with your social position in the world, where you are relative to others in the way that it defines who you are. ONE is to do with something being complete, filled, all there, enough. that sort of thing and it's reversed

Landscape: ONE HALF OF HEARTS, reversed Landscape here means the environment you're navigating. Where you are relative to other things and other people in the sense of like, obstacles or resources or... yknow, things that must be practically considered HEARTS are to do with perpetuance; with what it is that sustains, what allows something to continue to exist. health, both literal and metaphorical ONE HALF is to do with stuff being incomplete; things that are started but not finished, things that are there but not sufficient, partialness and it's reversed

Climate: NINE OF DIAMONDS, reversed Climate here means transient stuff that affects the landscape. The mood of the world, the weather. The way the world is changing. DIAMONDS are to do with what you value, what gives your life purpose, meaning. What fulfills you. and it's reversed

Doctrine: OMEGA PLUS ONE OF DIAMONDS, upright Doctrine is what you are trained to do, what your standard operating procedures are. What you can do without having to learn to do new things. OMEGA PLUS ONE is to do with utopia. While OMEGA is to do with your ideals, that which you pursue without particular expectation that you might ever attain, OMEGA PLUS ONE is to do with the world that you might imagine if you attained your maybe-unattainable ideals. and it's upright

Leadership: EIGHT OF DIAMONDS, reversed Leadership is the strategy you chose, given all the other things here. EIGHT is to do with networks. Stuff being connected to stuff that is connected to more stuff. and it's upright

In addition, there is an arithmetic relationship between the cards:

8 + 1 = 9 this suggests that we should think of our interpretation of 9 as being a more direct consequence of the coordination of 8 and 1

I read these cards thus:

You are in a situation here where, in principle, your social position is fully secured, but your desire here is to leave this security.

The world you live in is one where people are struggling to support themselves and what-makes-them-themselves, and at the moment people are overall having to make hard choices regarding the pursuit of those precious things that make their life worth living.

You have the ability already, without having to learn it, to do what you think you would do in ideal circumstances.

So, given all this, the cards are suggesting that you should reach out in pursuit of what-gives-your-life-value and work with others; friends, acquaintances and acquaintances-of-acquaintances. In particular, the hard choices other people are making may give you some form of opportunity to change your social position.

...

Anyways, that's my reading. Maybe these cards make sense to you in some other way? Maybe this is helpful? Maybe it isn't? Either way, I claim no responsibility :p

Thanks for this opportunity to further test our experimental variant on the classic card-based rpg solitaire "cartomancy". i would be happy for feedback or a tip, but, it's also absolutely fine if you'd rather not. it's your choice, and we respect that.

[excludedmiddle]

hey congrats on reaching CM (? wanted to find the post where you mention that to confirm but tumblr search misbehaves). was curious as to how many problems you've solved on cf? I primarily picked it up cause ik it helped friends with interview stuff but I'm 2 months in stuck at ~1200 so wondering if I should be doing things differently. on one hand most problems <1400 are greedy or math so I worry an actual interview will be more "algorithmic" and I'll be unprepared (maybe leetcode is better in this regard?). on the other hand it's soo much easier to fantasise about being good at cp than actually practicing. so. anyway wondering if you had any advice on this? CM in one year does not sound like the journey of your average cf-er. congrats again. cheers!

Thank you!

(full disclosure: I've kind of fallen off with competitive programming - I haven't competed on codechef since January and codeforces/leetcode since April)

My solving totals, ratings, and number of contests are:

Leetcode: 824 problems, 2571 rating, 41 contests

Codeforces: 69 problems, 2000 rating, 14 contests

Codechef: 32 problems, 2046 rating, 4 contests

If you're looking for interview prep I would skip codeforces. Leetcode problems are closer to what you'll get in interviews, and their contests are much less of a time commitment. I also code in Rust on CF/CC and Python on Leetcode, and I much prefer to take interviews in Python.

If you snoop around a bit on reddit and the leetcode forums, you can often find lists of problems people have seen at a specific company's interviews to get a flavor of what you're up against. I really recommend this - the problem I struggled with the most in getting my current job was on one such list for my company and I wish I'd gone through the list. This was before I got really good, though.

I think my rapid growth was fueled by three things:

I did math competitions all the way through college that have a similar skillset

My college classes taught a lot of competitive programming concepts (I learned what a SegTree was in class!)

I had a period of 5 months between graduating and starting my job where I was unemployed and highly motivated, and I did a ton of grinding during that period. Most of my leetcode solves are from that time

If you're looking to improve but don't have a ton of time to burn, here's the regimen I recommended to another asker:

[scholarhect]

there are things people say about the characters i like that i don’t really see. but basically everybody says these things all the time, so they’re pretty much undeniably true. presumably. but i still don’t see it. but i can’t even remotely talk about the fact that i don’t see it, because then i’m the guy with a character url who totally misunderstands the character. i should’ve picked a different subject to put all my emotional eggs into than a couple books, i feel like literature is a lose-lose situation where your engagement with it (ie your thoughts on the books) both a) can never truly be proven right or wrong and also b) CAN be wrong, absolutely. you’ll never fully know whether you’re right or not, but if you’re wrong you WILL be wrong and everybody will know you’re wrong because there just are correct readings and incorrect readings. AND you have to base your takes on knowledge of the world, you know what things mean in the books by knowing what they mean generally in the real world, so if you don’t know everything about the world and how it works and you end up not understanding something you’re out of luck. and I (that’s the word ‘i’ in all caps to be clear) don’t know anything about the world because i’m in my room all the time. it’s an insurmountable disadvantage! i should’ve gotten into something you can just study until you’re right about. fate should’ve made me the kind of person who grinds leetcode 5 hours a day for fun. it’d be useful i’ve got an interview coming up

[oshaviolater]

i feel like the clock is ticking too fuckin fast nd every single day i spend not grinding leetcode is going to kill my career like no. no is dsa even imp in the holy year of 2023 or not that missed Microsoft internship is fucking Killin me.

[lazar-codes]

22/08/2023 || Day 69

I realized I hadn't done LeetCode in a month and a half so I did an easy one today...need to get back on that grind (my mind feels numb when it comes to that logic now).

React To-Do App - Log # 5

I think I worked on this project a little between the last post and this one, but it must not have been important progress (or just colour-picking for dark mode). So for today, I present to you some more (important) progress! I decided to sit down and work on the functionality to "complete" a task, and I did it! It was actually quite easy, I just needed to check the value of the checkbox for a task and if it's checked, display that task under the "completed" tab. I have some ternary operators checking the status of the checkbox/completion of each task for my "In Progress" tab and "Completed" tab, so that's how I can display the tasks in their appropriate tabs:

The part that was difficult was editing the field in the task that this ternary operator's response depends on. Essentially, I pass up the task's unique ID (in this case, the time of task creation) and use the map() function to iterate over my list of tasks and check to see if the current task's timestamp is the same as the task's that we clicked the checkbox for. If so, invert the status (i.e. from false to true, or true to false). Then, replace the current list of tasks with this new list that has our edited task.

Next up will be to work on a little animation that'll make the disappearance of the task smoother, but for now here's what it looks like:

[hey-heigo]

online applications for cs jobs are so ridiculous you're telling me i have to spend 4 hours of my life doing this thing that will make me miserable? and if i dont do it in a way that you exactly like you'll waste my time and ghost me? what if we both became shooting stars passing in the night

[mighthavepizza]

idk what I'm doing maybe I really should buy more time like actually that might be a good idea maybe just maybe is it worth it tho idk like is getting more intern experience + grinding more leetcode for another reroll at ibanks worth it over just jumping into the deep end it's a year I can't get back do I even want to reroll for ibanks does it matter do I care I mean the pay would be great to have to fund my cardboard crack addiction what would an extra year even give me would it actually give me better chances maybe if I locked in but that's what I say every other day honestly no idea time I want more time but would more time help

[parasitic-inductance]

Monday, January 20th, 2025

hey hey besties back at it again

almost halfway through my MERN tutorial project (that id said id finish eons ago)

contemplating joining another local team for embedded

and doing some leetcode grind

The world isn't so bad after all

[plantdro1d]

9/6/23

eugh. I'm signed up for 6 credits still. hope to sort that business out tomorrow. but, in the mean time, need to get back on my grind!

today:

leetcode

cheat sheet for something

have a couple more things to iron out for the arrays/hashing cheat sheet like lambda, sort, and perhaps list comprehension onto this stuff but it's helping :)

[recursivetrauma]

I'm job-hunting again.

Ten years ago I dropped out of school to be a homemaker. My dream was to be a game developer with my spouse. It was also to be happy with my partner and cats, and to let go of an abusive childhood.

While we were in school together I had a meltdown following domestic violence and my grades slipped, the semester after this slip I stopped showing up to our classes. I found that the anxiety from these events wasn't going to just go away. I couldn't do my work or even take an interest in it. Even reading code brought on emotional flashbacks.

I tried to keep programming off and on for years. It caused extreme frustration, feelings that couldn't be explained yet because I was mistaking serious mental illness brought on by trauma for regular depression and personal inferiority. I felt like I was struck stupid, and then that I had always been stupid, and then that there was no point in trying because I would never be good enough. At this low point I was coerced into accepting a very bad deal; to be an unmarried house husband with no social safeguards. My life was in someone else's hands.

Things got much worse in my relationship. I suffered serious injuries from further violence, I was cheated on and neglected until I grew distant, and then raped, the meltdown that caused my trauma was never ending. It reached a peak when I was hospitalized from stress. I hated myself and often wanted to die.

I've tried many times to return to computer science. I'm still trying, kind of, but mostly because I have to do something to survive that isn't labor.

I recently did well at a Data bootcamp, but I haven't gotten a job four months later. I've had only two responses.

When I had an interview with Meta it was like I suddenly had IBS. I did what everyone does: grind leetcode and study in preparation. I passed a test with a recruiter. Every day I was shitting myself and quaking so much my abs hurt. My stress was awful. Then someone else was interviewed before me and got the job, and my interview was cancelled. I did another interview for a Data Engineer position for city government where I just bombed.

I'm trapped in the same recruiting hell that everyone else is. But that's not all there is to it. I truly believe that I can never succeed in the long term even if I get a job. This is a stressful career and my worst symptoms come out with external stress. I have seen the pattern of my behavior and understood what it is since I was diagnosed with CPTSD in 2019. It is a serious disability.

Eventually, as I work, I will get sucked into emotional flashbacks that last weeks, I will be overcome with pain and it will affect my performance, the way I'm treated will shift with my behavior. The causality of trauma is that you keep finding it. In 2019, I was bullied at work for the first time in my life while working in grocery. I've dealt with bullies before the trauma, but that requires a strength I don't have anymore. I need jobs I can walk out of to be safe, and tech employers want jobs with steep requirements and multiple testing interviews to make sure no-one is safe but them.

Looking at the work culture of tech, I feel myself reverse-engineering the logic that abused me. Their lives revolve around being obsessively superior, the 'grindset' is driven by fear of being surpassed by others. Unless you're one of the privileged, you live by the logic of elitism.

When I told my partner I didn't want to have sex because of the cheating, to her that was someone with a lesser station in life making demands of their superior. The cheating itself carried the logic of "I need more to balance out our partnership because you're just a loser". Gender roles as sexual economics, they're cruel because economies always are to the most replaceable classes.

There is an absolute logic to economic abuse and social status that no-one can dispel. You don't just spend the bulk of your life being a 'hustle mindset' creep and turn it off in personal relationships. That's who you are everywhere. In my mind, Tech companies driving inequality isn't just a function of technology but the people who build it. You may know that 'harassment in tech' was a news item for years, yet there no mechanism in that industry or even in our society to help survivors deal with it. It's just your problem. If you get out of this hole you teach everyone the lesson that 'anyone can do it', and if you don't you're ignored forever. Even the way we view victims is steeped in elitism.

This idea works fairly well being plugged into various scenarios. After our relationship ended I was mocked on twitter as an inferior. Someone who should've known their place and been more thankful. No-one bothered to question the weird narrative shift from 'my sweet, supporting partner' to 'my evil, worthless ex who wouldn't respect my power'. There is no moral difference here, simply knowing that I was worth less is supposed to carry all the credibility of publicly abusive statements. I could write pages and pages on how viciously economic elitism, and the abuse that follows can shape two people and the social circles around them.

I'm still trying. I see some classmates getting jobs and others returning to amazon fulfillment. I read experiences on this process - It's shocking to realize that normal people are experiencing the same stresses I am, not because of an exceptional series of abusive acts but because of the pressure exerted by the regular economy on them. I'm tempted to say Capitalism is as bad as life-ruining abuse, but for some that's what it is in the first place.

I don't think it's an accident that I did so well in my class. It didn't revolve around the same culture as employment does. I felt confident, social, likeable even. If I had just somehow dropped directly into work from that position, maybe I would've been okay.

I really just want to be safe and I don't know how else to do that. If it weren't for one of my injuries degenerating into arthritis I would already be in a fulfillment center or working grocery.

It occurred to me this week that I wanted to make video games with someone I loved and that's how I got here. I despise that romanticism now, but I feel emptier living without it.