Wednesday morning. Sitting in the park with my coffee. I wish there was a table outside the shop where I could sit and watch the street. Sadly, there is not. Instead I am back in the park, being one with nature instead.

I woke up this morning at about 6am. Bright and early with the sun! I dreamt I was in Hong Kong again. Something about it just gets to me. I was sad, then I checked my iPad and found a lovely little news notification from AJE about an another round of crackdowns on political activists by the CCP. I noticed there was a new wave after the HKSAR Anniversary on July 1st.

I wish I could explain the vibe of the city on that day. It was dystopian. No fireworks. No celebration. No parties. No joy. Every screen had the Chinese flag waving proud, reminding everyone Big Brother is in charge now. I could feel the simmering anger and resentment of the people in the streets. Everyone looked even unhappier than they had in the days prior. Something about that day just felt off. Everything was off everywhere I went. It was like I could feel the fever of revolution burning in the air. Hong Kong wants to be Free.

As I sat in the airport, waiting for the flight that felt more like a polite, voluntary self-deportation, no questions asked, all I could think of to do in protest was order a plate of Avocado Toast. The bartender looked at me as if he understood, but said nothing. I said nothing. We just looked at each other like both of us knew exactly how fucked up shit was in the world, but neither of us could do anything about it.

I do love Hong Kong. I wish I could just hop a flight and go back there and find a new apartment and buy a proper Hong Kong umbrella and get some French toast and go do yoga on the peak. I wish I could go back and live the life I wanted to live. I thought I would be there for a year. Instead I got there and discovered this glorified immigration fraud scheme posing as a for-profit “education” company and a totally fucked up political crisis that I thought I understood but really did not understand at all.

So this is how we learn about the world we live in. Life is not a James Bond movie full of crazy hijinks and fun gadgets and narrow escapes. Shit is real, shit is scary, and shit is fucked up. You know who is not made for a Chinese prison cell? Me. It is what it is. There are some risks in this life I’m just not willing to take. At least, not unless there’s a story involved. Somebody please pay me to be Martha Gellhorn and I will hop a warship straight to Taiwan right now.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Ohio, my super judgy aunt is hate-reading this blog like, “Piper, naaaauuuuuuuuuu!”

Hahaha. She’s just mad I haven’t freaked out and begged her for money yet. Well, I won’t, and don’t expect me to. I won’t come crawling back. I made this choice to be out here on my own and I will find a way to make it in this world without you.

Anyways…

Spent most of yesterday being productive. Andrew’s job is pretty easy. He just does whatever he’s doing in the background while I’m working and then he checks in occasionally to make sure I’m on task. It’s nice to have him there, even if he is an imaginary creation I made up in my own head. I prefer him to real people, who are usually just screaming at me and being mean for no reason. Actually, the real version of him is just like that. Somehow the fictional version is super chill. I guess the fact that I made him to be chill and not yell at me proves how desperately I need someone in my life who is not going to yell at me.

This character is so weird. I know. But it’s been ten years and I couldn’t get rid of him, so I guess he’s supposed to be here. I’m fine with it. It’s everyone else that has an issue with it. Everyone always has an issue with anything I do. I’ve completely stopped caring. Like, yep, I heard you 10,000 times. You hate me. Got it. You are free to stop reading whenever you want. You’re just not free to tell me to stop writing. You wanna write about your hot takes on Hong Kong and Thailand, go right ahead. Nobody is stopping you.

Anyway, back to the so-called productivity. What did this consist of? I updated my bullet journal, which I’ve been neglecting since May. Could be part of my executive dysfunction problem. I need to keep up with it because I use it as an accountability tool. Not using it has not served me in any way.

Then I spent a lot of time scrolling through job boards asking myself what the fuck I’m doing with my life. I really suck at this whole work thing. I just don’t even know what I’m doing. Like at all.

Then I looked at this adventure trip called the Absolute Safari, which is 77+ day trip through 10 African countries with optional side excursions like climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and watching the Great Migration from a hot air balloon. This is my ultimate dream bucket list trip. Needless to say, it’s very expensive. It’s something I look at the motivate me when I’m feeling shitty, like right now.

Then I went through my finances, which was ugly and unpleasant. So many dumb choices. I’ve learned a lot of things the hard way. The good news is… the damage is actually pretty minimal compared to what I thought it was. I just can’t do math in my head. I can still recover if I play my cards right. So I made a plan for that. I hate that I have to do what I have to do, but my old budget assumed I was going to making money by now, so I have to throw it out the window and start over. New plan, new budget, new priorities.

Then I spent more time scrolling through job boards. I have no confidence in my ability to be around other people at all. My biggest concern is other people in the workplace. I’m really tired of being targeted and bullied out because I’m neurodivergent. I just don’t want to out myself in another situation like that. I know I’m different. I can’t wear the mask you want me to wear. I’m not going to change. You can’t beat this out of me. You can’t force me to be normal. It’s not going to happen. Stop trying to make it happen. Just let me be who I am and put me in the right place so I can thrive.

Of course, I have no vision of what that could look like. I only know what doesn’t work for me. So that’s very frustrating. How can I manifest a vision if I can’t see the vision?

So then I started thinking about yoga again and started looking at teacher training courses in Bali. They are more expensive, but they are not in India. Some of them are very specialized. I was looking at the Aerial yoga courses. I’ve never done that before, but doing it might give me the sense of confidence, discipline, and achievement I’m looking for. I made a list of some potential courses, so I will run the numbers on my budget and see if I can work it out.

Then I started researching other hot destinations recommended to me by digital nomads I’ve met. Everyone is like, “You have to go to Malaysia! Kuala Lumpur is so affordable!” I had never thought of going to Malaysia, but I’ve seen their tourism commercials on AJE and it’s very beautiful there. I looked up apartments in KP and wow, yes. There are some very nice modern luxury condos available for affordable prices. I could easily go there for a month and not break the bank. Good to know. I will just have to do some research because I literally know nothing about Malaysia.

More scrolling through job boards. Overwhelmed. Remote work. Teaching jobs. Yoga gigs. Volunteer opportunities. Any one of them could be another scam, another abusive environment, another disaster waiting to blow up in my face. Cue the anxiety attack coming in 3… 2… 1…

It’s not that I don’t want to work. Really, I do want to work. I want to feel useful and valuable. I want to give back to society. I want to have meaning and purpose. Why do I feel like people want to take advantage of my desire to do goodwill for humanity so they can exploit me for my time, energy, and labor while they take all the profits? Oh right, because that’s the world we live in.

Sucks to not be a selfish, narcissistic asshole who only cares about money, I guess. I truly feel sorry for people like that. They have no souls. They’re empty. They can’t enjoy life. They just need more and more and more because nothing and no one will ever be enough. Sad.

I got frustrated with the search, so I started thinking about going back to school. I should finish that coding class I started. I don’t know why I stopped working on it. I just couldn’t focus. It’s not like it’s hard. It actually comes quite easily to me. I should just finish it since I have time. Then maybe I can get a remote job that requires zero face-to-face interaction with neurotypical assholes who want to bully me out of my job and take away my healthcare just because I’m different.

Fantasies.

Then I thought, “Oh, I should take a videography course to upskill so I can be an influencer and go to these yoga programs for free.” Well, not for free. There’s just a lot of places that will give you accommodation, food, and yoga classes if you do all the fancy marketing stuff for them. Then theoretically you can use that in your portfolio and get paid gigs. Oh wait, that’s right, I forgot. Somehow AI is going to replace people who do this. lol, I’m just imagining a little robot at yoga school trying to teach downward facing dog, malfunctioning, and requiring an actual human to fix all of the errors and imaginary positions it hallucinated into existence.

Crazy world we live in.

I can’t wait for this little AI phase to be over. It really does make people significantly dumber. I am proud to say I don’t use AI for anything. I don’t need it and I never will. There’s nothing it can do that I can’t do for myself.

Speaking of a world without AI, I just watched a delightful scene in the park. Two cats (both with collars) came lurking around to check out the new intruder on the block (aka me). One of the cats decided to sit under a tree and watch for a bit before it decided to start climbing up. All of a sudden, a pigeon flew out of nowhere at the cat and startled it so badly that both cats ran off to the other side of the complex and disappeared. The branches in the tree started shaking as I heard what sounded like laughter coming from above. I looked up and saw a little squirrel poking its head out and making the very distinct sound, “Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.”

Delightful.

I love animals. They’re so funny. Anyone who says animals don’t have complex personalities or thoughts or feelings has never watched them interact with each other long enough. I don’t know how anyone could treat an animal badly.

Anyway, yeah, so that’s how my life is going. Really glad someone mentioned Malaysia because now whenever I’m tempted to fixate on a random guy, I can just pull up the Wikipedia page of Malaysia and do a deep-dive into the history and culture. You know, just for funsies. At least it keeps me occupied.

What’s on the agenda for today? Um, definitely get out of the house because it’s way too easy for me to stay locked up in there all day and isolate myself from the world while I stare into the black screen of doom. I could go to Chinatown and try to find some Hongkongers and ask them how they feel about all of this. And then send the article where, exactly? To all of our compromised media that don’t pay writers shit because we can all just be replaced by AI? Right.

No idea what to do. I’m just hitting this same wall with work over and over again. It’s so frustrating. I wish I could break through. I just keep telling myself… I got over the anger. I broke through that wall. I couldn’t break through that wall for like five years, but I finally smashed it down, and now I’m out here in SEA, totally free, navigating the world without rage or pain. I’m just taking everything as it comes, one obstacle at a time. I am not being controlled or sabotaged or held back by my evil family anymore. I am making my own choices, even if they aren’t always great, and I am living the life I chose for myself.

If I can get through all of that pain and trauma and rage and misery, then I can find work that pays without exploitation or abuse attached. I can totally do this, you guys. I can totally do this!

Off now. I don’t know what I’m doing today. Definitely gotta take a break from the meaningless doomscrolling though. It’s not helping anything…