Hello everyone, I hope you're doing well.

2022 has started and with it will come many challenges. While I started 2022 with a fever and still feeling the cold bite down on me. I feel this is the time for me to let you know what is going on with me, for real this time. And why you don't see much from me at all.

This isn't going to be a positive journal, so strap yourself in for a rough ride that hopefully does have a light at the end of the tunnel as I'm writing this, and as you're reading this. I suppose I'll start with the negatives and end with positives.

2020 and 2021 were very rough years for me and my mental health. From being depressed about losing my dream job, to having toxic friends who do nothing but leech off of my compassion and positive vibe to fuel their own miserable lives. 2020 and 2021 respectively worked against me in almost every way when it came to my mental health. I was not in a good head space at all, and it has made me more and more desensitized to bullshit where I have no tolerance for it and get it out of the way in any way I can, sometimes at the expense of losing a friend or whatever gets caught in my crosshairs.

I'm still the same person I have always been. Just less tolerant to bad attitudes and toxicity from friends who manipulate their friends to get what they want. It's reached the point where I'm slowly moving away from friends and making new ones to hang around with as a breath of fresh air and a change of scenery. I feel like that's something I need this year; a breath of fresh air and a change of scenery. I both hate and love how cynical I've become and being more concerned about my own well being than the well being of others. Of course I still care about my friends, but when they aren't doing anything to help their own situations, welp, it frankly isn't my problem. I can try to help, but I can't do much without them actively doing something to better themselves.

And then their toxicity seeps into my every day life and I can't deal with people, I'm not a therapist and refuse to put on an act just to have their toxicity dumped on me like I'm some emotional landfill. I got my own things to take care of, my own life to get back on track. I can't sit around and pretend to be a therapist. I'll offer some advice and offer my shoulder for my friends and mutuals to cry on, but more than that I can't do. I'm sorry that I'm only a human with an ordinary life who has his own problems, I really am sorry. But please, don't dump your problems on me in hopes that I can fix them.

There have been many events in my life during those two years that have been nothing but stressful, drama filled and very toxic for me that I just want to go meet other people and spend time elsewhere. But I keep looking back to the same place I was but then remember the toxicity in there. I try my best to make things better and some people have shown great progress to being better people, but some just fall short and make a huge scene and that's not healthy at all. I wish I could help more than I already do, but I can't be much of a help if someone doesn't pull their own weight too.

All of that has shaped me to be a more sturdy person, but a sturdy person with a cynical view of things. I'm still the same me, just less worried about someone's opinion and feelings when I say something that needs to be said.

I really hope 2022 is the start of something positive in my life. And the lives of my friends. I'm starting my new job next week so I'm very hyped for that, because being out of a job for a year has been nothing but heartbreaking, demoralizing, depressing and filled with anxiety. I hope 2022 changes all of that. I will strive to be a better person as well. But remember that I am only human, I make mistakes like everyone else.