(I'm writing this after six days of being sick, so I feel I'm a little incoherent because I'm so tired. Apologies in advance.)

I "worship" Anubis, though it takes some explaining.

I was raised religious. I left my faith about six years ago. I was very hard on myself, both in academics and in my faith, and when I went to college for the first time ever, I learned the hard way that I couldn't just coast through life by being naturally smart. I had to work, and worse, I had to fail sometimes. My faith didn't help me -- I had masturbated and looked at pornography, which was sinful, and I kept trying to stop, but I couldn't -- so I drifted from it.

I was also very logic-oriented. I still am, but I've learned to pay attention to my emotions more. Part of this emotional growth was me discovering my sexuality.

I never landed on anything solid after leaving the faith of my youth. Eventually, I chose to cultivate Anubis as a spiritual placeholder of sorts. I am in an "in progress" place, spiritually. I decided to embrace this new, more emotional side of myself and see where it took me.

I know I'm not really worshiping Anubis. I find him very hot, but the Egyptian religion is far removed from what I'm doing. He's more or less a token, a way to say "there are other faiths besides Christianity and it's fine if I don't care about Jesus." I still feel threatened by basically any open display of fervent Christianity, even when it's not directed at me. The fear comes from wondering if I'm actually wrong -- not that "oh, the church was right and I'm going to hell," but "the way to be happy in life isn't what I'm doing."

I might move on from Anubis one day. Honestly, I kinda hope to, eventually, but it's okay if I never do, if I never "figure things out."

My current spirituality involves trying to be very true to myself, to listen to what my needs are. For example, I have ADHD; I experience sexual cravings perhaps more than the average person. That's okay; there's no "should be" I need to try to conform to. My mom passed away at like 53 or 54. That's okay; embrace the Buddhist idea that the only constant is change. Some people want me (and gays) and many of my friends (other LGBT+, especially the T part) dead. That's okay; I would prefer they not, but the best I can do is be a good person and hope they'll learn the gays+ are alright.

Rereading that last paragraph makes it sound really zen, but honestly it's a lot more about just being okay with myself and who I am than any "I am a leaf in a stream" kind of thing. It's a lot like what I wrote about in a previous journal, "Splatoon and boyfriend." I think the best way I can put it is it [my "spirituality"] makes me comfortable with myself.

Idk. I still feel like I'm not capturing this very well, so I will have to revisit it later.

*****

How am I doing generally?

I'm in my last semester of college for my bachelor's degree. I'm 27, turning 28 soon enough. The economy sucks, tech job hiring is down, I'm scared of my prospects for work. I'm considering looking outside Utah for my first job out of graduation, either to the Bay Area in California or to somewhere in Europe, but I haven't given the notion serious thought. I know I should be job searching, but I haven't given it much effort, so I blame myself entirely for not yet having secured a job offer.

Overall I'm very tired. I might be depressed. The king sized bed I got has always been ass, but I think it's been taking its toll more heavily now. I know part of it is I just spent the last week being sick, so I'm not reading too heavily into this current mood.

I'm deeply scared that I don't actually like computing. Every time I try to work on a real-life programming task (e.g., my summer research internship of 1.5 years ago, or the capstone project I'm working on now), I find that trying to learn what code other people have written is very hard and not very fun. I'm scared this will be a significant part of being a real software developer. I miss the very crunchy code I had to write around a year into my degree, stuff like implementing algorithms. It was complicated, very hard, took a lot of my time, but it felt more approachable and rewarding than having no idea what I'm doing trying to work with someone else's code.

Maybe it's just imposter syndrome, but I'm not one of those people who loves to sit down and code. I'd much rather just be playing video games or watching YouTube. Idk. I do know I'm really hard on myself. I think it's just very difficult to be someone who can get top 500 in a worldwide math competition, then struggle to be even competent at programming. It's like, I feel like I'm supposed to be really amazing, given my talents and my privileged upbringing.