Fitting music: Cocktails & Avenues by Arwelone
I have some exciting tech news as well, at the bottom as usual!

Art by  shadarrius of Cyber Val.

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Alright, here goes. Another update. I've made several of them as I try to navigate my CFS and the last one from 7 months ago you can find here >>

It's now been another half a year of this, and I've passed the 2 year marker since I first developed it. Boy what a journey through the sewage it has been. But! As I mentioned in my last post I had gotten into therapy and was getting professional help. Together with my therapist and 2 doctors we started to do what the title of this submission is - research and explore - what could be done for me, how to help me the most and how to navigate a path forward. It's been a long and tough journey, not gonna lie. We theorized and then put our theories into practice. Turns out that what I was previously very good at - organizing and leading - now turned my brain into mush in no time. But I could still do a lot if I did something step by step in a steady routine.

So of all the things in the world, this ness managed to land herself a job at a major international science and research companies, as a labtech. This was completely out of left field for me, my family and my friends, but I was very lucky. They liked me and I had some good prior experiences from medical care, so they put me into a one month introduction program to learn the lab. And when I got taught hands on by a mentor I also learn incredibly fast, so after a month I was a fully licensed and individually operating laboratory technician in a BSL-3 clinical testing and research facility. I started working fulltime, and here's the crazy part - it worked!

Yes, some days I was so exhausted that when I came home I just sat down in bed and cried. Not sad, just sheer and utter exhaustion. But I made sure to get good sleep, some physical activity and healthy food. Slowly but surely as things got more into routine it started to work very well for me, and I could handle fulltime workdays without much issue. My energy levels were back to "normal", but God forbid that something unforseen happened and I had to change my routines or even lead, that would destroy me to the point of having to escape into the bathroom to get a break. But to add to this, I had the most amazing and wonderful colleagues who are very supportive and delightfully crazy. Working with a bunch of science nerds has been one of the best experiences of my life. Like when I was new, and the lead chemist (who looked like a 25-year-old version of Doc from Back to the Future) introduced himself, he said "I guess I'll be seeing you a lot from now on!" and then went into the chem room, flailed bottles around and mushed himself against the glass making faces. I damn near peed myself. Oh, and we also had this secret artist that would sneak in and put up paintings, drawings or small art installitions when no one else was looking. It was just so sweet. Best job I've ever had in my life!

Along with this, I started to feel much better over all. With the job running on routine, I could soon start to schedule myself to other regular activites after hours as well, such as household chores or working in my garden. That means I'm now back to a somewhat normal life as long as nothing goes out of the ordinary plan, forcing me to think up solutions on the spot. Some of the issues still remain:
- "The Roll of the Dice." Still, each day is a random roll. It can be great with lots of energy, or curl into a ball in bed and cry kinda deal. Mostly it sticks to "tired, but functional" thankfully.
- Memory lapses. I still have tremendous memory issues, but we've done our best to mitigate these by putting up tiny whiteboards all over the house, so that I can write down whatever I need to remember exactly when I remember it, and I've made a habit of always looking at them and also writing down reminders in my phone. Ofc it looks a bit silly with to-do lists all over the house, but hey, if it works~
- Still struggling to maintain focus, drown myself in caffeine to help mitigate that.
- Brainfog. When I get a little too much, my brain still turns into a mush and I cannot think straight or sometimes even form coherent sentences. Last week after a long intense workday I lost my trail of thought every 20 seconds and had to excuse myself as I started to just ramble incoherently to my colleagues.
- Apathy. Even though it has slowly gotten better and I take more initiatives and get more stuff done, it's still very prevalent in my everyday life.

But over all, I'm getting a bit more hopeful for my future. This job proved to me that I can still do a lot of good, I just have to find and explore new circumstances. The person I thought I was no longer exists, and I need to find out what works for the new Val and how to implement it into my life. And I'm quite eager to don my labcoat and dive into this new field of research and dangerous experiments~

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So, time for some cool tech news as promised!
In this upload I detail the Mechina's cybernetic arm. A few weeks ago I caught wind of this really cool prosthetic arm and hand by Esper Bionics. The attachment has very finely trimmed sensors that detects subtle muscle movements through the skin and moves the hand and fingers accordingly, thereby making it a "natural" part of your body! It also uses an AI to learn your personal movement patterns to fully adapt to you. I found the concept of this truly fascinating! They won the International Health Care Innovation cup in November 2021 and now showcased at CES2022, which is where I caught wind of them :3 You can find a video showcase of it here >>

As the world grows darker, we can build it brigher