JOURNAL

5 February 2026 - Brain Fog

Brain fog is the worst thing ever. So much work. I have had headphones on. I've been taking breaks. I have been timing myself. I've been going one at a time. NOTHING WORKS. It's just so hard for me to focus in the first place! I know it's not my fault, but I still end up feeling horrible and unproductive. I can't really think much and it's like someone's blindfolded me and asked me to read a 30 chapter novel. For context, brain fog isn't a single medical diagnosis but rather a symptom that reflects multiple underlying processes happening in your brain at once.

The prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain responsible for executive functions like focus, decision making, and working memory. When you experience brain fog, this region becomes less active or less efficient. Research shows that in people with ADHD, there's often lower activity in the prefrontal cortex and reduced levels of neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine. These chemicals are essential for maintaining attention and motivation. Without enough of them, your brain struggles to filter out distractions and sustain focus on tasks.

Inflammation also plays a significant role. When your body is stressed or your immune system is activated, inflammatory molecules called cytokines can cross the blood-brain barrier and interfere with normal brain function. These cytokines can slow down communication between neurons and reduce the production of neurotransmitters. This creates that heavy, sluggish feeling where thoughts move slowly and everything feels harder to process. Such a pain.

Your brain also relies heavily on glucose and oxygen for energy. When you're stressed, anxious, or overwhelmed, your body's stress response diverts resources away from higher cognitive functions. The amygdala becomes more active during stress, which can hijack the prefrontal cortex and make it even harder to think clearly. This is sometimes called an "amygdala hijack" where your emotional brain overrides your thinking brain.

Sleep deprivation and chronic stress further worsen brain fog by disrupting the glymphatic system. This is your brain's waste clearance system that works primarily during sleep. When you don't get enough quality sleep, metabolic waste products build up in your brain tissue and interfere with neural signaling.

In autism and ADHD specifically, there are structural and functional differences in how the brain processes information. The default mode network, which is active when your mind wanders, and the task-positive network, which activates during focused work, don't always switch efficiently. This means your brain might struggle to transition between rest and focus states, leaving you feeling stuck in a foggy middle ground (if you have autism and/or ADHD).

Knowing how it usually works and why doesn't really help get me out of it though. I still feel awful. At least I'm knowledgeable.

25 January 2026 - Cool dream

Had a dream where the main character was some sort of undercover parks and rec/national parks journalist went to “work” for some incredibly rich man who lived at the edge of a large lake to find out more about the lake. The lake was absolutely massive and always had a thick fog over top, which was the main draw for tourists at the southeast end and wealthy residents like the rich man. The problem was that due to the terrain and property ownership nobody had figured out what the fog actually was. People assumed it was water but it probably wasn’t. It always had this weird stuffy smell that you couldn’t quite place as anything in particular.

So the MC needs to figure out why so many rich people live around the lake, what the fog is, and more history. He shows up to his “job” and sets up camp maybe half a mile southwest of the rich man’s mansion (it was curved with massive glass windows, the closest structure to the lake, directly overlooking it, super modern looking). He’s supposed to be some kind of groundskeeper or land consultant as a cover. He reminds me of Indiana Jones a little bit. Brown hair and hat and all that. Well, he sets up and pulls out a few large maps surveying the area. One in particular was his focus and it was one drawing property lines around the lake.

It turned out that there was some kind of factory with an undisclosed purpose on the north side of the lake that owned pretty much all of the Northern land around the lake, and the factory was riiiight at the edge. The map didn’t have a size set for the factory so the guy decided to check it out. Before that, though, he built up some rapport with the rich guy and pretended to do something. He also got some shots of the lake fog from the inside of the mansion. After that, he set off with a backpack of surveying stuff and hiked up to the start of the factory property line.

At that point it’s already really suspicious that a factory is at the edge of a lake. Why? So he goes further into the property and eventually gets close enough that he can see this huge, dark building around the bend of the lake (he couldn’t before because of the fog) and goes closer. It’s a weird type of structure and only half looks like a factory. It’s apparently spewing SOMETHING into the lake. First big red flag. It’s right on the edge, even more than the map said. Second big red flag. It looks really dark and menacing for some reason (why if it’s supposed to be a factory? Why spend more on style)? Third big red flag… So it’s already really suspicious. He goes up to the gate and snaps a ton of photos.

After that he tells the rich guy that there’s a factory ruining his view and spewing something into the lake (idk why don’t ask me) which gets him incredibly mad. He goes off to call a bunch of other rich people to form an acceptable opinion. The MC has a suspicion that the closer rich person mansions are being paid off somehow.

Anyways there’s this whole big thing about getting into the factory and figuring out things that’s all a blur for me so I’ll give you “spoilers.” The fog is a substance from a hellish dimension that the factory draws from as a byproduct so otherworldly deals don’t arouse suspicion. Why? I have no idea. The fog comes from a sea of “kelp” that spew toxic gases when cut. They’re using it for something though and need a place to put the evil gas, so they stuck it on a scenic lake that they know nobody can get close enough to. Then they had people buy up the shoreline properties so nobody could get close enough if they tried. Somehow, the factory can get up.

Once they were found out, it uprooted itself from the ground and walked off. The evil mist guys were surprisingly nice. The MC got a hard hat and everything. I think they were going to kill him anyways so they were just answering his questions beforehand. There was also a fog leak detecting golden retriever. How did they train a dog for that? I guess you could but I don’t know why. Maybe so you don’t drop dead at work…? Well, it was a cute dog.

23 January 2026 - SIGH

Man, I did so much, but there are still bugs!! I always go back and fix things over and over again, I wish I had more time to implement things. Made the homepage look awesome, but the margins and sidebar (nav bar) are off and it's annoying me to no end. I've gone line by line and I can't figure it out! Other than the main site I've been building a test character/worldbuilding site called Second Winter, and that's going great. I made an awesome notebook and the aesthetics are looking great. I think I might migrate all my characters/worlds to their own pages. Mobile is a pain to account for but I've still gotta. I'm pretty pround of the accessibility of my pages so far, but I need to test them all. Well, it was a good time.

3 January 2026 - On a roll!

Fixed a bunch of pages and added a prev/next button for easy image viewing. My cat is on the cats page now! I was playing around and managed to make it interactive. Very fun. Now I've just got to upload all the art...argh!! It's going to take a long time. In other news, I made another cute little plushie out of the rest of an old t-shirt to go with my stick-figure type guy. It's super cute! Great weather today. I went out for maybe five walks? Can't remember. Made an amazing sandwich in the morning for breakfast. Overall a pretty good day.

2 January 2026 - Lots of stuff done

So much work done today!! Made all the pages, standardized the look, added fun effects and more. Still need to upload all my art, but at least I've got my MS Paint page done! There's even a drawbox you can use to make your own art. Had a mishap fixing the favicon where the entire MS Paint page disappeared completely and I spent nearly two hours trying to fix it. Luckily, it's back now. Sigh! At least it was fun to mimic the styles of MS Paint and Kid Pix. Looks great in the end. Image carousels are hard to make...well, I'm done for today.

1 January 2026 - Happy new year!

Today I launched my website! Feels pretty cool to code it myself. I don't miss google sites at all. Went for a walk in the park, and it was unseasonably warm. Pleasant, but I had to carry around my jacket for an hour. "New year, new website," as they (probably don't) say. I have a good feeling about this new project.

10 December 2025 - Messing around

It's pretty fun to come up with random things to implement on this website. I've been messing around with some HTML code and I managed to make a half-hearted attempt at a "book" you can flip through. It's annoying to try and format it, though, but I might use the code somewhere. At least it scales!

29 November 2025 - RPGMaker MZ finally works

I managed to finally get RPG Maker MZ to work! I still haven't gotten a refund for MV, which I'm disappointed about, but y'know. I can't do much about it. The graphics error was some kind of a rewrite that was happening, and I've fixed it! It doesn't seem to like when you get rid of battle mechanics, so I was forced to give my test character a class. Parallax backgrounds for maps also finally work and I figured out how to make tiles walkable :)