GirlRobot's Pod - by Droniela

So, for a 2 and 1/2 weeks now I've been on antidepressants.

The whole story goes as follows, in (hopefully) simplified terms:

I've never really developed the habit of going out due to circunstances in my family. So while teenagers start to go out and skate and date and get in trouble, I didn't. I had a permanently sick mom and a very strict father so I was only allowed to leave the house to go to school or to run errands for my mom.

That started as early as 8 and lasted until I was 17, when I went to a full time school that gave me the experience and excuse to be out and about.

Soon after I started working, and I barely ever had any money to do anything, so stay at home I did.

When I started making enough money to do stuff, I was also doing 2 and 1/2 trips to and from work, so I didn't have the time, since I spent at least 5 hours a day in buses.

My transition allowed me a little bit more of leeway in the sense of going out and enjoying life but by the time I was getting the hang of being out, I married the biggest pulsating asshole to ever live and he kept me locked at home for 2 years.

Lol. Lmao.

Then I divorced him and was free, but full of trauma. And debt. Spent 2 years rebuilding my financial life and paying debt before I could finally start enjoying life out again.

Eventually, with all my debts paid, a lot of trauma processed and a nice salary, it seemed like I could finally get back on the horse! Go to kinky parties! Go on dates! Go to concerts!

Man, the future of my social life looked BRIGHT

...in february 2020.

Then *gesticulates wildly* all that happened.

I still haven't fully recovered from the isolation of the pandemic. Whatever little social interaction and reasons to leave the house went out of the window ever since, because I work from home.

THIS IS NOT A COMPLAINT. WORKING FROM HOME IS AWESOME.

But this comfort comes with the drawback of retreating from society if you aren't particularly careful with your habits.

And I certainly wasn't =V

I mean, I go to the gym, I do chores outside but I don't get to MEET people. It's like the minimum mandatory being outside, it's not really like I'm enjoying third spaces.

Then recently, after a lot of therapy, I decided to give "outside" a chance a little more effectively. I went clubbing once =D

But anxiety still gets me. And not only my personal history does not help with that, the reason why I had to do external errands for my mom was that she had panic, agoraphobia and social phobia, and wouldn't leave the house for like 20 years.

So there's also a genetic component there. And if there is something I learned from my parents is that I should not make the same mistakes they did. My mom was around my age when she stopped leaving the house altogether, and I refuse to succumb to the same fate.

Then when I had my next prescription filling apointment with the psychiatrist, I described my problem.

I can't be spontaneous

Everything has to be planned at least with a week in advance to prepare emotionally

Being in the company of others for too long drains me for weeks

I want to have a social life.

The diagnosis was social phobia and the prescription was antidepressants.

(I won't get into which or dosage because some weirdo on the internet might take my post as medical advice and I'm not here for that. Go talk to a psychiatrist.)

The adaptation period has been rough, though it is much more subdued at this moment. The only real bad thing that happened was that it fuuuuucked my sleep. I wake up in the middle of the night and I just can't just go back to sleep, my mind racing. And not even like BAD racing, I'm not thinking bad things, I'm just thinking too much and too fast for someone trying to sleep.

I'm sleeping a little better now, so I'm back at the gym and I've been very productive at work, so we are almost through that.

The cool part is that it is doing wonders to my state of mind. I don't get pissed anymore. I don't get as anxious as a did about the future, or work, or college. I'm even doing college assignments without flipping my shit. It's been a very positive change.

But not only that, my back barely hurts anymore because I am not as tense as I usually am. I no longer feel "on hurry" for anything, I am just confident that things will happen when they have to happen.

I'm still not going out and meeting people because, as I mentioned, my sleep is fucked and I exhausted most of the time I am awake. Also I am too busy with work and college stuff, but I'm feeling some social improvement already.

I'm back at the server with my rubber friends and seeing them doing the things they do no longer cause me the pain of jealousy, it actually fills me with joy. And longing for the future when I'll be able to do stuff too, but without hurrying or feeling anxious.

I am, overall, feeling much "lighter", if that makes sense. No more overthinking, no more anxiety for no reason. I still have to work to achieve the social life I want, but I am confident I'll get there.

Social media, however, is out of the question, at least for the time being.

That shit was toxic for me. It was like I was living in enough fumes of a social life to not seek actualy social life, but dealing with tons os stress.

Maybe in the not-so-distant future when I have content to share again, but that is not sounding likely at this particular moment. I want to be able to do stuff for myself, for a while.

Yo!

I'm still alive!

I did quit social media though. Not the first time I do it of course, every once in a while I leave it to detox or whatever.

And far from me to say I'm not coming back, but this time feels... different.

First of all, the first step: I admit I am addicted to social media.

When I'm in it, it consumes my life with easy pseudo-social interactions and easy pseudo-attention. As I crave both of those, it's easy for me to lose hours doomscrolling and posting.

But that also sort of precludes me from engaging with real stuff in real life in a really stupid way?

And how does it feel different? Well, most of the times when I leave social media, it feels like rehab. Like some time I need to breathe after too much exposure, but I miss it and I want to go back, and then eventually I do come back, refreshed, only to feel spent a few months later again.

This time it doesn't feel like rehab. It feels like I am free.

Again, I'm not saying I'll never come back, but I absolutely do not feel the urge. I do not miss it.

My day suddenly feels like I have an extra 4 hours to do stuff and I feel *WAY* less exhausted, even with work and college demanding a lot of me.

I play more games, I watch more shows, I do more stuff in general. I haven't been this productive at work in who knows for how long.

In my work there is a lot of downtime (waiting for stuff to compile, waiting for code reviews, etc) that I used to fill with social media.

Not anymore, now whenever I have those mandatory downtimes I go do SOMETHING ELSE.

I clean something, I work on another task, I go solve a problem. I've been called a CODE GODDESS (by someone that is not a dev so take that with a grain of salt) because I was working on 7 different repos at the same time for different tasks lol

I work out better at the gym because I no longer lose 5 minutes between routines checking social media, so I'm getting more gains while spending the same time at the gym.

I'm drawing again. I'm doing sexy stuff without worrying about making it into content and posting it. It's a true renaissance over here.

Sooooo yeah. If you want to see news from me, you will have to check this website frequently. I am slowly upgrading it with new features. The last one was inserting analytics so I can see if people are reading it. Next thing is a proper back-end so I no longer write those as individual react components lol

After that, I intend to do some sort of notification when I post. A Newsletter? Do people still use RSS? I'll figure that out later.

I also intend on getting some sort of way for you to contact me that is not intrusive and subject to spam.

On other news: I finally started getting my bracers installed! Yay!

I also started taking medication to deal with my anxiety and social phobia. But this is going to take a while before I feel the difference.

I think I am going well. Not being immersed in bad news coming from that cursed land 24/7 surely helps. It's not like I can do anything anyway. I'm hoping things get better, I'm rooting for all my trans friends over there, but I can't keep looking at it everyday anymore. I can't even help financially.

I guess that is it for today! Have a good one!

This is a post about loneliness, but not in my usual whiny way on the subject.

I mean, it might get a bit whiny, but not in the same way as usual.

I am a lonely person.

But not because people don't like my company, I discovered. They do.

I have many friends IRL, my roomie, my girlfriend, my flirts. I am not here to complain, but to explore the loneliness I speak of.

It's hard for me to share my activities with someone. It always feels like it's more trouble than it's worth.

Like, I usually complain that when I do my photoshoots I have to do everything alone, which is true, it's a lot for a single person.

But at the same time I *dread* the idea of trusting my art in the hands of another person.

I've done content with other people before and unless I direct them on every step, I'm always disappointed on the outcome.

For instance, once I gave my camera to a third person so me and the second person could play without worrying about that. I took care of the lights, the effects and really managed to relax and enjoy the shoot instead of worrying about directing.

But then I got the raw footage and the entire thing was 1/3 off-center because that stupid fucking asshole, instead of point the lens to us, pointed the flip screen.

God, I was angry editting that shit.

The same goes for my other hobbies, I can't see myself working with another person on fixing stuff.

Even at work, it's not automatic for me to seek teamwork because during 80% of my career, I was the only person doing what I do on whatever team I was.

I wonder where that comes from.

Of course my usual suspect was the terrible, weird way I was raised, which even my siblings agree that was "You weren't raised, you were just there".

But even though I am pretty sure that after careful inspection I will come to the conclusion that yes, my environment is to blame, I also think that jumping straight to that conclusion is lazy and will probably not reveal the whole truth.

I think it was a set of unfortunate coincidences.

Yes, I mostly played alone (for reasons that would turn this into me whining) and did school assignments alone, and I raised myself alone because everyone was too busy to raise me.

But what after that? Where were the opportunities for me to learn teamwork?

I remember enjoying some teamwork opportunities in online gaming, for instance.

I had this group of friends where we would play anything online with no purpose of winning, just for a laugh.

Ragnarok Online, World of Warcraft, Gunbound, Diablo 2. We had so much fun.

But then life circunstances changed and I've never played online with friends again. That was a good 15 years ago.

As far as work goes, I was either in a big team working projects so small it made no sense to work together with someone, or teams so small there was no one to colaborate with. Mostly I was instructing people from other teams (artists and designers) on how to make stuff for my work.

And then I was the only front-end dev in a team full of back-end devs.

...from 2014 to 2023.

In my current job I'm getting to stretch my teamwork muscles a little bit more and while uncomfortable to seek, I usually enjoy the results of it.

I wonder if there is space in my life, my hobbies and my projects for other people.

If me being a control freak will scare away everyone willing to help.

Only time will tell. But it's my responsability to grow out of it, regardless of the past.

I'm still alive.

I've been thinking, as I always am, of getting a little bit away from social media.

The problem is that I'm not a super social person.

Like, I have the need for social interaction, but working from home, studying from home and going out much kinda hinders my ability to socialize.

Whenever I get a little bit away from social media, I definitely feel happier but then in a matter of days I feel lonely.

It's this weird unhealthy relationship where I feel alone out of social media, and then everything on social media annoys me.

There's also the fact that I have too many thoughts I feel like publishing, like this one, or others about random stuff that I feel like it's a good exercise to write them down.

But then, I feel that maybe I don't need to get the amount of feedback a post on social media would give me.

Specially considering I'm not in the mood to code a whole comment section here lol

So I guess I'll try posting my longer threads on blog format here and just refer to them on social media?

Personally, I think it's a waste to post there and expose it to the dumbest assholes on earth, specially on microblogging format where a complete douchebag can just reply to one of the posts without reading the rest, like a complete bafoon.

God I hate that. Why do people have to be so dumb all the fucking time.

But this is besides the point.

General update on life:

I am working and I like my job and my colleagues and even the company. There's good benefits.

One of the best benefits is dental insurance, so I'm doing all the fixing of my poor, mistreated teeth, including bracers pretty soon.

College is not going terrible, I actually have good grades, but I hate it so fucking much. Studying is so dumb, assignments are so meaningless. It's a good thing I'm less than a year away from graduating because this is so fucking DULL.

And expensive! So fucking expensive. I'm not in financial trouble or debt over it but I am completely failing to save money to buy my house.

Which is something of a sore subject lol

I am somewhat close to buying a house but even if I had more money, I wouldn't have the time to deal with everything related to buy a house, so I'll have to wait until I graduate anyway.

Which is a bummer. I found a really good candidate but I don't think it will still be available one year from now.

Oh well, time will tell.

As you notice, time is not a commodity I have in abundance these days, which also means I'm not doing fetish stuff and pictures and whatnot.

Not only I barely have proper weekends (due to college assignments), but I am tired of my tiny space.

So I need money.

To buy a house.

Which I have no time to do either.

See the kind of cyclical bullshit going on?

I could be doing some content on the side to make some extra money and expedite the house thing but nope, no time for that. When I'm not working or studying, I'm exhausted.

I miss my latex fetishist friends, but being around them fills me with not-pretty feelings of envy, and not only I don't want to feel that, I don't want to deposit such bullshit on them. They are good people.

Sooo I guess it will be a whole year like that.

At least I am managing to do some permanent cosmetic procedures here and there, like laser and taking care of my teeth, so when I am able to come back to content making, I'll be prettier =D

See, life is not bad, I'm just tired, stressed, annoyed. But everything is coming up Milhouse, from a future-planning standpoint.

And that is more than I could say about any other moment in my life.

Hello folks!

Took me a while to come back because I was simultaneously working on several things, like the new pictures, light experiments, and a brand new feature for the website!

SO, Following the last entry where I tried the blue cellophane paper to tint my soft box light, I proceeded to take some pictures using red cellophane instead. And the results are...

Pretty Great! Sure, I can improve some stuff further but now I believe I'm closer to the results I was envisioning. I'll post some of the pictures down below, at the end of this entry.

The background is less washed and the colors are so vivid! The pictures have no post processing and are posted as is, directly from the camera.

Which takes us to the new feature: The Gallery!

Instead of just posting a billion pictures one under another, you'll have a barebones gallery to check the pictures I posted.

Can still be improved of course, but at some point I have to call it done or else I'll stop doing anything else.

And then, theres Infinite Dorkness, a webring/coven of trans dorks with their own websites so we can connect you to relevant content. You can check the floating window on the right-top side of this page for the links, along with indication of which language that website is written on.

I guess thats it for today, I hope you enjoy the pictures I took and that my gallery works as intended!

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I always liked using bright RGB colors on my pictures. My bedroom is decorated with RGB strips and I really like the eyecandy aesthetic of bright gamer girl colors.

But then I noticed that while I had a lot of lights around me, I was never particularly well-lit myself, for my only white light is a weak ringlight that only really works from up close.

I needed an alternative, a liiiittle bit more pro than a ringlight, and I discovered it is called a soft box.

This is a soft box:

It's functionality is simple: It has four white LED bulbs on it's center, pointing to the open side. The insides of the wall are made of a reflective material to force all the light out on one direction. Then, that open side is covered with a white cloth that acts as a diffusor, spreading the light evenly.

Here's how it looks from the inside:

And this is how it looks when it is turned on:

Obviously it is not made for you take pictures of IT, but to take pictures of whatever they are pointed to.

This one is very strong, with an average setting, which is great for regular pictures but it really washes out my beautiful RGB lights.

So this beautiful diffuse purple:

(The washed thing is the color on the background, not me)

So yeah, it sucked.

But then I had an idea: what if I changed the color of my softbox, without spending a lot of money?

So I did it! I bought some sheets of Cellophane paper and applied to the bulbs!

And this is how it looks

(It looks super dark because otherwhise it would be barely different from the white picture, but it's very bright and very blue)

Now, I still haven't tested it in a proper photoshoot, because that takes a lot of work and time and I spent the day busy with college assignments.

Buuuut I did test with a selfie that really blued me!

Now, I have some options: Not only it's easy to swap the cellophane to change colors, I can also fold it so it has more layers to go through, making the light more or less saturated.

And I think it's safe, since it's LED bulbs, they shouldn't get hot enough to catch on fire.

Hopefully.

I am really excited to test the possibilities here. And I'm super happy it was super cheap.

I guess that's it for tonight. Once I have proper photoshoots like this, I'll be sure to share!

1010 - Robot Girl

Okay, let's start this for real I think.

First, an introduction: I'm GirlRobot.

If you know me, you know me. I'm a Brazilian girl (vai braSIL) that has interesting hobbies.

And by interesting, I mean interesting to me.

As hobbies should be.

I'm a software developer by profession, but on my freetime I do stuff related to the following:

• - Fetish (really ample range of interests)
• - Photography (posing, directing, lights, post-production)
• - Retro gaming (playing, modding, CRT Tvs, fixing)
• - Exercising (weightlifting for now, but I want to start new stuff soon)

There's more stuff probably. If you know me from somewhere else, you know I'll also talk a lot about politics, but I'll won't do that here.

At least not mixed with the other stuff.

I might end up breaking content into different subjects later if I have enough material.

ANYWAY, I'm not a professional in any of my hobbies. What I intend to share are my findings in these fields that I probably didn't find anywhere else, and might be useful for individuals with interest in those things.

Don't take what I say here as gospel. I'm no authority in anything.

It's just that people frequently ask me stuff and I think it's better if I do here.

Aaaand that's it.

Be cool, be nice.