how do i make my code less janky and shit

@skells depends on what you're writing. I know for me, the answer is almost always to eliminate recursion.

@realcaseyrollins
not sure what recursion means in this context..

I'm using a series of different functions to do the lion's share of the work but I'm using a single "status" dictionary for most of them to work with

thinking I need to scope out what I'm doing and how I'm doing it, just not really sure where to start as I'm an amateur coder at best