fury_of_the_forests

Yesterday I was very productive. I'm thrilled with this, not because productivity is inherently positive or successful, but because FOR ME it represents an ability to get out of my head. I am absolutely a procrastinating planner. Someone who intellectualises rather than feels, which might seem like a crazy thing to say for anyone who knows me, as I am also someone who feels very big, about far more than is likely my right. But even that is a means of stalling myself from action. And yesterday, that was not something that I struggled with.

And it wasn't even as if I was always doing WORK, though the work that I did do was very enjoyable. I honestly am quite fond of furniture assembly, mm dopamine. But I did ALSO take time to actively rest. When I was hot, I would take a dip in the pool, and then come back inside to dry for a bit before redressing. I did that several times, swimming late into the night until all of my limbs ached happily. I slept very well.

This morning we are making a bit of a drive northward to pick up a stunning vintage leather chair and matching ottoman for HB's library/music room. We have a good lead on a couch comfortable for crashing on for in there as well. Her honey-do list for me is getting slashed.

After that I will likely do a few more things here, before dipping in the pool for the last time, and heading home. This evening and tomorrow is for painting.

"You will not rise to the level of your dreams. You will rise to the level of what you tell yourself you deserve.

The words in your head are building your life right now. You cannot manifest a life that you keep talking yourself out of. Tell yourself you are done playing small. Tell yourself the leap is worth it. Tell yourself you are allowed to outgrow the old version. Tell yourself the life you want is not too much. Tell yourself you are ready, even if your voice shakes. Tell yourself the next chapter starts tonight."

"Release. Release blocks so that expansion is possible, particularly physical things, via physical movement."

I've been thinking about the semantics of the Blue Moon, in particular it's meaning to me. I am keen on second chances, archetypes, on studying of the life cycle of any particular thing, especially the ever evolving, never ending ouroboros of existence.

This is the first weekend of my summer off of my regular work, school is out. So it is a good time to reconsider what it is I am through the simple act of doing. I do generally think it's true that someone can, say, be an artist, even if they struggle to find time in our current capitalistic society; sympathy can lie in how labour can consume both time and energy. But also, how can we define ourselves a something or someone who never sets out to BE that something or someone? So this is grand timing-- a meaningful event coupled with a meaningful time.

Given the heaviest thing that's been sitting with me for a few years now, my knee-jerk reaction was to work at repair of an old flame that seems to persistently burn. Thankfully I sat with that concept long enough to weedle it out before I acted on it, and fairly quickly determined that those were not the kind of second chances I should honour-- well, should they want to, I'd be open, but rather than focus on them, I would be better served to focus on myself. I deserve love. I deserve a love that is as big, and epic, and poetic as the love I give others. I deserve a persevering love that stays. I deserve a love that is curious, understanding, and comforting, that is both intellectual and deeply feeling.

I deserve to love myself in such a way.
The 'second' chance here is that I am recommitting to giving myself that love.

I sometimes visual my anxiety and self-doubt as a snake coiled and constricted; a kind of artery through which nothing can flow. I will visualise Them relaxing and releasing, allowing what will come my way to arrive, and what is not meant for me, to continue onward.

Current Mood: manifesting

1. What is your favorite experience in your life so far?
I truly don't know how to answer this, particularly without sounding like a pompous ass; the person who wrote it must have an idea of how someone *should* answer it, but I do not.

Though the birthing itself was not pleasant, being a parent is probably the most all encompassing in it's sense of worth and wonder and persistence in gift-giving. But that is an experience of great enormity, and as such probably more obvious, whereas I ALSO enjoy experiencing small things; sitting in the sand with fy nghariad rolling with each wave that rocked us and laughing with the children. The softness of my flannel sheets, fuzzy blanket, and velvet comforter, particularly cozy when the cats flank me with their purring on an early weekend morning in bed with a good book. The joy I feel when Bird, blonde curls bouncing, yells "Un-tee Fin!" while running toward me - and all the warmth remembering what a work of heart it took all of us to get to this place.

2. What motivates you to keep going every day?
On the bleakest days, I get up for Riordon. Some difficult days it is a mantra we say out loud to ourselves: you're the only bitch that matters.

3. Where do you want to go in life? What do you want to accomplish?
I would like to know longer-lasting happiness. I think it is a muscle that atrophies when not in use, but also some of us may have genetic dispositions toward difficulty, too.

4. Is there anything that you regret? Do you try to change it?
No actually, and I am aware that that's absolutely enraging or unbelievable to some, I have no regrets. I may, when things are fresh, think that I do, but as the scabs heal, I also come to my senses and understand the hows and whys, and accept. Amore Fati.

5. What is your most cherished gift you have received? Why do you cherish it so much?
Riordon.
I had no right to hope, and yet I did. And Everything has been so much better than I could've imagined.

I was at a party yesterday (and a good chunk of this morning) that put me in mind to think a lot about how folks love, and show up for one another, and even more generally interact with the world.

Yesterday before we went, Rio was having trouble regulating, and I was able to troubleshoot the issue and help remedy that for them (they needed food). On the drive they chuckled and said that they kept thinking "you're my momma" as a sort of happy echolalia to express feelings of being seen and cared for so completely even through one's 'chunky' times.

Today, it's me needing to be deliberate and intentional with my regulating, by taking lots quiet down time. I popped out briefly to tell them I loved them so very much, and they asked me what they'd done. I said, "I hope that you always know that your worthiness of being loved it is not in what you do for others, but because of who you are". They said that I was very sweet, but I chided them and said I think maybe it was the bare minimum, to which they laughed and said, "I think that makes it even sweeter".

I'm so glad they have that from their parent; I hope someday they find that from a Love.

What people want is largely the same, I think. To be seen and known, understood and loved not for what they do or how they seem, but who they truly are. It's the HOW to achieve that that differs from person to person. And are we capable of showing up like that for them, based on who WE are. (Finding that alignment is the trick.)

I am a lot of things, but I cannot be everything. I don't expect anyone to be my everything either, but I know what I do want.

Someone who can be still and quiet with me. Be that in the early hours over a cup of coffee/tea, late at night in bed with a book, sitting in the sand listening to the ocean and noticing how the soft hairs on our arms respond to the wind. The liminal spaces like drives between places, where ones hand can rest on the other's thigh and notice the sun's warmth through the windscreen. I need someone who can be fully present in each moment - we get so few of them - and wring every ounce of meaning, love, life, from it.

That's how one must show up for me; to show up in entirety.

Translation is something that both fascinates me and.. in a way.. I find repulsive in the same sense that considering the vastness of the unknown ocean does. It's, quite literally, unfathomable.

*smiles* Someone use to call me that. I'd ask if they knew how much I loved them, and they'd stroke me and say no, I was so deep, they could not fathom me.

Translation is like that to me. I think one of the canonical examples of this is "hiraeth" being untranslatable from Welsh to English. It's not really, it's just not a one-to-one translation. It means longing, something akin to nostalgia, or even homesickness. It's used in banal language, though it's often prescribed very poetic undertones.

There are words with less literary aspirations that still carry a lot of cultural information with them - "tiddies" for example. Sure, we can translate that to breasts, but would one use the two words interchangeably? No, because some additional nuance is there. I was reading something recently that made the claim that "tiddies" and "titties" even carry slightly different connotations, and where you might use tiddies to refer to an anime character, you'd use titties for an actual human pair. What about 'tit'? Other slang, are they analogous? Is there any difference in use between age, class, sex, sexuality, etc... demographics?

Whenever we translate something, we run the risk of missing out on some nuance. Some richness is, inevitably, lost. It cannot be helped. The human experience as a whole is a set of untranslatable qualia.

Does this mean that we should never seek to be known? Are we even knowable? And if not, does that mean we shouldn't try?

https://thefridayfive.dreamwidth.org/137137.html

How often do you typically shower/bath?
I generally bath once a day every day (largely for muscle/fatigue reasons) and shower anywhere from 3-6 times a week; more often being in the summer and/or when I'm going to the gym regularly. I generally bathe at night before bed and shower in the morning.

Do you prefer showering or taking a bath?
They perform very different functions for me, so it's like asking if I prefer two equally useful but unrelated things. I soak in an extremely hot bath to ease my muscle pain/fatigue and relax; I can and do occasionally wash myself a bit then as well, if necessary, but it's not the primary purpose. A shower is generally to get clean.

What's the longest you've ever gone without a shower/bath?
I've been to the big burn more than a handful of times, and though many of those times I had access to showers, many I did not - though I did do the best that I could with vinegar and wet wipes... But so close to 2 weeks.

What's your favorite personal hygiene product?
My leave-in curl creme.

Do you shave your legs and/or beard? If so, how often?
Whenever I go to the big burn I shave everything before I leave, because of the length of time in between proper showers/baths and the heat, because I feel like hair does trap the sweat and can exacerbate the bad smells over that length of time. Otherwise, no, I don't shave anything.

Something assembled from some slightly connected posts I made earlier today. I made an effort to add more clarity and fix flow a bit, but I am also terribly unwell, so who knows how successful that effort was.

I physically feel terrible AND it's St Paddy's Day - a day I hate to witness Americans observing with such zeal and complete ignorance (so like most things, admittedly). The combination has turned me into an incredible curmudgeon; I probably should have stayed home.

Today isn't the day (I mean thematically it should be, and it seems I will try tho I don't have the proper capacity) for the rant, but ma'am, am I full of rage for the way that the homogenisation and secularisation of all "whiteness" has not only, at it's core, caused the oppression of ALL, but I feel it is a self-serving circle that fuels additional oppression, disrespect, and cultural appropriation because we are consuming the cultural equivalency of highly processed food filled with corn syrup. We are culturally and spiritually starving whilst being utterly gluttonous.

The negative way it impacts white folks does, in NO WAY supersede the harm to others, but in much of the same way that men are also impacted by the patriarchy, so too are (imo) whites suffering from and under the way capitalism drives homogenisation and the "defaultism" of pan-whiteness.

Green attire, leprechauns, drinking. Irish Catholic oppression of indigenous pagans, followed by oppression by English Protestants causing the diaspora to observe the holiday as pride, the process of Irish immigrants "becoming white" & it's impact on maintaining white power = ALL lost/ignored.

(This is not even beginning to approach how the Potato Famine was triggered by a blight that destroyed the crop, but it was the wilful policies and actions of the British government that lead to one million deaths — we could use this day to learn about that, instead.)

The ones that didn’t die were displaced and eventually the Irish, Italian, Jewish, and other 'ethnic' immigrants became "White" at the expense of Black Americans (and to a lesser extent those that could not racially assimilate, like most indigenous Americans, etc).

Whiteness, as a construct, has been stripped of its connections to history, culture, faith, or solidarity. It’s through that homogenisation that whiteness as a construct is 'sold' to us. Stripped from access to those connections, an artificial problem is created with whiteness/proximity to whiteness as the 'solution.'

Compiled some bits from BlueSky (what's the associated verb, and thus action-based noun?) here, as it was all more or less one thought/thread anyway:

I've spent some time diving into George Herbert Mead's work, and I want to spend more time there. (I'm kind of surprised that he's not something I've read more during uni.) I do need to finish the increasingly-tattered copy of "The Strange, Familiar, and Forgotten" from a past love that I've been carrying around for over a year. And I've a stack of TBR on each of my nightstands, too.

"The Strange, Familiar, and Forgotten" is such a small and good book, but because of it's density and the timing of the love giving it to me as the relationship was ending meant that I've been really suffering with trying to get through it. Rather apropos, I suppose. It's very existence highlights that I no longer have any one with which I can discuss these sorts of things. No one else whose love language is pdf. When they'd told me that they fancied me, they recalled a time years before at a party when I'd used the word "sui generis" (but pronounced it wrong, as if it were french rather than latin), as a point of awareness of a persistently growing fondness beyond friendship. There were in fact a million such moments of isolation between the two of us while insulated within the interactions of our larger friend group. We spent that last summer in both the literal & metaphorical sun of only one another, playing violin, painting, learning/speaking Welsh, sharing books back and forth, talking about philosophy, identity and gender, theoretical maths.

It is perhaps the ONLY instance of my being Icarian in my life.

I'm driving to work more through muscle memory than awareness. I catch a sudden whiff of something that is unlikely, but inexplicably familiar. Pulled pork, specifically in a metal catering pan, warmed with water, in the clean but somehow still dust-smelling basement of a church. Not necessarily your church, but any church, all churches have such a basement, and if not, a similar area where there is first a small closet dimly lit with wool tweed coats where one, if one were a small child, might hide, and nearby in a blinding industrial kitchen, grandmothers with aprons and large slotted spoons making massive amounts of food. It doesn't matter if it is a Polish Catholic church, or an Anglican Methodist, it doesn't really matter what food it is, there are always babas and nonas and mémés who want to feed a congregation. All the nations, all the denominations of grandmothers who want to feed you, who will sneak you a cookie before the proper time, with a knowing and secretive wink, under the cover of ancient but well-kept coats. It is that smell that I catch, that wakes me a little more, enough to be aware that my own grandmother is no longer around to feed me, and though I've long stopped eating pulled pork, feel a little sad.

Also, I am thinking of a small handful of dear friends in particular. Closer to home, a bunny had run across the street, and I thought "I hope they see something small today that delights them". I made it to the top of the hill that is a spiritual waypoint for me of "going out into the world" where the sky is never not impressive, and I thought "I hope they know how universally stunning they are". It was an earlier thought, but I think of it again when I wonder what smells they're smelling, and how they're feeling, who they're missing.

Earlier, before I'd left for work, I'd reached out to someone else, for whom I've no adequate noun, adjective...they are someone with whom I've both history and fondness. And they come to mind again here, with no actual crystalized... direction, plot, expectation. Just a presence with me.

I write sometimes in my sleep, in a notes app. I do not know how I manage to do this. Sometimes it is one cogent bit of prose, other times there are snippets of things with no real resolution, in one note but with no real discernable tether to one another. I think of that now, because these various thoughts feel similar, and that thought wakes me up a bit more to the road, because to think that these thoughts are in any way like the ones had while fully asleep is perhaps a bit alarming when behind a wheel.

This post is going to be full of stuff that some folks would deem TMI, so be forewarned. I'm ALSO going to try to keep it vague enough that I can keep this post public.

I often like to chew on thoughts of identity, and spending time with friends often gives me more opportunity to do so. There's the general who are we, who do we show up as with others (vs with different others), who do those people perceive us to be, does their perception have any baring on our true self? if intent isn't magic, impact matters more, then the weight is not on who we say we are, but on our actions, and how those actions are interpreted by others. But also sometimes something much more specific will come up, and it's like OH, huh.

Such a thing happened this weekend when I was hanging out with a group of friends that as a whole we've known each other a bit over a decade now. Who I am, and what I do, has changed a great deal within that time. I had JUST come out of a toxic situation at the start of this, and for a bit I dated another member of the group. We were poly (I mean, we both, individually, still are) and both rather into PDA, and we occasionally hooked up with others, both together and separately, and we're both very sex-positive, had no shame dictating we hide these things. We remained friends after, even cohabitating for a few years, before they moved out of state for better work prospects. I was young(er), and very open to trying new experiences in the hope of finding what worked best for me after the end of a much, much more restrictive relationship (not just in terms of romantic entanglements, but the whole expression of who I was). There was very much this.. freedom to it. And as it should've been, to be honest. I said that I've never made a bad decision that I regretted, and that honestly not only was all of it great learning opportunities, but many provided really fun stories to add to my "lore".

But a friend referred to me as "thirsty". Like currently. I was really taken by surprise by it and said I disagreed. She said "but you're so sexual and it's been so long for you" - and she's not wrong. The scenarios that I found myself in 10yrs ago are definitely not my current reality - but nor is it anything that I'm looking for. Hence my disagreement.

I think she sees how much I've been mourning my last relationship, which was about a year and a half ago, and thinks "they'd be so much better if they had a diversion". And she may even be right. I DO miss not just that specific person, but also that specific 'genre' of connection. But she is focused on the sex - and I get that, because when it suits, I AM still a highly sexual creature - but who I am now, ideally wants BOTH kinds of intimacy.

Listen; I love my friends dearly, and if they need a hand or anything with something that I can help with, I'm down. But I don't want to conflate things, because that isn't what I'm craving-- I miss having a PARTNER with whom sex just a continuation of the act of communion with, where, for lack of less woo terms, we are connecting heart, soul, mind, and body. Like... I cannot seem to find grandiose words enough - the human cosmic mycelial-like connection.

I think I'm at a point in my life where I'm pivoting. I don't know that most folks EVER have a single someone with whom they get to feel that - and if so, then I've been far, far too blessed to complain about not having it more often, or any longer. I'm not saying that I'm not open to the possibility, but it's time to move on from an active desire, because that desire is causing pain and suffering. In the sense of taṇhā and tṛ́ṣṇā then, yes, I guess that I AM "thirsty", heh, but I think I'm transitioning into a period of... pruning all of that so that I can better control my growth.

From Grey doing last week's Friday Five:
1. Would you rather have a fun job that doesn't pay well or a boring job that does?
I do enjoy my job now, but I also can't imagine functioning in a job that's less fun that this... I do wish that it paid at least a little better (it's truly abysmal).

2. Would you sacrifice your morals for a job?
Frankly, I think being forced to labour under capitalism already sacrifices my morals. But even more so? Hm.

3. Would you ever take a job that requires you to be in costume?
Anytime I'm in People Drag, I'm in costume.

4. What is your fantasy job?
Teaching art at a public school on a traditional calendar where I'd get no less than a full hour every week with each class in a fully-outfitted, dedicated art room. During the summer off I'd host a session of play'n'paint days for children, weekend afternoon private lessons, and evening sip'n'sketches for adults, and still reserve a small bit of time for travel and friends visiting.

5. Would you like fries with that?
lol, I love hot potatoes pretty much any way.

1. Of the various cultures, ethnicities or nationalities you belong to, which most strongly do you consider yourself? Welsh, Scottish, Irish, and to some degree English.

2. Is there a culture you cannot claim heritage from but which you feel quite close to?
I can't think of any? I guess maybe, currently because of living proximity to it, Southern Californian Mexican?

3. What's one language you wish you knew fluently?
Mandarin; I likely won't even attempt to learn it at all, but it would be great to just *know it*. Of the ones that I do at least know some of, I wish I were more fluent in Spanish; it seems like it would be the most useful due to amount of other speakers and my job.

4. If you could move anywhere in the world and be guaranteed a job, etc., where would you go?
Aberystwyth

5. If you had a time machine, and could witness any one event without altering or disturbing it, what would you want to see?
To watch Vermeer paint.

[DJ Kahled voice] ANOTHER ONE [/DJK]

1. What is the most adventurous food you've ever tried?
I mean, I've had baked goods made from ground cricket flour; is that adventurous?

2. What is the most adventurous food you'd be willing to try?
I am not very adventurous anymore.

3. Would you have a problem eating dog meat and why or why not?
Yes, I'm not interested in eating flesh.

4. For the most part, do you consider your diet to be balanced?
No, not at all - I lean too much on complex carbs like bread, wheat, etc.

5. Which is more appealing: being a vegetarian for the rest of your life or being a strict carnivore for the rest of your life?
The first, incredibly.

I've often thought that perhaps my queerness was not one aspect about myself, but something that runs so thoroughly throughout me that it impacts everything about me. My understanding of politics, of faith, etc. But recently a very dear - and pokey! - friend asked me if I ever gave myself even the smallest pat on the back for being a good person.

It caused me to pause, because I knew what he was getting at but also.. I just couldn't conceptualise it. Being "a good person". And the pause wasn't for semantics or a bid for insistent validation. But no, I haven't ever thought of myself as a good person, and if I think of the instances that my friend was pointing to, I didn't even particularly think those were outstanding acts of goodness either.

For the sake of communicating simplistically, I forgave a person. I don't think that makes me a good person. I don't think doing so is, itself, "good". I don't even really know if, not for for the sake of communicating, I'd typify what happened as 'forgiving'. Life happened, it moved on. I chose not to remain in the past where I was hurt. It wasn't for them, I dunno really that it was FOR me either. It just is what life does.

It rains. This is good. Except when it's not. And yet it rains anyway, regardless. It rains, or doesn't, and that just is.

1) Do you like your birth-name? Why?
It's an alright name, it's just not mine.

2) If you could change your name to anything else, what would it be?
*gestures loudly*

3) What names would you consider giving your children?
Well, the one I did (iykyk). Other names would've also depended on the other parents, but we had hoped, so we did have them picked out. Aedon/Lochlan for the one, for the other Llinos/Osian or Huw.

4) If you had a band, what would you name it, and why?
Well, what KIND of band? That matters, I think.

5) Is there a name that you completely hate? Why?
Nope. Why? Because names are signifiers of culture, and it may not be mine or to my taste, but that doesn't make it 'wrong' in any way. I bet lots of folks don't like the ones I'm fond of and they can fuck right off.

Today's morning reading was about not putting off things, because death always awaits us. The end is nigh! etc. It's alarmist, but also not incorrect. This kind of sentiment is often used to back up grind culture, where every moment of your life, in capital letters, MUST BE PRODUCTIVE!! It's a sentiment, that though I am generally a fan of Stoicism, is one of the things that I don't align with. I'm maybe borderline hedonist in this regard. If you get joy out of always working and doing? Cool, I guess, do you (though, have you unpacked the whys of that?) But there's really, in my opinion anyway, no particular reason to do so. Your worth is not based on your production, your value, your humanity, etc. The only meaning your life has is what you assign to it, and the idea that you're working yourself to the bone, in a way that you don't enjoy or get some sort of pleasure out of.. that seems really dour to me.

On the other hand, a friend of mine wrote this morning about the work that needs doing (and not knowing WHAT to do). She wrote on a world scale, but on a personal scale, I'll liken it to my veggie garden I've been working on. Do I enjoy the physical labour of building raised beds, of hauling many tonnes of soil, etc? I mean, a little bit I do, but mostly no. It is filthy, and hot, and tiring. But I DO want veggies to eat, and so I recognise that that work must get done.

I've taken to wearing very subtly subversive t-shirts to work. Today is my Dylan Thomas shirt with a snippet of his "Do Not Go Gentle" poem. I recognise that it's a poem about death, but I've always extrapolated it to be about defiance more generally. If folks want us to die, must we lay down for them? If folks WANT us to panic, to do nothing more than work ourselves into exhaustion so that we're unable to to fight back, should we comply? Let sullen fatigue strip us of our humanity?

Maybe the work that we must continue on is within ourselves, in finding ANY remaining joy. Maybe it is outward, in creating that joy for others. Are we tired, are we worried and morose - absofuckinglutely. But maybe that's work we need to do anyway... maybe we should rage against the dying of the light in whatever way best suits us.

I've been rewatching Arcane, this time with Riordon (somewhat by force, admittedly) largely because I wanted to discuss it's themes with someone. I've consumed A LOT of critical analysis related to the 'sisters' character arc, and I DO feel that some of that (ie: Powder/Jinx's identity) is clearly part and parcel with the issue of identity (if this is not clear enough subtext, it becomes full blown TEXT in S2E8), but I've seen folks dismiss the Jayce/Viktor arc as being too convoluted, but I find it the most interesting in part because it IS subtle, it IS complex, it is also very rarely addressed in pop media AND it is not completely separate from the concept of identity. In fact, I'd argue that Powder/Jinx represents this on a personal/micro level, and Jayce/Viktor represent it on a much larger, macro, and universal level.

The Theseus Ship paradox has always been my pet thought experiment. Like, I think knowing that is integral to knowing ME, it's been so important to my foundational thought processes for a very long time - long before I even understood 'philosophy' was an area of study. I instinctively applied to it humans, rather than ships, or axes, or knives. I've come to no concrete determination (I don't even know how folks would come to immovable positions on such things) - I'm not strictly team bundle theory nor team ego - but I find it a comforting perceptional puzzle to pull out on any cozy evening and play with.

So when considering this as pertains to Arcane, and specifically the Jayce/Viktor arc(s), there's an aspect of determinism and fate that interests me deeply. Can there be some aspect of the self that is so untransmutable that fate - not just in a personal sense (though certainly that), but also in something more universally impactful - can hinge on that trait? And if so, what kind of trait would that be?

I've been struggling to sit down and write a thought provoking post, some sort of missive that was worthy of discussion with others for awhile. I thought "why can't I write this, I use to write these often", but it occurred to me that it's been awhile even then.. so I went and looked. Early November. Oof. Anyway, since I couldn't come up with anything, and the one I found feels really relevant still, I figured that I'd share it here as well.

I could connect this morning's thinky thoughts to this morning's reading, but the truth of the matter is that I've been ruminating all weekend anyway.

I think that each of us have things that we're peculiarly good at, and things that we particularly... struggle more with. Some lessons we don't learn the first time, sometimes not even the third or fourth, and it creates a kind of pattern in our lives that if we're aware enough, we might be able to see. Like the rings of tree growth.

I think we put a lot of emphasis on seeing the lesson - and I've known enough folks to know that IS an important but often missing first step - but I'm here to tell you that even if you ARE aware of it, it's often incredibly difficult to see HOW to determine which situations are the problem, let alone then puzzle out the problem.

So I can, with some clarity, tell you, for a completely random example: I've a fucking chaotic attachment style stemming from an entirely absent father, a narcissistic and emotionally-volatile mother, a love-bombing but abusive grandfather, and a supportive but emotionally-subdued and non-demonstrative grandmother. I chronically find myself involved in some manner with folks who lovebomb despite being emotionally unavailable and having avoidant personalities, who will flee once they're confronted with the real work of an actual relationship - so I tend to be anxious about bringing up issues and ignore my own boundaries to keep the peace, instead choosing to burden myself with all of the responsibility, since I've been raised to believe it's all my fault anyway. Until I become so laden down and emotionally distraught that I DO fail in some catastrophic way, then which the person is completely justified in their opinion in leaving - often resulting in cruel insults hurled that reinforce all those internal fears of myself that I already had.

I mean, that's just the general overarching theme, but there's some alarming specific ones that repeat, too.
I will admit, as it happens again and again, things HAVE also gotten better in some key ways... I CAN look at the repeating patterns and say that I can see growth, like the rings of a tree.

But to break out of this pattern entirely, what IS the lesson I obviously need to learn? Is everyone that tells me they love me going to fuck me over and leave once I become attached? Are my "love maps" just so completely fucked that I can never have a healthy relationship of any kind because I'm hopelessly attracted to those who don't want me? Knowing these patterns, do I just entirely opt the fuck out of society?

And loves, that's just me. But extrapolation to larger scales almost always works -- we as a society, as a culture, as a country, wow, do we just keep repeating the same patterns. Even if we can look clearly enough to SEE the lesson itself, how do we learn, do better, and move the fuck on?
I dunno, on either the macro or micro level. I don't know.

Does anyone happen to know if there's a way to turn on notifications of any sort? I'd love to get an email when folks reply to my posts, at the very least, but ideally, I'd also enjoy getting an email when the people I follow post.

Yesterday was, for me, a level of exhaustion far increased from the usual tiredness. Even though it was a short day at work, I didn't get home to rest until 6pm, and then I had work to prep for today. When I got home I think they sensed it, because Riordon asked me what I'd like to do this coming weekend. (Aside from sleep/rest, presumably, since that was abundantly obvious.)

I have a large painting (watercolour on canvas) that I need to put the first layer of ground on the canvas- I hope to do that this evening so that I can do a second layer Sat or Sun. I haven't painted, drawn, or anything really - some crafting with my students, but nothing of my own - for what feels like entirely too long. Hopefully with the ground layer sorted, next week I can work on the painting.

There's a lot of house things that have also slipped by. I need to rehang the shelf in the bathroom, for instance. It's coming up on the time where I need to get the garden started if I want to have home-grown veg this summer. I have the bits in order to build a climbing play structure in the backyard for Bird and though that's not a "this weekend" kind of project, it IS on my mind.

There's the usual house/life maintenance stuff as well. And I really am, like to my bones, very tired.

One of my favourite memories as an educator happened a few years ago, in the 4th grade during maths class. We'd gone over numberlines, and were learning how to plot fractions/decimals, etc on that line.

Sometimes we learn things as a slow acquisition, and other times it is like a shocking lightbulb moment. A student had just managed to put several pieces together, and exclaimed to me "this never ends though, right? you could just go on forever. Once you plot 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, all the way up to 1.9, then you get to 2. Then you do that to two, and when you're done two, there's three..." and I chuckle and confirm that that's the case.

Because they are generally a clever student capable of quick thinking, I say "and what if I told you to plot 1.23? - where would that go?"

Kids at that age don't guard their facial expressions, so you can see the thought process, "it goes between the 1.2 and 1.3, but then that means there's a 1.21, 1.22, 1.24, 1.25 etc. So there's probably a 1.33, and a 1.43, and a 1.53,"

"Yep, exactly! AND, what if I asked you to plot 1.234, or 1.2345?" The expression of inquisitiveness is replaced with a kind of horrified awe. "There's not an end to the amount of numbers after the decimal, is there?"

"Nope, just like there's not an end to the amount of numbers before the decimal. They continue on forever in both directions."

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