Because we had some disconnection I wanted to offer reassurance. I don’t feel like there is a problem but I would like to make myself transparent so that it feels safe and easy to reconnect I feel like your job is going okay. At least that’s how you last talked to me about it. I don’t think you are a person who would be better if you quit. I know it was hard for a minute with funding cuts but I felt like you were mostly satisfied with how things are at present, and planning around a future with a definite end date The idea that your work is too…

I am not nothing at the times when I am not defined by a continuous-narrative cognitive-dominant identity 1I am not convinced that anyone is well defined primarily through an isolated, cognitive-dominant identity. It’s the way that many people talk about human existence, at least in White culture, but I’m not sure that story is true. I know for a fact it’s not the only truth, because it’s not true for me.. I am not nothing at the times my disability means I cannot be productive or even active. I am not nothing at the times when I do not know a path to something better and cannot imagine a future…

I know brains do not always agree with this perspective, but try to imagine that to get the right job or school or opportunity or relationship you actually need rejection. It’s a thing that keeps you safe and helps you value your own wants and needs. It’s a tool that lets you find what you want. It hurts like hell sometimes, but it’s a thing you need. Being rejected from a thing where you won’t get what you need is better than being selected and wasting your time. Regardless of the accomplishments or qualifications or recommendations you have, no matter how hard you’re willing to work, not matter what you…

Maybe it’s a scam. And like any heist story we should start by meeting the players. I’ve been reluctant to really pin them down but maybe I should start. Since before these started – since I started moving to reduce the cost of employment – I have been resentful and overwhelmed about day job.The work itself isn’t terrible. In fact I have successfully minimized a lot of it, and in many weeks I can compress it to a fairly manageable number of hours of dedicated work. But I only feel capable of working when I become Work – the somewhat independent self that’s in charge of all the aspects of…

I want to scream when I hear someone describe event-based PTSD. It’s worse when they position PTSD as proof of how bad the event was. “I was raped once by someone I never saw again and I still have PTSD years later”. My brain singes with decades of resentment for what feels like privilege 1It is a privilege, from my very specific perspective. But it’s not a societal privilege, in the way that term is used more broadly. Being “only” traumatized by an isolated event is still a loss of personhood and still pain. to me, even though the speaker merely comments on their own terrible experience. Most of the…

I am almost always prepared to try any thing even without cognitively knowing how it works, without any reason to believe it is safe, without any experience or anyone to guide me. This is sometimes expensive but often sufficient and occasionally excellent. If I give up the idea of anxiety I am allowed to do many things. But I don’t always do this to be free, sometimes I do it because I am fearful I won’t have cognitive memory to depend on. Sometimes I am afraid the me who knows won’t be available in the time that matters, and so I am loathe to depend on memory for anything I…

I’m doing better today. Hotels and heat and a hundred other things are still here in my brain, but I had a good day, and now it’s not as hard as it was last night. So today we’ll do a rant instead of a purge. When I say money is imaginary, I don’t merely mean that it’s abstract. I mean it doesn’t exist and when people demand it you can merely claim it exists because there is no technical process to determine if that’s true. Obviously this position is not strong on nuance, but I mean it to be understood as literally true. There are lots of examples of the…

Let’s try one of these. There are a lot of old feels in the air tonight and sometimes a Screed is a way to burn them. I might as well do something with my time while I sneak out of bed to lay here on a hotel floor, hiding my distress, waiting for tomorrow to help me forget tonight. I got abandoned a lot at hotels when I was young. Being abandoned wasn’t exactly uncommon for me, but it was extra hard when I was someplace without access even to familiar terrain. There were several versions of this but a common one when I was like 11 was for Pete…

It’s not that I used to find these easier to write. It’s not that I can’t be person who writes. It’s that I used to burn pain to fuel them. It was always hard. But there are still things to write. It’s okay if the first time trying a hard thing alone didn’t go perfectly. It’s okay that it was stressful, that you didn’t get the outcome you hoped for, that you decided to stop because it felt like too much. It’s okay to need some space, to need support, to need a different approach. There are good reasons it’s hard and it’s okay to be daunted them. It’s okay…

When I was very young – around the time I developed Person in Charge – I built a framework for the world that told me I should not know how other people feel. It was sometimes useful to me to know, but revealing that I knew was a likely path to abuse. At the time I was convinced that it was a thing I should have grown out of by then – I felt I should have overcome empathy by age 5 – and that I hoped I would someday be able to do (or at least fake) the correct behavior so that I could live independently 1You know, the…