Emergency vet trip today, to deal with a guinea pig injury. It’s the weekend and an “exotic” animal so we had to go to Akron to be seen. Pig got hurt while being retrieved from an under-couch escape, possibly from a falling rear-channel speaker (though it’s hard to say precisely what the cause was). It’s not life threatening but it’s at least bad enough to need treatment. And there’s lots of waiting alone on a hard bench on a day when I did not get nearly enough speed. Plus it’s really starting to snow, which is very uncomfortable fro me when I’m away from home and without survival resources. Were…

Had another therapy session today. Felt better able to direct the discussion. But not really better understood. Initially I thought it was going better because I wasn’t so defensively positioned, but I still felt like they weren’t talking to me personally. Whether they weren’t hearing me, didn’t believe me, or simply was making inaccurate assumptions it continued to be an exercise wherein I could not get them to see where I was and adapt their technique to my needs. It’s very easy for me to think “eventually this will get better” and just keep putting up with it. And eventually it might get better, though Shanda tells me it’s been…

Worked a bit today. More than yesterday but less than is necessary to finish the things that people want done this week. I think I’m gonna split the difference and get one of the two big ones done, and punt on the SR I’m still holding. I was thinking today about how I was “not further behind than yesterday” and about the endless demand for higher productivity (without higher pay) that is demanded of us from capitalism. I think my goal should actually be slightly lower. I /should/ be slightly further behind today than yesterday, and more tomorrow. I should punt more and more things to keep my workload constant…

Here’s a thing some of you know but I wanted to state explicitly for everyone – you are welcome to share anything I tell you. Obviously some discretion is probably useful for both of us, but don’t ever feel like I’m burdening you with secrets. I well know the cost of secrets – they almost killed me when I was young, and kept me alone for years after. I have studied secrets both first hand and academically. I literally have a grad degree in secrets, their uses, and their costs*. And I am not in the business of creating them. That comes in part as an attempt to reassure you…

DerbyK suggested – in comment on the dissonance between my social skills and my understanding of their impact from the last The Screed – that I am sometime invisible not because of my own behavior but because of blind spots in others, or the inherently unpredictable nature of human emotion. That’s true if course, and in part was what I was trying to communicate – that success in any social engineering is statistical and it’s not reasonable expect each individual attempt to meet all of my hopes. That my perception of success should take into account that I hardly know what I want, let alone how to get a specific…

V talked at me, for the first time in a while. They spoke in kind and reassuring ways that helped me feel heard and appreciated. And like I am not incompetent at the social tasks I undertake. Sometimes I imagine that I am a master of social engineering, with special skills at peering into other people’s heads from afar. Able to target a feel I think they can relate to – maybe even guess at a cause – without really knowing their life. Able to carefully express an emotion in a way I know they’ll be able to understand, skipping a bunch of intermediate steps. Able to waggle my eyebrows…

Another therapy session today, and not a good one. I tried to share about how I had done something I felt like was progress for me – about how, after feeling like I wasn’t getting what I wanted out of The Screed in terms of social engagement, I had decided to express my expectations and my motivations for them and ask for help rather than just doubling down on my lone typer routine. About how I had felt slightly shaken to see how little of me or how little of our relationships people see in the sharing I do here, but how I used that to assess my methods instead…

Got super wet more than once on Monday. It was raining all afternoon and just pouring sometimes. People talk about Seattle being rainy but they misunderstand. In the wet seasons Seattle has almost daily flurries that melt at low altitude. So it’s humid all day, but its closer to fog than rain. And it never storms; if there’s one thunderclap it’s literally a news story. But it was plenty rainy and stormy In Cleveland – and 60 degrees. Followed by snow the next day. So weather is a little intense. I could go for something a little more moderate but I do sort of hope that Dog gets to tromp…