Today I watched two people I interact with regularly talk openly about their role in the patriarchy and how it empowers them to decide who gets medical care. I don’t question their motives. I’m sure they feel lucky to be able to obtain care for themselves and others. But the system they use to do it is about legal parents and maintaining the control of old, powerful people. It’s one of the ways we participate in institutionalized oppression. You can be happy that you have access to care, even under this oppressive system. We are all fighting for our lives. But you have to be fighting for a system that…

I cannot write on days when it feels like I need to escape. I kept that feeling at bay yesterday until evening, but gave into it before bed. I’m still getting yelled at a lot, for things that I can’t avoid. I know you’re having your own hard time with feels you can’t do all at once. But we’ve got to get to a better place. One where I can write and sleep and do my day job sometime before never. We’ve gotten control of our schedules again but there are still big feels between where we are and where we need to be. Let’s take time for them, in…

Early therapy this week. Tried LI work to come up with happy memories from my past. They have not been forthcoming even as my general childhood recall has improved. They still aren’t. I had one of those interactions that makes CPTSD so hard – the one where people consistently underestimate how bad parts of your life were, even given context. My brain knows it means I’ve been caught being too inhuman and now I’ll have to flee. Or maybe I’m just making it up because I can’t take responsibility for my own life, like every other narc I’ve known. I talked about Kindergarten, a time found new memories of after…

Calmer today, after pushing through to the bigger feels that had put me into the treacherous place I was yesterday. I was triggered by food – specifically by the lack of a few specific things that 7-year-old me had come to depend on for low-visibility meals during times of high stress. I have intentionally reduced my stock of many of these because I rarely eat them and because I no longer love a life where I need them. But the household had gotten into a bad state. Shanda spent 2 weeks being too stressed for feels, and another being sick, and that put essentially all of our usual coordination on…

Had a hard day today. Or noticed I had been having several of them and needed it to be different. In many ways this week was an improvement over the preceeding two, but in some ways it was worse. It’s been several weeks since we’ve been able to work together on some household tasks. Between that and you needing extra care while you’re sick, I’ve moved into a mode where I optimize for reactive work and try to do literally nothing that isn’t urgent. It’s not a great place. It kept me from eating today. And it feels a lot like being trapped, particularly when it rubs up against the…

Watched Bohemian Rhapsody (2018). It seems like a movie building from pub band to a Queen concert should be pretty straightforward, but this movie is apparently not interested in that. It’s got a perfectly adequately band montage film about writing Bohemian Rhapsody that plays for about 40 minutes. It ends with a fun LiveAid recreation where we feel triumphant and get to be at a Queen concert in the 80s. In the middle though there’s a whole extra hour of movie, and it’s no good. Among other things it neglects to have appropriate music. Or to give us any characters more than an inch deep. Rami Malek is great as…

I have a great warpaint plan for tomorrow. Did some experiments tonight and it came out well. I’m excited to show do it and to show you. Here’s a thing I know about busy. Sometimes the feeling you have of “busy” is not a response to being over scheduled – sometimes it’s a response to the work of trying not to think about a feel. When there’s something emotionally loaded kicking around in your brain and your afraid to engage with it, it can make you feel “busy” (in addition to unfocused and anxious and a bunch of other things). It can also encourage you to fill all of your…

iZombie (CW) did a Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999) episode (S05E09: The Fresh Princess), wherein Liv eats the brain of a 90s teen pageant star who has been in a coma since the last pageant she was in. It’s an excuse not just to 90s nostalgia or to act out DDG, but also to return Liv to her 90s relationships, stuck between her parents and disrespected by both. And an opportunity to be nostalgic about where the show came from, as we wrap up the final season. It’s not the best place to jump into the series, but I really appreciated the effort it made in this one. Do watch. Shanda…

Did a work thing today that was technically easy but that lots of people thought was emotionally hard. I’ve gotten more recognition for being confident about a shitty plan than I have about any actual work I’ve done for years. Realized that one of the reasons I hate recognition is that it means we’re in a crisis. When we’re not in a crisis I am invisible (by design) so me being noticed or in charge means things are terrible and I am alone. It’s sort of the same feeling I have about my friends only noticing me when they’re in crisis. And definitely the same feeling I have about all…

Spent all day in the office today, busy the whole time. I had expected to do my morning meeting, make a couple of personal calls, and the go to the gym. Maybe get my haits cut this this afternoon. Or organize the new studio space. But the morning meeting was canceled, I skipped one call and had another at an unexpected time, and spent almost my whole day chasing release notes. It wasn’t a bad day but it wasn’t what I expected. And it made me tired – I got up early to go into to that non-meeting and stayed until after 5. Had a real good call today. I…