It’s very hard for me to believe that I can have joy because people are very often sad when I tell happy stories. Not without cause. The parts of my past I remember most fondly are often just moderate relief from something that was worse. That can be very hard for people to hear. Whatever the cause it’s pretty isolating to know that other people can’t share joy with me, because knowing about my existence makes them sad. My current story is less sad than my past, so if I stick to it people do better. This is one of the reasons fleeing seems so attractive. People like me more…

Made my early meeting today and got through all my SRs, though there’s one more coming up from KI review. A couple of release checklists not due until next week but I’m gonna try to get them done before my time off to make next week easier. Skipped my noon meeting but got through all the KI and other email including team stuff that will make my boss calm. Went to the gym this afternoon, but found the sauna broken, which is pretty disappointing, since that’s the specialized equipment I actually go for – I can push heavy things against gravity from here. I do it every time I stand…

Fleeing is the only tool I know to actually fight oppression. I don’t just mean running away from oppression and pretending I won’t have to deal with it elsewhere, I mean actually fighting it and making it be different. Fleeing empowers me in a way that almost nothing else can, making me invulnerable to many form of power and letting me burn too brightly because I don’t need anything for the return trip. Fleeing is like jumping out of a plane – it commits you to an interaction with reality in the near future, but it also allows you a few minutes if great freedom. Some people plan to jump…

Watched Winter Passing (2006) yesterday because Shanda wanted a movie that was “bittersweet” and that was about feelings like Nassun had – about fleeing and hoarding and parents and not being a child. About oppression and sadness and not getting what you need. It was a good match on all counts. I’m often able to give you a movie for a feeling, if you can take a moment to tell me a story about your feelings. @Zooey is the saddest panda with no attachments, and it’s time to flee again. She has to give up everything – this movie is not subtle so she actually drowns a kitten – to…

Lots of people aren’t comfortable with their eyelash feels and only a few risk acknowledging them 1Sometimes people ask technical questions when they want to talk about their eyelash feelings. But they can’t talk about feels because they’re also feeling anxious, so instead of talking about art you can only communicate in the form of an itinerary, or maybe a story about a financial transaction.. I watched a couple hundred individual people pretend to ignore me over the course of a few hours. I watched the very young not pretend 2The very young interact about art feels, they just don’t do words – they do eyebrows. And sometimes they do…

Long day at robots, didn’t get home until about 11. Still had to do dragon work afterwards, both fabrication and design. Got everything satisfactorily complete at home and at school, but I won’t get as much sleep as I hoped. Should be done by 5 tomorrow – FTC’s one-day competitions are nice – so I can have an early night. Might be a challenge to get going in the morning though, so today you’ll have to make do with pictures. ZiB

Did lots of day job today. Got my old SRs squared away, did the major release notes, clicked through a mandatory information security training slide show for more than an hour. Compliance training designed to allow the corporation to pass liability to low-level employees when something inevitably goes wrong (or is discovered, having been wrong since inception). It’s better than the ones about sexual harassment but still laughably useless and sometimes even clearly wrong. It spent a lot of time labeling people who notice wrongdoing as “disgruntled employees” – like Boomer parents who shout “respect your elders” if you ever respond to their ongoing mistreatment and disrespect. But it’s done…