There is No Spoon

Watched @MMF tell me about The Stupids (1996): https://youtu.be/4VBD62OTfnU She has a long history at Cracked of caring about movies for intensely personal reasons, and this one is on her list. But she also has a strong take on it in more relatable terms. It’s not the same sort of in-depth long-form analysis she did for Sorry to Bother You (2016) but it’s still good. And in the middle she takes a minute just to talk about color, the way this movie decides it’s a thing in a way many movies don’t, and her own engagement with color (including a bunch of shots of her in vivid makeup). I’m glad color feels like a thing I can participate in myself; I still would have loved this episode even if I didn’t but I’m excited that I was able to imagine copying her striped yellow and green eye shadow instead of merely watching from afar.

I know that sometimes nothing will make it better. That only some change you don’t directly control – or that you could only control at significant cost – will actually do the thing that improves your life. That nothing you do will actually give you what you need, or empower you to do what you really want.

I also know that surrendering to fatalism breeds hopelessness. That deciding there is nothing but distraction or despair is a sure way to ensure you will find nothing else. I know that merely choosing to act, to push against the thing that has trapped you, can keep that thing from crushing your entire life. Wiggling the boulder you’re crushed beneath won’t get you back to walking. It won’t end the pain. But it will help your brain believe that you’re not dying. It will let you imagine a world where the pain is less, even if you’re not there right now. It will give you enough space to believe that you will not always be subject to the whims of the world, and to find the thing that keep you from going crazy until the situation improves.

When you are crushed under a pile of rocks you have to believe in incrementalism. Not merely that someday you will be rescued by a power you don’t control, helpless until it arrives ¹This is also the path to not reacting until there’s an emergency, which is almost always the worst option. Waiting for things to be so bad that you have no other choice is expensive in every context – socially, economically, spiritually. It’s letting your soul die instead of mustering 3 minutes of belief in yourself. It’s letting life put … Continue reading, but that you are an agent in your own destiny even if your control now is very small. You don’t have to believe that you will move mountains through the power of positive thought. Or that a few minutes of hope will make you forget the pain. But you have to believe that your actions matter. That you have agency in your own life. That life is something for you, and not a thing that happens while you suffer nearby.

And I can help you. Not by knowing the answer but by being willing to try all the things and believing you when you tell me about how they make you feel. By being nearby and listening to your lamentations and reminding you about the things you like that you can do from under a pile of rocks. I’m willing to enthusiastically try anything that might make it one inch more tolerable for a few minutes, and to try the next thing when that one fails. I can CareBear stare for literally years and it makes me happy to try. If nothing else you can lay there under the rock and help me imagine that I am making doing something useful from under my own.

Work was complicated today. I got the bug I was working on done, but not until almost 8 PM. I got new monitors so I can finally have more than one window open, but it also made my mouse stop working. And my machine fell off the domain so it disagrees with the rest of the world about my password and refuses to allow the keychain to function correctly. I also can’t seem to make the SR I closed on Monday stay down. Much frustration. It’s a tough first day back. But I think if I get through my MBOs and can get the RB published tomorrow I can recover before the weekend.

I did get to the gym today. I was sufficiently stressed that I hard a hard time focusing, which is usually the tool I use to make exercise happen. But I did it anyway, because I’m told it will make me feel better. I haven’t seen it work in the past several decades but I’m told it does. And I needed time for the sauna to warm up.

I didn’t feel well today. Spent time being disabled by it, which I’m supposed to count as a problem and not just life. I’m sure I felt bad partly because of my mood, but also my mood is partly because of my body. And my skin is tending back toward pain and bleeding, which makes many things harder.
Dog was still pretty vocal while I tried to eat today. It’s like he doesn’t even care how hard it is for me. He’s not quite distressed by it – more excited than upset – but it’s sure distressing for me. Particularly when Shanda starts to imagine that he’s dying or has some other urgent need. It would be great if he could use his words so I could help him more directly. But unlike you he’s just a dog, so I’ll have to settle for redirection.

I’ve been thinking about the way I hurt myself, imagining that I’m “cheating”. I do it a lot of mornings, when I imagine that having extra sleep when I feel bad would be cheating because I’m not really sick. That it’s cheating because I could have gone to bed earlier if I wanted more sleep. Cheating because it means Shanda has to deal with Dog all by herself for another hour. Cheating because I arranged to not be needed most mornings, and double cheating if I make use of that arrangement. It’s like I’m running my own Republican welfare system, wherein good outcomes are not nearly so important as catching cheaters, and cheaters are anyone who wants to use the program. I’m going to try to talk about it more, so I can catch myself doing it. ‘Cause it’s dumb and I should at least make myself frame it in terms of imagining that I don’t deserve to feel well, or to have care or accommodation.

Still standing on Medicaid. Which is tough. My own insurance finally seems to be going though – they’re taking literally every hour they’re legally allowed to process my claims, but it is happening. I still need to go back and make sure the last therapist refunded me correctly, but it looks like the new one will only cost $220/month most months. Which still feels like a lot to spend on myself, but better than before insurance, and I’m trying to get used to it. And I made some progress in budget. It was thing I was worried about alone, and now I get to be worried about it with other people – talking about helps my anxiety significantly, even if it’s only step one of making the numbers work.

Robots tomorrow. Should be pretty low key, which is good because that’s all I’m up for this week. I should reach out to T and see if I can get them to walk through the code with me some time. They’ve expressed interest in the concept but they don’t show up much and are not very interested in doing the work when they do. Maybe something outside of team meetings would go better for them.

Chatted for a second with DerbyK. You had a bunch to say but I didn’t find the time to really keep up. Mostly I sent a bunch of depressing shit that matched my mood. I intended to bring it around to something more useful but the day did not cooperate. We’ll see if I can get it together tomorrow. In the mean time know that I feel your pain and frustration. Though I still feel incapable against systems of power I actual am quite adept at working around them and happy to share those skills.

Chatted with M. You’re still pushing through, but I’m not sure you’re still steering toward a clear goal. I hope we can do things to make it eaiser for you. But I’m glad you talked. I’m always glad when you talk. And when you notice things I like. I spent a long time not liking things and even longer making it hard to see what those are, and you’ve helped me with both.

I do still need to poke Cowboy. And to paint my nails, which have been bare for far too long. I think I get to be home and done after robots tomorrow. And probably alone while Shanda is with B for. So it might be a good time to catch up on both those, on a night when I’ll be too tired for things like a tea shelf or budgeting or research. Also both things I might be able to do with weed, which wouldn’t be a bad end to the week.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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