Reverie by LED
Did gym today. The sauna is still busted and the staff basically says they aren’t going to fix it, at least not anytime soon. I’m gonna add sauna to my long term budget so someday I can do this in my garage instead of in some gender-segregated locker room across town. Then Shanda could come with and Dog could watch through the door.
Dealing with some of Shanda’s gift feels today. They’re definitely adjacent to other recent big feels, but slightly more urgent given expectations about the calendar. You don’t want to think about gifts because you’ve got mixed feels, and one of them is pain. But we want to feel the pain and step past it, so there’s space for joy in the future. And you have joy planned, so let’s take the time to get ready.
Talked to my assigned capitalism coordinator today, luckily for only 20 minutes. He wanted me to know that he thought he could write me a capitalist’s excuse to avoid paying a 0.58% payroll tax for WA’s new public disability insurance program, by proving I was rich enough to not need it. Along with other disgusting capitalist propaganda, like how there were more millionaires than ever but also increasing numbers of poverty-stricken old people. But we’re done for now, so at least there will be a break from his harassment. I’d love to just opt out entirely, but it’s tricky while landlords still exist.
I’ve got an appointment with a new physician on Thursday. I’m feeling like this about it [fig 1]. It’s not going to kill me or anything, but it will be a hard time. It’s very likely that I will be triggered to flashback by more than one aspect of this visit. I’m also worried that Shanda will not be able to stay present with me or offer support, because that’s our typical dynamic when I’m detectably stressed.
My brain is worried that the visit will not result in any useful medical care, or maybe even harm, since I’ve had a lot of experience with both. It’s also worried that Shanda and the physican will gang up on me to do things I don’t want and ignore my actual needs, because that’s how it worked every previous time someone came with me to see a physician. Granted the most recent time someone went with me was in the early 1990s, but it’s still what my brain expects.
Skipped my meetings today – I was not up for them. Got other work done, but not the specific part I had planned. There’s still time this week though, and I’m officially off Thursday but only bust half the day, so I should be able to get to it before I’m back on queue next week. Got some encouraging replies to my open complaint at work, and no HR notices yet, but we’ll have to give it a day or two to see where it settles. I don’t want to put a ton of energy into whining about office layout, but I sort of would like to be sure it made people angry enough to think about for a second.
Thought of a cool project. It will require actual development and learning – I need to figure out new hardware and write software and write a server and probably fab a few boards and figure out some sort of physical packaging before I can even get to the UI – but it could be real good if anyone takes it seriously when I’m done. I want to think of a simpler one for the sort term, so I can meet a shipping deadline this month, but I’m excited to have a project in mind. Particularly one that I’ll be able to share with people who can’t smell the love from a github commit about lighting control. I hope that feel will help me stay motivated about it, over the various required steps, and actually get it done in the foreseeable future. Maybe the thing I cook up for this month will help me get going on the big project.
Therapy tomorrow. I sent my therapist prereading: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4166378/ Which is not itself the topic for this week, but is relevant to my thinking about it – about fleeing and expectations for interpersonal trust and the responsibility we all have to each other. I also realize I haven’t written the actual therapy bits in the usual way, while I’ve been focused on trying to change my interactions with my therapist. In part that’s because they haven’t been very strong or useful, but also in part because I have been distracted with the meta matters.
Last week I poked the edge of economic abuse, but didn’t really get into it. I helped my therapist understand the way I can’t eat like a human, which prompted questions that indicated urgent concern, but they did a pretty good job masking their worry and speaking in a professional scope – I’m not sure they’re prepared to deal with it, but it’s also not on my short list for topics. I spent most of the time talking about not being able to share my joy, because people can’t hear it over their own reactions to other aspects of my existence. Which is a topic I’ve covered here previously – I didn’t really discover anything new in therapy. So it was still not great. And there are still some bits of mistrust in the way. I’ll try to get another one of those in this week, and see if it makes any difference.
ZiB
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Sent from a phone.
