Crafting Calm

We did art therapy on Saturday. In public. At a place known to trigger old feels. About a topic that required – still requires – much grieving. So there was resentment and anger and sadness and fear. There was restlessness and sore feet and tension and dry mouth and disappointment. But we did it.

We went to a craft store and felt the old feels about being trapped in such a place, hungry and tried and overwhelmed and unable to leave. Choosing between being trapped and lonely at home or trapped and anxious here. Waiting for someone anxious who refuses to make a decision, preparing a for “project” you dreaded doing when you got home. Dissatisfied with all the options but unable to find any alternative.

You’re not trapped though, not anymore. The old feels are there and it’s work to get through them. It will be for a while, even with effort. But it’s a thing we can practice. We can find ways to let out all those old feels, until they aren’t so overwhelming. You can scream and kick and cry and mope and we can find the feeling you have now as we get past all the ones that have haunted you in the past. There will be peace, eventually, when we get past the pain.

We did it with art. By making choices about what you want. By searching not for the “best” or “right” outcome but for the one that lets us tell a story we like. We stood in public and made art decisions to fit a story about building a family. To take on the belief you’ve built – that we both live, in our own ways – that you can have a family. That you don’t deserve one, that you can’t be part of one, that anything you got in trying would be painful and bad. But you’re having one anyone, and we’re going to art about it so you can explore new ways to feel about it. We already did art about it, and we’re going to do it a few more times – in research, in design, in shopping, in construction. You’ll hate it. But I think it will help if you keep at it. I know it will help me.

Any guesses as to how my therapist will react to Tuna Terror – as you might guess from my use of “you” they were a direct recipient yesterday. My guess is no reaction. That’s what I’ve gotten in the past. It maybe doesn’t come up at all, or they mention reading it but are clearly worried about having done it “right” and don’t have any response. Even if I drive the issue directly the most I get is more likely to be praise for sharing than an address of the issue I am trying to discuss. They’re “happy” (which often means “challenged” as far as I can tell) that I did a thing but doing the thing doesn’t produce any changes. I guess we’ll see.

Did D&D today, this time with the full group. I was real proud of myself, setting up a plot to deliver a bundle full of bombs to a baddie in the middle of a city, and making $5k in the process. But it was a little trickier than expected. I did murder the baddie and collect $5k, but I also knocked down a 90′ tower with my teammates inside, and ratched up racial tension in the process. But I got to yell about the corruption of rich folks and use a vomit twin to deliver bombs and generally have a good Guy Fawkes time, so it went pretty well.

Back to the queue tomorrow. I did get through my SRs last week, so it should be okay. Maybe I can avoid picking up 7 on Friday afternoon like I did last time through my queue week. I’ve also got a release this week, and I want to get my policy tool spun up in a VM where I can make SMB mounts and finally make the output process automated. I promised that months ago, because my boss thinks it’s important, but it has been hard to prioritize because no one else cares and it doesn’t matter. Still, it would make him feel like I’m working, so I should do it.

Robots went well last week. I got all 6 pots desoldered from a game pad and only burned myself once. During HA4H earlier last week I destroyed an Xbox controller figuring out how to make this go, but it worked – the Logitech was much eaiser and still works. After all this work S decided that they wanted to take my original plan of using servos and their built in pots instead of rolling our own; I guess they get to do hard-way learning too if that’s what they need. I still haven’t figured I’m going to do to compensate for the difference in resistance among all the bits we’re using but I’m going to keep that fact quiet until it actually becomes an issue, to avoid distractions while we try to prototype. S is already stressed enough about the project and it will be eaiser to sell changes after we meet a fabrication barrier than in design. The flow sensor came in too, though no one was around to see play with it. I’m excited to see how it works.

We’ve got a trip planned with C and spouse, to go to Portland in a couple of weeks. But it sounds like they’re going to cancel. The excuse is about dog care, but I’m guessing that having care wouldn’t relieve the concern. It’s sort of disappointing, but not entirely unexpected – they have a high anxiety household and changes like this are common. We can still have fun on a trip to Portland. It would be nice if any of the trips we arrange for people ever resulted in them going places with us. It seems like it should be easy, when we produce a trip that only requires you to have one day off and includes transportation and lodging, but it has rarely worked out when we try.

I got a letter today, with a sad title and an apology ¹Over my life a huge number of interactions have started with people apologizing to me for some varient of not talking enough.. It made me very happy, even though it contained some pain. In fact it made me taco. It was full of news and plans and its very presence is evidence of an effort to change how things have been. It’s the highlight of my week and at risk of being hung on my fridge for use in future smiles.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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