Satnday
While I was at robots Shanda told me. “Rev misses you a lot. He’s never been this sad.” To which I replied “That seems unlikely. He was abandoned after 12 years in the same home.” She of course meant “About you leaving” not in his entire life. But it’s my role in every relationship to remind people how much more bleak the world is when I’m around to imagine it. The cure for hope, Dave tells me.
My laptop is back today. I don’t understand why they shipped it back to the store instead of to my home – I don’t want to make a trip across town just to get a box that FedEx already had. But I’m glad to have it back – well, the part that came back given that they replaced both the top and bottom case to fix the keyboard and battery. And I’m glad to have reliable Xs again.
Stayed out for lunch while I was at UV for the laptop. Had a drink (Westland Peated), worked on my shiny new laptop in public. Thought about how anxious my dog would be if I made him sit under the table at a restaurant like the one next to me, and about why someone decides to cut bangs into a dog [fig 1]. Burned down my work email backlog a bit; I learned new freedom in deletion while I was on vacation but I fear that may be a dangerous tool to apply to shorter absences. Or maybe it’s the key to my salvation. It’s hard to say.
Skipped the robots kickoff* today, as is my tradition. People say they like it but that doesn’t feel like a thing that would apply to me. And the 7 AM departure is enough to keep me away even if I believed that sitting in a room with a thousand other people clapping for themselves after a conference call was a good idea. But I am excited to start designing a robot again.
I thought I was having a nice day by myself but apparently Shanda thought we had plans. I asked her about plans both yesterday and today, and the next one we had was “supper”. But it turns out she was not listening so the answers I got were not reliable. I guess I was already alone this weekend and didn’t know it, and then I was held accountable for it when she finally noticed. Passive to the point of destructive ignorance and willingly distracted by B to let it last longer. Or at least that’s what it feels like from here.
So we lost some time this weekend, but we’ll probably recover. We at least recovered enough to watch some more Killjoys. That show makes no sense sometimes but it’s always my favorite for feels.
No D&D this Sunday; Brian called to cancel about 30 minutes before game time. He’s having anxiety out on the island and feels like he can’t accomplish a game day, despite it clearly being one of the things he likes most. But that’s actually great for me because I could use the day off, and some time with Shanda. I often feel like game day is a drag in anticipation, even though I mostly like it when it happens. I feel like a bit of a dick because Brian clearly wanted to tell his anxiety story, but I was just not up for listening to him slowly apologize a story at me over then phone. So I just reassured him that it was okay to feel bad and that we still liked him. I’d love to help more but there’s only so much anxiety shame I can handle in one day.
Finally got enough decent food stocked for dog. It’s been a hassle, this prescription food thing. We still don’t have him on the right diet, but at least we’ve got a bag and a spare of something that doesn’t make him constantly itchy. And I ordered a bag of kangaroo to see if maybe that’s better.
Chatted with A today. Told him I have a dog, 6 weeks in, because I am terrible at telling people what’s happening in my life. Lots of people think dogs are super important. It’s one of the reasons I got one. But I still have trouble making things I like public knowledge, for fear it will be deliberately used to hurt me when the wrong person eventually finds out. Safer to keep it forever secret.
Watched M.F.A. (2017). It’s more ambitious than it is capable, but it’s sometimes real good. And real violent. That movie knows about doing things that won’t help, and about the ways we want to imagine they might anyway. And it delivers on the pink wig it promises in the poster.
Work. It’s still happening. Tomorrow even. I really should get moving on a plan to have it be different. It would probably make other bits of work easier just to get started on a plan. Also not having** an untreated panic attack every Sunday for years of my young life would probably help with my Sunday jitters, but updating my resume is a lot more realistic.
I try to keep the ratio of childhood trauma paragraphs low, so that these aren’t the worst. But some days it comes up a lot.
ZiB
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR4gR4l2XA8&t=1s&ab_channel=FIRSTTechChallenge
**And then bring punished for my crisis-level anxiety, because I was being disruptive for no reason and I should really be more considerate of other people’s needs and deal with this sometime when it won’t bother anyone else.
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Sent from a phone.
