Apparent Approbation

I’ve been listening to Calculating the Stars (Mary Robinette Kowal). It’s solid, crunchy scifi. It likes to talk about flying. It’s about anxiety, and actually has things to say about it. It’s sort of about systematic oppression but it feels pretty lightweight – there is real pain described but it’s observed from a place of some privilege. There are support systems in place that often allow the protagonist to disengage when she’s overwhelmed, and to not greatly suffer for that loss of control. And some of the oppression is presented second hand, when the protagonist is made to notice. It’s a good book though, and I’m probably being hard on it after recently reading Jemisin. It has lots of feels, and it knows what it’s saying about them, it’s just not the specific ones that make me cry.

Parent threads do make me cry. Anytime there’s public discussion of young people’s behavior it’s full of descriptions of old people not empathizing with them and the young people being blamed for that failure of humanity. Full of old people being cruel to a young person and describing the interaction as beneficial. But the part that gets me is the overwhelming reaction of others in favor of that anti-youth reading – where cruel behavior is excused or even lauded because it “teaches a lesson” or otherwise produces compliance in a population where we demand a lot of compliance. Where people are sure from the second hand description of a single event that the old person telling this story was subject to harm from a “bad kid”; in 80 replies no one even considered how the young person was feeling, or how the old person could have achieved their goals more kindly. I should stay out of them. I usually do but sometimes I’m fooled by a title I think will lead to happy anecdotes. It’s safer to stick with dog threads.

Shanda’s got court on Friday. You expect there will be a negotiated agreement to relinquish parental rights and make the status quo “permanent” ¹Permanent only in the weird way that the law describes the assignment of young people. Assuming that goes to plan you’ll be done with this case and the whole CASA program in short order, probably with no more contested hearings. I know being done has been your goal for a while. I’m glad it’s finally happening. Good job sticking around until it did.

“Everyone’s always telling me to relax and I’m not good at relaxing. Well, I don’t want to relax ’cause I hate relaxing so – Ooh.” – every person ²This specific dialog is from Amy on Veep (HBO) S07E03 “Pledge”, but the general sentiment is something I’ve seen more than a few times. who has been stressed out so long they don’t remember what calm feels like, when the drugs kick in. It’s easy to imagine that letting anything past the wall of nervous distraction will make things worse. That being alone with your thoughts is dangerous and will make you spiral. That you’re not tired at all, because you were so much more tired yesterday. That stopping for a second will just put you that much more behind, or that if you stop you’ll never be able to start again. Honestly getting past that wall is a decent reason to do drugs, IMHO. But it can’t be the only way you get there – sustainable living requires that you avoid spending so much time in that state in the first place.

Shanda had a lot of feels about “the big paragraph” from Qualified Higher Ed Expenses. Which is good. I want to stop sitting on them so we can be on the same page. And I think we’re closer. I think you’ve decided the good feel is the one you want ³though I could use a clean run through them for my own reassurance. I can see you’re still afraid, and that’s fine – doing things even when you’re afraid is how real change always happens. It’s how you find things you love.

When I imagine what’s on my anxiety index I think of things where we are both worried about a topic but for some reason not discussing it. Things I would like to worry less about, and was hoping for your help to make that happen. Things you would like to worry less about, a task I’m offering to help with. Things I want you to pay attention to just for a few minutes, even though it’s hard, so I can guess what might make it easier.

But I think the unifying concept of the list is things I’m worried about and don’t know how to change by myself. Things where I’m waiting on a person or an event or just waiting for luck to change what’s happening. Things that I don’t know how to advance on my own, and would like to talk about. Sometimes I’m offering you help, but I’m always asking for yours.

I’ve suggested sharing media of all kinds – and dress-up day, which you should still do – as a way to do sharing that’s asynchronous and that gives you the safety of being about something that isn’t directly you. As a way to create shared experiences even at a distance. Here’s another option: share writing with me. I do a lot of it and I’d love to see yours. It doesn’t have to be like mine. It doesn’t have to be about you ⁴though I’d be excited if it was. I know some of your write, at least from time to time, and you could share. I’d be happy to provide prompts or follow yours. I’d trade 8s with you in beat poetry or communicate in greeting card haikus. Anything counts.

Listened to this while I fought with Outlook ⁵They’ve turned off IMAP access so I have to use Outlook or something else that’s MS-partnered. On my phone I’m sort of indifferent, other than the stock app thinks it can have admin rights to my phone. But there are alternatives with more reasonable policies. On the desktop though – fraking Outlook. For my own mail I use MailMate. I might … Continue reading and my O365 account: https://youtu.be/845J6YKdOxI It’s a little dense but if you’re into DTD or C-PTSD research it’s an interesting presentation. And the caae study it presented helps me feel better after reading the parents thread before. There’s actually a lot of cool stuff the channel about a bunch of psychology topics, if hour-long teleconference slide shows can be cool.

I got dressed today, at a not unreasonable hour. It’s still hard for me to imagine I can wear clothes just for being warm or comfortable absent some more significant utilitarian need. So it’s good that I got dressed but I found myself carefully selecting my least good shirt to do so. Its a habit I have of selecting the first shirt that’s “good enough” for a particular task, starting with the worst clean shirt I own and working my way up. I got out of that habit when I stopped selecting shirts years ago – I just took the next one. But now that I’m doing selection again I need to build better habits. I also need to stop having a whole tier of shirts that aren’t good enough for normal life, though it’s a little hard for me to imagine not having low-quality backup shirts for emergencies where I either can’t afford to “ruin” a good shirt or have lost access to all my regular shirts. Just like I used to keep a shitty emergency jacket in the car – something bad enough that it didn’t count against my clothing quota but still better than nothing.

I’m working my way up to trying clothes in bed. There are lots of reasons that’s hard for me, from external deprivation and my perception of my own inhumanity to sexual harassment and fear of homelessness. I’m not particularly interested in the idea of bed clothes on a recurring basis, but I’d like to imagine I can wear them without fighting trauma and triggers. That I could fall sleep partly dressed and not feel ashamed and worried. I’ve gotten as far as lying under the sheets with leggings and socks on, at least for the period I’m awake and in bed. I was thinking maybe Saturday after morning Dog/drug activities I would come back to bed and nap for a couple of hours while dressed. The daytime setting and shirt duration make it seem safer, even though I know the danger exists only in my perception.

Work sort of happened today. I spent time fighting with the computer so I got a little less done than I had hoped. But I still got things done. I’m going in for an early meeting tomorrow a I’ve got a phone meeting at like 1. I hope to get caught up on SRs and bugs between the two. If I can do that, or get close, the rest of the week should slip by without too much trouble.

My taxes apparently did get filed yesterday, though not quite accurately. They didn’t tell us about it until we asked again today, and I’m not sure if they were filed with my current name, but it should be close enough. I’ll get them to ammend the return in the next couple of weeks. And then I can pretend I’m getting a refund when they send back a few hundred dollars. Though it’s going right into next year’s tax escrow account, to cover my 2019 IRA penalties – the ones you pay for not being old enough to deserve access to money.

Shanda is a little nervous about C coming over tomorrow. Which is fine, though it can be tough to support you about a thing that’s happening to me. Not that you can’t be impacted or have support from me, just that it would be nice if they happen together instead of serially. I’m feeling okay about it, other than my ongoing assumption that this sort of thing can only lead to pain for everyone. And not the good kind.

I ate twice today. Lunch required sort of a run-up but I got there. I didn’t do enough tracking to know how I did physically. The morning wasn’t great, though I was still recovering from particularly bad sleep on Sunday night. Afternoon was okay, and I did accomplish household chores, but lumping also felt necessary for reasons I did not pay enough attention to. Evening was fine, though there were lots of feels around the house that made it a heightend experience, even if the process was intentional and productive. My skin is in rough shape still, or maybe again. I’ll try to pay more attention tomorrow.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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