Prepared Statements

Sunday started with exactly the sort of free-floating resentment I was worried about. Where my existence is perceived as a burden even when it has no impact. It thankfully did not last days like it has in the past, but it made getting to robots tricky.

Robots itself went well. We won all but one of our qualification matches and played in finals, but did not advance. It’s very good – we beat hundreds of teams – and we are finally building robots that can survive a day of without breaking. The team is always exited to imagine going to Worlds, but I’m pretty ambivalent. I would like them to be able to travel ¹Maybe I could arrange for a competition that allows easier travel. That was easier to arrange in FRC but I might be able to make it go here. That would let the team have an away trip but would require big money or herding folks through and airport., but I’m not super excited about organizing a trip for 20+ people, particularly not a trip the school wants to control. It’s also tricky to try to get people to ask for money or whatever other help they need, so that they don’t self-exclude because they think they can’t go.

I added some lights to my costume, somewhat haphazardly. But stupid flash is appropriate for the event. I’m excited to have some time off to work on a more integrated costume for next year. Helium was disallowed at this venue so I worked up a balloon staff to fight gravity. It required some fighting with the door guard to get in with it but I think it came off well, and lots of people talked about it.

Got a great heist going with J. Got them to come on short notice, and then got thanked for it when I was done. It’s easy for them to talk themselves out of a thing, given time to worry about it, but if I do it right there’s a band where there’s enough notice to make it plausible and not enough to make finding excuses easy. I almost hit it last August, and tried again in October, but this is far and away the best result to date.

Left early to give them a ride home, so I had an excuse to talk with them for an hour. Which worked better than I could have hoped. They were engaged and talkative; initially I thought the discussion was light (it was probably intended to be) but it was easy by the end it was pushing up against the feels ²In retrospect I can see that same feeling in most of the discussion. I didn’t understand the framing on the first pass, and so assumed it was partly filler, but it all came together eventually. I imagine I can help with. They still object to any classification that isn’t purely positive, but they’ve got new perspective now, and at least can see how other things are different. I even got a positive response to my post-action reassurance messages. So full success, in spite of the challenging circumstances.

Scheduled Monday to facilitate recovery. No robots, done with work before 1, a massage for Shanda and a haircut for me ³Which turned my head into an age-color map [fig 3,4], where the oldest bits are bluest. I’m wondering if there’s more math I can do with my hair (or eyebrows) next time around.. Got some fast food and some new weed and some bits for a textile project and then camped out and watched TV. Killjoys gave us their best baddie [fig 1,2], way back in episode 4, and I forgot she came with her very own purple leather mantle. I almost certainly liked this show for its color scheme when I watched it the first time, but I couldn’t see it then. Later seasons gives us lots of green as a plot point, but our heros have always been purple.

Monday didn’t recover all the feels from the weekend, or even all the tension, but it was a good step, and good to do right away when Cassie left. In the past it has taken a week or more just to admit that stress is too high, and sometimes a second before we cms have things like massage or a day off. But this was useful changes almost right away, and set us up to continue recovery throughout the week.

Accomplished productive day job both Monday and Wednesday, and I’m finally pushing back at the old SRs. There’s nothing I haven’t worked that’s more than a few days old, and only 4 left that I need to do real work on. I won’t be able to clear them all this week but I think I can get them all pushed into a state where no one is waiting on me, which is almost as good.

Therapy today didn’t get my usual planning, and so didn’t get an official topic. Which is fine but makes my therapist feel more challenged and therefore often results in time spent trying to kite them to where I am. I talked about how I was sensitive on some topics to getting “reassurance” or other “help” about a feeling I’m not worried about. They wanted to praise me for bringing those things up but couldn’t really see the place it was hard for me – not in asking for things to be different, but in seeing that I will have to protect myself against help intended for real humans that does not apply to me.

I told my therapist that I imagined I could train people to provide the help I needed, but they didn’t like that framing at all, despite praising me for the doing it. I reminded them that I already write or talk to them most weeks about how I want therapy to be different, but it didn’t really help the discussion. Eventually I suggested again that they could help with heists, with sort of mixed response. I do think they could help, if they were in the right mindset, but it clearly wasn’t a thing they were comfortable with. They did respond well to me being excited about heists, which might be enough. Or they might decide they’re no longer up for me, like most people do eventually, because that was clearly an option they came prepared to discuss. I do not object to the idea of a new therapist, but I expect it would be a lot of work to find something better.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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