Undisguised Uneasiness

Played D&D today. Well, mostly had the GM whine about the non-currency wealth system he wants to use in their game. It’s bad enough that Shanda flat out refuses to care how it works. I technically know, at least in many instances, but I wholeheartedly agree that it makes no sense and isn’t worth having. And philosophize about how strict adherence to labour relationships makes “capitalism” work in their murder-hobo-driven economy. I mean, I’m all for ending wage theft, but I don’t think capitalists would be. Although if we made murder-hobo a real job there probably wouldn’t be a lot of real capitalists left. They made it difficult to obtain a consumer-grade jacket today, so I suggested that instead we steal a car ¹Their 2056-as-imagined-by-people-in-1985 setting has a lot more 1987 Cutlass Supremes that you might expect. But that’s good because they make me roll a DC25 Computer Use to unlock new car doors and for old doors they let me roll DC15 with +4 Disable Device from Thieves Tools. Nothing in this world makes sense but that’s okay because it’s … Continue reading and sell that to be able to buy one. Turns out the people we murdered in stealing a car were wearing the jackets we needed, so win-win. Seems like it would have been easier to just let us buy a jacket though. I did get to roll a nat 20+7 Disguise check at one point though, which was good fun.

Dog was a little bark today while I ate, but less than before. It would be great to stop getting negative feedback about eating regular meals. I had enough trouble making food happen today; I don’t need Dog to shame me. I did eventually get two real meals in today, though one of those only because yesterday’s leftovers were an all-in-one casserole — if it had required two parts I wouldn’t have made it go — and one only because I delegate my food decision making and procurement entirely to Shanda. But intentions don’t matter and I did get 2 meals ²Or at least most of 2 meals. Our supper order was missing several relevant components., so still a success.

I’m feeling anxious today. It’s Sunday so part of that is the weekly anxiety cycle I built for myself back in the 1900s and carry on even today. Because of the day it’s easy to feel like work is a thing I’m anxious about, but that’s not particularly true. I got my RB published today and will have my MBOs done before bed. I’m not on the queue next week so I actually don’t have a ton of work lined up. Followup to move the RB from Published to Submitted but probably just a one-click action. Maybe some minor product release checklist. But honestly nothing big or with a tight deadline. I’m moving to the next building next week but all I have to do for that is label my stuff and I’ve already cleared all the excess junk I’m not taking. So the assignment of anxiety to work is sort of a lie, at least beyond my general dread of participating in murderous capitalism ³There’s some general job dissatisfaction/career management anxiety in here but that’s still on my own avoidance list so it’s difficult to articulate. And in any case not something that changes much day to day — it’s the accumulation of years of poor choices not just something that bothers me on Sundays..

I’m anxious about M, and about your view of me. You had an decent weekend but you’re still a ways from comfortable routine. And even further from easy discussion of your own anxiety list, which has some overlap with mine. You let me in a bit, which makes me feel safe in some ways, but it also puts me on what feels like a perilously narrow path. I’m worried all at once about not being able to figure out what help is, about not being able to do it in the context of our contact, about pushing you away whether I actually help or not. I worry that I’ll read the wrong things into the limited information I get and fall further from that path over time. I worry that I will create whole topics that can never be discussed because of the way I make you anxious about them, and that eventually I will have pushed so many things into that category that there will simply be no more talking.

I’m anxious about figuring out how to spend my attention and time. I some ways I’m super busy, and in some ways I’m getting nothing done. I need to keep working to put all the parts into the same box so I can prioritize in a way that actually reflects my goals. It doesn’t help that work demands many specific hours of coordination regardless of the work to be done (or that they pay for hours instead of production), or that I’m burnt out on it all the time. But I need to make it go even with that, since I don’t yet have any plan to not have to work another ~60,000 hours to keep me and the people I care about alive for the next few decades. I’ve picked up lots of weekend activities over the past few years and now I’m at a “0 free days this month” sort of schedule again. I was there for decades when I was in school and whatnot, and I finally made life better by ensuring that I had some free days even though work and school and other big time sucks dominated my schedule. But I’ve now filled that time I cleared out — mostly with things I like and want to do — and I need to find someplace to pick out some more, higher-quality time off. And it would be easier to prioritize if I could put all the pieces in the same list at the same time instead of switching between them.

I think maybe I need to reconsolidate my work schedule. For the sake of flexibility (which I have sometimes needed a lot of) and for the sake of being able to always sleep enough when times are tough, I’ve sort of let it spread out over the whole week. But on a lot of days I could probably work like 10-1 and then be done if I avoided late meetings and got myself actually working in the morning. I would have to give up the idea that I’m fit for work every day though, and let myself not work on days when I’m not up for it. Current I just worry about not working until like 2, hoping I’ll feel better and being anxious about skipping work, and then make myself work even if I’m still unwell (or don’t an continue worrying about it all night). And I need a plan to recover when my sleep gets off; never planning to work until noon lets me be lazy about recovery but I could probably find a balance that requires some recovery discipline without requiring I don’t have (or always hate) a morning schedule. It’s good that I have a high-flexibility, zero-maintenance plan available, and I should use it when my life demands it. But I think if I dialed down the avoidance a tick or two it would let me make improvements overall. I don’t hate having to schedule, I hate that I feel required to put so much in my schedule, and I could learn to just put less in without feeling bad about it. I don’t hate doing things to regulate my bad sleep habits, I hate that I feel guilty for skipping things when my sleep gets bad, and I could learn to skip things when I need to fix my sleep.

I’m anxious about getting Shanda to help me with schedule. Even now that you believe in the power scheduling your own life to reduce your anxiety ⁴Which I know was no small feat, and which your feelings still don’t always believe. But I think you’d agree that mostly it’s doing what you want and mostly you like it. it’s still hard for you to work with me about mine. Even harder if I increase the scope from this week to this year. You’re never satisfied that you’re doing enough work. Which I completely understand, given the pressures that life communicates at you (even if they’re mostly false or ableist or otherwise unwise for you to accept). And you’re convinced that trying anything else might kill you, because you’re hardly holding it together on this setting and another one might be worse. I can see how it makes you feel trapped. I wish though, you could see how we’re on the same side of this. I’m not asking you to jump across to my boat, I’m asking you to row with me from where we both are to someplace better. I have some tools you can use right away to make things easier, because I’ve become master in them myself after years of struggle. But I need your help wielding others, or building them in the first place, because I’m still stuck here with you. It’s so tough sometimes, when me wanting to do a thing means that you hate it — that I’m causing the pain you feel about it. It leaves me not just unable to help you (or at least unable for you to feel good about having help) but unable to have your help for myself. I have learned to do a lot of things alone, but I’d like to imagine that someday I won’t have to.

I’m a little anxious about E, having neglected you more than I intended. It’s easy for me to imagine that’s not a real thing, when it goes too long, and it’s been a goodly while since we actually spoke more than a few lines at a time. Same thing with DerbyK; we’ve managed a few lines here and there but we’ve been bad at actually connecting. And it’s made worse by the way my brain is convinced that my excessive demand is already the reason for that, and any attempt at more would make things worse.

Cowboy is still on my call list, weeks later. And K’Tuck, who hasn’t spoken in a long while. I suspect neither of you is desperately waiting for me, but it’s still a thing I should do. That I think helps. It certainly helps me imagine that I’m allowed to contact people, a thing my brain denies right up until the moment I do it and then again as soon as I’ve clicked go. I’ve sent one of these most days for like 8 months still sometimes seems dangerous, like this will be the last interaction, the one that uses up all my remaining relationship credit and leaves me forever alone. Sometimes that feeling seems even more desperate for people at the lower end of that contact list, where my brain imagines that perhaps I’ve still got a little relationship credit banked up and I don’t want to risk using it until there’s an emergency ⁵As with all my other ancient fears, there’s never an emergency bad enough to justify using my emergency resources. They’re things I hoard against the idea that I am truly hopeless. Things could always be worse and wouldn’t I rather have my emergency supplies available when they get worse? Sure, I’m starving today, and I technically could … Continue reading.

I’m a little anxious about figuring out what to do with J, now that I’ve offered to do things. The big picture is easy enough — but and build things — but the details are slightly more complicated. And of course the whole thing is an excuse for sharing, which is always tricky to get going. I’ve spent a lot of time practicing and I can still only occasionally make it feel safe enough for other people. Or manage to do it live in a way that doesn’t make me worry about the way I am a danger to others.

I guess I’m still anxious about money. I’m sure it’s a thing I’ll figure out eventually but I haven’t been able to move the needle this week — I’m still just waiting. Waiting on taxes, to be sure I have enough saved to pay them, and that I have sufficient documentation to keep the IRS from demanding penalties for not being old enough to use retirement money ⁶The thing always demanded by the capitalist class, to permit your participation, is the ability to not need money until the future. Once you join the class you are permitted somewhat arbitrary amounts of money, but only if you can prove you don’t need it for years. Retirement accounts are sort of the lowest rung on this ladder — anyone can buy … Continue reading. And today I’m waiting on even knowing what my next stock grant is worth. The ridiculous, broken, non-standard TFA app e-trade uses now just crashes on my phone. I re-installed and it works but it doesn’t keep its secret when you reinstall. I get that in 1994 RSA tokens were the only option and you just had to deal with their shitty choices, but my fracking WordPress site has TFA and it did not require me to install an app that needs Phone permissions and can’t be backed up — it uses the same protocol as 30 other TFA websites in my keychain and I can any one of dozens of apps for whatever device(s) I prefer to use. I have to re-sync this thing essentially every time I want to log in and it pisses me off every time.

I’m anxious about the decaying state of my severs and home automation systems. I’ve recently picked up some progress on the MMS gateway, which was a good start but stalled out again. I’ve had lots of automation update ideas, but it’s been a year since I touched the code. And I don’t even like to think about the servers. I need new hardware for the router and the disk host and the video host, and I still have like $0 budget for them. I do have a scheduling-related plan to make the software parts of this maybe go again, but I still don’t have a hardware plan ⁷I want to get a new router up, to get started somewhere. It’s also the cheapest box I need. The current one is seriously old and sometimes slow even just for throwing packets around, and my network is complicated enough that just slapping in a NAT box won’t cut it. I don’t know where I’d start in buying or building such a machine these … Continue reading for any of it.

I’m anxious about my name day. Shanda keeps threatening me with attention about it and I can’t figure out how to make it better. I’m still happy with the plan to do name day instead of birthday, but that nomenclature and calendar change don’t really fix my feelings about it, they just give me a little space from the external parts. It feels like my only options are to copy the birthday strategy — which was to hide in Christmas and then not do Christmas either — or to magically know how to feel differently about it. I do believe it’s possible to improve; with some help I’m feeling much better about several holiday things. But this one isn’t going well, and I can’t figure out how to get the right help. Instead I get threats about attention, questions about what I want to do, and no response to my pleas of helplessness and fear. I don’t understand how normal people do any of this. Please remember I’m a middle-aged man who only recently learned that I can have butter on bread, or preferences about color or flavor. It feels like there’s a lot of pressure for me to get it right on the first try, and I’m not qualified to do this alone. Maybe not qualified to do it at all. I have none experience, either directly or by watching others, of anything that seems even tolerable to me, let alone like a thing I would want. And it feels like the only cord I can pull to make it better is the one where we never talk about it again and I go back to just not having a birthday.

I’m anxious about fixing the fence for Dog. I bought some hardware to patch the worst bits months ago, but that’s one of the projects that got lost while I was in Ohio. It also probably isn’t enough, since the fence is in such bad shape. I actually think Dog would do okay staying inside anywhere except the gates, but the gates are also the hardest parts to shore up, and the whole thing is in such bad shape that even getting them to stay closed is a challenge. But I would like Dog to have the option of going out without direct supervision, particularly on days when we’re home but can’t pay him enough attention (like when we host D&D and are too busy for play for 5 hours in a row). Or on days when it’s impractical for us to spend time at the park. Also because off-leash practice is hard to come by in the city, and I’d like Dog to be able to handle a wider set of circumstances without a tether. He does come if I can have his attention but he needs to practice giving me his attention when he’s wandering about outside.

I’m anxious to send my sister a package for her birthday. If I were sending a normal care package to her the theme would be “please leave your abusive relationship” or maybe “if you left your abusive relationship maybe we could talk”. In practice it’s going to be “remember when you were 11 an liked turtles”. Which will mostly work, to the extent that feeling is worth communicating; I already have the physical bits. It’s more than I’ve done in years so maybe it should feel like success but it still feels like a failure. It’s hard to deal with because for my own protection she has to live in a box until and unless she becomes safe, but possibly a thing that lets her become safe is me choosing not to keep her in a box. The real answer is this shouldn’t have to be my job, but like almost every other hard thing since 1984 it’s either my job or no one is going to do it for her.

That’s a point of reassurance my therapist offers. Or sometimes Shanda — that the failures and pain in others aren’t my fault. That I shouldn’t feel bad for being a bad parent in 1991 because I was “just a child” and “it’s not my responsibility”. But that doesn’t really work for me because regardless of who you blame it’s still a thing that needed to happen, and I was the only one even trying. Imagining that I could have not tried doesn’t make it better, it scares me. Things didn’t work well even when I did try, not for me or my siblings. Not trying would only have made it worse. It’s not a comfort to imagine it wasn’t my duty, it’s confirmation of my fear that my poor care taking is the best option available to some people. I’m still afraid the world will kill me and everyone I know; I learned how to protect people from hunger and cold, but I still don’t know how to protect myself or anyone else from the abuses and neglect of the system. I can’t stop trying, can’t stop feeling responsible, because imagining a world where not even I am responsible is terrifying. It’s why even after learning to not work so hard and not be so busy I still can’t stop trying to take care of everyone I meet. And never feeling like I do it well enough even to be sure my intervention is a net positive, let alone like I succeeded.

That’s a bit that ties a lot of these together. Not to mention my whole like from infancy to today. And my fears about work. I bet that’s a thing I could Screed about once my attention is back in balance.

ZiB

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