seryn

Today I said I was sort of grateful for the do-over I feel like I got for my life.

Figuring out what I want to do and how to make that happen is still a huge burden that seems overwhelming.

But not wanting to punch people who tell me to keep a gratitude journal is a huge step forward.

I had a brief period of actually being OK. That turned out to be a side effect of a medication that caused migraines. Side effects tend to get better as your body gets accustomed to the medication.... and that was what happened.

I've been struggling ever since.

So, it's winter. That means the days are shorter and the nights last forever.

It's also holiday season and end-of-year. (Guaranteeing that you'll need someone who is on vacation for the whole month with no substitute.) "Holidays are family time." is what I hear everywhere. It makes me understand Scrooge and Grinch. After you've been told flat out that nothing good includes you, some curmudgeonliness makes sense. The reason all the Whos down in Whoville make all that noise Noise NoIsE NOISE is to taunt the Grinch with celebrations he's not invited to. They're not very nice neighbors.

I'm in one of those intermittent stable periods, so I'm stressed about taxes and health insurance but not actually sick. Well, theoretically. My psychological and psychiatric issues destroyed my physical health for a while.

Facebook people I know have been grief-stricken lately. I will reach through the "series of tubes" and punch the next person who tells me I don't understand how much it hurts to lose part of your family because their goldfish kicked off. It's not quite that bad, but close.

I'm reading the DM/HG Advent stories, but otherwise haven't been reading fic. AO3 has all these database features to warn people of triggering things but most authors don't bother. Some of them are even proud of it. Most of them are morons who can't figure out tagging either.

I need a new hobby, but have no ideas. Just that none of the old ones are fun. It's hard to read a book. I take breaks to finish 45 minutes of Netflix. I want to do something that might allow me to engage with others who enjoy my pastime. Or I want to do something valuable.

I'm still here. I don't have nothing to say, but there's so much to say that this isn't going to work for me. I want to have people hear me, but I'm tired of listening to me, so I can't imagine anyone else would put up with it.

This place really needs a phone app.

I do like the mostly text concept and without gobs of pictures it loads really well. I want to have friends who have stuff to say not just random images they've linked. I have a pinterest account though, so I can't talk. I wasn't wrong about that, by the way. It's a bunch of pictures with no provenance, so it becomes, "These are things that exist, but you can't have them."

Though I apparently need to choose a new layout here because too many things are impossible to read due to custom formating.

Tonight I listened to several women admit that they are uninterested in the specific color things are. I'm actually the pickiest one.

I still hate that "Happy" song. I'm not sure why we favor one extreme pathology over another.

Why do I feel obligated to get the sedate blue thing instead of the purple version of things?

Why does Spiderman always seem like a whinging whiner of the first order?

I get that he's poor, he was a freelance photographer before there were internet coffee shops where the unemployedfreelancers could be together during the day and pretend they had jobs in company. (Peter Parker hasn't gotten a real job since 1975 in my experience.)

I get that he feels responsible for getting his Uncle Ben killed... but he wasn't the one who did that and someone should have gotten him therapy until he understood that the killer killed and the killer alone is responsible. That Peter cannot know the future outcome and yes, the world would be a better place if we all did more than our part, but he's not responsible for what happened. It's not like there's this social contract where since we've invested 87 billion dollars on his superhero power development and 12 years of training and we can expect him to save us. We're all grown ups too and one of us could have tripped the killer.

On the other hand, it allows nerds and geeks who are otherwise disenfranchised to be secretly totally important. The world cannot get along without Peter Parker being Spiderman. It's worth it to lie to his frail Aunt May, his only remaining family. It's worth it to make his leagues-out-of-his-league girlfriend Mary Jane (and how the fuck did they get away with that? there's a reason she's mostly called MJ since the 90s.) believe he's cheating and irresponsible and unreliable. It's worth it to be a failure at having an adult life--- doing schoolwork, being a researcher, having a part-time job, trying to get to the point where being a man is something he does all the time rather than accidentally.

Compare this with the typical introvert who doesn't have a lot of friends, who actually flakes on their minimal friends a lot because they're all introverts too and no one minds bailing at the last minute when they'd rather stay home anyway, they don't really have a lot of access to the desired sexual objects and they tend to mistreat them out of cluelessness, and they generally suck at being grown ups with responsibilities.

Now just imagine if the reason for that wasn't that you're a loser without social skills or empathy or the willingness to put forth any effort.... if the reason was that you were actually amazing on the inside.

Spiderman is a geek's social pornography.

Which is why it makes no sense that he's still whining about it 40 years later.

Also... Stan Lee is kind of an abusive parent to his heroes.

Someone asked about e-voting. I went off on this tangent which I'm sharing here since the person said they're too busy to reply to comments, so I might as well try to garner my own instead of wasting this there:

I'd like to see governmental voting done electronically with the tallies for every single vote put up on some government website every day, which news sources would be encouraged to mirror as content. Not the droning video feeds of C-SPAN. And the expanded view of each vote would show who had introduced it, who had added shit to it to weigh it down, and who could not stay on topic to save their own asses... those people would get demerits and be booted out of Congress automatically. Then a random citizen would be chosen to replace them and get the best most excellent health care for life. We could even set up a system where the truly unqualified people would muddy up a standing non-voting bill, get their demerits and allow someone else to be sworn in.

For the in-person e-votes, I'm not sure how to deal with the guy who stands up and shouts that his vote was mis-counted though. Or how to deal with the neighbor's elbow jostling or pressing your neighbor's button when they're late. Seems like we could make vote fraud a felony (oh right, it already is) and make it illegal to be a member of Congress if you're a felon. (Can you believe it's not? Seriously. New Jersey even re-elected someone who was indicted on a buttload of felony charges... he didn't even have the honor to not run. Now The Daily Show says that New Jersey is poised to special-elect that guy who caused nation-wide race riots. Seems like since the states all have the power to choose how vacancies are filled that the people of New Jersey should demand that there be a lottery of all citizens instead of that asshole getting to make laws.)

I was watching Poirot yesterday and Poirot informs them that there is prosecution for perjury. We don't do that here. I was a juror on a trial and it was blindingly obvious that people were lying (their lies conflicted with each other, not just with the other side) and afterward when we were allowed to ask questions of the prosecutor, I asked if we could be notified when the perjury trials would be scheduled. The prosecutor said, "We don't go after perjury cases like that." Which, to me, explained the inherent problems in our justice system. There's no penalty for lying, there's only punishment that doesn't fit the crimes available (if you're even moderately wealthy, the fines are not onerous; but a single day in jail or even a felony indictment (not even conviction, just being put on trial) can keep you from being employed forever. And the biggest crimes get "life" in prison which hurts us far more than them. Then the people get out and are angry at being "abused" by the system.) And there's no real incentive to do the right thing when everyone else is cheating.

So I imagine that Senators here would be constantly screaming that their e-votes (even if we required them to be in-chamber and not remote) were miscounted just to cast doubts on their political stances to the public, but internally there would be this sniggering about deluding the stupid public.

I have these overpowering urges to talk to people who aren't here anymore.

Several grief processing advice sources suggest that writing letters is useful. I have found that for the people who are still alive, whose addresses I still know, but to whom I am not speaking, writing letters is somewhat useful if they were addressed in the email. I do, usually, *not* send them.

Without the autofill from name match, it's stilted and impossible to write anything.

(you'd think given how much I can write here, that it wouldn't be so, but there's a limit as to what applied to a generic audience.)
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One of my current favorite books, Stray, by Andrea Host, (this one: http://www.andreakhost.com/ ) uses the same term, "anchor" that I've seen in Teen Wolf.

[Quick aside: I love Stray because the heroine gets put in this incredibly untenable situation and *keeps going*. The whole thing is told from her perspective in diary form (which is usually rather irritating, but this is a lot more narrative than my diary-type entries) and even in this private forum, Cass is resilient and strong and stoic. Like, she talks about how the fire it took her days to figure out how to start went out because the bowl part of her bowl of water deconstructed itself--- with, "had an epic tanty and stormed off". Which, as the worst reaction, really, isn't bad for being trapped alone on an alien planet fresh out of high school.]

There was a common quoted bit in the sequel, saying that an anchor doesn't work when it's pulling away from you. (Kindles have this "show common highlighted bits" thing... I hate it and turned mine off really soon after seeing this.)

It's always bothered me. Because, actually, that's kind of how anchors work in real life. As a metaphor, no, but when you think about a ship with a dropped anchor, that's what's really going on, the anchor causes increased resistance and effectively pulls in the opposing direction from the ship's.

We don't talk about "anchoring things to the ground" much. When I think of that as a concept, I'm thinking tent stakes (which are actually optional on a lot of modern tents as long as you put stuff inside and don't wander off) or the concrete footings for construction. And really, calling those things "anchors" is poor word choice.

When Teen Wolf talks about anchors, they're aware that these are kids still in high school, so it's not the permanent construction type.

Weirdly though, Stray and Teen Wolf both talk about anchors the same way. They're the people in our lives who hold us together when times are hard, they provide comfort and support in a deeper way than friends do. They're the people who make the struggles of life worth enduring. They're the ones we want to be better people for when we don't otherwise care. So Scott, the main character on Teen Wolf, has to learn to control his newly acquired werewolf nature and uses his girlfriend to focus. She grounds him. And he loves her enough to overcome the killer instinct. Cass has, at the point of the anchor comment, nearly died at least a dozen times and just seen someone die. She says that she wishes her friends could be what she needs but she knows it's Ruuel.

I'm not complaining about the concept. I just think "anchor" is a shitty word to have chosen. It's a lot like the "out of spoons" thing, which is an enormously useful concept to have explained, but the spoons themselves limit the approachability of the idea because they're unintentionally representational. It looks like someone with chronic illness measures their life in teaspoons, like their life is *smaller* than someone else's which is unfair and untrue for many many people. If there were poker chips and the original explanation had said, "spend a token" instead of a spoon, I'd have a lot lot lot fewer issues. Anchors just don't work the way the metaphorical use implies. Anchors hold us back from going where we were going. They're the parents enforcing nap time when our friends are ready to play. They're the "we can't go on in the dark because the dark is too scary to navigate, we have to find a way to hold still." But the metaphorical usage is more like the safety harness at an indoor rock climbing wall. We soar to new heights and make greater achievements if we're not going at it alone. If there's someone who cares, we've got stability to leap from.

I modeled a lot of my deliberate behavior after Cass's in the wake of my husband's illness and death. (There was a LOT of un-deliberate behavior though.) But what struck me most this time is how foundational the love of her family was to her. It's really amazing how truly damaged I was by not being loved as a child and how much that affected my ability to feel secure in what otherwise seemed like a stable relationship. I wonder, if, truly, my insecurity exacerbated the problems my husband had. Obviously there were better ways to handle it than what ended up happening, but my trust in his love was very fragile and easily broken. I know he was deeply hurt by this. But I still don't really believe in love.

The relationship between Cass and Ruuel takes a long time to form. But there is absolutely no doubt they have serious feelings, although it feels fairly groundlessly so. Scott and his girlfriend Allison have visibly intense feelings and we're shown enough to know that it's not just lust on Scott's part. I think I believe in serious feelings and intense emotions and the kinds of things that draw people together, and I'd be willing to use the word "love" as a shorthand for that. Overall though, love doesn't seem to mean that to other people, it's like "love" is a shorthand for love which is a shorthand for feelings which is a shorthand for the kind of intense emotion that binds disparate people together... and there's just too much meaning lost by the time people use that word.

That might be the rational behind using "anchor" but that just doesn't work for me.

This is so stupid. It's 3:30 in the morning. I can't sleep. I've got sleeping pills, but it's too late to take one now. (They take 2 hours or so to kick in, then last 7-9 hours during which I cannot wake up. The warnings should include one about not drinking a full glass of water.)

I've got stuff I should be doing, but I've been reading fic and watching Dirk Gently (it showed up on Amazon Prime, I'd not known it existed.) So it's not that I've upset myself.

I went outside today and walked a decent amount.

There's even been a sort of rebound from the nadir, as long as I don't look at a list of insurmountable chores, I don't even feel that overwhelmed. (Really I try not to think about what needs doing and just do a tiny piece of it at a time.) It still all seems utterly pointless, but as long as everything seems pointless, I might as well do the stuff that shows. Which, wow, I'm not sure motivation gets any lower than that without being negative.

I feel tired. My eyes are dry and creaky, but I can't stop my mind's pacing.

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing. — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)

Yeah. Things aren't going well.

Pretty much I'm completely conscious of the fact that I'm much better off without my dead husband. He was pulling me under while he was dying and self-oblivious to that fact. Right now *all* of my external problems are under control or resolved. No one has been adding things I cannot handle even if the day-to-day stuff is irritating.

I made progress on my day-to-day stuff by getting a boost from a friend and this allowed me to overcome the inertia that made it seem insoluble.

But where I am now is that *this is all there is*.

I'm looking around me and seeing the lives that people I know have made for themselves; I don't want what they have. The major things that make other people content would actually make me unhappy. Some of the people I know are physically suffering and more determined than I am.

So, there's nothing I want that I can see anyone else having (I would like if someone truly loved me and was emotionally healthy enough not to let me sabotage myself and ruin the relationship--- but I don't see that ANYWHERE. It sure as hell didn't exist in my marriage.) but what there is, is not enough. This is all there is and it's not enough.

From here all that can happen is that I will continue my pallid existence until I am old.