The Warden Sleeps

 You wake up on the first day of the rest of your life. The depression is not gone. The stakes and struts on which it grew are all still here. So too are the habits and memories forged in its malign influence, and you've been through this before.

It sleeps. And though you can't tell when,
it always wakes. It will again.

For now, the world is little different, but you are. You can breathe a little easier. The house is the same, but for little day to day changes. The tasks you could put yourself to still intimidating. You do not stride boldly out. To move too boldly may bring it crashing down again.

You don't know what will wake the warden,
what to flee or move toward.

But for now, there is respite from its despising gaze upon all you think to say, upon the outcome of things not done. For now, there is some flavour to savour in even the interplay of bitter and sweet in a cup of sweetened instant coffee. It feels like you could have fun again.

Gaze upon the bones: your weight; the tasks left undone for weeks; the gentle and polite concern of coworkers; things it would have been nice to do... Under your feet, the ground trembles with thunder, a distant growl and long sigh, the half-disturbed snoring of latent depression. To look too long, too worried, too threatens.

Perhaps any of these could be worked on slowly enough to weaken its hold the next time it wakes without hastening the rise. Too much happy idleness just relaxing in the thin ray of light while it lasts will give it more to mock.

But perhaps that isn't quite true. What stinks in idleness is when it ceases to be relaxing and turns into a numb shell pressing the button over again despite increasingly diminishing returns in joy or soothing. That and a sense of abdication of duty to the screamers, whatever one's own good intentions. The knowledge that some suffer and you are not helping them will always rise to the surface sooner or later. Would that there was time for it to regain some of its weight... No, that isn't what's been lost. 

It is not light what bites less into you.
Your callous scarring will not let it through.

And what is there really to do about that?
Well, perhaps if you can loosen the grip of the warden, just a little by little, and refuse its shaming at how much of your strength this takes, perhaps someday the skin of your conscience will feel again, less under the thick of this numb weariness, as base childlike sense-pleasure can now. Maybe there is some nobleness in that somewhere.

The Man

There is a man.

The man comes home from work. He is tired.

The man takes off his shoes. He takes off his jacket. He greets his wife with a smile and a little kiss.

The man calls his children to dinner, and they eat together and ask each other about the events of the day. The man complains casually about his boss. His wife complains affectionately about messes. The children complain about their homework. The family tells itself that it's going to be okay, and this is how life is.

The man puts on slippers, and picks up a drink, and picks up a newspaper, and sits down on the most comfortable chair in the living room, and reads about events in the world beyond his house and his neighbourhood. He reads in order to be up to date on what to talk about with his co-workers during breaks, and what to avoid talking about because it may be awkward in light of something which has happened. He reads in order to know who to be annoyed at for what recent indiscretion. He frowns at indulgent politicians. He smiles at progress in public works. He pauses to wonder at the pace of technological advancement.

The man is comfortable.

The man is sometimes worried, especially when looking at construction projects, and newspaper headlines, and stressed people whose problems he does not know how to solve.

The man is sometimes happy, especially when he thinks about his wife, and his kids, and his friends, and his home.

The man doesn't know what to do about the politicians, or how to feel about fluctuations in immigration.

But the man knows he works hard and does well enough by his boss and co-workers.

He takes care of his wife and his kids.

He looks back on his day and he feels he is doing his best. He can relax into that thought, like a warm bath; or an old, well-worn pair of shoes. He does not feel compelled to question it. He could, but it would only leave him more worried than happy, so why would he?

He settles into his chair, and keeps reading.

 

You Who Would Change Me

To the ones who read my messages of despair that I always get into these conversations that feel like fights, that I'm afraid my professional relationships may always be characterized by comments like "If you're so anxious about this, maybe you should reconsider your fit for this position"...

To the ones who greet my whimper with a cheer, who are proud that I'm finally coming around to seeing the problems in myself and may be open to getting better... Who tell me to grow up and adapt, to make the people around me more comfortable...

To the one who told me today encouragingly that I may be onto something, that I could seek psychiatric evaluation, that I "can't make other people adjust to me on a dime" so I should consider how to broaden my own approaches in order to get "more doors staying open" to me...

Life Advice in YouTube Comments

Yesterday I spent a little time wandering through YouTube comments on a video about psychology and the kinds of people you can't help.

A number of the people commenting were observing that they saw elements of their own behaviour in the "unhelpable" types being described. I left replies with advice to some of these.

To a commenter who said they had brought everybody down without realizing it, I answered:

“without realizing it” is the trap there. Well... Now you have an opportunity to see things differently. Here's a piece of advice I have said many times to my friends:

When you start to notice your mistakes in retrospect, it can feel really terrible, but it's important to remember that seeing the problem AFTER it's happened is pretty much a prerequisite to seeing it WHILE it's happening, and eventually, with enough practice, seeing the problems your own behaviour could cause in the moments BEFORE you react to some stimulus.

When you realize your own role in your problems at ALL, it makes you stronger. It gives you the chance to do something about it. Even if you don't see the ways in which your actions may have been harmful until after you've left the situation, once you realize it, you unlock an opportunity to apologize, or look for ways to make it up to the people you have hurt, or even just to learn from your mistakes. You can't do any of that effectively without seeing the mistakes.

When you start being able to see it in the present, you will unlock the power to stop yourself, or call yourself on it. "Oh wait. I- I'm being a jerk aren't I. I didn't mean to do that, I wasn't seeing the situation clearly. I'm sorry. Let me take a moment to disconnect, walk, calm down, or otherwise gather my thoughts and try approaching it differently."

And when you start being able to see it coming in what you are about to say, you can change so quickly that other people won't even see the problems you decided not to cause.

Of course, that doesn't mean you won't face complicated situations where figuring out what the right thing to do is hard. n.n' But it will give you more options as you notice your own part, and practice acting in different ways, so you aren't always running on a terrible form of autopilot.

Good luck!

 

Catching up: The Job

Another long gap. I spend too long away from this thing.

For the last half a year or so I have been working nights 2-3 shifts a week stocking shelves at a local grocery store. It's been a great workout. The pay's alright, and has allowed me to not worry about it while acquiring a number of nice new things, including replacing my phone. Most of my coworkers are pretty nice and I found after a while I was getting along with them nicely, but throughout it my fear of the apparent scorn of my immediate supervisor never completely went away.

It seemed he glared at me whenever he looked at me, and seemed he wished he was doing something else whenever he spoke. I heard variously from other co-workers that he's just like that, but recently I've observed him speaking to some of my co-workers in ways that are damn near respectful... far closer to it than he ever spoke to me so far as I can recall.

It became intolerable for me, and eventually I reached out to a bunch of people around me for advice, and one part of that advice was to talk to the store manager, who would likely seek to accommodate my moving positions in order to keep me there. I am, I suppose, possibly considered a good employee. Just not, it seems, by my immediate supervisor.

How that panned out is that I took the commute across town and back on a day my manager had suggested, and called en route to let her know when I'd be arriving... and she was too busy dealing with the district manager and doing something related to a new phase of pandemic lockdown to speak to me at all, so the customer service rep asked me to write her a formal letter on my position. So I left one, including a footnote asking her to call or email me so we could talk this through.

I left that experience feeling even more impatient and frustrated with the branch manager. Checked on the shift scheduler online to find my shifts for next week had vanished, a little while later, so I called in and asked whether I still had shifts and the online version had lost them (that's happened before)... But I was told, no, the manager asked my supervisor to remove them and was going to try to get me transferred to front-end.

She hadn't told me anything. I appreciate that my complaint is being taken seriously enough to act on, but I really should have been part of the conversation about what to do about it. I feel this is being terribly mis-handled and I am feeling pretty unimpressed about it. I still have yet to actually hear back from her at all.

So I guess I'll be transferring to front end? I don't know how that will go. I bet it won't be as good a work out as hauling the products out to be put away. I can do customer service though, I've done it before.

From this kind of start, I'm feeling pessimistic though. My head is starting to buzz with internal accusations that asking for a transfer was not a good idea. I already asked my friends to back me up on this, to remind me that my dissatisfaction was real and the stress I was under was not something to put up with. That... was in the context of helping me be willing to look for other jobs, though. Maybe I should ask them again, to help me validate the move having made it.

I haven't been sleeping well lately. I moved the topper off my bed (I had been having back pains after sleeping) and it seems firm now by comparison. I don't know if that's why for most of the last week it seems like I can't stay asleep for much more than 3.5 hours.

So. That's the big thing which is happening right now. Maybe I'll catch you up on more later.

Heyo, House

I seem to recall a Brer Rabbit story I heard read aloud once, some long time ago, in which the clever rabbit tricks a wolf by asking "Heyo, house; Why you don't Heyo?" as though he were in fact used to the house actually speaking aloud to him... so convincingly that the wolf who is waiting inside to ambush him is fooled into revealing himself by calling out and trying to sound like a house.

It comes to mind, I think, because I have a new house to greet. Well. Quite an old house really, with some of that quirky coziness of a house that has stood a long time and been patched and updated bit by bit. But I have been here only five days.

As to the house I'm leaving... When the first roommate I waged war with there left, it was an uncomfortably novel feeling. It seems it's always me that winds up leaving when I clash with roommates. "But not this time – the ground is mine," I reflected, feeling disoriented. Well, that was then – it didn't survive the next tenant who came and took his place.

But, as I think about it, what was that house to me? What was it really but a room of my own for privacy which I had not had in far too long; and a rent I could afford for the time being; and promising at first, which didn't last past the first month? Wasn't it always intended to be temporary? Why did I stay there almost a full year anyway?

Well, never mind. The place I come to now I choose for the company. The roommate who has lived here for seven years and is determined to stay seems a promising companion, LGBT friendly and understanding. Decorations bedazzle the details - fridge magnets, old stickers and pins - with hints of nerdiness and reminders to challenge all those various foolish expectations that all people be the same and dull and perfect. My room is smaller. My rent is cheaper, but transit is now an expense worth mentioning. It takes an hour to get to work.

Yes, I have work now as well. Good honest labour for a good honest wage, pulling and stocking and tidying non-perishable groceries at a big grocery store in the city. I've been employed now perhaps a month and a half, fifteen shifts in total. I'm still learning layouts and efficiencies, but I'm pretty solid on the basic process of what I'm doing, and I'm gradually getting faster while minding thoroughness and making the necessary concessions to my poor sore body. I am anxious every day that I am not going fast enough, but I know this is disordered thinking. I also know it's okay for me to need more help than just realizing it's disordered to get through it effectively.

This past week has been... tough. My landlord surprised me by not letting me know until Nov 30th that he expected me to move on Nov 30th, not Dec 1st, and not telling me directly at all – It was left to my friendly roommate to tell me. My job surprised me by allocating me sudden shifts which had not been on the schedule the previous week on the nights of the 29th and 30th even though I asked for the 30th off. I didn't even see the change to the schedule until I'd already missed the Nov 29 shift.

And so I contacted New Roommate and made sure I'd be able to move my things to the house early, did some last-minute packing (glad I had been working on this over the previous week and had already done most of it), vacuumed the room I was leaving until it was nice and soft and neat, and took a few hours' nap despite the stress... Then hired an XL size Uber to bring me and my belongings across town. There was plenty of room and I managed the physical labour of shifting boxes and suitcases fine. New Roommate helped me stack them in the living room while their old roommates were busy leaving. I called my best friend for support and comfortable company for a little while and then went to work for the night, and for the following two nights as well, which was my first time doing three shifts in a row at the new job. I certainly hurt by the end of the third day.

Then there was last night, when I unpacked and set up my room. Today I started colonizing and cleaning the kitchen. I've done a little exploring around the neighborhood to find the nearby convenient shops, but I do not know the turns yet without consulting Google Maps.

I am... getting somewhere, I suppose I'd say. Aye, getting somewhere. Getting along in work a bit faster as my endurance and understanding improves, starting to make friends with some of my coworkers and join their banter at 2 AM lunch. Getting acquainted with a new roommate I can talk to and get that lovely sense of being on the same page. Getting back into doing a little bit of cooking, getting to know my new kitchen. Getting back to this blog after a whole disgusting half-year away. Getting all sorts of turned around on my sleeping schedule while dealing with emotions and memories and mood swings and anxiety and the fascinating surges of "nesting" energy that come to me when acclimatizing to a new house. I'll figure it out though.

So it goes. Now you knows.

A Poem to Wanderlust

I wake and the wanderlust crusts upon me.
Like the first frost on a window, like limerence on a lonely soul.
Like heart's compass remembering North after so long spinning aimless it had been forgotten.
Like thunder at the very beginning of a rainstorm.
Like bubbles breaking the surface of an underground lake.
Words of yearning surface in my mind like clues to a cipher, like a god's whisper.
"The Body Needs to Travel".

 

 The Body Needs to Travel is an album by Ian Tamblyn that I listened to in my childhood.

Advice and Resentment: All Over Again

I come here for a change not presenting my own writing about my experiences, but the words of a friend who felt inspired to write about my experiences after hearing me relate a part of them.

A dear friend of mine shared a disappointing experience with a counselor just now, and I feel the urge to say something about this. The profession of counseling is naturally one of providing advice, one of giving counsel to clients. It’s entirely expected that a counselor will have opinions on how to improve a client’s behavior. And yet. 

There are people who have been talked over, who have been pressed down upon with the opinions of others throughout their lives. These people have spent a great deal of time treated as though they couldn’t possibly know what they’re doing. They have been imposed upon with well-meaning advice, time and again, to the point that they begin to lose their own voices. Their own agency becomes forfeit to the crush of external narration, telling their stories for them. 

It’s a counseling instinct to want to correct a client’s poor choices. A client’s working through reclaiming their agency and voice doesn’t mean the counselor is relegated to observation alone, or that all sharing of advice is harmful. It does however mean that counsel must be given with care. Someone going through this process, such as my friend, is very likely to set boundaries on being given advice, and is very likely to frown on advice being wrapped in polite disguises. Responding here by rejecting being relegated to observation is a false dichotomy, a trap of black-and-white thinking just like counselors everywhere try to guide clients out of. That negativity and accusation only refreshes those old hurts, no matter the counselor’s intentions. 

There is a middle path that I’ve learned to walk — one that should have been obvious to my friend’s counselor — though I still stumble from time to time myself. Offer. It is so easy to assume the privilege of being the expert, to throw advice out like people are blessed to hear it, and people all too often forget the simplicity of offering first. It is a habit that must be trained, but a very compassionate one, full of respect for a client’s agency and intelligence. 

"That sounds stressful. I have advice on how to handle it, when

you’re ready for it." 

"That’s a good start. Would you like to hear a way to improve

that, either now or in a bit?" 

Those are just two examples off the top of my head of how to offer, rather than impose. As a counselor, you have the luxury of patience, the luxury of writing your suggestion down and holding onto it, for when the pressure has been vented, for when the concerns have been validated, for when the urgency has faded. To give in to the dichotomy, and assume the privilege of the expert, is such a common kind of weakness. I know we can all do better, counselors and friends alike. 

In loving and hopeful defiance, 

Sable Seylerius

How Things Have Been

I meant to come post a bloody story I wrote here. I'm not sure whether I thought better of it or whether I just forgot. For all that I post raw and intensely here, I don't typically post gruesome, and perhaps I should keep it that way.

The situation with another nasty roommate continues to deteriorate. I actually shouted at him last night, then cried and felt sick and tasted and smelled acrid for the rest of the night. There is a potential new tenant coming to see my room today. If she takes it, I will move downstairs and not be next to him anymore.

Friendly roommate continues to be friendly and supportive; friends have been accessible, and I have been doing better for the last couple of weeks at accessing them.

I've pushed some regularity into my medication schedule, taking my pills at 10 each morning. I think I might shift that to 8 now that I've been regularly sleeping nights for a few days. Waiting until 11 to eat in order not to interfere with their absorption is annoying. Waiting until 9 would not be so bad I think.

The new stability feels weird sometimes. Like the world is flatter. Not grey and dull and uninteresting, just more level and approachable. Less shaking around, less steep slopes to climb. It's like every footstep takes a little less effort and is a lot less scary. I didn't realize the schedule would make such a big difference, and regardless I don't think I was ready for it before.

I'm paused in the middle of reading documentation for a programming tool so I can try to rewrite parts of it better and clearer, and work on a portfolio to pursue technical writing work remotely online. In light of the pandemic it seems like a decent move, but actually... I took some time to reflect a short time ago and recognize that I don't want anything to tie me to Kitchener.

I want to go back to my friends in the states. I don't want a job that would keep me here any longer than a few months, and even temporary jobs may be... "sticky" that way, tempting to stay on longer. So it's more about that than COVID, really. It's more that once it's safe, I want to go and be with the family of people who support me, give cohabitation another chance. Give dealing with each other another, better chance, more carefully this time.

It's lonely staying alone inside, far from my intimate companions and uncertain of the future. But then, it always has been, really. Not much has changed for my day to day life personally in the light of pandemic except that I feel like I'm not supposed to go out for walks - and when I go to buy groceries and household essentials, there are long discouraging lines a lot of the time.

In a certain tongue in cheek way, I've been occasionally remembering a Daft Punk song which has never seemed more appropriate. I Remember Touch...

Silent in the Face of Panic and Heartbreak

I attended Unitarian Universalist service today for the first time. I rode in early with a choir member so she could attend rehearsal.

Sitting nervously in the corridor-side edge of a pew, unwilling to trap myself in the middle of one of the long benches, I curled quietly. In waves, I felt exposed. As the people gradually filtered in, the edge of panic at the potential for judgement and the eyes of strangers flickered up, threatening, and ebbing down, and rising up again. I tied part of a macrame bracelet, pinned to my backpack, set on my knee, and turned my eyes down and set my fingers working in their fidgeting work when the anxiety rose, as a way to curl in.

Fearing that others may try to ask me questions I felt I would not be able to answer, but only burst into tears at my own inability, I had the forethought to take my pocket notebook out shortly before service ended and write clearly: "I'M SORRY - I'M NOT FEELING ABLE TO TALK RIGHT NOW."

The one person I handed this notebook to as answer to their greeting questions about whether I had enjoyed the service nodded and took a half-step back immediately on comprehending the words. I did have a bit of trouble finding routes to move around people engaged in conversation, scattered here and there in aisles and in the party area downstairs.

Downstairs for tea and coffee, at the table for writing nametags, I wrote my chosen name, and stood for a long indecisive time with a marker of a second color in my hand, trying to find a way to express succinctly enough for a nametag what I wished be known. I settled for "MAY MIGHT NOT SPEAK", which seemed to serve well enough. Those people speaking to me caught sight of it if I just angled a bit, and then spoke without expecting me to answer in words. One kind lady for instance first asked if I was looking for something, and then upon seeing it, told me where the coffee and tea was. Coffee was, indeed, what I had been looking for, and I was at first looking at the wrong table.

I summoned my nerve to speak when the lady who had led most of the service stepped near. I thought I had already missed my opportunity, or perhaps ought to wait and see more of her manner on another visit first. But being brought so close by chance, I attracted her attention, speaking softly and shy, and asked, given her mentioning a love of collecting all sorts of Christmas music, whether she'd added the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society versions to her collection yet. It seems my recommendation was welcomed with some delight. It brings a smile to my face to remember in order to relate it.

Throughout the service, while panic flickered and was soothed in waves like a tide, as my developed instinct to be averse to ritualized group ceremonies (as they strengthen ties that often lead to groupthink) rose and railed as the people chanted their sacrament, rose and sat, sang, held hands to sway together, and made arches with arms for young ones to pass under. I might have wished to join in better, but the rhythm of the service was unfamiliar to me; still deeply associated with traditions that rankle my thoughts; some of the songs unknown; and as well, had I wished to sing, my voice, I feared, would have croaked and shrilled with sobbing.

I joined in singing "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" in a deep register and some softness, though tears streamed from my eyes. I stood to go and light two candles when the time was called to do so, although with a fear in me that this was something meant to be arranged beforehand or paid for. It seems it was not, though.

Sometimes, it was not really fear that insulated me from the warmth and welcome of the friendly people at the chapel, nor perhaps even my old accustomed sense of distance and barrier from people who are being happy, relaxed people together. It was heartbreak, still thick upon me like dust or fiberglass. Heartbreak, which renders its host profoundly alone although they may be in a crowd of recognized friends.

And so I lived for a time on the edge of panic and in the thickness of heartbreak, and sat crying. And I wished I could have told someone, through my silence, through my sense of isolation, and the intent of the assembled congregation, I know. I know and I need, for this time, to live on the edge of panic and in the thick of heartbreak, and to cry and endure and sit with my tears on my breast.

And so I have, and so I do. I will cry until my crying runs out and is not replenished by water and salt and sleep.

I have been struggling with the question of how much to let go.

Claustrophobic Dreams

"Oh." I came into my room, thought to do some gaming, but realized that I would prefer to just lay down and be still for a bit. Contemplate. Let things surface. Perhaps sleep if it happened, but not make a point of it.

When I lay down on my back and put my arms down at my sides, I thought of morgue drawers, and the idea of being put into a CAT scan, in a metal tubular place with no easy way to get out, and a stricture against moving.

I think, if I ever need to have such a scan done to me, I will need to plead with the doctors to give me something to relax me, to draw me down out of or prevent the rising of a panic attack.

And next I remembered a dream. I think it must have been a dream I had last night, but amidst headache and waking I forgot it completely, until I laid back down. A dream of exploring big metal pipes, like a tunnel to a secret place in Morrowind or something. But they were full of water. I was in a place where I could find one small pocket from which to breathe, but it was only a few inches from the surface of the water to the ceiling. Enough room for my mouth and nose to be above water, or my eyes, but not both at once. And I think when I realized I would not be able to take a deep enough breath and then kick off with enough speed to endure the swim back out, for there was nothing really in the gradual curve of the pipe to kick off of, I shook my head violently, hoping to move my body enough to wake me and so dispel the dream, as has become a habit of mine in some claustrophobic dreams, and the cloying grip of sleep paralysis when it has me.

I think perhaps it worked... But then I came aware of my headache, and waking was gradual, and the dream was lost. Lying still in my room feeling terror claw at me gently, I wished to forget it again, and realized I feared sleep, although I was tired. So I rose again, and began typing, and typed this.

I feel helpless and shaky; as I usually do, when it comes to claustrophobic dreams. I am not enough of a lucid dreamer at this point to control what dreams I have, and when I remember how frightening they can be, it becomes a very frightening thing to surrender to the possibility of nightmare.

I Like Being This Person.

Wait. I just said I like being this person. What happened?

And then, everybody laughed. My lovers and I had been talking about norms, policy-building between us. How to stay in touch across time zones - fewer hours than across the ocean now. Planning to reserve one convenient hour to connect to one of our busiest people.

We were talking about leadership. In our group of five, three are far more followers than leaders by preference. Maybe, maybe that's more two, and the third is on the fence. Two of us are more leaders than followers - and I'm one. I'm the louder one, the one who draws attention to it more often, who usually asks what telecommunications program we're using to voice chat, and suggests something to watch or to play, takes responsibility for remembering things we agreed we have to talk about.

But we have another leader, who usually stays quiet, who spends more time watching and less time saying what he sees. He gives careful prods but not ostentatiously. It's not his way. And he and I, it seems we work together well. Me the circus ringleader, he around the shadows at the edge of the ring of light. I asked again that he remember to remind me, if my shouting becomes too self-serving - I don't want my trained assertiveness only to serve my own preferences. And I'll try to give him time, and bite down on my jealousy when it has a problem with sharing the spotlight.

I asked him to tell me out loud that it was alright that I was louder, was showier, was the ringleader kind of leader that I am. Whether we really do work well together with this being a prominent part of the nature of our double act.

Good. Because, I like being this person. And I wouldn't want to have to go without it.

Wait... What happened?

And then, everybody laughed.

You're healing, he said.

Okay, crying. Crying again.

I'm on my second day of being back on my thyroid medication. There was a gap there for a bit, while we got more. But I'm just over the extra hormonal stress and mess of my period, and although I expected things to be harder while I was off my medicine for a week or so, and then back on again... All I've really had to cope with so far that's seemed worse than usual has been some waves of tiredness in the middle of the day. And I eat, and drink, and get excited with my loves and I listen to upbeat music, and they pass. And honestly, I have been getting short and broken sleep a lot of the recent nights too.

I've been here a month and a half, in the house of someone who wasn't surprised to see me, who wasn't pined after secretly for months on months - we've discussed my coming to see them for a long time, and they've said yes, that they would welcome me with open arms, and they have.

Our apartment is our apartment, they tell me. Ours including you (meaning me). Our food and drink is your food and drink too. You don't have to keep asking me whether you can have it.

Our apartment, then. It's a pretty place. Well maintained, simple and somewhat small but high quality and close to their work. I keep it tidier than they ever did - I asked first. We've discussed the matter many times, and I've gotten consent over and over again to go ahead and turn their lives upside down.

We watch heartful TV together. They've been showing me This Is Us. I've been showing them Steven Universe. They're started to show me My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and I've had a bit of fun riffing on it and analyzing it.

With some prompting from me, they started to shift their focus away from the idea of signing up for a code college which would require them to be at a physical classroom for months and pay up thousands of dollars later down the line presuming they can find better work after the schooling. They're taking on some courses on Udemy instead for now - there was always some fear that they wouldn't be able to stick to it, but I'm here to help now. To ask what they're learning, and remind them to study regularly... but not too hard. ♡

We're doing it together. I'm picking up a Udemy course too, and suddenly I have a six month plan, to end in a working store website and all the experience it took to build it. This morning, a Saturday morning, we each spent a few hours on our different projects, in the same living room, taking time from time to time to hug and kiss or give back massages.

I send them to work with packed lunches. We can save money that way, and still eat deliciously. They don't mind - they like the food I give them. I keep our apartment clean, and cook, and when they can't walk on their own, I'm there to help carry them.

And I'm working through this course, and from time to time I just spend my day watching YouTube videos, but it's okay. Because it's not all the time. In my spare time, I get to reach out to people all along the edges of my online social network. I got to spend a half hour not long ago telling someone struggling with grief that they were not as alone as they felt.

And I still fret, sometimes. Of course I do. I worry that work that isn't done in a hired position isn't real somehow, isn't worth as much... but I know that isn't true, it's just... just one of the things that gets passed along through the deepest social memes and habits. And I don't have to know that all by myself anymore. My lovers will tell it to me over again as many times as I need to hear it.

I've been starting to look through listings for a house for us to move into once the lease here ends.

My Stars want me to stay here with them.

Everything is different now.

And I'm starting to think... Maybe I really don't ever have to go back.

Resume Confessionals

I know I'm not alone when I get so nervous about my resumes. What is too long, too short, too corporate, too personal, too weird? How can I expect or presume to know the culture of the places I'm looking to work? Some online articles remind me to focus on what my audience will be excited to hear... And my sense of the limits of my own understanding of other peoples' priorities and expectations closes in again. It's tempting to throw up my hands and declare myself helpless...
But I am not willing to give up now.

Quantity over quality... I will put forward the attempt and make these applications even if they must be flawed in ways I struggle to judge as well as ways that will seem obvious in retrospect. This is not the time to fear my own imperfection. I will make changes and refine my practice attempt by attempt.

I will push myself to remember why it is that my friends, and sometimes, when I hear them, even I, believe that I am awesome and will be a great credit to the company who hires me. My courage. My insight. My perseverance. My vision. I will find ways to put them into words that fit on a resume, and I will keep doing this until opportune offers come to light and enable me to build plans around them by which I will find my way.

It's exhausting getting over the ugh. It takes a lot of strength and will to fire up my confidence into the blaze it can be.

I steer by the Stars, who help me and remind me. I need to steer by myself when clouds and circumstance come between us.

Dear Diary: Time To Make A Plan

I came in to the campus just to write a Financial Accounting test today. And I sat it, and finished it, taking about 98 minutes out of what would have been an available 120 I think, although that may have been stretched out from 90.

I walked away from the testing hall with a bit of niggling frustration over trying to remember whether it was IAS 37, 38 or 39 which dealt with events after the reporting period. I've never been good at remembering arbitrary numbers and codes like that. I let it fade gently from my mind, and my thoughts settle on something else.

I need to stop not having a plan.

This morning I told my dear Stars that over the past few days, I've come to the conclusion that it's important I come around to admitting that coming to Ireland was a mistake. "And so I've said it," I told them. And so I have. It was a mistake to come here. It may have been a mistake I needed to make, in the situation I was in, needed to make and then learn from. But it was a mistake. Which is the English human shorthand way to say, I suppose...

I need to stop trying to justify this and figure out how to recover. Write it off, sell it for what scrap I can get for it.

What now?

It's strange how much difference that makes to my perspective, when none of my options have really changed.

Well... If I'm not assuming I have to stay, I need to have a plan to go. Plane tickets, dates, an address of someone who'll let me stay with them for a while when I arrive back in Canada, either for rent or otherwise. All of it flexible, ideally, so that if I do manage to get a paid internship here with a company that'll put me through my next year and offer me a place with them, I can pivot to that.
Huh. Using the word pivot that way on a personal blog makes me sound like a corporate dickhead. Well, not pivot, then. Switch to it. Adjust to land there.

So. Refundable plane tickets. Those exist, I'm pretty sure. How much time do I want to give myself? Couple months? If I don't have an internship set up by mid-June, I don't think I'm likely to get one, so let's say late June maybe. April, exams are in May, June. Alright. I can work with that.

Today while I was walking to the campus, I listened to some episodes of the ACCA student podcast, including one episode on Clever Job Hunting which I listened to more carefully than the others. One of the things it says is about networking - that it's important to build relationships up before bringing up jobs at all.

Well, there's the kick, isn't it? Don't look desperate, ever, especially when you feel desperate. Don't ask people for awkward things. Smile. Shake hands. Talk small. Make friends.

I've never been good at that. I hate feeling like I'm confined to safe, inoffensive subjects. And I'm quick to get annoyed with people's bad habits. I have to admit, though, I get it. Swooping in and expecting the attention of people who don't know what makes me great looks pretentious, entitled. Because it is. I fly around the world, leaving places and people behind me, looking for a break... And then who's there to help me or vouch for me?

Anyway. Book a ticket to leave in June, then. Get through the rest of my classes and exams. Shift emphasis away from menial work for the summer - it seems even mushroom harvesting positions are looking for people who intend to stay longer than a year. Keep throwing out applications as I can bear to for internships, try to learn about companies that might be a gateway for me, here or in Canada. Maybe look into the US a bit, but since I've no claim there and no degree so far, don't expend too much effort on it.

Wrap up the story of the tabletop campaign. Does everything just go to hell because the death of Isabet Carol was only the first sign of things going very, very wrong, and the PCs didn't actually investigate enough to stop it? Sounds plausible, and may offer them enough closure to satisfy. It would be nice to have a tabletop story actually end in a way that feels like an ending for once.

Continue the conversation with Fanshawe and maybe other colleges in Canada, look at continued study... Maybe. I'm tired of going to school, though. Look for work in Canada, yes. If it's something that can get me starting to do work that aligns with my strengths and studies, great. If something that aligns with EA, even better.

Alright. Go and set it up, then, Serp.

A Simple Story

On my way home on Tuesday evening, the pony at the corner of my block was hanging out by the gate, and I noticed the water bin in the paddock was empty. I stopped and held out my hand to be smelled, and managed to get away with petting and neck-scratching the pony for a good long while. I felt kind of bad about seeing it so thirsty, and said "Sorry" as I walked away.
On the short rest of the way to my house, though, I realized there was something I could do.

I checked the backyard and found an old bucket in a stack of things, with mud caked around the bottom, and when I took off the lid, it had mossy water in it - Good; It's water tight, then, and not being used for anything else. Dumped the dirty water, left it there for the moment, and came inside to use the bathroom. Noticed a bucket in the laundry room too, which was much cleaner. Open it - empty! Alright. This gives me more to work with. So I carried the dirty bucket empty through the house and set it on the front lawn without putting it down anywhere, so as to avoid making a mess. Filled the clean bucket at the sink, filled the dirty bucket with it, and filled it again. Somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 full, the both of them. Put on my puffy gloves in order to avoid hurting my hands on the thin handles, and carried them to the paddock, taking several breaks to rest and stretch my arms.

But when I got there, a big farm truck was pulled up and a fellow was climbing over the gate. I put down my buckets and looked closer - the water bin and feed area had already been filled. Well. Alright. Pony's master has got things under control.

I said nothing to the man, didn't even wave. I suspect he never saw me, being too busy. I dumped out the buckets and brought them back home.

On net, I got in some 'farmer's walk' exercise and both had and executed on a resourceful idea that turned out to have been completely unnecessary.

I figure I'm quite alright with that.

Blood

If you're someone who's likely to be disturbed by blood, menstruation, sex or complicated questions about gender, it would probably be better not to read this one. Have a good day.

An aggravating feeling of helpless rage at the smugness of an authority that doesn't give a damn about anything I say and has power over me through the very nature of the systems of which our world is built, the only allies against it very far away and unable to intervene to help me in my present, and for all I know unable or too busy to intervene before I run out of time and die.

Seems familiar.

I have, for the last hour or so, been holding an internalized mental argument... with an anthropomorphic personification of human evolution. And feeling increasingly like a sulky, powerless teenager under its authority.

-----

I woke up this morning covered in blood, soaked through the sheet under me, into the mattress, all over my loins and thighs. Grumbled to my feet and wrapped in a towel and tried to get to the bathroom to clean off without leaving drops of blood on the hall carpet. I had made my regular preparations for my period, it's not like this came out of nowhere and I wasn't expecting anything. But what the hell? Usually those steps are enough.

Wash my legs, empty my cup, clean the little drops off the bathroom floor (at least that just wipes clean) and come back to my room to strip my bloody sheet off my bed in a cold room stinking richly of copper and rust. Laundry earlier than expected, then. I don't have any spares. Sad regret at not following through on my thought to buy another mattress protector when I started using the first one I bought as a blanket against the growing cold followed me to school. I can't expect the next unknown tenant to be willing to sleep on a bloodstained bed, so it's only fair after this to put some of my deposit towards replacing the mattress, which is a punch to my sensitive budget awareness. I know better than this, and the cost of buying the second mattress protector would be so much less. But I just hadn't gotten around to it. Too many other priorities too intensely felt. Too late now.

Well, at least I did put myself to bed early and got what should be a reasonable enough amount of sleep to function well at school. But in class, it took not only an energy drink but the engagement of an actual exercise to perform to keep me from repeatedly closing my eyes and realizing after a while that I hadn't opened them and was paying more attention to my desire for more sleep than the lecture. On the upside, I guess, it's familiar material that was covered by my Cost Accounting class at Fanshawe, and didn't require much mental presence to use as review rather than new learning.

And while I sat in class, warmth leaked into my underwear and jeans in little blossoms. I could feel it. What the hell, seriously? It's only a half hour walk, and only an hour of class. School bathroom, emptied my cup again and looked over the damage. Mhm. Stained the patches on my jeans. Well, that's fresh enough it might wash out if I deal with it before it dries. And if not, well, I was kind of planning on re-patching them anyway. Damn, though. I don't usually have heavy periods, and this is insanely fast. One of my old friends used to tell me about how heavy her periods usually are, and I was glad I didn't have to deal with it. This sounds like what she told me. I don't think it's a medical emergency, but it's really weird for me.

Feeling exhausted, scarcely better than on Monday when I hadn't slept at all, after a morning headache I attributed to dehydration from blood loss (and seemed to be validated, since drinking lots of water really helped). I felt and feel drained in a way that seems profoundly more literal than usual, and responded as I had on Monday by returning home to rest, frustrated intensely at the impact on my attendance in classes.

As I walked, I wondered why my body was investing so much into conception this month, such that it was leaving me deprived of strength for other things, like actually being restored by sleep and being awake in class. I reflected that all the masculinity and determination I pulled up yesterday and that wonderful feeling of swagger and confidence just couldn't seem to be supported on a body spending so much of its strength to wash out and replenish a womb, which was not made for battle. I felt I would like to be able to talk to the part of me that regulated that and ask it what the deal was, why the investment, and if I could have some kind of warning if this was going to happen again.

Well, I hadn't been expecting this to develop, but my imagination is vibrant and has a lot of material to draw from.

The personification looks back at me with patronizing eyes.

"You get all pumped up on passion and infatuation and don't expect to conceive. Just like you, Upstart Consciousness, thinking you run everything now, decide everything. I made those feelings, and getting you pregnant is what I made them for.

"You can co-opt the feelings, sure, like you've harnessed everything else. Do what you like, Upstart. I can't and won't stop you. But when you take the infrastructure I spent twenty years building into your very flesh, and millions in practicing, and you try to make something completely different out of it, don't come complaining to me that my lust, my affection and instincts of family-forming and the elation of compatibility that I gave you have side-effects that mess up pieces of whatever weird deviating program you're trying to build with them. De-bug your own mess.

"Silly Upstart. Always wanting the best of everything, without its costs.

"I specialized you to be a garden, rich and fertile. You don't want to plant anything there, fine. But this blood is not meant for you, Upstart Consciousness. It was meant for the children you refuse to have."

And I stare and sit and sulk, enraged at the determinism of my weave and my flesh to anything other than my will. An authority I have no greater established authority to appeal to for overturn. I wonder to myself whether this personification of the very manufacture of me gets its attitude of distant, smug and hateful authority from my mother (the flesh person from whom I directly descend, rather than the long process of descent which is no less my mother), or maybe the other way around. Was this always a part of it? Was this far more a part of my utter intolerance for her than I ever suspected, a hatred that I was built with a body made for childbearing when I wanted to fight and lead?

Confusion and despair and uncertainty. There are times, although as befits the bitter teenager feeling, I may resentfully resist admitting it at the moment, when that purpose flows through me red and alluring. I feel the heat of it and my body's response. Lust craves in me pointedly to be sewn and swollen with fertility, but I revolt and hold my ideals against the impulse, valuing quality of life over quantity and understanding them to be in conflict. I will side with quality, no matter what my biology has to say about it. But deep in my sex drive, I know it is there in all of my femaleness.

Do I hate that? Is that why all of sex seems like rape to me sometimes, in that vague and imprecise close-but-not-quite way? That the ways in which my body is designed to enjoy it seem like an imposition to me, a drug woven into my flesh, a manipulation I cannot escape and a tool to subvert me as an individual, as Upstart Consciousness which thinks that Consciousness ought to rule the world; like the systems of pleasure exist to demur me and not just me specifically, not just Serp, but "me", the concept of being an individual and having self-determination, demur "me" to submit my time and life energy to being part of the biological process, a cog in the machine of flesh and procreation. A stitch in the fabric of generations, to bond and spread its spoor and die and be eaten, digested by plants and returned to the newborns in their day as fruit.

I want more for myself, for all selves as my loves and inspirations remind me. Does this revolt then, this rebellion, seep in bitterness and conflict right down, down, through my muscles and organs and neurons, into a hatred of the very attraction of sex, the hunger and preoccupation and the pleasure it offers to reward me for doing obediently as my body says? Made disgusting by a rejection of blind obedience on principle, a hatred of all the flaws and all of the victims enabled by the processes of just taking your pay, or endorphins, or promotion, and not thinking about whether what you're being paid to do is good. Could that conviction, revulsion, really be at the core of my longstanding recoil against, shame about, not exactly sex, but the love of and desire for sex?

Maybe.

I hadn't considered it before, but at first appraisal, it seems to make a lot of sense. The distaste and shame are still there, after all, after every kind of mental exercise and argument I could think of against kink shaming and slut shaming, after rejecting and rejecting again repeatedly as not having any right to determine my feelings every mote I could find of religious shame, of mere fear-of-judgement, of anything else. But there was some root that none of it has shifted. Is this that root?

My plans for the day had more to do with study and less to do with uncovering dysphoria hidden deep in my psyche, but hey, I'll take it. I will almost never refuse an opportunity to understand myself better.

The Rainbow

It's been a while since I've come back to write here, but maybe it hasn't been as long as it feels like. For a while I was thinking from time to time I should come back just to mention that the heartbreak is fading and although the challenge of trying to get by here on the budget I have available for it is a big one, I think I'm getting more of a handle on it.

A couple of weeks ago, I think on the day I last wrote, now that I think of it, I applied to Rev after looking through some articles on more unconventional ways to make money, as opposed to a regular hired job. Rev is a captioning and transcription service and work space; they hire freelancers who can use the online tools they provide to claim jobs as they come available and type captions to videos and audio from clients. I went through some testing and was approved to join.

It's been exciting to have something I could do with my hours from home to make money on my own terms, and although I'm not currently earning at a rate which is going to solve all my financial problems, it's work that I like and I think I can get better at it over time.

Yesterday just for example I wrote captions for a weird music video, and started work on an hour-long documentary I'll need to finish today. I get exposed to a lot of different media I probably would never have watched on my own, and the variety makes this job interesting. I'm glad to have something that takes advantage of my precision with words and good typing speed, although in this case, it's precision in listening to hear exactly what words someone else used, not choosing them myself.

As often happens, I've found solace in love from those around me by deepening my relationships into romance. There's a degree to which I feel uncomfortable about that, since it's happened so many times before it feels like I'm turning predictable or something, becoming a cliche. It's frustrating that that meta-awareness messes with my appreciation of the moment, because the thing itself is beautiful anyway.

So once again I've had a wonderful time talking endlessly to one of my friends and finding that there is potential for us to be closer, and it was all appropriately delicious. I've drawn a few pictures, hit by inspiration from the new relationship energy and finding with pleasure that the skill I've accumulated over the years makes it much easier for me to depict what I want to reasonably well, and I've been producing work I can be proud of in just a couple of hours.

The thought to see if I can try to market that as well does come to mind, alongside the long-standing intent to try to set up an online shop for my macrame bracelets. The way things are going so far, it'd make me an all-around crafter-freelancer, and you know what? That could be pretty cool.

Sunday night this week I pulled an all-nighter hanging out online with this relationship that's changing colours in my life, and so yesterday I had trouble staying awake in my classes. I gave up and went home to sleep after the first two. I slept again last night, although not ideally long, and walked to school today listening to a variety of renditions of "The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond". There was one instrumental version in particular that I reflected would sound just about perfect if I could have added the sound of rain into it, for an atmospheric connection to the sky and fields as they are, I suppose.

Well here's where it gets a bit strange, because not five minutes later it started raining. I'd finished the song by then, but the timing was remarkable anyway. I had been admiring the many colours of silver in the clouds, as there often are in Ireland, and it's not as though it seemed unlikely for it to rain, but just that it happened right then, as opposed to fifteen minutes earlier, struck me as somewhat uncanny.

But what was moreso was when I looked up and almost jumped to see the change in the sky; where there hadn't been not five minutes before when I took a photo of the lovely silvers in the clouds over the green field I was passing, there was a rainbow, full across the sky and not the slight half-bow I'd sometimes seen in rain in Canada.

Over the next little while, the rainbow got brighter and brighter by the moment, not only a full arc across the sky now, but apparent right to the ground on both sides, even casting its colours in front of the distant hills on the horizon. It looked as though you could have guessed to within a dozen meters or so where exactly it seemed to touch down on one side. Looking on with awe, some of the old legends of searches for leprechauns' gold made a lot more sense all of a sudden.

For a period of not more than ten minutes or so, the rainbow brightened and brightened, clearer and more vibrant than I had ever seen a rainbow in my life, with a second, dimmer arc beginning to show outside the main on the sides, and then began to dim and fade away. I caught a few photos of the rainbow before it was gone, and the sky returned to gray as the rain continued lightly for a while longer and I went on my way toward the college. The whole of its appearance may have been contained in a quarter of an hour.

I thought back to King of Dragon Pass where the appearance of a rainbow was considered to be among the best of omens, and to other similar things, and felt rather a lot as though the sky had smiled at me, 'like forgiveness' in a way, I remember thinking. There's a certain cheshire-cat-ness to it now, looking back, that leaves me feeling curious and portentous. Perhaps it smiles on the progress of my new relationship, or to reassure me that my efforts are good enough, for now; or that I may be soon rewarded for not giving up on my time here. Who knows, but there is that in me that wonders, even while its being silly and seeming misguided is also felt in my thoughts.

So there, anyway, is the rainbow which greeted me this morning, and the trend of my activities these past few weeks. Health and fortune to the ones I love and to all those who love me, if I may spread it out to them, for their fortune is also mine after all.

And good day.

It Festers

I come here with a bent mind, frustrated at a... friend? acquaintance? friend?... who asked me how I was doing as the last class began to settle down into their seats, and would not take my grimace and uncomfortable silence as an answer and did not hear my whisper, reached to touch my hand.

Such small actions, one might think they should not bend me.

I have become trapped in the mirror, and appropriately the things I see and hear around me all reflect the dark. The voices that close the podcast I listen to sound lower, slower, tired... in a way they did not once before. I feel less entertained by it, and wonder whether I would see it becoming lesser if I was not, within myself, shriveling. Everything I see and hear now becomes suspect.

Last week, I made mistakes. I acted in ways that, in retrospect, in dread, I knew must mark me as an outsider, and every time I spoke of it, in voice or text or explicit thought, I cried. I cried in front of my peers who came to chastise me. I sat in frozen stillness for long moments in front of my peer who sought to comfort me; or perhaps, comfort themself with the hopeful confirmation that I was fine... which I refused to give them. I cried in front of my friends of this last half-year, whose notice and acknowledgement and forgiveness for the act I sought.

I stayed up late on Sunday night, spending a few cherished hours with those I cannot see or hear any other time than the middle of the night, and missed my first class again on Monday morning. But not Tuesday this time. I arrived to class twelve minutes after the hour but in time to hear much of the lecture. About insecurity and social media. Of course. With little jokes about how obviously as a younger generation we were all addicted to Facebook even if we knew it was exploitative. As if saying that kind of thing were funny rather than insulting. I can't say it helped.

Such small gestures, one might think they should not bend me.

But everything now is in subtlety. The greatest impacts can be wrought with the flourish of a pen and the pressing of a button, which are actions even smaller, in the simple physical performance which is so little of the context that fully makes them up.

Why should I be ashamed? Why am I ashamed? Why?

The post on my blog two posts back is displaying improperly. Three paragraphs are shown in the smallest available font size, and although I can edit the text of the post, I cannot change them to normal size such that they display properly on the webpage. I am left feeling frustrated and powerless. Such... small... things. Such small things that yet I do not have the reach to correct. Like all the things I may feel are wrong with the systems here.

I wonder whether my friend?acquaintance?friend? will forgive me, and cannot really claim to stir myself to enough feeling to hope. I wonder whether she will care to learn enough about me to begin to understand what I need, why it is painful for me when someone pushes for me to speak in a room crowded with people, such as students in a classroom. What to do about it. But as a point aside from all of this... when I looked at her eyes looking at me, trying to reach out to me, there was a warmth there that I would like to see again...

People keep telling me I know I can always talk to them if I need someone to talk to.
I wish they would stop telling me that. It isn't true.

Last week I dragged myself into school on Thursday mostly so that I could attend counselling, but I was told I had no appointment. I had begun to depend on my counsellor. I had begun to trust him enough that last time, I opened up my chest and let him see me raw and crying. I suppose we mentioned it each time until last time, and he had written me in for another appointment, same time next week. But not last time. When I trust, I assume, and do not think to say it, and then it is not done.

I wished that I had an appointment this week, but I do not want to speak to the staff at student services to ask for one.

I wish people would stop telling me I know I can rely on them. I don't. People keep showing me that I can't; not in the ways that I rely on people.

I think it's time to start calling this depression.

I am trapped in the mirror now, and nothing I see on the other side, nothing I hear, can be trusted not to be twisted by the reflection of my own darkness.

Hello, old darkness. It's been a while.

Predations of Fatigue

Both yesterday and today, I slept partly through my first class. Yesterday it was deliberate after a late night. Today it was not. I feel exhausted despite a long sleep last night, early as well as late. I woke up around 4:30 and spoke to my friends a little before bedding back down.

This seems to continue the pattern whereby I feel the affects of a shortened sleep cycle a full day afterwards, but it also feels awfully like the draining fatigue that consumed my days that one summer when I was on a sapping antidepressant which made me angry and exhausted at every moment.

I am unsure whether energy drinks would help; I seem to develop a dependence on them. Or whether in order to really be able to talk to my American friends at all I will have to establish a habit of sleeping early and waking part way through. As to my other friends... I notice that I have not heard from one in over a month despite fairly proactive polite prodding on my part. There is another, too, who has gone silent, and I am concerned for them both.

So full of my tired after my first class today that I walked outside where it was cold but not crowded or trafficked, brushed the grass and found that it was wet, and so experimentally lay down on cold bricks with my backpack under my head. The downside, of course, was that in the central area where these bricks were, this would not fail to attract attention. Some students from off somewhere laughed, and one called out to another to ask me if I was alright, make sure I had a pulse. It made me angry. Without opening my eyes or lifting my head I flipped them off with a raised hand.

In retrospect I felt bad for it... but it reminded me too much of those scenes of my high school years when guffawing and teasing boys would dare and cajole one another to talk to me or ask to kiss me. If you cared so much, the one who called, would you not come forward yourself? Staff men walked out to ask me if I needed to see a nurse... of course. I told them no, I was not sick, just tired, and they went away, but they had had loud voices and all the attention of eccentricity was playing on my mind. I began to feel points of colder; an inkling of rain. Reluctantly, I got up and left, but I still feel dizzy with tired.

I wonder what will be the fallout of this scant few minutes of being visibly strange. In this mood, under this fatigue, I cannot but expect the worst, but I think I will buy an energy drink to see if it helps me through the afternoon.

In other news, last night at the archery club, one of our trainee archers flailed at release (maybe the thing that our lead coach mentioned to me; someone releasing the arrow when it jumped the arrowrest, instead of calmly relaxing the draw and putting it back) and the arrow flew high and wide and hit one of the second-floor gym windows with a mighty sound. The arrow bounced off and landed among the bleachers. The window cracked outward in a spiderweb pattern from the point of impact, but did not break. Good safety windows, then. We kept training but carefully and restricted from approaching the area under the cracked window, until staff came and instructed us to leave.

Regularly two hours, our monday club meet was down to half a one. I had extra time; I shopped and cooked with it. The beginning of my week is highly mixed. I kind of hope I will be able to adjust my sleeping habits to offer me more consistency, more consistent energy.

Continuing On

"I feel like you imply to me that I'm wasting your time every time I ask a question, in class or outside of it."
"No, it's not that. It's just that we have a lot to cover and very little time to do it all."
"The way you say it upsets me every time."
"Ditto."
"Well, I'm sorry for my side of that."
"Me too. Let's begin again next day."
handshake

-Monday 24th, September

The term is now thoroughly underway, and I have been neglecting my blogging again. I have become acquainted with the chaplain on campus and one of the two counselors, who I am set to meet once a week. I have been feeling busy, with pressure from classes, homework, and financial stability; regular job searching has as usual been discouraging. My several runs of boldly introducing myself and dropping off CVs in person have yielded nothing so far and largely robbed me of the energy to continue making online applications to posted jobs.

I am seeking to break into freelancing, to work on my own terms, and maybe do some tutoring, even in IT Carlow itself. UpWork has rejected my application twice, though, perhaps negating the hearsay I had from a friend of a friend that the application process was pretty much a formality. Having taken ten tests on the site and scored above average on every one and in the top 10% on some, I feel indignant about this, and am wondering whether you have to already be an established freelancer for UpWork to want to support you.

The lecturer I had the above encounter with has been treating me with greater kindness and consideration since. In my Excel-based computer labs, I race ahead. In non-computer lab Management Accounting classes, I have begun to sometimes stop even processing through the problems. Vainly racing the lecturer's Excel with a hand calculator while my mind is crowded with her talking was growing very tiresome, and I feel confident I already get the idea by now. If I could find the time to do more practice on my own it would be great, but my time is mostly spent wondering how I'm ever going to juggle all of the things I need to do.

And then there is archery. It's the one club I've been going to reliably, learning form and stance and hearing encouraging words from the coach, who is acting as a better teacher than any of my lecturers, using effective repetition, class participation and good humour, much like my statistics lecturer back at Fanshawe did, to help us memorise the safety rules and terminology of the bow, adding a little every week. There is also a lot of waiting, since the beginners shoot only 4-6 at a time so that the coaches can observe us and correct mistakes, and the rest queue behind. I have begun to get to know the other left-handed archers; In archery, which hand you fire with depends on the dominance of your eye, not the regular dominance of your hand, and so someone who is a right-handed writer may be a left-handed archer. There are perhaps three right hand archers to each of us lefties, and we share the same line to shoot with a left-handed bow.

I enjoy archery, even though there's a lot of waiting. I have been challenging my social courage to chat to and get to know some of the other lefties. I had an amusing conversation with one young man yesterday who's in the first year of a software course going into cyber security. For the money, he said when I asked, and we talked about different countries and pronunciations, accents and languages. He wondered why out of all the countries in the world I would want to come to Ireland, and expressed a dislike of the Irish accent and disdain for the country in general. He was an interesting conversationalist, although as I said to him myself it seemed in some moments as though we were chatting across from different sides of the D&D alignment table. He laughed.

Between the talking and building my skills and the generally welcoming atmosphere... Well, probably more important than any of that is that when I am at archery club I feel a certain pseudo-obligation to leave school, work and busyness matters mostly aside and just be still for a while, focused almost entirely on other things, and that's just deeply refreshing.

I had an ongoing email conversation with someone who runs the campus's tabletop games club, suggesting some ways he could make his emails and Facebook messages more welcoming and less cynical. We met in person yesterday, and essentially he told me that he wasn't interested in spending the effort to improve his approach for this thing he was volunteering his time toward. I am proud of myself for continuing to speak animatedly but cheerfully with him until we parted ways, although I went away from it feeling stressed and perhaps on a verge of my social anxiety that I am a bit surprised I managed to cling to, and not tumble over. He did thank me for the feedback and admit to some surprise that the way I had rewritten a couple of his messages registered as so much more welcoming even to him.

Also yesterday, a couple of my friends introduced me to A Capella Science, with Entropic Time and Banting's Imparted Years, which has made my Song of the Day list. The single-voice a capella of the latter is a little harsh on the ears at first, but it really grew on me over time, and the arrangements are good.

I had better get moving. It is another school morning and I need to be at school in a little under an hour to book an appointment with the campus doctor to get a renewed prescription of my thyroid medicine. Oh. Also also, I picked up a bottle of apple cider vinegar, which was mentioned in my marketing class, and have begun trying to take a spoon of it every day like a medicine. I don't know how valid are its claims as a health tonic, and I feel a little self-conscious for following a trend like this, but I'll just give it a try, and see if it seems to do me any good.