Grim November

It has been some time, and so I will explain.

Things began to be sour, I think, in August. Habits which were endurable in the short term so long as they were being worked on and would improve over time seemed to worsen, signs of improving grew sparse or there seemed to be subconscious resentment at the pressure.

Too much responsibility was placed on me.

There was cause, of course; there were extenuating circumstances. My Stars left their job, trusting to another to support us, and then he lost his job too. And there was much discouragement and despondency. None of us were in fit shape to carry the limp weight of the others while we were robbed of strength. And so I did my best at times, but neither was I - and I lashed out and growled and broke down often under the strain, so little rewarded, so little relieved.

I believe I am still blamed for my failure to hold up the heads of my companions during that time, as well as my own, but I plead that it was not within my power, and ought not have been expected of me. I had not enough participation. I had not enough support. I had not enough compensation to see me through it, not enough nor gentle enough reminders; reminders which are invitations, rather than chastisements.

Of course, it is an advanced difficulty to succeed, with me, to my standard, in giving invitation and not chastisement.

But this is how it went on. I carried far too much, seeking not to let others down, but I must in the end. My patience, my spirit, was overloaded for quite some time, and my vulnerabilities pricked when I was gathering enough air and lift to begin to get somewhere, such that that liveliness would easily and swiftly drain away, and I would lie again lifeless in a wasteland of bitterness.

I do not say that I held no responsibility nor blame for these cycles - O, I was part of them. My failure to speak my boundaries while I could still do so without cursing made things worse. I was at times negligent. I was at times evasive.

And so it went, and until I had a room of privacy to myself for a while (the gift of interim hosts in the city of Kitchener, and O my great gratitude to them for the privilege), for six months I had no place I could retreat to which was mine to be alone in, mine to rest in, and not need to share it, neither night nor day. Looking back it shocks me that I lived so long in these conditions, and I did not seem to realize that that was a problem.

Of course, I was caught up in wanting to be there, be present for Stars if they needed physical assistance to get up, and perhaps then, I ignored my own need for privacy, for a crook I could lay in on my own and be undisturbed. There are reasons for this, of course, reasons. But O it was surely a part of my growing twisted and impatient and bitter.

And so it went until a particularly bright-careless and manipulative episode, of some of my love's worst habits. And then I told them I would not marry them. Not now, not like this. And so I would need to return North and leave the country, for I had no other legal basis to stay. And it was sad and sour but felt necessary.

We moved several times, because as everything descended into a slough of despond, we would not organize cohesively enough to close a rental agreement and did not have a place to go by the ending of the old lease. And so there was a hotel one night, and an Airbnb for a half-week, and then another Airbnb for the rest of the month, with our things in a storage locker a long drive outside town, near to where we had hoped to rent a place, but it was a scam. A scam we would ordinarily have spotted, but we were desperate for a place by that time, of course.

Much of our things have been left behind. My friends I leave with less, materially, than they had before, and some bitter memories of my impatience and desperation and the guilt of having drawn it. But still though, my friends I leave in a pleasant place, a roomy apartment somewhat bare but well outfitted with such things as the kitchen that came with it. I leave them in a place with an extendable lease and the flexibility to adjust time there, so that they may be sure of their next leap's landing before arranging to leave. I leave them nearer to some people who have been friends of ours, that we wished to be close to... And still do now, but less so. Less, for there has been loss and grief and disappointment.

I leave my friends and I hope very dearly that I leave them better for having spent time with me rather than worse, for all that they have less materially now and our lessons from each other have been grim. November was a very slow, very sad and waiting and grieving month for me this year.

I hope to pick up my project again. I have not done so quite yet. I have a bit more of ensuring my next living-space to do first. I was in no condition then, really no condition for it.

And that is how it went.

Growing Pains

I am growing stronger. As documented in I Like Being This Person, I have been slowly healing. Although I am currently looking back at a week of tracked project work with the fewest hours since I started, I know and am capable of remembering that having continued to track my time and make my minimum quotas of time, humble though they are, is still an ongoing success, and a strength.

For two days, yesterday and most of the day before, I was down in a slump and lazy, after a sobbing breakdown Tuesday morning. And here I am awake, thinking about priorities, flitting from one thing to another, getting little things done here and then there, rather than getting trapped like a fly on the deadly adhesive thought of how very much there is to do.

It is strange, growing healthier. It feels strange, from the inside. Occasionally dramatic, but pretty much only in reflection or in my emotional extremes, blazing fury or torrential brightness which I worry will all spend itself out and leave me exhausted... and sometimes it does.

It feels strange that largely my improvement seems to be that I have gotten better at sleeping. It almost feels like magic sometimes how noticing my heaviness and excusing myself from my social contexts and going and laying down, no matter how much it feels like I "shouldn't be tired already", leads to my actually being able to sleep within just a few minutes. I don't exactly wake up feeling highly energized very often. I often wish I had someone to help pull me out of bed because lifting my body on my own feels exhausting in a sort of grim, repetitive persistence sort of way. But much of the tired that had been on my shoulders has gone once I can get moving and doing something, if I do something at all rather than just re-watching old YouTube videos.

Most times, I take my laptop with me, because it would bother me and keep me awake being tempted to go and get it so that if I can't sleep, I have it there to do things with. And I close it up and put it next to my bed, and sleep, comfortable enough in the knowledge that if I were to wake restless it would be there for me.

When I am well-rested, and sleeping more or less consistently during the nights and for long enough periods of time, wakefulness becomes different. It is more than once or twice a month that I feel distinctly capable of getting things done. I cook for myself, and while I am cooking, my mind wanders, and it seizes on ideas and desires and strings them together and insists I must write them down, tell my friends, do something to capture the resulting inspiration before it evaporates.

Sometimes it feels like I can't catch my breath and actually follow through on the ongoing project I've committed to, just because I'm so busy catching and coping with other inspirations and ideas for things I want to get done which are oozing out of my ears and eyes and mouth, burbling over and getting all over my face and in my heart so I can't focus.

It is as though my brain has formed a long, long queue of all the many things I have dreamed about while slogging through my days, half-awake; and so on the rare occasions I wake up, my whole workspace becomes covered in petitions to make them real.

I have learned important strategies from Finish It! for coping. I have been putting those things in writing but then putting them aside. I have learned important strategies for keeping going even when I don't feel like it at all. I have put consequences behind my quotas, and it has been working.

My life may be a heavy and clunking machine, sometimes clumsy and very base, but I have been getting some of its motors to stop coughing and dying so much and run sort of smoothly for a few hours at a time. Well, who'd have thought? It's exhausting work, but it can be done. And there's a bunch of neat stuff among the flies and dust being coughed out of this machine now that it's running well enough to actually disgorge some of the ideas which have been stuck in the pipes almost-formed for months.

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.

Christmas Crash

After my last post here, I decided to look back a ways and revisit what my feelings had been in November, when I was just setting up my resolution to return to Ireland. I was a little shaken to see how uncertain I had been about how I might expect Eoin to feel, and how much more confident it seemed that I had become.

Of course, I have been careful to avoid developing any sort of certainty that I would be welcomed, and every time I think or speak on it, I at least pay some lip service to the possibility that for some reason or another I would not be welcomed back. But by often envisioning him hugging or kissing me, by remembering his smile and his affection, I think I have further reinforced the notion to myself that I will be greeted with love of some kind.

Upon observing the distinct change in my confidence, a crumbling came on me that was probably well due. I had been working hard, catching up and keeping up with my schoolwork in one thing or another, for a solid stretch and I was tired. My spirits had been flagging uncertainly, waiting for the fall for some time, but I kept pulling them up again. This observation, though, and an opportunity to doubt and wonder if all my confidence had been built up by self-conditioning and wishful thinking, was just the slip I needed, and the fall came.

However, as these things go, I will say it was short. I spent almost all of a day in bed or idling, watching YouTube videos to fill mental space with noise, sleeping in frequent bursts. The next day, I reached out to my friends, although wretchedly and in an awful conflict, grumpy from social neglect and fatigue, feeling the stresses of ancient habits of self-doubt and deprecation bending but not entirely broken. I was surly and rude and plaintive to those who took the time to listen, but...

Throughout it, I acknowledged that I was in a crash at the end of a long streak of positivity. I spoke through all of my feelings and complaints over everything from my doubts about Eoin to procrastination of tasks I found intimidating or dull to feeling fatter than usual, but at every point I spoke of feelings and imaginings, and did not say that any great flaw I saw in myself was fact. I managed some gruff apologies and excuses to those friends I leant on. I held my tongue for vital moments some moments, and pointedly avoided some opportunities to pick fights even though I had to wrestle with my impulses and irritability to do so.

I was invited to play Jackbox 4 games by one of my dear old friends and enjoyed them, although the way we played over stream and without voice chat was less intimate than I used to enjoy from Jackbox games and had an irritating delay. Still, being welcomed into the fold for social fun was something I acknowledged that I badly needed, and had gone too long without.

I did not expect anything for Christmas, and did not get much. One friend bought me a game soundtrack that I had put on my wishlist at some point. I was happy to have been thought of with such a gesture, and made a point of saying so and giving my thanks.

With the patient ear of one friend, some friendly invitations and thoughts from others, and the vital acknowledgement that although not perfect, my judgement in times of happy optimism is probably better than when I am breaking down with doubt and fear; that so long as I do not presume to be infallible, sustaining my spirits on a reasonable hope is a fair and fine way of carrying on, I recovered fairly quickly. This morning, I woke and got back to some schoolwork pretty much first thing. In the early afternoon, I made a point of going outside just for the sake of my health.

Having come back here to write, although I have paused uncertainly many times, will be the last thing on my list of things I have set myself a duty to do today. Having done this, I will be free to relax, or to work up the courage to do something a little more intimidating, like returning for a brief refresher to my JavaScript lessons, or working on my resume to send to companies that might be my key to get back to Ireland. Ah... Breathe, Serp, breathe. It is still intimidating, that. Taking a solid step toward a desperate goal usually is, I think.

Dear Memory: The Present Strategy

Hello, Dear Memory.

My mind is full of jostling thoughts, and I am not sure which way to begin.
However, it is not painful. Not the pain of uncontrolled and vivid fixation. Not the pain of unfeeling or feeling too much. It is a bumbling confusion after sleep, for I only recently woke up... Thoughts and priorities, possibilities... The haze and confusion of trying to choose which things to do today, and which things to do first.

By the notion of my counselor, and of kitten mother, in order to make this strategy work of pushing away your memory into the future and avoiding being ambushed by it, I should take time to think of you intentionally, without being driven to it by madness or pain. And so, when I woke today, for what seemed like the sixth or seventh time in a sleep full of interruptions, but awake enough to stay for now... Laying in my room, not really looking at anything, for I think my eyes were still lolling and unfocused then, I decided that I should think of you for a while. I am not driven to out of madness or pain. It is simply that for now, the tight deadlines have passed and I have more time, and it seems like a thing to do.

Dear Memory, I looked around this basement room and thought that is is quite a bit bigger than the bedroom I shared with you for a while, or the one you shared with me. I wondered what it would be like for you to be here, looking around inside of it. Although, I suppose, if you were, it would be annoying for you, since it has such a low ceiling. I wonder, did I ever mention on this blog that I am moving in January? There is a lovely house right across from the college that I was able to take a room in for only $500 per month. It's more than I pay to live in this basement, but still on the low end of what a student seeking room rental can expect in this city, and it is not a basement, nor a patchwork of low ceilings with dripping in the vents and an old, fussy furnace.

I have been going through some of my things, sorting. Keep, donate, trash. It is a good time to thin my collection of things. That way, I will have a bit less to move into the new house.

I think about my plan for the future. This hazy, strange plan built mostly of wishes so desperate and shy that perhaps they would waver when I examined them, or began to write about them here... But although desperate and shy, they are too strong to waver. Hm. Perhaps that is like me.

The plan is to leave all this behind, really. Take only those things I can put in a couple of suitcases. A supply of clothing, of personal effects and tools that I feel it's important to bring with me. But most of it, to leave behind; give away or throw away. I feel as though... for most people, that would be a fearsome thought. It is part of the plan, so that when I meet you again, dear memory, you are not possessed of any misconception that there is a place back in Canada to which it is important that I return. It seems as though you may have thought so, last time, and through such thought may have been convinced that you ought to push be back towards whatever was home for me.

Although I have tried to express it, perhaps you do not have the frame of reference to understand. The process of leaving the bulk of the objects I have built my nest of behind and leaving for the next adventure... This is more my home than any mere place has ever been. Houses have been places that I am tied to out of convenience. Houses have been places I am fond of as well, do not mistake that. But houses have also been prisons to me, with parents as wardens who have sought to keep me from leaving. My mother, at least, who was a tyrant to desire escape from.

I wonder... perhaps others who are so happy as to have enjoyed the support of loving families with whom they could get along better cannot understand what it is like for home to be a toxic, poisoning thought, and the uncertainty of the road to be better. Not every home, I certainly hope. But I did develop a habit of leaving, and of leaving being a bright and wonderful thing. The objects of comfort and habit, from which I built my nest, they are not evil things. But sometimes my nest grows confining. Too small for me, or not the right shape, and so I leave it behind like a shedded skin. There is no other time when a serpent's scales are so healthy and shiny as when the husk which bore most of the accumulation of dirt and scars has been split off and left behind.

To leave a home behind, for me, is a process of renewal. I say all this because it seems important to me, to convey to you, Dear Memory, that although I plan to leave much of my worldly possessions behind to seek you someday... You should not feel guilty for your memory having driven me to such great sacrifice. For... it is not so great a sacrifice, for me. I am glad of it. When I have something toward which to adventure, it feels like a Story Worth Telling, which is a thought that means much to me.

The plan is... In the future, when I am ready, when I have prepared... To come to Ireland with all I should need to arrange to stay permanently. Find a place to rent by my own dollar (or euro, as the case is there). Set up some interviews to seek employment. The plan is, once I seek you out, to present you with as pure a choice as I possibly can. See, Memory, I want to be able to tell you: I intend to stay. I have set it up so that I can stay as long as I might wish to.
I will not approach you in a position of weakness from which you should see any obligation to rescue me, but strong and self-sufficient and available.

It seems important to me that you should know that at least in terms of money and property and law, I will be well able to support myself alone, should you turn me away; and there will be nothing that you are taking me away from that I am unwilling to leave behind, should you welcome me back. I think that would help to present a pure choice, so that you can simply decide what you want, and not be bullied by feelings of guilt either way. At least, not any more than can be avoided. There may always be some guilt in turning away someone who wishes to be welcomed, but I don't think there is anything I can do about that.

I write, in scattered thoughts and long digressions of explanation. I write to you, Dear Memory, and I hope to myself that someday I will read you these things I wrote, thinking of you, and perhaps now long ago. I wonder, will you be embarrassed of how much I thought of you? I wonder, will I find reasons why I should not share these blog posts with you, even if you have welcomed me back? I think... I think I might not have written that here, but it seems important that I do, because I should affirm to myself that that desire for the future, like all desires for the future, is a thing of the present. It might not hold through time. And that is alright. I write it here as an artifact of what will be the past, so that it can have had its day now, as musing and hope, even if it does not ever come to pass.

I wonder if you think of me. I wonder if you ever have vivid memories of the time that I was there, and cry because I am not. I do not think it likely that you would write diaries about it. I know you are not much disposed to writing. So perhaps even if you do miss me so, there might be no record of it save your own memory, with all the warping and unreliability of memory.

Or perhaps you do not think of me much, just another part of your past that you might look back on thoughtfully from time to time among other things, like your thesis, or your time at Magic: the Gathering tournaments, or past years' celebrations at the Macra. Or other things you never told me about.
But I think to myself that I should not be angry, if that were the case. It is only a mark that you are peaceful where I am driven, and prepared to leave the past in the past while I plot to return in the future.
I can readily believe that you might not think of me often, or with much longing, but still welcome me back when presented with the chance. Even if you had not wanted me desperately, you might be happy to recieve me like an unexpected present.

I really cannot say what you think. I find it doubtful that you would not think of me at all. I am sure I left a mark on your life. And I wonder what shape that mark has grown into over time; past and future, over the time until I will see you again.

The other day, not long ago, I was thinking of canoeing, and wondering whether you would ever like to go canoeing with me. I should like to share it with you sometime, if you think you would enjoy it. I was thinking of skating, too, but I already know the answer to that one.

Perhaps a me who reads this to you in the future would have forgotten to ask, and this can be a friendly, casual reminder. Perhaps it will prompt a canoeing trip. Perhaps I should stop speaking in a way that might seem prescriptive or creepily predictive to my future self, and your future self, Dear Memory.

Perhaps then I have written enough, and I will go now. I think I might go down to the Gibraltar Trade Center. It will have its weekend market open, and I wanted to visit Forest City Surplus, which is next to it. See if they have any more of the incense I bought there.

Here's to you, distant and dear memory, wherever it is that you are now, and whether or not you will ever know that I have written you these words.

Double Negatives and the Philosophy of Overthinking

Yesterday, I sent an email to a lecturer at my college asking about a quiz question on an online testing resource my course uses on which I was marked wrong. I thought the question may have a mistake in it, because of a double-negative in the wording of the question and the "correct" answer. Today, I received an email back praising my understanding of the content, and suggesting that the publisher might think I was overthinking the question. This is an excerpt of my response.

I stand firm by a belief that if thinking about a question obscures the answer, it is probably a bad or poorly worded question. Getting distracted by minutia is one thing, and a personal foible it's fair to test resistance to. Thinking, however, should never be an enemy in an academic subject. I would argue that a double-negative in the core structure of a question is not minutia, as they are frequently used intentionally to ensure a student is reading the question thoroughly. If the correct answer isn't actually correct because whoever wrote the question forgot the double-negative, that is a problem with the question, not with me, and I hope others will understand if I object to being docked marks for a mistake someone else made.

If on the other hand there's something I'm not seeing that explains why the answer the publisher registers as correct is actually the most correct answer to the question as posed, I want to know, for the sake of my own understanding.

Regarding "overthinking"...

People have often accused me of thinking too much. I have come to resent it. It does not tell me how, or whether, my conclusion was wrong, which I think ought to be, generally speaking, the measure against which my thinking is judged.
I also find it is frequently used as an excuse to dismiss constructive criticism or complaints I attempt to make, to save someone else the effort of updating a flawed system, habit or stance.
On the other hand, sometimes people are only trying to advise me not to waste my time on something they don't think is worth it. Well-intentioned, but I would usually prefer they didn't do that.
If I 'over-think' quiz questions, it is not likely that I fail to think when deciding how to spend my minutes and my effort. Besides that, how I spend my time and effort is my business.
The quality of study and testing materials in a school I attend is also my business, as well as the business of every other student in the course, and the school itself. I think it justifies a little bit of time and effort giving feedback if I notice a flaw, and there is even a small chance that it might be improved on for later years. Every change must start somewhere, with someone noticing something that could be better and doing something about it. Student engagement is often criticised as dangerously low, and generally I agree. I do my best to compensate in what small ways I can.

Noticing Ignorance and Noticing Drives

Tonight I stayed up late having a wonderful date with my darling Ashlynn. Then I stayed up later reading articles on LessWrong. Eventually, I read this one on how easy it is essentially not to notice our own confusion, not just about big, complicated things, but one's own life and habits. "For it is a sad rule that whenever you are most in need of your art as a rationalist, that is when you are most likely to forget it."
My desire to talk about this article inspired me to immediately and quickly solve several problems. Not knowing if I had an account on the website;
and then, not being able to log in properly after I had made one;
and then, figuring out where to talk about it even though it seemed I was unable to add additional comments (perhaps they have been closed due to the age of the article).
Bam bam bam. Suddenly I'm motivated, suddenly I'm here and blogging again, something I would ordinarily see as a bit of a chore, because it takes time, and is slightly challenging. Phooey. I may be reluctant to write, but I am almost always happy to have written.
The art of getting around to things and time management is an elusive one, certainly, and for me as well, but I am conscious of it, thankfully. If I am sitting around waiting to feel more inclined to do something, sitting around is not helping me; if I am taking time to relax, I would prefer to relax with the confidence and contentment of having accomplished an acceptable quantity and quality of the things I had set out to do already.
If I am not feeling able to cheerfully focus on my work, then... I'll be honest, I often forget to quickly "check in with myself". My drives will play an influence on my productivity and ability to focus long before they actively demand my attention.
Of course, sometimes it really is just as simple as the presence of distracting noise in the background. It can be hard to find a place in college to sit and work on homework between classes without being distracted by the noise of strangers' passing conversations. But other times, it's something else.
Am I tired? Am I hungry? Am I feeling unclean and in need of a shower? Am I feeling lonely? Restless? Am I worried about something?
I may be eager or anxious to finish things, but I have been thankfully getting much better at recognizing that I am not currently able, and then, instead of idling and waiting for my mood to change on its own if I'm too tired to get any real work done, I can do something productive like taking a nap.

The Ayn Rand Effect?

I wonder if there is a scientific name for this effect:

That in any situation in which a system is put in place to help a group of people who are presumed to need it, some people who do not "need it" will seek to take advantage of the assistance anyway, and some will succeed. Then, a large third party will equate every single person who utilizes the help to be cheating the system by taking its assistance on false pretenses, creating a social and political situation with loud, vocal deriders claiming that these people are (all) leeches who could get by fine on their own, and any and all users of the systems become stigmatized. It happens with welfare, it happens with food banks, it happens with the LGBT community and supports therein, it happens with trans people and feminists and ethnic minorities; any group of any kind that is partially or wholly disadvantaged in some way, and which people seek to help out of that disadvantage by giving them focused support.
The stigma generally does not start because they are given help, but is deepened or shaped by it.
I wonder what that would be called? Perhaps the Ayn Rand Effect?

Thinking on this got me taking a second look at her philosophies. Some of it's quite sensible if I look at it to understand, rather than outright seeking conflict. I think I can see precisely what she's talking about and warrant her her insight on it, and then see exactly where she makes an oversimplification and calls something an absolute that isn't.

For instance the assertion that sex is "not possible in self-abasement". I read what she's describing about sex, and I know what she's talking about. To see in one's partner's surrender the glorification of one's identity... Suggesting then that I love and desire another person because they, as I understand them, are a complement to my own self-image; because taking them (and them in particular) as mine to please and please myself upon glorifies what I am. I don't actually have any objection to that; she's right, it does. But she stumbles, I think, it defining that as "Sex". It is Ideal and Idealized Sex, as she sees it, and I do not disagree, but it's only one subset of the many possible acts called sex. Sex IS possible in self-abasement. She talks about that as well, and in so doing contradicts herself; but only because she has stooped to making a battle cry of an oversimplified absolute statement and an emotional trope, because one cannot easily make battle cries of the complicated, grey-shaded and fiddly truth. Amusingly, if I am reading this right, that act is against her own philosophy, but nevertheless a mistake she is frequently prone to.

That and a tendency to really overblown patriotism, and perhaps a blindness to downsides of decisions and ideals that she cares for strongly. Common problem, that. Significantly worse problem for a philosopher than a member of the general populace to have. More damaging there. Ah, but of course she speaks of her vision of Idealized America, just as she speaks of Idealized sex. Its victories, without its failures, as though those could be separated and held in different histories. Disregarding the times, and the frequency of the times, that it has failed to live up to its own ostensible vision, and to uphold its own ostensible values. Or indeed, the places where its apparent victories were attributed to glorious virtue, but were as much the result of, for instance, oppression and literal slavery.

Ha. I feel like doing a bit of my own political-sounding speechifying, so I will:

"I disagree with her. Altruism and selfishness, for all that they seem often to pull in opposite directions, are not enemies and are not mutually incompatible any more than the expansion and the contraction of a person's beating heart are enemies and mutually incompatible. They can be balanced. Indeed, they must be balanced, or the individual quickly collapses and dies.
I believe that it IS possible to construct a society in which there is a bottom absolute limit, a floor, to how far a person's wealth and quality of life is allowed to fall, but with no corresponding absolute limit to how high it may rise; if only it were to be agreed that this state is desirable, and to then construct it with this goal in mind.
I believe that giving to others and keeping for oneself are both forces that belong in every life, are both sources of happiness and joy, and that they complement one another as such. To find a healthy balance between them is one of the necessary steps to create a happy and purposeful life, without resentment or hate or shame."

What brought all this on?

Well, the study of and comments on Ayn Rand were of course off of the thought that her name and reputation might fit the effect I was describing, and the thoughts on that effect are a repetition of something I find myself mulling over from time to time. In this case, it was all prompted, somewhat indirectly, by a SciShow video on the Taboos of Science. In the comments, biological and formative differences between different ethnicities and sexes was a (fairly obvious) subject discussed as a taboo of science, as it has become faux pas to admit or suggest that there are meaningful and significant differences there due to some irritating exaggerations associated with the equality movements.

There was also mention of the classification of gender dysphoria as a disease, which got me thinking about the way some people question the existence or legitimacy of trans people and also sufferers of things like Aspergers and Bipolar Disorder, and on from there to an old recurring series of thoughts on how youth who are acting destructively or poorly are frequently dismissed as "just seeking attention," as though seeking attention when one is lonely, hurt, or confused and facing something they don't know how to solve is inherently wrong and shameful, which is obvious bullshit. While acting out destructively is not an acceptable means to it (albeit sometimes true that suffering people do not know how to ask directly), seeking attention should not be seen as a wrong. The "just seeking attention" tends to imply lying and making up ailments or exaggerating them in order to get the attention that may actually BE needed.

Admittedly this actually does happen a fair bit because lesser problems or less severe cases of problems are often dismissed, mocked or ignored, making exaggeration sometimes (tragically and socially destructively) necessary to get help of any kind. And then those who do truly suffer from the ailments most often used as excuses suffer further from stigmatization and an impression that their ailment does not exist because the false complainers reflect badly on them. That's an example of the broad effect I was talking about, which I think also holds true in this broader sense.
That's what brought this on.

Pubic Hair

written on August 7th, 2014
& inspired by Ani DiFranco

When I'm in the bathroom
I have a way of wiping myself
that has a habit of plucking out pubic hairs on
just one side of my groin
And I could probably learn to change it
if I could see what I was doing
but for now I guess I'll live with it;
It's not important,
It's just annoying.


When something is pulled away
Oh time will ease the pain
When something is pulled away
Oh time will ease the pain


Ain't it funny how the little things
in life just get passed by
like the hangnails you pull off sometimes
and the crusty stuff that gets in your eye
There are some things we don't talk about
Things we would rather not discuss
And the silence just fades into the background
-until somebody has to die
!

Then suddenly all of the silence
comes crashing down around your ears
and you can scream and wail all you want to but
Nobody wants to hear
There are some things you don't mention
except alone and in quiet prayer
While lives get plucked from the human race like
Just so many pubic hairs


And every time we do not speak
We fill our world with silence
And every time we turn away
We fill our world with silence
And every thing we don't discuss
We fill our world with silence
And the silence will cover our graves


So when I'm in a dark room
I have a way of crying to myself
that has a habit of making the skin
around my eyes feel raw and burned
And I think we could learn to change this
If we could see enough to care
I just hope to god we learn
that some things are more important
than a hair


When something is pulled away,
(Every time we do not speak)
Oh time will ease the pain
(We fill our world with silence)
When something is pulled away,
(Every time we turn away)
Oh time will ease the pain
(We fill our world with silence)
When something is pulled away
(Every thing we don't discuss)
Oh time will ease the pain
(We fill our world with silence)
And the silence will cover our graves


And suddenly all of the silence
comes crashing down around your ears
and you can scream and wail all you want to but
Nobody wants to hear you 'cuz
There are some things you don't question,
except alone and in quiet prayer
while screams are brushed aside
like so many stray pubes on our underwear


Ain't it funny how the little things
in life just get passed by
like the hangnails I pull off sometimes and the
rash that crying leaves 'round my eyes
There are some things we don't talk about
Things we'd all rather not discuss
No matter how much or how little
they quietly affect all of us
And the silence just fades into the background
along with the best of us


When something is pulled away
Ah time will ease the pain
When something is pulled away
Ah time will ease the pain

~~~P.S: My own thoughts on presentation...

The parts in purple should be sung or spoken more quietly, more like a whisper,
and ideally blend into a sort of musical break between the sections in black.

Would like to have guest backup voice/s for
"We fill our world with silence" and possibly for all of the parts in purple,
while still singing/speaking solo the parts in black. Or white, as it generally appears on my blog.

A Shot of Proactivity

Hi, dear blahgh.

I did a lot yesterday. I've been doing a lot. I had my troublesome top tooth out, it was a premolar. I've been getting some nasty ache while it heals which sometimes reaches all the way up to just under my eye, probably due to the fact that the cavity in the root opened up an infection right against, or possibly in, some of the lowest part of my sinuses.

I got a referral and went for a psych evaluation. The psychiatrist said that my triggered mental images of being stabbed or otherwise hurt with almost any particularly scary object I see was OCD. It's what he said; not might be, was. I personally am not sure how much confidence to have in his apparent confidence, but I've just started taking the mind medicine he prescribed me. And holy hell is it ever bitter. For now I'm going to presume that means it would be dangerous to take too much of it, so they did their best to make sure no-one would want to. I'm being started on a quarter tablet, then half. I should be taking whole tablets daily within two weeks.

My roommate's Australian girlfriend is visiting and she is awesome. She cleans. She cleaned his room, she cleaned the kitchen. I helped her clean a box full of dishes from the place he and Robbit used to share. Then, because Robby was feeling tired and lazy and I would have been bored walking by myself, she went with me to the drugstore to pick up my prescription for mind meds, and we stopped in to get gardening supplies, which I've been meaning to pick up, and groceries.

Gardening is something I've been really wanting to try for a while, and I'm very excited about it! I planted seven trays of ten spots in those little pre-planting seedling trays made of decomposing cardboard, so you just tear them apart and replant them outside without having to take them out of their potlets. All cucumbers and lettuce, since those were the seed packets I had that suggested pre-planting in the instructions on the back. I'll be trying to follow the instructions as much as possible, because I'm very new to this and I know I don't really know what I'm doing, despite having helped my mom and dad in the garden sometimes while growing up. I'm sure what limited knowledge I do have will be useful, though. I really look forward to having home-grown vegetables during the summer. I hope I can keep a garden somewhat maintained. I imagine having the reason to be outside should be good for me, too.

So anyway, yesterday was awesome in many ways, I got a lot done - I even tidied up my room and went through my shirts to get rid of some by donating them to the Goodwill store I work at. I really do have more than enough clothes, so I got rid of anything that I probably wouldn't wear, either because it's not as comfortable as other options I have, or because it's too high-cut and shows my belly-button if I lift my arms - not that I have anything against that kind of shirt, but I can't wear them at work, and I rarely dress up to go other places, and I have no problem wearing longer shirts when I go out to other places anyway. I didn't toss all my high-cut shirts, but I did pass on a few. A lot of my clothes probably won't be good enough to go out on the sales floor, but I know that the "salvage" they get there (what isn't up to quality standards) goes to do some good too, so I'm sure they'll be able to do more with it than I was.

I was so energized last night due to my good mood that I stayed up late just because I wasn't tired. And then, unfortunately, I was woken up very early by my roommate packing his lunches into tupperwares. It sounded exactly like a kitten chasing the lid to a tupperware container around the kitchen floor, with a lot of scraping and sliding sounds. I'm going to ask him to try to do that in the evening, now that he's working morning shifts and is home earlier than 11:30 at night, so that I don't get woken up that way again.

Roommate's girlfriend is staying with us during weekdays for two weeks. I hope that I can continue to use her energy to spark my own. Maybe I can help my boyfriend out by stealing his bedding and insisting on washing it. He won't do it himself, but I really think that the mess he voluntarily lives in can't be good for him. Maybe I should be more like her, and clean his room like she cleaned our roommate's. I hadn't thought about it this way, but I may be neglecting Robby by allowing him to neglect himself when we both know he's in a rut.

For now, excitement abounds! Thanks for reading, and may you be inspired to make progress in your own lives as I am being inspired to do in mine.

Sex Without Shame, Death Without Fear

"Just thinking out loud... 

I don't mean to dwell on this dying thing"

It's a shot of bloody perspective reminding me
that regardless of WHAT
I think and have experienced, regardless
of how much I do and how many hours in smug solitude
thinking I'm better, or smarter, or more spiritual
than you
That I know, that I can face it
ALL
It still remains more true
What is said in the book, title forgotten:
You truly feel, don't you,
that you are now completely disillusioned?
That may prove to be the most enduring
illusion
of them all.

And I am dying. Very slowly.
A decay no medicine, no surgery can erase
Time and entropy will take my place
and fill it with strangers
With a shot of bloody perspective...
An urgency that will fade with time
That I could die now while I'm ready
equipped with a fullness of uncanny surprise
the understanding that nothing
no matter how great could prepare me
The shock now is greater...
I wonder, if only,
Walking with giants, lit by a star
I would know now, to know,
to have no expectations...
Until the next moment,
of bloody perspective,
How far?

It may be harder to face living and knowing
that I will forget, and find boredom again,
a lack of perspective...
I wonder to myself, if the impossible can be done...
Not to deny death... Yes, that exactly.
NOT to.
What seems it should be within the reach of the mind...
I'm not sure it is:
To face Sex without Shame,
And Death without Fear.

My Secret Plan

I find myself [...] trying to force myself to ascribe to something I do not believe, the idea that submitting to the need to work on whatever my employer's terms are will empower me to make a difference, rather than making me a supportive cog in a system I despise and disempowering me by giving me something I must fear to lose...

--- 28 September, 2012

I must find some way at least for the two not to be in open conflict, or I shall tear myself apart...

--- 6 September, 2012

It seems like I end up finding an awesome cool thing that I want to try to do, and then forget until I'm right in the middle of it that I can't do anything right, and then I panic.
Job search? When?

--- 22 October, 2012

I think I have found an answer.

The plan is brilliant... because... I cannot tell you.

Allow me to expand.

I went for a long walk on November 13, now four days ago, taking time to myself to think many things through, let my mind free-wheel and fantasize about wonderful and romantic ideas. I found myself alighting upon a brilliant and beautiful idea, and fleshing it out until it became a plan and I had enough of an idea how it would all work that I could write it all down. I sat on the corner of some random stranger's driveway, cross-legged, to do so. I wrote down details until I was confident that even if I somehow forgot all about it, in three years I could read it again and not be missing anything I needed to know in order to implement the plan.

I built a second inspiration around the first - I know it is a very strong weakness for people like me to come up with a brilliant idea but never enact it, and I know that it is a typical failing even for people who aren't that much like me to gush about a great idea to their friends and have that gushing effectively lead to its downfall, because either they believe it can be done, and praise you for the brilliant idea, which provides immediate gratification before you actually act, thus weakening your motivation to get around to it... or they point out problems and disadvantages that, intentionally or not, discourage you enough that you talk yourself out of trying.

After writing down my plan, I tri-folded it, tri-folded another blank page around it and stuck it in a security envelope. On the envelope I wrote these three things:

*My Secret Plan

*Not to be opened before November 15, 2015

*If you tell anyone before it happens - It won't. Remember that.

The idea is too beautiful to me to sabotage in such a way.

I am confident that I am capable of accomplishing it, if I can keep my focus and my motivation.

Here's the crux: I absolutely hate to keep secrets. If I have a good idea, I want everyone to know about it.

So I'd better accomplish it, so that I can tell people what it was without putting its success in jeopardy.

It will require funding.

I now have a motivation that stands a chance at being lasting, by continually reminding me that I do have a plan, that this caterpillar is already designing its wings... with the burning power of a beautiful secret I must not tell anyone anything at all about (exceptions beget exceptions).

I now have a reason to get and hold a job. I have an End so good I should be able to use it to justify even Means so despicable as working at Walmart for three years and striving to do a good job making money for a mega-corp I would love to see fall within my lifetime.

I gained a new perspective and am making use of it... I'm using my own nature to my advantage, in a way that will both torture and delight me... that will protect me from both criticism and complacency - if it works.

I hope it does.

I would like to extend an open invitation to absolutely anyone who reads this blog post, to come back a year or more after its posting date, and if you can remember to come back on or around November 15, 2015, that would be ideal... and ask me in the comments section if I've made any progress yet.

The Sting of Rejection - But Not What You'd Think

I feel guilty today. On my way home from a walk around town and lunch at My Sister's Place, I met the eyes of an attractive-looking black man and he stopped me to talk for a moment. He introduced himself as... I suppose it would likely be spelt Santha - It sounded like Santa with an accent and a soft t - asked if I lived on "this side" (of the city, I guess) and said something about looking for a relationship. Then his phone rang. He excused himself and asked me to stay, but I didn't, I slowly wandered away, not wanting to stick around just for the awkwardness of trying to be graceful about rejecting him verbally.

He was very handsome, and I was, admittedly, eyeing him a bit before he spoke to me. But he had an accent so thick I could scarcely understand a thing he said. Communication is important in relationships and communication problems caused by heavy accents just annoy me and make it hard for me to feel on level ground with anyone. It couldn't have worked. Maybe I should have stayed to say that aloud, but I imagine my just walking away probably delivered a message of rejection without having to get into reasons or details. If I see him again and have the balls, maybe I'll apologize and explain. To be honest, though, I don't really hope I get the chance.

Choice and Responsibility

I clicked into a serious talk on YouTube today. I wasn't really looking for it, not actively anyway. It was about choice, capitalism, and the paralysis of clinging to what little we have rather than risking the loss of it by moving to engineer social change. It strikes kind of hard... I'm familiar with this truth. I think it may be one of the things I was trying to talk about with To Do What I Must While I Am Who I Am.

It also reminds me of The Little Prince. I find myself almost wanting to cry as I think even of myself, trying to force myself to ascribe to something I do not believe, the idea that submitting to the need to work on whatever my employer's terms are will empower me to make a difference, rather than making me a supportive cog in a system I despise and disempowering me by giving me something I must fear to lose...

I see myself trying to mount a stressful job search, with minimal resources and trying to bury my resentment of the system that puts me here and demands that I serve it in order to live a better life... turning into what the Prince would call a 'mushroom'; putting off, ignoring, or dismissing important matters of emotionality, sensitivity and wonder because "I am concerned with matters of consequence!"

I do not want to take solace in that phrase or in the necessity of my busywork. I don't want to allow myself any excuse for not doing what I believe in in every way I can.

And yet... I must job search, I must work. If I refused, I would be denied what little survival budget I am being given, and pushed into an even smaller, darker hole. To avoid both would be dishonest and as such a betrayal of principles I hold most dear. I am already concerned with matters of consequence... matters of survival. And I must admit I already kind of hate myself for it.

I wrote in the very first pages of the notebook that's now become my journal, quite some time ago:

People in a culture with as much technology, resources and interconnectivity as ours have absolutely no right to be concerned about their mere survival.

I am guilty of this, and feel that I have failed, not on my own lack of merit, but as one of the billions, as a member of the whole human race. I also wrote:

Western culture has adopted the image of an organization collapsing under its own obsession with efficiency - efficiency itself compromised by endless lawsuits over liability and breach of protocol...
A machine so frantically upgrading and replacing its pieces that it tears itself apart.

The Whips and Scorns of Time

I swear, I was asleep two hours ago, snuggled down and starting to dream. I didn't even have a very hard time of it. And then a pizza guy came to the door. Well... I guess this is how life is when you live on someone's couch. Or more specifically, on the couch of people who are unmistakably night people. Not that I wish to complain; I am grateful that I have a place I can lay my head that isn't crowded with curfews and enforced structure that doesn't suit my natural rhythms. I am naturally a night person too. In this house, it looks like any attempt I make to keep more normal hours, though, for the sake of productivity, will be stymied with ease, completely unintentionally.

Besides that, the dog pup of one of the six people stuffed in this modest three bedroom townhouse (myself included) isn't house trained and tends to piss on the stairs and everywhere else. The kitchen, even when I clean all the dishes in it, will be cluttered to near-uselessness again less than two days later. The cat litters in the basement are not maintained, so the only one any of the cats use is the one that my partner cleaned about a week ago, right at the other end of the couch that serves as my bed. And several of these five cats fight and race about and knock things over. One of them stole my partner's wallet a few days ago and hid it away in a box of bags and non-perishables in the kitchen. Besides my partner, there are two people here I get along with well, one I hardly know who is clearly very different from me, but with whom I share a quiet politeness in passing, and one that I actively dislike, and the feeling is mutual. He is loud, aggressive, and acts with an exceptional air of entitlement.

Would I rather be back at the Evil Old Man's place? ... No. Conditions here are undeniably worse, and even the social atmosphere isn't much better, if at all, but it is a step forward, from stable misery to comparatively unstable misery that I may be able to resolve into non-misery. If I allowed myself to be overcome by the negative transitory period between one stable situation and another, I would remain forever paralyzed. It's the old saying, you can't take third base while keeping your foot on second. Or something to that effect.

But in these conditions, I am backsliding. I don't feel terribly upset about this right at this moment. At this moment, I am giving myself more patience and credit than that. Besides, I'm starting to turn around to effort and courage again, as can be demonstrated by my coming back and writing again. Earlier, when I was caught completely in the mire, I was very upset about it. I don't mind admitting that my general default state of mind is bad enough that any particularly bad situation or attack of panic and doubt brings me back to thoughts of suicide. It's less threatening than that might otherwise be, because I can think of no means to suicide that I am both able to access and think I would have the strength of will to go through with. I am too frightened of and unfamiliar with the associated pains. Blades terrify me, and I naturally shy away from them. I suspect poisoning would be unreliable and I would almost certainly suffer hideous nausea and probably terrible migraine as a result of the attempt even if it didn't work, and particularly potent poisons would be difficult to obtain legally, for incredibly obvious reasons. Exposure to elements would be slow and even more unreliable, drowning is classically terrifying, getting licencing and funds for a firearm would be prohibitively expensive, out of character for me, and... well, I just don't like guns. Something about them fills me with distaste. So essentially, even leaving aside the dread of something after death, that undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns, I cannot help but come to the conclusion that dying would be phenomenally unpleasant - possibly even more so than living, even in the worst of times. Also, my mood always stabilizes eventually, and it doesn't usually take more than, say, a day or two.

I have been, as always, rediscovering that there are, in fact, things that fairly reliably cheer me up. Going for walks, especially with my partner's company, is one of these things. Surprisingly enough, doing downtown and noticing the people seems to tend to cheer me up a bit, too. People often depress me with their ignorance, shortsightedness and cruelty, and yet... maybe it's that certain je ne sais quoi I always liked about this city, but I find the human life here more reassuring than condemning about humanity as a whole. And it's certainly not for a lack of ignorant or cruel people, but maybe... maybe the worse people here tend to be a little less worse than in other places I've seen. Or maybe it's just the healthy bustle and liveliness of the place that seems to bring it all into a more forgivable context. Or maybe it's something else. I really noticed it when a passing cyclist on a biking trail thanks me for moving over to let her pass. The question is whether such decency really is something I didn't see in Saint Thomas, or whether I'm just... noticing it more. I suspect the former, if only because I feel quite certain I would be able to remember an example of it if it was present back there.

Before I go, let me share with you my current worst problem. As is not at all unusual, the source of my trouble is Ontario Works. I learned, when I was invited by the support structures in the city to go through an intake procedure here, with the company of some professional... well, caring company... that I would not be eligible for shelter and basic needs funding while I was staying at shelters in the city not even Crash Beds. Apparently OW expects that a bed, albeit not necessarily the same bed, but the promise of a bed, each night, breakfast in the morning and snacks in the evening, are all anyone really needs to survive and get by. Likewise, I am not eligible if I am couch surfing, because in that case I have shelter for free, so they don't have to help me pay for it. If I remain homeless and float around shelters and from that position manage to get a rent agreement (goodness alone knows how), Then I could apply to be kept alive but harassed constantly about whether or not I've found work yet like the child of a disgusted stepmother who just doesn't want to have to deal with me. Or, I could wait and float around shelters and put myself on a fast track list for geared to income housing. I have a friend who went that route. His words on the subject? They quote the official waiting list, for the actively homeless, to be half a year. Realistically, it may be half a year if you have no standards, if you are willing to accept absolutely any form or state of housing. In his case, it took over a year for them to get back to him. According to OW, they can put me on a faster track if I am utterly homeless, and the waiting list for that is only three months - only! Imagine that... But I will be ineligible if I continue to couch surf. Even for one day.

When I tried to apply on my own, and at the intake told them I was currently couch surfing in the house of friends, into which my boyfriend had just moved, I was pounced. I swear the look in the intake worker's eyes turned from sympathy to disgust in an instant when she asked me whether this was the same boyfriend I left in Saint Thomas. Of course it was. As she understood it, I had been leaving an abusive relationship. Well, I had been, of course, it just wasn't a relationship with my partner. We were both being abused by his father, and if she had been misinformed about that, it was not my doing, I never claimed differently. But it seems that if you say you are in an abusive situation, it will be immediately clear to everyone that you are claiming spousal abuse. Certainly women are never abused by anyone else. At least not, it would seem, in the eyes of the government.

Anyway, my intake was terminated. I was told rather forcefully to sign a form of withdrawal of application. According to OW, regardless of my intent to stay under the same roof or not, my partner and I are common-law, since we were on the same account before and I still call him my boyfriend. Nevermind that Ontario law states that common-law only becomes default after three years of cohabitation and I haven't even known him for two. He brought that up when he went to his own intake, later, and the only response he got from his case worker was a simple and cruel word of blackmail. "You know, I can just close your file." I had considered asking what happened if I didn't sign the withdrawal form, at my meeting, but decided against it. I was already upset enough, and while I would have really loved to act rashly and refuse, just walk away, I was sure it would bring more trouble down on my head, either then and there or later if I had to come back, and I really couldn't have dealt with that.

Ontario Works says that if we are sleeping under the same roof, we have to be on the same account. No wiggle room, no exceptions. Boyfriend asked whether it was necessary for me to be on OW at all, whether I could just choose to go unsupported, and survive on scraps as it were. Ontario Works does not regard it as an option. No. We need to be on the same file, and both be on it, if we are together, because we are common-law, because they say so, and we were, once, happy to be classed that way.

So my legal options are these:

Run away, leave my boyfriend, whom I still care deeply about, but do not wish to live with, behind entirely and find some other form of charity, someone else to support me, and try to survive the leaving in my weak and depressed state.

Surrender myself to the mark of extreme poverty and live on the streets, sleeping in charity beds and eating charity food, and wander the streets while the shelters are closed until my feet are worn and bloody and my clothes fall apart, or until the housing system gets around to me.

Become a useless limpet clinging to my boyfriend in a place I do not wish to be, resigned to the ugliness of this place and its downsides, angry and miserable, considered and classed an extension of my boyfriend, the unofficial spouse. And of course, expected to job search effectively from this position.

Find work and/or housing on my own. Yes. Of course. That will work. I'm definitely strong and stable enough. Sigh.

Be the beneficiary of some kind of miracle.

Oh. I should probably also mention, because they are important developments, that I am out of thyroid supplements, at least of my standard dose. I still have some of the ones I was given before, which are 50% larger, and so I've started taking those again, and just trying to make sure I don't take them too close together, hoping it will even out somehow. Also, my boyfriend... is getting together again with someone he knew before me. They were always happy together, until they broke up the first time. They are giddy when they think of each other. Everyone accepts that they will be lovers again, and even they have had to admit it, struggle though they might. They even share dreams with each other. I find myself wondering whether I would finally be free of useless spouse status if he reported to Ontario Works that she was his girlfriend now. Probably not, unless she moved in, even though I doubt they would go so far as to assume something as unconventional as polyamory.

How do I feel about their relationship? Hell, how do you think I feel? Well, I probably feel significantly less bad than that. But it is still hard to accept. There are connections between them that I never managed to forge with Boyfriend, and I am jealous over that. I look forward to meeting her, though. From what my boyfriend has told me, I think we will get along well, like friendly sisters. I just hope that we can shift gracefully from me being the most important lover in his life, to her. I already know it will happen, it's just a matter of how naturally, and with how much drama. I feel slighted, but not by either of them. Only by the cruel hand of fate.

Disappointment

I had been hoping that one of my next blog entries would be happily telling you, my valued readers, that our application for our new apartment/house/home... I'm not sure what we should call it, since it's kind of a weird building... was approved, and we will be moving within the month away from this terrible, oppressive place.

I cannot. Our application was denied. The nice lady who showed us around explained to my boyfriend over the phone that they've gotten some requests to use the building as office space and as such, the price has been increased by $150 per month. In accordance with some kind of zoning policy, I presume, since it would no longer be "residential". The thing is... it had been zoned as shopfront for a long time, and didn't sell. Apparently the same place has been on the market for about a year, albeit under different conditions.

I guess it doesn't matter anymore to me.

I haven't been exercising consciously at all anymore. It is a thing which has stopped happening. I've been spending more of my time socializing, on an IRC full of generally closer to like-minded individuals, and I've made some new friends. One of whom seemed really nice and even made a request that I tell him if he ever, figuratively speaking, missteps on my toes, along with a promise to bear it in mind and try to make right on his mistakes... since he knows making one now and then is unavoidable. He managed not to offend me at all the first time I spoke to him. The second time, he said something which, unintentionally, caused me some offense. It was a thing about different play styles in roleplaying games, about resource management bogging down a perfectly good game (I tend to put some focus on it in my cavern game, since it's an important part of struggling to survive, which is kind of the premise). It was a minor offense, but me being me, I find it kind of hard to get past minor offenses sometimes. I told him how I felt about it... and was, in effect, dismissed as an accusatory and ridiculously oversensitive bitch who was making a big deal over nothing and was convinced he was a hateful person.

This isn't related, of course, it just fits in with the general theme of my life for the past 24 hours... profound, hideous, heartbreaking disappointment, after I'd allowed myself to get my hopes up. Again. How much harder will it be to avoid convincing myself there's no point in trying, next time? I don't know. For now...

I've mostly gotten over the liar crush from IRC, but the house is a much bigger problem. I feel trapped here. I would say that I feel like the walls are closing in on me, but I don't. I looked at the walls practically asking them to, and they refused. They just stood there being walls and mocking me for the cowardice that traps me within them. It's not their fault, they seemed to want to remind me. They even have a nice high ceiling to create the illusion of greater freedom and openness, specifically, it almost seems, so that I can't be intimidated and cramped by its closeness. Nevertheless, I hate this room. I hate this apartment. I hate the mess and most of all I hate the evil Old Man that I've become so afraid and disgusted with that whenever I'm in the kitchen/livingroom area and he walks in, my gut tightens, my shoulders stiffen, and I just wish fervently for him not to try to talk to me (not that he ever does) and to please, please, just hurry up and go away. He can probably tell. It's hardly as though I'm taking any particular measure to be subtle about the vibes I'm putting off. And when he talks, even if it's just to my boyfriend while I'm in the room, I want to tear him apart.

He posted a list of unreasonable, stupid "Normal" house rules, including not using the stove after 7 PM and not eating after 10 PM, until breakfast, that even my boyfriend is afraid to break, now, because he claims that us moving around and running water to clean dishes kept waking him up.

The other morning, between 5 and 6 in the morning, he came and actually knocked on our door. I don't remember what it was he wanted, my boyfriend sorted it out. Apparently he was confused by something, probably a setting of the new television he bought recently, and needed help figuring it out. It doesn't matter to me. What I do remember, and what does matter, was the sinking feeling of dread and anger, as I realized that by knocking on the bedroom door, he had forced his presence into my awareness even when I was safe in my room. I couldn't be free from him even if I never left my, our, my boyfriend's and mine, so our, bedroom, the place which was safe... because it's where he doesn't go. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair for him to take that security away from me by doing something as simple as knocking on our door. At a time when "Normal" people would probably not be assumed to be awake. I can't help but feel that this is a terrible form of hypocrisy. He hasn't exactly broken his own rules, but his complaint was that we had been accidentally waking him up at times when it was reasonable for him to be sleeping. ... And this seems like behavior that would accomplish the same on purpose.

I don't know what I'm going to do now. I guess we'll look into other available places around town. Or rather, my boyfriend will. As for me, I'll more likely retreat further into the internet in an effort not to face my despair, and rot for another couple of weeks.

If there is a change of plans in that regard, I'll let you guys know.

The Powers of YouTube

This is likely to be a short update, because I feel compelled to post and reassure you all that I have not gone crazy with anxiety after my last post, but I don't actually feel I have a great deal to talk about.

To catch up, the anxiety was not the end of my fitness regime, but some recent frustration and depression due to the failure of a plan I had been getting rather invested in is causing some delays - by which I mean I'm upset and lazy and not doing it. For two days after my walking 11 km or so, I had a good excuse - my legs ached amazingly for a while, badly enough that I had to lean on banisters quite a lot while dealing with stairs, and even then walked like a rag doll in order not to bend my knees as much.

What plan, you might ask, was I so invested in? Our plan to move out of the tyrannical and unsupportive... and smelly... lodgings with my boyfriend's father, and into an apartment of our own, shared with another couple who are also facing concerns with their current living arrangements. Well, it turns out that a combination of Ontario Works bureaucracy and time constraints caused the only person involved who actually has any money right now to get cold-footed about investing in future shared living quarters, and back out... as far as I understand it, anyway. So, so much for that. I'd been looking forward to getting out of this mess with desperate excitement, so, I hope you'll understand, this setback has left me very grumbly and irritated.

As to what I've been doing in these precious days that I have not been working out... well... mostly playing either The Binding of Isaac or The Sims 3, and watching YouTube videos, as you might have guessed, given the title of this post.

Incidentally, I thoroughly suggest The Binding of Isaac to anyone who fancies classic gaming, clever systems of randomly generated level design with a generally tight, functional and simple play style, and things that make you ask "What the fuck is wrong with this game?" while simultaneously awed and disturbed at the imagery and strange content. You will die a lot. Be warned.

I don't particularly suggest The Sims 3, despite many impressive advances to the series, but chances are I really don't have to anyway.

Someone recently demonstrated to me the existence of a person called David Mitchell, who has a YouTube channel on which he occasionally rants about things that annoy him, or brings up things upon which he otherwise wishes to comment or make a suggestion about. The special effects in the visuals are impressive, and so is the wit. If you like my sense of humour (and if you don't, I can't understand why you would be reading my blog), you will probably also enjoy his.

I also, as a result of my partner's habitual browsing of Failblog, which I sometimes also take part in, I very recently discovered someone called C. G. P. Grey, who presents a variety of educational videos on his YouTube channel which are also well-made, delivered with impressive charisma and easy to understand, covering a variety of topics from time management to politics to misconceptions about animals, and even misconceptions about misconceptions (maybe).

And, for something completely different, John Cleese on the Monty Python channel reveals his insight into religion, stupidity, and the recently released game Skyrim, in this video.

Hopefully some of you find these links interesting and can forgive their contents for taking up most of my attention of late. I'll talk to you again once I have something new to say... Or possibly before then, if I feel, again, like I should do so.

What Stops Me

Today, I went for two long walks. A total of about 11 km. A total of almost three hours. One at evening, one in the middle of the night. I was stopped by a cop car on my way back on the second walk, which startled me a bit. Officer Question Mark asked me my name, which made me feel suspicious, and whether I was out doing anything I shouldn't be, which didn't. Apparently my answers satisfied him, because he left, still quite friendly, without much fuss.

Less than ten minutes later, a cabbie pulled over and asked if I was alright, too, amusingly.

But now I feel shaken. I keep imagining a conversation with the policeman, things I might have said, things I might like to say, about why I feel nervous talking to a man with a badge. Things about the protesters in the states, at Wall Street, at the University of California... nearer by, in Toronto... And the more I think about it, the more I seize up. I shake, I start to cry. There is so much I'd like to say, that I'm afraid to - not that I think these neighborhood cops, or this one in particular, is like that, just... just, the only thing I know for sure about them and about the ones from the stories and videos, is that they share the mark of authority, the badge. And I don't know.

Human beings need each other. We are not machines, as much as industry leaders might want us to be.
Human beings can exist and survive without houses, without electricity, without medicine or guns or modern plumbing, in very harsh conditions. We're amazingly resilient sometimes, really.
But I'm not sure human beings can survive without being able to trust each other.

This is not the first time since I started my workout that I've been afraid I might honestly not be able to convince myself to continue... But it's the first time I've felt something that I thought might be the thing to prevent me. I am again reminded of some of the things I'd like to do... some of the changes I'd like to make... some of the talking and standing up, and yes, protest, I'd like to take part in... And I'm reminded of what made me stop thinking about it last time.

I am terrified, paranoid. I don't think anyone is watching me, specifically, but I think if I started to do what I want to do, they might. And the helplessness, the fear... this paranoia, a feeling that even if I do become strong enough to be healthy... I may never be strong enough to be confident of my survival should I step into the place where trouble is... this, more than anything else... This, is what always stops me.

I feel so afraid, thinking about it, so helpless... I'm not sure I can do anything but sit here, stunned. I'm not sure I can find the courage for my workout tomorrow. How? In the face of this... can I ever feel brave? How can I feel strong, and use my strength, when I feel so weak? But I guess I'll find out, tomorrow.

Effective Use of Time

Well... I've gotten a bit more sleep and then uncharacteristically decided to look at some more things on LessWrong.com - still not committing to the basic sequences, but returning to the site out of interest.

I wanted to come back and correct myself about my motivations, because it seemed to me after reading this, this, and this, that I was deceiving myself further than I had perceived. I'm still not sure I have a motivation proper beyond self-destructiveness, which has fueled a lot of my activity since childhood, and laziness, of which I can say the same.

In "Humans are not automatically strategic", an outline is given for genuinely making the best use of one's time to achieve a specific goal, and it goes like this.

• (a) Ask ourselves what we’re trying to achieve;
• (b) Ask ourselves how we could tell if we achieved it and how we can track progress;
• (c) Find ourselves strongly, intrinsically curious about information that would help us achieve our goal;
• (d) Gather that information (e.g., by asking as how folks commonly achieve our goal, or similar goals, or by tallying which strategies have and haven’t worked for us in the past);
• (e) Systematically test many different conjectures for how to achieve the goals, including methods that aren’t habitual for us, while tracking which ones do and don’t work;
• (f) Focus most of the energy that *isn’t* going into systematic exploration, on the methods that work best;
• (g) Make sure that our "goal" is really our goal, that we coherently want it and are not constrained by fears or by uncertainty as to whether it is worth the effort, and that we have thought through any questions and decisions in advance so they won't continually sap our energies;
• (h) Use environmental cues and social contexts to bolster our motivation, so we can keep working effectively in the face of intermittent frustrations, or temptations based in hyperbolic discounting;

The jist of the article was largely that these strategies exist and aren't really all that hard to come up with, but are very, very seldom used by anyone to actually achieve their goals.

I continually struggle with (g), which is probably a good sign that my first goal should be to find a doctor and associated counselor that I am able and willing to keep appointments with easily.

It says quite a lot that upon reading articles which presuppose that a rational person wants to maximize their effectiveness at attaining their goals I react with so much resistance and even offense I can almost feel it physically, like a feeling of resisting being pulled forward by the back of the skull. Why should I be offended by a completely logical presupposition? Because it challenges my ego, of course, and my right to call myself rational if there is nothing in particular I am putting all my effort into achieving. I feel I can understand better people who find my inactivity reproachable.

Recognition of my inability to act according to goals has spurred me into activity, though, and I'm investigating a venue or two of information according to (d) as well as getting around to some small things I'd been procrastinating on. On that subject, I have some dishes to do. Another time, bloggers.