Work has been **** but it's very slowly getting better, my region's lockdown got progressively worse, I had to leave writing a Sharaka scene while fully in the zone, my brain added another full-sized nonMEM WIP to the grill out of two lines of a song because he's a mischievous bastard, I'm back into HS fanfic binge reading. But barring a friend's grandpa, everybody's reasonably healthy.

Could be better, could be worse.

Just kind of a perpetual haze? Finished a manuscript lately, but... I dunno. World feels off. Having you back around here is likely to stand as a plus, otherwise time will salve the nonsense, I can hope.

You and me both, friend. You and me both.


Oof. My area, also, has not been doing well, mostly because I live in the vicinity of some dumb, dumb people...


Oh, do I know that feeling. I wrote the first part of a fairly ambitious project remarkably quickly, and I liked how it turned out, but then completely stalled out about half-way through the second part. That was within the first two days of November, and I haven't gotten back to it at all.


I am choosing to intentionally misread this as High School fanfic, and now I am picturing throngs of people who read the M:EM HS thread, and have created a site somewhere where they write a ton of fanfiction about our non-canon setting.

This pleases me.


Well, I am sorry to hear about your friend's grandfather, but I am certainly glad that you and yours have stayed healthy!


I definitely understand that feeling. It's been hazy around here, too. Just sort of existing, really. A constant Paradox Haze, really.


Well, congrats on the finished draft, at least! That's always a good feeling, even if it's one you end up revising heavily. If you want to spitball some ideas about what seems off to you, feel free to shoot me a PM. I sound sounding-board for you (because that's a verb now, apparently... )


Ahh, shucks.


Time is a good friend that way!

* * *

On an unrelated note, I learned today that there is a town called Boring, Oregon, and that it is a twinned city with Dull, Scotland, and Bland, Australia.

I can't really explain why this amuses me so much, but I think this is great.

I ran out of spoons like two or more years ago, as I took it upon myself to try keeping informed of politics after I started seeing cheetoh dust around, if you catch my meaning.


And we missed you! Glad to have you back. Internet hugs?


Poorly. Probably worse than that, but it hasn't quite sunk in yet.

I finally decided to seek out a counsellor (just registered to BetterHelp, waiting to be matched with one), mostly because I started thinking too much about things today like "my family isn't my support network anymore", but what really made me realize I need this is when I got to the part of the questionnaire that asked if I've thought about suicide. It kind of finally hit me that the fact I've thought about it at all is much more worrying than I had let myself realize.

And to ease your worries ahead of time, I have never hurt myself or had any sorts of plans to do so, but as I reflected on the question I realize that I have actually thought about things like how easy it would be to intentionally crash my car or the earth would recover more easily if I wasn't pouring carbon into it and producing so much trash for a long time. It made me really worried for myself, being confronted with the notion for once that these are not normal things to be thinking, so I'm seeking out a counsellor. I'm fortunate enough to have the kind of money to do so, obviously, but it's important, either way.

That's a few levels of fanfic there. Fanfic of the arguably fanfic alternate universe of the MTG fanfic. That is deep down the rabbit hole. What is "HS" in this situation though?

...
There's a pleasing level of self awareness in a town recognizing that it has such a dull name.

@Luna - Scary thing is, a few years ago I would not have believed that anyone didn't at least occasionally think about how easy it would be to kill themselves. So you can at least take solace in the fact that it could be a lot worse.

@Me - I emailed an RPG developer about some typos in their product and they responded with what sounded like a job offer. So I might end up with a side gig here. Kind of excited, but I haven't heard any more since I shot them my response.

I love it


Homestuck


Same. Intrusive thoughts are also no ally in this kind of situation.

Glad you decided to begin therapy, Luna, it helped me a lot and I hope it'll work out splendidly for you.

~gives a very raven-y hug, whatever that means~


I hope you have found/will find someone to help you through that, Luna. I am definitely familiar with what you are talking about, and I just hope you know that we care for you!


Very cool! I hope something good comes from that.

Luna have you considered doing another “selfish month” where you become a recluse outside work again and watch an above average amount of anime?

You still give off the impression of doing too much adulting for other people who don’t deserve you.

Yeah, I've thought about my own mortality since I was, like, 6 years old (I very clearly remember the day, as I was eating a bowl of ramen, and I stop to ask my brother, "I'm going to die one day, aren't I?" or something like that), so I've always taken it for granted that people think about mortality. I mean, it's very clear in a lot of media throughout history — Shakespeare is particularly famous for it — but I hadn't realized that that's a very different form than what I've thought.


Neat!


I'm slowly coming around to the idea that you might be right, but my conscience weighs on me too much sometimes.

What I really need, that I'm kind of waiting to get the vaccine for, is to take a lot of regular time off of work (like a few months of 4-day work weeks instead of the long 10-day stretch I'll be taking for AGDQ) instead of retreating from things except for work. Then again, one thing I'm hoping to gain from therapy is a better understanding of how to talk to people and stand up for myself, so that maybe I can talk to my own family without it being stressful.

--------

Obviously thank-you to everyone for the caring words. I was matched with a counsellor today, but our first hurdle seems to be one of logistics (his words) because he specializes more in discreet sessions like over the phone instead of via messaging, which is a big reason I went to teletherapy instead of looking into how my work will provide for therapy (something I know they do, but likely as labyrinthine and unintuitive as finding a doctor for my insurance).

I pretty vividly recall that moment in my life too.
I was walking home from school, passing this building that always had lizards stashed away in its gardens when, pretty much unprompted, I realized that life is finite.
And it's been pretty much downhill ever since! To be candid, and since you shared with us, I feel it only right to share in kind, I spend a lot of time thinking about death. At least once a day.
In part, I feel like it's because I have relatively little in my life to think about otherwise. It's why I throw myself into mental projects and abstract puzzles. That helps sometimes.

I'll stop there, unless you really want to hear about the times I've contemplated suicide, but likely that's not the smartest road to traipse down.


No worries bud. We're not counselors, but we'll always be your friends.

The sudden unprompted urges to drive into traffic or jump from roofs and such is actually something a lot of people experience, it's known as High Place Phenomenon (HPP), or if you feel more poetic: "the call of the void". But it can be related to suicidal ideation and anxiety sensitivity, so getting help is still a good idea.

https://www.healthline.com/health/call- ... o-get-help

There is nothing to feel guilty about figuring out your own **** before wading through the **** of others, especially others who don’t seem to appropriately appreciate the **** wading. This is why we accuse you of being a saint. And maybe those other people would even learn to appreciate you more if they were forced to deal with their own **** for once.

Sometimes being selfish is a good thing. It let’s you take care of yourself.

Actually, I think you have it backwards, mjack. Self care is not selfish. It is an important part in giving others the best you can give them. To say that someone needs to be selfish still implies that self care is somehow not a morally good thing.

This reminds me of the only thing I remember about the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The story went something like this: two teams of lumberjacks were working on the same forest. One day, two lumberjacks from different teams meet each other and started talking about their progress. One of them complained about how hard the work was, and how the team was only felling twenty trees a day. His friend instead claimed that work was going smoothly, and his team kept a good place of thirty trees a day.
"Thirty trees? In eight hours?"
"Well technically, seven and a half. We spend the first half hour of every day sharpening the saws."

Nicely put, Aaarrrgh And that goes even for people like me who cry over spilled time. Overwork screws pretty hard with creative endeavors, and burnout is a bitch.

I like that a lot.

Just, you know, don't tell Daneera about two teams of lumberjacks cutting through fifty of her friends a day.




Amen.

Semantics aside, another piece of unsolicited advice would be to ask whatever professional one sees about how to better deal with the situation that comes across a certain way. I had to personally do this with a professional a few years ago when I was stuck in some toxic relationships.

My Minecraft is going really frustrating. Im on my 14th 1024 x 1024 quadrant in my map quest already; and i still cant find a desert or a jungle.

Yes, the main difference is what language you use, but that is an important factor - I mean, in a writing subforum that's not an outlandish claim to make

Personally, just dropping much of my spoken/written self-deprecation, humorous or not, helped me quite a lot. I know, you used quotation marks and probably I'm making a bigger deal out of this specific interaction than it needs to be, but this stuff is sneaky and there's value in examining it, even if it wasn't your point. Even with that distancing layer the negative concept is still there; the language we use about people and their interest, and thus us and our self-care, inevitably informs our outlook.

Basically, we need to brainwash ourselves into happier and more functioning human beings! ...sorry, that was just me finding the weirdest way to sum it up because I like turning concepts upside down and shaking them and seeing what comes out lol I should probably go to sleep.

Minor development: the counsellor I was matched with first kind of specializes in one-on-one sessions, and our schedules aren't really good for that, so he's going to help me match up with someone else.


If you feel better sharing deeper, feel free to — one of the first things the counsellor said to me was to not try avoiding the very idea that the thoughts are there, and that technique seems to be part of Acceptance & Commitment Therapy — but you sound like you've got a pretty good handle on yourself without needing to. I don't want to push you and I'm not sure how everyone would react (myself included) if you really opened up about it.

If I ever opened up, it would be... Well you know that scene when they open the ark of the covenant?

... Okay, it was mostly about making jokes about opening things there