Be the change you want to see.

One of the things that the pandemic has taken from me, is the ability to wander around my own house talking to myself, Or talking into the phone as I'm doing now. I don't feel comfortable dictating into the phone while Jeff's in the house. I mean he's got his own headphones, and he'll listen to his podcasts or watch his YouTube videos but for whatever damn reason I still don't feel comfortable. Feels like I disturb him if I'm talking in the house.

But I got really used to it, while he was still working, before he retired.

As far as the fiction writing goes, dictating words and story feels like it comes from a different part of my brain, then typing on the phone, typing on the laptop, and then a completely different head space if I go to use pen and paper and handwrite some part of the story. Similarly I can dictate blog posts like this quick and easy and I just... don't, now.

I have been missing the sound of my own voice.

I don't have regular social scheduling with people who want to hear me talk. Had a really nice dinner with girl purple and her sweetie kit, and I just got to talk about something that I'm enthusiastic about, reading Tarot. And they dug it and I really enjoyed being appreciated. I read for them, and I read for myself, and I just sort of talked about the structure of the deck and how you read how the majors are big life theme sorts of cards and the minors or pip cards are more like everyday concerns? Yeah. New deck, getting to know it is being enjoyable.

There's this acronym that fly lady uses. The word halt, stands for hungry angry lonely or tired. I think the H needs to have two meanings, hungry, and hurting. Cuz when I'm hurting it messes with my head because I feel feelings and I don't recognize that I have the body pain going on? It's not until I idly rub it something that's painful and resolve things the next day, that I realize that I was snappish or I was depressed because my body was hurting. And my body hurts a lot by a lot I mean frequently. I think I'm sort of feeling sorry for myself and I know there's no oppression Olympics, and I know that I'm allowed to feel sad or sorry for myself or like I have needs that aren't being met. No matter how good I have it. I'm allowed. So I have permission from myself to feel whatever kind of way I feel about it, you know?

There's a big beautiful world out here, and what with the trauma of the pandemic, and 45's presidency, exhale, and can't even bear to say that man's name. But what with everything that went down, I feel like I've been hiding for years, I feel like I haven't been able to be fully myself for years and that my skill and my joy have both been buried maybe about 80% of the time? I have skill with people, I have joy with people, and I haven't wanted to admit it, and I haven't had therapy that was just for me and basically about a year, but I've been stuffing my feelings again and I've been feeling infantilized and I've sort of let myself get sidelined. Or get smaller? Getting smaller is more familiar to make other people comfortable. Is that why I've done it? I'm used to doing that to hiding myself to be less of a bother. I'm used to going off on my own by myself because it didn't feel like it was worth it to other people to have all of me there.

Questions I still find myself asking myself: What am I good for? And to whom? I managed to stop the spiral usually before I start saying to myself I'm no good to anybody because I know that's flat out incorrect. But I frequently have to talk myself out of saying something like I'm less important than ex or why

There was this one time three or four years ago I think, where my wedding anniversary with Jeff landed on a Thursday. And at that time his regular date night with Jen was on a Thursday. He says to me something like it's not like it's all that important it's fine if I have date night right? So I say sure have date night. And then I tore myself up all night, grieving something that I couldn't even quite put words to. Sort of like he didn't value me if he didn't value the anniversary. I can't remember if he ever apologized for that, I can't remember if I ever asked him to. But I guess I haven't forgiven him for it.

This is a great big giant ramble I'm just going to talk about some things.

My friend Eric a wrote a Twitter post sorry Tumblr post recently about a therapy session that she had in which her therapist said that most people don't create playbooks for how to interact with other people or for specific events. And she said that she was surprised, I replied something like sounds fake but okay, because honestly I can't remember a time in my life when I did not do that. I'm always trying to create rules sets for my behavior. It's easier when it's people I don't care as much about. The rule book for Jeff is complicated. Partly because we have a tangled up mess for our recent sex life kinds of things.

Here's some of my observations about that not necessarily sex. Things like I'm the one who initiates I love you. I hear a lot of I love you too. I'm the one that's just thank you when he does something for me but I almost never hear it I'm the one who gets the impatient reaction from him when I don't hear him the first time but I swear to God there's a lot of times where he doesn't reply but he acts like he did and maybe it is the fact that my hearing has been decreasing and getting worse but I think I'm looking straight at his face sometimes when I ask him something and I have to wait several seconds and then he looks up as though he's replied and says yes or no or whatever with an impatient tone as though I should have heard it. I think it's just a careless miscommunication but I would like him to be careful I would like him to pay the same amount of attention to my words as I paid to his to detach himself from other concerns when we're speaking the way that I detach myself from other concerns, I put down my book I pause when I'm listening to I get up and come find him in a different f****** room. In that regard it feels like I'm making a lot more effort than he does.

But I must acknowledge, that he makes a lot of effort in other regards. His love language is still doing things for people. I have to remember, and I have to notice, that when he does something for me, maybe it is a cleaning task I don't want to do, or maybe it is fixing something for me that I've said I wanted to fix but don't ever get around to. He does those both with some regularity and like I literally have to notice and consciously put that into memory, and translate that as that action is love. It is, to my brain it is literally like having to go to Google translate when I see something in Russian. In a similar way I go to Google translate and I say I love you, and I put it through the acts of service translator, and I try to find the things I can do to show him that I love him because the words aren't meaningful to him in the same way that they are to me The words he's already said that the words don't nourish him the way that they nourish me. I wish he could take an effort to use the words some of the time, it was so shocking to me when potential new sweetie ( I already feel like I'm f****** that up) New sweetie has been complimenting me and using words to appreciate me and I just don't know how to take that in anymore. It's like I've been, I guess I have been away from people long enough that speaking people languages is hard now like that part of me is atrophied. I feel really isolated, yeah.

When to go back to the oppression Olympics that I was mentioning before none of this is getting out of this whole pandemic bologna without damage and trauma and stuff. Things are way better for Americans right now than they were for the last 4 years, but we're not healed, do you know? We were in an abusive relationship with someone who had control over and influence over our lives It's like when you have a job in which nobody cares if you burn yourself out or not. It's like when you have a boss that's verbally abusive, the same way that 45 was, or threatening the way 45 was. Or threatening to your loved ones and friends and family in the way 45 was.

Is there a marker in the DSM-5 for having been an abusive relationship with your government? I don't feel like there's anyone I can talk to about this right now but I just have this deep deep grief and all of the ways in which the former administration intentionally damaged and wounded and frightened and traumatized huge swaths of the population. I feel damaged and wounded and frightened and traumatized, but none of my smart friends are really talking about this, like well we survived let's move on sort of flippantly. But the thing is not all of us did survive raise dad died of covet other friends family also died a couple of people I knew peripherally died from the failure to act other previous administration People I know moved out of the country, because they felt so profoundly unsafe being who they were under 45's presidency.

It's a lot.

I made a post yesterday or the day before, about being very unhappy that morning when I woke up. In retrospect I wonder whether there might not have been a hormonal blip on the radar, but I was able to hold on to myself, and I was able to sort of collect what spoons I had available, and to borrow my friend Jen roses metaphor, I pulled out all of the forks that were stuck into me that day and an attempt to restore some more functioning and to find my way into the world with just a calmer head? Pulling out forks might look like following the routines you already follow in the morning, looking after the cat, taking your meds and drinking your water. Maybe taking some acetaminophen. Maybe pooping? In my case it turned out that pooping restored a spoon or two. I didn't even know it was bothering me until I resolved the issue!

Kinda like when you have a hangnail and all you can think about is the fact that your hangnail is bothering you, until you can find the nail scissors or clippers or nippers to fix it, that small niggling pain takes a surprising number of brain cycles away from active usage.

I don't have any solutions tonight. But I appreciate the fact that my technology, and this web page, and this community of people who may or may not choose to read this long-ass post, can allow me a few moments of blowing off steam and maybe I can have some clarity tonight.

Thanks for reading. I might go make some decaf tea and do some repair work around the house I'm not doing it to be worthy I'm just doing it because it needs to get done.

Chop wood carry water, right?

I've been looking at my face in the mirror lately, and, it's not like I don't like what I see! It's just that there are definitely signs of aging showing up, even beyond what I already knew about the wrinkles, and the bits of my face that are sagging, and the little dark hairs that started showing up on my chin about a decade ago and has since spread to my lower cheeks blow my cheekbones and under my chin and all kinds of places. The other thing that I've got going on right now is these little tiny rough patches of skin. They're mostly the same skin color as the rest of my skin which is to say mostly hail pink into light tan. The first one that showed up I asked the dermatologist about and he said it was a normal thing that some people just get and I didn't have to be worried about it. And they're rough and they don't go away when you pick at them.

Now I have an association of myself with my mom, and also with my grandma on the other side It's funny I remember my dad's mom better and in detail in a close-up kind of way, I don't think I saw my mom's mom in full sunlight very often Most of my memories of her have us staying at their mobile home in Aptos which is near Santa Cruz, and everybody sat in the house when we would visit and everybody would smoke all day when we would visit. So aside from Grandma and Nez being a little bit fuzzy around the face I don't really remember and I know she passed on when I was 17 or 18, so it's 30 plus years now. The funny thing is that Grandma Bert passed on when I was 11 or 12 and I just remember her whole look in much more detail. Anyway it's helping me a little bit to verbalize all of this, thank you speech to text! And just yeah thanks to any of you who are reading this I just needed to empty out my head for a minute.

I don't feel like I've ever been good at "girly" things, and I sort of wished I wanted to be good at them? But didn't. Met some enby folks, reflected on my life, realized that I mostly only ever cared about my gender during sex... before I figured out I'm bisexual and biromantic... I mostly think genderfluid is one term for me, agender sometimes, but the term which made me feel real joy is genderpunk. 🤘I get to choose, in whatever chaotic combinations I feel like, how I feel, dress, present myself.

The short term I'm using lately is simply "queer". It's a great search term, for research etc.

(From a facebook comment in a nonbinary folks discussion group)

i am not my family. i am not my friends. i am not my hair color, or the melanin in my skin (or not) or the number on a scale or in the back of my jeans.

i am my scars. i am my choices, and my mistakes, and my experiences, and my adventures, and my successes (and my failures.) I am my own striving. I am what i hope to become. I am what i hope the world should become: trying and sometimes failing, apologizing, making amends to make the world better and more humane. I am the love i give in the world, the compassion and the yearning.

i am my own words on the page. I am my own colors on the canvas and on my own skin. I am my intention, my will exerted upon the universe. I am the magic I need to see in the world. I am the work and the connection, I am the kindness and the trust and honesty that i bring to the discussion. I am the questions that help understanding.

I am between the truth and the lie. I am in the middle of the becoming.

I am the compass needle pointing North.

Most of the world is now starting work I began when I quit teaching: examination of the priorities and assumptions we have taken for granted.

How about that. Education. Grocery clerks. Taxes. Rent and mortgages. Eviction in times of financial or health crisis. 8 hour work days. None of these things work as we've assumed they "had to".

Doing work while performing femininity, (or masculinity). Almost like how we present has zero, fuck-all to do with how well we work.

Time to change the world.

Our families hurt us.

For some lucky bastards this isn't true... And this is an insomnia-post, where it's the middle of the night and I feel like I'm having some great insight...

One. Our families hurt us by actually lashing out, actually setting out to hurt us.

Two. Our families hurt us by not providing what we need to thrive, at a young enough age where we can't actually express what we need, or to ask for it.

Three. There's as many reasons why as there are suffering families.

Four. Whatever we don't find healing for, we continue to propagate outwards, in our sibling relationships, intimate and romantic relationships, work and friend relationships. In our political opinions.

Five. Once we start recognizing and healing that wound, we can recognize that wounding in others. Sometimes that means we can help someone else to start healing or continue healing. Sometimes...Not. Sometimes the best that knowledge can do for us is to help us avoid people who will make our original suffering worse.

Six. It's complicated. Smarter people than me have studied this EXTENSIVELY.

And it's stupid o'clock in the morning, and I'm going back to bed now.

On a FB fitness group recently someone asked for advice on seeing a chiropractor. I was one of several people who've seen one and benefited, so I weighed in.

Sometimes people are trolls, and trolls gonna troll. One dude starts yelling in a comment about how chiropractors don't know anything because they're not MD's, theyre dangerous and unethical blah blah blah.

I wanted to reply, defend. But didn't know what to say. Fortunately someone else in the group did @admin so the situation was being taken care of.

Today I know what to say. "Massage therapists know lots of things doctors don't know, they're specialists. Chiropractors go to school and know things doctors don't know, they're specialists too. You don't want to go see a chiropractor or massage therapist, don't. But you don't get to slag off everyone in the field."

There's good and bad practitioners in every field, same as there's good and bad humans in every field from plumbing to poetry to priesthood.

Had a nice second date with Johnny, when I said I needed something more substantial than coffee he just walked us a couple blocks past the coffee place we were meeting at, and the little diner was cozy, cute and clean. It felt like being looked after, in a tiny way. He seems like a good human being who's done a lot of stuff and likes telling interesting stories about it, but I didn't feel talked over or anything, there was always room for me at the table.

(More coming, stay tuned)

I thought about asking him what's his favorite thing about being poly, and then I wondered how I would answer the question.

The first thing I thought of was the bad puns and sex jokes within the Polycule group chat. There's also the sense of community, of people who love you enough to stand at your back if you need anything. And then I went from there to think, these people are nourishing to me in different ways, which is why I want to spend time with them.

THEN I remembered times in my life where I've HAD to spend time with people who DRAIN your energy instead of being restful. Jobs, school, teaching. Awful awkward times dating. The Burning Man camp before this last year's, and how aggravating some of those people were who didn't pitch in, who assumed privilege they hadn't earned (getting dragged into hugs by a dude I just met and *didn't want to hug*, getting swatted on the ass by someone I barely knew -both cis white dudes, FTR).

...hang on, I was going somewhere with this...

A huge part of why polyamorous relationships work for me NOW is that NOW I feel secure, safe, loved, trusted and trustworthy. I couldn't have been polyamorous in my earlier relationships at all, not without a lot more pain and panic. (which still did happen frequently during my early days in this lovestyle.) I couldn't have made this go before I started really unpacking my emotional wounds and insecurities, before I felt safe enough to actually speak up about what I needed and wanted, with the trust that I would be both heard and listened to.

I guess it's that polyamorous relationships at their best, like all relationships, are nourishing and support everyone involved. There's a mutual give and take but it's not just a DYAD. There's a conscious acknowledgement that other people exist and are important in each person's social network and often, love life.

Poly: It's not a simple relationship model. And you can't make blind assumptions about "what IS the relationship" the way I did in earlier mostly-monogamous relationships I had. For polyamorous, particularly romantic relationships for ME, we have to do a lot of work DTR (AKA defining the relationship).

I flailed around FOREVER in my early years
of life, as far as making friends, in both childhood and adolescence. Human connection was a deep mystery to me. My family wasn't a good place to learn how to connect with people, so I learned, mostly on an Intellectual level, "how to people" and "how to friend". I tried to build frameworks of acceptable interaction to avoid ostracism and humiliation, with only partial success.

A common downfall and cause of conflict in all relationships, I think, is when each party assumes they know the shape of the interaction, the commitments that are implicit, the expected duties on both sides. This can be friends, this can be boss-employee, this can be co-workers, teachers and students, even FAMILY, and of course we have ideas about what our lovers should be.

We all have models in our heads of what these look like, feel like, and how they will provide benefits for US, and what is our part of the job in return or exchange.

But I'm finally consciously realizing, THAT'S NOT THE CASE. That's never BEEN the case. Your model of friendship is different than mine. That's why we negotiate our friendship over time. The job relationship is gonna look different between me and my boss and someone else and my boss. That relationship is ALSO negotiated BETWEEN us as co workers.

It's about how consciously you inhabit your own life and how consciously or unconsciously other people negotiate, or navigate maybe, that's not a horrible metaphor, relationship spaces.

so I'm going to say that right now today, my favorite thing about polyamory is that it forced me to examine my assumptions about what relationships even are. And that is giving me the freedom to have completely different take on The World and to be a lot more intentional with where I spend my time my intention my money basically how I do everything!

There's that one saying I remember that I struggled with understanding for years as a kid and teenager, along the lines of how you do one thing is how you do everything. And I would like to say that my goals for the rest of my life include being intentional careful and kind in all my relationships.

(I need to come back and hack at this again some more, there's definitely more to be said. And this needs more editing, but whatever, for right now.)

If you want, Beloved Reader, tell me what you think about conscious relationship choices, below.

I was a school librarian way back during the dialup/AOL days of the internet.
We started the library microlab with three 386 machines in 1995, and at first they weren't networked.
Eventually we acquired 8 newer Mac/Windows Power PC machines, and daisy-chained them with a ninth machine to act as server.
By default I became the IT guy and network admin for the library. I was learning fast, but barely kept two steps ahead of the kids.

I remember when we got internet working properly. Even in '98 and '99, the junior high kids would rather look things up on webpages than use the CD-rom encyclopedias. In retrospect, finally I understand why. They feel so... STATIC. The internet feels *alive* in a way that most books and every encyclopedia I've ever met, simply do not.

I also remember staying late after work, and after I finished tidying up after the kids, I myself would sit down, read email, and surf the net a little.

There was a "meme" (before I understood "memes") which I stumbled across at some point. As I thought about this week's prompt, this page came to my mind's eye, so of course I Googled it. *smile* The Last Page Of The Internet. Hope you've enjoyed your browsing, now turn off your computer and go play outside!

Even fifteen years ago everyone could tell that the internet was a fascinating, roiling, sea of distractions and delicious, delicious data. Distracting.
Even then, it was apparent we would all need reminding to turn off the screen to go outside and play...

There was a bumper sticker on the door of my office in that library. I probably had picked the sticker up in Berkeley, it said in big dark letters, "KILL YOUR TELEVISION". Some kids would read that and argue that they loved their television; others immediately got the point of the message and why I found it so damn funny. Because they did too. But the thing I never would have expected, was to need to think about Killing My Tablet, Phone, and Desktop computer too, from time to time.

The most seductive thing about internet memes? They are in-jokes. You have to have been there. You have to be part of the culture, the subculture, the microsubculture. You have to belong.

And that's part of why memes are so irresistable. Embedded in the joke, is the reminder that you belong.

We're all citizens of the internet. With the rights and privileges thereunto.

but sometimes, you do indeed need to turn off your computer and go outside.

*click*

This is my home game entry for therealljidol. The prompt for the week is "Keep calm and end this meme."

Today's massage was pretty darn good. This was the first time in recent memory that I showed up for a massage with nothing actually hurting or needing the therapeutic work. So on the therapist's suggestion, I opted for a relaxation massage. That was nice, and he (he and I are new at working together) seemed much more comfortable in this mode than the sports-therapy massage I requested two weeks ago. So that went well.

I'd had Wrenb drop me off for my appointment, we'd been doing errands together, so I opted to walk home via the bike trail. Less than two miles, I figured...
(How tough could it be, right?)

Oh dear.

Upside: no muscles are sore, my back is fine and my endurance for such things is hugely increased over the last time I took a long walk like this.

Downside? My shoes/boots weren't entirely the optimal choice for a long walk down the asphalt bike path. No heel blisters, thank Hermes, but I have blisters. Under my calluses. On the balls of both feet.

And the first of the early morning workouts with Tal and Tshuma. Like ready to work at 8 am early, when I usually roll out of bed between 8 and 8:30 kind of thing.

Oh well. I'll make it march somehow, and Tal probably has ane encyclopedia of things I could work on without straining foot blisters.

I have faith. Tomorrow will be good, and I will work hard, because I want to be tougher and stronger.

That's that.

Now to check in on Spouse and Tshuma, and rustle myself some more food.

Posted via m.livejournal.com.