i'z

Hitting the twitter hard again. Have vowed to get my following list down under a thousand. Still finding restaurants and CEOs and weird stuff I don't understand at all scattered and buried all over the list. I'm using two different outside twitter apps and still manually sifting through, incredible how many truly unfocused accounts there are out there. I mean, real people are fine, but if I don't have an interest in your thang and you don't EVER interact with me, I don't see my continued following as a necessary ingredient in our lives. If someone wants to keep following me, fine. I lost count of how many lists I'm on ages ago, and who knows how many private lists, plus I'm sure a few undergrounds keep me on mobile alert because I see the links trigger immediately as soon as they tweet, so someone doesn't actually have to be following me to keep track of what I'm doing. Same back at them. I've been sifting several strong interests down into their own private lists.

I feel a major shift coming on, feel like I'm getting ready for it. I'm trimming back contact with a number of people (nothing personal, I'm just overwhelmed), I've got holidays about to slam over me (srsly, feel like I'm laying on a track waiting for a really fast train to zoom right over the top of me), I'm trying really hard to keep up with juggling my stuff and trying even harder not to kick myself over the things I'm dropping (some fail feels are inevitable, I'm a detail oriented workaholic trapped in a spoonie body governed by an aspie brain), and ultimately, point blank, @bonenado has started worrying about me, so I'm feeling challenged to present how well I can hold myself together.

I have come forward with an incredible amount of reveal over the last year and half, and I kind of feel like I'm stopping to catch my breath before the next big plunge into where all this is going. Sharing this journey on Pinky blog has been a strenuous effort, and don't believe for one second that I have any idea what I'm doing or that I have ever felt at all comfortable (much less confident) being so very public. This is important. I tell myself that every single day. Getting a story told isn't an easy thing sometimes. Pinky blog is my float device, that much is clear.

I cannot get this song out of my head. I guess this is my birthday theme this year and marks a place in my head that I'm not quite sure I can see yet. There is apparently a trigger word that sends me plowing through internet searches, and for some reason several childhood memories have begun springing up like jack-in-the-boxes. What I'm finding isn't very soothing, but there's a key turning in another door leading into a room I had sealed off for a very long time...

restructuring

Aaaaand statcounter went to sleep on Pinky blog on the 25th. That's actually pretty funny. You guys don't know why. Anyway, while I broke through 51,000 over Easter weekend, statcounter is swearing I've had zero visitors. I'm pretty sure it's related to a blogger update and I've got to go reinsert the code now. I'm still too lazy to go fix it. I'm such a tracker slacker nowadays.

Taking a puddlejumper out for a spin, like you do. You guys remember Stargate Atlantis? I feel like I'm mapping terrain on an alien planet, making notes of interest for later. And this planet really does have baddies, much like wraith. I'll have to be careful while I'm discovering an amazing civilization here.  Kai says I can upload a singleplayer world to share when I get it the way I want. I might do that. May be awhile, though, still just getting through this last hectic week before I have room to breathe.



I spent several hours typing real words yesterday and now my hands ache again. That is work. Doing my Seradge exercises helps a LOT after all that ASTYM. Today was my last day of occupational therapy on arms and hands. I assessed out at about the same strength level, but my pain level has gone down dramatically.  Thursday I follow up with the surgeon and see where I'm at. I'm hoping I go back into therapy for neck/shoulder/back/arm sometime later this spring, as per my neurologist. I saw someone go through shoulder replacement, I do NOT want to ever go there.

Totally forgot to mention this happened the other night.

Here is the next morning for context on the very short bars because it looks like nothing else is happening.

And I finally figured out it was this.

Of course, that number is nearly 20,000 now, thanx to @kenjeong retweeting me. We've been watching Dr. Ken religiously.

This next is a random thought that popped into my head earlier this morning.

I think a lot of people have the idea that confidence is what inspires us to do something, and that having your confidence shattered makes it impossible to get it done. I've found the opposite to be true. I have no confidence at all and just do stuff anyway expecting it to go wrong or something because it seems like everything always does. I'm going to quote myself from confidence-

There is no such thing as confidence. I've never been confident. I'm not blogging because I feel confident. I hit that publish button and cringe every. single. time. I have learned that it doesn't kill me. Yeah, I still have a few panic attacks, once in awhile one will last a couple of hours and you don't see me being cartoony around my house, but I believe this is important. We are all important. I believe that feeling confident is a lack of feeling something else, just like my lack of stage fright due to an extreme lack of self awareness because I'm a little deeper on the Asperger's spectrum cannot be called confidence.

I think oversharing is a cool thing. It's about time we told each other what's really in our heads. If people want to read it, fine. If they don't, they can click to something else. It's your blog. Do what you want on your own blog within reasonable legal limits.

I have recently migrated into a 'safe spot' where I can have private support without it turning into a public debacle. I have relaxed so much. Relaxing isn't the same thing as gaining confidence, and it has nothing to do with getting confidence back. It doesn't take much to shatter confidence, even if you're at the top of your game, and it doesn't take much to find confidence, because it's easily manufactured in the form of chemicals going into our brains.

This part is different now. Pay attention.

I am confident in other people being more capable than they think they are, and being more in tune to what's going on around me than I am.

Pay attention again, here's where it gets good.

Being confident in other people being capable and more in tune doesn't mean they really are.

And here's the clincher.

But as incapable and out of tune as I feel myself to be, look how far I've come.

I kind of failed theorems and proofs in high school and sucked at logic in college, but I'm pretty sure I just conquered it right there.

Modernized a cliff dwelling. I've walked around the Manitou cliff dwellings in real life, still use a locally hand woven wool blanket I bought in the museum gift shop. That was a very long time ago, though, before they had it all set up like this for tourists. I'm sure it's even cooler now. It didn't have sidewalks and railings like they show in the pictures now, we had to hike up to where they were.

I need to go do stuff. I want you guys to remember though, like she says, we were all born to be here. It's not about being brave first. It's about doing it anyway.

bravery not included

click for source, very cool site

I have a tagline on this blog- Forever stepping innocently into the offensive without a thought or a clue. Accepting who we really are and then being honest about ourselves to each other is something I like to call 'brazenly stupid'. As I have had to learn how to interact with others, others must also learn to interact with me. We each have our behavior boundaries and tolerances on social medias. I blog so I don't have to go into lengthy explanations on twitter, or redundant private messaging one by one saying the same thing over and over. Talking to people is not a game for me, it's a test, and sometimes I fail. Aspienado used to blow up bridges. I wasn't joking about that. Sometimes it's all I can do not to kill people for no reason. ~metaphorically~

I'm not on social media for friends, I've said this how many times? Yet, I'm always grateful to find there are people out there who seem to keep wanting to be my friend in spite of myself. I came back out public for very different reasons, with an agenda and goals. Friends are a nice side effect. Last night knocked me over, and once again I remind myself that claws hurt people and kindness is logical. However, I must find a way to remain true to myself by being more honest with my friends. If friends are determined to stick with me, it's my job to teach them how to duck and dodge my personality flaws, but their job is to learn that duck and dodge. You stick with me, you'll either get really good or really banged up emotionally, and not necessarily the good kind of banged.


I have shared in triplicate my personality, my problems, my challenges, my addiction history, more about me than I'll ever know about another single person I know on the internet. It's all out here. I've even got links to legal documents on how to handle someone like me. I've confessed to being monitored by both a psychologist and a psychiatrist how many times. No one who has read even a tenth of my blog should be surprised at having difficulty with me on occasion.

This being said, good morning, I hope your weekends coming up will be lovely, even if you have to work at a sucky job, may your coffee (or whatever) never fail you, and your socks never sag into your shoes, because that really is more annoying than anything.

Ok, moving forward. I must continue to strive to be both fair and honest. Yes, I found her. The light in my eyes, the song in my heart, the wind beneath my wings, as it were. The One. My aspie whisperer. I will be ever so much better for everyone else because of her. And I'm not going away off the medias if you don't see me, I'm just refreshing my soul and getting ready for the next big WORK! FOCUS!!! I know it'll seem like I'm gone if I'm not on the twitters as much, but you guys know I'll show back up, and you can always look on Pinky blog to see what I'm doing. While some might scoff at this, others hang on in the dark, and I know this is important, because I hung on in the dark for so many years myself. We can do this.

This song can be purchased here. More info about the music artist here. You can also like her page on facebook.

MerLexxian

When I first came back out public, this was my FB cover.

I gloried in lurking in real time through a worldwide fandom and found my feet again. No one knew how sick I still was, and that everything I was laboriously reconstructing from scratch went agonizingly slowly because I still had to wear sunglasses in the house and couldn't sit or stand in one position for more than five minutes at a time.

This was a video I downloaded and played every single day to get me motivated to WORK, because I had a vision, and come hell or high water, I was going to follow this dream.


I live streamed the last show as it was broadcast to UK fans, and sat in on one of the coolest live tweets I've ever seen. I've never seen a fandom before or since who shared so openly and lovingly, even through tiffs and fights. I lurked through watching a whole planet come alive over this show, and weep together at the end. Watching people in so many countries reach beyond their borders, beyond their politics and religions and family problems to comfort and support each other in real time was like watching a dream come true. I realized THAT is what fandom is all about.

After that I reclaimed my original internet name and came out of my lurker hole and continued to keep scraping my web empire back together, word by tiny word, link by broken link. Almost nobody saw me doing this at first.

Over time, weaving in and out of fandoms, meeting new people, making new things, I got stronger, more capable, and along with the determination I found joie de vivre, something I'd never experienced before, because most of what I'd built before I tore it back down and disappeared had been constructed dot by dot through terrible pain and sadness on broken tech. No one ever knew how hard I worked and how much I threw away. But I wanted it all back.

As I watched myself scraping my heart back together, I started feeling a thrill I never expected. I was still far from where I wanted to be, but it was getting easier to to believe I could get there, no matter how steep and jagged the mountain. I started to dance while I worked.


And as I worked I noticed other fandom leaders going through the same thrills, dancing the same dance, reaching out to and supporting their people. Their people.

My people don't really have a global network yet. The dream is there, and some have tried. I've talked to several around the world who've worked very hard to extend and connect beyond their borders, crossing language barriers and political lines. But some of my deepest lurkers are watching from countries that would burn everything I've done for standing up against a fictional tyranny because it so sadly expresses exactly what they're still living with now, on this earth. It's just a TV show, and we're just a fandom, but for some of us, it's very dangerous to reach out and show our support.

Many Americans don't think of these things very often while they're watching television. So few people actually get what I'm doing or see what's going on behind the scenes that even if something happened, it would go unnoticed. When I first came back public I had no intention of doing this, no idea it would become important, I just knew what I wanted to say from the heart.

Zev vs Xev is still a big deal. That post, along with my entire Lexxperience blog now, is regularly loaded from a country that upholds strict Sharia law. I continue to stare at my monitor every time I run into that, wondering who is actually reading it, whether it's being copied and passed around underground, whether it might be inspiring hope, and I dearly hope it's not inspiring punishment if anyone is caught reading it.

This is a 28 day chart of top ten visiting countries.
Over half these views came in the last 7 days.
The country in question has never shown up on my other blogs.

My psychologist has expressed worry for my safety a couple of times. People in other fandoms (I've done way more than Lexx) have found me before, it's been a little weird, but nothing bad happened. Well, at least nothing to me or my family physically. I've been threatened a few times (including a couple of death threats) but nothing has ever come of it. But this goes beyond fandom wars between fans.

I took a long break on purpose over the holidays just to see if the traffic on Lexxperience would slow down from a particular country. It hasn't. So before I continue with more character posts in which I intend to be brazenly stupid enough to point out politically incorrect atrocities going on, I just want to go on record saying I know exactly what I'm writing while I'm writing it out, and I've always believed that what I'm writing about Lexx is important.

And now I'll call other reviewers cowards for jingling Lexx down to a 'smut in space' show. It takes a lot of guts to say the things I'm saying and watch some of it go viral in places that still execute people for that.

This might become a really challenging year, and I hope all my friends understand that I need to stay focused and not blow this off as busy work for fandom glory. Anyone who thinks what I'm doing on the internet and social media is about getting attention for myself needs to please step back if you're taking me personally, give me room to think and write and be brave enough (brazenly stupid enough) to say some things that will probably rock a few boats.

If there really is such a thing as destiny, then everything I am doing is part of that.

I'll never forget the first time I watched this fan video. Every hair on my arms went up, and it inspired me like nothing else in any other fandom ever has. It's not mine, the site I got it from is long gone, and I've never seen it again anywhere else, although I'm sure other fans have copies. And if it is out there and I've missed it, apologies. This comment is the closest thing I can find publicly on it ever existing.

I've got work to do.

oblivious blaze of glory

I'm in one of my irritating moods where brazenly stupid kinda takes over and I have to be really careful not to be obvious because I'm probably already so obvious it's ridiculous.

This is the me that no one ever wants to play chess with again because I delight so much in dancing around mocking while I inflict death by a thousand cuts that some people quit before I even get to the checkmate part.

It's the me that leaves a wake of people cringing and facepalming in the trail of my blaze of glory.

The me who is oblivious to being an idiot lit up like neon because I'm busy getting lost in a meme search.

The me who dances around my head singing this kind of stuff....


LOL, you thought I'd stick a blaze of glory vid there... 😁

confidence

While I'm in my grim little mood, I feel like tackling an idea that's come up a few times on blogging hashtag days on twitter (good lord, nearly every day of the week has a special hashtag for bloggers now).

Quick reminder that I've been blogging since 2004 and have been in and out of fandoms as both lurker and moderator since 1994. I've seen it all. All the blow ups, all the hurt, all the stats. I'm obsessed with search engines, distraction, and headphones. I have special lurkers that go way way back and we play little games like 'find me now', but since I won't risk my lappy's crippled life in the dark underground, I have to be satisfied with knowing only that one of my very favorites is a gamer overlord living in a posh neighborhood.


There's this thing going around social media articles now questioning 'over-sharing'.

Urban dictionary- oversharing I have seen a LOT of that. I've been privately contacted so many times by people genuinely worried about their sex lives and mental illnesses that I finally just turned comments off, stopped checking my email for a week or more at a time, stopped hanging out in forums. Everyone wants to spill. It's NORMAL. Sadly, I'm aspie with a strict time limit on social sharing tolerance, and I should be making at the very minimum $80 a pop just talking to you guys. Ok, I'm not certified, but I've been trained to professionally assess. My professional assessment to the world is I love you and we're all going to be ok, just keep finding people to talk to. Sooner or later we click somewhere, so keep trying.

Wiktionary- overshare I guess we're supposed to click on deeper discussions of 'inappropriate' and 'disclosure' there, kind of a cop out, but you get the picture. This goes beyond describing one's sexual fantasies into places like 'I really like knives, is something wrong with me?'. I've had some very interesting discussions with people who may or may not have done harm to or terminated other people, told a couple of them that they'd probably make excellent forensic scientists. It really is ok to be weird. You guys need to figure that out. (I'm not saying it's ok to harm or terminate other people.)

wiseGEEK- What Is Oversharing? I don't necessarily agree with this. The whole social filter thing is a new concept and until we learn to deal with a spectrum of people with a variety of brain types, you can't just bind everyone down to 'stop talking now'. It's vital that some keep talking, and I'll get into that in a minute.

Social filtering- this is actually a computer term that has to do with user stats being gleaned during search engine analytics and cookies and all that whatnot and is now being used as psychological and educational slang. If you really want to get into this with me, we need to jump to social cognition and discuss this like grown ups, which means I'll expect you to have done your research before you start flapping your lips. This is a ridiculous summary that means very little- Why Some People Have No Boundaries Online

To wit, I just overshared a bunch of junk that probably wasn't necessary. Let's point this specifically to bloggers discussing oversharing as a social media faux pas, because people have been oversharing since time out of mind and it's ridiculous to go there.

My blog is my blog is my blog. I can say anything I want on my blog. If someone doesn't like it they can stop reading my blog.

Bloggers who are using blogging to make money or push sales or create a launch platform for future goals are very different from bloggers who are using blogs as a daily journal or a writing exercise. Professional bloggers are becoming typecast as savvy technoweenies who know how to monetize, and they are mixing freely on twitter with amateur bloggers who just want to wrangle some thoughts out. Both are equally welcome to link their posts on twitter using special hashtags designed to increase exposure and reach more readers.

I can tell that bloggers who are blogging real stuff (by that I mean regular people who post pix of kids and pets and talk about their own families and neighborhoods) are feeling intimidated by bloggers who use and create hashtag feeds to hustle. It's bad enough feeling lost in a crowd, it's even worse realizing that one's content can be turned into a feed generator for someone else. The feeling of competition is getting wildly out of hand. It's not a competition. There are no winners and losers in blogging, I don't care how Forbes ranks mommy bloggers. It's not real.

Blogging is a huge thing right now. When I started, it was to keep in touch with my kid in college. Blogging was a fun way to say This is my day, and then pop over and comment on someone else's day. It's more fun than emailing, takes the pressure off timing phone calls, and has an added bonus of being there for any and all friends and loved ones who have the time to flip through and see how it's been going for someone in particular. Ten years later, blogging has morphed into this huge spectacle, and even professional journalists are jumping over to blogging vs writing articles. Everywhere we turn, there is a sea of blogging.

One of my more popular posts is called Blogging Saves Lives. It was kind of a tongue in cheek joke about using blogging to pull myself away from dumping my reactions all over innocents sharing elsewhere, but it's a real thing, guys. Put "blogging saved my life" into a search engine bar. There are people out there who credit having a way to share being what they hung onto during the hardest stuff they ever had to go through. It's human nature to need to feel connected, all through human history. Very few people enjoy feeling isolated. We live in an age where the most isolated people can now join the gangs online and feel like they're part of the human race.

I've mildly argued with my psychologist about suicide being a social disease, based on Erik Erikson's idea of how our self identity fits into one or more groups we are part of. He died before social media blew up into this huge thing. I'm one of those 'Freud is dead' people. Yes, we all have our anomalies and quirks, but I believe whether we feel rejected by groups is what tips the scales for some of the more drastic actions we take. We can drag Stan Lee into this for another professional opinion. Has there ever been an evil villain that didn't have an outside motive for becoming a dominating force? We can talk psychopaths all day long, but all it takes is one scoffed human determined to show someone they can not only do something, but do it awesomely, and bing, the world changes. How many of the success stories we hear about come from people who overcame odds? What if they had shut up when social media told them to shut up?

There's no such thing as oversharing on one's own personal blog. It's your blog. One of my faves from several years back was a delightful romp through cool and beautiful graphics, like flipping through someone's scrapbook, while the general content was a continual woe is me for this or that, and then politely asking for donations to a paypal account, and even direct links to retail gift lists. While I agree some people need help and this is a cute way to solicit funds, I felt the woe is me part could have been a little brushed up with not confessing how so much limited money is wasted in the first place on pets, clothes, recreational substances and whatnot while electric bills missed getting paid among claims of starvation, but is this any different from vague anonymous contributions to food bins and various big charities that must use part of your money to keep office management going? Not at all. So why judge?

Social media is HERE. It's not going away. We are all being watched, and criminals are actually being caught because they share real stuff on real blogs. Then there's the other side of the coin- that kid (pick one) who blew away part of a school and no one had any idea that was even possible. Wouldn't you rather that kid had overshared on a blog?

Do. Not. Tell. People. To. Shut. Up.

NEVER tell someone in comments that what they write on their own blog is a waste of time, or that they are a waste of space. I believe that the words spoken to someone before a suicide are just as heavy a weapon as a gun. If you're the sort who believes in accountability or karma, you stain your own soul with words.

I believe in freedom of speech. I don't believe in strangling those who don't agree with a reader's viewpoint or belief system.

I'm speaking from experience. Because I've been on the internet so long, and because I've used so many different names, you guys do not know how many threats I've received, how many times I've been attacked, and how afraid I used to be. I know people who are still afraid to be themselves on social media because of the past or the way they've behaved to others.

We live in an age where it's becoming increasingly cool to stand up and be OURSELVES.

One more thing. There is no such thing as confidence. I've never been confident. I'm not blogging because I feel confident. I hit that publish button and cringe every. single. time. I have learned that it doesn't kill me. Yeah, I still have a few panic attacks, once in awhile one will last a couple of hours and you don't see me being cartoony around my house, but I believe this is important. We are all important. I believe that feeling confident is a lack of feeling something else, just like my lack of stage fright due to an extreme lack of self awareness because I'm a little deeper on the Asperger's spectrum cannot be called confidence.

I think oversharing is a cool thing. It's about time we told each other what's really in our heads. If people want to read it, fine. If they don't, they can click to something else. It's your blog. Do what you want on your own blog within reasonable legal limits.