Out of currently 1087 published posts, I have 150 with the word 'alone' in them. I tried to search for 'alone in the house', 'alone all day', and other alone phrases, but that's a lot of grind work for a blog this big. In case you want to search for anything in this blog, there is a "Search This Blog" bar in the right side column just beneath the featured post.
I used to love being alone. Many days I have craved alone time when I'm with other people. I didn't tell anyone for a long time, though, that sometimes I have days where I'm afraid to be alone. With myself. With Myself.
When I was still a young kid, I felt Me. It felt weird to feel Me. Sometimes on those days I would be very aware that I was a walking skeleton, or would sometimes feel like a doll I was moving around. I know nowadays that is called dissociation. To some degree it's very normal to click into an objective perspective and 'see' things from a different point of view. To do it constantly and feel stuck that way, like you can't get back 'in', isn't normal. I did that a lot as a kid.
When I dissociate on a bad day because extreme fatigue or pain spike or sometimes other things causing brain chemical changes (I'm hyper reactive to meds, for example), I lose being able to control how I present. I do and say things that seem confusing. For about an hour yesterday I felt like a box full of fireworks that started going off all at once, and I was experiencing all the emotions almost simultaneously or back to back without any coherent thread of why. There was no logical cause. I couldn't tell what was happening until I started writing, and pretty quickly, I think in about 10-15 minutes, I realized I had spiked into the nether regions of depression. My psychiatrist would like a harder diagnosis that I suspect would result in manic depression and possibly more, but since my psychologist monitors me and I don't seem to consistently go into the more hardcore 'manic' list of symptoms, the debate is left hanging without further testing. Yesterday, though, I definitely dissociated and once I realized it was happening, I was able to pull myself into focusing moment to moment. I did ok, made it through the rest of the day without incident, handled everything ok, made it to bedtime without any problems, at least on the outside.
I've mentioned my mom forcing me to learn to self monitor as a child through sometimes severe corporal punishment, which is now proven to be psychologically scarring and emotionally stunting. Because of that experience, though, I am much more objectively aware of myself than some people. (Not to be confused with the self UNaware state of autism spectrum, which is a social deficit/interaction problem.) I've met people who don't have a clue how to even see another point of view objectively at all, but mostly the people who can seem to be afraid of it. I ventured into objectivity at a young age and played with taboo in my head for many years, mostly as thought experiments that included every conceivable debate about God(s), right vs wrong, reality and realism, and much more. I can emotionally derail and catch myself fairly quickly with diversion, basically cutting the emotion part off. The part in between the derailing and the catching is spooky. People say I'm scary, and it's not because I'm violent so much as unpredictable, I think. I'd say the same thing about my dad because I got to see more of him growing up than my sibs, and I know his cognitive rigidity is his way of not derailing.
Personally, I know I can rely on myself to never cross certain lines, but dissociating is one of those things where you can't always see where the lines are. It's important to reach out and start dealing with real as soon as it starts happening. It's important to be honest and let people know I'm dealing. Trying to hide it never turns out well in the long run. For some people, it's a very short run because they commit suicide or start killing people, and I can tell you from the inside of that state of mind that there is no logic, no red flags, nothing stopping a dissociated person from living out a nightmare and never realizing what they're doing.
People don't like talking about this stuff. It's pretty common, because it's a reflexive survival tool the brain uses to get through something difficult, and some of us do it all the time without even realizing it. Some people cover it up with med, drug, or alcohol use, some people simply have a line of 'reasons' ready, some people just pretend it never happens, like don't talk about it and don't rock boats kind of thing, and then bringing it up is super awkward and makes things worse.
I am #aspienado and I don't want things to get worse. I am using #transparency and #honesty to talk about my stuff, and I keep using public social medias and a game server to keep my balance because it's hard for me to talk on phones and I don't have real life friends or family close by while @bonenado is at work.
I talk about being broken, and I say that we're all broken to some extent in some way or another, and I think 'kindness is logical' is a good belief to hang onto when all else fails me. I can stop immediately and ask myself- What am I doing right now? What do I want? How do I get what I want? Is what I'm doing to get what I want breaking anybody?
Breaking each other is a way of life in many religious and political systems. It's very effective. The better option, though, in my opinion, is kindess. It lasts longer. No matter how I am feeling in any moment, even when everything is black and stupid, I believe Kindness Is Logical.
Aaaaand someone beat me to that hashtag by just under 2 months, lol. That person is promoting 'love is hate' and sexism. Let's see if I can change that. I'm really tired of doublespeak.
I WANT ALL OF THESE
pic clicks out to way more pink mug stuff
I especially like 'live what you love', 'prove them crazy wrong', and 'make it happen'
I'm actually back up to my 2 extra large cups of coffee every morning. I was doing really well cutting back for about a week and I guess just hit a big ol' rebound over the last few days while I was juggling a few eggs and chainsaws. One of those sucker punch weekends on all fronts, and today feels like the 3rd Monday in a row kind of thing.
I grew up in a world of stigma and have seen all the nasty things it can do to relationships and self worth. Inserting stigma into any convo is the fastest way in the world to sabotage, using stigma in social structure is the surest way to mass control.
Fuck stigma. I don't care who thinks or says what about me any more, and I'm going to keep saying honesty and transparency are the path to healing, from micro to macro. Everyone benefits from this point of view.
If you want to stay trapped in stigma (and bless your hearts, I know it is so hard), then realize that you make the conscious choice to allow others to victimize, harass, and emotionally (sometimes physically) rip you. Yes, I know that simply deciding to flip to the other side of the coin doesn't solve all the problems, but like I've been saying in public blogs since 2008- MAKE A PLAN.
Who are you?
Who do you want to be?
How do you get what you want?
What small steps will it take in between the bigger stepping stones to reach your destination?
Social mapping is foreign to me. I suck at understanding human interaction. That doesn't mean I can't learn to navigate the choppy waters, lurking undercurrents, and deadly rocks jutting up from below. I don't have to be shipwrecked because of a rock I didn't see coming. I don't have to stay beached in a place I never wanted to be. I don't have to be sucked into a downdraft and drown because someone else is oblivious or mean.
And I don't have to be mean about it myself. All I gotta do is walk away from it, float over the top of it, steer around it, and keep sailing to where I want to go with my life.
For some people this will mean literally leaving families. For others this means simply adjusting schedules. Any change is always disruptive, and sometimes our comfort zones are deep ruts carved into dysfunctional relationships for reasons. Could be money, could be physical or mental handicaps, could be anything. But tiny incremental small changes over time add up to big changes you never dreamed you could make happen.
I've spent the last 5 years blogging my way through small stepping away from hopeless helpless despair because I wanted to. I had an idea I believed (desperately hoped) could work, and yes, it's working even way better than I ever imagined. I put together my own care team, I put together a plan with clearly defined goals, and I asked for my care team to help me. This care team includes
primary care physician
chiropractor
psychologist
endocrinologist
gynocologist
neurologist
psychiatrist
physical therapy team
massage therapy person
I sought out all those people (and my family) and told them they are part of my team, and that they would all know all the things all the rest do. They all have input, and therefore I've been able to successfully stay off meds that exacerbate problems. My favorite is the neurologist wanting me back on amitriptyline for nerve pain and my psychiatrist letting me know that would make anything mood related much worse. In the past I floundered through so much confusion with only one doctor trying to handle all my stuff, and wound up so miserable and sick all the time that I literally crumbled into immobility and loss of function. Her abruptly abandoning her practice for hospital work and leaving me dangling for 4 months set me on a path that ultimately saved my life.
I crawled my way back out of that, I'm honest with all my people about all my things, I ask for very specific help with reasons why and what I hope to get out of it, and they are more than happy to help me. No more confused wandering through a health care system for me, thanx.
I am #aspienado. I know who I am, what I want, and where I'm going, and I hope to be good for other people so that my life won't feel wasted at the end of it. The legal diagnoses I listed in my last post don't mean I can't make decisions about my own health care (including mental health). Yes, I deal with a mountain of stuff, but that doesn't mean I am incapable of seeking out advice and making educated decisions about how to go forward into making my life better, and I trust my team to guide me through what I don't yet understand.
The most important thing I ever did in my life was learn to ask others for help. I don't instinctively trust anyone, and I'm super fail at reading people, so that was hard. In order to get good help, I put together lists of questions I needed answers to, and I learned to keep it simple and focused so that I wouldn't overwhelm anyone, because I really am an overwhelming person when I get going, and often other people don't realize quite where they triggered a mass of confusion in me that tips my world over. It's called the KISS method and I learned it in high school. Keep It Simple, Stupid.
I came out a little over a year ago in this post with my diagnoses on my disability papers. I didn't link them to anything, but I'm doing that now. Each one will click to an explanation or article.
My psychiatrist would like a harder diagnosis since I've progressed into dissociation issues with my psychologist, which I've basically lived with my entire life but never talked about. He asked for it last winter, and my psychologist said not yet because I was up and down dealing with pain med adjustment problems, and he said that could affect the testing and the diagnosis would be permanent. My psychiatrist reminded me again lately that he'd like that done, and now that I'm more evened out with the pain med situation and another successful set of physical therapy visits, I guess I'll see what my psychologist says.
I am of the opinion that anyone on the planet could be diagnosed with some level of mental illness under the right (or wrong) circumstances. I knew I was having problems as far back as high school, and I walked into MMPI testing of my own volition in college and apparently passed just fine. Years later I asked my primary care doctor to refer me to a psychologist after I learned about Asperger's. Anything mentioned in between to family or friends was mentioned back as me being a hypochondriac just wanting attention, to which I replied I actually dislike attention anyway, so to purposely seek out negative attention seems a bit stretchy, especially since I'd been corporeally punished and lectured at length throughout my childhood and never got enough positive benefit from that to want to seek out more. Well, I didn't say it like that, but you know what I mean.
I have never been hauled in for evaluation. I have never caused disturbances that required interventions. I have never self harmed (typically, visibly) or harmed others (in ways that would get me caught). I was rigidly raised to obey, behave, and don't be embarrassing. I took longer than most kids to catch on, but because of that, I learned to self monitor and avoid unwitting consequences.
I have developed the opinion that beating, humiliating, and scaring children into submission is a very big mistake, but I can see how mentally ill people living in dysfunctional families manage to survive in society that way. Being raised to have too much pride to wind up in jail was a powerful motivator for me, although that was never said in so many words. I actually turned down a lucrative offer based on the fact that I'd eventually wind up in jail, because I personally detest being confined and told what to do. I didn't choose correctly on moral principle or because I might lose custody of my child over it, no, I chose correctly because I had a deterrent I didn't want to tolerate. I was smart enough to at least avoid that by walking away from the offer (which was actually a dangerous thing to do, and I knew it, but I had such a flippant attitude back then that I didn't care).
I'm old and wise now, like Gandalf. I see people all around me who are like me but toe the lines so their lives don't get stupid. They stick to rules and reasons for why they have those rules. I personally think most of the rules are rubbish because the reasons are even more rubbish, but whatever works, right? The goal is to function successfully enough to survive, not win a logic debate. It's easy to see how not toeing the line can go all bad real fast, and that implies stupidity, and many of us would rather not be caught being that stupid.
I've noticed that very few people have actual moral principles, and even when they do they betray them without an eye blink if it serves their momentary purposes. Human mental health is relatively new on the long term scale of human development, and survival traits often include the more cunning virtues, like being able to lie and cheat well, learning when to fake or steal without being caught, jumping into opportunities without sharing them, and more. Part of human intelligence is cunning, and cunning isn't necessarily emotionally healthy.
I think neurodiversity is in it's infancy, and I really hope it doesn't go through a sweeping genocide because of 'mental illness'. It's possible that some level of mental illness might actually be a positive survival trait for some people. For instance, my narcissistic attitude as a child about other people being stupid kept me from self destructing into self deprecation and the nasty consequences of self harm, corroding addictions, and suicide, as per discussion with my psychologist. It's true that some people benefit from help with tweaking brain chemicals, but it's also true that some of our greatest art, literature, and science leaps were borne in mentally ill brains.
I am not ashamed of a single one of my diagnoses. I didn't even know I was this much of a mess until I sought out help for a very real personal problem that bothered me very badly. I wanted a friend. A real friend, a friend who would accept me and respect me and care that I walk this earth and not just toy with me or use me. Real life isn't like television for most of us. Most of us feel lonely a lot more than TV says we should. Most of us don't have laugh tracks following us around like we're so cute even when we're dumb. Most of us live like facepalm cliffhangers that never get resolved because the show got cancelled.
Most of us remain undiagnosed.
Side story to make a point. @bonenado has shingles. He is dealing with a level of pain I've been living with for years. He has suddenly taken an interest in a little research, so I sent him a link with a list of shingles symptoms. I have been living with every one of those symptoms for years, minus the rash. I am not afraid of shingles. That doesn't mean I ever want them or that I would blow them off if I got them, but it means I'm a seasoned veteran with experiencing nerve pain and therefore don't feel that tingle of fear around the word shingles.
The idea of being mentally ill doesn't frighten or upset me. I have apparently been living with all of this for a very long time without knowing there were names for it. My life has gotten better and even easier since I found out about them. I was struggling so hard for years with why is it so hard for me to be nice. I really did try, and everywhere I went, one hour into whatever and I was in defcon migraine level hate and badly needing escape. Why? Once I found out it's because my senses are so easily overwhelmed and that my natural coping mechanisms are faulty, I stopped being so hard on myself. All I have to do is simply remove myself from a situation before it gets overwhelmingly ugly for me, and people all around think that I'm nice.
Learning to live with mental illnesses is like learning to live with chronic illnesses. You develop rhythms and lifestyles that help you stay balanced and learn to navigate the disruptions that upset that balance. I happen to need a lot of quiet time in order to cope well, and when that becomes impossible, I have fallback modes I can go into to focus my way through until I can reach a place of quiet. A lot of it is about preplanning for sensory overload, which triggers all kinds of personality issues when I don't stay smart about how I want my day to go.
It's not a piece of cake. I live with both mental and chronic illnesses. Sometimes it's really hard to get through life sucks, but sometimes everything goes all wrong and I'm fine with it. The most important thing about each moment is keep moving. Keep breathing, keep minecrafting, keep doing my laundry, keep checking on people I love, keep keeping. Enjoy the little things, treasure the moments, love all the nouns (people, places, and things).
I don't know if this will help anyone, but I believe honesty and transparency are becoming even more rare and precious in this super socially saturated world, and the more we just say our stuff, the more we'll not feel alone.
It's amazing how settled my nerves are this morning after that long post yesterday. Normally on appointment mornings I'm a tad 'distressed' underneath everything I'm doing, but today I'm like meh because that post yesterday took all day long, and I'm so worn out with the work and material that I'm kind of sick of it, lol. 😐😒☕
I'm sure they'll unsettle on the road. Long day in town today, temps already dropped 30 degrees in the last couple of hours, lots of big cold wind and and possible sleet, ice pellets, or freezing rain, depending on the weather service you check with.
Actually balanced to ye olde exact pennyage on my $$ sync today, first time in many moons. Calendar sync still on point. Had to move a couple of things already going on later in the month, but so far it's all good.
I know I said I'd put minecraft over on my Bluejacky blogger, but this is Pinky stuff and needs to home here.
Every bit of this was unintentional and has been coming out fairly slowly since Christmas. It actually started around my birthday a few months ago, came up immediately with my psychologist, kinda got put on hold for holidays, ramped up as a very real personal problem right after holidays, evidently started spinning out on a friend's realm in minecraft until Sherlock blew me up again, so the minecraft thing super ramped up this week until I realized what was happening yesterday, and tomorrow I see my pyschologist again, so this is me organizing my thoughts, like I did before with my Mo Creatures builds that I psyche analyzed over this last year. Something about minecraft (and Sherlock before that) is really pulling my past out of me.
It started with this video.
The only clue I had at first was the sudden compulsion to dig up everything I could on Atlantis, and even wound up requesting a really cool book through our regional Mobius system lending.
Hang on, discussion with @bonenado before he heads out to work, actual live blogging-
He's reminiscing about having $7 in Kennedy silver half dollars (1964 mint) and 3 buffalo head nickels when he was twelve years old. His mom prompted him to open a bank account, he asked the teller if he'd get THAT MONEY back, got a yes, and bam, promptly lost what is now worth a load of money. Naturally, that turned to time travel, and I was like yeah, if you could legally go back and fix, say, 5 things, but it all had to be very strictly monitored with lots of interrogation about not changing anyone else's timelines so it would probably all end up being about money or something, and he was like yeah, everyone would be going back like crazy, and I was all like yeah, it would be the lastest get rich quick scam for the time travel agencies springing up.
He's out the door now, got more coffee, where was I? Ok, the theme music up there. Atlantis is something my dad was interested in, along with hollow earth, UFOs, numerology, end world prophecies, and lots and lots more stuff. For some reason, the Atlantis part has always stuck with me, and I have particularly enjoyed shows based around it, including Stargate Atlantis, which I even purchased.
I grew up with a terrible fear of water and refused to learn to swim in a special swim class for pre-schoolers and had to be pulled out. Describing the scenario would start out like very young autism spectrum child entering a pool area for the first time with a nervous and self conscious yet very determined mother with a load of untold emotional baggage, and basically both of us being asked to leave and me getting griped out all the way home and then spanked real good when we arrived. (I grew up with a lot of very angry spanking borne out of a frustrated young mother who got absolutely no moral support whatsoever, but surprisingly, this will all turn out to be about my dad...) I'd say it was one of the worst days of my life, but I've had stacks of way worse than that, so of course I blocked some of the details, but I sure do remember that much a little too vividly. Over a few years, I grew interested in swimming, took my own initiative, and actually became a pretty good swimmer for awhile, even though I nearly drowned one time (funny story, actually), and by the time I met @bonenado, we took our kids out swimming quite a bit and I got into the pool with them as much as possible unless I felt too ill, because anything pool related is a bit rigorous when you're a spoonie with chronic fatigue, so I obviously overcame that fear of swimming and conquered the water.
But around and in between all that, I have a very long history of fearing water itself, and becoming obsessed with water. After I graduated high school, I got so jumpy over a dripping sink one summer that my mom sent me to live with other people, stuff like that. I've had many dreams of drowning due to water filling up rooms I'm in with no way out, and they were so real, like I already knew exactly what it feels like to stop breathing and 'die', and over time in the dreams, I even just accepted it and let it happen. Trying to fight it with a last breath never helps at all. Since this all began in tiny childhood long before sleep apnea, none of this is prompted by sleep apnea, and I don't dream of drowning just because of that. In fact, it's been awhile since one of my drowning dreams, so I had no urgent prompt to dive into this. Get it? Dive. K, nevermind.
So I've had this combination of minecraft and Sherlock going on in my mind's background where I'm not seeing it, right? And then season 4 started back up, and of all things, death happened in an aquarium, under all that water. I didn't realize it, but subconsciously my mind must've exploded, just in time for an ocean village to be discovered on my friend's realm (super rare, I had never run across one in all my own playing), and before I knew it, I'd launched from there to a nearby mesa my friend had also mentioned finding, and I started in without even thinking about it. Just piddling away on this in between chores around the house, right? It has felt like something I've wanted to do for a very long time, but I couldn't put a finger on what or why until I was nearly all done and then just broke down over a memory finally 'talking' to me. It really does take a lot to see what's underneath who we become.
I'm seeing this is going to get quite long because 30+ screenshots, so if you're not up to either minecraft or the personal psychology behind this new build, see ya. It's important to me, and that's what Pinky blog is for.
I've often thought it would be cool trying to build some kind of apartment complex into a natural tower. I didn't get before pix, so here is after.
You can see I'm the sort who likes preserving natural structure. The very first thing I did was start at the top of that tower and create an open top floor with a bed. Even though I did all this in creative mode and I don't really need a bed for respawn after dying, it felt right to make that a sort of loft bedroom. Looking back, my bed is the closest thing in this whole build to the sky. I didn't notice right away until I came back after I was all done that the emerald (I'm not a 'green' person) is the symbol for communication, which is at the head of my bed where, in minecraft, I would come back to life after dying somewhere. Quite literally, my head is trying to tell me something, apparently, but at the time I did this I felt quite spacey and was just piddling around. I had never put an emerald into an item frame before that I can recall. Emeralds are the currency with villagers, and you trade them for maps. Maps, of course, symbolize journeys and destinations.
The next thing I placed on that level (remember, this is the highest level), was an ender chest. If you don't play, anywhere you put an ender chest immediately connects to all other ender chests you've put things into, so you don't have to go back for stuff. Kinda like Pinky blog storing all my rememories for me...
And then I placed another ender chest right below that one on the next level down with a lilac above it. My mom loved her giant lilac bush in our New Mexico house. That's right, I'm building on the edge of a mesa and the first flower I feel like framing is a lilac, above a chest of things I don't want to lose.
This level is like a mezzanine, an in between place. There's not much on this level, but guess what- right next to that chest and framed lilac is a couch... Do I have a special floor for my psychologist? It feels like a very quiet floor with lots of viewpoints, and also feels very much like a cave, but high enough off the ground to feel safe. I find this color of clay block very comforting. I did every bit of this on a whim, but going back, these are the impressions I'm getting.
The rest of the floors and walls on this level are blank, but I love the views. This is what being in my head really feels like when I'm quiet and not interacting with people. Stuff is going on 'out there'.
The next level down is a little more complicated, just above ground floor. There are views, of course, but there is a whole different feel to them. The entire floor feels much busier, like I have stuff to do. Is that cozy little table and chair where I do my writing?
And I can step out and see what's going on out there. Maybe that nearby village is social media. Ah, yes, you see my springboard. I made that a little later. Cool, huh?
I ran around adding flowers a bit later, too, so this is my view now. The lilacs and sunflowers had to be planted, the rest came from just throwing bonemeal on the ground. I was very surprised at the tulips showing up, kind of how I feel when I go back and proofread, perhaps.
When I go back through that double patio door, this is the wall I see. I loooove maps, usually make one for nearly every place I go. I wonder why I didn't put any furniture around.
That window, though. I think just about my favoritist thing about minecraft is perspective, any way you use it, especially metaphorically. It's like stepping into art, and art comes out of heads. I still don't know what's coming out of my head, but for some reason I am really liking this part. I should have been a cat sleeping in sunlight coming through windows. I feel like I could stand here forever. Maybe someday when I'm a ghost I'll stand at windows like this. Do you ever think that? I've been thinking it for years, how peaceful things feel when we can freeze moments.
The other end of that level has paintings on the wall, and a regular chest. I don't like it, but I haven't changed any of it for some reason. Maybe everything I need is at this end of the room.
The next level down is ground level, which pops up in my mind as 'real life'. I have loads of doors in real life, apparently... There is absolutely no furniture or wall decor whatsoever on this level. All my attention making this level was on doorways. This first one is the 'back' door. Believe it or not, as inconvenient as it is, Janika uses it the most to run in and out making things and looking things over. There's probably some big meaning in that. I love all the blue... It's like part of me is surrounded by it or something.
You don't see the far door down the hall in this pic, which goes out to a steep hidden mine. The big double door out to the pretty area has already been dubbed the Pinky door in my mind.
Yes, very definitely feels like the sort of doors Pinky flings open for the world. Pinky is accessible and claims to be transparent and sees all the things lurking around behind a screen. Really digging the yellow floor, too, whatever that means. I'm generally not a yellow person, but sometimes I really like it. I'm standing on lots of yellow. I hope that's a good thing. Yellow brick road stuff... Some of you know exactly what this means.
And I'm already calling this my Bluejacky door. It's guarded with a bunch of sticky webs and prickly things so no one wants to come in that way. Bluejacky likes to go down rabbit holes and disappear...
Before we continue with that thought, let's go run out the Pinky doors! We could already see a springboard looking down from above, but there was something else, too.
It's all orange. Nearly everything in there is orange. It's tiny and private right out here in the open and the sort of innocent thing that immediately evokes suspicion. My mom's favorite color for awhile was orange. She had a big orange vinyl tablecloth made, and lots of orange started showing up in the kitchen when I was in middle school.
And I know what you're thinking- if this winds up being about my dad, why is all this mom stuff showing up?
My original house-tree-person in my Guidance and Counseling masters degree was very strongly about covering up a lot of anger underneath everything. My house, representing my relationship with my mom (on paper), was a floor plan, like the guts of my thinking without any signs of emotional connections. My tree, representing my relationship with my dad, was a Christmas tree cut away from the roots and covered over with pointy baubles, a very angry looking tree, and my person, representing how I see myself, was a showgirl in a bikini on the back of a circus horse with my eyes closed and a big toothy smile, basically disclosing a difficult personality with interaction problems. I am finally seeing my mom around me on 3D minecraft, but I can't help but notice that trees are conspicuously absent. Interesting. My dad is still alive, my mom is not. I wonder where my head is going next.
I still didn't have a clue at this point. I had built a springboard, went running right off it, placed a row of 3 sea lanterns where I wound up very far down in the dark, measured out a line of sea lanterns across the gulf floor, and then went back into the mesa to tunnel down and out. I had no idea how it would look later, but here's what I got.
Ursa Major, anyone? I loved that constellation growing up. Except the cup of this is pointing south instead of north, so if that's a deeply subconscious thing, maybe I'm wanting to tip the water out? The line of single sea lanterns is following the ocean floor, and the aquarium room is parallel to it. I had a little trouble with the ocean floor breaking through into a cavern, so you're seeing other sea lanterns in the cavern, which amusingly adds to the Big Dipper outline.
I started this venture at the top of the mesa closer to the sky, and what I'm seeing looking down is a picture from the sky I had growing up, but it's under water. There is a saying in archaeology- As above, so below. It is thought that indigenous peoples build on the ground what they see in the heavens above, and that some architecture mimics constellations. I don't know if that's true, but I have a dipper from the sky in the water. And we're about to go down there...
I know, right? It's creepy what can come out of your head when you're not really watching.
I'm going to interrupt before we go on with the real life personal problem that started kicking flashbacks at me again.
I grew up tough. I could handle anything. I have seen death and torture so many different ways, and I never cried about it for many years no matter how personal it got. Over the decades as I've gotten older, I started breaking down over seemingly 'little' things, like a pet chicken dying, and soon after that I couldn't watch anything bloody on TV for a couple of years. I've gotten past that part, but now I've got grandkids and find myself spiraling into emotional dilemmas I never had raising my own kids. Most recently, we had to try to make Bunny take some medicine after a tonsillectomy. That kid is one of the strongest 3 year olds I've ever seen. She was drinking cold milk and telling me THAT helped, so she didn't need medicine. She finally reached a point where she was crying and really did need it, but even though she's taken medicine for us just fine in the past, she had no trust this time and did everything in her power to resist, despite being able to drink milk (and even eat) and feeling so rotten. Something about holding her down while she was already so miserable to force her to feel like she was choking on top of such a bad sore throat through all the crying and slimy bubbling coming out her mouth- *flashback*. I had a horrible couple of hours after that. I kind of blew up about it, firmly stating I would never force her to take medicine again, and that if anyone else has to, I need to leave the room. I understand sometimes you have to force it, especially if the child really needs it, but I couldn't be the one to make it happen.
That is a very big thing for me to admit. I'm the one who was by my dad's side puncturing sheep bellies when they bloated (it's an emergency life-saving 'surgery'), helping him carry and bury puppies whose heads he'd stomped in (quietly weighing the conflicting idea that neither life nor spaying were 'necessary', and kindness to the poor mother dog's anguish over every litter lost to a master's whims was never even considered), helping him catch another dog so he could beat it half to death over a chicken (which never made sense to me, he never hit Mom or us kids), killing cats before he could so they wouldn't suffer because he was so bad at it (if animals don't feel pain, what are nervous systems FOR?), holding livestock and pets down during bloody procedures that also included birthing and butchering, butchering animals myself. Death and the torture I've seen and all the pain I've lived through have made me an extraordinarily strong person. But I broke apart trying to make Bunny take a little bit of medicine. Fortunately, my sploit came to my rescue with some suggestions, because I was appalled at a pharmacist telling Bunny's mama that sometimes you've just gotta plug a kid's nose and force it down. From what I can tell, forcing medicine isn't all that different from waterboarding if it's done in a way that a child feels like they're not just choking, but being forcibly restrained and then choking by someone they are supposed to trust. But perhaps I'm just overreacting because I went through a little too much of it myself. I grew up feeling dismissed, in the way, doing my best to earn being 'necessary'. Along the way, I learned to close all my feelings off the same way my dad did.
I recovered a memory a few months ago that was directly triggered all over again seeing Bunny so terrified of us holding her down while she was in pain, because I have my own vivid memories of being held down and forced through tortuous pain (beyond the stupidity of dripping olive oil up my nose to coat my throat, which burned like hell, and many other home remedies that never worked), and I wasn't yet aware playing minecraft that I was about to relive the emotion of something so rough that I had blocked it out and was finally remembering it.
Despite my fear of water, I do love beaches and ocean vistas, read everything I could get hold of about pirates on the seas in my teens, and even use checks and return address labels with an ocean and beach motifs. You'd have to heavily sedate me (and keep me that way) to get me onto a cruise ship, but I do love everything ocean for some reason, and I've been playing around on several minecraft worlds with underwater builds. I'd had this particular idea for some time to practice building underwater from beneath the ocean floor coming up, and was ready to try it out.
So, back inside the mesa tower on the ground floor, I tunneled straight down to a cavern, and naturally I lent an aquatic feel to the experience.
I love this entrance.
A cavern wraps around this room, looking a bit like an outer work area, plus I did the ceiling in blue glass for an underwater effect. I really love these gray walls from the polished andesite. I've been around a few mechanic and machine shops, so this whole below area feels kind of like a headquarters section of a big operation.
Opening one of the doors steps out into a river, so I slabbed over it. That little square of rushing water right by that door really bothered me, like a sick feeling, but I liked seeing it for some reason, so I left it. In my mind, seeing it like that feels awful. Still wasn't getting any hints why, until the idea of water flushing through entered my mind. I quickly shut the door and went to work on the opposite side of the room.
Before all the water was there above my head, all of that was an ocean floor of underwater gravel above me, so I was able to dig up and create very easily.
And then I kind of made myself feel sick again. I mean, I love it, but it's triggering lots of memories, particularly of smells, and I don't feel well looking at it.
I decided to go back down the stairs, go back up the ladder, and then fly over the top of the ocean to see how it looked so far, which is cool because it's very visible from above the water.
And then I went down into the water on the outside of the glass and looked in. It felt very different then, having a buffer between me and that room. I love how I made it, but something about it just keeps triggering a lot of stuff, and I may have to fill it with some greenery and furniture or something before I'll feel comfortable with it. Maybe a few villagers.
While I was standing there down in the water, I noticed that I could also see down into the room below. It looks like there are two paths to the same room, one without any water in it, and one covered in water, like a sort of visual trick.
I decided to dig the rock out over the room below about my height like a secret pocket cave over it all, which created one of minecraft's weird illusions. Water doesn't flow the same way in minecraft that it does in real life, so the water came in only so far. I wound up with a sizable air pocket that mimicked walking on water because of the blue glass.
And as I cleared away all the rock that is now this empty air pocket, I noticed the walls above the illusion of water, and the whole memory clicked into place, and I cried a little bit. Nothing weepy, just a couple minutes of acknowledging I have a thing in my past that has affected my entire life without me ever understanding why.
Walls. Fear of water, love of walls. It all started on the same day.
I've seen my dad resuscitate animals. I've seen him start newborn goats and lambs breathing by blowing into their mouths to inflate their lungs. He never learned it watching TV or in a class or by knowing anything sciencey. He knew this because he believes in the Breath of Life, and that is how the world works.
Just after my birthday, listening to that song up there, I remembered why I know what it feels like to stop breathing and 'die', probably more like just passing out. I was small, probably about Bunny's age. I was once again going through a familiar ritual that used to be common in civilized households around the world, before the medical field became more sane and started calming people down. I remember trying to convince my dad I could do it, I just needed a little more time, but I was a tiny person and tiny people weren't listened to in my world. I was forced to lie over a closed toilet and was held down very tightly to where I couldn't move at all, and when my very young mother protested my screaming because my stomach hurt so terribly bad having all that water shoved into my bowels and my dad wouldn't stop and I heard my mother's screams escalate because mine were escalating (I feel really bad for my mom going through that, she was just a young mother and I was the first child, it must've been so horrible seeing me go through that and not being able to stop it), my dad did the only thing he could at the moment to handle the situation, which was to quell some of the noise. Years later, he again held his hand over my face to make me shut up my whining, which he felt was interrupting him trying to listen to my mom having a little crisis. I think I was about ten maybe, and I remember thinking he was too busy talking to notice I couldn't breathe. I struggled and he held me still, which was even more terrifying, so using all my wit, I decided to go limp so he'd feel that I couldn't breathe, and it worked, he let me go. I left the room immediately and he never seemed to notice. But remembering all these things, I also remembered with a whoosh that the reason why I so detested the smell of my dad's breath on his harmonica and in general was because I had woke up to it in my mouth when I was very small. Technically, I passed out and he revived me, just another one of his pragmatic actions in a very long history of pragmatism. But realistically, he killed me. If I hadn't started breathing on my own and he hadn't known how or been able to revive me, I could have died.
You know what? That's not the part that got me the most upset, which might sound weird. I trusted my dad growing up (but don't mistake that for being close to my dad) because I saw him do the impossible so many times, and have never since met anyone who has worked as hard all their life. The problem was that he had found a way to turn all that noticing what he's doing to others off inside himself, or at least that anyone else could see, and that's a whole other history of what the crap must he have gone through as a kid, right? Because as a boy he was like a chicken whisperer, and had a dog he loved, and his stories are profoundly deep sometimes. So honestly, I'm not upset with my dad. But I am extremely sad and relieved that I finally know what really broke me. I have so many memories of screaming or crying around water, about being afraid of getting wet, and even though I might seem to be ok in photos or just living life, I'm definitely not ok. I've been through anxiety so bad that I couldn't even get a shower for days, or had to have someone in the house with me just to bathe. For decades I've had nightmares of being trapped in the dark by water around me and the only thing I could feel in the dark was a wall, or of drowning in places that I should be completely safe from drowning with no hope of escape.
And standing there in the dark pocket under an ocean that didn't even get me wet, I remembered I fear the water because I suffocated while I was being inflated with water, and the wall was the only thing that held my hand when I reached out through all that pain and fear for comfort before I blacked out.
Somewhere, way down there, was a tiny child lost in a very dark place, under an ocean of water, and I went down there and dug her out.
Putting stuff like this into words has been very challenging, but I think I am coming close to more easily talking about who I am now. I've been watching other people write lots of things about religion and politics and mental illnesses and awareness stuff. Have you ever wondered how we arrive at our conclusions? How we come to decide and define what is right and wrong? How we come to believe what we believe?
We (I and all the people who know me in real life) have been dealing with me having what's basically called an emotional switch that gets flipped when I get PTSD triggers. I'm still discovering exactly what these triggers are. I became aware during high school that I go in and out of personality modes that handle different kinds of situations, but mostly I stayed in what I call shut down mode, a flat personality that doesn't get emotionally involved.
As I've progressed through adulthood, I've learned to develop more personality modes so I can better control who I am and how I present, although I didn't realize at those times that's what I was doing. These were most easily seen on the internet as I went through my Yablo, Janika, and Bluejacky stages, which are the most visible.
Pinky is turning out to be an interface for all the modes, much like an office coordinator. As Pinky is going through all the files in the other modes, my psychologist and I are discovering that I have PTSD triggers and different ways of handling them, like adjustment disorders, delayed emotional response, PTSD Tourette's (sort of like an aspie super stim that I can't stop, especially when I'm driving so it gets a little scary and sometimes I have to pull off the road), pain disorder with psychological factors (and that on top of documented nerve damage), and yes, a little bit of narcissism, which actually isn't a joke since it has loads to do with how I survived years of emotional and physical abuse. For example, turning 'what's wrong with me' self harm and suicidal thoughts outward to 'everyone around me is so stupid' is what saved me from the kind of self destruction that a lot of people don't understand. Fortunately, I managed to veer away from what people think I'm joking about when I call it being an evil villain fully intent on revenge.
I started openly bringing all this up on Pinky blog last year, and then started specifically defining it in hybrid- how robots go on (more links there). Later I openly shared the diagnosis documented as part of my disability.
I'm NOT talking about dissociative identity disorder. Despite have some mixed up recall during the roughest PTSD triggering memories, I don't have a dominant personality that takes over and lose actual time, although I do go through time orientation loss jags from stress, which isn't the same thing because I'm able to reconstruct. When I talk about shut down, it's an autism spectrum emotional shut down that allows me to keep interacting on a very low level automatic function so that I can make it home with groceries kind of thing. Shut down helps control meltdown, which is emotions going out of control, another thing autism is famously associated with. Developing personality presentations has helped me step into a sort of acting role as needed so I would be able to handle jobs and stuff, although sometimes this has backfired in unforeseen and sometimes hilarious ways. Pretending to be a Vulcan at all times doesn't actually help a person work well with others on a job...
So I'm essentially a real life role player. I learned at a very young age to be a 'doll', to 'perform' or be punished, sometimes severely. It took a few years, but I learned to staunchly control my natural autism spectrum inclinations, not by understanding either them or anything else going on around me, but by strongly stuffing down any and all feelings I might be having and turning into a stone. I survived.
The reason this is important to understand is because a lot of people don't survive. There are too many people who are on the edge of self harm and suicide every day who aren't getting the help they need and who haven't figured out how to survive like I did. They don't feel safe with themselves. They are like ticking time bombs walking on eggshells and hiding all their stuff from people who don't understand and fail to comprehend. I call this the yawning chasm, the lack of real connectivity with others. We might be interacting with others all day long in one form or another but never find that connection that helps us feel stable, or validates our difficulty. We feel emotionally abandoned and ignored.
I had two modes I clicked into throughout childhood, and they both had names. I wasn't particularly aware I was doing it, but I knew the names. I never told anyone those names until I became Pinky and finally brought it up. If I was talking to anyone, it was usually in mode, because deep down I actually prefer not to talk at all, even though I love brain sharing in print. I know, that's funny, because I actually don't shut up once I start talking. It helps to understand that I never saw my mom as a mother figure and never dwelled on how that made me feel. Yes, very seriously shut down emotionally.
I had a secret friend name in high school, essentially creating another me that talked to me. I never really shared that beyond very briefly bringing it up a couple of times in my life. That split helped me keep my balance in a world that was crumbling all around me after we moved to another state and things got really stupid between my parents. When I talked about this part with my psychologist, he became very interested in how I could change reality in my mind and believe it, a sort of consciousness of reality toy I played with without realizing it (which later grew into a love of philosophies). That link goes to a list of links. Essentially, because I couldn't look at faces at all one year and was so disconnected from other people, I reworked reality to be more like an alien world and I was the visiting alien. The halls were sloped like a stream could run down the middle, so I had to stick to the sides by the walls so I wouldn't slide in, all the glass was pink and everything I saw through them was pink because of that, my line of sight was knee level and I got to know people by their knees, and talking sounded like gibberish. I carried this out for a couple of months until I realized I was kind of stuck in it and it had become tiresome, so I snapped back to 'real' and started looking at faces again. When I did that, I also snapped into a personality mode and got kind of mean and secretly destructive, pretending I was a spy and committing sabotage that backfired on other people. I never got caught, but looking back, some of the fallout wasn't cool. Very real consequences were inacted on wrongly accused innocents, although I thought it was funny back then because I intensely disliked them.
I didn't think very much about that stuff in my 20s, which got pretty chaotic from the poor choices I kept making, but by my 30s I was back into mode switching so I could handle being married and raising kids. From there on out people have known me as Janika and Yablo. Bluejacky came a little later, and Pinky is the last. There may be a couple more very minor nearly inconsequential modes tucked here and there.
Janika is like a baseline, an umbrella over the old modes, a central hub of sorts, and eventually an epic fail. Janika history is volatile and never had a direction goaled out. Janika was stuck with Yablo's mess and Bluejacky's anger and didn't see a way beyond any of it, so Janika disappeared.
Pinky is an Idea. Pinky thought long and hard about goals and plans and modus operandi. Pinky wrote out a mission statement. Pinky incorporated all the modes into one whole and is mapping how they all became part of a survival story. Pinky sees the bigger picture and brings all the things into focus. Pinky named Aspienado and created a direction for all the modes to go in together. Pinky is sharing real life stuff, what's really inside this kind of head, because it's important for other people to see that 1- kids like me can turn out ok, 2- honesty is what saves us, and 3- kindness is logical.
There are others out there arguing semantics about whether or not it's acceptable to say someone has autism (which sounds more disease-y) vs someone is autistic (which sounds more label-y), among many other things. I don't take sides because I don't care. I have it, I am it, I am living and breathing it, and I know that the bickering is borne of being who we are- super definers of all the reality around us. We are the brains that want specific answers to vague questions, that want words to be used correctly while we simultaneously don't understand how the way we use our own words mixes people up, the brains that thrill to find and point out flaws and figure out people puzzles and solve problems all around us by thinking of better ways to do things while we gunk up our own days getting too caught up in these things. We are glorious spatters of thought that either reclusively don't share or just never shut up.
Everything in this universe is a spectrum. We are all waking up to that, some more slowly than others, but eventually the entire world will learn to stop rigidly defining and start allowing variance. Where in the world humans got the idea that things have to be rigidly defined is probably a Hitler thing, or the Ancient Aliens telling us what to do and how to do it. Who we have to be laid over who we are born to be is the modern conundrum in philosophy. Who is to say what true freedom is if we keep fighting over every little thing we are supposed to do and think? We are free to fight, wheee...
Someone shared a thing on facebook last week about how if we had big old fashioned porches around our houses like in the olden days, our world would be a friendlier place, or something to that affect. Please allow me to point out the flaws in this thought-
Being stuck in low tech nearly nonmobile society in a hot environment with no air conditioning was why those big porches were a thing.
The cost of building houses with big wraparound porches nowadays generally precludes wasting materials on 'dead space' unless a person has the money to blow on it.
Bugs.
The views pretty much suck unless you're lucky enough to live near a nice vista, a water front, or a cool skyline.
The TV is inside and the neighbors are irksome.
Sweet memories of big porches might be a little skewed...
Those kinds of old houses are nowadays becoming synonymous with drug dealing and weapons caching, at least in popular entertainment.
Need I go on.
It's about perspective. What one person thinks cannot apply to all brains at any given time. It's only been in the last 10 years that brain variance is becoming recognized as 'ok'. I'd love to posit that 'neurotypical' is a widely overused and misconstrued word, and that we've got this weird neurotypical until proven otherwise thing turning mental hypochondria accusations into a circus. Yes, there is abuse of entitlement, but people actually do need help, and the ones needing it the most are having to fight through a barrage of hate trying to get it, which seems a bit odd since the hate is springing from standing up for - ok, that's dumb and I can't even go there saying it. I watched the same fight over ADHD, it was like a witch hunt, OCD people are rising up now (about time), and basically everyone with even a hint of probably need for diagnosis is finally standing up for themselves. YAY, *finally*. If we're going to complain about NTs defining atypicality, let's keep in mind that NTs are slang for haven't been dx'd with anything yet. Their turn is coming. Everyone on the planet has *something* wrong with them, be it physical, mental, emotional, whatever. Not one person on this planet is a perfect specimen of humanity. The idea that we've got to measure ourselves against each other is a bunch of hogwash with a sales pitch behind it, and I wish everyone would stop falling for the pausing to argue thing. Go enjoy something today.
When I was little, if I didn't 'behave' properly, I got punished. When behaving properly gets judged by someone who is having a succession of very bad days around very unsupportive people, things can trickle down onto a child like a break in a dam, and then justification sets in and then recriminations abound, and pretty soon it's not about the child needing help at all, but about other people desperately needing help themselves and not understanding why their worlds are screwed up.
So to sit around arguing over semantics seems a bit time-wastey to me. Sitting around defining religion and salvation and the world sliding into a big black hole seems a bit displacing coming from people whose lives are messes.
Aspienado was spawned out of a really big mess. Aspienado is tired of the words. Pinky says we must keep using words, so Aspienado wants to use words in a really big way. Pinky says WE'RE WORKING ON IT.
Chrome won't let Jawn get vids, and old lappy just can't pull that kind of workout off any more, so this morning I invited Torch in. Jawn is thrilled. I'm thrilled. Torch is thrilled. And all the app exes are fighting and it's hilarious and I hope nothing is f*kg up my hard drive.
I really am my happiest like this.
I like getting to the tops of these crazy mountains and then drilling all the way to the bottom. This is the same spot later when I was ladder testing so I wouldn't fall to my death. The white things are snow fluttering down from the hole I made at the top. Even after all this time, I still pause to watch sunrises and sunsets.
Going back to once a month with the psychologist for the summer, and nearly done with this round of physical therapy, so I'm hoping July is will be wonderfully back to routine. My daily workout schedule has been blown to bits between stepping down the beta blocker and aggressively hitting that spot in my neck, and a whole week of heat advisory already spiked all that right into super fibro flare, so I'm mostly just micro focusing on immediate top priority. Got a form filled out this morning that HAS to be mailed off by end of the month, paypal is just about ready for transfers that HAVE to be done by the end of the month, things like that.
Psyche guy wants me to do another sleep study, so if he remembered to note that to my doctor, he'll probably get that ordered to be scheduled when I go back in for follow up on the beta blocker thing in a couple of weeks. Last night was ridiculous. I think it's been at the very least over 9 years since my last sleep study. I think it's the usual junk, the ups and downs of med changes and season changes and whatevs, but he wants to rule out REM related apnea because my dreams are pretty off the wall. Well, I've had severe insomnia for so many years that's probably related to the nerve damage in my neck, I'm more of a wait and see if we continue to solve some of my issues over time, because I've started actually sleeping in the last couple of years. It's hard to sleep well when you're spending a month reliving an ancient whiplash in physical therapy because it triggers a fibro flare. Anyway, I'm sure another attempt at a sleep study can't hurt. The first one I had was pretty lame, my insomnia was so severe that I slept 20 minutes, and 4 hours into it they just booted me out. They were at least able to document the alpha delta anomaly.
A little piece of my brain just reminded me I need to focus back on TODAY. Physical therapy this morning, and no idea what kind of shape I'll be in afterward, so maybe I should go do my dishes and start some laundry before I go. This afternoon might be a complete washout. Get it? Washing.. oh nevermind.
My head doth protest. I quip that it's going soft, to crawl back to the primordial ooze it organized from and weep, and it tells me it needs more coffee first.
lol, click for cute blog
I used to be so tough, springing forth and getting right to work at 3 and 4 a.m. Lately I'm staggering forth, whining, and this in spite of a virtual A+ with the psychiatrist yesterday. Is this what normal feels like? My God, how do you people stand it?
Ok, I mock. It's been a very long month in a very long year. I feel like I've already slammed through 6 months, not 4. Every day I'm still amazed at how quickly I'm cramming things into my head now, miles of tutorials, hours of vids and streams and recordings, even actually reading a book in between all of it, and this on top of keeping up with my house and my errands. This month has truly sucked, and yet I still conquer in so many little ways.
I used to curl up on the couch at a certain time every day. I used to pace out my days in increments just to get a few things done. I used to hang on by my fingernails on a phone tethered to social media, and a few people thought I was already a machine back then.
I'm about to go full machine. I know, I keep saying I'm about to do something, have been saying it for years, and this is really no different, but my days have so drastically changed and I have become so capable that turning my attention to something produces results in one third the time now, or even less. Everything in my head is reorganizing, everything settling into a new rhythm, and I can feel serious flow logistics being tested. It wasn't that long ago that it took all the focus I could muster to produce content, and I did it out of sheer stubbornness.
The keyword yesterday was all the various incarnations of functionality. I have worked very hard to become a functional person, versus a dependent person. I am still dependent in many ways, and always will be. I need help with meeting my financial requirements, for example (for now- I still dream of shooting for some stars). My physical function, however, is nothing short of miraculous (and which I still work very hard for), my emotional function is probably the healthiest it's been in years, my cognitive function continues to improve (which was initially unplanned, and I'll probably always be glitchy, but I'm getting better at managing it), and my social function is at least remaining steady. By the way, both my psychologist and psychiatrist (back to back appointments this week) see my trend away from social media as a healthy one. (The diversion into minecraft is still up in the air.) I set up social media as a platform, it turned into a crutch, I know exactly when it started doing that and why, and I've reset back to my own path. Key phrase- my own path. As in not someone else's.
Speaking of my own path, this is happening. My followers know that I've recently very seriously downsized my twitter by over 1500 accounts, and that I'm not aggressively or even passively looking for more numbers. I understand that many people get asked to 'follow', but deeper waters across the years would reveal that I'm being asked to pledge my influence. I support a variety of fandoms, have even publicly supported a few funding drives, but I cannot support a site that directs actions I disagree with and then quietly solicits funds. I feel so strongly about this that I wrote about it and linked it across several medias, on SyfyDesigns on Facebook on grandfortuna, but I will be gracious enough to give my readers a chance to check it out and follow for themselves if they'd like. Just click this convo snip to reach twitter, and from there you can link to their dotcom in the bio.
I've made note in the past that a few Merlin fans have created the most brilliant and beautiful fansites I've ever seen, and they've inspired me deeply. I could be doing that same thing with Lexx, making a big beautiful site and quietly holding a donation jar just out of sight. I don't solicit fans. I especially don't use all the fan content I can find to promote my own fansite. In the past, when the Lexx fandom was more publicly active, yes, I rescued a site from utterly disappearing with its own blog (but you guys never saw me beg the original owner of the content to take ownership of the blog after all the work I did), showcased fan involvement (most of you never saw the flak I took for highlighting ostracized fans banished for not correctly playing the head games), and worked diligently to create diplomatic relationships with webmasters in other countries during raids and bombing blitzes that had most fans diving for cover. What webmasters of other fandoms may not know about me and my past is that I've already been threatened with lawsuits, already been asked by state police on a convention floor if I'd like to press charges, already heard every conceivable rant and wistful depression about bringing a show back.
Politely asking me to openly follow a fandom initiative hellbent on remolding the world to their wishes runs much deeper than politely just following back. What most of my Pinky readers (barring a few deep lurkers) wouldn't understand is the politically rippling message that would send across the other fandoms I support, and around the world. I am closely followed by several key webmasters in cities around the globe, and there are people who keep me on mobile notification day and night that you know nothing about.
So I sort of politely decline. I'll also add that after all the personal work I've put into my own emotional and social mental health, I'd invite a few other webmasters to do the same. This level of obsession is very unhealthy in my eyes, and to actually get so many people around the world worked up and following commands amounts to cult level leadership. I really don't want to see a bunch of Merlin fans drinking any kool-aid.
In case some of you think I'm being ridiculous, I'll just say back that I know a few private things that you don't about a few fans. It's neat that they collect all the things into internet scrapbooks and have the money or access or support to share real time travel stuff on sets and at airports and it's fun that we get inside snippets from unnamed unfaced people who are really inside and leak stuff out (I've been privy to a few really cool things), but when links go up for donations or a list of directives start rolling out, that's where I draw the line. Not accusing anyone of doing anything illegal, just saying I don't play the head games, and I don't expect fandoms to pay for what they see or get from me, and I especially don't require membership registration for anything I do. Everything I put on the medias is wide open to the public. I don't force lurkers to reveal themselves with forms and account IDs.
I won't go into why I don't monetize again. If you really want to know, here is my 'stat' tagged post list. I've turned down funding support and hosting several times through the years. I have bigger plans.
click for a delightful waste of time
Screeching around a corner into a wildly different topic, have you guys ever wondered where we get this automatic idea from that pandimensional beings either root for us or plot against us? Angels protect us (from what?), devils whisper in our ears (for what purpose?), fates taunt us while destinies call to us, and we oscillate betwixt guilt and glory in our tiny little minds. What in the world started all this?
I'm a Lewis fan, so of course I think The Screwtape Letters are the bomb, and Dr. Weston becoming a shell for that horrible evil thing in Perelandra was about the truly creepiest thing I ever read, but when it all boils down, I have found that the negativity of the dark side, as it were, can be brain-trained out of one's automatic response system. Why does the brain play these tricks? What is it about society that trains the brain to play these tricks? Is this a necessary survival mechanism for maintaining culture in general, and whose bright idea was it to incorporate it into mainstream cognitive programming of our species so many millennia ago? Because if you want to debate that with me sometime, I'd love to point out the all new brain training going in in current media, with Lucifer and the antiChrist and dark angels and whatevs being held up as entertainment icons. Is the general public now being calloused to the old ways through repetitive story bending, or is this a mass brain training at an all new level of doublethink? I see way too many 'Christians' and other spiritually minded people out there slurping up every sloppy splat of blood and angst they can get on the networks, and I'm wondering how empty some of you are to be this thrilled with 'new' ways of thinking. I'm watching the old open minded Star Trek fandoms being dumbed down to devil fans and wondering just who's in charge here.
I don't believe in accidents of fate, but I believe in synchronicity. One could argue this is basically the same thing, but not really. Just as the universe is webbed with dark matter and our brains are webbed with neural pathways, so the human race is webbed like a network around our globe. The pattern is the same, no matter how big or how small. We are all part of each other, and we are all part of the whole thing. It would be one thing if we moved in tandem with our own species, but we don't, we continually disrupt each other with negativity. Some postulate this negativity was introduced by dark forces that beguile and deceive us, some are convinced it's just part of our nature. The dark forces have been explained as everything from fallen angels and demons to aliens who once visited our planet and may still walk among us, and the nature explanations throw babies out with baths unable to take sides on justice and moral principles without begging all kinds of questions.
I won't go over everything I've ever read, which is quite a lot, going back thousands of years, studies from every conceivable angle (including science), and even the new medical philosophies. I'm just asking where it comes from. No one knows. It's still just a guess. Our brains haunt us, and we are trapped in them, an existential horror that no one can grasp enough to say why it's even happening. I personally think it should be impossible to be this aware in a universe where the only thing that happens is cause and effect. The observer thing only confuses us. I think we're still not looking deep enough. Our minds are still too tiny.
So, back to in the moment. What is right and what is wrong in any given moment and what we do with our time here is completely up to us. We can blame it on whatever we want, but in the end I think all our motivations boil down to whether we are selfish or selfless. I've said this before, a long time ago somewhere, that I think all our miseries really do boil down to this- selfish people ruin things, selfless people fix things. Human brains are natural problem solving machines. With good directives, humans do amazing things. With bad programming, humans do despicable things.
So I'm asking who is doing the brain training? Who is programming all this philosophical frappe into our entertainment? Who is breaking down the barriers and remodeling what is good and bad for our amusement? I'm not against it, but I'm a little surprised by the flocks that fall into it so quickly. I'm not seeing a lot of thought being generated about what our entertainment industry is slipping into our belief system cocktails. I'm all for shaking things up, but part of that shaking up needs to contain more than being upset that our favorite character died or that a show got canceled. I'm saying this across the board, not because of the Merlin thing up there. I'm seeing this everywhere, all around me. Are we really so spiritually bereft that we cannot handle dozens of icons almost being force fed to us (think about it- you pay them to let you beg for programming...) and then ripped away? We are practically drowning in heroic characters, or at least stoic ones. The fictional characters we idolize far outnumber the amount of people we know in real life now. We live in a dichotomy, lead double lives. What are we hanging onto, and why? It's ok to question what's in your head.
I've been able to slack off on the benadryl a bit this week, thanks to storms. Here's to hoping tree season is just about over. I'm tired of being pickled on H1 blockers.
Next week I start the hard stuff again, back in physical therapy.
