Done This Week

[scrubjayspeaks]

A friend described me as still being raw right now, due to some crap that happened. And that feels about as accurate as a thing could be. Everything just feels dialed up to eleven. Even good things hurt like a new tooth growing in, and the bad things feel like being flayed and salted.

Which is an odd sensation to have alongside the realization that 2022 was actually...a pretty good year for me?

• I rediscovered my ability to read for pleasure.
• I wrote more than I have in years and with unexpected freedom and joy.
• I settled into a role at work that has me indispensable but also actually respected.
• I've got a couple of people I socialize with outside of work, who seek out my company for, as far as I can tell, no reason except that they want to be around me.
• My finances are sufficiently comfortable that, while I can't afford all the major projects I would like to do on my property, I can indulge in a number of small pleasures without a second thought.

In some ways, I think I pushed through a lot of my own self-consciousness and self-flagellation. I came out the other side to a certain devil-may-care self-indulgence. I don't want to work at having fun. I don't want to turn everything into a chore or a side hustle, something fraught with a sense of obligation and questions of worthiness. I have a job that meets the requirements of my survival; I want everything else to be, as much as possible, the enjoyment of that life.

In some areas, though, I'm still struggling with what I can only call imposter syndrome. (Or, to be even more flippant, the spicy autisms.) My case of the gender weirds has been flaring up, for various reasons. It leaves me feeling particularly alien. Opens a floodgate to all my various feelings of not-enough, too-much, two-steps-to-the-left.

I saw a tumblr post (of a twitter thread, as these things go) about moving away from the concept of being our best self, and instead aiming to be our favorite self. I liked that. That feels like something I could manage. There's also one that says, "you were cooler when you were eight and didn't give a fuck." That feels useful as well. My eight-year-old self was a feral little freak (said with great affection), so I could do worse than to strive to impress them.

Lewisia: 9 new ephemera pieces written, all of January queued up, which also means I am officially done writing and scheduling for Year Five of Lake Lewisia, holy shit!

Day job: 32.25 hours, a short week due to the holiday and so still not really representative of my new schedule

Gardening: picked up this year's bareroot fruit trees (apricot, peach, and damson)

Reading: completely forgot to mention that I finished reading Margaret Killjoy's collection, We Won't Be Here Tomorrow, which was haunting and delicious and everything I love about a short story collection

Listening: the two-single (what's the term...) release of "The Way She Looked at You / Devil May Care" by Sarah Shook & the Disarmers (same lead singer as Mightmare), which is a real one-two punch of sorrow and hilarity, bought more music even though it wasn't actually a Bandcamp Friday

The Bedroom Project: got the mirror hung up, which by a minor miracle fit precisely in the space I needed it to go without disrupting the Pokemon card frames that I absolutely was not going to move

Comments

[shipperslist]

I saw a tumblr post (of a twitter thread, as these things go) about moving away from the concept of being our best self, and instead aiming to be our favorite self. I liked that. That feels like something I could manage. There's also one that says, "you were cooler when you were eight and didn't give a fuck."

Oh. That’s a good one, both of them.