Sunday | 07.16.23

Let's see, let's see, where to start...

I'm really liking Dreamwidth, actually! It's much more slow paced and intimate than other social media-ish platforms I've used and it's set up very well for conversations. I posted the first mock up of the "chaos" project on there (it's turned into a series of collage poems, oopsie!) and some other little things as well. I also like how it's a nice little middle ground between the full css/html freedom afforded by Neocities and the like with a more rigid general format -- even if I haven't really played around with any of that just yet. Like, Tessisamess posts all sorts of cute little layouts that the Tumblr rpers back in my day would've gone crazy over! Is that what LiveJournal in its heyday was like? Sorry for the misplaced nostalgia, but I really do wish I was actually around to see it (despite all the drama, discourse, etc etc)...

Also, I really don't know why, but I've just gotten super into birds recently! I think if I did end up making a birdy shrine, it'd be better to host it on Tumblr or something, maybe? I was thinking about adding little reviews of different bird character designs in media (and maybe also "emoji reviews" like were popular on Tumblr back in the day) and windowshopping for cute stationery -- I think little low effort posts are more suited to Tumblr (y'know with the app and everything) than Neocities, where you have to type out all the code for even a small update...

I've also been collecting some books by / about female naturalists and nature-y books from a feminist persepctive, so I might end up posting about them here, also. Most recently, I've been reading Birds of an Iowa Dooryard, the collected essays / writings of Althea Sherman. She had a lot of... interesting opinions about the "morality" of predatory birds, but devoted her life to careful observations of various species (also her rant about house wrens is pretty funny).

And sorry for lack of major essays for a long time! I've got notes and research done for several topics, but I just keep jumping around and never actually writing anything...

Saturday | 07.08.23

Like I said in the last entry, for a while there I was hardcore stressing out, thinking about how people must think lesser of me for being "weird," etc etc. I think I also mentioned looking at the autism subreddit? The whole thing I was saying last time still applies, how basing your "identity" off of an innate, inborn trait just doesn't really make sense and how a "community" (especially an online community like a subreddit) based on such a topic is inherently doomed to failure -- because "identity" itself is a nebulous concept. Everyone you meet is going to have a different perception of you, a different version of you that only lives in their own head that you a) have no control over and b) will never be able to see. These different fake versions of you are basically static, whereas you are a dynamic, everchanging, full human being. You shouldn't care how others think of you; there's no point in "curating" your personality, etc, to others to make sure everyone only sees the "best side" of you or whatever. All that matters is genuinely living your life for yourself, doing what you enjoy, following your own convictions. Why should you let someone else (or even the spectre of someone's hypothetical criticisms!) keep you from living your own best life?

I could really keep going on about this topic forever, but I guess I'll spare you all... for now.

Otherwise, uh, my relatives from Texas were in town this week. We met up a couple of times at my aunt's house, and also went on a road trip to a little pseudo-touristy place about two hours away. We basically just ate there and immediately drove back home, but I did even up buying an extrememly overpriced bag of chocolate-covered cherries, so I guess that's something, huh?

Also, my sister came over and we broke out the Wii and played some pool and bowling. I've also been *dying* to play Double Dash for so long! but maybe next time... It was a lot of fun, though!

We've also been hitting up what ever garage sales we see (partially because garage sale, and partially because we're planning on having our own and trying to take notes on what works and what doesn't). I picked up this nice (albeit extremely dirty) painting of some bluejays for only $2, so that's cool!

I cannot for the life of me find anything about the artist online, though! On the back, there's an address to a "Wildlife Gallery" with the same last name, but when you look it up, it's just a house. I guess he was just a hobbyist?

Not much else to say... Plan on writing a proper article next week and I've also been working on a couple of other random little pages like planning out a themed garden and maybe a shrine about birds, so those might be coming out soon, as well!

Saturday | 07.01.23

Let's start off with a craft update:

I took an outdated cat-themed desk calendar and painted it to look like one of my cats. He's gonna go on a paperholder thing I found at a thrift shop and sit on my desk. Kinda looks like a sad clown...

Also, my aunt commissioned me to make an artwork based on "chaos." I've got what I think is a really cool idea where it's gonna be like a collage based on climate change, with little warning labels depicting different issues everywhere like popup ads. Will try to talk about it more when I get further in (now I'm just at the research / scavenging through magazines, etc phase).

I've already talked about this, but it's just hitting especially hard recently: I feel broken, like there's something fundamentally wrong with me as a person. My whole life people have been able to immediately tell that there's something "off" about me. For example, one time in high school, on the first day of a new term, a long-term substitute teacher told me to stay after, alone. "So, um," he begins, "it's fine if you don't want to speak up in class, as long as you turn in all of your written work. And feel free to come talk to me about anything."

I thought that was very nice, don't get me wrong, but also, super weird. Did the previous teacher specifically write a note about me or something? Did he just notice something was weird about me from being in the same room for less than an hour (with me sitting in the back, no less)?

Also, at the time, I was convinced my whole thing was just "anxiety" and "panic attacks." In 9th grade, especially, while I did very well in school in general (like a 4.0 GPA), I would frequently break down sobbing uncontrollably whenever I felt like I had "failed" or "not met expectations" or anything like that. If I was running late to school or even potentially running late to school, I'd cry. I literally had nightmares about being late to school where I'd wake up crying. I literally was so stressed out once, so worried that the gym teacher would hate me for being a bit late that I ended up dislocating my knee in the locker room in my haste to get out to the gym as fast as possible. I got an 80% on a math test and cried. A substitute teacher graded an assignment with a different rubric than the normal teacher and I cried. And nobody understood why I felt this way, much less myself. I was asked repeatedly: "...You shouldn't be reacting like this, it literally doesn't matter. You won't even get detention unless you're 30+ minutes late. Is something going on at home??" It wasn't...

I have less issues like that now, I guess, but that extreme "fear of failure" remains. Like, at my (former) job when I dropped a plate / cup or was told I wasn't doing things fast enough, I just completely broke down.

My mom told me a while ago, she's suspected for a long time that I was autistic. Again, I've mentioned that before, but now it's just really... I read an issue of National Geographic that centered autistic people, talking about them like they were zoo animals... And hearing how my (former) coworkers referred to residents with autism. And how society in general seems to see people with autism. And thinking about Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata...

I'm kind of at a point of pathologizing everything about myself, even if I try to avoid it. Is it weird to think ahead ("are you sure that shelf is going to fit there? should we measure it first? how are we going to lift it? is it even going to be accessible there? etc")? Is it weird to want to know what's happening and why before doing something? Is it weird to not understand why others react the way they do? Is it weird to dislike loud noises? Is it weird to read safety labels on chemicals? Is it weird to wait several minutes at a stoplight until it turns green, even if it's the middle of the night and there's no cars? Is it weird--?

Also, various worries about the future... (Job searching isn't going well and I've been reading some statistics, controversial as they may be... Is there no hope for me being "a functioning cog in society"? Again, it's not like I'm incompetent or anything, but I think I've just completely screwed myself here. Employment gap on resume = no calls back? And if I do, then, based off the previous job, lack of clear instructions and various other stressors completely destroy me... I really just don't know what to do...)

I've also been reading several subreddits. Again, they're all horrible -- I honestly find the idea of making a subculture based around anything that's an innate trait, really, to be bizarre and doomed to failure. There are certain points where it is genuinely useful to have groups based around certain things (ie: a state sub to talk about regional politics, weather, etc; a sexuality sub to talk about how to come out, personal experiences, sex ed, etc), but once it becomes a "culture" or "hangout place," I think it's just kinda weird. That's when you start getting people who make up random stereotypes or associations and inside jokes that are completely unrelated to the actual experience that's supposed to be discussed. For example, the whole thing about how gay/bi people can't sit in chairs properly and can't do math or whatever.

...But, simultaneously, I really do just want to find some sort of community, somewhere where I fit in... I'm sure I've already talked about all of this before, but this is kinda just a major theme of my life at the moment, unfortunately...

Also, I finally started that Dreamwidth account I mentioned a while ago! Haven't really done much with it yet and still getting used to have to navagate the site at the moment, but it seems cool. I've found a lot of fanfic challenges / post a review every Friday, etc sorts of communities that it seems like it'd be fun to participate in.

By the way, the inspiration for this layout comes from the Super Gameboy border for the Japanese beta version of Pokemon Silver. I love these tiles so much, I think they're so cute! (I tried to make an outside border, like the original, but, while it looked nice on desktop, it was complete ass on mobile. I'm not sure how to fix that...)