December Days 2022 #1: Silvery
Dec. 1st, 2022 10:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptWhat am I doing for December Days this year? I'm trying to think better things about myself and move my mental state from seeing myself and my life as a series of deficits and failures to achieve the impossible perfect goal toward a more strengths-based approach and trying to convince myself that because I am still here, and I am still holding down some sort of life, even in the face of all the things that are making it difficult for me, I am an accomplishment worth celebrating.
So I asked all of you to provide some adjectives to start with, and then I will turn them over in my head, based on their definitions, and then talk about what comes to mind from them. I'm doing a month-long love meme, from me to me, because I need it. The first one is, of course, about me and this name that I have carried with me for my Internet life.
That said, I am not physically silver in color, as I am not a being made of metal and electronics, nor am I suffering from various kinds of poisoning that would give me a metallic tinge to my skin.
I will admit freely to being so white I burn if you whisper the words "ultraviolet rays" at me, so that fits.
I am much more an instrumentalist than a singer, so I have no idea if I sound like anything pleasant at all when I sing. I have a feeling what I think is on pitch isn't, and I'd need to retrain my ear and my voice to pull my pitch up to where it actually is. Of course, is been years now since I've made any music at all anywhere that isn't home, because, well, the thing that sent us all home two and a half years ago.
I grew up in the age of desktop computers, but I'm not so young as to have lived all of my life with the World Wide Web, nor with the app ecosystem of smartphones. I am someone who has had the privilege of being able to curate most of my digital life and to have most of my young time flailing about and leaning how to be online destroyed in the great swaths of commercialization that came for most of the Web when it became Web 2.0. Instead of having to choose sites based on where my friends are, I've chosen sites and made friends that way instead. I am curious to see whether or not Twitter will fully implode, whether the Fediverse can take off in critical mass (and, hopefully, make more progress on defeating anti-Blackness than other spaces), and whether Tumblr embracing one of the protocols the Fediverse built itself on will be accepted or soundly rejected.
I am now over halfway through paying off the decision I made to save my own life from someone who was using me as their sugar daddy while simultaneously trying to isolate me from having any friends of my own who weren't her friends as well. I have been managing my money and maintaining a house and household for all the time that she was there and for all of the time that she has not been there, with the acquisition of new people and different pets and assorted expenses. There will still be more expenses in the future, most definitely. But I succeeded, even at the worst of that situation, and I will continue to succeed in the future.
I am in the middle of trying to work through a significant amount of my issues, the kinds of things I was trying to ignore. Now that those issues have spilled over into having physical consequences and bodily effects, I don't really have a choice but to try and resolve them and take the baseline level of anxious back down to something that can have capacity to take on additional stresses, even temporarily. It's difficult going, trying to change my mindset from "they can't make fun of you if you're perfect" to "you can make small mistakes and everything will not collapse."
I am also trying to dial in an effective dosage of medication to handle my variable attention stimulus trait and allow me to direct my attention and energy in ways that are productive at work and that allow me to avoid hyperfocus and time variability. That might be pretty close to done well, but the undesired effects of the medication sometimes exacerbate the anxiety condition, so we're trying to find something that can provide the benefit without making other things worse.
I've done published writing and conference presentations and moved a few more books' worth of grief over to AO3. And kept up with exchanges and book club writing and all the other tasks I set for myself this year. I successfully played some more with APIs so as to make the indicator lights work even better than they had been before. I have been Silvery through all of it (how could I not?) and all of the other accomplishments, both loud and quiet, and while I am still adjusting to the new reality, I will keep trying until there is success. It would be helpful to get occasional reminders that people who are not me also see my successes for those times where my own mental attention won't be able to overcome the brainweasels without help.
Mostly, though, I intend just to keep trying.
So I asked all of you to provide some adjectives to start with, and then I will turn them over in my head, based on their definitions, and then talk about what comes to mind from them. I'm doing a month-long love meme, from me to me, because I need it. The first one is, of course, about me and this name that I have carried with me for my Internet life.
- silvery (comparative silverier, superlative silveriest)
- Resembling silver in color, shiny white.
- Sprinkled or covered with silver.
- Having the clear, musical tone of silver; soft and clear in sound.
That said, I am not physically silver in color, as I am not a being made of metal and electronics, nor am I suffering from various kinds of poisoning that would give me a metallic tinge to my skin.
I will admit freely to being so white I burn if you whisper the words "ultraviolet rays" at me, so that fits.
I am much more an instrumentalist than a singer, so I have no idea if I sound like anything pleasant at all when I sing. I have a feeling what I think is on pitch isn't, and I'd need to retrain my ear and my voice to pull my pitch up to where it actually is. Of course, is been years now since I've made any music at all anywhere that isn't home, because, well, the thing that sent us all home two and a half years ago.
I grew up in the age of desktop computers, but I'm not so young as to have lived all of my life with the World Wide Web, nor with the app ecosystem of smartphones. I am someone who has had the privilege of being able to curate most of my digital life and to have most of my young time flailing about and leaning how to be online destroyed in the great swaths of commercialization that came for most of the Web when it became Web 2.0. Instead of having to choose sites based on where my friends are, I've chosen sites and made friends that way instead. I am curious to see whether or not Twitter will fully implode, whether the Fediverse can take off in critical mass (and, hopefully, make more progress on defeating anti-Blackness than other spaces), and whether Tumblr embracing one of the protocols the Fediverse built itself on will be accepted or soundly rejected.
I am now over halfway through paying off the decision I made to save my own life from someone who was using me as their sugar daddy while simultaneously trying to isolate me from having any friends of my own who weren't her friends as well. I have been managing my money and maintaining a house and household for all the time that she was there and for all of the time that she has not been there, with the acquisition of new people and different pets and assorted expenses. There will still be more expenses in the future, most definitely. But I succeeded, even at the worst of that situation, and I will continue to succeed in the future.
I am in the middle of trying to work through a significant amount of my issues, the kinds of things I was trying to ignore. Now that those issues have spilled over into having physical consequences and bodily effects, I don't really have a choice but to try and resolve them and take the baseline level of anxious back down to something that can have capacity to take on additional stresses, even temporarily. It's difficult going, trying to change my mindset from "they can't make fun of you if you're perfect" to "you can make small mistakes and everything will not collapse."
I am also trying to dial in an effective dosage of medication to handle my variable attention stimulus trait and allow me to direct my attention and energy in ways that are productive at work and that allow me to avoid hyperfocus and time variability. That might be pretty close to done well, but the undesired effects of the medication sometimes exacerbate the anxiety condition, so we're trying to find something that can provide the benefit without making other things worse.
I've done published writing and conference presentations and moved a few more books' worth of grief over to AO3. And kept up with exchanges and book club writing and all the other tasks I set for myself this year. I successfully played some more with APIs so as to make the indicator lights work even better than they had been before. I have been Silvery through all of it (how could I not?) and all of the other accomplishments, both loud and quiet, and while I am still adjusting to the new reality, I will keep trying until there is success. It would be helpful to get occasional reminders that people who are not me also see my successes for those times where my own mental attention won't be able to overcome the brainweasels without help.
Mostly, though, I intend just to keep trying.
no subject
Date: 2022-12-02 07:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-02 07:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-02 07:33 am (UTC)The bare minimum for affiliated people: not overtly personally insulting randos.
I wish that were not the floor.
no subject
Date: 2022-12-02 07:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-02 08:21 am (UTC)You might not have thought of yourself that way!
But... you're open, you're writing about things that work in finding a way, and you're frank about what works and what doesn't.
Okay, that's what I see: but this post is, I think, for your 'take' on reassuring and encouraging.
no subject
Date: 2022-12-02 08:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-02 04:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-02 04:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-02 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-02 05:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-02 05:26 pm (UTC)I'm impressed you've hit all your goals this year. Well done polishing your luster.
no subject
Date: 2022-12-02 05:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-03 07:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-03 07:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-03 04:43 pm (UTC)Best wishes with getting the meds dialed in and overall reduction of anxiety and physical symptoms. My sympathies about the body saying, “Actually? This is your highest priority starting Right Now.”
no subject
Date: 2022-12-03 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-30 11:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-12-31 05:43 am (UTC)