Silver Adept (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
silveradept) wrote2025-01-29 11:40 pm
silveradept) wrote2025-01-29 11:40 pm
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Snowflake Challenge 02025 #15: Going Out On A Happy Note
The final challenge for 2025 encourages us to go forward into the year looking for moments of joy.
The thing that makes this slightly less easy is the "unexpected" part. I do a fair amount of planning my joy out, or at least finding times to have joyousness, because [there's a post from December 7, 2022 by the_tweedy on the former Twitter here about neurodivergent masking and how the presence of a positive emotion gets treated as a warning sign that you're too close to doing something "wrong," and therefore in the interests of safety and self-preservation, most people who mask their neurodivergence also maintain a "constant, low-key negative internal state."] Because of this, and because (if I'm understanding brain chemistry correctly) human brains are wired to have greater memory and easier recall of negative feelings and negative results, it's also harder for me to recall unexpected joys, unless they are emotionally strong joys. (See above about persistent low-key negative state.)
Some of those unexpected joys would also be immediately tamped down at the thought that someone else might have done something for me that was a thing I liked, but they expended some kind of resource on me. When I was in the bad relationship, the "unexpected" usually meant that my ex was spending my money on me. Which would have been fine, if I had that kind of money to spend on me. But it still means that I'm very aware of other people doing things for me that aren't part of some kind of reciprocation or that come from people who have different levels or resources than I do. (I have been told repeatedly that how other people spend their resources is their choice and I do not get to control them to that degree. Which I respect and allow, but maladaptive responses are still maladaptive. I have also been told that I am an entity that other people like doing things for, without the expectation of reciprocation. That does not necessarily mean that I believe it yet, but the more I hear it, the less sus it seems.)
Additionally, as someone raised in the stew of at least toxic-adjacent masculinity, my joy and positive emotional states are only supposed to be let out in specific circumstances, and usually in having joy for the sport team doing well, or justified pride in one of my progeny, or one of the rare and approved situations in life where a man is allowed to express happiness or joy out in public. Even though I've mostly said I'm uninterested in that kind of thing, and I joined up in a profession where displays of positive emotion are regular, both for the reading of material and for helping people out with their problems, there's still a certain amount of "men don't feel that emotion" that's lurking in my cultural background.
That said, I keep a folder of good things that have been said about things I do professionally, and I also keep a folder of good comments left on some of the works that I've done. Those are often very unexpected, as not a lot of people give good feedback in writing at work, and while I like to believe that the things that I do for exchanges and such are of good quality, sometimes they really resonate with readers, and those readers aren't shy about sending a nice comment in.
There is one thing that was an unexpected laugh for me during last year's visits to schools to talk to students about continuing their reading habits all the way through the school break. These were middle school students, so grades 6-8, (which might be year 7-9, if year 1 is the equivalent of kindergarten over here in the States.) and they had been listening to me talk about summer reading programs, and describing the books that I had brought along with me. Several of them had sapphic relationships, sapphic encounters, or sapphic overtones, in addition to their regular plots. After I had finished with one group, and they were moving toward the change of classes, I heard one of the students exclaim to nobody in particular, "Why are all of these books about lesbians?" I did not crack up completely at it, but instead silently commended that student for paying attention during the presentation, as I prepped for the next class that would be coming in and receiving basically the same presentation for themselves. It's the perfect kind of anecdote to tell about students paying attention, even when they're at the phase of life where they're trying to appear aloof and jaded and unmoved by what the strange person up front is trying to do with them. Except for the part where it couldn't really go into anything formal or evaluative because of the exclamation made. But it was definitely a moment of understanding and realization that I had gotten through to at least one student, and they had paid enough attention to what was going on to deliver commentary about one of the themes of the books that were part of the presentation.
One of the other things that was unexpectedly fun this year is that I think I received my very first Official Citation in someone else's article, based on a chapter that I wrote in a book four years previously. I can now add that I have had a work cited onto my QI resume. And also, when an academic that I follow on Mastodon was putting together a presentation on how much an LLM is like a TTRPG GM, I provided some suggestions to it and got a nice thanks in the presentation. When I mentioned the presentation looked good and probably had been delivered, the academic said I was someone whose opinion she respected. (Surprised Pikachu reaction goes here - I'm a front line grunt who still occasionally manages to get themselves published in places. What are academics doing saying they respect my opinions about anything?)
One that I have to remember for this year is that during my "take defunct electronics apart without having to worry about putting them back together" program, one of the teens who was there used the tools to disassemble, clean, and reassemble one of their game console controllers that a sibling had handled and gotten a fair amount of slime into. I hadn't advertised it as a repair program, but I was pleased that the tools I had on hand were enough for this person to do the repair, and that was cool. (Also, when the kids got in after the keyboards of the devices and the keycaps started flying, I demonstrated to myself and one of the other grownups that my hand-eye coordination was still pretty good by catching the flying keycaps as they kept sailing in my vicinity. The first catch was by reflex, and the subsequent ones were because I was now aware of the potential for flying keycaps.) Makes me think about what would be needed for a program that actually was a repair program, and what kinds of tools and expertise I'd need to recruit to make it successful.
So yeah, there are those moments of joy and happiness that happen all throughout the year, and I try to pay at least some attention to them. (And some of them end up reappearing on performance evaluations for the year, or I dip back into them when I want to reassure myself that people do enjoy the works that I do for them in exchanges and other.) I highly recommend that if you don't already, that you start keeping a folder of the good things people say about you, your fanworks, or your excellence at your work, hobby, or otherwise. They can be really helpful for bludgeoning brainweasels trying to convince you that you have had no impact nor worth to anyone else.
Today, I invite you to pause for a little and…
Challenge #15
Talk about an unexpected joyous moment you experienced last year.
[hellip;]
Joy comes in lots of forms. Did something make you giggle or crack a smile when you didn’t expect to? Or feel surprisingly content, satisfied, pleased, glad, or warm?
The moment can be quiet, loud, brief, big — maybe it lasted a second, maybe it spanned months. Maybe it was something you saw or heard or read, or something you or somebody did.
There’s no right or wrong answer; only your answer! ;D
The thing that makes this slightly less easy is the "unexpected" part. I do a fair amount of planning my joy out, or at least finding times to have joyousness, because [there's a post from December 7, 2022 by the_tweedy on the former Twitter here about neurodivergent masking and how the presence of a positive emotion gets treated as a warning sign that you're too close to doing something "wrong," and therefore in the interests of safety and self-preservation, most people who mask their neurodivergence also maintain a "constant, low-key negative internal state."] Because of this, and because (if I'm understanding brain chemistry correctly) human brains are wired to have greater memory and easier recall of negative feelings and negative results, it's also harder for me to recall unexpected joys, unless they are emotionally strong joys. (See above about persistent low-key negative state.)
Some of those unexpected joys would also be immediately tamped down at the thought that someone else might have done something for me that was a thing I liked, but they expended some kind of resource on me. When I was in the bad relationship, the "unexpected" usually meant that my ex was spending my money on me. Which would have been fine, if I had that kind of money to spend on me. But it still means that I'm very aware of other people doing things for me that aren't part of some kind of reciprocation or that come from people who have different levels or resources than I do. (I have been told repeatedly that how other people spend their resources is their choice and I do not get to control them to that degree. Which I respect and allow, but maladaptive responses are still maladaptive. I have also been told that I am an entity that other people like doing things for, without the expectation of reciprocation. That does not necessarily mean that I believe it yet, but the more I hear it, the less sus it seems.)
Additionally, as someone raised in the stew of at least toxic-adjacent masculinity, my joy and positive emotional states are only supposed to be let out in specific circumstances, and usually in having joy for the sport team doing well, or justified pride in one of my progeny, or one of the rare and approved situations in life where a man is allowed to express happiness or joy out in public. Even though I've mostly said I'm uninterested in that kind of thing, and I joined up in a profession where displays of positive emotion are regular, both for the reading of material and for helping people out with their problems, there's still a certain amount of "men don't feel that emotion" that's lurking in my cultural background.
That said, I keep a folder of good things that have been said about things I do professionally, and I also keep a folder of good comments left on some of the works that I've done. Those are often very unexpected, as not a lot of people give good feedback in writing at work, and while I like to believe that the things that I do for exchanges and such are of good quality, sometimes they really resonate with readers, and those readers aren't shy about sending a nice comment in.
There is one thing that was an unexpected laugh for me during last year's visits to schools to talk to students about continuing their reading habits all the way through the school break. These were middle school students, so grades 6-8, (which might be year 7-9, if year 1 is the equivalent of kindergarten over here in the States.) and they had been listening to me talk about summer reading programs, and describing the books that I had brought along with me. Several of them had sapphic relationships, sapphic encounters, or sapphic overtones, in addition to their regular plots. After I had finished with one group, and they were moving toward the change of classes, I heard one of the students exclaim to nobody in particular, "Why are all of these books about lesbians?" I did not crack up completely at it, but instead silently commended that student for paying attention during the presentation, as I prepped for the next class that would be coming in and receiving basically the same presentation for themselves. It's the perfect kind of anecdote to tell about students paying attention, even when they're at the phase of life where they're trying to appear aloof and jaded and unmoved by what the strange person up front is trying to do with them. Except for the part where it couldn't really go into anything formal or evaluative because of the exclamation made. But it was definitely a moment of understanding and realization that I had gotten through to at least one student, and they had paid enough attention to what was going on to deliver commentary about one of the themes of the books that were part of the presentation.
One of the other things that was unexpectedly fun this year is that I think I received my very first Official Citation in someone else's article, based on a chapter that I wrote in a book four years previously. I can now add that I have had a work cited onto my QI resume. And also, when an academic that I follow on Mastodon was putting together a presentation on how much an LLM is like a TTRPG GM, I provided some suggestions to it and got a nice thanks in the presentation. When I mentioned the presentation looked good and probably had been delivered, the academic said I was someone whose opinion she respected. (Surprised Pikachu reaction goes here - I'm a front line grunt who still occasionally manages to get themselves published in places. What are academics doing saying they respect my opinions about anything?)
One that I have to remember for this year is that during my "take defunct electronics apart without having to worry about putting them back together" program, one of the teens who was there used the tools to disassemble, clean, and reassemble one of their game console controllers that a sibling had handled and gotten a fair amount of slime into. I hadn't advertised it as a repair program, but I was pleased that the tools I had on hand were enough for this person to do the repair, and that was cool. (Also, when the kids got in after the keyboards of the devices and the keycaps started flying, I demonstrated to myself and one of the other grownups that my hand-eye coordination was still pretty good by catching the flying keycaps as they kept sailing in my vicinity. The first catch was by reflex, and the subsequent ones were because I was now aware of the potential for flying keycaps.) Makes me think about what would be needed for a program that actually was a repair program, and what kinds of tools and expertise I'd need to recruit to make it successful.
So yeah, there are those moments of joy and happiness that happen all throughout the year, and I try to pay at least some attention to them. (And some of them end up reappearing on performance evaluations for the year, or I dip back into them when I want to reassure myself that people do enjoy the works that I do for them in exchanges and other.) I highly recommend that if you don't already, that you start keeping a folder of the good things people say about you, your fanworks, or your excellence at your work, hobby, or otherwise. They can be really helpful for bludgeoning brainweasels trying to convince you that you have had no impact nor worth to anyone else.