e

I'm not usually much for setting explicit goals, a fact which I think causes some sorrow to my more organized friends and family members. But there are a few things I'm hoping to work towards this year!

( Chocolate Box )

( Driving lessons o_o )

( Cleaning up )

( More and better connection )

( Moar muscles, moar Strong )

And you know, this entry actually felt a lot better to write than I was expecting, so points to snowflake_challenge once again. ♥

1. Anxiety is not always an unpleasant state. At least, it isn't always consciously so. Sometimes -- I imagine it like a day when snow falls so thick and fast that almost all you can see is white, everything fading to white as it recedes into the distance, with even sounds softened and muffled by the heavy hush of the snow, so that it can feel almost as if you're entirely alone in the world, everyone and everything else having disappeared behind a thick white curtain. It isn't an awful feeling. Lonely, maybe. And perhaps discouraging in the sense that it seems unwise to travel very quickly, or away from places you know very well, on such a day, when you might not even know if you were walking in circles, or see hazards until you were almost upon them -- but as long as you stay still, it's safe enough, so again, it isn't in itself unbearable. It's just a little cold.

2. staranise has a really good post on dealing with criticism and/or flames. It is, in the first place, an awesome resource, and in the second, left me somewhere between hysterical laughter and simple hyperventilation for a little while after I read the description of triggered states. I, ah, gather it isn't typical to experience those routinely during harmless interactions with friends? Maybe that's something for me to work on. Another thing to work on: consistently rounding up any state of affairs I can conceivably live with to "being okay". There may in fact even be multiple intermediate levels of existence to be found between acute, unmistakable lack of cope and reasonable wellness! It's something to think about.

3. I'm having a hard time finding words to talk about this beautiful post of Leiah Moser's, probably because my head is full of emotions instead. In it, she talks about being transgender and Jewish. I have no personal experience of the latter, but the former... is maybe something I should stop questioning my experience with.  Or maybe even find words to talk about, one of these days.

4. Springtime Will Kill You starts out as a very nice noir pastiche in which Mr. Orpheus, private detective, is engaged by one Demeter Dione to find her missing daughter, Persephone. From this entertaining beginning it builds, and grows, until it ends up -- someplace pretty amazing, in my estimation. You may wish to overlook the paragraph about the mystique of Death Valley, which Orpheus describes as the only "wild" place left in the otherwise "civilized" state of California; it's a rare false note in a complex and skillfully told story, which does not otherwise have much truck with false dichotomies. Do heed the author's choice not to use archive warnings.

5. I don't know if I'm actually clumsier than average these days, or if that's a leftover bit of self-image from back when I was still growing and couldn't reasonably be expected to keep track of where my elbows were at any given time; if I had to guess, I would say that in practical terms I'm much less accident-prone, but that some of that has come from knowing the limits of my motor skills, rather than having dramatically expanded said limits. Anyway, regardless of whether my lapses of physical grace come more or less frequently than most people's, I've been known to get pretty frustrated with myself when they occur, because, well, getting frustrated with myself is something I am good at.

One of the things that's helped, though? Is learning a little bit about how monumental a task it turns out to be to build a robot that can move around on legs and keep its balance -- or, more impressive still, regain its balance after having lost it. I mean, I still trip or slip or just randomly start to fall over because, like, it is dark, and how am I supposed to stay upright when I can't see? And it's still totally a pain in the neck, and I still sometimes have that familiar internal chorus of "Oh shit! Why am I always so clumsy? I don't even know there is to trip on here, what is my deal?"

But what's newer is, the times when the ground is a little uneven, say, and maybe slightly icy too, and even though I'm trying to be careful, my feet start to slide out from under me, just a little bit, until I correct for it -- at these times, I notice that I did correct for it. And I think, damn, I've got some decent programming at my disposal, here.

And thus cheered my by utter geekiness, I generally feel quite a bit better.