schlugliminal
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long meandering blog post about nothing in particular
🕑 Added 2024-01-27 23:00:04 +0000 UTCI finally finished Buffy the Vampire Slayer last Monday. I watched the final episode at 6am, alone in a warehouse. It felt somehow like the correct environment for that sort of thing. I thought about how many people must have been watching it simultaneously back when it first aired on syndicated television. The buzz at school about how crazy it all was. The collective closure to a series spanning 7 seasons. In 2024, these experiences are private.
The past couple of months I have been working to finish lingering projects. Things that were almost done. Things I hit a wall on and had to put away for a while. I visited my family for a couple of weeks during the *winter holidays* and recalibrated my sense of what is important. For the 2 weeks before I left, I cleaned my apartment, organizing piles of things-I-was-once-doing that had been stratifying for over a year, at least. I'm still digging into my old art studio in my apartment (which has become an inaccessible storage room) and rebuilding the space it once was in the art studio in town I rented with my collaborator artist friend 5ish months ago.
This past year has not pulled any punches on stress--body, mind, environmental, financial. The hardest blows have been the ways I've watched communities deteriorate in real time. People are disappearing in their own ways, at their own pace. I think life has been pretty hard for just about everybody, in an unrelenting fashion, for a while now. There are absolutely people who still retain their sense of joy, people who show up and create little pockets of interconnected-ness, but it's not like it used to be. It's not just a winter thing. It's been building slowly to this for years. We have so little control over so many difficult things. So very few people in my close circles asked me if I was ok last year. They just quietly got frustrated with my inability to be non-stop hyper-effective, unbothered, and full of space, dropping off one after the other, all year long. I know it's not all about me. The frustration goes much deeper. But there is resentment and avoidance directed my way. Whether it's a projection from me or another, or a totally real thing, it's the recurring dynamic, in concert with little-to-no communication about how or why or what's to change. I don't really understand all of my experiences, but I don't think I am scary, or a problem. Just a person. Sometimes it feels like people want me to bear the weight of everything that's wrong. Or like it is unacceptable for me to be tired and ineffective or overburdened and sluggish or have a season of vices sometimes. I don't think that's right. I don't think that's the right way to think about people. It's totally normal to not be ok right now, and it's disturbing how many people are choosing to pretend that everything is fine and nothing is terrible and continue to pressure themselves and others to maintain the facade. We all have to give each other space to grieve our illusions. I know I'm doing my best, and I know when my best is ugly and short tempered and hard to be around. I'm habitually quite clear about what I am capable of and willing to do, and I rarely fail to meet the expectations I have for myself. I try not to take it personally. Everyone is feeling some kind of way, even if they aren't letting themselves actually feel it. Sometimes you just have to be honest and afraid and angry and sad and cry and find your people and pick yourself up and figure out what is within your control and what is not. Not doing that when you really really need to will make you sick. It will literally manifest as physical ailments and wreak havoc on your capacity to focus and thrive emotionally and psychologically. Please feel. Look out for loops. They get loopier the longer you avoid them, but I assure you there is an exit.
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That's mostly where my mind has been at lately. I've had a lot on my mind, but nothing really to say. I am learning to be calm again. Be disciplined again. Be healthy and effective toward my goals again. Since I returned from visiting family, I have been working 40-60 hours/week between 3 jobs, treading the debt spiral, but staying just above it. I've got about 5 more weeks of this before I can reorganize my time. It will all work out in the end. It always does. I've been waking up at 4am, limiting my coffee drinking to before 10am, drinking less alcohol, almost none, practicing guitar 5 days/week, and cooking enough food to sustain me. I started crocheting a blanket that is difficult to describe, but it has been a peaceful process, taking it one row at a time. I'm not in a hurry for anything really, just trying to enjoy the process of becoming.
Stay warm, my friends. I've missed sharing with you. I hope you are still finding joy and connection amongst this chaotic mess we're in.
Much love,
amelia
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