MOOP!

I am sad, and it sucks and I don't like it.

Some of it is the usual genocide-other-genocide-plague-climate-disaster background radiation that makes my brain constantly quietly ache. Some of it is the February-work-is-hard-burn-out-where-is-the-sun-and-the-warm background radiation that makes my body sad and tired. Some of it is slightly more immediate and pinpointable Weird-Relationship-Stuff-Where-I-Am-Probably-Not-Doing-A-Good-Enough-Job.

I am anxious and burnt-out and tired and not good enough and it's making me sad.

And I fucking hate that this has been my most productive Saturday in like a century. I put on cute makeup in the morning¹. I ordered more meds. I ran a decent bells practice with only seven people, one of whom had never touched a bell before yesterday³. I socialized with old and new friends (Micah and aforementioned new ringer) and got to take the train home with them. I read an entire book⁴. I attended a zoom meeting for RSCDSBoston teachers and provided insights. I organized my bookshelf (a task that has been on my todo list for over a year). I did the tax.

And I'm still sad. I'm productive sad, and feel better about myself than if I was non-productive sad, probably I guess, but like. I...I don't know. There is an overwhelming amount of Still To Do, I'm not quite finished, and also the part where I'm still Not-Good-Enough so that's cool as shit.

Yesterday I got home after bells and sat up on my staircase for half an hour and cried. I made myself sad with Bad Times Daydreams, a thing I try not to actually indulge, and then I cried, and like...if I hadn't been full of the anxiety and the burnt-out and the tired I wouldn't have been tempted into it in the first place.

And it's eleven o clock at night and I don't really know what to do with myself. I'm actually listening to music⁵, I've already played my daily challenges of Hexcells and Necrodancer, I could read Holes which finally got released from my library holds? I should/could Grundos since I haven't today? I deserve ice cream, or to open a new set of dice or something because I did the accounts?

(I am behind on Dicember, they said, still always acutely aware of the things they Have Not Done, even several months later.)

Productive and Sad is worlds better than unable-to-do-stuff-Depressed, but it's still not joyous. And it's lack of sun and a world that wants me dead and some of that will change in the summer but maybe I am facing a universe where I'm never joyous again. It's not the best thought, though of course because I am immortal I will have to sort out how to deal with it, just like everything else.

("Perhaps I am a miscreation no one knows the truth there is no future here" plays as I write this, and hm and huh and yeah. Sometimes past!Sor made good playlists.)

Anyways, I hope you are able to be joyous. I hope you are able to be as productive as is soothing to your soul, and do not have to be more than that. I hope we can hang out soon and go to a T-station for a selfie (I have not forgotten, it is just still cold).

I love you. I mean that to me as well, even if it doesn't sound like it. I'm allowed to love sad people too, who would be left if I wasn't?

I love you.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: I mean, I woke up and as I started to get dressed was hit with so much dysphoria I had to wear a binder on a non-work day, which does not happen I have gone bra-free² and it's great. So it's less cute makeup and more _war paint_ and that's fine, I'm sure it's fine.

2: I still own a handful of "girl bras" which I wear with certain ball gowns some of the time. And I bind for work, and this year it's all real binders instead of sports bras because I made a really big gc2b order last June and now I own like eight binders instead of two. But me tiddies are wee and I like better not particularly compressing them in the day-to-day, it turns out.

3: Okay technically she also had one day of handling at Smith at some nebulous point in the past, but that doesn't count for reasons I'll decide later.

4: Wayside School is Falling Down, which may be the most iconic one, it's certainly where all the chapters I particularly remember/enjoy are: the three chapters 19, the one with Myron becoming Free, the one that's backwards, "I got one sock, looking for its brother", and Star Bringing Purple.

As an aside, the chapters 19 hit _so much different_ now that I am a teacher myself, holy wow.

5: Although it occurs to me that in my current mood, "Between" is not the correct song. What happens if we put "Space Monkey Mafia" on loud instead?

canyonwalker commented on my most recent post with the following:

I'm curious about the dice reward system you've mentioned several times recently. Are you talking about actual dice, like the kind used in tabletop RPGs? What kind of dice do you like, and how does the reward system work?

...and then I accidentally wrote my whole day's worth of words in response. It turns out I am REALLY EXCITED TO BABBLE ABOUT DICE. Probably this fact is not surprising to people who've been haunting my journal since 2004 (how do I not have a tag for this?) but I'm always happy to squee more!

Here we go:

***

I am talking actual dice! I like RPGs well enough, but my true love has always been the clicky-clacky polyhedral math rocks and over my lifetime I have acquired...more than most people. I'm no Seanan McGuire (who obtained an old Library card catalog to store and sort her own collection) but I'm no slouch either.

(The link above is some photos showing the ~600 dice I have in sets or otherwise with some sort of "special" factor to them. Not pictured is the ~300 loose random dice that aren't in sets, which I use for various math teacher purposes and pretend not to notice when my students steal one or two.)

I like all dice, but my preference is for plastic over metal or wood. I have a few metal sets and they're nice enough -and the weight is great- but I am always more worried that they'll scratch each other up if I store them in bags and I don't have an interest in getting heaps of fancy storage boxes. My preference is for ALL THE COLOURS, but you'll notice a distinct bias for greens and oranges (which matches up with my colour bias for, uh, everything else I own!).

I've found that I'm picky about inclusions in my dice --I appreciate that lots of dicemakers want to put lots of cute things into their dice, but I find the effect most often falls flat. I still own a handful¹, but I've been trying to be _very_ selective about which additional ones I purchase since I don't like being disappointed. The dice are just usually too distorted to clearly figure out what's supposed to be inside.

(Speaking of Seanan McGuire though, I *do* have a set of Evergreen Burrow's Scrollie Rollies with fragments of a copy of the book Middlegame embedded in the resin. Those are absolutely *not* a disappointment, they are _gorgeous_.)

My go-to companies are Foam Brain Games (bigger dice company that does some originals and lots of outsourcing, their convention displays are *so* delightful to peruse), Ice Cream Dice (small company with food inspired dice that is so candy-bright and delicious to look at!) and Dead Eye Dice (small company I found on Etsy with totally handmade sets). I'm not exclusive though --my spreadsheet² includes 14 different companies (and it's not complete, I'll probably find another four or five companies when I next update!)

***

As for the reward system, I bought one of Black Oak Workshop's Advent-ure Calendars last year. I didn't actually have anything in particular to count down to, so it languished for a couple months until I figured out that I could use it as an incentive for Getting Things Done. I was already keeping my Dailies list (a group of about twenty things I should do every, or at least most, day(s)) so it was easy enough to just consider opening one door of the calendar as a reward for hitting 15/20. 75% is a healthier (and more attainable!) goal than 100%.)

I've managed to earn a die about 40% of days since implementing this system, which maybe means my threshold is still a little too high, or maybe just means I really do need to push myself a little more to Get Things Done. Many of my dailies are things that could be done in 10 minutes or less, I just need to...make myself fit it into the rest of the day!

What I have managed to do is not buy any more dice since starting the system...sortof. I actually have four still-sealed packages in my room, each holding 3-6 sets of dice from a different company, which will allow me³ to restock the calendar once I've opened all the doors. Given a 40% rate, it might take me all year to open and have those other pretties, but I've been considering ToDo list methods that could earn me a second die for each day.

***

Part of me wants to end this post with some kind of defense of the money and space I've spent here, but nope! Not doing it. The money would be a lot if you looked at it all at once, but I've been collecting dice since I was twelve, and the amounts and kinds I buy are commensurate with my disposable income. Own Pretty Things That Make You Happy --as Ms. Kondo would say, my dice spark joy, and therefore are a good part of my life!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: And if I were writing this comment at home instead of during free time at work I'd be diving into my dicebags to photograph more examples...

2: What? Obviously I have a spreadsheet. I love spreadsheets almost as much as I love dice, and it's a nice way to keep organized about All This.

3: Well...technically I'll have someone else load it for me. It's just more fun if I don't know exactly what I'm going to get (and because I ordered some mystery sets from some of the companies, there really will be some complete surprises for me!)

Having joined Habitica again, I'm not using it very well. Something about it being the ~weekend~ and therefore not having to do things as much or something. Hopefully I will get my ass together and do better again tomorrow?

(I feel like maybe I am starting to slide out of a mild hell zone? This is interesting, but not unsurprising, that I seem to be able to recognize the Hell Zone more accurately when I am leaving it rather than entering. But maybe a good sign always is whether or not I've got the self discipline to sleep in a real bed, vs falling asleep on the couch for a while before going to bed.)

((There is definitely a somewhat different feel to the household on weekends, if only because suddenly Ezri's not working. It changes the overall house culture, yanno? Like, if I'm not doing work but they are, there's some degree of...guilt or accountability or something like that. (sidebar to Ezri: This is in no way meant to be judgemental or guilt-inducing, please enjoy your weekends!)))

***

Yesterday I fainted for the first time in my adult life. Extremely likely that it was lack of food/very low blood pressure/the usual low iron but worse. I actually hit the ground though (which meant I got to have a very charming conversation with Ezri where I went into the living room and was all "um...did you...hear a thump a moment ago?" and Ez saying that they had indeed, and had called "are you okay" and gotten no answer, but then heard me stirring so did not go investigate.)

Obviously I did some self-care immediately afterwards, mostly of the "drink a lot of water, eat anything, eat salt, eat fatty dairy full of protein" in that order. I did not faint again, or even grey out yesterday.

I have been greying out more than usual during these trying pandemic times. Just...stand up, get a rush and a little bit of weird in the head. This is what caused me to actually collapse to the ground --I have been enjoying the incredibly weird and unique moment of my brain sliding sideways into nothing and my head feeling pressured that comes with greying out. Normally if I just stand still, it passes. This time it did not and I got to experience the incredible confusion of waking up on my bedroom floor and having to piece together what on earth I was doing there.

(Yes, I recognize that grey-outs are a bad sign, probably of super low blood pressure, and when I've been experiencing them, I've been taking them as the alert they are and trying to minimize them. I have not been encouraging this, but I have been enjoying it when it happens, because bodies are weird and fascinating).

In case it's not very clear, I think this was an incredibly neat experience. I mean, no, it was not good that I hit my head on the floor (I spent the rest of the day watching for concussion, and everything was fine until I was lying in bed 14 hours later at which point my brain helpfully suggested that you're not supposed to sleep with a concussion, probably because you will die. I did not die.) But the rest of it! The rest of it was a keen thing my body has never done before!

At any rate, now I know what that feels like, and maybe I will be smart enough, the next time the world starts greying, to at least sit down immediately instead of trying to ride it out. Or better yet, drinking a lot more water to head the whole thing off at the pass.

...but probably I am not going to be able to answer in the affirmative to the MGH plea of "we desperately need blood donations" for at least another week or two.

***

Tomorrow I need to do more of the Endless Paper Sorting And Filing project. It is getting better, gradually. I went to four boxen on the floor to two, and now I've gone from three chock-full filing cabinet drawers to two-and-a-half. There are at least two specific projects that I am too shamed to mention explicitly, but need to get done as part of All This. Also at some point I'm gonna wind up doing a very hard culling of a LOT of old art. Or I won't, fuck it, who cares.

I also need to finish up the grading for seniors --last day was on Friday. Everything feels unreal, of course, but there will be some small celebrations in the coming days. I don't have a car, so I can't even go sit secluded during their "one student at a time in very proscribed times" graduation ceremony to happen in a few weeks. I am a little sad about that, and will miss them all dreadfully.

This is all quite hard, and you are quite wonderful for surviving it so far. I love you, and hope that continues.

~Sor
MOOP!

I haven't updated in five days. Here are some things:

*Austin came and visited from Friday evening to Monday early afternoon. It was a very nice visit --he walked over, instead of taking the T, and given how close we are and were even the week before, probably neither of us have changed our risk profiles *that* much? But it was lovely to have him around for a bit, especially since we don't know when that will happen again, not really.

*Schools have been closed until May 4th, at least. I have a meeting with my department head tomorrow afternoon (immediately after she has a meeting with admin) so I'll know more about the Longterm Distance Learning Plan then. We are still only giving enrichment work, which means my students are largely not doing _anything_ offered up. I have some thoughts of things I might try, including maybe reading chapters of The Number Devil as a YouTube stream, if I can figure out how that works. (Probably I should email the author and find out if there are copyright issues with that idea --maybe only if I archive the streams after?)

*I am still alive, still eating multiple good meals a day, still showering every day (or every other sometimes, but that's totally normal for me). I missed my meds for about a week straight, just because I kept not remember to take them until it was too late in the day --I took them today and hopefully that will get me back on track. Physically, I'm fine.

*I finally started a calendar, after realizing that there are Too Many Good Things happening online with the livestreams and whatnot. Tomorrow is the Anna and the Apocalypse tweet-along, (as well as my meeting and my first attempt at an open office hours for my students), then Friday we're gonna try and have a family zoom meet-up, and Sunday is a s00j concert. Every Wednesday for the next five weeks is one of Patty's online archeology classes, about half of which sound SUPER INTERESTING and the rest of which merely sound interesting, and I'll maybe be able to go except that...

*Wednesday night is also the night the bellringers have been getting together for group social. Last week I failed to have a date with mek (we just...didn't manage to sync and really need to try again) instead, and this week I missed about half of the fun due to attending the Exec meeting and talking about Srs Future Stuff instead. But it was really nice to see everyone's faces --there were at least fifteen ringers represented-- and get like...tours of Michael's new apartment and to see Mira and James's cat and stuff like that.

*I've been _really_ laggy ever since Austin left. I was doing SO WELL with the cards, and then I was too busy hanging out with him to focus on them (I still _did_ stuff --my taskmaster projects, my words, lots of good food and hanging out outside!) and now I've completely lost track of them. Maybe tonight before I go to bed I'll choose a set? I don't know. I suspect I'm slowly moving towards a more stringent schedule, even though those usually don't work for me very long or well. I like the generalness of the cards!

*But yeah, Monday I watched nearly an entire season of British Bakeshow, and then yesterday and today both had _long_ stretches of playing _lots_ of dumb phone games. Probably I am not allowed to play dumb phone games tomorrow.

*I haven't been outside since Monday, and that's probably bad. I'm not very good at making my brain just...go be outside (especially when the weather's not particularly encouraging), I really need a destination in mind in order to leave the house. I should try and get back into PokeGo, that will help.

*The inbox zero project is about the only thing that's been making progress. I'm down to 1369 unread emails in my inbox, which is...staggeringly low, for me. There is hope! There is a light at the end of the tunnel! Then I can start interacting with the 15,000 emails that are just...in my inbox and need archiving or whatever. Sigh?

(The read-but-still-in-the-inbox emails date as far back as...well there's only one from 2007, that's a start anyways. The vast majority are LJ -not DW- comment notifications of some sort or another.)

*I keep thinking I want to do something like "Screenfree Sundays" or whatever, but I absolutely lack the conviction, and also I don't actually want to do that on a Sunday, probably. Maybe I'll trial run it this Sunday, with the exception of the s00j concert, oh bother. There're just Too Many Good Things going on, despite the apocalypse.

*Something great is going to happen tomorrow.

~Sor
MOOP!

Okay. So I am an ADHD nightmare childe, and I want not to be. How do I fix that?

STUFF I CURRENTLY DO (no value judgments, just description):

*Open ten million tabs on my computer and also phone. These are generally "get back to this" --finish reading the article, emotionally process the post, save the picture, comment on the entry, subscribe to the patreon, back the kickstarter, add the event to my calendar, What Have You.

*Use alarms on my phone to remind me it's time to do a thing. These can be specific time-based things (leave for the concert, wake up from the nap) or they can be vaguer things (you should book an aeroplane, do it now!)

*Write things down in my Planner. The current manifestation of the planner has a spread for each week of the calendar year (and now a page at the end for "next year"). On one side I put "Todos" and on the other I put "Events". Later I check them off.

*Set up roughly infinity filters on my GMail to automatically label different things, which makes archiving unread emails pretty simple. I'm still HOPELESSLY BEHIND, but I have maintained InboxZero in the past, and I stubbornly maintain I can do it again someday. (Small value judgment)

*At work, maintain a new ToDo list basically every day. Maintain a "ToGrade list, full of ticky boxen. Maintain a daily checkboxen full of tasks (attendance, post homework, enter participation grades, grade daily warmups...).

*Write, at some point in each 24 hour period, at least 750words. Lots of these are Skedulans, or ToDos lists. (24 hour period = 0600-0600, skedulan = broken down schedule of what I hope to achieve that day. Spelled thusly because for a long time schedule was one of my "cannot spell" words and "it might as well have a "k" in it for all I know")

STUFF I DO NOT CURRENTLY HAVE SYSTEMS FOR, EVEN BAD ONES:

*Actual paper mail. Literally no method or system for this beyond "eventually move from my mailbox to one of several piles in my room"

*Refining basically any of the above to be more consistently timed or used, especially like...going back over things once I have written them down, or opened them in a tab or whathaveyou.

*Power Hour??? #AccountabilityClub??? ForestApp??? All of these are things I have successfully used for short periods in the past, but are not currently working/happening.

*Defeating addictive/mindless phone games and playing them for Too Long (what did that procrastination article I didn't read call it? The Dark Playground??)

*Leaving/transitions. I am continually astounded by the fact that for summer school these two weeks, it has not mattered in the slightest what time I wake up, I will consistently leave for work four minutes late. Related to the point above, some.

(I actually pride myself on the fact that I think I am better-than-average at correctly approximating how long it will take to Do Things, but that doesn't work when I'm trying to get out of the house and things are sorta nebulous and also I'm tired and maybe I should shower and eat breakfast and all these sudden unpredictable tasks.)

*Food

*Money tracking, beyond the very basic "when I get a high enough amount in the checking account I put some in savings; I stop buying frivolous things when checking seems to get low".

*Anything that I need to do that's really big, very nebulous, and does not have a solid deadline (finding jobs, applying to grad schools, getting new glasses, dentist)

*Brushing my hair, and to a lesser extent, other general hygiene tasks. I mean, I successfully do them, but I might do better with more of an Active Plan than "huh, been a day and a half, guess I should shower".

My biggest takeaway from writing all the above is mild surprise that I am actually much _less_ of a nightmare childe than I feared. I have lots of structures and crutches and ideas in place! They absolutely need refining and editing and adjusting and twitching --I want very badly to find things that work _with_ my brain and don't involve me trying to fundamentally change my mess in ways that will just be SUPER FRUSTRATING.

Gonna stop the entry here, bring this to my therapist next week, and request feedback from y'all. How do you manage your life?

~Sor
MOOP!

So, did you know that sleep is important? Because sleep is, apparently, important!

Like, I've pretty much reached an understanding with myself, where I more or less "get" the idea that I have to eat, regularly, and honestly quite a lot. I'm still not particularly good at it¹, but I understand that if I'm feeling mopey or wounded or depressed eating is probably a really good first step.

I have not reached this understanding with sleep yet. But Sunday and Monday nights were both 4.5 hours, compounded with me being SUPER SORE AND TIRED from BodaBorg still. Tuesday and last night were 6 hours, which is a lot closer to normal².

Yesterday wasn't great, as I was still catching up, but today! Today everything has finally clicked back down, and I feel so much better. I mean, I'm still painfully stressed, behind in my grading, and in the middle of dealing with hellish logistics about both my future job and house, but damn, that extra hour and a half makes a difference.

(Of course, I'm not going to get a chance to actually pay back my debt this weekend, because convention...which I don't necessarily have a room for...um...shit. I should figure that out. Probably in the next twenty-four hours.)

So maybe I am going to make it some kind of goal (coughHabiticacough) to actually get at least 42 hours of sleep a week. I can do that, right? It's not even two full days! ;)

~Sor
MOOP!

1: I don't have disordered eating or food aversions, but I do completely hate cooking. And food shopping.

2: Strictly speaking, to function at my approximate baseline definition of normal, I should be alternating 6 and 7.5 hours of sleep a weeknight, with 7.5-10.5 a night on the weekends. This allows me to do the valuable awake things that keep my brain happy, and also gets me enough sleep.

Things I should be doing: Cleaning my room. Organizing stuff. Dealing with Adult Things.

What I am doing: Essentially, rolling around on the floor being useless.

BUT! I did finally convert hard boiled eggs into egg salad (which Genni and I both deemed amazing) and now I am eating dinner and I texted some people and okay, really it's just that Genni came home and it stopped being EMPTY HOUSE ALL AROUND AND NO MOTIVATION and I have this sneaking suspicion that I am actually an extrovert and don't really know what to do with that information.

Anywho, there is creepypasta and sammiches and someone should get on IM and get my attention and then get on Skype with me and encourage me to clean my room while chatting with them. And...also protect me from the creepypasta because I am seriously going to go do this, and I get spooked _so easily_ and this is _such a bad decision_ and I know before I make this decision that it will leave me jumping at shadows and carefully checking everywhere in the bathroom before I pee¹ and other nonsense.

But I'm gonna do it anyways, because I will never become a horror buff if I don't, and you have no idea how much I love creepy stories, and there's this super long list of "bestof" that someone on Tumblr put together months ago and I've only gotten through like twenty of them so far.

So yeah. If you happen to be up at two AM, I could probably use talkdowns. Hoping to convince the boyf to come over after his partything, but being as he is a social butterfly, he will probably be doing that instead. It's okay. I'm not bitter or anything.

WHEE FOR RANDOM WEIRD LIVEJOURNAL POSTS!

(no seriously, I used to make this sort of post all the time and I really kinda miss it. Livejournal remains my social media baby. Someday I should unpack my urge to call everything I care about my babies. Especially when it comes to the people taking my GED class, who are on the whole much older than me, and sometimes have kids who are not much younger than I am.)

~Sor
MOOP!

1: The best part of this instinct is the fact that I have utterly no idea what I'd do if I pulled back the shower curtain and there was some evil dude standing there. Just...close the shower curtain again? Scream scream scream, then run away?² Politely apologize for intruding and back away? I do not even know.

2: *drones, in her best dude-what-does-Magnetic-Fields-voice*³ "The count has an eye on his ankle / and lives in a horrible place. He's not very funny / he wants all your money / he wants to remove your face"

3: Okay, technically it's a Gothic Archies song, but they're the same guy, alright? Also, did you know that the Gothic Archies did an entire album of music inspired by and about A Series of Unfortunate Events. So awesome.

If I try to change the subject, that's because I don't want to talk about it.

One of my coping mechanisms --hell, my most used coping mechanism-- is to write. One line posts, quick rants, strings of curses...whatever. I fire it out, and a lot of the time, I don't bother to proofread or think much about it.

This is what twitter is for, after all. Letting people know the mood of that particular instant.

That particular instant. Moods don't last, and I've had more than a few awkward conversations because I let the walls down too low one night and hadn't found a way to hide that fact the following day.

The second most used coping mechanism is to mask. To find so many distractions, splatter myself across the internet, talk to so many people at once that I can't help but put on a happy face and pretend everything's alright. If I pretend enough, it can't help but become real.

However, masking takes a little bit of energy. It's a fragile goddamn process, and while I'm working on it, it's very very delicate. Trying to undistract me, pointing me back to whatever caused me to need to mask in the first place Just Doesn't Help.

So, why am I crying/upset/frustrated/hiding/etc? Because I'm in this shithole of suburbia. Because I'm sleeping alone at night. Because it's been x days since I've seen him or him and it doesn't fucking matter what number x is, it's too fucking high. Because I'm too introverted for this household, and I can't always have people nearby, and without people, I have to be by myself. Because when I'm by myself, I have to deal with myself, and in case my wildly zaphodic ego wasn't enough of a hint, I do not always or even often get along with who I really am.

Because I hate it here, and I can't escape. There *isn't* an escape here. I can go play on mein Das Nonstop-Programm¹ or climb my tree or do any one of another million things that will unthrill my mother and result in annoyed phone messages.

Because I hate it in my head, and without distraction, I *really* can't escape. Let me find my fucking distractions, okay? Or seriously, GTFO, because it doesn't help. Star-hugs-star only works so well, and it's really just well enough.

No. I don't want to talk about it.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Very obscure reference. Don't feel like explaining, figure out a way to search my journal or something, as I'm relatively sure I've reff'd it before.

When I read, I don't read a chapter at a time. I don't read for fifteen minutes every night before I sleep. Hell, I don't even read in lines and during lunch and only during those spare scraps of time when I don't have anything else to do.

When I read, I Read. I read books from page one straight on through to page ninety or two hundred or a thousand. If I'm lucky, I force myself to eat during that time --taking the book with me, of course. Every time I have to close the book, I do so with reluctance, and while I'm in the middle of a book, more desperate than any other want is the niggling little desire to keep reading --to find out what comes next, to read and see and hear the words and find out just what the author has planned.

This is why I don't read very often. This is also why I perpetually have multiple books that I am "in the middle of"--I will start Reading them, get torn away, and so distracted that I never manage to grab them again.

I like reading. I like it a lot, and I realize this every time I pick up paper books again. I've managed to read five novels in three days (admittedly only one new) and I'm happy about this --it helps make me feel stable.

But I meant to be ready to start accomplishing things an hour ago. I wanted to be showered, with clean hair, and working on my scriptwriting or my calculus or my teaching homework. What ate my time? Are you shocked to learn it was a book?

I read a lot less often than most of the rest of you, and that's a depressing thing to think about. I'd really really like to change that. But honestly? I'm so erratic and distractible when it comes to homework already. Do you really think having "just one more chapter" whining in the back of my head will make it any better?

...

Thoughts?

~Sor
MOOP!

THOUGHTS WHILE PACKING:

1548:

Man, my folder of worship is getting *awesomely* full. One Comedity print, original art by Randy Milholland, Randall Munroe, and Jeph Jacques, a random commision of a dinosaur I bought at AnimeBoston, Hiro's milk mustache ad, the picture of me that Dominik used as a print for his portfolio, and my still alive index cards.

And that's not counting the Maryland folder of worship which contains an obscene amount of KattersArt, and my original sluggy art.

(For reference, the folder of worship is basically full of everything that goes on the wall of worship. So, not real posters, but Other Cool Things. I should put the ST article I ripped out of a magazine in there too.)


1557: Dude, that's James Bond? What the hell is James Bond music doing in my iTun...ohyeah. Thanks Talia!

1636: Unrelatedly to anything (I'm fine today, just a little stressed out) I find it really interesting that, one of the things I do when I'm trying really hard not to start crying in public, is to begin seeing how much of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy I can recite.

Granted, this somehow backfires as I originally began to learn hitchhikers as a self-masochistic way to illustrate the 2718.89 miles between me and my clone, and if I think too hard about that I'll be depressed, but still, just as a "shit shit I need to distract myself from everything in real life" it works like a charm.

1925: ...Ohyeah, I was working on this. Well, I mean, Ria was all "doof?" and dhs was all "I'll bribe you to come to Diesel with the offer of giving back your clothes" and so I went and got dinner with Ria and Mando (who recently dyed his hair BLUE and so now looks not unlike a character of mine) and then went to Diesel where I stayed for like...an hour or something. On the wicked plus side, I was finally properly/formally introduced to sunspiral, which is exciting. *adds him as a friend*

Now all I need to do is properly meet Cthulia and I'll be able to officially consider myself a Boston based fen.

2137: Did I really just spend the last two hours reorganizing my friends lists, again? Fuck. Me.

2224: You know what I want to know? I want to know how long it would've taken me to meet and become friends with Janny without the sluggy.net link. I think the only other person on my friends list who I could say pretty confidentally that I would meet without however I met them having happened is dan4th. And maybe very vaguely possibly Magus, but only insomuch I would've started to meet him at Balticon '06 rather than Origins '04

I'm attempting to clean out my gmail inbox, ie, archiving everything I'm done with. I had 1209 messages from 2008 sitting in my inbox waiting to be archived and about 4500 overall, I am *hilariously* bad at this, and not just because of the several hundred comment threads of doom I'm ignoring with mek.

OH! And I might be going to GenCon this year!! Mom's going, and if I can get the time off from wherever I will be working, there was an implication of me being able to booth babe for Joan. :D!

2237: So, something Tristan asked me right when we found out we were both virgos¹ was "So what's your neurosis?" I can't remember exactly what I answered --almost certainly my default compulsion, the fact that I clean my glasses overly often, and every single time I ever get into a conversation about OCD or neuroses. *speaking of which, cleans 'em now. Sigh*

But I think my current big one is the neck thing. I hate hate HATE having my neck touched, it freaks me out. Occasionally, I'll just freak out about the fact that I have a neck for no good damn reason which pisses me off, especially when I get the "ohgodohgod, need to have nothing near my neck, RIGHT NOW" Necklaces and collars I can take off. T-shirts are harder. Skin is impossible.

I was idly thinking about this, and about the fact that, when doing the cuddling/petting/caressing fan situation that I seem to find myself in a lot, if someone gets their hands too close to my neck, I will invariably move their hands down.

At some point, I am going to inadvertently move their hands down to far and accidentally cause someone to grope me. Stupid fucking neuroses.

2301: Oh, bitches!! So, I'm looking at my class schedule, and the creative writing class I really wanted to take because hey --Sorcy likes creative writing!-- takes place on Thursdays. From 6:45 to 9:15 PM.

Yeah, when is Concord based contra again? What's that? Exactly that time? What the fuck Belanie. What the fuck.

(So now I have to decide if I'm going to try and find another class to take instead or if I'm just going to not start doing contra up here until next January --I suspect one of the deciding factors in which I choose will be how much contra I get in over the summer.

Still though. Bitches.

0019: QUOTE OF THE DAY:

JoshZed:
this is more of the strong evidence that I'm really a 1 on the Kinsey scale
or close to it
I mean, if Randall doesn't do it for me, who will?

(Good lord, has the concept of sexing up Randall Munroe become a *theme* in my livejournal? That's either terrifying or awesome.)

Also, I am amused that I started this as 'thoughts while packing' and haven't actually packed anything in seven hours or so.

0101:

NEW Quote of the Day!

"Do I want to know why you are interested in my lovelife?"
"Because human interactions of all sort fascinate me."
"Any sort of interaction is fascinating if it involves cherry-flavored lube!"
[Immediate follow-up comment] "...........I did not just type that.........."

0112:

OHMYGOD.

Does the world love me? I don't actually know. But the world might!

But...not being at movie night.

But Satanic motherfucking Mechanics!

Ohhhh, I should not be forced to have decisions like this...

0222: Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, Sor? Fuck you. Go do your paper. Like...now. Just because you know damn well you're not going to be sleeping tonight is no reason to not get the paper done early.

P.S: What is your plan, to sleep on the floor or something eventually? You're incredibly fucking stupid, I hope you're aware of that. Also, a week of sleep-dep? What makes you think you'll even be able to potentially *begin* to make it to Rocky? Yeah, that's what I thought. Tell your terminal optimism to fuck off.

Allfornow

~Sor
MOOP!

1: heh, I almost wrote that as 'virgins'. Oops.