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darlingdeathbird
darlingdeathbird
23 December 2021 @ 01:55 pm
Whether good or bad lies ahead, I brace myself  
Hiiii....

So, good news: I just did my last work day of the year and am now on a stay-ca until after Jan. 2nd-ish. Huzzah.

Bad news: I didn't make it through in one piece. I have either contracted a cold or seriously somehow thrashed my voice just by having to talk more loudly yesterday because the store was so busy. I lean towards thinking it's a cold, because I do not understand how my throat would hurt this bad throughout the entire night, to such a degree that I had to get up and take Tylenol to sooth the pain.

Hopefully it's just an absurd thrashing, and not a cold, and not covid, because if it's either of the latter two when I'm trying to enjoy my stay-ca, I'm going to be PISSED and ask for a redo. lol I NEED to be well during this time. Things need to be done.

☆ Namely, a proper cleaning and purge of the apartment. I've decided it's time for some old shit that I've hoarded to be cleared out. And no more ADHD piles - not of paper, art supplies, or shoes.

Yes, I think maybe I have had adult ADHD for a while. A lot of dysfunction in my personal life seems to come from things that describe this condition. A friend I have in the medical field (my former UO roommate, Kristen!) says she has it as well, and was explaining medication options to me, and she said that even upping my Wellbutrin could help with ADHD symptoms, which are likely brought about by my depression/anxiety. I do not have hyperactivity, just attention and memory issues.

☆ Another thing that needs to get done is... some more planning of future projects. 

~ ~ ~

A bit of that has been getting done already. There is a master to-do list for the Wonderland AU series, and another file I'm working on that will list all of the main stories it will contain. AND there is also a lengthy plot description being drafted for one of those main stories (the introduction of Dodgson!) 

In preparation, I have been re-reading In the Shadow of the Dreamchild, and it is rather amazing that the caricature of Dodgson that endures to this day has not actually strayed so far from the impression of him that I got from this book. I was concerned that I had turned him into something else, but... no... this feisty, finicky man of such duel-nature is right there in the pages. 

Also in preparation, I've continued reading Jenna and I's chat logs. Every time I'm there reading, it feels like it's that time again, and my heart feels full again while simultaneously aching. Such a pain, this heart of mine. The logs continue to affirm my memory, just as Dreamchild does. Two bosom friends, who are both clever and passionate, bouncing ideas off each other all the time, and opening up about personal things. I notice that my anxiety was not as bad back then, and I had a healthy handle on how to deal with assholes or less than favorable situations. When we weren't joking about Rabbit's adorable fuzzy bunny butt, or talking about the things I was learning about Max Schreck, or discussing the drama going on in her family, we were repeatedly coming back to the idea of enduring importance of passions and friendships, to us. Neither of us could understand why online friends just stopped checking in, or why people just suddenly were over things that had meant so much. It's ironic to read that, given that she ghosted me one day, 3+ years ago. I don't know what to make of it.

A part of me considers that perhaps she will show up one day, wanting to check in, if it really was a rock-bottom/self-hatred thing that kept her from doing it before.

Whether she does or not, drafting anything for this series has felt good and natural. It hasn't been difficult. I think they will be good stories, and I'm getting closer and closer to being ready to write them. 

~ ~ ~

Anyway, that's as far as I've gotten. Hopefully after the next ten days I will be all set up for 2022, for this project and others. For now, I need to take care of myself a little, and get ready to drop some things off at Good Will, and then go inside and see if I can find a good red scarf. Hatter needs it so he can do a short Christmas shoot tomorrow! *sigh* Today and tomorrow may also be my last chance to run errands, because the forecast says it'll be lots of freezing cold temperatures and snow! Luckily, I got all the food I need last night before I left work. WOULD NOT WANT TO STARVE DURING AN ICE STORM AGAIN LIKE LAST YEAR.  

Alrighty, take care now. Toodles.

-J
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Igenlode Wordsmith[personal profile] igenlode on December 27th, 2021 01:47 am (UTC)
ADHD does seem to be... well, fashionable at the moment, in the way that 'on the spectrum' was a few years back :-(
I've seen rather a lot of creative people self-diagnosing and complaining that their doctor has ("as yet") failed to back them up, and I'm left with something of an impression that they're looking for a solution/explanation of a malaise that probably has more to do with life situation and/or ordinary human fallibilities than any sort of Genetic Doom (in the way that women in the past used to suffer en masse from 'hysteria' and l'accidie, conditions which have mysteriously ebbed in prevalence. Not to mention the 19th-century epidemic of 'Railway Spine'...)

But obviously that is not at all a popular viewpoint, since people are very attached to their all-explanatory diagnoses. I do think that a lot of aspects of modern life are probably poisoning people -- mainly metaphorically but in part physically -- more than we as a society are aware, and if there were a more obvious cause/effect relationship between the actions required of us and whether we get to eat or not, for example (e.g. you see the food you are going to rely on next year growing up in front of your eyes as a result of your constant labour), then 'getting round to doing things' might seem like less of an incredibly burdensome abstract concept and more of an obvious practical requirement.
If you don't look after animals, for example, they die. Most people, however hard they find it to look after themselves, find it much harder to watch a dependent animal suffering from their neglect. (Which is one reason why I don't have pets any more, because I felt incredibly guilty about them...)

Neither of us could understand why online friends just stopped checking in, or why people just suddenly were over things that had meant so much.
The thing about online is that it does basically requre an active two-way effort to be in touch with people at all. In normal life, if someone stops talking to you, then you're probably still sharing the same physical space, even if only at a distance; still living in the same neighbourhood or working with the same colleagues or reading the same local paper. Online there is only a thin thread connecting people, and if that drops, then there is no ongoing contact at all.
(Not necessarily true; I've had a couple of painful jolts when I stumbled again across people I used to know, via shared acquaintances/interests -- including here on Dreamwidth.)
darlingdeathbird[personal profile] darlingdeathbird on December 27th, 2021 03:12 am (UTC)
If you don't mind me asking, what was the sentiment of the first part of your comment? The way that it comes across is that, despite that we have not had a conversation about it and you don't know me well, you're being dismissive of my claim. Yes, things sometimes do seem "in fashion", if only because they were ignored before, or there was not a care to diagnose them, or it was once more difficult to diagnose them. But anyway, maybe I'm wrong and you forgot to tack in more of a sentiment of "hey, that's worth looking into."
Igenlode Wordsmith[personal profile] igenlode on December 27th, 2021 03:40 pm (UTC)
The actual sentiment behind my reaction, if I analyse my own instincts with a level of honesty that is uncomfortable and doubtless unwelcome as an excuse, is that the wave of ADHD labelling on the Internet and elsewhere both makes me feel very uneasy as a general trend of medicalising unhappiness, and causes me to feel threatened on a personal level (if people say that about other people who are struggling, then they could say it about me). So yes, my knee-jerk response where someone says they don't have any hyperactivity and they do have depression, which makes it hard to focus at the best of times, is to imply that they can probably safely dismiss the suggestion.

But it's completely out of line for me to make any medical comment on the treatment of someone whose case I *don't* know, least of all to do so with the unacknowledged motive of making myself feel better, and I apologise and retract the statement. I also apologise for effectively impugning the motives of your friend (about whom I also know nothing).

I really am sorry and I feel awful about it.
darlingdeathbird[personal profile] darlingdeathbird on December 29th, 2021 08:29 pm (UTC)
No worries.