spindizzy | Entries tagged with rl: health and wellness

Managed to dodge it for four years! Masked up the entire fucking time! Was convinced that work was where Covid was going to get me, what with the whole "We can get like 6000 people through the doors in a day" thing!

No. Two of Lex's coworkers tested positive after a work event, and here we are.

I'm mainly mad because I did everything right and STILL got the damn plague, but also because I got the damn plague while I'm off work anyway so I'm not even getting time off for it! I just wasted my holiday from work being asleep! Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Like, I mainly felt like I had the gnarliest cold there has ever been? Sore throat, trying desperately not to cough because it made my brain throb, bouncing between sleeping ALL OF THE TIME and not being able to sleep at all, because it was also shark week. In case there wasn't enough injury for this insult. e_____________________________e

I'm okay now, Lex is okay now, but UGH. Covid is bullshit and I hate it.

The equinox has passed, so happy arbitrary new year from the seasonal depression camp! I celebrated by uhhhhhhhh wearing a cute dress, finishing a bunch of tasks that I've been putting off, painting my nails, and playing video games, so I think arbitrarily declaring a new year has gone pretty great so far.

I've not tweeted since the twelfth of March, which feels weird Like, it's not a bad thing! I've just not had much to say because there's only so much I can complain about being tired! ... Also I fell back into a Dragon Quest Builders 2 hole, which might be the bigger issue.

But yeah, there's been a bunch of remixes of old problems, and I've been... Kinda dealing with them? We had a guy in to look at our leaking ceiling (into the bathroom instead of from the bathroom this time!) and he reckons it's just condensation from the attic. Bought myself like three new bras because I managed to snap my last surviving bra in the exact same place I snapped my other one, and

jilliferium found me a bra shop that does bras in my size for less than twenty quid. (I am very confused because I've been wearing underwired sports bras for like two years and now I'm wearing normal bras! Why are my boobs not held completely still anymore!) The students are mostly back, so I've volunteered for lots and lots of work projects that will keep me off the front line as much as possible! ... Okay, that one is me being an arse, but it's true.

I'm not calling the depression defeated yet for obvious reasons, but... I feel like I can win? I played boardgames with

LexGarrett and

sithe, I stickered up a bunch of stationery, I am slowly getting back to having a routine again and thus maybe words. I'm not right yet, but I'm having more days where I can see the road to get there. I'll take it!

... Now excuse me, I need to ruin this "No tweeting" streak with something daft.

LexGarrett and I both had our first covid jabs! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! It ended up shaking out that Lex got his before I got mine, despite getting his text about it after I did, but mine was through the doctor's surgery and his was a general NHS one. I had the Pfizer one, and the main thing I noticed afterwards was that my arm ached when I raised it until like Saturday. I think it was intramuscular? So it makes sense. MORE IMPORTANTLY THOUGH: I got a sticker!

sithe and I watched a movie called Agency of Vengeance: Darkness Rising, and I think it was meant to be a parody? Or at least it makes more sense if it's a deliberately bad parody than it does if it's an actual movie that involves at least three fights where the female characters are in lingerie and chains.

APPARENTLY what it takes for me to be able to do things is starting them in the morning when I still have action points. Inconvenient.

I have a new mindless project at work, because they need people to reformat all of the reading lists! I've had my first session and it seems to be straightforward so far, which is INCREDIBLY suspicious. As far as I can tell, they're using two versions of the same software, but they only want to do the maintenance for one, so mindless busy-work for meeeeeeeeeeeee. ... Plus, I now have access to a shitload of course materials on moodle, and all my brain is doing is playing the anti-piracy ads like "YOU WOULDN'T STEAL AN EDUCATION."

The Second Grand Unfuckening is still ongoing. There are still books everywhere while I get things wrapped to send out, but once that's done, I should have enough space to actually start moving my crafting supplies out of the living room and into the bedroom!

... I might need to smuggle a couple of the boxes into work to weigh them on the post scales here, because I'm not sure how I'm going to balance them on my bitty kitchen scales.

(I have a piles of like four parcels that just need taping closed and stamping. That's it. Come on executive function, work with me here.)

Listen, I'm not saying that the building where the architecture and engineering departments are based is the worst building on campus to make your way around. I AM saying that I'd rather pay someone to print out patterns in A0 size and post them to me than figure out that maze AND whether I can do enough light fraud to actually print off all of these patterns. ... Also that's apparently just a thing! That you can do! No trekking out to a print-shop required! The one I tried out is Netprinter, and it is expensive but honestly worth it to not have to tape a shitload of A4 pieces of paper together.

Current work drama: one of the managers noticed that someone had started disassembling one of the customer bathrooms on... Saturday? And it is still in pieces today. And Estates haven't mentioned that they're coming out to do anything with the bathrooms, so... Whose tools are these and why are there doors and sinks disconnected from the wall?

On the brain weasel front... You know the scene in Inside Out where Joy is flopping around on the floor pretending to be Sadness? That's basically the stage I'm at! I feel better enough that when the depression kicks off I can do the "mentally repeating everything it says in a silly voice while swooning melodramatically" and make myself laugh! But the depression is still kicking off, so fuck me I guess.

... I'm being unfair. We had ACTUAL SUN recently, and oh god I could feel myself powering up! It was amazing! Unfortunately, I live in England, so there was maybe three days of being amazing and now we've hit our sunlight cap until April.

Somehow managed to misplace every single headphone wire I own, which is slightly hampering my attempts to finish Hades. It's INCREDIBLY Misplacer Beast; I know I definitely had them at the bottom of the stairs, but I didn't have them when I got to the top. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Going to do surgery on one of my bras, because I've snapped one of the underwires while stretching, but I might be able to buy a replacement if the actual size number of the wire hasn't worn off! ... Listen, it was one of the most comfortable bras I've owned. I could NAP while wearing that bra. And I don't want to do the "order -> check what bastard sizing this manufacturer is doing -> return" dance in a pandemic. Surgery it is!

THEORETICALLY, Kobo is going to be giving out the points per book read in February things tomorrow, so I am keeping an impatient eye on my inbox. GIVE ME MY FUTURE BOOKS, KOBO, I AM READY. ... Okay, I'm not ready, I haven't figured out what I'm spending them on because I don't understand the points to pounds conversion rate, but I still want to be validated.

I've started knitting a blanket and oh god I forgot how quickly super chunky wool knits up. *__* I'm using a Lion Brand "I wanna make a blankie" ball, so it's 800g of yarn in one enormous package.

Okay, I need to hang out laundry and work myself down this scale of overstimulated so that I can actually sleep. No bad decisions book club today! I'm determined!

Narrator voice: She lied, like a liar.

First one next Thursday, second one in May, and holy crap I got the text and sobbed hysterically at work. I don't know what I was feeling, but it did all come out through my tear ducts! But I booked it, it's there, I had a panic because I wasn't sure whether I'd be able to slope out of work to head to the appointment but management said yes, fuck it, getting vaccinated is the priority.

(My line manager also told me to be careful who I told, because some of the older staff would be salty. But I let it slip to the coworker I thought would be annoyed, and she was delighted for me! And the coworker who I thought wouldn't give a fuck seemed frustrated because she's nearly retirement age and still hasn't had an appointment.

Her: How old are you?
Me: 31, but I am also fat and crazy.

I don't know if this is specifically why my doctor asked me to go and get my BMI recorded, but thank fuck he did.)

So yeah, I have a date! It doesn't feel real!

I don't have covid! Asymptomatic test came back negative, so I'll take it. Haven't heard anything about the coworker who had a positive results, but I'm hoping she's okay!

Scuttlebutt is that Terrible Manager has covid and went into work while symptomatic, which would explain the very passive-aggressive all-staff emails we got about NOT DOING THAT a couple of weeks ago.

Work have set up a process for staff to collect and drop off tests in the building... But are banning the cleaners from using it. Because – and I quote – "they'll take twenty of them and share them with the rest of the cleaners." I DON'T SEE A PROBLEM HERE. I DEFINITELY WOULD BE OKAY WITH MORE PEOPLE GETTING TESTED. LINE MANAGER, WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS.

This week's massive fidget has been untangling all of my sashiko threads, because I went "I will definitely remember to untangle these before they completely knot together!" while throwing them into a box, and also sit on a throne of lies. I've only had to cut through like four gordion knots, it's fine!

Started tidying my room, and strongly considering moving house as an alternative. But at least I've accepted that I'll never be able to vacuum the whole floor at once! So my revised goal is to be able to clear big enough spaces that I can vacuum a bit and just shuffle the piles of crap around the room so that I can vacuum bits of it at a time. The theoretical goal is to rearrange the furniture so that I stop automatically dumping everything on the bed as soon as I walk through the door, but as there's technically more stuff in this room than it can actually hold, moving the furniture might turn into a logic puzzle. =_=

(I drew DIAGRAMS for how I was going to have to lay out the furniture to get things to fit logically. That's how bad it got.)

I bought a pattern for a cute and fancy skirt, and for my fucking sins it's forty pages of A4 that need taping together. I do not live in a house with space for forty sheets of A4 to be laid out together, so I might be taking this into work and assembling it there on my break.

Progress of sewing adventures: spent most of this week window shopping for cheap fabric that I can use for muslins. I'm considering just grabbing cheap duvets from the supermarket, because that's a decent amount of fabric for like four quid? And also letting my heart beat for notions and cute labels that I can sew onto things, because I'm that flavour of nerd. ... But seriously FORTY PAGES.

Pretty sure I need to fuck about with my sleep cycle some more, because I'm far enough off a routine and good amount of sleep that my meds aren't compensating for it. It's fine! I know what will solve the problem, I just need to convince myself to stop doing the thing where I go "But I can't sleep because I haven't done x," where x is a task that would be MUCH easier after I've had some sleep. ... ONE DAY I will actually learn all of these lessons and have it stick, just not this day!

Although, soothing activity suggestion: KonMari-ing my Kobo library. If I looked at an ebook cover and couldn't remember what it was about or think of a reason to read it, I just... Archived the book. Suddenly my library is manageable, this is very suspicious and I wish it was that easy with my physical collection.

... No but seriously what the fuck do I do with smutty manga that I can't sell to Ziffit. I used to dump it on one of my old housemates, but it's the apocalypse and I can't exactly message her out of the blue like "Hey I know we don't talk anymore because I can't be doing with your husband, but do you want some free smut?"

Had an ECG, can confirm that I have a heart and it appears to be doing recognisable things! I am not the tin man, good job me.

Plans for the rest of the evening: aggressively sticker the shit out of my diary, try not to panic, be all wrapped up and ready for bed by 22:30. Good night!

I think the most frustrating thing about digging yourself out of a mental-illness induced hole is that it's EXHAUSTING. Being in the hole is tiring! Getting out of the hole is tiring! Pretending that you're not in a hole is tiring! Desperately praying that no one says anything about all of the evidence of the hole before you can hide it is tiring!

And like, I'm fine? The hole is not new? Me being buried in crap at the bottom of the hole isn't new? I'm just really tired of making it harder to climb out and going "Oh god, please let no one notice that I [haven't spoken to my friends in weeks/threw fifty quid into a phone game/bought more craft stuff]," instead of literally anything that isn't that.

So yeah, what if I give up on shame-hiding from literally everyone in favour of picking up the coping strategies that used to work? I would settle for it helping me clean up the endless piles of crafting stuff before Lex and Mike actually murder me, even if it doesn't get me out of the hole, but we'll see. Wish me luck!

THIS WAS THE POST I WAS WRITING WHEN I HEARD THE NEWS ABOUT THE US ELECTIONS. LIKE. I WAS PASTING SOME LINKS IN AND THEN THERE WAS A NOTIFICATION SAYING THAT IT HAD BEEN CALLED.

Wolf Totem by The HU and Jacoby Shaddix — Okay, I am the person who went "Oh hey, a Mongolian metal band? I should DEFINITELY check that out!" and then forgot about it until youtube brought me a Fate AMV about Archer being sad. THIS IS WHO I AM, I CAN'T APOLOGISE BECAUSE I HAVE NO INTENTION OF CHANGING. But they are so fucking metal, and I am low-key in love with how deep their voices are, holy fuck.

She's Electric by Oasis — I think my family is still messier than the one in this song, and yet.

Worried About Ray by The Hoosiers — The 2020 mood: "Truth be told / the truth be told / I'm worried what the future holds / the future holds / I'm so tired / of being worried ~~/ about Ray~~"

Goddamn I'm Dead Again by Sum 41 — I've still not played Hades yet, but this is my understanding of the plot. (Also, I'm not saying that "It's off with his head, and on with the show / The old king is dead, gone in one fatal blow / And I don't believe he'll be coming back for more" joined my victory playlist at any point this weekend, BUT.)

Without Me by Eminem — sithe's current reality tv show is about up-and-coming british rappers competing for a contract, and there is one fucking white dude who is Sure There As Well and this is all I get every time he starts kvetching.

Prison Song by System of a Down — Do you ever think about how System of a Down have a song that is like 75% someone reading off statistics about the US prison system? (Also they're raising money for relief efforts in Armenia, if you missed it.)

What's Up Danger by Blackway and Black Caviar — Housemate put Into the Spiderverse on this afternoon, and how did I forget that this scene was perfect?

In other news, I read books today! Prose books! That I deliberately and specifically sat down to read! And promptly burst into tears over, because it has been so long since I read a book! I have been in a maybe-depression, maybe-insuffient sleep, maybe-whatever slump for... A while...? And all I've had the energy to do is read tropey Scum Villain fic for that delicious artificial burst of feeling. But no! I chose books that I'd been excited about at the start of lockdown and actually read them!

... I feel like me again. Between this and the week of slowly plunking away at writing again, I feel – I feel again! ;_______;

Stayed up to watch the Hugo Ceremony and oh BOY was that a clusterfuck. It involved George R. R, Martin devoting his entire presentation to being The Ghost of Worldcons Past and being nostalgic about racist/sexist/fascist/sex pest authors from his youth, some incredibly gross and inappropriate jokes, and pre-recorded sections that apparently no one checked for things like "Have the participants's names been pronounced correctly?" and "did the presenter remember the actual description of the category?" Greatly admired R.F. Kuang's speech because not only does she roast the entire publishing industry for being racist and sexist, she also calls out GRRM not pronouncing her name correctly in a video recorded before he did it. anoutlawlife has put together a cut of the stream that skips over the nostalgic circle-jerk that is somehow two hours shorter.

Went to bed after the fan categories. Congrats to booksmugglers and a thousand hugs to clairerousseau and AdriJjy! But also it was 1:15 and they'd only gotten through four categories in an hour and fifteen minutes, so it was bed time.

Got up, caught up on the chats and twitter about the award ceremony, and discovered that it somehow got worse after I left. Wrote a thread about how the opportunities that CoNZealand had to not make these mistakes that involved no swearing and no capslock, which I think is proof of either restraint or the degree of my annoyance, considering that I usually use fuck as a fucking comma.

Been very weepy because a) the idea that I've been batting around for the last few weeks isn't my hyperfocus anymore and this makes me feel lonely(?!?!?!?!), and b) I think my next hyperfocus is going to end up being The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System and my brain has decided that I'm never going to write anything I love as much as MXTX's work.

Discovered that no, apparently my goal in life is still to write like MXTX because my dreams have done the full cyle of "I really want to write a story that I post on the internet like all of the cool people!" to "Maybe I'll write an Actual Book" to "I should probably just stick to writing reviews" and back all the way around to "I really want to write a story that I post on the internet like all of the cool people!"

Eaten a food, took my meds, hydrated... And still decided that I couldn't wait a single minute more for a haircut, even though I was using nail scissors and no mirror.

Realised that the haircut and the weepiness might be significant and took my emergency dose of anxiety meds.

Did not pass the will save against ordering myself an ergonomic keyboard, did pass the will save against buying myself a keyboard with that lights up and has clacky buttons, because MAYBE people on my street don't want to hear me machine-gun typing at midnight. MAYBE.

So yeah, bit disappointed in the scifi ~~~~establishment~~~~, and I'm having a slightly off brain day, but I'm okay.

I'm stargazing in Animal Crossing, so hi internet! Keep me company while I listen for the chimes.

Non-fannish stuff! ( Read more... )

Fannish stuff! ( Read more... )

Okay! Thank you for this company, I am heading to bed now. Good night sweetpeas, be well and be safe! <3

I'm not aggressively refreshing the drabble_zone page so that I can start posting all of the drabbles I missed the deadline on in Amnesty week, no one is doing that, that would be Foolish.

The loft was not in fact cursed and/or full of corpses! Or at least if it was, dude had a really good pokerface about it, so respect to him. But we are theoretically getting things fixed so that we have a less terrible mold problem in the house, and the window that can't close will close and the window that can't open will open. PHEW.

I'm a little offended that these ADHD memes are actually just photographs of my life. How rude.

I am attempting to relearn how to paint, because it's the summer and why not? I'm using paint pens and waterbrushes, so these are new tools but a skill I used t have, and that's apparently the middle ground I need for learning things now? I'm currently trying by copying official Pokémon art, because then I'm concentrating on how to do the colours instead of how good my drawing is, if that makes sense?
- I'm discovering that I like blobbing down my paint where the shadows are and squiggling it out from there, although I'm not sure if I'm using the waterbrushes right or if I'm just giving the paint too long to dry before I start moving it around. The Ivysaur is closest to what I'm going for! Not perfect, but honestly that's why I'm practicing.
- (Lex is being very kind about me being excited about Pokémon at him whenever he comes downstairs.)
- Me: I don't understand why this set of pens doesn't have a green! It's got two shades of blue, a yellow, a red, and an orange, why does it not have green!
  jilliferium: It's for painting sunsets.
  Me: ......................................................................................
- I keep catching myself about to do the "Oh man, did I ever tell you about the bullshit [authority figures from my teenage years] said about my drawing skills?" and like... Brain... It's been twelve years. You can let it go.

I've finally admitted defeat and bought myself a mouth guard, because my anti-anxiety meds make me grind my teeth at night (apparently? I don't know, I'm asleep) and the muscle relaxants my doctor prescribed isn't doing much except letting me go to sleep in the first place. It works! But it turns out that moulds in my mouth still make me retch, so the fitting process is a fun exercise in controlling my reflexes.

My current game rotation is Animal Crossing, Pokémon Café Mix, and Spyro Reignited. I've finished Spyro the Dragon and Spyro 2: Ripto's Revenge, and made it up to Spyro: Year of the Dragon! It's a weird kind of nostalgia, because Spyro was the first console game I ever played, and Spyro 3 was one of the few that I finished, and it's just... Strange? Kinda strange. (Am I weirded out that they've decided that the kangaroo needed to be made more femme? Kinda! Am I more weirded out that Hunter has Sonic-style human teeth? ... Yep!)

lexgarrett and I are watching original flavour Fate/Stay Night, because Lex hasn't seen it in years and I've never seen it. The art is... It's sure there. And I think I found the origin of my "Ugh, Shirou, bleh," feelings, which feels very unfair to every other version of him. (WHY IS TOHSAKA NOT THE PROTAGONIST. I KNOW THAT IT WAS ORIGINALLY AN H-GAME BUT TOHSAKA OR AYAKA WOULD BE BETTER PROTAGONISTS AND I DO NOT ACCEPT CRITICISM ABOUT THIS.)

Managed to not fall victim to the Steam sale by going "Oh I'll check it out tomorrow!" until it ended.

... Apart from that, not been doing much! I hope you're all well!

Hey sweetpeas! I live! This is very exciting to me. Not much has been happening since I last posted, so let me try to think if I need to update you on anything!

I'm officially not going back into work until September, because I break up for the summer on the 23rd and there's no way work are going to have their return plans sorted by then. Five months off work, woooooo! ... Admittedly three of those I've apparently spent staring into space/Animal Crossing because this timeline is a hellscape, but I'm working on it!

I am back to using my calendar and filling in my diary with things that I need to do, and in news shocking to everyone: I FEEL SO MUCH BETTER. It turns out that when I know what I need to be doing and have a plan for it... My brain works better... IT'S ALMOST LIKE THIS IS A REALISATION THAT I HAVE EVERY SINGLE TIME I STOP USING MY DIARY FOR A WHILE.

(I have also set up a dedicated Stationery Shenanigans bag because I got sick of shuffling multiple piles of things across a room whenever I finally got a chance to use my desk. It works! It's just... Large.)

Speaking of getting my shit together: GUESS WHO IS FINALLY BACK ON TRACK WORD COUNT WISE FOR getyourwordsout! I still have a lot to do, but I feel better knowing that I'm ahead on my numbers.
Got a two month prescription for my ADHD meds, picked them up, and then the pharmacist rang me about half an hour later to say that they weren't allowed to prescribe me that many. Except that the mental health team say that they ARE. Soooo something's going on there, and the best guess any of us have is sithe pointing out that the issue literally could just be that we live in a slightly rough part of town. (I'd argue, but I can't get to this pharmacy without going through the red light district, so...)

Fic triage project has started! I have... A lot of WIPs. Like 300 WIPs. My current plan is to go through them in the order of fewest fic to most, and figure out what needs doing to them. It turns out that I have a LOT of drabbles that I can just polish and punt out the door next time drabble_zone has an amnesty week, and I've actually found some fic that I'm willing to just let die! Which is a weird and interesting feeling, because I used to have the hoarder instinct of "I'll get to it EVENTUALLY!" and... Y'know what, I don't think I will go back and finish that Carol fic I started, and that's okay! I can just make like a Disney princess and let it go.

At some point I'm going to need to go through my review drafts as well, but THAT is a problem for future!Susan to sort out!
The Ghost of Hyperfocuses Past has reared its head to say HEY DO YOU REMEMBER HOW MUCH YOU LIKE MAKING STUFFED ANIMALS and the honest answer is "I don't think I like making stuffed animals as much as I like being praised for making stuffed animals, but continue," so if I start making any moves toward crocheting an 8' dragon, stop me okay?

Hey loves, I'm still alive! I think!

It was Favourite Nibling's birthday at the weekend! Favourite Nibling is not actually related to me, but they are still the cutest of toddlers and now I have pictures of them eating the head of a caterpillar cake. :D

I'm still using the notebook that sithe donated to me! I'm... About two-thirds of the way through it, which is impressive considering I only started using it on the 3rd. I've been using it as a proper diary – so as a planner AND as a journal, which isn't something I've done in a while! And also as a sketchbook and a photo album, because I've found my tiny bluetooth printer and I've been using that to print off pictures and stick them in my diary as well, and it turns out that doodling Animal Crossing characters is apparently a very soothing activity?
- I have been processing my very repetitive feelings on paper instead of on the internet, which... Weird. Apparently it's possible for people to not talk their way through their feelings on the internet, who knew? And it turns out that in my brain my filofax is too impermanent to record feelings or put photos/doodle in, which is good to know!
- I've been digging out some of my old stationery stuff – mainly washi tape and washi-adjacent stickers, and the little printer! Did you know that it's possible for the glue on your washi tape to fuse the layers together if you leave it in a box in your bedroom for three years? Whoops. But the point is that it's so weird going through my stationery, like The Ghosts Of Hyperfocuses Past are looming over me and seeing if they still have any power, which is unnerving. It doesn't help that I went on an etsy splurge and bought MORE stationery last week, so my brain is sounding the "IS THIS A HYPERFOCUS STORM ON THE HORIZON?!" alarm.
- (The little printer is called a Sprocket, and it basically lets me print out photos and nonsense from the internet as stickers. I love it, I just keep forgetting that I own it.)
- Fun aspect to buying things off etsy during a pandemic: "Do I need to put a note on my order saying that if they can't send it until after lockdown, that's okay?" "It looks like [store owner] hasn't updated in a while, I hope to god that nothing's happened to them!"
- Current state of my stationery haul: A6 notebooks and some stickies, and some personal size notebooks with covers designed for colouring in! (I got them off The Chelsea Paper Co, if you like the look of them.)

I have been sitting in an Animal Crossing hole for two weeks, and I don't know if it's a new hyperfocus or if everything is awful and micromanaging an island helps me to pretend that it isn't. ... Or both! It could be both!

sithe and I have been trading off who's using the Switch (he's playing whatever the Fire Emblem/Persona fusion game is), and somehow between that and my inability to not drop everything on the floor, we borked the joysticks. I'm now kinda offended at the cost of new joycons!

Speaking of everything being awful: I sure am writing to my MP a lot! I don't think she can do much, but it's nice knowing that she is ALSO angry about the things that are making me angry.

I've started doing modified planks as a way of seeing if I can do an exercise! (It's the knees and elbows one, the first one in the list.) So far I can only do about 30 seconds and then I have to lie on the floor for a while and hate my life choices, but that's progress! I can work from that! I'm keeping an eye out for other super-low-effort exercises, see how I feel.

Epilating your face hurts. And for some reason my brain is just like "Okay, face, we can do face – wait you want to try this on your legs?! Don't, it'll hurt!"

I was very convinced that I could shave my own undercut back in, until I looked in the mirror and remembered that I need my glasses to see. Fortunately, lexgarrett came to my rescue!

Anyway, I am okay, I'm just sorta... Checked out. I'm starting to feel like I can check back in though!

Current Mood: blah

ADHD: Hi, I'm stuck on these three things that need doing!
Me: Okay, cool, how about I do those and then we can move along properly?
Anxiety: Absolutely not.
Me: ... But they need doing?
ADHD: Yeah, seriously, I'm just going to keep turning these over until we do them.
Anxiety: Nope. Can't do those.
Me: Cool, I'll do something else then.
ADHD: NO! I'M STUCK, HELP ME!

... What I'm saying is that I'm fine, but also in the state where I'll be awake for five hours before I can face getting breakfast. I'll report back once I've found the task that's load-bearing the anxiety.

I had the NHS version of my ADHD assessment! It was amazing!

... Okay, backing up:

jilliferium came over to visit yesterday, which was excellent; we had tasty Korean barbeque, traded Pokémon, figured out how to do raid battles, and got to pet a Stealth Staffie that liked hanging out at eye-level in the pub. This morning we both rolled out of bed at arse o'clock so that we could head into town and get dessert for breakfast at the café that does things like "here is a stack of four american pancakes with whipped cream and red velvet brownie/salted caramel brownie on top" before I had to head across town to my assessment.

captainraz and

hardlyaverage came with me as moral support (their view)/less biased witnesses (my view), and the doctor was SO NICE. Like, he was half an hour late but he apologised and explained! (He had an earlier appointment that ran over, it was fair.) The first thing he said in the interview was that he liked to observe patients in the waiting room to see how they act when they're not in an a pressured environment, and he was prepared to write me a scrip just based on that. Constantly in motion, yay!

(I know I mentioned most of this on twitter, but I try to write this stuff up long-form because I know a bunch of OTHER people who are trying to get diagnoses and it's sometimes useful for people to see what happened in other appointments?)

( Read more... )

Dear dreamwidth friends: as part of bringing the unfuckening round full-circle, I'm trying to get back into, like, actually existing in a community instead of just leaning out of the window and shouting about my opinions and problems. If you get necrocomments on stuff from a million years ago, or see me signal boosting something from the dawn of time: this is why!

Apart from that, current state of the Susan:
+ Went to the dentist and she didn't mention any damage from the teeth-grinding I'm apparently doing, AND I didn't get the inside of my face scraped!
- Accidentally stabbed myself in the gum with my toothbrush and now I can't stop poking at it, and I have to go back next week to get a filling. But it's a WHITE filling, which feels very weird and fancy.
+ Discovered the phrase "executive function halt state", which feels like the shorter and fancier way of describing that feeling of looking at the stuff you WANT to do and almost bursting into tears instead. Will naming the demon help me to defeat it? WE SHALL SEE. I am definitely in the stage where the thing I want to be doing the most is the thing that's hardest for me to get at, so I guess that's fun.
~ If anyone is waiting for anything from me, it's coming, I'm just trying to unstick myself. (Here is your metaphor: everything was flowing nicely down the river of my brain until one thing went sideways and jammed everything, so now I'm trying to pick out the smaller bits and pieces so I've got room to move the bigger pieces.)
+ Have set up my folding desk in my living room and I'm not only using it, but enjoying it? It's comfy and means that I can actually spread stuff out like I want to!
+ Went to see The Gentlemen with

LexGarrett and my Pseudotwin this time, and they very kindly let me complain about toxic masculinity and violence against women as a fridging technique.
+

captainraz has finally managed to lure me into her bullet journal cult, in that I've gone "fuck it" and taken the actual diary inserts out of my filofax and am just going ham on some lined paper. I'm hit and miss on the bullet journal thing, because it feels a bit "tech bro invents to-do lists" (like, some of the stuff I read about is just like "The innovative part is INDEXING YOUR NOTEBOOKS" and I'm over here like "Mate, everyone indexes their notebooks, this isn't a new thing.") but I'm gonna give it a fair shake! It's easier to do in a filofax, because if I decide I don't like something or need to rearrange pages, I can, so I guess I'll see how flexible it is?
- Possibly coming down with the slowest-moving cold in history, in that my throat's been going "Nope, need more water, here is STABBING PAIN to remind you," for a while
+ I'm not doing that thing I was doing 2015-2018 where I'd just go flat out for months and then literally collapse as soon as I had a day off! Having a sore throat that isn't part of me getting a fever like a victorian urchin is honestly progress.
+ Just over a month to go till my NHS ADHD assessment! Excited and terrified, and I found out today that I don't need to work the time back or swap shifts to go because it counts as a hospital appointment. Yaaaaay!
+ Exam season ends on Saturday! Fewer stressed out students means fewer stressed out members of staff!
~ All that said, I'm fucking knackered mates, so I'm off to bed. Wish me luck with the fixing things, I'll see you on the other side of ~~the war~~ this mountain of shite I'm doing. Be good, be safe, be careful.

Hello my sweets, through a convoluted chain of logic,

captainraz and I did a ritual burning to... Acknowledge that being diagnosed with ADHD is a complicated thing and it's okay to feel like the knowledge is positive and still be frustrated and sad for the person that you thought you were going to be? I have no idea what Tonks wrote on her card, tbh, but mine was definitely a goodbye to Idealised Susan, who not only doesn't exist, but never had a chance to exist at all, I just didn't know it. But it turns out that there was a corner of my brain permanently occupied with comparing myself to Idealised Susan and now I need to figure out what to do with the extra energy I'm going to have from not having to argue with myself about my worth as a human being! Possibly this is me becoming a secondary character in a Persona game, because I had a boss battle against Idealised Susan, used too many items, and now have to figure out what the hell I'm going to do with myself until the next cutscene.

... And also we had cake. This is who we are as people.

Behind the cut: excessive wittering.

( Read more... )

So yeah, HI EVERYONE, JULY WAS SOMEWHAT BUSY. I'm only slightly in a hole of "things that I haven't gotten done yet" though! I believe in myself and my ability to get out of the hole! And August is going to have more travelling than initially planned, but that's fine!

Back when he first suggested

captainraz and I talk to someone about ADHD,

hardlyaverage was like "Imagine what you could do with four hours of being able to concentrate!"

"We would take over the world by lunch time," I said, and honestly right now I think we probably could. I've been on 10mg of Equasym since Monday, and I've spent most of this week going "Is this what people without mental health issues feel like ALL THE TIME?!"

Like, I cleaned my house yesterday. Not in a anxiety-fuelled "Oh god this is disgusting and I must deal with it while having a breakdown!" way, even! It was very much a "I need to assemble this coat rack so that I can hang up all the coats on the shoe rack and throw away the shoes with holes in. Oh, turns out there's a bunch of crap under the shoe rack, I'd better sweep that up. Oh hey, while I've got the broom out, I should probably deal with this massive pile of stuff that's been sitting over here for years!" and just spiralled out from there! Like, my house isn't perfect, but it's probably closer than it's been since we moved in! And I think it's a level of tidy that can be maintained by household where two-thirds of the people living in it have executive function issues!

And I've been reading short stories again.

And I've written a bunch of reviews.

And I've actually started writing stories again.

And I've baked a cake.

It just – it feels like magic. I know objectively that it's NOT magic, it's my brain getting dopamine and going "WHAT THE SHIT IS THIS AND WHERE CAN WE GET MORE OF IT?!" But it feels like magic. I'm still distractable! I still start one task and realise I've spent half an hour doing a different task that I straight up didn't notice I'd switched to! I still lose things ten seconds after putting them down! It has not magically solved all of my issues! But it feels like there's a point to finishing things now and it's fantastic?

At some point it's going to wear off and this is just going to be normal and boring, but I cannot tell you how excited I am for "living in a clean house" and "finishing things" to become boring.

Good morning my darlings! I broke up from work yesterday and it's DELIGHTFUL. I have TWO MONTHS where I don't have to go into the dayjob! Hurray! So far I've celebrated by getting up at six in the morning, doing housework, reading, and going to the library, but COME ON, this is progress for me! I didn't try to go into work! I might in fact buy some ingredients and make myself a celebratory cake! I don't know, I haven't decided yet. I'm just very excited to be FREE!

(I am genuinely deeply excited about HOUSEWORK of all things. Like, genuinely "Don't know whether more excited about the video games or the housework time" levels of excited, whoops.)

AND I went to pick up my new meds! Started taking them yesterday and today, and apparently the fact that 10mg of equasym makes me sleepy does mean that I really do have ADHD! HURRAYYYYYYY! Apparently I'm talking a little slower, but the main thing I'm noticing is that it feels like I've only got three tabs open in my brain? Which is frankly an ENORMOUS improvement. Like, I'm not any less distractible? So far this morning I have jumped between about fourteen different things without even noticing! But when I go jump into something, I'm apparently pretty good at staying in that thing, which is kinda nice, even if I have had to make a bunch of lists so that I can remember what the hell I just decided I needed to do.

So yeah, that's me, that's what I'm up to, I don't know if there's going to be further effects of these meds as I keep taking them, but I will report back as I know things!

Hey everyone! Went to the doctor's yesterday, and I officially have a prescription for Equasym XL, which as far as I know is the generic of Ritalin. 10mg dose at first, going up to 20mg after (and possibly the 30mg after that, if the 20mg doesn't do much). I am... Slightly nervous? Anxiety has been going "But what if I don't have ADHD and I'm left with a Class B restricted drug that I can't take!" and pretty much all of my friends have been going "SUSAN YOU LITERALLY TALKED TO A DOCTOR ABOUT THIS, YOU HAVE ADHD!" in the nicest possible ways! (I KNOW, you are all right! But also, anxiety.)

I managed to find what might be the only pharmacy in Nottingham that does their ordering on a Saturday, so gonna find out on Monday!

captainraz and

hardlyaverage have promised to keep me off twitter until we're sure that it's not doing anything squiggly to my impulse control, although right now I'm struggling to think of anything that I could put on twitter that a) was true, and b) was significantly worse than the usual capslocking about my brain and fictional dick that I usually do.

So... That's where my brain is at! Ringing in a new month with NEW DRUGS, which sounds fun! And

captainraz and I have agreed to do Camp Nano while we're both getting used to New Drugs and have yet to pick out specific projecgts to work on, so this is going to be an adventure, maybe.

Oh, and did I tell you all that I have a 40 week contract at work? Because I'm breaking up for the summer on Monday, which is going to be fun! I am going to write SO MANY WORDS and play SO MANY VIDEO GAMES, please feel free to send me recommendations! And HMRC apparently made an error in my favour, which means they're going to refund me £500! I'm very excited about that, although I think I'm going to have to put it away for potential Worldcon emergencies instead of dumping it into my student loan/phone contract. And I won't be at Edge-lit this year either, I'm afraid, because I'm going to see Lex's family and didn't actually clock that Edge-lit was that same weekend instead of the weekend after. orz

So yeah, that's what's going on with me! Mostly the usual, with new meds! And a vague hope of having savings for a month! How's everyone else doing?

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Susan

Covid finally fucking got me!

I'd say I'm back, but I've not actually been anywhere

... I don't even know what I would pick as my ADHD icon tbh

I HAVE MY VACCINE APPOINTMENTS BOOKED!

Scuttlebutt is such a great word though

Is this going to be the time the lesson sticks? All signs point to no!

"It's off with his head and on with the show!" is a mood as well though!

Things that I have done today:

I think it was the first time I saw stars on my island!

(no subject)

Using coping strategies helps you cope, news at 11

I could talk about sensible things, OR I could talk about stationery!

Fun with mental health!

Second verse, same as the first: SO IT TURNS OUT THAT I HAVE ADHD

I'm going to bed and no one dare stop me

I hope my Persona has fire attacks

Right, that general update I promised you

Is this what dopamine feels like?!

Genie voice I'm FREE!

If you can't make your own neurotransmitters, store bought is fine too

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May 2025

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