flexagon: (Default)
[personal profile] flexagon
Continuing to feel super burned out at the mere thought of working, or constraining my schedule too much. I know this makes sense. I know it takes more than six months to recover from 17 years of cortisol flooding my system. Gotta drift along and observe the whirling world for a while, and have faith in neuroplasticity.

In the meantime, physical workouts are only getting better. In some ways, there's joy in recovering ground I've lost before, because I can be confident in the path to gaining the skill again; for instance, I know that once I can bop my chest against the wall in a backbend, my kickover isn't too far away. And I know that once I have a dropback (check) and a kickover (as of today, check!), a back walkover will be coming along. This is easier on me in some ways than the -- exciting, for sure -- improvements into things I've never had before, where I don't know what comes next or where I'll max out, or how much faith to have. Anyway, in the last week or so I've gotten a set of 5 chinups back, and my kickover back. (The week before, also in backbend territory, I touched each toe to the top of my head in turn; that's a maintenance marker not touched since last December.) There was a cramping episode that made me think I should carry some runners' salt chews, but overall I'm doing really well.

Today in open studio, Birdie and I and another friend set up a station for walkover drills (tick-tocks) and worked on them for about an hour. It was so fun, and useful to really work on one thing for quite a while.

Also this week I ordered some organization stuff for our IKEA cube unit and for the freezer.

I spent a whole day helping a friend move (third one this fall, for anyone counting). She had a lot of the same Zillian swag as me, from working in the same office and, for a few years, in the same group, and I had all kinds of complicated feelings about seeing those items. Mostly sadness and a desire to avoid them. Neither she or I sees a way back to working the way we did when we got those things.

I floofed off to Portland Maine for the first time ever, with the squirrel. On the way up we listened to a podcast about fear, anxiety, exposure therapy etc, and had a good conversation about fears... later that day a tiny not-very-scary spider got onto my hand in a park, and I said "wait! exposure therapy!" and let it crawl around a little before putting my hand on the ground to let it get off. The squirrel was proud of me for letting it live, I was just proud of myself for doing something I'd literally never done before.

I'm sure there's more, but the sleepiness is rising fast, and I must succumb.

Maui sunset

Sep. 28th, 2025 09:21 pm
nanila: me (Default)
[personal profile] nanila
20250922_181125

[Epic god-light over the Pacific]

I returned to the UK last Thursday evening. I went to work and had a hectic day on Friday, greeting the returning students and my tutees. This weekend we got the suitcase turned around and at midday today, the bloke left for Uganda. At some point our kids will remember what it's like regularly having two parents at home, but apparently that is not this year.

I have to give three presentations tomorrow, one of which is a two-hour lecture, so I shall leave this photo here and go do some deep breathing.

Phone Question

Sep. 28th, 2025 07:41 pm
ludy: Close up of pink tinted “dyslexo-specs” with sunset light shining through them (Default)
[personal profile] ludy
Have got my Open Reach appointment to have my phone (land)line switched over to Digital Voice this week.

Asking people who have already been switched - do the engineers typically come into your home or is it like regular phone repair where it mostly happens outside but you need to be around just in case? And if they do come in do they just go to your router or do they need access to every phone socket?
anais_pf: (Default)
[personal profile] anais_pf posting in [community profile] thefridayfive
These questions were originally suggested by [livejournal.com profile] bricksonbricks.

1. Do you consider yourself to be a good housekeeper? Why or why not?

2. Are there any household chores that you enjoy doing? If so, what and why?

3. Which household chore frustrates/angers you the most?

4. When doing household chores, what do you do to make them seem less of a "chore"?

5. Which chore do you find yourself doing most often, and why?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!
flexagon: (Default)
[personal profile] flexagon
I had coffee with [personal profile] mindways and he noted that DW posts don't always capture the gestalt of my life, which is true -- so let's start with an overview: die Gestalt. )

Rightly or wrongly, I realize that I've never tied the quality of my own life very tightly to the (much) larger things going on around me. Where does this attitude come from? I've just always noticed the heterogeneity of things, and noticed that stuff affecting 90% of people leaves 10% of them alone. I remember being really struck, in my 40s, by how many people will respond to "how's work going" with a reply at the company level, about how their company is doing; and that's rational, reasonable. But I never once have answered at that level. It's more nuanced when talking about governments, but: here I am in a good town, in a good state, under a shitty federal government. It's bad, but a good life still seems possible, and open to me specifically (although yes I care about others, and I do get sad over the big stuff).


And events of the week included:

  • Not one but two circus shows -- Level Up (a local show with every act inspired by a video game), and Passengers by 7 Fingers. I watch these things as an impassioned amateur, always looking for some small floor or acro move that I might replicate, and in this case I saw two. One was a drop-back with one hand, made flashier by holding the second hand behind the back. I think I could do that within one or two practice sessions, and I'm gonna try. The other, going from a backbend, was a little hop over the arms (which bend) into a chest-stand-style rollout. I would want a spot for this, but it sure looks easier than a full hop over straight arms. And also less requiring of flexibility than a fully controlled lower to chest-stand. I'd love to try with a spot.

  • Reading a lot of Margaret Atwood, as the bug and I chug along through The Blind Assassin. It's definitely an exercise in attention management; I can get sucked into it, but it takes longer than with an easier and faster-paced book, so it rewards longer spans of reading. I do love Atwood's trenchant take on small things, and her sheer precision -- a young woman's lipstick isn't red, it's cerise. The wallpaper has a specific pattern with a name. The narrator as an old woman is far more observant and precise in this way than the same narrator as a younger woman, which delights me and makes me want to get old. I don't want all my reading to be like this, but it's a good reminder that there are different kinds of reading, too.

  • Covid vaccination! I was afraid I would not be able to get one this year, national policies finally affecting my body in an obvious way. The interplay of CDC, ACIP, state-level and other recommendations are a giant mess but, on the ground, I was able to self-attest to CVS that I qualified for it, and they stuck it in my arm. The next day, yesterday, I got super tired and couldn't really invert, and fell asleep on the couch after doing what I could at open studio.

  • A good handstand lesson, in which... this will horrify [personal profile] justplainuniverse, I'm sure... I think I managed to jump and push shoulders open at the same time, on purpose, for maybe the first time ever. It felt really strange. But yes, for all these years I've been 1) jumping, 2) losing track of time, space and my identity while motion happens, 3) trying to figure out where I am, and 4) pushing my shoulders open if the situation seems to call for it. Because I couldn't "push earlier" during the lost phase (too lost), and I couldn't push simultaneously. I did it and dang, I hope I can keep doing it. All of this followed from a simple bit of feedback I got from a substitute coach the week before, which oddly sounded negative ("sorry, you just got unlucky in this one way") but was very, very actionable.

  • A few crossword puzzle personal best times. Construction is paused, and solving benefits from impatience.



I could keep writing for some time. I had another interesting talk with the bug about whether house projects viscerally feel productive or not. And I could babble about my video game, which continues to have both frustrating moments and "ooh" moments and which I don't have to feel guilty about playing. I've started to go through my fancy boots, wearing each pair to decide whether to keep or sell them, and I think I'll put a few other things up for sale too. I have thoughts, continuing thoughts, about AI and climate change and pronatalism (as it rises on the left as well as on the right, how everlastingly glad I am to be sterilized!). And I am worried about the joints and antidepressant levels of several people around me. If any of those sound interesting, comment; I could go into it. But for now, I will put nuts out for the squirrels -- I never see them anymore, but would like to remind them before winter that this is a useful place to know about -- and get a few chores done.

Media Round Up: Mixed Feelings

Sep. 20th, 2025 09:32 am
forestofglory: Cup of tea on a pile of books (books)
[personal profile] forestofglory
Somehow I always go for long stretches without much to say about media and then finished several things at once, and suddenly its time to post here again.

Dominion and Devotion—Instead of watching any of the dramas I’ve already started I watched this mini drama (24 15 min episodes). I’ve had mixed luck with mini dramas but I enjoyed this one! It’s a crossdressing girl drama with enemies to lovers and political intrigue! The premise is that the FL has been raised from birth to pretend to be a young weak prince, in the hopes of someday escaping the palace. But instead she gets picked to be the puppet emperor.

The “AFAB person was raised as a boy for Reasons” variety of crossdressing girl stories really have a different vibe than the crossdressing girl adventures I grew up with, there’s just less of a sense of agency when the FL didn’t get to choose to crossdress.

Spoilers I was not expecting the tragic ending thought! I thought it would somehow turn out ok up until the last moment.


Content Notes: Child death, corporal punishment (children and adults), torture (presented as righteous), blood

Wow the Worldep 1-4—Yes, I’m watching yet another Chinese reality show featuring Liu Yuning. This travel show where a group of people visit a bunch of cities near the 40th parallel. It’s pretty charming! I love that there's a little cartoon planet that represents each person. I would prefer a bit more focus on the tourism – tell us more about these places, and describe the food please!

Ancestors and Anxiety: Daoism and the Birth of Rebirth in China by Stephen R. Bokenkamp—This was a super interesting book about Daoist ideas about the afterlife and how they evolved after contact with Buddhism. I kinda wish I had read this before finalizing my translation of the about Wei Huacun because she’s mentioned in this and there’s a bunch of useful context about early Daoist practice.

Dragon Steel by Laurence Yep—The second book in this series which I’m reading to the kid. Still holds up well, I enjoyed the under sea dragon kingdom which was one of the bits that stuck with me from my first reading. This one does have some fatphobia though, which I didn’t enjoy.

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh—I tried so hard with this book! Well maybe that’s not strictly true because at first I wasn’t going to read it because I didn’t really like the one thing by Emily Tesh I had read before (Silver in the Wood) but then I found out more about the premise – a teacher a magical school who actually has to do paperwork, so I decided to give it a go.

I loved the first third of this book with its teaching and risk assessment and a big climatic battle that could be the end of a different book. Saving the world part way through and then having to live with the consequences would make for an interesting book, but that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening here. Instead we introduced a new very annoying character.

I was considering DNFing at that point but I asked some friends if he went away and they said that I could expect less of him, so I kept reading. And there was a lot less of him for a bit, but another thing started frustrating me: the story was providing big clues about something that the main character was not figuring out. I really don’t enjoy that kind of reader character knowledge mismatch! That’s been resolved now but I didn’t feel motivated to keep reading after that.

I really wanted to like this book because teaching at a magical school is a cool concept, and so many of my friends loved it but after the first third I found it pretty frustrating.
anais_pf: (Default)
[personal profile] anais_pf posting in [community profile] thefridayfive
These questions were originally suggested by [livejournal.com profile] polypolyglot.

1. Do you believe you can have more than one soulmate in life?

2. Are you with that soulmate now?

3. If not, how long did your relationship with your soulmate last?

4. Do you still think about your soulmate, if you are not together?

5. If you're not together, do you think your soulmate still thinks about you?

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

If you'd like to suggest questions for a future Friday Five, then do so on DreamWidth or LiveJournal. Old sets that were used have been deleted, so we encourage you to suggest some more!

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