Gender Jumper

Oh Yeah...

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 07:47:34 GMT

In therapy yesterday, I reminded myself that my push to post more on DreamWidth is not SOLELY a matter of following my muse in a low-stakes, high archival context, but to get back in the habit of writing. Period. Therapist also asked how long it had been and I couldn't really answer.

I was always full of ideas before caregiving (and to some extent after), but if I had to pinpoint I'd say the corporatized nonprofit job in 2022-2023 killed my writing drive. No, that can't be right; I started an ebook that winter (though of course I haven't finished it...). It really must've been my burnout last year (and even then, I reviewed everything I watched on Letterboxd)... Was there really much of a lull in my writing, or did it just deviate from old habits for a while (respectively: academia, marketing, self-marketing, movie reviews).

Maybe this is just picking up the slack from pulling away from Facebook. Which is just fine with me!

Current media: just finished Doom Patrol (way better and queerer than I could have expected), Little Richard: I Am Everything, Essential Dykes to Watch Out For, and a disappointing listen through Wet Leg's new album, Moisturizer.

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Is Being Out of Alignment My Current Alignment?

Sun, 24 Mar 2024 12:17:55 GMT

I don't bother thinking very hard about the tension between free will and determinism unless I'm depressed and my usual self-regulation efforts aren't working. But it's rare that I start thinking about them without already noticing the depression and self-regulation stall.

This was not the week I thought I was going to have.

I got turned down for a job I really, really wanted. I trust that it's going to lead me to better things (or potentially I reapply later), but a lot of my cognitive load had been going to daydreaming about relocating and now it's not really sure where to go.
A trans woman died in my community. I had only met her once or twice: long enough to get a massive crush, not long enough to learn her last name. But I went to the grief circle tonight and offered what support I could to her grieving parents and others.
The friend I trust to be untrustworthy may be about to lose one parent to illness and another to the grief. I really wish people would call on a care coach or family diplomat during such difficult times. This particular friend just stormed off and probably got high.
Speaking of mental illness, when I started gray-rocking my fam-o about three years ago, I never would have imagined they would just stop participating. I have literally no idea what's happening over there right now, because they each started dealing with heavy shit and they simply do not know how to communicate out of anything other than idleness or overwhelm.
My ostensible dating partner and friend of 30+ years abruptly reconnected with an ex last week and derailed our plans to share physical space (which is a big deal because their family doesn't mask consistently so I have to build a lot of faith and request 5 days of relative isolation). I can't help worrying that some of this was sparked by their recent realization that I was going to move away sooner or later, but they are not strong at self-advocacy nor even certain kinds of self-awareness and I horrible at navigating the unspoken.
My planned road trip to visit hyper-cautious loved ones in central Texas did not happen because 2/3 of us got nasty spring colds (I allow for the fact it could have been COVID, but I have zero evidence and a lifetime of experience with allergies turning into sinus infections and it felt like the latter; that said, these things just plain heal more slowly than they did before my two cases of COVID).
Signs currently point to a new hypomania as I come out of sick-space: the excitement of the big change being redirected into staying calm combined with having been rather idle the past two weeks, so that's why I'm still up at 7am (I did have a 3-hour nap earlier, which is usually navigable for me) documenting some of the goings on instead of sleeping.
Have had a strong urge to write the past few days thanks to a writing group I'm co-leading, but I'm wavering between too much and too little to say.
My therapist wants to terminate after over ten years together because she has nothing left to teach me, I'm figuring it all out on my own. I agree it's time, but that doesn't mean I'm enthusiastic about it.

I should probably read the Tao or something contemplative, then try again to sleep.

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Two Sides of Mindfulness

Tue, 13 Feb 2024 23:36:40 GMT

Sometimes, mindfulness looks like maintaining awareness of others, so when your best friend starts picking a fight because you reached out on a bad day, you don't take the bait, back away, and wish her well.

Sometimes, mindfulness looks like pacing around your kitchen, seething, forcing yourself not to yell at family members who you know - logically, at least - have done nothing wrong.

Mindfulness is about protecting yourself, but it is also about protecting others around you. Mindfulness is about knowing your surroundings, but also about knowing yourself.

I've spent the better part of the last year documenting hypomanic cycles that I've only recently realized as such. When I first told my therapist about ten years ago that I thought I had a mild form of bipolar that I keep in check through extreme self-control and consideration of others, she just said, "Yeah, that tracks," but it's only been these past 10 months or so that I realized that beyond circumstantial cycles - lack of sleep, grief, working too hard - I experience three seasonal hypomanias each year, lasting 3-6 weeks each. Since they have different personalities and I wasn't confident in the dates, I've been trying to pay closer attention and write down the patterns. (It's also a capstone project with my therapist, who is recommending we wind down after exactly a decade of working together)

The past 3 weeks might have slipped past if I hadn't been watching for it: abrupt irritability, a low-grade but constant hunger headache, a little clumsier than usual... It's like being on steroids (not, like, the athletic kind, but the ones an ENT gives you when you get too many sinus infections). But the past couple of days I had to talk myself down, and today I awoke early and energetic (normally I snooze a few times and need extra time to get going) and couldn't lay back down once my head started spinning.

So here I am, bursting with energy but unmotivated to channel it any particular direction. But at least I'm aware of it and I can grant myself some leeway to find what's best. Writing helps. Writing always helps.

*****

Since I woke up somewhat fixated on a past era of my life, I was able to put all this processing to one mystery solved: I have, at times (one stands out), experienced close friends or lovers who could not understand (or sometimes even tolerate) why I made so much time for people who did not obviously align with my interests in the moment. You could call it their "vibration" or "level", though that shit gets hierarchical uncomfortably fast (I never told them that, but I see it plainly now), just something about them that others find disruptive to their own calm in a way that I didn't to mine.

And now I can see plainly that it's because I have been that person and I love them and want to affirm their journey. The other calm people I've known, the ones who stood with me when things were good but struggled in long-term chaos, who didn't like seeing me lose control (even when it was consensual and planned to do so), who didn't know how to argue without lashing out or shutting down...

They were all... faking it?

The mild-mannered accountant who buried a lifetime of shame, held grudges, and ghosted me in grief. The spiritual educator who was secretly an alcoholic. The sex-positive blogger who didn't like how my words made them look. They never shared their full, true struggles with me (and perhaps assumed I had never shared mine fully, when openness and a focused sense of self were my hyperfixation for a good long while) and were intensely devoted to projecting calm more than they were capable of cultivating it.

I don't know, maybe this is why I don't bother judging people who lose their calm. Because I've been there, too, I just always found my way back on the path. I can always do better, but I rarely do bad and it always comes from my experiential skills, not my affectations.

I don't really have anywhere else to take this, just gonna sit with it and hope that they're all doing okay out there. I doubt any of them ever would have guessed how much they broke my heart, but they definitely would have judged me for how easily I could forgive them for doing so.

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