August 12, 2024

This one might get too personal too soon. Feel free to look away. Or look at some of my July posts.

I recently stumbled across a clinical description of avoidant personality disorder, and team... I see a little too much of myself in it! This whole time I thought it was normal and common to assume everyone dislikes you until proven otherwise! I've always had a hard time believing that other people actually wanted to spend time around me so I would keep myself at a distance as a self-preservation tactic! I figured my brain was just being a little overbearing, but there's actually a name for it?

Something to talk to my therapist about!!

That being said, I am so unbelievably grateful for the many wonderful people I have in my life right now and I want to praise their resilliance in continuing to, like, be my friend? I don't mean that in quite so much of a self-depricating way. More so that it took me months of inviting my friends around for weekly dinners for me to believe that they actually liked me.

Which sounds quite ridiculous when I put it like that. There were people visiting my apartment every week to hang out and I believe that they wanted to see me. I used to keep a line from dandelion hands' "how to never stop being sad" pretty close to my chest (when I was a sad and lonely teenager, mostly):

"If they really wanted to see you, they'd come. But they won't. Who cares?"

There's a lot of really impactful sadgirl stuff in that track that I still dip into when I want to cry. Would recommend! But, like. The point being that I needed to grip myself on the shoulders and shake. I have avoidance deeply embedded in the social parts of my brain that I need to figure myself around. Maybe that's why I've historically enjoyed journaling, and don't mind this. It's public journaling, but because I don't think anyone is reading this, I'm not uncomfortable with it.

Speaking of journaling, my friends and I held a PowerPoint night recently, in which I dug into my middle school journals and shared it publicly. Maybe the same parts of my brain that assumed everyone hated me when I was 12 never really left, because putting it together was a mortifying ordeal, in which I was convinced that this would be the time that my friends saw my mean, pathetic, insecure, comp-het past and wondered to themselves. I was wrong. It was a hit. It's almost like we were all awkward and uncomfortable and dramatic as preteens and teens and my friends do like me, actually.

Maybe there is so much good joy in the world and so much of it is found in other people who want to share it with you.

I've also been trying to conquer this social fear through use of the internet, where I'm trying to ~put myself out there~ and talk to strangers, the one thing that my parents forbade me from doing. No, really. I had an online forum friend when I was 11 that my mother was convinced would stalk me to a high school football game and kidnap me. She lived in the UK.

Anyway. All of this to say: If you're reading this, feel free to drop me a line. I'll want to talk to you. This time my mom can't stop me.

August 29, 2024

Happy start of my semester!

This fall, I'm enrolled in a methods & research course and a course on writing reviews, both of which seem like exactly what I want them to be. Especially since I'd love to try my hand at writing reviews or holding interviews, the latter course is super pertinent to my current interests. I've made it through the first week, but now things take a sharp turn as I prep to attend a IAM's Grand Lodge Convention, meaning I'll be spending a week in Manhattan conducting Union business. It'll be so sick. I love meeting new people.

I haven't been to NYC since around 2018, and I fear that this visit will awaken something in me, as I keep itching to live in a city. Likely not NYC, but something bigger than my apartment complex and with easier access to physical community spaces and, I suppose, nightlife.

While I was working today, I had the thought that casual travel seems far more daunting today than it did pre-pandemic, and I can't pin the exact reason why. Forming deeper roots inside the home, for one. Discomfort with public transit, too. Perhaps I'm in less of a financial state to do even local travel, given transit, lodging, food, and the opportunity cost of not being at work. I don't know how to describe it, but I used to associate more of a mysticism with the world around me, and I was fueled by this deep curiousity to learn more about the places I had never been. I don't know what changed, but I'm not seeking new experiences at the same rate I used to.

I still believe the world to be fundamentally interesting. I just don't have the energy to go out into it in the ways I used to.

Because I know that some things are off, I've been taking renewed efforts to bolster my sleep habits. I'm seeing a specialist to address a condition that I think is granting me more fatigue. I want things to be better.

I hope, too, that this blog space doesn't become entirely filled with musings about how my life is only getting worse. The central vision of the blog is still taking shape.

If you're reading this, I hope you're having a good time <3