Eredien's Journal

Hi guys! Remember in 2010 when I'd just moved and had an unexpected $4000 medical bill I had to pay out of pocket since I had no health insurance? Remember how they thought my skull might get infected? Remember how much it SUCKED?

Well, guess what! Editrx is now in almost exactly a similar medical situation, involving dental work. Please donate or help out how you can.

2011 was kind of a wash for me. There were some good things--making new friends, seeing old ones, achieving the goal I'd had (and had been stymied in by doctors and moving for 2+ years) of actually getting on depression medication, helping my boyfriend figure out what he needs from himself in a relationship with me and his other SO, starting the process of recognizing the good decisions I made in 2010 and forgiving myself for the bad ones. There were some bad things--sharing an apartment with an alcoholic who "forgot" to pay the internet and fix the heat, moving into a second apartment where one roommate constantly promised to move but didn't and the landlord preferred evictions over conversations; having my phone die; having both laptops die; and generally running short of cash from too many moves with too little preparation in too little time.

I am proud that:
- I have started beta-testing as a vendor at an online marketplace which I can't talk about yet but is going to be awesome.
- I have gotten on medication and it has made my life better. I am not scared of medication anymore: it makes me be the person I am at my best, instead of the person I am when I'm at my worst. I am still waiting for medicaid to come through, which is a paperwork bear (as opposed to a paper tiger), but knowing that my doctors won't write off my depression as something I am making up, or tell me that if I changed my body drastically in terms of weight I wouldn't be depressed anymore, is pretty awesome. Also, getting a 90-day refill from my therapists in MA without having to pay $120 out of pocket every three months is amazing. I wish that option had been available to me in October, but now that I am on meds again I am less angry about the fact that it wasn't, and less angry about the fact that I lost another place that had become home because of the fact that the medical establishment limited my access to necessary medication because my insurance wasn't any good there and I couldn't pay out of pocket. Both of these things are good.
- I have become more informed, and more self-informed, about race and the history of racism, both worldwide and in America.
- I have started watching movies and anime that I want to watch and reading books I want to read and reviewing them online when I feel like it. This seems like a very small thing, but when you have held off on having the experiences you wanted to have because you wanted not just the experience of doing the thing, but also the meta-experience of experiencing that experience with other people who care about you and the experience, and the other people want to share those experiences with you but don't set aside time to do so, eventually you get tired of waiting for the other people. It's not as much fun as experiencing these things alone, and I don't enjoy it as much as I would if I had a group of friends and loved ones with me. But it's better than being told, "I want to have this experience and I want to experience it with you, but I won't set a time to tell you when and won't let you set a time for me," and getting confused, hurt, and resentful at constantly having to hold back experiences I wanted to have yesterday, so that I can have them on someone else's constantly-unspecified timeframe, and then hurting the people I love when I express my hurt and resentment to them but present it to them, wrongly, as a personal character failure on their part.
- I have determined that it is necessary for me to find a long-term relationship with another person (probably a woman-type person) who makes it clear to me that I am a pleasure in their life and won't doubt my love for them, while also continuing my relationship with [Bad username or site: ab3nd" @ livejournal.com] for the foreseeable future. I am not ready to go find that relationship yet. I still hurt too much. But I think determining that it was necessary was a good thing.
- I have determined that to get this relationship, I need to make it clear to the other person that they are a pleasure in my life and I want to live with them and enjoy their company and love them, and I will do this by not pointing out the goodness of the good things in my life, instead of complaining about the few bad points of the good things in my life, which is basically how I lose a lot of loved ones and friendships. I was better at this in the past, and I can get better at it again.
- I started going back to the gym (actually, it's what I'm going to do after I finish writing this journal entry). I am going to the gym not even to get in shape because my doctors won't medicate me for sleep issues without weight loss on my part (which was largely the case in 2009-10) or because I think losing weight will make my partners want me more or less than they ever did, because I'm beautiful whether people can see it or not: I am going because an hour or so of physical activity a day gives me a specified time alone to get in touch with my body via physical meditative activity, as well as an opportunity to listen to new music, podcasts, and audiobooks which I wouldn't have time for otherwise. An hour or so of physical activity a day is a great way to set aside positive time for me having my need for time to make and consume art be interrupted by other people's demands of me.
- I have accepted the fact that my family will never approve of my relationships, whether those are friendships or loved ones, because they have a hard time approving of many of the things I do, because they have a hard time approving of themselves because they are resentful of the things they tell themselves they cannot do. Their lack of approval of my relationships is not my problem or my partners' problem. I will keep doing what I am doing in my romantic and sexual life and remind myself to have compassion for others who think poorly of me when I make choices that make me happy, and who think poorly of my friends and loved ones when they make choices that make them happy, and limit my association with such people.
- Finally, I am most proud of getting rid of almost all of my stuff except what I was actually using. I had too much of it, and too much of it was around because I wanted to be a person who had specific experiences (skiing, reading, making jam) but did not actually have those experiences, and so the stuff just sat there reminding me of all the things I wanted to experience but hadn't. If I want to do that stuff, I can: I can borrow someone else's jam making set, or rent skis, or buy more books (though I got a Kindle for Christmas, which is awesome because I will no longer need to move with boxes and boxes of physical books but will still be able to read to my heart's wallet's content. It also makes moving a lot easier for me, both physically and psychologically).

Resolutions for 2012:
- Finish and publish at least two things.
- Continue 365 Days of Art (which took a hiatus for the holidays and will be back today).
- Continue to make my relationships with loved ones deeper by complimenting the people I love instead of complaining about my or their shortcomings within a relationship, which makes them think that I don't love them or respect their choices or respect myself despite my shortcomings, makes me feel that they don't care about what bothers me, and gets me the opposite of what I actually want when I complain (which is respect for the fact that I am bothered by something, manifesting in a mutual discussion about how and why to resolve the problem).
- Keep on meds without a break.
- Sell model horses on ebay.
- Transfer old cassette tape music to MP3s. Sync all MP3 collections across devices.
- Setup KeePass to manage passwords safely between devices. Setup gmail with 2-step authentication again and this time print out everything.
- Catch them all in Pokemon SoulSilver or Diamond.
- Pay off credit card debt, personal debt, cellphone debt, and personal loans racked up in 2010-2011 through unexpected moving and continued medical expenses.
- Continue paying off education loan on a regular basis.
- Make sure multiple address change(s) have percolated through USPS system. easy!
- Sell awesome things on online store.
- Make professional-looking website/twitter.
- Keep going to the gym 3x week. Do not allow my mother to manipulate me into going to the gym more than I need or want to.
- Get a job, preferably with benefits. Continue to explore career options with hands-on internships related to N. Bennett St School degree tracks.
- Apply to N. Bennett St School this year.
- Travel to weddings of various friends. Enjoy myself there. Mission accomplished!
- Get in touch with gender activists at other womens' colleges and continue to work for the rights of MTF transgender women as women in traditionally bio-female-only spaces.
- Transfer LJ to Dreamwidth and set up cross-posting there.
- Get hormone balance tested by a doctor, with new results instead of old ones. Life without PMS is really, truly amazing.
- Get sleep tested by a doctor.
- Get allergy tested by a doctor.
- Make a financial plan for the next 5 years.
- Plan 2013 travel, with suggested places including DC, Boston, Toronto, California, and Belgium.
- Make plans to move back to Boston, including budgeting for a space without roommates and medical emergencies.
- Bike commute in spring, summer, and fall whenever possible.
- Optional bonus resolution: compose music.

So, I already sent an email out to those whose emails are in the contact list of my currently accessible gmail account, but for those whose emails are on my other, currently inaccessible, personal gmail account, and for general knowledge:

I am probably moving back in with my family. It remains to be seen if they are amenable to this, or if there is some other kind of plan, but I suspect that's where I will be in a month or so (I technically am paid through Nov. 30th, but obviously hope things resolve much sooner than that).

It is theoretically possible I might get a job, or something, which would make all this moot, but I doubt it's going to happen in this economy. So, I'm planning to move, and if that doesn't happen and I get a job or somebody decides to hire me as their personal chef, or I win the lottery or suddenly find a Picasso, well then, it will be a pleasant surprise.

I am unhappy about this decision for reasons amply detailed in this journal and IRL to most if not all of you, but my landlord, who is generally awesome, agrees with me that one cannot pay the rent in self-knowledge and increased care for oneself, however much one might like to.

If you'd like to talk to me about this, please leave a comment, or email me at my "official" gmail, or Skype or tweet me. Please don't call--my phone isn't working.

Thanks for your love and understanding.

Quentin Tarantino as a My Little Pony, my mother singing to me about the ecology of new york city rivers, and people trying to make me eat fish pizza? Sure, all in a night's work for my brain.

I've also lost my voice so if you call I may not be audible.

Posted via LjBeetle

- I have read 2 John Brunner novels in the past two days, The Shockwave Rider and Players at the Game of People. I did not like Players. Its allegory was way too heavy-handed, and its main female characters served to a.)be love interests for the viewpoint character and b.)act as a foil to the viewpoint character and show him the allegory wasn't what he thought it was. I didn't even find the premise clever beyond chapter three. I think this would have been way, way better as a short story. The novel was also racist (oh, John Brunner and your problematics!) I liked The Shockwave Rider, although I have a hard time remembering the title, since there are really no shockwaves or riding in the entire book (the title is a reference to the book that inspired it, Future Shock, which makes a lot of sense. It's just that I've never read Future Shock and keep forgetting its title because of that). I enjoy books with strong and intelligent women who love their boyfriends but don't take shit from their boyfriends, tame genetically-engineered mountain lions, narrow disasters averted by last-minute computer hacking, cool architecture, and men and people in general who listen to their consciences even when that decision is really pretty risky. Though a lot of the technology in this book is outdated (tape backups? Punch cards?) a lot of it isn't (pocket videophones? Wall-to-wall 3-D TVs?) and the ways in which the technology is *used* (to disrupt corrupt governments by strategically leaking classified government documents wikileaks style, to smuggle people out of secret detention facilities that are not supposed to exist, to dupe credulous parishioners out of money to line the pockets of unscrupulous priests, to give the police easy access to the movements of everyday citizens, to create new bio-technologies that show great technological promise for humanity but may also cross ethical and moral boundaries) is cutting-edge stuff.

- I made vegan vodka tomato pasta. It's good.

- Oolong has been exploring the outside back porch, which has a tall wood railing. She keeps trying to sneak out between the slats, though. I have to try her harness again, because she's so stupid she'll go right through and so uncoordinated that I'm kind of afraid she might fall off the porch down to the ground 2 stories below.

- I cry a lot in the shower, due to historical problems finding any truly private spaces indoors as a child. Now I have apparently associated showering with sadness, to the point where every single time in the past week that I have showered, I have cried for at least fifteen minutes afterward, often for no good reason, sometimes because I came to an important realization in the shower. It's annoying. But I am also due to get my period. More about this below.

- Tokai shed yesterday. Go, Tokai!

- My cousin in NYC is a fabric buyer for a place that sells huge amounts of fabrics to places that make clothes and then sell the resulting clothes to mass-market department stores across the US. I didn't know this, but when I found out, I forwarded her an article I'd read back in Feb. about fabrics and their representations of people of color. I implied there was a huge market in this stuff, especially for kids' clothes. Hopefully she and her employer will take the hint and make a load of money, and make a lot of kids and their parents really happy, by giving people awesome clothes featuring some people who might not all be white! :)

- I have resumed conversations with my parents, but think I will end them soonish. This will make visiting my family in NY in July difficult, since I want to see my sister and Jan and apparently Jan's sister and her boyfriend, but don't really want to interact with my parents much. However, when my father said I was sounding happier on the phone, I realized he just couldn't distinguish between my actual genuine happiness and my talking to him about random things because I felt it was my duty as his daughter. Granted, possibly this is also my problem, but since my mother also did not bring up the 20-minute conversation I had with her last week about why I had stopped talking to them for six months and needed to talk to them seriously about fixing some problems I had interacting with them, problems they were largely causing, I don't think that my conversations with them will be going anywhere near Genuine Happinessville, despite my trying to steer the metaphorical car in that direction, and I'd rather have no relationship at all with my parents than one that I feel is false on its face, when it could be so much more, but they just aren't interested in bringing up things that are hard for them to talk about or finding serious solutions for the problems they have with me and I with them, because they might get upset and need to cry or be angry for a while, at themselves or me or both, and showing weakness and asking for help to fix their relationship with me isn't ok, it's just easier to tell themselves they have a crazy and disrespectful daughter who they won't ever understand.

possible physical TMI warning (PMS), which also contains a recommendation for a Droid app
- I have installed the most-awesome ever application on my new android phone (all the features of the old sidekick, for the same amount of money a month, and backed by a company whose data servers probably won't go out of business anytime soon, like the Sidekick data people did constantly? Yay!) It is not the touch keyboard that lets me type almost as fast as I can read, which is still pretty cool. It is a thingy called OvuView, which is free, and lets you track your period. It also lets you track variables, such as "lots of cramps," or "mild headache," or "temperature," or "moodiness," or "appetite" or "sleeplessness." It also tells me when my period is probably going to be. Since I am *notoriously* bad at tracking this myself, to my detriment and the detriment of everyone around me, this app pings me every night and makes me enter as much or as little data as I want to enter. It's fantastic. Now I *know* that if I eat a half a pack of tofu during a protein craving, can't sleep, and cry for an hour, I can track it and see if there's a pattern instead of wondering why I feel like shit and want to sleep all the time. It makes me feel way more in control of my body and my mood. Instead of being buffeted around by mystery moods and sicknesses which may or may not be hormonal in origin, I can just put how I feel in the app, and go on with my life.
It projects the dates of your next period, too, and uh, probably does a lot of other stuff I haven't figured out yet. You can also apparently use it to calculate fertility (though this is not a feature of the app that I will be reviewing).
I've tried keeping a paper diary and a calendar about this before, because I know hormone-related moods and painful cramps were a big problem in my life and in other peoples' lives, but I never was able to remember which symptoms I was keeping track of in my little notes, and sometimes I forgot to track it, and would have to start all over again, and since I was feeling like crap, I'd get discouraged that I couldn't even keep a period journal write and cry for an extra hour. This app? If I'm feeling like crap, it takes me a minute to open up the application and say so, and then I know I don't have to *remember* it to write it down later, and so I won't worry about it all day when I'm already having PMS and mood swings, and won't get home and forget what I was going to write down, so my fears of being an abnormal freak whose hormones are even affecting her memory, and hence her sense of self as a woman and a capable person in general, is *gone.* It's AWESOME. Recommended.

Ultimate goal: convince my doctor, using historical data, that I really do have some kind of freaky hormonal imbalance that turns me into a saltwater tears factory with no desire to eat; instant, painful, and socially awkward GI problems; and the desire to hide under a blanket with a warm cat for one week out of every four a month, and convince her that it is really ruining my life, so I can figure out what to do from there that's not hormonal birth control (which makes me that person for the whole month straight, and scared my partner and me the whole time I was on it because I would start crying as I was smiling, which I'd not done much before I took the medicine, but restarted my period on a regular basis, and which I've been doing an awful lot since having my period on a regular basis).

Not a joke: the heat in my apartment is out again. I would complain to the landlord, only my roommate still hasn't given me the contact info. Of course this happens just as I'm starting to recover from the two-week mystery sickness. And 3 feet of snow get dumped on the ground. ...Can't I have nice things yet? At least Tokai has some nice heat pads.

In other news, does anyone have recommendations of doctors around Davis that take MassHealth? I am thinking about getting at least a second opinion for the upper respiratory/ear crap that has been plaguing me on and off for a solid year now.

Also, in another kind of health, does anyone I know want to do a tarot reading for me? I know that's a little weird, but it's something that I'd like to try. My usual methods of figuring out what's going on with my life and subconscious aren't working really well--or rather are telling me things I already know in an endless loop that it's doing me no good to think about on waking--and I think it might be useful to bring in a different set of symbols, and one less finely-honed to me. A trepanning, rather than a blood-type-matched transfusion. I've never really done tarot before, except once, and it didn't work too well; the person doing it had to switch from cards to stones. It might be a little...weird.

So, today I wanted to go to the RMV, and the pet store, and run an errand, and do several hours' worth of work, and after dinner work on the dress I am making for B.

However, I instead spent the entire day at the doctor's office, so after dinner I will be going to CVS to pick up my 60 mg ibuprofen tablets and then do several hours' worth of work, since there was no internet in the doctor's office.

I got there around 11:15/11:30, and said, "yeah, I know I should have called, but I don't have a phone that makes outgoing calls right now [skype works with my bluetooth headset, but has poor reception; gchat doesn't seem to work at all, which I found out after I switched to gchat and bought a bluetooth headset]. Do you think you can have a nurse or somebody see me today, since I was already going to run errands over here later?"

They said, "sure; sit down and the nurse will call you."

Several hours went by. I read a paper on internet security models, picked out some courses I might take from the Boston Architecture Institute Catalog, made notes to myself, planted 30 berries in Pokemon Diamond, attempted to get wireless with my computer until the sishkebab place across the street blocked my IP, went to the water fountain a few times, read a magazine, and learned the rules of mah-jong and spider solitaire from playing the games rather than reading the help manual. I wasn't expecting to get waited on quickly since I hadn't had an appointment; I figured that when I walked back and forth to the bathroom the receptionists would have called me over if there was something wrong.

At 3:30, the receptionist called me. "Have you been sitting here all this time?" She was kind of embarrassed for me, I think.
"Well, yes. I mean, you said you'd told the nurse I was here, and so both you and the nurse both knew I was here. So..."
"You should never wait that long! Come up and tell us you're still waiting!"
I blinked. I was frustrated that it was apparently sort of my fault for not letting them know that I was still there, when in fact the whole point of telling them I was there in the first place was so that they would know I was there and I wouldn't have to tell them again--honestly, doctor's offices are really busy places, and I figured I'd just be annoying the receptionist if I popped up every half hour to remind her of something I'd already told her and she'd already passed on to the appropriate party.
The receptionist looked in the paperwork and found out that while she'd told the nurse I was there, for some reason the nurse had forgotten to actually see me. (I've had the same problem happen with the nurse forgetting to call me back, but I figured it would be less likely to happen if I was actually physically present in the office...silly me).
Fifteen minutes later, the nurse called me, apologized for forgetting about me (which was silly, since nurses were popping their heads into the waiting room every fifteen minutes, and I'd deliberately positioned myself to be clearly visible), took my temperature, and did a quick throat culture, telling me it was probably strep and it was going around a lot.
Fifteen minutes later, the quick culture came back negative for strep, but then my doctor wanted to see me.
The doctor came in, apologized again for the delay, decided it wasn't thrush, said that maybe it was "cryptic tonsils," listened to my lungs and felt the swelling/heat in my throat and around my ear, asked me, "but you usually don't have many ear problems, right?" and looked confused when I said that I *always* have ear problems when I have a cold, said they were sending the culture off for another test and that sometimes the quick test wasn't right, told me to drink a lot of water, asked me if either of my partners had been sick, got my email, and gave me a prescription for a horse pills' worth of ibuprofen 3x a day.

I really like my doctor, and she's centrally located, but a lot of the time her staff/practice seems overworked, and she can't seem to remember the current status of my ear/throat problems or my partnerships at any given time. If I didn't actually like her, or have an actual 5-year history at this point with her, I might try to switch practices.

...so, I might not have strep, but I will know for sure in a few days. Thrush is not likely. A fun six hours for...60 mg of ibuprofen and a strep culture. Thrills a minute.

One thrill. Per minute.

I am slowly beginning to start reading my lj friends list again, for those of you who were wondering when/if I would start to do this again. It's more of an experiment as to "do I really want to spend time on this?" than anything else, but since it's also one of the main ways my friends and I keep up with each other, keeping up with that is important to me. I just need to get better at skimming, I think.

In other news, I'm sick. I woke up at 6 am today after getting 6 hours of sleep, and then slept until 4 pm with no break. This usually means I'm really sick. I've also been having absolutely horrible headaches, but have remembered to take ibuprofen and they mostly seem to be gone now, as does the ear infection I was working on on Saturday. I *hate* getting my period, which also explains why I cried randomly on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and had trouble sleeping Wednesday evening, without knowing why.

( rant on reproductive health )

For my birthday, I treated myself to a movie Saturday afternoon, Rango [edit: Rango is rated PG], and realized two things:
- I didn't really like Rango. I thought the character design was interesting, and the commentary on water supply and control in urban desert areas was interesting (groundwater policy), and the end-credits had a fun design, but it had a lot of really problematic stereotypes (hicks, Native Americans) which it bought into because it was a movie in the mold of a traditional American Western, and that made the whole movie not really worth it.
- Lots of children's movies that are made with anthro animal characters now are the same movies that would have been made (or were made) with live human actors in the past, and if they were made with live human actors today, they would not get a G rating (I dunno if they'd get a PG rating, either, but in any case Rango was obviously aimed at children). Computer-generated animals can get hurt and have the bad guy fire at them and be trapped in a cell slowly filling with water and almost drown, and computer-generated animal women can be assaulted and threatened by the bad guys with sexual undertones, and computer-generated animals can be stereotypically wise Native Americans or stereotypically uneducated hicks, and it can be funny, and or/dramatic and full of action and shootouts, etc. Whereas if this same movie had been made with human live actors, people would have been more clearly able to see the problematic stereotypes and the violence for what they were, and this movie would have been rated PG-13 at the least. It's really interesting, actually--I found the movie to be a really compelling example of a genre that usually has to be marketed to adult viewers when human actors are used, but can be easily shown to children if all the problematic issues of having humans shoot and assault each other are glossed over by having geckos and snakes and rabbits replace human actors. I realized for the first time that the movie studios are able to market adult plots to children in the guise of anthromoporphic CGI, so they're able to tell stories that they couldn't with human actors in the same roles. (This realization was the reason I kept watching this movie after being disappointed in the stereotyping; indeed it was the stereotyping that led me to this realization). This is good, on one level--kids' movies can have humorous, complicated plots with a lot of drama and quick wit. But on the other hand, why is it so easy for adults and children alike to overlook stereotyping when the actors are groundhogs, as opposed to humans? Then I realized that almost *all* the children's movies I see are about anthro characters. Part of this is the CGI uncanny valley and the long tradition of anthro animals in childrens' fare and the expense of live actors vs CGI, of course, but I think the studios are telling stories with animals in place of humans partly because they can get away with doing things with animals they could never in a million years do with human characters, and still get that G rating and do a lot of merchandising besides.

I had an extra bit of energy today. I called my parents. The call was going pretty well until I told them I was going to drive back to Indiana to pick up my stuff and they weren't going to be involved in any way, because I didn't want them to be.

It is really very, very useful to be able to understand the exact tropes and language that your parents are using to dismiss your legitimate concerns and problems about your relationship with them.

Today I got:
- I know what your life was like better than you because I happen to have some privilege you don't which of course allows me to see everything that ever happened to you more clearly than you yourself see it ("we're older than you and we have experienced more of life so you should listen to us")

- Don't Ask Questions You Don't Want the Answers To/I Had Problems Too/Tone Argument ("When weren't were there for you?" "Well, how about when you didn't pick us up from school? When you didn't drop us off on time? When you didn't build the treehouse? When you didn't build the dollhouse? When you didn't go skiing or play backgammon?" "When dad didn't come into our apartment and I had to explain to Rachel that he wouldn't tell me why he wouldn't come in, and how that hurt both of our feelings?" "Well...my parents also didn't do things with me that I wish my parents had done. I'm not upset or angry. And your father totally came in and toured the house [lie].")

- Outright denial of my lived experience ("I feel like you weren't always there for me." "We were there for you 110% percent!")

- My personal failings couldn't have impacted you at all, and certainly not in the way that you say they did ("we recognize that we have a problem with procrastination, but that's our problem, not yours")

- I Will Privilege My Interpretation of Events Over Yours, which allows me to Discount Your Point of View as Irrational so that I Won't Have to Solve the Problem that Hurt You ("We had problems with procrastination, but that stuff about being late happened way less than you think it did!")

It's sometimes necessary and good, even if it doesn't feel very nice, to say "Fuck you," and hang up the phone.

Thank you, anti-racism and anti-sexism and anti-homophobia and anti-cisgenderism, and all my friends and family who have encouraged me in my learning even when it's hard. By learning how to get rid of my own prejudices and bigotry, I am also gaining the tools to help myself heal.

So, I need to apply to some jobs. But I'm stuck.

I can either:
1.) Apply to part-time jobs, or temp jobs for commission, that will leave me with time and energy to work a second part-time job for no pay (art and writing), which has massive happiness benefits for me. These jobs will not have health benefits.

2.) Apply to full-time jobs which will leave me with health benefits, but not have any energy or time left over for art and writing once I, say, have eaten dinner and cleaned the laundry. (I thought I could do this, and worked from 2005-2010 in jobs that I thought would let me do this, and it didn't happen. If I go this route, I will give up art as a career--I don't want to squander another half-decade of my life pretending like I'm going to write a novel, but knowing full well it's not going to happen because I've got no time or energy).

Oh, and I also need to:
- Get an apartment
- Move again, paying all moving expenses
- Figure out a way to afford grad school
- Pay for expenses, including special cat food that runs $45/bag

I'm secretly terrified of going to grad school. Remember that summer course I tried to take a while ago, the Urban Studies one at Tufts, which I was really excited about and was going to use to catapault myself back into academia and figuring out what I wanted to do for grad school for real?

I quit not because the workload was too much, but because when I tried to do the readings to do the work, the part of my brain that understands how to do hard academic reading shut down--and doing the work was impossible under those conditions. I was reading the words, but couldn't remember the ideas in the individual sentences long enough to follow a train of thought through a paragraph, much less from one paragraph to the next. I would finish an article, and have no ability to recall or summarize the main points of what I just read. And this is urban studies, not literary theory--the points are generally pretty straightforward, like "we can use these techniques to increase pedestrian safety; here's why America isn't using them."

That's also why the paper I gave a week later at Readercon was something that I was ashamed of--it felt like it kind of ran from point to point, and when Thrud asked a question that made sense given the paper's topic, I panicked because her question (about the trope of the flawed hero in early myth) literally made no sense to me. I heard the words coming out, in academic English, but I did not understand her question because I could not parse the sentence because I didn't catch the individual words. This was humiliating. I'd never written a paper that I wasn't proud of before, much less given one that I wasn't happy with at a professional conference.

I told everyone that it was the workload because I felt freaked out, confused, and ashamed, and had no idea what had happened to my brain or my ability to remember or think. I saw indications of the problem before--I thought that I was just rusty--by subjecting myself to things like independent essay-writing projects or summer classes, I would soon get back into the thick of things, and not have to worry about it, but the problem got worse as soon as I tried to fix it.

The same thing happens with novels. Unless I write down what I am thinking about the novel immediately after I read it (which is why I have been writing book reviews), I forget that I read it. I don't remember what it was about. I don't remember the characters very well. If it pick it up again I will remember that I read it, but it's like a transient experience.

That's why the only thing I've really been reading lately is political commentary and webcomics. The former is a few paragraphs that I can understand in a short burst of thought; the latter is not reading in the way that I usually understand it in that it is not entirely audio-based (when I read, I hear the phrases more or less spoken aloud in my head, and with comics, it's more like a movie, since a setting/scene is also provided).

For someone who desperately needs intellectual stimulation to keep her happy, I am pretty miserable, and I have no idea what to do about it. I've been miserable like this since I graduated college, when I felt intellectually at the top of my game and then took a minimum wage job working a call-center because that was all that was available, and then a job where I was routinely writing at top-speed, and editing, but not reading that much.

This is why, if you ask me to do something, sometimes I will stand there slack-jawed. I am not trying to be stupid. I am trying to remember what the word "washcloth" means.

This is why I haven't pursued grad school, while having dreams about screaming in horrible jealousy at a roomful of the people I know who are attending grad school (which just made me feel like an ass). This is why I constantly complain about going back to school and don't, well, apply for anything. This is why I've only written a handful of poems since 2005, and one short story finished. This is why I've switched to doing things with my hands, and why I've started complaining about it--I love doing things with my hands, but not as a main occupation; the fact that I feel as if I have no other choice but to do the things I still feel I can do has embittered me about those things, and I can't love them as much as I want to, or need to.

I am kind of terrified, as the only thing that really gives my life a deep meaning is writing and thinking and reading, and I appear to be losing my access to...whatever it is that gives language meaning in my brain. Sometimes I can think, and write, and churn out an idea, and manage to fix it on the page as a poem or something, or maybe part of a story.
But even then there's a clarity lacking that I know I am hieing after, and not finding. And I don't know what to do about any of it.

I'm really, really scared.

And I'm broke, so I need a job, desperately.

And I'm not sure which kind of job to pick. I desperately want to be able to do art and writing, but I don't know what to do about this problem where I read a page of, say, critical literary theory, or a long-form article, or a novel, and then want to go hide in a corner for the next hour because I can't understand it and don't remember it and can't...think...about it.

That's never happened before, and it's terrifying; I feel really broken in a fundamental way. I have no idea why. Did my brain just get through Bryn Mawr and give up? That feels really--not correct, as a theory, to me. I mean, I've been reading, and understanding and caring about reading, since before I cared about almost anything else in my life. But I could do it once, right, and do it brilliantly to boot--so why not now, when I need and want to?

Given all of this, what kinds of jobs should I apply to? Does anyone have thoughts?

It's taken me a really long time to talk about this--to think about this--because most of the people I know, and all of the people I care about, are really smart people. They value smartness, and quickness of wit and of mind, and that particular type of friendship that comes from recommending mutually agreeable books to each other, and the ability to have an intellectual discussion and follow a thread of argument, and valuing it when they learn a new word or idea. And I used to be one of those people. And I still care passionately about those things. And because I was surrounded--I surrounded myself--with people like that, like myself, it was harder to notice when I felt things going away; and once I realized what was happening, last summer, I was too scared to speak up because, well, things like that just don't go away, do they? And if they do, what will you be left with if you've spent your whole life being smart and thinking of yourself as smart and gradually feel like you don't know how to conduct a conversation anymore, and can't read your way through a text you'd read in highschool without losing a plot point?

It's why I've sat glumly through a lot of interesting intellectual discussions in the past year, while my friends kept looking over at me, wondering why I wasn't joining it, and why I declined to say anything if invited. I couldn't follow the threads of most arguments in book group, for instance; I couldn't understand the way that the sentences that people were speaking built up into a comment or theory or joke; it's been really hard for me to interact with people new and old.

I spent a lot of time thinking about this while putting together a puzzle in the gaming room at Anthrocon--a puzzle, simple, because I couldn't follow the rules for the new expansion of Race for the Galaxy, and kept losing my place when I tried to write the essay I was to present the following week--and feeling terrified that I was going to lose myself and the relationships that I cared about because I couldn't force myself to be intellectual enough for me to be happy, anymore. And now I feel like I kind of have lost those things, because my lack of pursuit of intellectual things and bitterness about working with my hands, which I loved to do before, ate into my life and my relationships. And I spent a lot of time thinking about it when I was outside, or constructing things with my hands, over the last year. That, too, was creative work, and worthwhile--so why was I so bitter about doing it? Why was I saying I hated it, and presenting myself to others as if I hated it, and complaining incessantly that it took up time from art, when what I hated was the feeling that I had to be working with my hands, because that was the only thing I was good at, anymore? I could easily have made time for art in my life, but was terrified that I would try and fail, again.

That's what I've been thinking about a lot, since that summer school session, and things have definitely come to a point where I can't ignore the question anymore.

Thoughts...would be really appreciated, here.

[Addendum: I first noticed this problem when I realized I was having a hard time remembering song lyrics, something I had always been able to do with no effort. This is largely why I don't sing anymore.]