The Status of the Skinner
A quick update, including why I haven't posted Chapter 6 of The Butterfly Effect and how this will change the rest of the schedule:
Migraines. Not as bad as the ones in college, but they hurt, and they're recurring a lot in these past few weeks. I'm treating them with rest (as much as I can, since headaches like this get into a vicious cycle with insomnia, so I'm not sleeping much either), and by reducing the amount of time I spend staring at a blank, white, backlit screen. Pain medication, alas, is a no-no given my complex physiology. This will slow my writing speed until I can get my eyes checked and all that. I hope the headaches will submit to treatment before November, since I was really looking forward to NaNoWriMo this year.
Since the slowdown in my fanfic writing speed means I won't be able to finish the "ten-year-olds" arc of The Butterfly Effect (Ch. 6-10) before November, and the gear switching involved in leaving a story hanging in the middle of posting while I do something else is physically exhausting (why does that happen? I don't know!), I'm going to save what I *can* get written now to create a buffer for when I start posting again in March. I like buffers.
The difficulty with focusing on writing composition on the computer also means that I did not get to finish my soul-baring essay about my (not actually that bad compared to many lives but still full of hard lessons) childhood for this year's combination Bullying Awareness Month, LGBT History Month, Depression Awareness Month, and Intimate Partner Violence Awareness Month that is October. I'll finish it for next year. In the meantime, I want everyone to know that it's okay to feel what you feel. It's okay to not smile when life is sad or hurts. It's okay to ask for help. It's okay to demand respect. It's okay to tell people you love them and want them around, even when they're not smiling or happy, and the hardest part of all is that it's okay to let someone be themselves, and to support them when they need help, without trying to "fix" them. It's okay to let people live without the pressure of feeling we'll disappoint the people we love if we're not perfect, and some days are worse than others. Help, support, care -- by all means, please be there for the people who love you, give people reasons to keep fighting -- but speaking for myself, there's a pain that cuts to the bottom of your heart to think that people who you love and love you might think you're "broken". It's today -- it's biology, it's a trigger situation, maybe it's everything at once -- and we may need help and practice to learn skills that help us weather every new today -- but there isn't a circuit anyone can replace to turn "the happy" back on. This isn't about being broken or fixable. It's okay to love people when they're not happy, and just help them ride out today. It's okay to reject the pressure to be something you're not, and to be who you are.
"To be or not to be" was Hamlet's question, but maybe the better question is "To be a lie, or to be the truth?" and everyone deserves to be the truth.
Along those lines, October 11th was National Coming Out Day. I never considered myself "in the closet" about my gender identity or sexual orientation, since I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by people who are incredibly open and supportive, but I've never made any clear declarations, either. It never seemed revelatory enough to point out that I'm attracted to people of all sexes. It is important to say, though. And lately, the pressure of how wrong it feels when someone calls me a "woman" has been wearing me down to tears. I've been wanting to say, "My gender identity is fluid, and that androgyny has been a fundamental, important part of my identity for as long as I can remember -- I'm not comfortable being defined precisely as a woman just because of my physical shape." I want to define myself precisely as someone who is both masculine and feminine -- not confused, but definitely not one or the other. Unfortunately, I don't have a good word to give people to replace "woman" in conversation. That makes it harder to bring up. That's also one of the reasons why it's important to bring up: words are a picture of a society's mental landscape. Not having a word to give means, in a way, living an existence that slips through the cracks of understanding and becomes invisible. Introducing a word is a part of making myself as real to society as I am real to myself. Making space in society for understanding and acceptance involves challenging the conversation itself. Now I'm on the hunt for a word I can give people instead of letting the conversation stay the same. I see that some people use the word "androgyne", which I may try on for size, but there's still a search at large for a word that doesn't necessarily define itself by the two established options -- for that place in the language where blue can mix with yellow and call itself green.
Interestingly, English does appear to have old, vestigial ungendered words to complement "he" and "she" (here quoting a quote quoted by Wikipedia):
In 1789, William H. Marshall records the existence of a dialectal English epicene pronoun, singular "ou": "'Ou will' expresses either he will, she will, or it will." Marshall traces "ou" to Middle English epicene "a", used by the 14th century English writer John of Trevisa, and both the OED and Wright's English Dialect Dictionary confirm the use of "a" for he, she, it, they, and even I. This "a" is a reduced form of the Anglo-Saxon he = "he" and heo = "she".
I like these pronouns better than the ones created more recently, and am considering how they would decline in Modern English. There may be announcements later. Heck, is "epicene" an option for me to offer instead of "woman"? Anyone have an opinion?
So, with that covered, back to what I've been doing while I haven't been writing (besides living in a massive Les Miserables and specifically Enjolras/Grantaire fangirl haze while I help
sumeria consider songs for her e/R playlist):
Art!
sumeria and I have submitted our application for the Katsucon Artist Alley, which meant I had to get samples of my calligraphy into an online portfolio tout de suite! And since pretty much all my convention calligraphy was done on-site for immediate sale, that meant breaking out the paper, silk, and ink, and doing a few pieces last week that could be scanned. I decided to separate these out from my cosplay and decidedly amateur colored pencil work (none of which would show up at a convention for sale, ever) by creating a new Deviant Art account specifically for my convention sale art: now available for viewing!
They may not be masterpieces, but they come from the heart. And now that I've got brushes again (we couldn't get them until Saturday, which was after the portfolio due date), I'm actually crafting the dye collection I need to do really fun, interesting things, and that I always put off mixing up until I had to tools to use it! Hopefully I'll have a chance to get some of those pieces scanned, too. As a special bonus, time when I'm working on calligraphy (and not looking at a computer screen, which is mostly unavoidable given my job but I limit it in what ways I can) actively helps my head feel less in pain and my mind feel less worn out. So, recovery by art! Yay!
Baby steps. I still want to have my head back in order by the time NaNo and holiday writing come around (my Yuletide signup is in, and I'll probably put up this year's copy of my Dear Yuletide letter tomorrow), but we'll see what happens. The first thing to do is get an appointment with an eye doctor and get a new glasses prescription.
Whew.
See you on the other side.
This entry was originally posted at http://psiten.dreamwidth.org/113708.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Migraines. Not as bad as the ones in college, but they hurt, and they're recurring a lot in these past few weeks. I'm treating them with rest (as much as I can, since headaches like this get into a vicious cycle with insomnia, so I'm not sleeping much either), and by reducing the amount of time I spend staring at a blank, white, backlit screen. Pain medication, alas, is a no-no given my complex physiology. This will slow my writing speed until I can get my eyes checked and all that. I hope the headaches will submit to treatment before November, since I was really looking forward to NaNoWriMo this year.
Since the slowdown in my fanfic writing speed means I won't be able to finish the "ten-year-olds" arc of The Butterfly Effect (Ch. 6-10) before November, and the gear switching involved in leaving a story hanging in the middle of posting while I do something else is physically exhausting (why does that happen? I don't know!), I'm going to save what I *can* get written now to create a buffer for when I start posting again in March. I like buffers.
The difficulty with focusing on writing composition on the computer also means that I did not get to finish my soul-baring essay about my (not actually that bad compared to many lives but still full of hard lessons) childhood for this year's combination Bullying Awareness Month, LGBT History Month, Depression Awareness Month, and Intimate Partner Violence Awareness Month that is October. I'll finish it for next year. In the meantime, I want everyone to know that it's okay to feel what you feel. It's okay to not smile when life is sad or hurts. It's okay to ask for help. It's okay to demand respect. It's okay to tell people you love them and want them around, even when they're not smiling or happy, and the hardest part of all is that it's okay to let someone be themselves, and to support them when they need help, without trying to "fix" them. It's okay to let people live without the pressure of feeling we'll disappoint the people we love if we're not perfect, and some days are worse than others. Help, support, care -- by all means, please be there for the people who love you, give people reasons to keep fighting -- but speaking for myself, there's a pain that cuts to the bottom of your heart to think that people who you love and love you might think you're "broken". It's today -- it's biology, it's a trigger situation, maybe it's everything at once -- and we may need help and practice to learn skills that help us weather every new today -- but there isn't a circuit anyone can replace to turn "the happy" back on. This isn't about being broken or fixable. It's okay to love people when they're not happy, and just help them ride out today. It's okay to reject the pressure to be something you're not, and to be who you are.
"To be or not to be" was Hamlet's question, but maybe the better question is "To be a lie, or to be the truth?" and everyone deserves to be the truth.
Along those lines, October 11th was National Coming Out Day. I never considered myself "in the closet" about my gender identity or sexual orientation, since I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by people who are incredibly open and supportive, but I've never made any clear declarations, either. It never seemed revelatory enough to point out that I'm attracted to people of all sexes. It is important to say, though. And lately, the pressure of how wrong it feels when someone calls me a "woman" has been wearing me down to tears. I've been wanting to say, "My gender identity is fluid, and that androgyny has been a fundamental, important part of my identity for as long as I can remember -- I'm not comfortable being defined precisely as a woman just because of my physical shape." I want to define myself precisely as someone who is both masculine and feminine -- not confused, but definitely not one or the other. Unfortunately, I don't have a good word to give people to replace "woman" in conversation. That makes it harder to bring up. That's also one of the reasons why it's important to bring up: words are a picture of a society's mental landscape. Not having a word to give means, in a way, living an existence that slips through the cracks of understanding and becomes invisible. Introducing a word is a part of making myself as real to society as I am real to myself. Making space in society for understanding and acceptance involves challenging the conversation itself. Now I'm on the hunt for a word I can give people instead of letting the conversation stay the same. I see that some people use the word "androgyne", which I may try on for size, but there's still a search at large for a word that doesn't necessarily define itself by the two established options -- for that place in the language where blue can mix with yellow and call itself green.
Interestingly, English does appear to have old, vestigial ungendered words to complement "he" and "she" (here quoting a quote quoted by Wikipedia):
In 1789, William H. Marshall records the existence of a dialectal English epicene pronoun, singular "ou": "'Ou will' expresses either he will, she will, or it will." Marshall traces "ou" to Middle English epicene "a", used by the 14th century English writer John of Trevisa, and both the OED and Wright's English Dialect Dictionary confirm the use of "a" for he, she, it, they, and even I. This "a" is a reduced form of the Anglo-Saxon he = "he" and heo = "she".
I like these pronouns better than the ones created more recently, and am considering how they would decline in Modern English. There may be announcements later. Heck, is "epicene" an option for me to offer instead of "woman"? Anyone have an opinion?
So, with that covered, back to what I've been doing while I haven't been writing (besides living in a massive Les Miserables and specifically Enjolras/Grantaire fangirl haze while I help
sumeria consider songs for her e/R playlist):
Art!
sumeria and I have submitted our application for the Katsucon Artist Alley, which meant I had to get samples of my calligraphy into an online portfolio tout de suite! And since pretty much all my convention calligraphy was done on-site for immediate sale, that meant breaking out the paper, silk, and ink, and doing a few pieces last week that could be scanned. I decided to separate these out from my cosplay and decidedly amateur colored pencil work (none of which would show up at a convention for sale, ever) by creating a new Deviant Art account specifically for my convention sale art: now available for viewing!
They may not be masterpieces, but they come from the heart. And now that I've got brushes again (we couldn't get them until Saturday, which was after the portfolio due date), I'm actually crafting the dye collection I need to do really fun, interesting things, and that I always put off mixing up until I had to tools to use it! Hopefully I'll have a chance to get some of those pieces scanned, too. As a special bonus, time when I'm working on calligraphy (and not looking at a computer screen, which is mostly unavoidable given my job but I limit it in what ways I can) actively helps my head feel less in pain and my mind feel less worn out. So, recovery by art! Yay!
Baby steps. I still want to have my head back in order by the time NaNo and holiday writing come around (my Yuletide signup is in, and I'll probably put up this year's copy of my Dear Yuletide letter tomorrow), but we'll see what happens. The first thing to do is get an appointment with an eye doctor and get a new glasses prescription.
Whew.
See you on the other side.
This entry was originally posted at http://psiten.dreamwidth.org/113708.html. Please comment there using OpenID.