Two nights up at 3am chasing off a bear; two nights ago with bear spray and last night the dogs just needed the reassurance of my presence to chase him off, and he stayed out of my line of sight. I guess this one learns.

I'm falling into what I think of as my natural sleep cycle: up earlier, tired by 8:30 or 9pm. This is the cycle where I pretty ( Read more... )

So my dad is crazy. I don't have a ton of interest in trying to diagnose him, but his behaviour is well outside anything even near normal in a society. He hasn't really held a job. He has initiated and attempted to initiate a lot of very weird lawsuits. He writes relationship-revenge books and self-publishes them. He didn't mow his lawn for 24 ( Read more... )

I read a meme this morning about a broken window. It's the thing that most folks have probably done whether renters or owners: a thing in the house breaks, it seems like some work to fix, it gets backburnered until it's time to move out, then you fix it in half an hour and the next person gets the benefit. If the half hour had been spent a couple ( Read more... )

Goodness. It's such a rollercoaster: up and down and up and down. I don't write it down because I believe in any one narrative, or feel at any time like I have the answer. I write it down because I need it out of my head, and I need to see it from the outside. I need to be able to revisit it later on; like they say about childbirth my brain is so ( Read more... )

Oh goodness, that's always so good.

My counselor is so affirming. She illuminates all the things I like in my life, the things that stabilize me, all the carrots dangling around that I could pursue. It's such good work. Clarifying.

I made a bunch of connections between the way Tucker punishes himself for having feelings and for not being how other ( Read more... )

Ok. I made it through the last couple days. Cautiously, hopefully, the last week might have been the worst. It was that acute shock/loss thing where my emotional self just felt like TV static turned on extra loud all the time and I numbly went through the motions -- there were lots of motions, because a LOT of pig processing to do -- and I couldn't ( Read more... )

It's stuck around with me all day, and it was pretty sad this morning, so here's my dream:

I was at some sort of big gathering with all the old Vancouver folks, maybe it was a conference, maybe it was someone's big home. I ended up on a couch next to A, who I used to date, and who I suspect it ended somewhat ghostily on both sides with. Anyhow, ( Read more... )

My philosophy around removing things from my life is: replace them with something better first. It's easier to go towards a thing than away from it. It's easier to displace than to carve out an absence.

So I've been reaching out to people.

I reached out to a podcaster about tomatoes. I reached out to my Uncle Dave about how his sending me science ( Read more... )

Further to my last post, the friends I do want to keep close are nearly all in some sort of depressive/emotional crisis. Most of them are externalizing it too, which means they're still in the "the world is objectively terrible and so I have to be emotionally destroyed and nothing can be done" which is-- I mean, that's where it's depression and not ( Read more... )

This post is heavy. It's even heavy on my hands as I type.

When I moved to Vancouver I slowly networked into a wonderful, vibrant, unconventional, supportive community of folks. For a little while each I was particularly close to two community hub-type people and by bringing them together the community grew. We took care of each other in various ( Read more... )