Self-health and home care

I still don't have have A/C at home (it's on order), so I spent most of the month on the couch stressed and unhappy. I get major sensory overwhelm in the heat, which means I'm operating with a baseline of irritation all day every day without A/C. It impacts my patience levels, sleep, and anxiety, but not as much as staying at another place and away from the comforts of home would. At home I'll remember to take my medicine and I don't get overwhelmed by smells or sounds.

The month came inside a season of self-health and home care: trying to get more consistent the with habits and routines that keep me alive. I couldn't just stop for a whole month (just as I didn't in July), so most of my energy went into making sure I had what I needed to keep going. I turned 41 this month.

In the last few years I've been taking real efforts to "catch up" with my peers in the area of home care. Frankly, I don't take care of myself very well, and never have. When things happen, like the A/C goes out, my toilet overflows, the bathtub drain needs cleaning, or any other everyday household issue occurs, my brain freezes and I can't function. I numb out and spend weeks in static anxiety and only when it becomes absolutely unbearable can I finally take action.

This month, I decluttered a room, found a "low energy care routine" that I can stay consistent with, and finally decided to get a cleaner (after I do some budgeting and eliminate a few expenses). I've needed help for a long time, but not the kind of help I ask one person for once. I need a professional to aid me over time. I'm learning to get over the shame and guilt of being disabled and unable to operate at the bare minimum level that everyone seems to think is "easy." I am a high support needs person who is too ashamed to pay for support. Silly.

I upset my routine once for my birthday trip (a week and a day off work with travel and errands) but I managed to get myself back on track and on meds within a few days. Despite the heat and things breaking around my place, I somehow managed to take action within a few days, not allowing myself to sink into the "freeze" response of my sacred environment falling apart. I don't know how consistent I'll be with it, but I'm hopeful and excited that I was able to prove to myself that (as long as I have enough energy charged up) I can handle the big stuff better than I used to!

Social things

In part due to no A/C in the summer heat and feeling overstimulated by that, I've been thinking a lot about how my energy levels are tied to every aspect of my life. My whole life I've misinterpreted this as "social anxiety" thinking I had low energy thanks to "people" and that some day I'll "get better" and become "normal" and have lots of energy. I now understand it's mainly due to overstimulation.

There is a little true social anxiety mingled in there, but not enough to keep me at home; rather, I'd likely suggest we shift the plans to something more comfortable. But I'm going to get overstimulated regardless; this happens about everything, all the time, everywhere, and doesn't have anything to do with friends.

One of the issues when I was younger was that I was trying so hard to keep people happy and stay within expectations for social relationships or dating or work, and then I was too drained of energy to figure out how to manage my life when things went wrong. This month I did an awesome job of putting down boundaries and keeping my time to myself when I needed it.

I will be honest, I don't think most of my friends really get it. I have a few friends who still make a point to repeatedly say things like, "wow we haven't seen each other in a long time," and "we should hang out more often like at least once a month," and it feels very passive aggressive as we've already had conversations about how I'm slower paced and need more recharge time from hangouts than they do. But I have other friends who do get it, and they tell me point blank that they're totally fine with it and while they like seeing me, they don't measure friendship on frequency. I suppose everyone measures connection differently, and they all have different needs.

I wish I didn't feel like it was my responsibility to ensure everyone's happiness and fulfill those needs when they make comments like that. I no longer do the "haha yeah" answer I did before the talks: I'm straight forward about it. "Yep, like we talked about before, I have a slower social pace now" and "I'm pretty booked this season," but I can't help but feel like I'm disappointing them. They clearly want more, but I don't have more to give. There's finite energy and I spent a lot of it getting dressed this morning.

Reddit doomscrolling

In between all this, I spent way too much time browsing Reddit, specifically doomscrolling for news about the current administration and people's thoughts about it. I feel grounded when I find people online who provide a good perspective on the history and long-term impacts. I like to see the before-current-after context of an event, rather than the immediacy of reactions and joke memes.

You see the latter on many of the other social media platforms that prioritize instant short-term attention. Reddit encourages a well thought-out response. Unfortunately, it's not immune from sensationalism and it's easy to get wrapped up! I have definitely gotten enraged more than once this month over something on Reddit. Looping into my energy-expending thoughts, I put a 1-hour daily screentime limit on that hellsite in the last week and it's bizarre how much more energy I have now to do meaningful things...

I did manage to catch the Elijah Wood AMA thread while it was LIVE and that was very exciting. He is a global treasure.

Birthday!!

For my birthday, I went camping around Parsons, WV, so that I could spend some dedicated time in Thomas, WV, where I easily spent over half my trip budget in the 2 full days I was there. I drive through Thomas on my way to camping trips in WV, PA, KY, and OH, and it's a gorgeous little LGBTQ+ friendly mountain town with gluten-free restaurants. What's not for me to love about it? (There's no grocery store.)

I'll be back again to boost their economy and see the nearby WV sights; it's a good central point that's only 3 hours from home so I could get a lot done staying there!

If you're interested in seeing more about it you can visit the entry I put in my travel journal for Thomas, WV. You can also check out the playlist I made for driving through the mountains.

During my birthday week I also had to apply for my own job to keep it.

Website things

I did a lot of background work on website things this month, nothing that's ready to share except for the new landing page for my playlists: Heavy Rotation. I still have about 20 old playlists to make pages for.

I'm going to close Cryptkickers and put everything on this new site. I want to build Frankenweb in a way that I don't mind sharing with people IRL, but keep this site more personal and raw for web strangers. It's possible people find me here, sure, but I'm not advertising it.

Cryptkickers was an old idea that I tried to morph into a music site, but it didn't really work out. Frankenweb will hold many sites of many topics. I got the idea from the concept of a "frankenkit" which is a custom built drum kit usually using pieces and parts from various origins. Sometimes people literally make their own drums for frankenkits to achieve certain sounds. Anyway, I thought the idea of a franken-thing applied well to a multi-topic site. So far there are plans to use this for my Halloween site, playlists, hobby journals (except travel which I'll keep raw too), my digital graveyard, Miles' site, a mail/postage shrine, and a movie site I've been cooking since 2023.

I find I really like the "ideating" part of making websites. I love to create the content. Once I get to the design part, I run out of steam and feel like I have to wait for the "right amount of inspiration" to strike. When it does, I find myself designing multiple site ideas at once, unable to contain it to just one project. Then when I move on, I'm not in the mood to put the content in the new layout. It's a whole process that I can't seem to figure out and seems to rely on whim.

I think in some ways, I don't care. :) It's kind of nice to have a slower pace for things and work on the sites for a few months before launching it. My whole life, website ideas have been something I put together within a week and then put out for the world to see, but I'm learning to slow down and take my time instead.

I got bored one day and made a bunch of summer blinkies

Feel free to take/enjoy. Made with blinkies.cafe

Links and endings

Here are a few links I wanted to share this month.

I saw this in response to Lil Nas X and I thought it was beautiful.

That's all I have this month, big Big Thoughts month with early morning walks, reading books about Antarctica, and camping alone. Not many activities.