What is this?
A website. A journal.
Why is this?
I find myself something of an exhibitionist. I make things with greater vigor if I know they will be displayed. I find myself something of an aptitude-dysmorphist. There is a quiet terror in showing anything less than passable competence at what I choose to do. It is a consequence of upbringing. You'll find more about it somewhere on here, with time.
This site offers a happy medium for my anxious exhibitionism. My own little panopticon for my own little wardens (hello, reader). You can text me your thoughts if you know where to find me and I can bask in the warmth of your attention turned upon my ramblings, but I step cleanly around the ubiquitous and poisoned attentions a place like Reddit might herald.
Who am I?
A creature distressed at its own independence. A shell of signs pasted over an I still dripping with amniotic fluid. Something young enough to be permissible in its not-knowing but not so young as to be healthy for it.
What am I?
A list of labels:
The list is incomplete, I'll get to it in a day or two. Odd day, doesn't feel like it's really a week from Christmas Eve. It hasn't felt like it was really a week from Christmas Eve since I was maybe nineteen? Probably more like seventeen. The last time Christmas really occupied a concrete space in my head. I think its trappings to me were always the trappings and theatrics of church, homespun that they were. My parents were suitably parental for the role they were trying to occupy and showed no small care for seasonal festivities when I was young, but my teens came and the holiday became more of a happening than a storied land to journey toward and then the trappings and theatrics of church became the terroir of the moment in itself. I think I need to reconstruct what Christmas means to me if I even care about it anymore. It's corporate and utterly saccharine but I need to find moments in the convolutions of a year that matter for me and it's probably the easier choice to opt for one others hold dear.
Dog ran away today, I got off work early to prowl around and entreaty him out the windows of my car, wondered if I might've looked like some kind of child predator to an overeager Nextdoor poster. Someone found him in their yard in less than an hour and a half, so it all worked out well enough.
Still not entirely sure why I'm doing this but it's fun. Enjoying learning HTML. Feels good to have a vaguely productive hyperfixation for once instead of reading some obscure game's lore wiki for hours.
Signing off -
Had my blood drawn for horomonal screenings this morning, should know within a week where I stand on starting testosterone blockers. Getting the blood drawn wasn't anything that was going to influence the course of the process in itself, but the small steps feel good. I'm more aware of my body in aggregate lately, wish it didn't primarily manifest as a higher sensitivity to itchiness but sensation is sensation. No effects on figure yet, but they weren't anticipated with any haste. One day I'll look in the mirror and be pleasantly surprised, I try my best not to make it happen by force even though priming for awareness fosters a certain passive vanity. Good to have positive sentiments toward my body for once.
Went to the used bookstore afterward, managed to get some nice paperbacks of Titus Alone and Blood Meridian. The former is a good prompting for me to get around to finally reading Gormenghast, seeing how I know I'll like it once I immerse myself in its smothering Dickensianness. The latter is a treat because reading Blood Meridian as an epub was irksome. Too distracting, too synthetic. I listen to audiobooks too frequently to cast stones over some alleged supremacy of print literature, but there is a clarity to analogue media beyond the mere novelty of its being analogue. My phone and laptop are screaming portals threatening to tear me from a task in five different ways with every second I use them. I still use them. They are distraction machines and my addict's brain finds a cold and bitter love in that. Holding focus is an active task. Energy leaks from me as I hold my eyes and fingers at rest. A book requires no such active effort to engender the same discipline. Your distraction is turned upon pages that contain nothing but that which you hope to capture your attention with regardless. I keep my phone beyond arm's length and try to sink into it. Reading used to be easier, I used to do it more, and I hear that refrain from numerous people my age. Part of it is the time but part of it is the environment that has been created for us. We participate in its creation, yes, but as with substance abuse there is social causation from a mile-high view, and a certain sort of coercion. We were handed unfettered the fetish objects that unwound our concentrations and told they were nigh-obligate tools of contemporary living. I'm still bound to mine but trying to chip away at that bit by bit. Time will tell if I'm successful. Trying to use my phone less triggers more relapse compulsions than any attempt to stop using substances, given I never stepped over a line from abuse into addiction with anything chemical.
The act of buying used books did feel a touch acrid in itself. A slightly compulsive and indulgent purchase, but one is allowed their compulsions and indulgences. Less acrid in the tenor of the act than in the impulse to be so monetary. The buying of kitsch and novelties is more of an ends to live toward for myself and many people than seems appropriate. Things constituted for buying rather than things of substance which can be purchased. It falls back to the old truism of capital and the creation of markets where markets cannot be discovered, and least that's how it feels to me. It's all addiction and gamification, my moving beyond pessimism seems to require some kind of post-ironic sincere reappraisal of poisoned acts as lovable. I think that's possible, at least. Schopenhauer would identify the whole desire to purchase for purchasing's sake and let my attention be torn away by any thing that shifts or whispers as characteristic of the restless striving of the human condition, but he never seemed to reach any life-affirming conclusions from making such assertions. I'm more inclined to try convincing myself the root of the problem is the taint of capital. Reductionist, to be certain, but it leaves a greener pasture uncolonized in my mind, shaded and undiscovered land though that pasture might be.
Signing off-
Sedate day. Did some cleaning and reading, relaxed. Managed to get a pale imitation of password protection working on the site, does nothing to block against webcrawlers or the barest measures of inquiry, but the illusion of a locked door was all I really needed. I felt at times today like I was rolling down an incline, had to pull myself back from squandering the day entire with meaningless drivel; bed-rotting and its cousin vices. I neeed to stop my cuticle chewing stim. It was heralded by the return of nail chewing to replace the hair plucking stim I needed to kick to ensure the efficacy of laser hair removal, you run out of nails to chew and dead skin on the fingers follow soon enough. It's only made me bleed a few times, but having a stim that does it at all is fucking tiresome. I'd have a better time of things if it was some conscious "car crashing" action like maladaptive substance use or compulsive distraction seeking where I saw the dumb behavior from a position of feeling powerless to stop it, but it's just an impulse like itching the back of my neck or drumming my fingers. Too reflexive to notice half the time. Might have to bring back the rubber band technique I used as a kid, when I first stopped doing this in high school. Trying my best not to feel like this is a juvenile issue, neurodivergence is living rhizomatically and sometimes the juvenalia is an issue of adulthood. I learned to talk before I was two, now I get to deal with two year old nonsense twenty years late. Life can be funny like that.
Got overstimulated during and after a social hour earlier this evening, but I'm canny enough to my inner states now that I could recognize it happening and make sure I didn't lash out at anyone. It's nothing worthy of a trophy, but I'm glad to have grown in some small way. Unprepared to go see family for Christmas, but feeling decent about the next few days I suppose. Bittersweet? More just anxious in spite of the things around me which merit joy. I'll pet my cat for awhile and hope he doesn't break the skin with his love bites again, my life could be much worse.
Signing off-