05012025 - it’s not that serious but it is
Jan. 5th, 2025 09:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twomblyingI find doing things for the first time to be relatively easy, for someone who has pretty severe anxiety. I get the sense that most anxoius people have trouble starting things. I don’t; I can be quite impulsive. Pretty much as soon as a thought enters my brain, I’m thinking, “Okay, well why wouldn’t I do that?” It’s been great (moving to New York, and then to Charlotte, and then to Philly) and questionable in retrospect ($70,000 graduate degree), but mostly it’s just…my brain and how it works.
What I have real, debilitating trouble with, is doing things for the second time. I have problems with follow-ups, not follow throughs. I don’t know what it is, but if I want to build a skill or keep up with a routine, the second time makes or breaks me. Beloved adhd friends are probably shaking their heads at me and I KNOW, okay. I KNOW. But I cannot add another set of letters to my cocktail of diagnoses okay, leave me alone. I’m not quite sure it’s the same, anyways. It’s not a block or that I get distracted from it — it’s anxiety. Doing things the first time is easy, but I put a lot of pressure on it when it comes back around. Like, if I don’t do it this second time, then that’s it: I wasn’t serious about it, and now it’s done forever. I couldn’t possibly pick it back up later. I’ve missed the chance and failed at [X].
So all that being said, I’ve been strangely anxious about writing a second blog post. Even though it is not that serious, but it is. Pretty much everything is very serious to me all the time. That’s my autistic swag, as Jacqui puts it (two blog posts in, two Jacqui mentions. Is anyone surprised? She told me in a voice message the other day, jokingly probably, that she wants to wear my skin. It’s mutual.)
I’m so fucked up by magical thinking that I have a small personal dictonary of banned words, which includes “habit” and “resolutions” — those words are fine if they’re useful to you, but they do me more harm than good. Instead, I’ve been using “goal” and “intention”, which I guess could sound hokey, but that’s fine. And I said in my last post that I did not make blogging one of my yearly goals but rather wrapped blogging up in my wider intention of “making the internet a place again.” But as soon as I posted that, I remembered how much I just really, really fucking love blogging. Doesn’t matter if no one reads it or interacts with it (although, as I begged on twitter, I would love people to do that. The internet should also not be a lonely place), the mechanism of The Blog is such a joy to me.
Anyway, here I am, doing something I want to do for a second time. That’s something.
Beyond thinking things about the internet, and blogging, and intentions, I’m spending most of my energy thinking ahead to my birthday. My birthday last year was not good, to say the least, but despite that I’m letting myself look forward to this one. It’s my last under-35 birthday, if that means anything. We’re taking a trip to New York, my absolute favorite place forever & ever, and I don’t have concrete plans (yet. I am an itinerary person), but I know at least one day will be spent entirely solo, which has always been — since I was 14 and old enough to go on the subway alone — my favorite way to exist in New York. It will be cold, and grey, and winter-lonely, but that’s also something I have always loved about New York. For my actual birthday, I’ve booked us a table at a Japanese comfort food joint in the village. Good things, good things.
Hope everyone I love is having a magical first weekend of 2025 and I hope everyone I hate never pulls their bias’s photocard or whatever their personal equivalent of that is xoxo
Here are some things:
What I have real, debilitating trouble with, is doing things for the second time. I have problems with follow-ups, not follow throughs. I don’t know what it is, but if I want to build a skill or keep up with a routine, the second time makes or breaks me. Beloved adhd friends are probably shaking their heads at me and I KNOW, okay. I KNOW. But I cannot add another set of letters to my cocktail of diagnoses okay, leave me alone. I’m not quite sure it’s the same, anyways. It’s not a block or that I get distracted from it — it’s anxiety. Doing things the first time is easy, but I put a lot of pressure on it when it comes back around. Like, if I don’t do it this second time, then that’s it: I wasn’t serious about it, and now it’s done forever. I couldn’t possibly pick it back up later. I’ve missed the chance and failed at [X].
So all that being said, I’ve been strangely anxious about writing a second blog post. Even though it is not that serious, but it is. Pretty much everything is very serious to me all the time. That’s my autistic swag, as Jacqui puts it (two blog posts in, two Jacqui mentions. Is anyone surprised? She told me in a voice message the other day, jokingly probably, that she wants to wear my skin. It’s mutual.)
I’m so fucked up by magical thinking that I have a small personal dictonary of banned words, which includes “habit” and “resolutions” — those words are fine if they’re useful to you, but they do me more harm than good. Instead, I’ve been using “goal” and “intention”, which I guess could sound hokey, but that’s fine. And I said in my last post that I did not make blogging one of my yearly goals but rather wrapped blogging up in my wider intention of “making the internet a place again.” But as soon as I posted that, I remembered how much I just really, really fucking love blogging. Doesn’t matter if no one reads it or interacts with it (although, as I begged on twitter, I would love people to do that. The internet should also not be a lonely place), the mechanism of The Blog is such a joy to me.
Anyway, here I am, doing something I want to do for a second time. That’s something.
Beyond thinking things about the internet, and blogging, and intentions, I’m spending most of my energy thinking ahead to my birthday. My birthday last year was not good, to say the least, but despite that I’m letting myself look forward to this one. It’s my last under-35 birthday, if that means anything. We’re taking a trip to New York, my absolute favorite place forever & ever, and I don’t have concrete plans (yet. I am an itinerary person), but I know at least one day will be spent entirely solo, which has always been — since I was 14 and old enough to go on the subway alone — my favorite way to exist in New York. It will be cold, and grey, and winter-lonely, but that’s also something I have always loved about New York. For my actual birthday, I’ve booked us a table at a Japanese comfort food joint in the village. Good things, good things.
Hope everyone I love is having a magical first weekend of 2025 and I hope everyone I hate never pulls their bias’s photocard or whatever their personal equivalent of that is xoxo
Here are some things:
- dj set i really like, there’s a cat in it
- this ochakuze recipe i made yesterday
- kpop song you should listen to even if you don’t listen to kpop
- david foster wallace on television and fiction posted in a reply to the “why is my brain broken / why can’t I do anything” tweet
- dylan mulvin on standardized patient programs in american & canadian healthcare - really, really loving reading this
