prixmium | Entries tagged with 2025

About to put my laptop in the jail of a carry-on so I can leave promptly for work in the morning. I'm going to the inane training, because I have nothing better to do all day, and it prevents me from using PTO or awkward apologies despite the fact that a lot of people are gone.

I don't look forward to getting my shit onto buses and trains, but otherwise it should be fine.

Decided, since I have the object permanence of a goldfish these days, to make a list of random things I would like to do if I have time between doing things with bestie. Sometimes, when I visit her, she is playing games or something for periods of time when I have nothing to do but watch her and feel sort of stuck for my own amusement if that isn't all I want to do.

- rearrange and add to dreamwidth icons
- figure out some WIP to work on or start a new one
- download and prepare all the things I have to prepare to sign up for an absentee ballot since I have to do it anyway
- refresh my memory of what I have to do to get the special permission for unauthorized activities on my current visa so I can get started on that right away when I get back to work before it is due again on April 1

Current Mood: thirsty

One of the things I often lament in my life is how rarely I have help for anything in particular.

My mom had a physical disability that made her mobility somewhat limited, but for much of her life she was also a pretty thorough and compulsive housekeeper. This resulted in a lot of my childhood being this pendulum swing between being given chores that I was mostly just supposed to figure out on my own entirely or not knowing how to do certain chores at all because one or both of my parents thought it was simpler to do it themselves than to teach me how. This led to a lot of weird resentment toward basic household chores that I think could have been avoided if I had been taught the responsibilities in ways that were less "figure it out, you should know this through observation," or just having it done for me until suddenly that wasn't possible anymore.

My parents were good and doing their best overall, but it is something I have realized as an adult and had to think about a lot as I figure out how to exist in a space where if I don't do something for myself, it doesn't get done.

Even as I was getting older and my mom was getting weaker, whether she was sick yet or not, it always brought me an incredible rush of feeling loved if anyone just volunteered to do something for me. I can't remember if it was the year she died or sometime before, but I remember being at home with mom and not feeling well for some reason or another, and she offered to make me a sandwich. It really moved and surprised me, because my parents at some point kind of stopped doing small things for me like that, even though my mom did my laundry for an absurdly long time. (It was not even really me being lazy; it was that my mom didn't want individuals splitting up their laundry by person rather than by type.)

Now, I live on the other side of the planet from anyone who actually loves me. I get along with some friendly-at-work people, but none of them is close enough to me to ask to hang out independently of work-related group events. One of my coworkers tried to start a D&D thing at work, but we did it exactly once and then basically gave up on ever trying to do it again because of the fact that, after that, we found that there were such frequent random extra weekend obligations at work that none of us had the clear time to do it anymore.

I don't have it confirmed, but I think that coworker might be moving on again next year. At the very least, I think she is kind of disillusioned with my workplace.

I can see why some of my coworkers are, but at the same time, this is the least-bullshit job I think I have available to me at the moment. Will have to see where things land in April, I guess, unless something weird happens before then.

Yesterday, I had to go into work for several hours for those parent-teacher meetings I'm mostly useless in. A couple of the parents spoke English and asked me a few questions, but it felt like it was mostly a courtesy to me at the end for having sat there during the Japanese conversations.

Today, I had a lovely lady from a Sisterhood Japan group on facebook come over and help me with cleaning my apartment more thoroughly than it's been cleaned in months. It's not that it was completely disgusting, but it was dusty and cluttered, and I just did not know where to start.

I don't have any official neurodivergence diagnosis, and I'm not even sure it's an nd symptom, though I've read about it as such, but I find that I get really stuck on doing menial tasks that aren't daily-maintenance stuff (like hygiene or dish washing etc) if I am all alone. While the lady was here, I let her do most of the actual cleaning, but so as not to be an awkward lump or waste the time or be rude by, like, playing video games while she's working, I organized my closet a lot. Unpacked some winter and fall clothes I had brought here in August and stuck some stuff that's too summery into the vacuum pack bags I had the former in.

I paid this woman, of course, but it felt like it was a mutually beneficial situation. She got paid, and I got the companionship, more than that, the soothing balm of having anyone care enough to do something well for me. I know she did it for money, but she was really kind about it, and I know that the whole love languages thing was really just a conservative Christian dude trying to justify why men need to be waited on hand and foot and to have their wife play mom at all times, but it really does feel like meaningful assistance is something humans need, both to receive and to give. I do try to give it, in work and in personal relationships, in the ways I know how, but one of the reasons I feel like my emotional well runs so empty sometimes is because I don't have anyone to ask for help when I need it.

I found the solution in this case by asking if anyone could come and help me tidy/clean/organize for pay on that facebook group, and I finally followed through on doing it after getting really frustrated with my own efforts last weekend taking HOURS for little payoff. (I was trying to put together a flat pack shelf that I ultimately decided was trash.)

I only got Sunday off this week, and I have to work both days next weekend, too. However, we get Monday and Tuesday off the following week. Still, for sanity and not becoming physically run-down, I might take a day off midweek. I hope nobody gets pissed off if I do since I am very often a pinch-hitter when other people don't show up.

Current Mood: accomplished

Taylor Swift fandom did not catch me as early as it did the person I used to talk about Taylor Swift with a lot. The person I have in mind collected all her physical CDs from the very first.

Recently, I have not heard much from that person. It kind of hurts that she doesn't really know much about what's going on with my life anymore. I know she's been going through burnout and fatigue, but it has been a thought process over the past couple of weeks to realize that even though she has kind of removed herself from my everyday sphere of thought that there's a part of my heart that is hurting for her absence.

It's not that I don't care about her, and I believe that she probably thinks she cares about me. I just think that she has this very immediate-local-reality locus of attention these days for herself. I know that a couple of years ago, she was a bit more online again, and it burnt her. But she and I met online, and it's like she used to understand my way of life and that my relationships are, by necessity, fairly online-focused.

A couple years ago, during that getting-burnt part, she thanked me for being there for her and indicated that had it not been for me that she might have been much worse off or in real danger due to the fallout of that situation. But then, as she cocooned away to try and begin the process of healing, she just pretty much vanished from my life.

She pops in every now and then, and for a while, I left her breadcrumbs or dead bird offerings, like a cat, hoping that when she bothered to check her discord notifications that she would respond to my thoughts toward her or care to show her things she liked. Sometimes, it worked.

For the most part, however, she would come in with whatever new thing she wanted to say with little or no acknowledgment of the backlog of links. And I get that the longer she was away, the more daunting 10 or 12 links might become, over the course of weeks and months. However, something kind of punched me in the chest a little.

I told her about Charlie's passing. It was just a small message. I thought she might notice or care, as her pets and stress over her aging dog has sometimes been a reason for her long-term absence or stated inability to have deep conversations. I know that, in the past, she has told me about how she only has "meme sharing" energy for people. And, to some degree, I can relate and sympathize with that. I try really, really hard to just keep telling myself that this is such a time for her and that she is dealing with what might be some kind of chronic fatigue disorder.

I try my best to reason with my emotions. But she didn't even notice the message. When I asked her if she'd seen it, she even excused it as having gotten lost in the shuffle of my sending her other relevant-to-her links. So, I told her something to the effect of, "Well, if they're too much for you to go through at this time, I'll stop sending so many."

This was two-pronged in a way. On the one hand, I mean it for both our sakes. If my efforts are not any kind of comfort to her and are just some kind of thing to maybe or maybe not bother with when she has 15 minutes of energy for interacting with me, quarterly at best it seems, then I don't think I should curate anything for her with the thought that it will be well-received or that I should give her some hypothetical social obligation to fulfill or not. On the other hand, I was really hurt that she doesn't even look at my messages closely enough, before sending one of her quarterly messages, to see if I have left a comment there about anything major in my life. Even something like losing a pet when, as I said, she has more than once put a pin in everything in her life in a very vocal and clear boundary-setting way about dealing with her pets.

When I said this, she said something like, "Do whatever's best for you."

I don't think it can be much more clear that there is a kind of dismissal of my importance and feelings there. At least, I have to assume there is.

If our relationship is ever solid enough again for me to send her this post to read, I hope that she doesn't feel angry or slighted by the fact that I am talking about her in vague terms to my online journal that's really only read by a handful of acquaintances. Because it's not like I can talk about it with her with the expectation that I will be heard anytime soon.

I kind of anticipate that she'll reach out in a few days when she's had time to listen to and digest the Taylor Swift album. That's one of "our things" together. It's a shared interest we know we have with each other even when other people in our lives don't share it.

But what counts as "in each other's lives"?

I get that people, especially married people and people with "professional" faces on their careers, have this tendency to compartmentalize and only come back to certain aspects of their lives when they have the time and emotional space for it. I do the same thing... to a degree. But I can't help but feel like I've been through two or three deep crises since she kind of dropped out of regular circulation in my life. And sure, maybe it's because her own crisis of energy and deep burnout is somehow so much worse than I understand.

But friendship is a two way street.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: CANCELLED! - Taylor Swift

Headed back to Japan early in the morning. I'm not dreading it as much as I could, which tells me I do genuinely like this job, but there's some anxiety associated with any kind of change of routine. I have also been a bit more physically lazy here, so I will definitely feel it for a few weeks in 90 degree heat.

This evening, my stepmom put an episode of the revival of Matlock on TV, and I just... The main thing that stood out to me was the bizarre cohesion of colors.

It has a color palette that is just too well put together. Everything is some depth of teal or tan unless they want to point it out with purple or navy.

After that TV show went off, Medium came on, which I remember being very popular back when I was transitioning from LJ-->dreamwidth-->tumblr when it seemed like nobody really wanted to adopt dw. For a few days, I tried getting into watching Twin Peaks, but it felt slow as much as I find it interesting. I am mildly interested in watching more Medium if I can find it online without signing up for more streaming. Stepmom has Paramount+, but I kind of... don't want that for multiple reasons.

Current Mood: okay

It's been a little while since I was on this website.

I started my new job on April 1 of this year at an international school in Tokyo. I had a couple of weeks before that to settle into my new apartment, but the moment I got moved in, I got sick for a few days. My body really does seem to just give in and give up every time I have a moment of peace from expectation and obligation.

I am currently writing from my dad's house in Tennessee. It's the first time I've been back in over a year. I was nervous about coming through the airport, as outspoken as I am online about things that suck about the encroaching fascism in the US, but I should know that for the most part as a white woman, no one is really paying attention.

My flight home ended up being delayed by 3 hours in total which cost me spending 12 extra hours in airports in total. Kinda sucked, but I dislike airports less than most people I've heard talk about it.

My new job is night and day better than my job that I left, so I feel confident that I made the right decision there. It's a really lovely job most of the time, even though every job has its bullshit. The two things that are most difficult in this job: my direct-report boss is a True Believer in AI and as an English teacher this makes me want to pull my hair out and, because the international school is private and people choose their junior and senior high schools in Japan based on a variety of factors, June and July were just a blur of hardly ever getting a full weekend from my job. We get flex time at this job, though, so most of those events I got paid back in hours I could use. Means I have a few extra paid leave days left over after taking several during the month of August. I think they gave us 10 or so days off besides weekends, and I ended up taking 8 in total.

And yet, I am stuck in this limbo of feeling of having too much free time and too little.

While I am here, my dad and stepmom are planning to go out of town for a few days, since they never have a dog sitter. Maybe I'll start to have creative thought again in that quiet. My stepmom is old enough that she turns up the TV loud enough to bother me a little, but I want to sit in the den both as a social grace and because it's where the air conditioning is the coolest.

I was hoping to get time and inspiration to write or otherwise do fandom interaction or contribution, but my last two fics have gotten next to no traffic or engagement. I did post them a few places, and I have at least one or two kudos, but it's just so lonely to get NO comments in spite of showing it to people. I feel like my greatest strength to make anything is writing, but no one bothers to act like fanfic authors are people offering them their ideas anymore.

Even before that, I participated in a secret santa type exchange, and my recipient kind of ghosted the entire thing.

I just really have... idk... a sense of lost competence? I've written over a hundred fics, and I know that it's a cultural shift, but I just... don't have whatever it takes to get people's attention anymore.

Maybe I should post them here, since people actually treat people like people here, but I feel like it's hard to find the audience... anywhere... for any specific thing I write.

Anyway, that's my current mope. And because of it, I lost steam on the few WIPs I had and can't think of anything new.