New Project Time :)

thinking back to the time i realized i'd been practicing such scrupulous politeness abt [bodily feature i actively wasn't attracted to] that my bff had come away with the impression that i was, like, very actively into it, which was like. wow, wild to be so deeply misunderstood—

however it turns out that after putting an enormous amount of energy into Accepting that feature, well, now sometimes i am actively into it, so like. guess i'm the one who was wrong about me after all!

art by tracy walker; preorder here :)

get ready to see these guys on every envelope i ever mail until i die

i do wish my experience of having feelings (this isn't me being Vague, i do very generically mean 'having literally any feelings at all about anything ever') didn't automatically involve a meta-layer of feeling viscerally humiliated by the fact of my having them

like any time i get irritated or upset about anything it almost immediately tips into 'well okay but probably i'm the problem here bc i'm Oversensitive and Irritable bc i've failed to construct a life for myself which makes me happy in a way that would cushion me against being bothered by these irritants, which in the philosophical scheme of things i recognize i should Rise Above' (in this framing i am apparently an oyster and happiness = nacre). and it's not that there's no potential truth to this line of thinking but it also feels a little like i imagine having one's emotions blamed on one's menstrual cycle would feel (disrespectful & humiliating)

with things like sadness-about-everything-and-nothing-in-particular or, idk, private delusional romantic hopefulness abt people (nothing recent in this category but i have been known to experience it from time to time) it's slightly different bc there the meta-feeling is less about my failure to respond appropriately to other people and more about, like, why am i not advanced enough to have evolved beyond these feelings. like 'i understand intellectually how unfounded and ultimately laughable i look right now and yet. despite my ability to observe myself i still continue to experience this (unpleasant, humiliating) experience. why can i not think my way out of it.' and of course this is more or less equivalent to saying 'why can't i think my way out of the human condition' which. hello. and yet!!

anyway i think none of this is helped by the fact that my nearest and dearest are largely deeply phlegmatic, pragmatic people, at least in terms of the affect they present to me, and so by comparison i feel deeply histrionic and stupid and childish at essentially all times: Local Man Secretly Dancing Bear (unlike aubreyad where dancing bear secretly man). the answer is presumably 'don't compare yourself! you are a different variety of Creature! #IDIC!' but unfortunately the comparative impulse is i think. again. pretty deeply human (for feelings on which, see above)…

i was just thinking earlier in vague terms about a specific but weirdly prevalent thing which consistently bugs me, namely: when cis men attempt to be self-deprecating about their unfamiliarity with feminine things, except that of course it's not actually self-deprecating to bring up how categorically distant you are and have always been from a stigmatized practice…

and then ran into this post, in which a presumably-white anon attempts to be self-deprecating about their unfamiliarity with the racialized genres of hip hop and rap (specifically by characterizing themself as a[n implicitly uncool] 'blorbo enjoyer,' which of course—as @‍batmanisagatewaydrug correctly points out—has the knock-on effect of framing fandom as Not For People of Color, which, not to put too fine a point on it, is racist), which illustrates exactly the same dynamic along a different axis…

anyway i guess my point here is just (1) to note that yeah, this really does seem to be a pattern! and given that, (2) to underscore in my own mind that this is probably something for nerds vel sim. in particular to look out for, because we often have insecurity modifiers that makes us feel like we're not ~really~ solidly part of the privileged group, which seems to make us feel like disclosing our ignorance can somehow constitute a self-deprecating self-own, rather than an offputting humblebrag about the privilege that made it possible…

"marriage is the ONLY way to get these protections" "there is NO WAY to hack a legal arrangement to cover everything that marriage grants" "kiddos you don't remember what it was like before we could get married, we finally got rights because we could get married" Okay But You Recognize Why That's Bad, Right. Like that is really, really bad that you have to enter a specific type of relationship to get legal rights. That is A Problem. You recognize that that is Not A Good Thing, Right

オオルリ

made it to the transfer station before it closed (task i have been failing at for a week) AND nothing leaked in the car on the way over (despite decomposition of compostables very definitely having commenced) AND there was a hot butch there (presumably my reward from a sometimes-benevolent universe) 👍

ordered a cheap wearable timer¹ that has a 'buzz every [multiple of 5 you select] minutes and repeat by default until deactivated' function and have been experimenting with it as a source of gentle non-judgmental 'do i still want to be doing what i'm doing at this time' queries that i can choose whether to ignore or respond to

anyway it's only been like a day and a half but so far it seems like a helpful tool to have in my toolkit—like it hasn't magically turned me into a go-getter or anything but it has meant i did a bit of crafting² today and went for a tiny little run which is like. usually i'm pleased with myself if i scrape together enough executive function to initiate one enrichment thing superfluous to subsistence, so

we'll see how repeatable the results are but in any event: some little wins today :)

⸻ ¹ yes i could probably also have just used my phone but (1) while you can of course get the built-in timer to repeat it doesn't default to that, which was an important part of the concept (2) i was also working from a vague notion that, while i'm not as fussed about my phone dependence as i know some people have gotten, maybe it would be good not to actively reinforce it, lol ² and yes i do mean my tiny little mends from earlier but like. sewing's a craft (zie says defiantly)

Black Sun (1) - Denmark/Germany, 2025

Last Saturday, I had the chance to see the natural phenomenon known in Denmark as "Sort Sol" (Danish for "Black Sun"). Thousands of starlings flock together to create swirling patterns across the sky. This happened right after the sunset in the cold and windy marshes around the border of Denmark and Germany.

The starlings were quite far away from us and stayed low on the sky, flying just above the marshes. Hopefully next time, they will rise higher into the air, so there will a better separation between the starlings and the ground.

i <3 overshot