kkscatnip

I've had this entry open and blank for two days because I am really not even sure what I want to write about. I need to write more in this journal, but I am just completely stuck on what I want to write about. (And I've been working on this entry for an additional two weeks. Go me.)

Guess I'll start with mental illness, since that's the hardest thing. Accomplish that and everything else will be easy, right? Here's to hoping! :D

My roommate and I had this extended discussion (three hours, y'all) about mental illness, wherein we discussed our own.

For anyone who is wondering, my background with mental illness, in shiny bullet points:
- 6 years old: have reoccurring, debilitating migraines, night terrors, etc; diagnosed with depression.
- 12 years old: committed to a lock-down unit due to suicidal threats; diagnosis of depression was thrown out, diagnosed bipolar.
- 25 years old: institutionalized four times within one year, once for anxiety that led to suicidal ideation, twice for plain old suicidal ideation, and once for actually trying to commit suicide (in that order); diagnosed borderline personality and generalized anxiety in addition to the bipolar diagnosis being upheld.
- 26 years old: placed on permanent disability (SSDI); I got SSDI the very first time I applied... I didn't go through the rejection/appeal process at all, probably because whatever the doctors told them did a good job of convincing them I was not functional on a long term basis.

So there's your run-down. I have been steadily prescribed medicine since I was twelve; I didn't start taking it seriously until I was sixteen or so, which was when I finally accepted that there might be something wrong with me. So it took me about four years between diagnosis of bipolar and accepting the diagnosis, pretty much. And even then it took me a year or two to really internalize accepting the illness; it's not a quick process.

Looking at it now, I think it's taken me three years to accept my diagnosis of borderline. I am in the process of accepting it now. I mean, when you look at the symptoms, it's like reading a checklist of what I have done for the vast majority of my life:

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Reading all this, it's kind of amazing that for fourteen years nobody realized that I had this disorder.

So, I am borderline. Or is it I have borderline? I prefer the latter, heh.

I kept thinking, "surely I want to say more about this?" but I really can't think of anything to add. It's a lot to take in, and I'm still in the process of accepting the information so that I can then move to change.

(Hi new people! I title my entries with song lyrics, usually quite apropos lyrics because Winamp has AI most of the time. I discuss everything. I lock very little. I will have something more of substance to say later, probably con reports from APW and Frolicon.

I am debating doing one of those "things you should know about me" posts.)

About a week ago, I sat down and watched a bunch of TED talks. I do it every so often, because I like hearing in depth about the ideas that are being tossed around.

One of the videos was Shawn Achor's "The happy secret to better work" where he discusses the results of experiments on how to make people work better instead of harder.

The results were unsurprising to me: people work more efficiently when they are happy, and in order to be happy they need to not have crushing workloads and expectations, and also: they need to focus on the positivity.

It is something that I hear a lot in the mental health program that I go to, the idea of "fake it until you make it"--pretend that you are happy, and eventually you will be happy. This isn't bullshit; it's a proven fact.

If you focus your mind on being happy (or being ________) you will achieve that thing, sooner or later. Because you have a focus, and because it's just the way we are designed. This concept shows up over and over in various schools of thought... it shows up far too much to be ignored, and there are tons of experiments that show that it actually works.

So one of the things that Achor uses as an example in the video is that the workers were instructed to do a few things every single morning, for 21 days:
- Write down three gratitudes, three things that they are grateful for having/being/whatever.
- Journal about one positive experience that they had the day before.
- Exercise. Any kind of thing that moves your body around.
- Meditate in order to escape from the cultural ADHD that is all around us.
- Engage in random acts of kindness, usually in the form of sending a positive e-mail, writing a positive comment--engaging with other people in some sort of positive manner.

Five things. I have been doing them; some mornings it takes me half an hour to do it all, other mornings I stretch it out to two hours.

I genuinely feel much better than I did a few days ago. I am still stressed and feel closed in blah blah blah, but I am more productive than I was last month, which is a big thing for me!

So... it's working. We'll see what kind of mental state I am in by the end of the 21-day trial period; I have a feeling I will end up continuing to do these things.


In other news, I am going to all the conventions in the next five weeks.

This weekend (March 5-8) there is Atlanta Poly Weekend! I attended last year and had an amazing time, so I am looking forward very much to attending again this year. I will probably be volunteering again but mostly I am going for the people, to meet and learn from people.

Next week/weekend (March 15-18) is Furry Weekend Atlanta. Calvin is going to be attending and talked me into going. I figure, why the fuck not? At the very least I will be able to spend time with him, which will be fun.

I get two weeks to rest/recoup after that, and then there is Frolicon April 5-8. Bonnie has a room on the club level and we are going to be pimping like motherfuckers; I am looking forward to it. I had so much fun and met so many people last year and am looking forward to meeting even more people this year.

SO EXCITING.

So, I had my date with Kristin. (!!!) I was so nervous as I was leaving that I left my keys in the front door. It was locked, of course. I just forgot to take my keys out. /facepalm

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Goals! It's good to have goals, right? :D I dislike calling them resolutions.

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My girlfriend and I broke up. It took about a week.

She said something on the lines of "but we can't talk anymore, because I couldn't take it" so I haven't spoken to her since November 17th. Yep. It hurts, but most of what hurts is not being able to have her as a friend. Maybe someday, but I think probably not, with the way she was talking.

Post break-up, I have been thinking a lot about myself, about what I want, about how much I let other people dictate my actions. I shave because other people are uncomfortable with me going natural; I keep myself from doing "out-there" things for fear of what my family and friends will think. Essentially, I self-censor my actions, to make myself more appealing.

For what purpose, though? I realized over Thanksgiving that, beyond alienating people, there wasn't a lot of point in doing things because other people expect it. So I got my lip pierced--something I have wanted to do since I took the earring out of the top of my ear for work, five years or so ago.

I am going to dye a streak of color in my hair, too! It's another thing I've wanted for ages. Purple and blue, maybe a little red. But probably just purple and blue.

Now I am turning that type of thinking inward, wondering about my sexuality. I have always formed more lasting relationships with women; I am more visually interested in the female form than the male form.

Does it mean I am lesbian? I don't think it does. I like cock too much, I like androgyny too much, to be purely lesbian. But I do think I am going to shift my label from pansexual to queer. Queer is just more fitting, since I am really beginning to notice that yeah, I do have a bias.

Makes me wonder about writing m/m fiction, but... that's a can of worms for another day, I think.

It's come around again to smut_fest sign-ups. I'm super-excited (and super-nervous) this round because it seems like a lot of the sign-ups are looking for threesomes (threesomes with men and women, too, which makes me happy--now we've had a f/f round and a m/m round, maybe we'll get a m/f round out of the deal) BUT we have a folklore focus.

I really love reading folklore, but I'm pretty crap at writing it. So, nervous about that. But threesomes. I would do anything for well-written threesomes *_* even trying my hand at folklore.

So, uh, yeah: if you like folklore (check the sign-up--everything and anything is fair game) and original fic or you want to write/read threesomes, or you're just interested in trying out smut_fest... check it out! We have wonderful writers who come back every round (five sign-ups so far, and I haven't pimped it at all) and pinch-hitters who are superb and come through every single time so you're assured to get something :D


In other news, I found out yesterday that I am moving on Saturday. Uhhhh yeah. Cue running around like a chicken with my head cut off! The good part is, with this much shit to do I can't possibly have any time to be depressed.

Thanks to IRC, I'm trying to come up with a list of movies that were really awesome when we were kids but are still good now that we're grown-up too. Feel free to suggest things!

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This list is AKA "Movies every kid should see", heh.

Man, it's been a while. Shit has happened!

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And that's the summary of the last month and a half. :D

Been stuck out on a farm these last two weeks. I got paid for it, but I also got to spend two weeks without internet access aside from what little I could do with my phone.

How is everybody doing? Anything happen that I need to know about? I've gotten ten pages back on my flist reading and still am not caught up @_@;; I fear I won't be able to, at this rate.

smut_fest sign-ups technically closed today but we're going to keep them open another couple days because we only had eight people sign-up. If you write original fic--any type; we have a strong showing of F/F writers on these sign-ups :D :D :D--please consider signing up! If you've signed up, poke your friends! More is always merrier.

Sign-ups are here and the due date actually isn't until mid-August so you'd have a respectable amount of time to complete your 2k or longer fic. It's just a fun little thing to do, and we had some really good writers last round :3