kkscatnip | Entries tagged with conventions

Current Mood: ecstatic
Crossposts: http://kkscatnip.livejournal.com/2119796.html

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.

Crossposts: http://kkscatnip.livejournal.com/2112896.html

narroch and I went to Gaylaxicon/Outlanta con this weekend! It was tons of fun, and we got TONS OF FREE SHIT.

- Gift bag from Angelina Sparrow
- 2 Chapbooks from Angelina Sparrow
- Nikolai by Angelina Sparrow
- Mind Fuck by Manna Francis
- Outland by Kiernan Kelly (signed)
- Two different discs of short stories by Kiernan Kelly
- I Put A Spell On You Anthology (signed by Kiernan Kelly)
- A wooden sandal that says "Aloha" on it that works fabulously as a paddle

Additionally, I got paper copies of Change of Heart and Trusted Bonds for $20, because after tipping Consuite literally all I had in my wallet was a twenty and the ladies at the Dreamspinner table were made of awesome and win.

We have so much shit to read. This is exciting!

Current Music: Fragma - Toca's Miracle
Crossposts: http://kkscatnip.livejournal.com/2112138.html

Frolicon write-up time!

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Current Mood: bouncy
Current Music: Britney Spears - Gimmie More
Crossposts: http://kkscatnip.livejournal.com/2110047.html

Wanted to post this separately from the APW stuff just in case someone ends up finding/linking to that, heh heh heh.

1) Went and saw Sucker Punch. My immediate reaction upon seeing it was to rage, but upon thinking and discussing it more with people, I think that this movie brings a very valuable element to the table but other people have already said this far more eloquently than I am able to.

2) Sweat lodge on Saturday. This is the e-mail I sent

tensergorn when I got home:

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I felt a bit better on Sunday when I went over there to help take down the lodge. I brought Puffin with me, since I'm going to be house-sitting their house for ten days at the end of May and Puffin will be coming with me.

Oh. My. God. Puffin had so much fun. She was constantly running around, smelling things, and like a bouncy, happy sort of running around. It was soooo cute! And she made friends with the pony, Bolt, who is very human-shy. They touched noses, and it was just the cutest sight ever, this stocky pony stretching out his neck and puffin stretching out her neck and their noses just barely touching.

I stayed out in the field for probably an hour just writing, and Puffin just ran around the whole time-- a lot of the time near Bolt too, which made me smile. I felt very good by the time I left.

3) Em and I attended the Whippersnappers Atlanta Meet & Greet at Manuel's Tavern on Thursday. Abby, Noel, and Art were all there so it was just wonderful to get to see all of them again. I ended up getting uhhh pretty trashed. I think the Triple Sec was what did me in, in the end.

I completely forgot the name of the girl who ended up giving me a scalp/neck/shoulder massage, (she had very nice tits, I must confess, and nice thighs as well) but all I can remember from the end of the night is that it felt like so many people were touching me and it was just such an awesome feeling. I didn't feel embarrassed or ashamed to be the center of attention for once, which was another boost for me.

(Also, I got to kiss both Noel and Art. Fsdlklsadsk I love kissing people; words cannot express this adequately.)

On a related note,

4) I will be attending Frolicon. I've made arrangements for Puffin; I have a pre-reg; Em and I will either find a room with some floor space and crash there or sleep in the car. We'll bring blankets and shit again either way, heh heh heh.

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Music: Rihanna - SOS
Crossposts: http://kkscatnip.livejournal.com/2109910.html

Such a blast. It's taken me a while to get the write-up done because I was without a computer for a week directly following the con, due to my computer being dead, dead, dead.

Atlanta Poly Weekend 2011 in a nutshell!

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Current Music: DeVotchKa - Death by Blonde
Crossposts: http://kkscatnip.livejournal.com/2107433.html

I took Emily out to dinner last night, for V-day. It was very nice! It's been something like two months (maybe as much as ten weeks) since I've seen her, so it felt really good to just... have my friend back, sitting there talking with me, and all that stuff.

We also talked a bit about Tens, and the reasons why I like her, etc etc. It was a good conversation for me, good to actually sit and talk about that a bit because nobody else has actually asked me those sort of things and they're questions that do need answers.

After dinner we went back to my apartment for sexytimes, and on the way we stopped and talked to someone named Amanda who lives in my apartment complex and had told me a few times that she liked girls. Amanda asked if we were drinking, and if she might join us, and of course Emily and I are both thinking: fuck yeah, threesome, so we said yes.

It took her a while to get beer and join us, during which time we reserved a room for Dragon*Con. (So, so excited about this!) It was kind of a pain, because all of the overflow places we called were booked up, and so as a kind of last-ditch resort we called the one official hotel that was fuckoff expensive but not booked solid, and found out that we could get a AAA discount that would pretty much bring the room price down to the Dragon*Con rates... blahblahblah, lots of negotiating later, we find a room at one of the booked hotels but it's fuckoff expensive so we're only booked for Friday and Saturday nights. I figure $50 for the cab back to my apartment isn't that bad, really, if we're going to have a room the rest of the time.

Anyway, Amanda finally joins us, and Emily and I are kind of, you know, making out a bit. Because we do that. It's required. And Amanda's just... watching. It was kind of creepy! Like, how are you going to just sit and watch when two girls are having sex and inviting you to join them? When one of them starts undressing you?

In the end we concluded that Amanda was remarkably straight, but it was certainly an interesting experience. Object lesson in spotting straight girls, I guess, which is always helpful!

(As usual the music is so apropos-- Amanda is blonde.)

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: La Roux - Bulletproof
Crossposts: http://kkscatnip.livejournal.com/2098642.html

dingsi went and created an alphabetical list of people on the love meme. Go, love them! And if you can't find someone who deserves some love: create a thread! ♥

2) Still privately being gleeful over yesterday, hahaha.

I actually went and tracked down in chat logs when we first talked (May 26th) and when I confessed the crush. It was exactly two months to the day from crush confession to relationship. It seemed like a lot longer than that, somehow.

3) Watching BSG, whoo. I'm up to S3 E7, which is pretty good considering there's like twenty episodes in a season and the episodes are an hour long. It was painful watching some of the reactions from the events of New Caprica, tbh, but the characters are recovering so that makes me squeeful again.

4) Am currently working on a story called Lizardmen in Space, which is actually being a lot of fun to write. It's turning out hilariously, too, which is good! I'm just worried it'll be a little too light-hearted for an erotica anthology, hahaha. But the characters are fun! Koit with his gay panic and Atlas with his FUCK YOU, BUDDY. I love them!

5) I've fucked with my Dreamwidth layout and I think I finally got it where I want it. The green was nice, but I'm really a purpley sort of gal.

6) I'm not going to Yaoi-con. After thinking about it and talking about it with various people, I came to the conclusion that trying to go this year would just be too stressful for too little return. I'll try again next year, when I can plan ahead and not have to worry about omgomg everything and stretch my finances so damned thin.

It's sucky, but I feel better having made the decision.

Current Mood: content
Current Music: The Kooks - She Moves In Her Own Way
Crossposts: http://kkscatnip.livejournal.com/2098022.html

1) An awesome person made an Anonymous Love Meme! Go, read the threads, show people love. (My thread is here, heh heh.)

2) The going-to-Yaoi-con thing is looking more and more likely, if for no other reason than I really really want to go because I've never been and

tensergorn will be there and

narroch will be there and man I wanna go so effing bad.

3) Have spent the last two days in the company of

narroch, burning through S1 of Gundam 00 and Oofuri. And An Education and BBC's Sherlock! Probably some other stuff too that I'm somehow forgetting about but-- it's been highly fabulous to have an IRL friend to share all of this stuff with! I haven't had anyone like this since I moved away from Boston, and it's amazing how much it brightens my outlook on Atlanta in general.

4) OH MY GOD CUDDLING. It's been so long since I've been able to cuddle with people in a completely non-sexual manner (hi

dhara,

britomart_is) and it was so wonderful and comfortable. I am really such a touch-needing person, I thrive on this sort of thing and it makes me feel fluffy inside and stuff. Looking forward to further cuddling!

5) Normal Pride (as opposed to Six Flags Pride) is next weekend and I am totally going. Totally. Maybe I'll even be able to meet more anime-minded folk! (One can hope.)