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Tumblr banned porn. It's using bots. My account there has been shadowbanned, on all blogs that I can tell, and will probably be admin-deleted on the 17th.

I do have a Pillowfort now! Also a twitter. So you can find me there. I also have a fandom and writing dreamwidth at Sanguinifex.

I don't feel like making any sort of big personal update, beyond that. Other than I'm open for commissions.

Back again

May. 30th, 2018 07:12 pm
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I'm back from the writing convention. It was fun. I learned a lot. One of my friends brought homemade mead and shared it. (It tastes like beeswax candles turned into a drink--in a good way.) It was absolutely surreal to be treated with respect while still being a queer person and being open about writing erotica. Frankly, this has made me resolve to avoid tumblr. Sure, I'll turn on notifications for the people I actually care about seeing (more than I already have done), I'll queue some cats, I'll make hot takes on the SJ blog, and I'll check the activity pages, but at this point I'm actively avoiding the dashboard unless I have literally nothing else to do. I haven't gone in tags except from misclicks in months. It's not just the sexual harassment from bigots--it's also that the app loses your place on the dashboard at the slightest whim--using a browser, sometimes when loading a link inside the app, queuing a post instead of reblogging it--and the desktop site slows down horribly after a couple dozen posts when endless scrolling is turned on and takes forever to load each new page when it isn't. If I could set the posts per dashboard page to 100 instead of 20, I would mind less. Maybe there's an xkit extension I could make for that?

But, you know, it's also that I don't like being called a pedophile just for being a queer person who writes erotica and supports others' right to do so. (At least they've mostly stopped calling me an antisemite and a Nazi--to be fair, most of these people can't possibly have even guessed my heritage, without a last name--but only because calling me a child molester is more powerful, and more of a homophobic stereotype.) No matter how many people I block, I keep seeing it happen to my friends, too. I don't want to give these people up, simply because they use the same blogs for politics as for personal stuff. Fortunately, most of those are on a Discord server that I usually check frequently. (Not the last few days, because con.)

I mostly lost touch with a good friend a couple years ago, because they left tumblr, in much the same manner as I slowly am now. It was the ace discourse that did it. I don't blame them for not putting up with it. I just searched their username on Twitter, but all that's coming up is posts shared from tumblr. I'm trying to message them on Pidgin now (I figured an email or a public fic comment would be too awkward). And then I thought I got a ping, but then it turn out to be F-List, because I'd forgot to set my tentacle monster character's status as "do not disturb." (RPing as that character takes a lot of work, and I'm doing other things right now. Like this post.) I'm just also worried that I'll lose people if I leave tumblr. And then I worry I should take up WordPress again, but then I remember that I didn't interact with many people there and only lost one person I actually cared about when I stopped posting--there were a couple others, but they had tumblrs. I still follow one of them. And I could log back in and read my feed; I was mostly just a reader, not interacting in a "mutuals" sort of way. I wonder if I could somehow get that WP feed in my DW feed. I need to find more people to follow, here.

It's just...six years. I've had tumblr for going on six years. My current account is only 2 years old, but the other one was made in January 2013. I was there before the site had rebloggable asks and when it still auto-shortened links. And its interface was always trash, but after Yahoo bought it, after monetization became a thing, I watched it turn into a harassment hellfire. I got a reprieve of a year by being too burnt out for discourse for most of 2015, but it's just gone down the shitslide, and I know it won't come back. This always happens. It will happen to Amino, too, and that and the NBphobia in its queer spaces and the fact that everyone is in high school and its stupid all-or-nothing login incentives are why I haven't gotten into it. (Plus, it doesn't allow adult content. That puts a crimp in my usual style.) Sure, it's good now, but eventually they'll run out of startup funding and start adding banner ads. Collectivization of websites is the only way to prevent them from going to shit, and that's why I'm posting here and not on WordPress. Even though I liked WordPress. Maybe I can set it to autopost from DW to there? (And clean up my theme, while I'm at it. I made it sometime in the 12-13 school year and I'm pretty sure it's hideous.) I'm just mad at seeing the site die, at watching user experience be sidelined in the name of money, with execs never knowing when to stop before it kills the site, and of course having golden parachutes and myths of obsolescence ready for when it does crash. Oh, it'll carry on for a few years yet, but it will stop being central, especially to fandom and queerness. Twitter is clearly the politics platform, as ill-equipped as it is to be; the Orange Menace is not on tumblr. It is also usable as a shallow fandom platform, and with the rise of Discord and the existence of AO3, tumblr simply isn't necessary for fandom clusters. DeviantArt and Pixiv are for imagesharing and hosting, and DW is another place for fics and social interaction. I'll still miss tumblr, though, when it finally becomes irrelevant. It could have been good. The dashboard was genius. But privacy and interface always sucked, and the only reason it got so popular in the first place was the lack of similar alternatives--and Twitter's (then) 140 character limit and lack of image prioritization.

I've heard about these kind of site deaths before, and expected more of them, but I've never seen one. And now Tumblr and Facebook (which at least I rarely used) are on the verge of decline. Already the "mom platform," FB is not going to weather the privacy scandals now. Older users will hang on, but teens and young adults, at least in the US, will be reluctant to get on board. If you need a virtual phonebook to keep tabs on an acquaintance from college, there's LinkedIn, which nobody uses as an actual social platform anyway, just to apply for jobs. I'll miss some things, but I can't say that any of what I miss will be from after 2014, honestly. And tumblr was toxic then, I just didn't know it yet, and verbal abuse is a slow poison.

God, what was I originally going to talk about? The writing convention. I speed-wrote a piece for a workshop I hadn't realized I could attend, fleshed out a response to Innsmouth on the fly more than I'd ever done in the past (still don't know when I'll be ready to write it, but it'll probably be a novella), and then the next day I went to a workshop on how to break into traditional publishing markets. I don't actually remember much about most of the panels, except for the one where a white woman my mom's age was appallingly white and self-centered when the topic was supposed to be about the dehumanization of "killable bodies" as racial coding. No one cares if your ancestors are Nazis, Lisa--why are you so strongly identified with said Nazis, anyway? I can't dare ask my grandpa why he assimilated, but I suspect it's because of people like that, hmm? She got banned from the con, though. And there was also a workshop on silicone molding, with a focus on dildos, though it didn't involve any actual crafting. And I suggested that the con's methods of feeding large numbers of people involve an always-available pot of white rice next year, which the organizers thought was genius (and I thought was obvious, because damn, I've cooked and worked in catering for how long?). But yeah, mostly people were just nice and non-judgemental. I was safe, for a few days, if very far from home and dependent on a shitty bus company to get back. And I still don't have a job, except on paper, and I need to formally quit that one because I'm moving. But I think the con went well. Hopefully next year I'll be able to go again, and maybe I'll have learned to drive and obtained a vehicle and will be able to get there my own self. (Or like, to Iowa by myself, to bother my friends' cats, and carpool the rest of the way there. That is, if I don't make enough writer friends in Texas to split a hotel room with.) And I found out that cheese curds are good--they're like really salty cheesesticks but not individually wrapped, so they don't get all weird--and I wish I'd been able to bring some back. I hope I get to go next year. Money willing.

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I have to tell my mom I'm going to a writing convention, and when. Which, as I realized like on Monday, is next week, not the week after next. It's the middle of the month already. She's going to be pissed at me for spending money. (Possibly also for missing my night to cook dinner.) I am hoping some talk of networking and connections and possible copy-editing gigs (though lbr most writers are fic writers and fic writers don't pay betas, it's the culture) will smooth that over. I can at least take the bus into the city, since I doubt she'll be free next Wednesday at 1:30. (Make sure you have change, and check the fare is still $1.75. Highway robbery, is public transit in this country.)

I need to make business cards sometime in the next 5 days--I just realized this as the page was loading; I need something with my full name, email address, and brief list of skills. Maybe with a QR code to scan my contact details into someone's phone? So I'll spend the morning designing this.

I am probably going to use my birth name, this year, unless I can decide on something else in the next...(looks at clock, considers business hours at Staples)...12-16 hours. Some of which I will be sleeping, or having my hair cut, or cleaning up my room or the kitchen. My main fear is that using my birth name could cause confusion in subsequent years, if I decide on something else later. I don't hate my birth name. It's just the wrong gendered ending in basically every language I understand any of (except maybe Japanese, but I don't think my knowledge of that counts as understanding of anything but the phone keyboard), and people make assumptions. And they usually mispronounce it. The gender thing is worse when they pronounce it right.

It wouldn't be the end of the world if I don't get the cards printed until Monday, but I'd prefer sooner so I have time to pack. I also need to pack for moving. I do not have many things that are not already in various household storage containers that can easily be transferred to cardboard boxes and also not in regular use; some books, some winter clothes, some of the contents of my nightstand. The clothes will probably go in the large duffel anyway, most of them. I have very few things that wrinkle. My good suit would be one of the rare exceptions. (I'm not packing it for WisCon. I don't think there's anything formal enough to justify the space.) It will take maybe a day to pack everything that isn't personal luggage or on-hand medication. There's only so much I can pack before we find out if the house is actually sold, though; if it goes on the market again, I'll have to keep out the room furnishings. Mostly furniture, which I wouldn't be packing anyway, but my lantern and that plant. During the whole hospital saga, I acquired a houseplant--a gerbera daisy. (The name makes me think of baby food. I am pretty sure it is not edible.) You can't really pack a plant, anyway. There's relatively little of my stuff in the rest of the house--a few boxes in the basement, a handful of kitchen implements. It's been a very long while since I've put down roots anywhere. Six years. Life as a series of flowerpots. Much longer than that since I've been more than two years anywhere, really--getting to be half my life, now. I hope that changes someday.

What to pack for WisCon? Apart from meds and underwear: both leather jackets, black pants, red pants, leggings, the floral shirts, black turtleneck, dino tee, one extra tee, swim gear (actually, no idea if the hotel has a pool, but it's the only presentable pair of shorts I've got anyway, unless I go shopping tomorrow but I don't want to spend more money), pajamas, converse(?), boots, brown belt. That's probably enough for 6 days of uncertain weather, 2 of them traveling. (Includes what I'll be wearing when traveling, too. Dino tee, black belt, black pants, boots. Carrying the brown jacket, because it's winter weight and huge.)

This is rambling and pointless to any reader, and I should go to bed.

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I'm going to a writing convention at the end of the month. That means I need a name. The sort that doesn't sound ridiculously pretentious when you write it on a name tag. "Sanguinifex" won't do, because it's just too edgy (rather by accident) and difficult to pronounce. "Periegesis" is similarly pretentious and hard for anyone but me to spell and pronounce, and it doesn't abbreviate well. I can't use "Chris" anymore; it's too, well, Christian for me to be comfortable with it, for several months now. (I chose it because it was gender neutral, originally, but it doesn't have a long form, which was always a problem, and then there's the etymology.) I don't really want people calling me by my birthname, because I don't want them to think I'm cis and also nobody pronounces it right; also, what if there are photos?

So I need to find another name. I've got two weeks.
  1. It needs to be visibly gender-neutral.
  2. It needs to be the right color, because synesthesia is a pain in the ass. Raspberry-jello red. That means probably starting with A, C, K, (M), R, or S. Whether any of those will work will depend on the other letters in the word, particularly vowels.
  3. It needs to go with my last name, which I am proud of and won't change.
  4. It needs to be fairly short--definitely no more than 3 syllables--or easily abbreviate to such.
  5. It needs to be not particularly religious, nor one of Those Names That 90% Of Trans Dudes Have. (You know the kind.)
And I need to do this, and also get my registration in order. And then I have to tell the people I'm going with what to call me. (I also need to ask one of them whether they prefer their given name or their AO3 handle, actually.) I don't really want to have to pick anything, but I've been putting this off for months.

What galls me is I've known I was trans for years, at this point. I should be past this whole picking out names thing by now--I'm not the type to switch names a lot. There's this sort of "your chosen name is your real name/is valid" sort of thing that goes around in mainstream trans communities, and there's nothing that addresses "what if you're wrong about what your name is, and it takes you several years to figure out"? It's weird that I feel guilty about this, because I never have about similar things, it's just that I felt so certain, once--and indeed, it suited pretty much all my current criteria except point 5, and also the minor problem of only being neutral as a diminutive, unless I spelled it in a way that looked wrong. I just feel like a should have known. And I feel even worse for being glad that financial circumstances meant that I couldn't really transition, because of the name thing, because of it eventually turning out that masculinity actually wasn't going to be the "better" option for me, because of all the reasons that cis people would use to justify mandatory gatekeeping. And I don't want to be the sort of person who has new pronouns every week or whatever, because if that persists past a few months you're just a flighty jerk, really; at a certain point one should settle on something just for decency's sake. (The idea that pronouns are supposed to be a perfect encapsulation of one's gender as opposed to merely a common placeholder that isn't wrong really irks me. I'll use what people want, because I'm not a dick, but it's linguistically stupid to try to make the language have much more than three animate pronouns. "They" for "both/neither" should be plenty, and much else is a strain on reading comprehension. I just recognize that most people with superfluous pronouns unfortunately have more gender feelings than linguistic awareness, or than a sense of looking out for nonbinary people as a whole in the long term. I don't judge unless I think someone has the linguistic education and foresight to know better, which is very seldom.)

This thing of "oh I thought it was this for five years; I was actually wrong." It's also that it will confuse all my friends (and it's hard enough to keep track of who's who on tumblr), and that some of the more ungenerous people will accuse me of accountability dodging for "being a pedophile"--aka, being a queer person who's unashamed of the word and thinks gatekeeping is suicidal and doesn't believe in censoring erotica. The Junior Log Cabin Republicans of tumblr are more than happy to take all the old libels and paint rainbow stripes on them, just to get an edge in a pointless argument or for a minor grudge, or because you wrote something and they didn't like it. It's completely fake, and they know it, but they do it because it doesn't matter if you're homophobic against a bad person, you see. And then, whatever I choose will likely become my literary name, so I'm likely to be stuck with it in some form or another, meaning it's a big choice.

But also, what if I'm wrong, again? The only thing I know about myself at this point is that nothing is certain. If there's a space between a binary, I"m probably there. I wish I didn't have to have a name, something bound to the core of my concept-self, because it eludes that, by nature. "Sanguinifex" is a mask, which is why I like it. It's also stupidly edgy (I just wanted a Dragon Age reference!) and doesn't and most people can't pronounce or spell it. It doesn't go with my last name at all. So I can't use it offline!

Hesitation

Apr. 26th, 2018 06:21 pm
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I want to write. I want to write a specific story. I want to write that story in a specific style. And I'm scared to do it, because the last time someone started a flamewar over it. Well, not over it, over something else, and the story was, well...unusual. People don't normally write prose like that. People don't normally write prose towards that particular sensory effect, poikilothry like water dripping through a maze of bits of broken colored glass.

People also don't write about tentacle monsters from the perspective of the monster, and they don't usually incorporate that level of religious symbolism into sexual roleplay, either. But I did. So it was pretty mockable, if you're a mean, uncharitable person, and these people were.

It's my style, though. Oh, I've learned others, but I've had that one for close to a decade, now. Prose-poems, and the disguise that reveals; that is mine. So I've just got to figure out a backstory that makes this particular fantasy work, and then get to writing it. I can't get comments if I don't publish, after all.

(Though honestly, does this sort of thing even go on AO3? It's not really a fandom of anything. There isn't anywhere else that's searchable that way, though, and I don't want to have to make an account anywhere else, today. I'm too young for usenet and so on, probably, and know practically nothing about Wattpad except its mobile interface sucks. Who even owns Wattpad? I need someplace for original fiction, and I want something that won't screw me over. Especially since getting paid for this kind of fiction is rapidly becoming illegal in this country.)

Edit: I'm an idiot. I could just post original stories here. Should I make a separate journal for it, though? I'm pretty sure that's a thing you can do from the same account? I mean, theoretically not everyone who knows this exists wants to see my weird porn? Though actually, at least most of the people I'm willing to reveal this blog's existence to would. Iunno?
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I was in Starbucks today, and this random dude said, "Hey, I noticed you have a cane, do you mind if I pray for you?" This kind of thing has happened to me before, only it was some kind of church scavenger hunt (in the B&N, for some reason) a couple years ago, so I knew he meant "kneel and pray right now." In the middle of a Starbucks. Which is exactly what their version of God says not to do--"When you pray, pray in secret," and all that. I also don't really want that version of God paying attention to me, if he exists, because I'm a licentious crossdressing bisexual homosexual and a "loose woman," to him. (Not that any of this would have stopped Actual Jesus, but it's Saint Paul who wrote over half the Epistles, and he was a massive jerk. Fuck you, Saint Paul.) Anyway, I told him it was fine if he wanted to try praying for me later at home (since God probably doesn't exist, so I'm willing to risk that much), but making a scene about it wasn't my style.

But like, holy shit, that's approximately the worst way to approach disabled people in public. Short of like, yelling straight up that I was a faker or something, which I fortunately haven't encountered yet, but probably will because I'm getting better and can walk almost normally without the damn crutch, for a little. (Enough to cook a simple meal, at home. Enough to take a shower or go to the bathroom, from my bedroom. Enough to make my bed. It still takes several times the effort it should. Even with the crutch I only get about 1000 feet before something in my heel spazzes up.) But I still need it for things like distances and stairs (which include curbs). But still, y'all Bible randos just approach anyone with an assistive device and put them on the spot like that, or is it only the ones who look under 50? Like, come on. That's just rude. And then you make it sound like I'm the rude one if I say no, or get pissed off. Makes me wish I could use Magic Gay Pheromones to repel Christians, Straight People, and other dangers to society, or to my latte.

But anyway, due to Starbucks' new data-gathering fuckery with their wifi, my computer couldn't connect to it (even after restarting; the redirect simply wouldn't load), I went to the other Starbucks in the B&N (again! also there are 3 Starbucks in this town within 1/4 mile of each other, and only one other coffee shop at all), which uses attwifi as its connect portal. I then proceeded to write bad neoclassical sex poetry, which required absolutely no internet. I probably could have walked all the way back home, too, but it was raining--not very heavily, but I'd be soaked through within a couple blocks. So I waited for my mom, and ate dinner.

It wasn't entirely a bad day.

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I walked the entire mile to 5 Below! Which hurt a little, but only in the "these muscles aren't used to being used" way. My feet aren't very used to being stood on anymore. Just one crutch, too. I got a new 10 foot μ/USB cord, a backup pair of earbuds (different brand than usual, they ran out of the ones with a right angle connector, Pinched Acoustic those were called), a t-shirt with a T-rex vomming a rainbow (not my very fave design but they didn't have the others in XL; if I can go to WisCon, I'm wearing it to WisCon), a 3-pack of chapsticks, a "pumice sponge," silly putty (hoping it'll help with my right hand; it's also supposed to be bright orange), and a couple of those anti-mosquito bracelets bc it's good to have those going into summer. I also got a push-pop, a rice krispy treat, and strawberry fanta. The fanta was in the fridge there but I let it sit till it was the same temp as tap water, and it tasted like red-colored happiness made into fizzy candy. People who drink soda ice-cold don't even taste it, honestly. You just get citric acid and fizz. It has to be warm to taste the sugar or fruit flavors, especially citrus--lots of fruit flavors are oil-soluble, and you can't taste them as well if they're cold. (That's why orange or lemon-lime soda has brominated vegetable oil in it; it's a carrier for the orange flavor. The bubbles make sure all that stays in suspension, plus a few other ingredients. Didn't check the ingredients for strawberry, bc soda doesn't ever have eggs in it.) And then I went to B&N and got a caramel macchiatto as an excuse to read some books. And about then, my mom discovered I wasn't in the house and offered me a ride home when I needed it. She was also getting pizza, so I didn't have to buy extra dinner.

So, basically, an epic success. I can indeed walk a mile, though it takes fucking forever. (Close to an hour, today. Normally it's 25-30 minutes. Actually, based on that speed, I wonder if Google Maps' calculation is off, because my job literally was to walk fast.) I've gotten to where one crutch is truly more help than two. I think in a week I'll be able to walk back home as well, though probably if I don't need anything from a shop I should just walk around the block instead of going so far. On the other hand, I had to go home today about 170 pages through American Gods.... Maybe Saturday.

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On Tuesday, I got discharged from the rehab facility! I also can take pills instead of IVs now! No more IV port! (It didn't even look like Lieutenants Stammetts' on Star Trek. I was so disappointed by that.)

Of course, between having a doctor's appointment on the same day and packing up everything there, I crashed basically as soon as we got home. Yesterday, though, I made bean soup and a loaf of bread. It was fun to cook again. Almost nothing was seasoned quite the way I liked it at the rehab facility (I was there nearly 4 weeks!), and the bread there was terrible. The worst store brand wonderbread, and sometimes the whole wheat variety. Bread with actual texture is amazing. It's so simple, too. Difficult to hold the mixing fork, a bit, because nerve damage in that hand from crutches that assume everyone's thumbs work the same way, but I managed. ("Mixing fork?" It's a no-knead recipe, but one that actually rises in the same amount of time as normal bread. You mix it up like biscuits, but less gently. A large dinner fork with a thick handle is best; if you want to make bread like this but all your forks have thin handles, find a thrift store and buy a stocky fork of fuck-all.)

Today, I want to take a walk, but it's raining, and I'm not sure I can make it 3/4 of a mile (or a full mile, to go where I really want; I need some things from 5 Below) on one crutch. Or both crutches. Let alone back. I'm not sure where the ankle brace the injury clinic originally gave me is; I'd want that. (I have an idea, but who the hell knows if I'm right.) There are also things I need to do, that should be done during business hours, which is to say the next 3-4. But I feel like I can't focus on that without some exercise first. If I take my laptop, I will need to clean out my backpack (which I need to do anyway at somepoint, tbh) and it will be heavier. But then I could rest at the Starbucks (either on the corner or the one in the B&N) after shopping. But I could do that anyway. And the most urgent thing is just a phone call; the other is a thing that has to be emailed and what difference will one day make, it probably won't be handled by the recipient this week since it's already Thursday. Maybe best to see how far I can go with a lighter bag and just my phone, and of course the one crutch (as a cane; it's a forearm crutch) and an umbrella.

I'll have to get out of the house eventually. Except for the specific localization of the pain, I'm no worse off than I was this time in 2016. Definitely no weaker. I got myself strong again that time; I used Pokemon Go to motivate myself to walk places. I could do that today, if it weren't raining (one hand for the crutch, one hand for the umbrella; none for the phone), but honestly I just want a reliable charger cord and some fruit soda. Perhaps another pack of chapsticks. A sense of not being imprisoned. Little things I haven't had, since the end of February. It's been nearly two months.

I have an ankle brace to look for.

Edit: Found the ankle brace! Exactly where I thought it would be, too. Also all the clothes I was missing; I have laundry to do, later. This...might actually work.

Progress?

Apr. 8th, 2018 02:12 pm
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As of yesterday, I can walk a little without holding onto anything! I'm not sure if shuffling two or three inches at a step properly counts as walking, but it's sort of back to where I was on the last day of February. My Achilles is still pretty tight (despite current hormonal fluctuations), and the muscles in my foot are too wasted (and the joints have gotten too stiff) to roll through a step properly and place weight on the ball of the foot. Which in turn risks fucking up my knee.

But it's something. I'm so close.

Seriously?

Apr. 7th, 2018 03:28 am
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I'd really hoped that almost dying would mean I'd skip my period, but nope, blood on the toilet paper. One day short of seven weeks from my last one, which is not out of normal range, for me. At most, it pushed it back a week or two--and the latter tracks perfectly with me being admitted to the hospital. It's five weeks, almost to the hour, since I came out of the first surgery and stopped dying and started getting better. Bodies are strange.

The real problem is I'm still on blood thinners, so it's probably going to last ten days or something. Ugh. And this is going to make physical therapy twice as hard (except maybe for stretching my Achilles back to normal), because teh uber-bendy dialed up to eleven. And I'm a black hole for calories and just had to ask the nurses for snacks at a quarter past three in the morning, because beef jerky and pretzels wasn't cutting it. (Not sure yogurt and chips will be much better, but at least it's different.) Breakfast is in four hours. I hope I'll sleep. I hope I'll wake up in time to eat it, too.

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Yup, just some tape over the nascent scars. I'm also allowed to put full weight on the foot without that stupid, abominable CAM boot. In physical therapy this evening, I think I got at least 75%. It's not used to being stood on anymore. And my brain still won't let me bend my knee, during. Still, it's progress. It should be less sore in a couple days. Maybe I'll be able to use the pain pills less often and completely stop in a couple weeks. (Especially since the orthopedic doctor confirmed I'm allowed to have naproxen. Maybe finally I'll get some relief for my hips and fingers. The oxy doesn't touch that.)

So that happened this morning, then my mom and I went to Panera and I somehow managed not to kill myself with the crutches, either by breaking my head open falling or impaling myself on the things, and then back to the rehab facility for the nap of all naps. I'm pretty sure I was literally the last person to have physical therapy today--the physical therapists normally leave at 6:30, which was when my IV finally got done. (They put it off, from some combination of me being asleep and the nurses not being properly notified that I'd come back. Seriously, the internal communication systems here are completely FUBAR. It's usually better to wheel yourself to the medcart than ring the callbell, if you want the nurse and not the CNA. My food orders only got sorted this fucking morning. I've been here 12 days. But of all days to finally get more than half a breakfast, today was the day I needed it most.)

But that got sorted, I managed not to have a full meltdown in a Panera (it was a close call. damn the crutches), I got to eat an excellent sandwich and a decent bowl of soup (the Bistro French Onion is much improved by lemon), and I'm back here safely and with no more plastic embedded in my skin. I'm allowed to shower without my foot wrapped, so I'm going to arrange for that to happen--I missed my scheduled shower because of the expedition today. I'm going to see when they can fit me in for that. We didn't manage to go shopping, but I'd still call it a success.
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So, I did sprain my ankle. The sprain got infected. (Yes, that's possible.) There was a medical screwup that I'm not talking about too much because we're probably suing, but I had the infection for over a week before I finally got sent to the hospital. I had two surgeries. I'm on a shit-ton of antibiotics. I got digestive complications from the antibiotics and had to jump through a ridiculous number of hoops to get Pepto-Bismol and to get the hospital to stop trying to give me stool softeners. I got out of the hospital and into orthopedic rehab. I'm finally strong enough to sit up without support for more than about an hour, the last few days, and finally acquired an extension cord so I could actually use the laptop at the desk in my room. Spent yesterday doing lots of various kinds of paperwork. (May have to get a tax extension. Also need to appeal the workers' comp decision, because screw you, all your belief that the world doesn't work that way doesn't change what actually happened to me and that sort of thinking nearly killed me, also I did, in fact, sprain that at work.) Finally have time to post today. Everything hurts but I'm not dead! Not dead is currently a major achievement. Also feeling weirdly guilty that I can't go to a Seder, despite never having formally converted and having almost no religious education from that side of the family growing up. (It's basically because I've Had It with the Church.) And OhShit I have to write a recipe for someone on Patreon. I haven't been able to actually cook for a month. *headdesks internally, because externally there's too many sharp edges and also laptop.*
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...Except I twisted an ankle yesterday. Today, I wouldn't have. I'll probably be able to work tomorrow--it's not swollen or bruising, it just hurts, so it's probably wrenched muscles. I'm just glad I'm not bleeding out of anything and my hips are okay.

Regular updatez! Let's keep this going.
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"I'm going to post regularly," I say, and then don't post for a month. It's a bad sign, as a writer, when a full keyboard feels strange under your fingers compared to a phone. Nothing more wrong with my computer than usual (it seems to think that its battery life is approximately five seconds), just too much happening. I haven't used it much except for games, in the last month. I should be applying to jobs. I'm moving to Texas in a month.

Wait, what? Yeah. My mom is, at the end of the school year, so I won't have this house, and she's fed up with me anyway. Keeps "forgetting" my allergies, and I don't know if it's deliberate or not, but anyway, it's a bad sign. So I need to get a job there, so I can be free of her. Maybe I can find a managerial job, this time. I don't know if I'm strictly *qualified,* but I fucking well can do it. What I can't do is survive warehouse (or retail, or food service) jobs much longer, because apparently part of having a normal hormonal cycle, for me, is tearing up all my joints one week out of five. Maybe if I go on birth control that'll fix it, but idk. But fast distance walking is inadvisable when your ankles supinate uncontrollably and your hips don't quite slot and your spine tries to bend in half backwards, and then I have to use my shoulders for this, too. This happened last month, too--about the same time my vitamin D levels finally got into the realms of normal, which apparently affects things. Because all this shit happened on a lesser basis before, but this is probably the first time in my life I've had anything resembling a normal adult female endocrine profile, especially while simultaneously doing high-impact physical activity. Four weeks out of five, I'm fine, but the fifth, I tear up all my joints and standing hurts after like ten minutes. I can feel it starting over a week ahead, a feeling like the difference between metal and green wood as I bend, but it doesn't really get bad until the bleeding starts. I simply can't take that much time off work and still pay bills. So I need to 1) get my fucking meds changed, since this is obviously tied to an exact point in my cycle, and 2) find a job which doesn't involve this much walking, which would probably be a good idea anyway. I can be kind of normal when I'm not actively bleeding out of my crotch, but I'm still a little extra bendy and injure things stupidly easily.

And my lungs are *finally* mostly over the incense from a month ago, now that the weather's finally *above freezing*. Still need to talk to my doctor about those meds, too, because obviously I have to go outside sometimes, and god is albuterol expensive. A steroid inhaler would probably be less expensive with my insurance and would mean I wouldn't have to use the other one as much.

I just hate existing as a flesh body sometimes? It's so much work. And it hurts most of the time. And my life is like grinding in a videogame constantly, only you never seem to level up and as soon as you get any loot, your equipment breaks and you need to replace it. My work pants are wearing out again. Bills are due next week. I very much want to and intend to stay alive, but this manner of existence sucks so much. How the fuck do I fucking get out of this?
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No, seriously. I am allergic to incense. Incense is also made of smoke, so even if I take allergy meds I'm still not going to be able to breathe. And it'll hurt all the next day too. I have finally realized that I can use this as an excuse to stop going to services for things I don't believe in, because really no one can say god *wants* me to die by means of being physically present in a church. It's an *allergy,* not the emperor Diocletian. If the Christian God actually wanted me to go to church, he'd have magically healed my asthma yesterday, when I stood in a smoke-filled room for maybe 20 minutes (having used my inhaler pre-emptively on the drive over), had maybe 50% lung capacity and went through several stages of slow asphyxia, and started to grey out. Or, you know, when I could barely walk to work this morning because it was 13 degrees out and I'd basically gassed myself yesterday and it felt like someone had stuck a handheld mixer in my chest and turned it on.

So, yeah. Boundaries. This is a way to set them. The goddamn universe had to step in to tell me that.

My life feels like a lot of ironic coincidences sometimes, I'll admit. Like, being ethnically part Jewish and literally allergic to churches. Anxiety meaning that at least I think about the consequences of things when no one else seems to. A fuckton of awful shit translating into being a better person solely by dint of realizing that "good" is not a thing a person can be, just do, continually. Some more awful shit translating into the beginnings of a political theory of transformative love--yes, from an aromantic person, shut up there are other kinds of love--though honestly I don't know how far I'll get with that or if some other author hasn't already basically done that in a secular context. An entirely different variety of awful shit giving me the experiences necessary to walk friends through stuff and make it a little less awful for them, or at least help them give a name to it. In some way, I'm kind of thankful that those things happened, because by god I've turned them into good, new restrictions and setbacks helping me break free of other ones, but I really wish it hadn't had to happen that way. I wish I could decide things without needing a reason beyond personal preference, and have someone respect that, ever.

It sometimes feels like I'm burning up, that everything in the world is acid mist on the outside and my own thoughts and fears are a slow fire on the inside. If there is anything left of me when times get better, I'll be a clinker, brittle but pretty-colored and more connected to everything else that was also in the furnace--but I was perfectly fine as coal. I still don't know what heat it is for which the universe decides to dig me up and burn me, and everyone else. Does this metaphor even work anymore? Just, whatever good comes of anything I've been through, I didn't ask to go through the things in the first place, and they really suck. I can make the best of things but I shouldn't have to. Would I be a worse person? Probably. But on the other hand, how much would I have had to learn and unlearn in the first place in a just world? I don't know. But at least I have an excuse not to go to a church I shouldn't have been raised in in the first place, now! Fucking yay.
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I really don't like being scheduled for shifts less than 12 hours apart. I do like walking that mile between at night. Tonight, especially: it's 28 degrees out, warmer than it's been in two weeks, just into the range where I can breathe easily and the crunch of snow under my workboots is not so annoying. Everything is ambient streetlights and the moon and no brighter. I get to be really alone for once, and perhaps that's why I'm writing about it here, where likely no one will read it.

And...yep, sleepy now. I'll get four and a half hours of rest, if I want to be on time in the morning. Fuck capitalism.

(I told my youngest brother to cook instead of me, tomorrow, sp I could nap, and wrote him a recipe for ham and bean soup. Hopefully he'll remember to do that and manage to make it edible. You'd think it's pretty much impossible to fuck up something like that, but this kid's a goofball. Well, night.)
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Maybe I'll try posting daily/regularly as some kind of belated New Year's resolution. Any days that I actually turn the computer on, anyway. That's not all days, because some days I'm tired and I just stick to reading things on my phone.

Earlier today I was reading an analysis of Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0 social media and why virality sucks as a universal social media structure (I'd recommend checking the notes on both), and it just makes me wonder what Web 3.0 is going to be like. What I'm seeing the last couple years is a move back towards community settings, moderation, and anti-virality--Discord and Amino, in particular. Amino looks a lot like LiveJournal for the smartphone age--I'm not even sure it has a browser equivalent. When I signed up, it asked for my phone number, not an email. Unfortunately, it's exclusively 13+ content, which limits what people like me can really do with it. I suppose you could post links to a link, but still dicey with the TOS. Most fancreators want to be able to display porn, to put it bluntly. Many adults want to be able to discuss sex in general. If Amino introduces an 18+ mode, it could be the social media app of the next decade. If it doesn't, it's going to hamstring itself as a fandom and creative network, which appears to be its primary market. It also needs to introduce a way to mute chat notifications without muting the entire amino they come from, because my god is getting every single notification from the Dragon Age Roleplay main chat annoying. I think it eats my phone's battery, too. The constant notifications, not the app. (Though apparently battery issues are a thing with this model of phone, and it's actually about the processor. Long story short, I'm not getting a Motorola again. Especially if the model's been out for less than 6 months.) It is currently ad-free, always a plus.

Discord, meanwhile, is an ad-free chat client. It's very good at hosting chatrooms; it has "servers" with multiple "channels" that allow, say, a fandom group to operate multiple channels for different subjects. It's ad-free and a far smaller application than Skype, both on Windows and Android, and usually less laggy. It's basically replaced Skype and Google Hangouts for me and a number of people I know (without us coordinating that), though I still have the apps on my phone just in case. I still use Pidgin, but only really for F-list and as a less laggy way to deal with Hangouts on my ancient laptop. (Being poor sucks. Student loans suck. I'd have an extra $4k for stuff over the last year and a little if I didn't have student loans.) However, it's not an independent social media app. There's no way to ask to join a server without already having an invite code; in fact, you can't see the server's existence unless you're given a code for it. Even on mobile, it doesn't support links within the app. There's no such thing as a personal page or "permanent" posts (there is a pinning feature, but it's not the same), just the chat, nor any kind of image repository (unless you overclock the custom emojis). There are direct messages and servers, but there's no way to show anything to the general public, and if there were, I suspect it would still have tumblr-scale ephemerality problems. Discord needs at least one accessory site to function socially. It's more of a nice add-on to an existing social media experience than an independent social medium. (For example, all the servers I'm in are drawn from tumblr and/or AO3, and basically exist because neither of those sites have any kind of group chat capability--or any realtime chat capability, until tumblr introduced chats around two years ago. For the AO3 one, an author wanted to host chat parties, and for the other ones that I'm actually active on, people wanted to discuss tumblr politics in a more moderated space with a less scattered structure than reblogs, and then it also spawned some more general social interaction.) Discord does allow 18+ with age-locking, as well as having voice-chat and videocall support. It bills itself as "for gamers," so I believe it was originally developed to faciliate MMORPG campaigns and it could certainly be used for tabletop RPGs via conference calls, much like Skype sometimes is.

However, I think that the true biggest social medium of the upcoming 2020s has yet to be developed. Amino could be it, but I'm not sure it will be, even if it does go 18+--and the reason is funding. Discord and Amino are run by private companies. So far, Amino has been funded by Series A and B funding, and from reading between the lines of Discord's Wikipedia page, it's something similar there. This means that, while things are sunny now, investors and owners will eventually try to monetize and datamine these apps, prioritizing revenue over user experience. Gradually, there will be ads and sponsored content and privacy erosion, paywalls for basic functionality, algorithms will replace user control, and harassment will be deliberately ignored because "someone is wrong on the internet" makes users spend a lot more time with the app open than generic, pleasant interactions. Sound familiar? It's because that's what's happened with tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and Skype (and to a more invisible but equal extent, Google etc) over the last decade. In the next 5-10 years, and I'd put my money on the lower end of that, I foresee all those sites/apps except Google and maybe Facebook becoming socially irrelevant, as other things with more functionality step in to replace them. (And they'll be primarily smartphone-based. I really hope they'll have backwards compatibility with Windows or browsers, for the sake of people who can't afford new-model phones with tons of internal storage, or if an app temporarily goes down, or to enable non-members to see public posts [since account-walls just make people lose interest], but they'll be primarily aimed at mobile users.)

But any new social media will follow this cycle of monetization and decay unless the underlying structure is changed. It doesn't matter what promises are made in the beginning; as the site grows, and it's going to have to grow if it's good, operating costs and investor appeasement will eventually take priority. If we want user-friendly social media, we have to decorporatize social media. Web 3.0 has to be crowdfunded, user-owned, and not-for-profit, or nothing will really change.

We've already seen Dreamwidth, AO3/the OTW, and Wikipedia use this model. The occasional banner ads for pledge drives are far less annoying than standard ads on other sites. Users who have spare cash donate to keep the site running because they value its services and understand the peril of allowing a for-profit corporation to run our social lives or control our information access or host our transformative works, but at the same time, it's not required in order to use the service. Donation can be socially encouraged by little badges on usernames or similar, but it doesn't gate any significant service or any accessibility feature.This model gives the site administrators and moderators a sense of obligation to the users--one that can be made very real if displeased donors stop giving, tying revenue to user experience--and makes the site immune to pressure from outside forces that would try to restrict content. (I.E., Strikethrough of old, or, more recently, Patreon's Paypal-driven TOS update.) I can see allowing users to place ads on their own pages, even taking a small cut from it, but never making such a thing mandatory or introducing sponsored content or ads disguised as ordinary posts.

I admit I don't know how well this would work when translated to a tumblr-sized social media network. Dreamwidth and AO3 have relatively small userbases. But if Wikipedia can do it (and so far it doesn't appear to have been secretly bought out by anyone at an infrastructure level to skew information), then it should be possible for a social medium to do it. Onward to Web 3.0!

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I guess I need positive reinforcement to bother loading a site or opening an app? like I only started using twitter regularly once I had a close friend on there? anyway today I just...followed a link to someone's page and remembered I had an account and hadn't posted in forever.


I'M ALIVE, GUYS


I've also written dickloads of monster fic and discovered the magic of sweatpants with pockets. Tumblr is still a shithive of teenage bigots who want a "woke" reason to beat people up (hint: it's never woke), and yet I continue to use it for some reason anyway. (Current URL: Sanguinifex.) It's cold as balls outside right now. That's pretty much it since last time!

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Thursday I only managed maybe 90 minutes of sleep, bc a disastrous combination of computer fan problems and a computer backup that took 9.5 hours. Friday was interesting. But then I woke up at 6 am on Saturday and didn't seem tired. I made bread and tried cooking a medieval recipe I found. Sunday—not sure if I got food poisoning (or how I would have, though I suspect it would have been from oil splatter with raw meat or raw meat traces on the spatula used to cook the meat) or just IBS. So I did nothing yesterday except watch anime and play Pokemon mystery dungeon and scroll through a lot of Reddit and tumblr.

So today, I actually have to get things done. And I woke up late, probably because all the sleep I got yesterday felt like a cross between Inception and a book on sleep disorders. Didn't really wake up till past 2.

Yeah I know this is boring, but I'm trying to get in the habit of posting.
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So I got the import to work. It was like 3 posts lmao. Aaaand is anyone I know even active here? Guess I'll find out.
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