Woman with glasses and stars antenna reading a book

Aug.05 - Blaugust Day 5 - Fibro crash, lightning hits, finished a book, site updates

This will be a very short post, on account of the aforementioned fibro crash. I should maybe include that the last two posts started out, "This will be a short post," and then I ended up deleting that first line. (<-- This post did end up getting longer, but I think this info is kinda funny so I'm leaving it here.)

Even with a shorter post, I like that Blaugust is gently pushing me to at least write a little something. I enjoy blogging a lot, although I wouldn't say I have a great handle on what my goal or purpose is in writing. That target tends to blur and wander around. I admire folks that set up a topical blog and then actually stick to their topic. What's that like?

The last couple years of posts from the old blogs (the first at hollie.micro.blog and then I moved to hollie.pika.page before shifting to this project) included a lot of short observations and bits of conversation from family and friends. I guess if I have a topic, that'd be it? Like a crow collecting shiny things, but those are my shiny things. Little bright moments where we made each other laugh, or witnessed something beautiful or silly or strange. That's the stuff I run on. That's my fuel.

Joel mentioned that he enjoyed my blog-before-this-one (thanks Joel!☺️), which I assume were all those types of posts, and it makes me so happy that someone I don't know in person found those and was delighted by them. Those old posts will be in this blog eventually, after I import them. I predict I'll end up doing that by hand, slowly, over time. I do wish I could write scripts! I would try to learn how, but there's a lot on my plate at the moment.

I wasn't bedbound today, hurrah!

I was really worried about that, but it turned out okay. I sat in my office most of the day, and tried to make sure to get up regularly to stretch and move around a little. It's really tough having an illness that forces you to be sedentary, I can feel the physical effects of not moving, and they aren't good.

I explicitly didn't get on Mastodon today, nor did I check YouTube until late in the afternoon. Avoiding Mastodon wasn't about avoiding people, but about avoiding "lightning hits," a metaphor I've used to explain a nervous system situation where I feel a deep flash of distress that can trigger a lot of anxiety (or panic attack) and a total cascade of physical symptoms (long story, will talk about that some other time). In regard to Mastodon, it's what happens when I scroll and come upon a lot of bad news or distress, which is sadly the norm now. This sounds maybe a bit benign to describe it in writing; I know a lot of people are feeling deep flashes of distress right now.

It differs from the norm in that the experience is happening in the context of a very thin psychological buffer. It's like having a very deep, out-of-proportion emotional response to something, and it happens lighting-fast and can make the adrenalin start flowing, and a list of physical issues that can include things like drops in blood pressure, dizziness, etc.

Right now, with democracy being flushed down the toilet, distress is a very normal response to what we see happening all around us, but my point is that this was a problem for years prior. These little hits would happen in response to much more average, normal types of events. Now that our country is in this state? It's of course much, much worse.

I struggled to describe this phenomena for years, until I was diagnosed with C-PTSD and began reading others' descriptions of living with a nervous systems similar to mine, specifically people who had experienced chronic stress in childhood, and realized it's not uncommon among that group. One person called them "zaps," which feels very accurate.

🤔

I'm pausing to decide how much more of my experience I want to talk about. I will stop to imagine who reads this, visualizing my audience as the twenty or so people I talk to regularly on Mastodon, and no one else, and then flash to the basic truth that this is absolutely public. The first image feels safe. The second image, if I rest on it too long, would have me deleting this site entirely.

I haven't found a comfortable mental place to rest yet when it comes to visualizing who is reading anything I'm writing, but the image that pushes me to keep publicly talking about this is one of a person with chronic issues, who doesn't know what's wrong with them, and is aching to hear another person describe even one small scrap of experience that matches their own. That's why I talk about it. Because I know that dark place. And if anything I ever write gives someone even a little light, then I want to do that.

Just to be clear: I have all the conviction. I wouldn't exactly say I have the confidence. There's at least a 40% chance I will take all this offline one day. Being perceived is exhausting.

📚 I finished The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

I loved it. Absolutely loved it. Sangu Mandanna is brilliant. I gave it a 5 out of 5 on Storygraph, and that's not common for me.

I listened to it on audiobook, and the narrator, Samara MacLaren, was just fantastic (I talked a bit about that here too). I haven't heard a narrator be that pitch perfect since Travis Baldree reading his own Legends and Lattes series (WE GET A THIRD BOOK SOON!) or Julia Whelan who narrated The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. I need to listen to that one again too. It was lovely.

I loved Irregular Witches for so many reasons. Found family, charming queer representation, a sweet slow-burning romance, children being lovingly protected and cherished for who they are, couples with good communication who really see each other, people with trauma from their childhood finding healing through feeling safe in community (I just want everyone to feel safe, it's my thing), delicious accents (seriously, this narrator), thoughtful commentary on the costs of diminishing ourselves in order to fit in, oh and witches! And a beautiful old house! And and and....

Yeah. It was a really good book. It will definitely be one I read again. Probably many times.

Site updates (still loving Eleventy)

Nothing really of note. I'm busy with the chronic issues and school. When I finish my classes, I have plans:

Oh I did get stats! I put a stats code back in, I'm using Goatcounter. I did this because I found out that Neocities has a stats page, and the counter was just ridiculously high and freaked me out:

A graph showing traffic for the last week, around 1k-2k hits per day

I knew that had to be a glitch, so I installed Goatcounter, and it's been a couple days, and it's reporting a very comfortable ~12-23 people a day. That's way more my speed than the wacky numbers Neocities is reporting (that definitely is not correct).

I do think it's funny that most websites probably install counters so they can watch their stats go up, and I installed one so I could make sure they don't go up. The strange awkwardness of wanting certain people to find you, of wanting to connect with folks out there who resonate with things you feel, or experiences you have, but desperately hoping and wishing that everyone else will just pass on by.

Move along. Nothing to see here.

Obi-Wan - "These aren't the droids you're looking for"