encompass worlds

A lot of what I've been feeling, mentally and physically, in the last couple of years, is "stuck," just surrounded by too much, both in my head, and in my house, to really be able to move forward properly. In a physical sense, it's the aftereffects of having to deal with everything of my mother-in-law's, which has been an impossibly slow process, hampered by health issues and Covid worries.

Two days ago, I got a load of things removed from the house, including my mother-in-law's bed. Lot of emotions around that, but ultimately I'm glad to be free of it and able to move forward. I'm actively working on clearing things up, getting things donated to charity, selling what I can, and just plain allowing myself to throw stuff out. I sometimes struggle with getting rid of things that could be useful but if it's sitting in a box or a drawer not being used ever, then it's not very useful, is it?

There's a lot more to do, but this feels like the start of really being able to get things looking like how I want them to look, have my house the way I would like it to be. My ultimate reward is getting my own office space, as we don't need a spare bedroom anymore. (I'm planning on putting in a sofa that converts into a bed, in case we have guests, but that will likely be a very rare thing.) I have a huge collection of various kinds of merch (mostly Word of Honor/Junzhe themed) that I'm planning to plaster my walls in, and really make it the sort of space I will enjoy and can relax and work in. I'm going to mount my computer monitors on the wall, and have space for doing crafts. I'll have a couple of good bookshelves as well, a cozy chair to sit and read or to play games in, and a cat bed on the windowsill for my cats to sit and look out.

So that's all good, and I'm so glad to be able to breathe a bit more easily. But even more difficult than the physical logjam is the mental one. I've really struggled with posting to social media for a long while now and I've been trying to figure out why that is. It's not a simple question.

I think on some level I'm worried that my life is kind of boring right now. Let me be clear, it's not boring to me in the moment as I live it, but I can see from the outside how it might be perceived as boring. It's not really moving forward in any clear direction. I'm still unemployed (and not likely to be employed anytime in the near future). I'm studying, yes, but I'm in the first year of what's likely to be a six-year course. I have a lot of mental and physical health things going on, but I worry that talking about them too much comes off as being complainy or whiny or consistently negative.

It's important to note that I don't feel this way about anything I see from anybody else! In fact it's the reverse, I love hearing about people's real lives, no matter how mundane the content, I don't find talking about mental or physical health issues to be whiny, and all this is just a massive set of double standards that I'm applying to myself and nobody else.

So I guess what I need to do is just break that logjam with a giant hammer, and start talking about my life, in all its mundanity. And Dreamwidth feels like the safest place to do that. I've always loved the LJ style anyway, more than any other social media. Twitter is, well, I don't think I need say much there. And Tumblr is not really a good place to talk about personal stuff. Facebook, though it's important to me, as it's the one social media pretty much everybody I know in RL has, it's such a mixed audience that I feel unable to be truly candid there.

Also Dreamwidth, as an organisation, has values and ethics I agree with and support. It's a small business in a way that none of the mainstream social media companies are, certainly not Twitter and Facebook! I feel like I can talk about anything here, in a way that I absolutely can't on Twitter and Facebook, and to some extent can't on Tumblr as well (less to do with policy and more with culture).

This is just to say, then, that I'm going to try to post more here, and just talk about my life, along with what I've been watching, reading, etc, and also doing in fandom. I remember back in the LJ days I never had any worries about posting whatever randomness came into my head, and I want to get a bit of that attitude back.

I just realised I haven't updated since my birthday in January!

I've been quite ill for the last couple of months, starting near the end of March. I was even in hospital for a couple of nights in April trying to figure out what it was. Ultimately the conclusion was more or less a shrug from the doctors with a sideline of "uhh, pancreatitis?" which is as good an explanation as any.

I'm getting better now though still not back to 100%. This really took it out of me: it was weeks and weeks of utter fatigue, nausea, muscle soreness, and worst of all, a constant pain in my left side (which is wrong for pancreatitis, but could have been referred pain). But the only identifiable change that was visible to doctors was raised bilirubin.

I've been fully vaccinated against Covid now, I had the AstraZeneca shots, and fortunately the side effects, while present, were very much bearable: mostly fatigue, soreness, and pain in the arm.

Obviously I've been up to very little in terms of writing or any other creative work. However, I have been getting interested in painting miniatures! We bought a resin printer so we could print our own models (in addition to the 3D printer we already had) and I've had fun painting a few things already, though of course I need lots more practice.

I've watched a lot of TV and films: the entirety of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, The Boys, WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Star Trek: Lower Decks, American Gods, Jupiter's Legacy, The Irregulars, literally every Disney movie available on Disney+, Inside Out, Enola Holmes, and so many more. There is some excellent TV going on these days.

I've been reading Silmarillion fic as always, but have also been reading lots of Sam Wilson/Bucky Barnes from TFATWS, who are eminently shippable and wonderful. I enjoyed both Stucky and Steve/Sam and hated the whole ship war thing, so shipping WinterFalcon feels so right, with Steve now out of the picture.

Anyway, I'll try and update a bit more frequently. I've signed up for seasonofkink and tolkienrsb so I'm very excited to get going on those.