![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I think I have, at this point, re-read Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books an average of 4 times each. I keep trying to get my brain to accept new reading material, any new reading material, and it just gives me a doleful look much like the one I imagine Gregor gives Aunt Alys when she's inflicting eligible Vor maidens on him.
I feel like I'm weathering the entire trashfire of 2020 fairly well, in that I'm upright and functional and feel relatively safe. And not at all well, in that I feel like the external functionality of keeping myself fed, showered, dressed, and going to work is pretty much the only thing I have going for me at the moment. Half the time, I don't feel like I even recognize my own emotional state. Concentrating on anything is extremely difficult, and I feel like my capacity to plan anything complex has shrunk. My inner life at the moment feels like the emotional equivalent of doing some small repetitive task, like folding newspapers or stuffing envelopes.
What's especially frustrating is that this kind of emotional bleh isn't congruent with a lot of what's going on. One day last week, I wrote 5,000 words of original fiction in a day; I still ended the day feeling dried-out, uncreative, and unaccomplished. (Today I've written almost 600 words, and feel much the same.) I feel disconnected from people, even with text chat windows open, or coming home from work with a team I enjoy, or after hanging out in a video chat, or watching shows virtually with people. I want to establish contact with people, and feel like I have nothing interesting to say. I feel stuck in my circumstances with no roads out, even when I'm making measurable progress toward concrete goals. It's frustrating.
As part of my campaign to ease my brain back into experiencing emotions, I've dipped my toe into media that's more accessible to my focus-depleted brain than books. I've been listening to the podcast The Anthropocene Reviewed, which I've been enjoying; it reminds me a little of doing Speech & Debate in highschool, where the governing ethos for our informational speeches was basically "Take something everyone overlooks, and make it interesting." (Memorable topics included "dust".) I also watched The Umbrella Academy, which was fun even if it did nearly buck me in the first five minutes (nonconsensual pregnancy is a massive squick for me), started Community (which was fun in a popcorn sort of way; I enjoyed the time spent watching it, but it didn't stick with me at all), and watched the John Mulaney program Kid Gorgeous at Radio City, home of the excellent horse in the hospital sketch.
I've been informed that I ought to watch Nanette, but I'm very concerned that it will take more emotions than I possess at the moment.
Incongruously, in my ongoing lack of brain bandwidth, the game I've been playing most obsessively is an open-source roguelike called Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, which is quite possibly the most fiendishly in-depth and complicated game I've ever played. To give you an example of just how complicated, one of the numerous challenges I faces was constructing a vehicle from salvaged parts which would have a recharger for a specific kind of power supply, which I modded a food vacuum sealer to use, so that I could salt and preserve vegetables in salvaged plastic bags, because I knew that I was heading into a long winter where none of my crops would grow, and I needed to build up a food stockpile with enough nutritional diversity to not give me a bunch of deficiency diseases. And then I had to scramble to get enough solar panels to actually power my vehicle and all its assorted electronics (including recharger, minifridges, lights, security camera system, welder rig, metal forging rig...) because as the days shortened, less sunlight was available, so my power supply was falling behind.
This is a game where, in order to learn how to play it, you need to be willing to stop frequently to look up external resources on everything from complex game mechanics to basic controls.
I have been eating it up with a spoon.
I have no excuse.
I feel like I'm weathering the entire trashfire of 2020 fairly well, in that I'm upright and functional and feel relatively safe. And not at all well, in that I feel like the external functionality of keeping myself fed, showered, dressed, and going to work is pretty much the only thing I have going for me at the moment. Half the time, I don't feel like I even recognize my own emotional state. Concentrating on anything is extremely difficult, and I feel like my capacity to plan anything complex has shrunk. My inner life at the moment feels like the emotional equivalent of doing some small repetitive task, like folding newspapers or stuffing envelopes.
What's especially frustrating is that this kind of emotional bleh isn't congruent with a lot of what's going on. One day last week, I wrote 5,000 words of original fiction in a day; I still ended the day feeling dried-out, uncreative, and unaccomplished. (Today I've written almost 600 words, and feel much the same.) I feel disconnected from people, even with text chat windows open, or coming home from work with a team I enjoy, or after hanging out in a video chat, or watching shows virtually with people. I want to establish contact with people, and feel like I have nothing interesting to say. I feel stuck in my circumstances with no roads out, even when I'm making measurable progress toward concrete goals. It's frustrating.
As part of my campaign to ease my brain back into experiencing emotions, I've dipped my toe into media that's more accessible to my focus-depleted brain than books. I've been listening to the podcast The Anthropocene Reviewed, which I've been enjoying; it reminds me a little of doing Speech & Debate in highschool, where the governing ethos for our informational speeches was basically "Take something everyone overlooks, and make it interesting." (Memorable topics included "dust".) I also watched The Umbrella Academy, which was fun even if it did nearly buck me in the first five minutes (nonconsensual pregnancy is a massive squick for me), started Community (which was fun in a popcorn sort of way; I enjoyed the time spent watching it, but it didn't stick with me at all), and watched the John Mulaney program Kid Gorgeous at Radio City, home of the excellent horse in the hospital sketch.
I've been informed that I ought to watch Nanette, but I'm very concerned that it will take more emotions than I possess at the moment.
Incongruously, in my ongoing lack of brain bandwidth, the game I've been playing most obsessively is an open-source roguelike called Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, which is quite possibly the most fiendishly in-depth and complicated game I've ever played. To give you an example of just how complicated, one of the numerous challenges I faces was constructing a vehicle from salvaged parts which would have a recharger for a specific kind of power supply, which I modded a food vacuum sealer to use, so that I could salt and preserve vegetables in salvaged plastic bags, because I knew that I was heading into a long winter where none of my crops would grow, and I needed to build up a food stockpile with enough nutritional diversity to not give me a bunch of deficiency diseases. And then I had to scramble to get enough solar panels to actually power my vehicle and all its assorted electronics (including recharger, minifridges, lights, security camera system, welder rig, metal forging rig...) because as the days shortened, less sunlight was available, so my power supply was falling behind.
This is a game where, in order to learn how to play it, you need to be willing to stop frequently to look up external resources on everything from complex game mechanics to basic controls.
I have been eating it up with a spoon.
I have no excuse.
