moveimbadger

 My therapist and I have been focusing on what we've been calling my 'toxic productivity'. Toxic gets thrown around as such a word for 'things i dont like' but it's pretty apt here and I haven't come up with a better substitute for it so you get to see me say 'toxic' okay?

Toxic productivity is like, the Protestant Work Ethic(tm) type stuff. The Grindset. The discomfort with doing nothing/being bored because you could be doing something productive, etc. I'm extremely susceptible to this type stuff. And so we've been working on me Not Doing that. 

I've been reading this book by Jenny Odell, Saving Time. I'm only like a third of the way through it but it's been so helpful in reminding me what the point of everything is and how sacrificing everything to the almighty time card is not the way. 

I've been working with my labor union a TON this last year, and frankly part of my horrid productivity habits are around me being unable to say no to union stuff sometimes. But I've been a firm believer in unions and that if you don't like your job, be the change if you can. I'm the secretary (and secretary-elect for next year!) and a building rep and I'm on the contract bargaining team. It takes up so much of my time, which means I need to be a lot better about my work-life balance. I've been finding people to work on committees for me, and stepping down from roles that I can't take on anymore. 

And another thing that we've been looking at for me is using accessibility options and accomodations in my daily life that make some tasks faster or easier so that I feel less burnt out. I've been trying to clean my kitchen every day so that it doesn't get really bad and prevent me from cooking, cleaning, and living in my apartment. I got meal kits so that I spend less time worrying about shopping and grocery prices and nutrition and accept that I'll spend $60/week on 3 dinners for me and Zach. I could probably ask him to help with the costs. 

I dunno where I'm going with this anymore. I lost my train of thought. So have this! some stuff to think about!

while you're here, I made a zine about ARFID and put it on itchio: badgerciar.itch.io/arfid-zine i think thats the url i typed it myself

 I might decouple this feed from my website, haven't decided
I doubt I have many daily readers or people who have my website RSS bookmarked or anything 
but still j like that I can be a little more loosey goosey with my feelings here

I've been in a weird place mindset wise but not bad weird. I don't know how to describe it. not super present, but getting a lot done and feeling okay despite it? 

settling into some new normals for myself I guess!

watch this space

This is going to end up being weird and vulnerable and it might go poof but I have such a small cozy audience here I don't feel too threatened.

I had an imaginary friend as a child. I don't personally remember much about my experience with him, other than I'm certain he was blue and an otter and I think he could fly/float around. He was named "Trinken" which is a bastardization of "Twinken", a character from a barney movie. Again, I don't really remember what I did with Trinken, how I talked to him. My parents remember me talking about him but nothing beyond that. Maybe he was just straight up Twinken, but  I remember him being blue distinctly, and an otter. Maybe kind of based off some characters from Bear in the Big Blue House. Anyways.

I grew out of playing with Trinken eventually. Probably around the time I started school.

The year is 2015, I've been mostly living with my now-ex (who I'll just refer to as X) and their family. X would tell me about their OCs in vivid detail, and talk about how they've known them their whole life it felt like. How it almost felt like imaginary friends, that X would talk to them in their mind.

X would be diagnosed with DID in 2016, at my prodding to talk to a psychiatrist about some other stuff they were experiencing. I came to know X, T, K, S, and C and U. Lots of guys in there.

X and I went our separate ways in 2018. They're doing rough now, but okay. Seeing someone new and living somewhere else new.

It's 2023, and I decide to do an experiment. I'd been thinking about "syscourse", "tulpas", etc. The various shades of "there's guys in my head and they're real". I was mostly interested in the idea of plurality being intentional vs unintentional. I don't really want to sit here and discourse, I'm not interested in that and have no stake in that. I was merely curious if one could be capable of believing in the existence of an entity/alter/persona enough that it becomes unconscious and second nature to interact with. I didn't want to tell anyone about what I was doing. It fell into the category of activities I call "weird little autism experiments" (another of which was when I labeled all the cash drawers at my old job with alphanumeric codes and kept track of which went into which register with what frequency, which many would think had nefarious purposes but I just wanted to know which drawers went where, entirely innocently.) Also because of the aforementioned discourse I didn't want to feel like I was engaging in that in any meaningful way, especially publicly. This was weird and embarrassing and entirely just for myself.

What I did was decide that there was someone I would talk to, mostly in my head and rarely aloud, that I would let organically become Someone. I resisted all my random character development habits and only picked out a name, Echo. The idea just being that it was a reflection of myself. Honestly I think this started less as a "forcing myself to have DID" and more like "if no one else will look out for me, I'll look out for myself" and I like, mentally cloned myself. Again, I can't stress this enough, this was just an idle sort of idea.

I gave Echo the sort of dialogue I would be saying if I was helping a friend through situations. Echo was a voice of reason and self-compassion. Echo would remind me when thoughts weren't charitable towards myself, or when I was making assumptions instead of using facts. Like a conscience I guess. Echo kinda took on a blue sort of tinge in my mind, no physical image or anything ever really happened. I was also kind of thinking of Echo like a spren, from the Stormlight Archive. Guiding me and keeping me on my principals and helping me be my best self. The spren Sylphrena in those books is blue, so Echo is blue. I also tend to think of Echo as She/Her, which is interesting since she was originally a splinter of myself and that's the only pronouns I don't use. Echo took them. lol.

Eventually, I realized Echo is my imaginary friend. And I think that's a fine place to leave it! I don't think I have DID, I don't think I'm plural. I basically only talk to Echo at night, when I'm processing the day. I don't feel like I can't turn Echo's presence on or off. No one really needs to know about her. I am only writing this post even a year after I started this experiment because I figured I could finally talk about it.

A friend of mine, who considers themself like, robotkin or whatever the cyber version of therian is, was experimenting with having an "alternate program" that takes care of their body and gets tasks done. I thought about how Echo tends to fulfill this self-care portion of me, convincing me when I try and logic my way out of showering or eating. But what about when I really need to get other tasks done, like work trainings or chores? I decided to introduce Doppler. (My naming scheme for these imaginary friends has been vaguely Pattern-y terms, you will see. Echos and Doppler Effect and a little spoiler, Fractals). Doppler is burgundy-red in my mind, and sorts out tasks and organizes things and is Me when I'm In The Zone. Doppler doesn't talk much, but guides all the same. I don't really interface with Doppler (or Fractal) as much as I do with Echo, but they caught on and I still think about them when I'm being particularly efficient.

Fractal is what I've dubbed my physical self when I'm fully unmasked and being my wholly genuine being. Lately I only feel like I'm Fractal when I'm alone or intoxicated, which isn't super fun. I'm working on letting Fractal be free when I can. Fractal is green, like uranium glass.

What this experiment has taught me is that I'm happy with my imaginary friends. They keep me company, help me process things. Help me find labels for my states of being (Doppler and Fractal in particular feel more like 'me' than Echo does, funnily enough). I don't feel the need to get into plural stuff, or really consider this anything close to it. I'm still Donnie 100% of the time.

I don't know where I was going with this. Maybe I just wanted to tell you guys about Echo, Doppler, and Fractal because I was feeling I would explode if I was the only one who knew about it. Maybe I wanted to let you know it's okay to have imaginary friends as an adult. It's okay to do weird little autism experiments.

Maybe I'll try letting Trinken out to play again sometime. I think he'd like Fractal, maybe they're old friends.

ive been without my ritalin for a week so i have not been doing anything but play factorio because again i am unable to do anything mentally/energy wise.

I've been making a lot of hawaiian bread though because for some reason zach and i are on a sandwich kick so here's my hawaiian bread recipe (for my bread machine but you could proabbly bake it in the oven im not a cop). I definitely got it from somewhere but yeah

Also its crucial you know I've made this bread so much i measure with my heart. i have a 1 cup measure and a regular like silverware big spoon and i just do what feels right now lol but ill write the recipe down for people who care

3/4 cup pineapple juice. i buy a 6 pack of little cans and the cans are the exact perfect amount for this bread
1 egg. i want to experiment with adding another yolk too.
2 1/2 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons oil of choice, i prefer olive oil but i used butter today bc im out of it and i know it wont be an issue
salt (i dont have an amount written down. uhm. probably like a teaspoon?)
splash of milk, 2 Tbsp-4tbsp whatever feels right
3 cups of bread flour
1 1/2 teaspoons yeast. activate it if it doesnt come that way. i use bread machine yeast

ok im stoned and exhausted and understimulated okay Bye!!!!!!!!!

Hi, I'm just trying this space out a bit! I figured I'd post a little bit about myself and the kind of stuff you'll probably see here:

- Art? Maybe? I think I'd like posting my art here :> Especially my crafts
- Crafts, as previously mentioned. Currently into anything and everything, except maybe crochet/knitting. I just can't get the hang of that. But I like sculpture, doll customizing, furbies, painting, felting, latchhook, embroidery, carving stamps, and a lot more.
- Fiction, if I write some
- essays, if I write some
-general blogging? gonna try and make sure things I post are longer form, I think its absolutely time I get back to reading things that can't fit in a tweet, or even reasonably in a thread.
- book reviews, I have actually been reading books and plan to review them as I read them :>

That's all for this, a test post. What do you want to see from me?