The Dreamwidth Account

Hi all,

Well, it's been a while since I wrote anything here. Lately, my main interest has been FFXIV - I've been playing it for over a year now, but I've managed to get one character through the main sequence on "A Realm Reborn" (the original patch 2.0 content from ten years ago) and I'm now getting into all the various trials, raids, 8-person dungeons and so on. (If I'm speaking gibberish, let me know, and I'll slow down and provide definitions). I've just joined a free company about a week ago, and this character has been on the Novice Network for a while, which has been useful, so I've been doing a lot of chatting there.

I'm quite enjoying it, although I'm currently finding the whole raiding thing to be somewhat chaotic and overwhelming. I'm sure there's a gaming culture thing in there somewhere which explains why people seem to do group content in MMOs at top speed - I mean, I've yet to see a single bus stop anywhere in any of them, so it can't be that the characters have a bus to catch. But I'm much more of a "can we slow down and take our time about this?" type - I mean, we spend hours waiting around for alliance parties to form, surely we can make all that waiting worthwhile by taking our time going through the content and appreciating the work the developers have put in?

(I suspect this is my neurodiversity showing).

I'm currently on two weeks leave from work - a staycation rather than a vacation, because I'm going to be using the time to get a whole heap of errands that have been outstanding dealt with. Things like dealing with some personal matters, getting various bits and pieces done around the house, and seeing about sourcing a new computer.

Yup, my current PC has reached the point where I'm looking at it and going "y'know what? This isn't going to do anymore." It's always been a bit sub-optimal on the gaming side of things (Steam running tends to bring the poor thing to a near-halt) and I haven't even tried to run FFXIV on it (I play FFXIV on the PS4), because I think it would literally have a meltdown at me and die. But I've started using Discord (Free Company thing) and running Discord is enough that this PC is busy grumbling and groaning and slowing down ridiculously. So I'm looking at replacing it with a proper gaming-capable machine - something where I can run FFXIV and Discord at the same time, the way the cool kids are doing these days. As a challenge, I'm going to be looking for a gaming PC which doesn't light up the house like a disco ball - I'm sure it's possible.

So, that's what I've been up to. How about you?

Hi all. The title pretty much says it - I'm taking a six week hiatus from social media (or in the old, old-school fandom term, I'm "gafia").

The basics for why are as follows: I'm autistic, I have a rather large change in my life happening at present, and I have limited executive function resources available to deal with both the change itself, the ways it's impacting other parts of my life, and the regular things I was doing. Something has to be temporarily jettisoned, and social media is the stressor I can do without at present.

I will be checking email, so those of you who need to reach me can find me at megpie71 at gmail dot com. Otherwise, I'll see you all again on July 10th, my time (AWST).

(In response to: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/16/belittling-the-canberra-convoy-protesters-will-just-push-ostracised-people-further-into-their-bunkers)

I read this article, and I thought "gee, it's nice Simon Copland is able to feel some sympathy for the various protesters out there." But I rather disagree with his premise that "We must seek to understand and address their feelings".

Mr Copland talks about these protesters having formed an "intimate public" group as part of the camp and the protest, and yeah, I can understand that. Heck, I've been part of "intimate public" groups myself - I've gone to science fiction and fantasy conventions, and I've camped out at the Canberra show-grounds myself as part of the National Folk Festival. So I can sympathise with the protesters feeling disappointed, even despairing, when the event breaks up, and they have to go home, resume their everyday life, and deal with being an ordinary part of society again, after a few days (or weeks) of being something extra-ordinary. It's a bit of a let-down, and it's not the most enjoyable situation to be in.

But I think while we're busy looking so hard at the humanity of these protesters, we need to also pay attention to the thing which has united them together. This isn't just a gathering of people who have got together to celebrate a relatively harmless hobby (like folk music, or enjoyment of a genre of entertainment). This is a group of people who got together in defence of an ideology of "liberation" which rests very solidly on the idea that their personal freedom to perform certain activities over-rides the right of anyone else in the country to enjoy a safe, healthy life.

The people in this convoy who "lost friends over [their] views" lost those friends, almost certainly, because of their ideological stance.

Their ideological stance, in a lot of cases, involves effectively telling a lot of other people that they are dispensable. That they are not as human as the holders of this particular stance, and therefore do not merit the same level of consideration. For example, as an autistic person, I'm not considered by many anti-vaccination thinkers to be as human as they are - my existence, to them, is something to be feared, to be dreaded, and something that should not be. To a lot of anti-vaxxers, I am a monster, and I belong dead.

Forgive me for disagreeing with them on that one.

For the sovereign citizens, and the other extreme glibertarians in the crowd, there is nobody on the planet who is as human as they are, and they are fighting hard for their right not to be bound by the dictates of wider society. Mind you, when you stop and talk to a lot of them, you find out what they're actually fighting for (once you strip out the rhetoric, and boil things down to their core notions) is that they should share in the benefits of society (things like infrastructure, services and so on) but not have to deal with any of the costs of society. There's a reason a lot of billionaires in the USA describe themselves as "libertarians", after all. To these people, as a person who has relied on social security to survive at times, and who is going to be looking for support from the NDIS in order to be able to live a slightly fuller (and healthier) life than I do at present, I am anathema. Again, I belong dead, because I am a "parasite" who needs a bit of help from other people in order to be able to contribute fully to society (like a lot of people with disabilities).

Again, I disagree with them as well.

The neo-Nazis in the crowd think I should be dead because I'm a person with a disability (and even more so because I'm a white woman who has reached the end of her reproductive life and not bred good little white children for the nation). Of course, I'm part of a very long list of people they think belong dead, starting with the indigenous owners of this continent, and moving on from there covering things like "people who aren't white enough", "people who aren't Christian", "people who aren't Australian enough", right the way along to "people who don't entirely agree with their every thought".

Do I need to say I disagree with their point of view? Or can we take this as read?

Now, I agree with Mr Copland that it's good these people found a sense of community in their convoy. Community is a human thing, a thing everyone who is human wants and needs to be part of. But let's not lose sight of the fact that these people, this community, want to deny a lot of other people the opportunity to be part of any community at all (much less theirs). There are the immunocompromised and people with "pre-existing conditions" (by which, apparently, the health authorities mean "anyone in less than 100% health, both physical and psychological") who currently aren't able to take part in community events, because it isn't safe for them to risk infection - and let's note this group skews strongly toward those who are on lower incomes, those who are in rural areas rather than urban areas, those who are indigenous, those who are disabled and so on. There are the elderly, who are both vulnerable to things like COVID due to issues of age-related physical and mental deterioration, and also vulnerable because their living systems mean they're unable to move away from sources of potential exposure. The same applies to persons with disability who are living in supported accommodation.

I'm sure a lot of us can talk about people who very literally haven't left their houses if they could possibly avoid it since the pandemic started spreading back in February 2020, simply because they don't want to risk their lives. I'm sure there's a lot of us who fall into that group ourselves.

According to these protesters, we deserve to die, so long as they can carry on acting as though the bad things in the world won't touch them. While the protesters are "expressing genuinely held feelings", as per Mr Copland, I'm sure Mr Copland can also understand that quite frankly, if these people want me to meet them half-way, then they have to start by acknowledging my genuinely held feeling that I am as human as they are, possessed of the same essential humanity, and stop upholding ideologies which say I'm expendable. I'm more than happy to form a community with any of the protesters. Whether they can say the same about me is on them. But I'm more than happy to meet them half-way. It's just the half-way point where I'm prepared to meet them is one where they recognise I don't deserve to die simply because of who I am. If they have a lot of travelling to do to get there, then that is on them, not on me.

I'm having one of those days where I cannot manage self-care. I've managed to get up, get dressed, do my hair, and do a load of laundry, as well as drying up and putting away the dishes that were on the sink, but now I'm all out of spoons.

So among the tasks which need to be done, but which aren't being done because my brain is basically going "too hard" at present are: feeding myself; emptying out the dishwasher and drying and putting away the dishes in there; figuring out what I'm going to do with the rest of the day.

As an elaboration on the "feeding myself is too hard" thing - I have had three mugs of tea (currently drinking my fourth) and half a dozen dried apricots so far today. I have tried to figure out whether there is something I want to eat in the fridge, freezer or cupboards, multiple times, and come up blank every single one. Everything I think of is either "don't want that" or "too hard". I should note "too hard" includes things like cooking up two minute noodles (too many steps involved to get from none to done). So is toast with Vegemite. "Don't want that" covers most of the frozen things in the freezer.

This has happened before. I'll usually just fill up on tea or hot water, because those are easy and don't require me to think too much. But it means I'm not getting nutrition that I need to keep myself moving, which means I'm more likely to wind up in this situation again. Eventually I will wind up probably having either a foodsicle from the freezer (because they're easy) or getting my partner to fetch take-away, and that will be my one meal for the day.

[Update: my partner has decided he is going to be cooking meat pies, and is willing to cook one up for me. So I may well be fed today after all.]

I'm starting to realise why I need assistance from the NDIS, quite frankly.

One of the problems that comes with having a serious tea habit like mine is tea tends to leave tannin stains on the mugs I use. Some mugs are worse for this than others (the T2 mug with lid and infuser set I use at work is terrible for this, going deep brown inside about the length of a week; also the mugs I got from Effin Birds are pretty bad for it as well) but generally anything you use to drink tea on a regular basis is going to get tannin stains. This is particularly a problem if you tend to forget about your cup of tea and let it get cold.

Now, normally tannin stains will come off with a bit of hot water, dish-washing detergent and scrubbing, but the thing about scrubbing is over time it damages the glaze on the inside of the mug, and it makes it harder to remove the staining. Dishwashers don't do much of a job at removing the stains either. However, I have discovered one thing which works like magic to remove tannin staining, without damaging the interior glaze of the mug, or requiring a lot of effort when you're low on spoons.

It's grated bar soap, or soap flakes, if you can find them. Soap flakes are sometimes sold in the laundry aisle of supermarkets, as special care for woollen items, but it's been a long time since I last saw them (it was the "Lux" brand at the time). What I tend to use is the tail ends of bars of ordinary old bar soap, grated up on a standard cheese grater. It's best to use some kind of protection over your nose and mouth when doing the grating, since soap dust tends to make people sneeze. Put the grated soap into a lidded container (again, soap dust is a sneeze hazard, you will need the lid).

When you need to clean a mug or teacup with tannin stains, put two teaspoons of grated soap into the bottom of the mug, and fill to the top with boiling water. Stir to dissolve the soap, and then leave it to grow cold and solidify. The soap jelly tends to contract as it solidifies, so you may want to top up with some more boiling water as this happens. Once the soap jelly has solidified, tip it out, and you'll find most of the tannin comes out with the jelly, and the rest can be wiped off easily with a dishcloth and some hot water. I tend to use the jelly as a detergent for whatever dishes we have handy at the time and do a small load whenever I'm cleaning a mug (and I'll start the mugs going when I'm getting my first cups of tea for the day).

This mainly works by the application of a long soaking time (you're leaving it to sit for long enough to cool down from boiling to cold, after all), but also because bar soap has a different chemical composition to detergents. This also means grated bar soap or soap jelly is very effective for cleaning things like stainless steel (if you have a stainless steel sink, you'll notice it comes up a bit more shiny after you've done a load of dishes with soap jelly as the surfactant). I tend to use this to clean my glass teapots as well - they have stainless steel infusion baskets of a very fine wire mesh, which can get very clogged with tannin particles - in that case, put two or three teaspoons of grated soap or soap flakes into the infusion basket, fill the teapot with boiling water, leave to cool, and you'll be able to clean most of the tannin off in no time and restore the infusion basket to "just like new" condition. Same thing works for a wire-mesh tea-strainer that's become clogged, although in that case you will need to give it a bit of a scrub with an old toothbrush or something similar to remove the tannin build-up from the mesh.

I find this a very low-spoons method of cleaning things, and I enjoy the near-magical transformation of my mugs from dingy brown to shining white again.

It's been a long couple of years. I'm starting on my third year in my job, and I'm realising I need to be willing to take care of myself. As per the statement circulating on Tumblr, I need to schedule time for maintenance, or it will be scheduled for me (my body and brain are both being very clear on this). Between the autism and the RSI, I am starting to realise I can't just barrel forward through life throwing myself at things until I collapse - it isn't a sustainable strategy any more (not that it ever was in the first place).

So I'm being a lot more definite about my downtime - making sure it is actually down time, rather than spending the time being just as busy as I would be at work, only in other directions. I'm spending a bit of time and effort on treating myself - giving myself nice things, rather than living the rather Spartan lifestyle I've become accustomed to through being on unemployment benefits. This doesn't mean I'm heading straight for the consumerist life - not by any means (I mean, first I'd have to figure out a way to be able to cope with the sensory overload of heading in to the average shopping mall, which hasn't happened). But it does mean I'm doing things like buying a few flavours of tea I liked from the sampler pack I was given by my Secret Santa at work (must get around to putting up the reviews), and taking the time to have some nice tea at home rather than rushing through everything.

I've started writing regularly again - the plan is to do at least 100 words a day on one of two projects. I figure 100 words a day isn't too much to aim for, because even on a low brain day, I can manage to string a drabble's worth of words together - even if it's just outlining, plotting, scribbling down background notes or whatever. I'm happier when I'm writing regularly, so I may as well make time in my day to do this. Plus the 100 words add up over time, and get me closer to actually completing some of these projects I've started but then paused on.

I've re-started the "three things that went right" practice again, after another bout of the miseries (again, I need to schedule maintenance, or my brain will schedule it for me), and I may just sit down and write up a list of all the positive things in my life at present (not so much "counting my blessings" as just reminding my brain they exist).

At present, the aim is just getting these few things solidified - get used to actually using my down-time as down-time, rather than "searching for things to do so I don't stop moving" time; keep treating myself kindly wherever possible; keep up the daily writing practices; and keep up the "what went right" notifications. Maybe once these are settled habits, I'll look into things like actually finding a new GP (my current one isn't the greatest fit for me); finding a new psychologist (I need to do this, but I don't have the spoons at present); and getting a bit further with the NDIS paperwork to get myself support that way.

(Yes, I do need support in day-to-day living, despite outwardly having things sufficiently "together" to be able to handle working four days a week).

Back to trying to build a posting habit here. I'm also working on trying to re-build a writing habit as well - adding at least 100 words a day to one of my many ongoing projects in the fanfiction space. I'm having to go easy on myself at present, giving myself small targets, because I don't want to re-strain my arms and give myself RSI again. Can't afford the time off from work, and I can't afford the interruptions to everything that it causes.

So today I added 166 words to one of my pieces (transforming notes into narrative). Let's see whether I can keep this up.

Other plans for the day include folding laundry, and maybe playing one of the games on the PS4. I'm currently actively avoiding playing Final Fantasy XIV, because while I have purchased a headset so I can participate in the raiding and dungeoneering content, I don't know whether it's going to work (turns out the headset is intended for a PS5, even though the shop had it advertised in the PS4 section of their website), and I don't know how to test it ahead of time. So, rather than stress myself out in twenty-seven different directions about that, I'm avoiding FFXIV and playing some of the other games I have on hand (yesterday I dug out World of Final Fantasy, and re-started that).

So, I've been on annual leave for the past couple of weeks (today is the last day of my official leave; I'm also dropping down to 3 days a week at work, because the university semester starts on Monday, I have one day a week of uni, and my brain can handle four days a week "on" and no more). I've mostly been staying at home, not because of any lockdowns or anything like that (I'm in Western Australia, we're one of the few states which is letting people move around at present), but because frankly, I spent four months (from late February through June) doing four days a week at work plus one day a week at uni, and I'm frankly knackered.

However, I have slowly been shifting various things off my list of "things to do while I'm on leave". I started with a list of fourteen items, this is now down to nine, which may not seem much, but given this list has slowly been building for the past four months as I haven't had any "errand" space on my calendar, I'm pretty pleased I've managed to at least deal with some of them.

For one thing, I managed to book and attend a couple of necessary medical appointments. One was for a mammogram (I turned fifty this year, I get to have my tits squished by a machine every two years for the rest of my life, yay). The other was to follow up on a blood test I had done back in March (I got a letter from the Dr's office saying "your doctor wants to discuss your test results with you" at the end of June, and I was like... well, it can't be that important given it's taken 'em three months to get back to me about it), which I did this morning. Turns out I'm fine in every way (no diabetes, no kidney or liver problems, no issues with red or white blood cell counts or platelet counts, cholesterol is great, thyroid hormone levels are being replaced adequately by the thyroid supplement I'm taking, and I don't have PCOS) except that my iron levels are low. So I'm on iron supplements for the next four months (yay!) and we get to find out whether this works to make my system behave itself.

The other thing I've accomplished was taking a bunch of stuff to the nearest tailors for adjustments. I've had a pair of carpenter pants knocking around in my wardrobe for at least the past five or six years waiting to have their hems taken up, as well as needing a buttonhole re-sewn on one of my pairs of work pants, and the hem re-sewn on another pair. The thing which actually prompted me to do this was getting delivery of a new cardigan (shawl collar, long length, pockets) where the pockets were sewn up using a very fine stitch, and since I own neither a stitch ripper nor a magnifying glass (and my bifocals don't give me a powerful enough magnification to handle unpicking things by hand) I decided to pay someone to unpick them for me. So, whole heaps of long-delayed mending and adjustments done, and I now have two extra pairs of work pants that I didn't have before I went on leave. So that's good, anyway.

Aside from that I've mostly been noodling around the internet, reading Tumblr and occasionally glancing at Twitter, and mostly playing games on the PS4.

So, today is my 50th birthday. I never thought I'd get here.

I should explain: I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, in the shadow of the Cold War. We were always about twenty minutes and a bad night's sleep from total nuclear annihilation by Mutually Assured Destruction, the world was always on the brink of ending. By the time I was in my late teens, I was convinced I wasn't going to see thirty (which, I have to admit, did absolutely nothing for the raging depression I had at the time).

But now I'm fifty, which is like... crumbs! I've made it. I made my way through half a century. Wow!

So, what's changed? Well, for a start, the climate I'm living in has changed. I'm still in the same city I grew up in, but when I was a kid and a teenager, my birthday was usually the signal of the beginning of the winter storms. This year? Well, there's a category two tropical cyclone off the coast of Timor, heading south-west (Tropical cyclone Seroja, if you're interested - go look up the track map), and it might head toward the WA coast on Thursday or Friday this week. Which will be... interesting for April. This is what climate change does over the course of about forty-three years (the climate started changing here in about 1976 or 1977).

The technology has changed. I've seen the explosion of the public internet, and the way it's changed so much of how we do so many things (as a practical example: I had an essay to write for university that I was able to complete, from scratch, without setting foot outside the house, because I was able to access all the materials I needed electronically, download them to my computer, and work on my computer at home rather than having to go in to the university library or a university computer lab to access these things). I've seen the miniaturisation of telephone technology, and the ways that the mobile phone has come to be the single multi-purpose device for everything these days (when I was born, the phone was a fixed thing, attached to a landline, and it did one job).

Fashion has changed... and then again, it hasn't. The standard "teen uniform" of jeans and t-shirt has remained pretty constant in its overall form for the last fifty years (yes, okay, the particular style of jeans, the preferred shape and size of the t-shirts and such has altered from year to year - but the overall outfit hasn't changed too much). There's been styles going in and out and round about, and I've seen the seventies come back a few times (never quite in their original eye-watering tackiness, thank heavens) as well as the eighties and the nineties having their cyclical revivals. But people are still wearing clothes, and it's largely clothes their grandparents recognise as clothes (as opposed to the science-fictional bodysuits and utility garments which were being forecast back in the 1970s).

The world of work has changed, and the overall trajectory of the ways the world of work was imagined have altered too. Back when I was a child, I'm just old enough to remember the idea of the working week getting shorter - we were seeing the forty-hour week dropping down to 38 hours, then 37 and a half, and there was talk of a thirty-five hour working week in the future. These days... not so much. The eighties changed a lot of stuff, and one of the big changes which came about in the eighties with the arrival of neo-liberal economic theory was the idea that job security and the shorter working week were things of the past - the eighties is when the idea of "a job for life" died horribly, and when the idea of "work-life balance" consisting of "your work is your life, and therefore things are in balance" really came back with a rush. Everything since then has been tweaking the idea in more corporate-friendly directions. But I'm just old enough that I remember back when unions had power, and where strikes were a regular thing. Not all the changes were good ones.

I've changed. I've learned there's a word for the way my brain works that isn't "weirdo" (I'm autistic, and learning that actually felt like snapping a dislocated bone into place - all of a sudden, things were a lot more comfortable, and it was a lot easier to deal with things). I'm a lot less prone to depression and anxiety than I used to be (or at least, I've learned how to handle the anxiety so it doesn't get a chance to sour into depression anywhere near as often as it used to do). I'm older, and my hormones are busy giving me the first signs of perimenopause (yay, I get to go through puberty part II, and deal with my body switching from high-oestrogen chemistry to low-oestrogen chemistry), so I'm getting things like hot flushes and periods (because why should it be easy?). Getting out of bed in the morning is a bit harder than it used to be, and it takes me a bit longer to recover from things like sleeping in an uncomfortable position.

I still don't feel like I'm an actual-factual "grown-up", and at this rate, I don't think I ever shall. But I'm largely happy with where I am now. I have a job I enjoy, a partner I like being with, a place to live we're happy living in, and I'm getting closer to finishing the degree I've promised myself I'm going to get (just for the joy of getting one). Life is good, overall.

But yeah. Fifty. Wow!

1) I've moved house, which is why I've not been visible for the past couple of weeks. The new place is a bit more expensive than the previous one, but it comes with a lot more basic amenities, including things like a roof that doesn't leak, doors which fit their frames, decent insulation, air-conditioning and heating (both of which are relatively essential in an Australian context these days), and a dishwasher in the kitchen. We're currently in the unpackening stage, and probably will be for a few more weeks at least, if not months.

2) Subsequent to 1) above, may I actively dis-recommend iinet as an internet service provider to anyone living in Australia? They have been less than helpful and less than useful in the process of the move, and I suspect I'm going to have to argue things back and forth with them to get some billing issues sorted out (such as them charging me for another month of service at our previous address, even when I gave them two weeks notice of the move occurring during the previous billing period). They have not been helpful, they have not been friendly, they have not been particularly cooperative, and I'm just about done with them. 0 out of 10, would not recommend to anyone, not even my worst enemy.

3) Due to issues related with 2) above, we haven't had working internet for about a week and a half. I'm currently in catch-up mode, and I'll find out what's happened in the rest of the world as I go along. I'm reasonably certain the world hasn't ended (I'm sure I would have noticed if that had happened) but if people want to pass on bits of news to me, I'm not going to turn them down.

4) One of the things I'm attempting to do now we've moved to the new place is build a gardening habit. At the moment, it consists of five minutes work in the garden each day (timed on my phone), which at present is mostly about removing weeds from the front garden area. Which at least means the amount of weeds in the garden is going down slowly. I have Plans for one particular corner of the (minuscule) back garden area, but I'm going to wait until we have the house in vague order first, then hire it done, because these Plans involve a lot of set-up, and I know from extensive past experience I am not good at setting things up, although I am fairly good at maintaining them once I get the required habits built.

(I should note: the gardens, both front and back, are largely sand. Either black sand, because this is Perth and black sand is pretty much the default for most of the city, or yellow brickie's sand, because reasonably recent building site, and therefore covered in the stuff. Easy to dig, desperately hungry and thirsty).

5) As a result of extensive hand-washing and use of hand sanitiser, I'm now discovering I need to use hand cream more often. I would welcome recommendations from readers for a brand of hand cream which is a) not too expensive (I'm not paying more than about $10 at most for a 100mL tube, and probably lower than that would be preferable); b) not too heavy - I want something comparatively light and easily absorbed (for comparison - we have some sorbolene cream in the house which I don't use on my hands because it is too heavy, and leaves them feeling greasy; this is a sensory thing for me, so I'm likely to bounce off things good and hard if they're too heavy); and c) reasonably readily available in Australia?