A Little Lighter for Mental Health Purposes

Green ribbon for mental
health awareness

LINK HEAVY POST

Because of all the incredible, ridiculous, dangerous, scary horseshit that has been happening lately, I have been retreating more and more into myself and my personal circles, and out of social media. I'm still there a little bit, because a) I still need to know what's going on in the world, and b) I have some very dear friends whom I only see online. But in addition to the aforementioned (click any recent post) time restrictions that I put on my Facebook app (the other platforms are not generally an issue), I have now turned off notifications as well. So if I want to go there, I have to do it deliberately.

In any case, this post is about what I do to keep myself from huddling in a corner sucking my thumb. I suppose it's technically dissociation, although not in the clinical sense. It's probably better defined as my old standby, conflict avoidance. I'll be 57 next week, and I'm just tired of dealing with... well, with all that out there.

I write, of course. Mostly here, or the nightly write-down-my-worries notebook that I have picked back up again. I'm currently not writing fiction, fan- or otherwise. Don't know why.

I'm rereading old childhood favorites. For a while it was Agatha Christie's not-Poirot-nor-Marple novels, but many of those are political or spy thrillers, and are therefore unsettlingly close to what the world is like right now. Though I suppose if I wanted an actual taste of what the world is like right now, I'd have to pull out some Ian Fleming; some of our current crop of political types are one fluffy or hairless cat away from being Bond Villains. I have no objection to Poirot or Marple, but I want to read them in chronological order, and most of the early ones are on hold in my Libby app, as other people are reading them right now.

So I regressed even further into childhood and am reading Nancy Drew. Now, the ones I used to own (about fifty each of the Nancy Boys and Hardy Boys series) and the ones I'm reading now (on Kindle through the Libby app) are rewrites (from the 1960s) of the original stories (from the 1930s-1950s), to update some technology (like Nancy's convertible car) and some language (there are a few words in the early books that would be considered slurs today, and even the 1960s ones are not great by today's standards). Aside from these issues, and the formulaic nature of the stories (Nancy & friends come across a person who has been Done Wrong, Nancy vows to investigate, Bess gets scared, George shows off her "tomboy" strength, there is a Dangerous Situation involving kidnapping or flood or fire, and then they catch the Bad Guy), there is a lot that I notice as an adult that was not at all evident when I was a kid or even a young adult. 

Leaving aside the Mary Sue that is Nancy Drew (she can do just about anything), there are these elements in almost every story. George is there to be the muscle if there aren't any boys around. She also mildly fat-shames Bess at least once a book. So does the narration, as Bess is invariably described as "slightly plump, but still pretty." Ewwww. All three girls, and Nancy especially, have had a truly alarming number of traumatic brain injuries, ranging from the accidental (Bess gets swept overboard by the boom of a sailboat clocking her in the head) to the deliberate (Nancy gets hit over the head by a Bad Guy or indirectly by an Elaborate Trap with everything from decorative furniture to cannonballs about once a book). These head injuries are always cured by a cold cloth to the forehead and a "good nap."

Anyway, reading childhood favorites is a relatively safe and healthy way to keep myself out of the fray, and has been approved by my therapist. Even if I do cringe at most of the stuff up there. It's safe.

I have been looking for (additional) work fairly regularly, as my job (which I love) isn't enough on its own in our hypercapitalist hellscape of a country. I've had a couple of one-day side gigs, but that's not enough either. I can write, proofread, and edit; I could even do simple data entry. Everyone seems to decry my "lack of ambition" because I don't want to be a CEO one day, but really, I just want a job where I can do things that need to be done, in between my day-job shifts. But apparently, that lack of ambition is incomprehensible to hiring managers. I wonder if they think I'm lying in wait like a spider, trying to steal their job; it would not be the first time that people mistrust me because I "seem nice."

 Also, do you know how expensive car insurance is for a single, widowed, fifty-something mom of a 22yo and an 18yo? The 18yo only has a learner's permit and is never driving alone, and the 22yo only drives during school breaks, but that matters not to insurance companies. I'm a teamster with a good enough driving record to be considered safe to drive Other People's Children to school, but that doesn't matter either. Yes, I am shopping around.

Also, video games and TV. Genshin Impact, mostly, the trio of Wordle/Connections/Strands (posted on Bluesky), and stuff on my phone. I've discontinued my Duolingo subscription because I'm poor and I'm annoyed about their switch to AI, but I may as well use it until the subscription runs out. I swapped out Spanish for Chess over the summer there, but I'm back on Spanish now. I'm watching a bunch of those Netflix cooking competition shows (Is it Cake, Cook at any Cost, Easy Bake Battle, etc.) they made in like 2022 because they're fairly light and fluffy. I'm excited about the new season of Call The Midwife, but again, I'm avoiding the heavy stuff right now.

So I didn't manage to be super light here, because of the reasons for the required lightness. But it helped me feel a little better, so I declare this a successful blog post.

I CanNOT Understand This

A bitmoji cartoon of a brunette-with-grey
woman dressed in blue pinching her nose
with incipient headache.

Yes, today's topic is the same old same old.

Again.

Or at least a variation on a theme.

Immediately after the shooting death of Charlie Kirk, the usual suspects (in this case, primarily the man sitting in the White House and the inner circle of his fan club) started saying that the <spins wheel> "transgender libt*rd antifa" was the cause. Dogwhistle terms were flying fast and furious, "the demon-rats" were being called domestic terrorists, and the larger fan club started threatening historically black universities. Because that makes sense to them, I guess.

Less than 48 hours later, we find out that no, he was a Good Mormon Boy. None of these people has retracted their statements. Some are doubling down by either doing "la la la I can't hear you" with their fingers in their ears, or by outright fabricating statements that 90% of mass shooters are from the "party that wants to take my guns."

I can only assume that this makes sense to them, too.

Look, I'm not sorry that Chirlie Kirk is no longer on this earth, but I'm not glad about it either. I am sorry (in spite of the massive irony of a superficially civil gun nut being shot in public) that it happened this way, partly because of those people described up there. And partly because in my country's twisted love affair with guns, this somehow justifies more guns. I don't believe in the death penalty; I think it's barbaric. But I do believe that actions have consequences, whether you call it Karma or something else. 

"Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows," (Galatians 6:7) is another way to put it, and that one is repeated several times in other ways in the same holy book that CK and all those folks up there in that earlier paragraph purport to believe.

I do know several reasonable Christians (a family member or two, a few friends both online and off-) who try their best to actually follow Christ's teachings instead of the weirdly ass-backwards Christian-Nationalist version. I treasure these people. They are, however, as a group, neither powerful nor loud enough to drown out the bullshit giving them a bad name.

The other groups I do not grok are those whose faces are likely to be eaten by leopards at any moment, but don't think they will be the victims of the face-eating-leopards party. MAGA people of color, MAGA LGBTQ+, MAGA immigrants, etc. Oh, honey, they hate you too. They just hate you slightly less than their current scapegoats. Don't worry; they will eventually get around to eating your face too, if you're a good sycophant and lackey.

Other shootings - those of more than just one MAGA media darling - happened this week, too, but we don't hear nearly as much about those, of course. The Epstein files are still out there as well, and CKs death has served as a handy distraction from that. I have heard some people say that it was deliberate for that purpose. Whether or not that is true, it's still a distraction. Weirdly, some of these same MAGA folks seem to think that, "What if <insert democrat> person is on the list? Huh, bet you never thought of that!" is some kind of gotcha, but honestly, if there is (and I can certainly think of a few who might be) then they should go down too.

I'm finding this timeline to be very stressful, in spite of my self-induced social media restrictions.

Ridiculous

EDIT: this Social Security issue worked itself out the day before the cut off. It sure would’ve been great if they had let me know in the interim that things were in process, but at least it’s OK now.

I'm still only on social media for around an hour a day (for me, that means Meta for the most part; I tend to use YouTube for DIY or game hints or a handful of cutesy things I follow, not news, and TikTok only when my kids send me something). So I'm on enough, and reading electronic newspapers and so forth, to know what's going on in the world, while still protecting my own psyche.

Reading Agatha Christie's thrillers (as opposed to her mysteries; the thrillers are all very International Intrigue) has convinced me that either a) nothing changes, or b) the woman had the gift of prophecy, because there's a lot of Rise of Fascism stuff there. 

But even with All That Out There™, life has to go on. Bills have to be paid, kids must go to school, laundry must be folded... you get what I mean.

So, about those things. 

• Bills paid up-to-date, but I didn't work at the district during the summer, so I have no end-of-August paycheck. 
• A benefit we receive from our state may have been lost in the mail. We're on Day 11 of the 7-10 business days, and the phone rep says if I haven't gotten it by Friday to let them know and they'll issue another.
• I've done all the paperwork, jumped through all the hoops, and tried calling 3-4 times a week all summer to get Lizzy's survivor benefits extended to when she graduates high school next June. I tried again today but now they won't let me represent her. She's not 18 yet, but she will be this month, so I guess that the SSA considers her to be close enough. That means that we don't know whether we will be getting a direct deposit (to my account) as we have been, or whether it will be a paper check, and we still don't know whether it will continue through June.
• We are ready for school! Lizzy has an outfit picked out for school tomorrow, Abby is getting her stuff together for her senior year of college, and I have at least my morning route tomorrow!
• The new washer/dryer we got from the power company (it was a great deal intended to assist with power efficiency is terrific. Small, and a little finicky (I have to vacuum the lint traps to get them clear enough to do another load), but as long as I'm on top of it, they work great!

So, yeah, 2025 Life sucks. My personal 2025 life has a lot of headaches and (as always) financial woes, but it's pretty balanced out.

Vent or Rant or Rave or... Whatever

I need to write.

A bitmoji of a chubby brunette-with-grey
 woman in blue and rainbow tie-dye, writing
using a pencil that is taller than she is.

It's been over a month since I last wrote in on this page, mostly because I'm severely limiting social media for my own mental health. I have set an hour-per-day limit on my iPhone's Facebook app, and although I can certainly browse on my desktop, this computer is quite slow, even with its new RAM.

I planned it that way when my old PC went Tango Uniform, because then I am more likely to use it for work and writing, and also do less doomscrolling. 

Again, for my mental health.

It's pretty good right now, especially considering the existential dread acquired from living in the USA these days (even though I have a lot of US Citizen English-speaking CisHet White Privilege) and Fucking August. My doctor says I have moved from Survival Mode into Living Mode. My therapist says I have reached mental health milestones regarding things like parenting and boundaries.

These are Good Things.

But they won't stay that way unless I keep working at them. One of my favorite ways to do this is to write, and I have had little success in finding a writing gig this summer.

So here we are.

Now, mind you, I have said all these things on Facebook, but generally in a post-and-run format once a day, in order to avoid doomscrolling. Lots of this post may be repeat stuff. You have been warned.

Shut up, Grammarly; this is basically my diary and does not have to sound professional or confident. It's for me, and you need to calm tf down.

So, aside from writing, what am I doing?

I'm planning (or helping plan) Lizzy's 18th birthday party. It involves a lot of homemade decorations and food, a cake ordered from a local grocery, and a few very close friends at an Airbnb a few cities away.

I'm playing video games.

I'm still applying to side gigs, even though there are a lot of people with way more technical knowledge and experience than I have getting laid off from tech companies this summer. Some of these folks can write well, too, and so they are getting the jobs. I don't begrudge them this; it's not their fault that their employers care more about money than people. I just wish that someone would hire me for what amounts to remote entry-level data entry or something. Just so I have something to do that can earn a little money, as it would be better than nothing. And it has to be legit, please. Most of the hits I've gotten are either entirely sketchy or the people (or bots) have clearly not read my requirements. I don't do sales, I will not train AI to sound more human, and there are a half-dozen companies I refuse to work for due to Capitalist Hellscape Reasons.

Speaking of income, it sure would be nice if I could get hold of the SSA to find out whether they received the extension paperwork (children on survivor benefits can receive these benefits after they turn 18, as long as they're still in K-12) the second time I filed it (because they didn't get the first batch). I can look it up on the website, but that only shows the next payment, not whether the extension was approved.

I'm learning to bead. Lizzy taught me the method she uses for what she calls "flat panels," and I have been calling them "those little beaded tapestries." She made me a TARDIS one for Mother's Day. It's fun, and it's kind of meditative, and if I'm not great at finishing rows (she helps), I'll get there eventually.

I'm working on physical fitness/weight loss by ramping up my assorted apps to more intense and longer workouts (I never moved up from the beginner sessions I was doing) and by working on portion control and sleep hygiene. I've been doing this on and off for decades, and I know what to do, what works for me, and what doesn't, but I've never kept to it long enough to see more than the quick results one gets at the beginning. But now that I'm in Living Mode instead of Surviving Mode, maybe it will be easier. I have also (with the doc's approval) stopped certain medications for which one of the side effects is weight gain.

I've been reading a lot of old favorites (as long as I don't remember whodunnit) and I'm finding some of the Agatha Christie written between 1914 and 1950 more than a little prophetic as regards things like creeping fascism and the tendency of some people to believe that they and they alone can save their country. Usually by being fascist pricks, demonizing people with differences of any kind, and believing alllll the propaganda.

Gotta remember that "meet them where they are" is not only a motto for special education or parenting, but also for things like my knees and my mental health. Knowing that should help. As an example, if my arthritic left knee is being a literal pain, I can meet that where it is by going easy on the weight-bearing exercise and heavy on the analgesic cream, you know? It doesn't mean I have to avoid exercise entirely, get out of the habit, and have to start over.. 

Anyway, as writing-to-distract goes, this one has been fruitful, even with assorted references to the awfulness going on right now. Mission accomplished, I guess. 

I Don't Even Know Where to Start

This Bigly Ugly Bilge is insupportable, as in, I don't understand how anyone can support it, much less

A bitmoji cartoon of a chubby
woman on a pink couch, patting
the seat next to her, with the
caption, "We need to talk.
This is serious."

people who a) claim to follow Jesus Christ, b) are a member of one of the many groups (and they are legion) that are currently considered undesirable by the asshats in power, or c) both a and b.

Yeah, yeah, racism, sexism, homophobia, prejudice, whatever. Those aren't reasons. They're symptoms.

Lack of empathy. We know all this. God knows I've certainly been over it dozens of times in this blog and on other social media, and I'm not even loud or well-known or particularly outspoken. There are many good people out there explaining this, but they're ignored by hundreds of thousands because what? Those hundreds of thousands might feel a twinge of guilt or shame, I guess?

Can't have that. Might be uncomfortable. And as we learned ad nauseum during the pandemic, powerful privileged people's comfort trumps (used deliberately) everyone else's life and health and safety.

If this post makes you feel defensive, or inclined to not-all, or ready to well-actually me, don't bother. Just take yourself the fuck off my page, block me, whatever. I'm no purist, and I'm certainly not one to let perfection get in the way of progress (or even not backsliding into fascism), but if you are, get out.

I don't feel safe in my own country right now, and I'm a cishet white American-English-speaking citizen born to citizens in a family that has been citizens for generations. Sure, I have a few of the "undesirable" traits; I'm female, for one, and fat, and poor, and ethnically if not religiously Jewish, and neurodivergent, and chronically ill (if you count asthma and bad knees), and mentally ill (although how anybody is not depressed and/or anxious right now I'd love to know their secrets) and I <gasp> think people are more important than money in this hypercapitalist hellscape.

But I can't even imagine how people who don't have my advantages feel right now. 

I mean, folks who "look like" whatever the most-hated group of the day™ is, whether they are or not?

I do not feel like celebrating independence today, because what independence, exactly, are we talking about? I see very little of it around here these days.

I'm willing to entertain hope, though, and multiculturalism, and empathy, and basically trying to be a decent human. So that's what I'm doing today. Yes, I'm setting off (legal) fireworks (according to the legal limits of time and place) with my neighbors because this is a tradition of over a decade in my neighborhood. It was one of my late husband's favorite holidays. It's still a friendly and well-loved summer thing for me and my neighbors. 

But I'm not celebrating. I'm coping at best.

Oh For F*ck's Sake

A Bitmoji cartoon of a pale hand in a blue sleeve giving a Thumbs Down

My government has me dropping F-bombs in the title now.

I saw a link to one of my old posts this week that was very apologetic because it was a "quarterly political rant" that might "not be rated as PG as usual."

Yeah, that changed when my husband got sick and again when "the mean, shouty one" (per my then 8yo daughter) was elected.

Let me clear things up for you (where "you" means the asshats-allegedly-in-charge of this bullshit, and their supporters).

I am autistic, and I work and pay taxes.

Everyone uses pronouns, unless you speak a language without any personal pronouns (which I did write into a fanfic story once and it was a pain in the ass).

Even the President is supposed to follow the rules.

Doctor Who, Star Trek, superhero comics and their associated media, and a huge chunk of speculative fiction in general have always been "woke." Just because you don't like it doesn't make it a bad thing. You're just not that important, sorry.

Freedom of Speech does not apply to Facebook.

It absolutely does not matter that people online are "just looking for attention." Why do you care so much that you feel the need to comment (and then complain that they're still in your feed, since that's what engaging with the content does)? Perhaps you're just looking for attention.

"Autistic" may mean "has trouble with social cues." It is not a catch-all for excusing behavior like Nazi salutes.

The Paradox of Tolerance is real.

Many of those you call "demoncraps" or "libt**ds" are waaaayyyyyy further left than that.

From all reports, Jesus was woke af.

LGBTQIA2S+ people are not hurting you. The vast majority of them are not hurting anyone. They're just trying to live their lives, and God forbid some of it might be in public.

Vaccines work.

Yes, I do think it's ridiculous that you call liberal types "snowflakes" for wearing masks or vaccinating children when you feel the need to wear an arsenal to a grocery store.

The list of this kind of horsecrap goes on (and on and on). It would be laughably stupid if it wasn't so damn scary.