February 16, 2008
Terrifying Can Attack
On Friday I manged to slice my hand open while trying to pull the lid off of a can of cat food. The doctor in immediate care assured me that it wasn't deep and didn't need stitches, but it's still the worst I've cut myself in... ever (unless you count the terrifying exercise bike attack, but I usually don't). I have to wear a splint over the weekend so I don't bend my left index finger (opening the cut back up) and I'm not allowed to get my hand wet. So I guess this will be a yucky, bathing optional weekend.
I'm doing pretty well with coping, I think. I type much slower but I'm doing okay with sewing so far. I have a lot of sewing to do this weekend, so we'll see how I hold up in the long run.
February 12, 2008
February 11, 2008
February 06, 2008
This post is a bit morbid. I'm really okay, really. I just thought that getting this stuff outside myself might help me to deal with and understand some of it better. To reiterate, I'm not that upset, just stressed out and having a touch existential angst on and off. I'm sure it'll pass, perhaps more swiftly with the cute kitten photos I've just uploaded.
I'm turning 27 this year. I'm now moving firmly into "late twenties" and I can't tell if that inherently bothers me or not. I've been a bit stressed lately, which I think is causing the persistent thoughts of death and loss that I've been having. In my mind I know it's dumb to be so upset about it. I get one lifetime of a finite duration and I shouldn't be wasting parts of it worrying about that fact. But it still preys on me sometimes when I can't sleep.
In a way that seems ironic, since what usually upsets me is not the fact that I will die, but the possibility that I will cease to exist. It would be nice to have a firm faith in the existence of the soul as separate from our corporeal bodies to fall back on, but I don't, and I have to live with that. It's sort of hard to think about, since by definition I've never known a time when I did not exist, except by the shallow comparison to times that I just don't remember. Like sleep. I don't fear sleep (that would be silly) but I can't help but think that death is very much the same problem with less experience to reassure you. You give over your consciousness and wait to see if you get it back. You fundamentally don't know any given night if the you who goes to bed will be around until your memory kicks in again in the morning.
I played in a game recently that was very cathartic for me. If you're playing in Anandi's game at Intercon H, you might want to stop reading now. I'm talking about a related game, and I don't really know what's a spoiler and what's not. The game I played in wasn't really about death. It was about life, life's story, and how you deal with it. The characters (and players) didn't really catch on to this however until quite a bit of the game had pass. The basic concept hit me a bit below the belt, because I ended up inadvertently method acting with a twinge of that death-fear coloring my mind. There came a point in the game when my character realized that no, she really did exist and would continue to do so after death, and I was so relieved that I literally cried.
It was a good game. It brought the players together in a way that I have never experienced before. There was at least one point where I genuinely felt like I knew everyone else in the room, really knew them like I'd known them my whole life. On one level it was all IC, but on another, I don't think I've ever felt like that in real life. Usually there is, what seems to me like, an impenetrable layer of difference between people. Even when you want to know each other you can never really completely understand each other, because we are separate people who've come from different places and lived different lives. Maybe I dwell on it more than other people because I acutely feel the discordance as social anxiety when those differences are too great (or I don't know yet what they are). For a short while during the game that feeling was completely gone. I could sincerely trust those other character (those other people) as if they were me.
I really don't know how Anandi did it, but she cast me as a character who was so like me in some ways that I was blind to it. The character back story spent much of it's time talking about making or doing or wanting to do creative things. She wanted to make something new and special in the world. It came out much later that the character was, in fact, meant to personify creativity. But I never would have guessed it on my own. The feel of that sheet seemed perfectly normal and natural to me. It took me a long time to realize that was because that's who I am in my real life. I spend an inordinate amount of my time wanting or trying to make beautiful, useful, and interesting things. On some level I don't know how some could not feel that sort of creative drive.
February 02, 2008
Okay, I know I promised more kitten pictures, but hopefully this will tide you over for a few days. I've culled the 560 candidates down to about 70 really good ones, but I've got a bunch of other stuff I need to work on over the next week, so it will be a little while before they're up.
(Sorry!)
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