not easy to state the change you made

I can now be found on Dreamwidth at esque. I'll probably crosspost here as well, but if you have an account on LJ or Inksome, you can make an openid account and read (and comment on) my posts there.

Completely unashamedly, a massive reason for my moving there is that they allow me to list my gender as 'other', rather than the usual 'male' or 'female'. I am also absolutely and completely in love with their Diversity Statement (someone else discusses it here). They look... incredibly awesome, and, so, yeah. If anyone over here requests access to me on Dreamwidth (I'll probably be posting primarily locked over there) I'll allow them. :)

Had such a few crazybusy days. Work, work, more work- though it was actually a fairly calm week, as they go, it just feels a bit like I've been there all week and done nothing else, because I've been so tired when I get home I've not been up to anything other than sitting around poking the internet with bargepoles- apart from on Friday, when I met up with the cult & Elaine (who I haven't seen in 4 years! This is.. weird, to think it's been that long, and that so much has changed in the meantime in my own life) and went out for the night in Canal Street, which was absolutely brilliant as always, especially with such great company. It's ridiculous, but going out drinking with friends never fails to remind me how okay life is; it's strangely grounding, a bit, when my head is off somewhere full of stress and upset and triggerfish- having fun with people I trust in a comforting bar. It also reminds me that I'm actually a grown-up capable of handling things (well, mostly), rather than a 14-year-old trapped in their house because of insurmountable social anxiety. I think it's good to remind myself of all that.

Anyway, yesterday = yet more work, then came home and OMG DOCTOR WHO SPECIAL. Which I actually (unsurprisingly) had quite a few issues with, but I'll not spoiler anyone. On the one hand, yes, it's always awesome to have new Doctor Who on TV; on the other hand... RUSSELL T. DAVIES, IF YOU RUIN THIS SHOW RIGHT BEFORE YOU LEAVE, I WILL PERSONALLY COME TO YOUR HOUSE AND SHOUT AT YOU A LOT. But the bit at the end = squee, even though I've already seen the photographs of the certain person etc. Then stayed up very late watching movies (Little Miss Sunshine & Perspolis, both of which = just what I needed right at that moment).

Today = an actual day off work. Have a mountain of laundry & studying & cleaning to do (which means I will probably find some reason to sit on the sofa reading/painting all day), so, yes.

first day back at work = knackering. good to be back, though, in a weird way. and there is a new guy! who is awesome and calm and seems like a genuinely happy person and he seems to know what he is doing! GODSEND.

brain is still swimming with triggerfish. (actually, I kind of wish it was. that'd be really kawaii. and weird. but still cute.) going for a big hot bath with a bottle of beer shortly; bliss.

butyes. completely forgot to mention that I have a new (ish) private twitter, here, if anyone wants to add it.

...yeah. brain is vere vere tired.

to-do:

• read 100 pages of textbook + notes + highlighting + revision tests for three chapters
• grocery shopping (why does the only bank machine around here charge me £2 to withdraw money?)
• phone work & check shift for Wednesday
• LAUNDRY
• glare at pointedly not-dyed-black hair in mirror (why does henna not work? why does indigo dye not work? WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY HAIR?)
• call mum and ask for money crap, she's still in Germany until tomorrow, fail. maybe I should consider this a sign
• find awesome painkillers, which I have somehow lost
• work on awful painting
• lots of staggering around, lying on the sofa grumbling at jointfail, wanting to throw things at the internet, etc

my sleep schedule is absolutely fucked. somehow over the last few days it's become: stay up until midnightish, sleep for a bit, wake up, become unable to get back to sleep, eventually nod off for a couple of hours, wake up at 8am (without any sort of alarm, even, over the weekend), stagger around, and have to lie down for a while at around 3pm, not really napping, but not really awake either. I'm not tired in the evenings, and my brain seems to have lost the concept of 'it is night, now you need to sleep'. slightly worried about being back at work; won't be able to take a convenient break at three in the afternoon to collapse somewhere.

dealing with a lot of personal crap, in other news, none of which I will be discussing here, but.. sans twitter, I'm probably going to be very quiet (apart from little frippery-ish posts like these) online for the forseeable, just while I attempt to get my head sorted out. seems the most reasonable thing to do, under the circumstances. still checking email and twitter regularly, though.

Amanda Palmer saved my life. I feel like a twat for saying that, even thought it sort of feels like that. But, I don't know, finally I have discovered a perseveration that isn't work or upsetting things and... there is just something so very incredibly yes about her and her music and her writing. If I'm feeling very, very low, HEY LET'S LISTEN TO AMPERSAND OVER AND OVER and somehow I come out the other side not hating myself quite as much. Which is a good thing, and worth noting, and worth making a weird babbly post about.

I wish I could embed youtube videos properly, but.. no, apparently not. Have a link instead. 'Astronaut' live. Also 'Leeds United'. And 'Ampersand' (official video, not live. Live she is just so.. so different, so much more alive and there in what she's singing somehow, but I cannot find a decent live version of &, so).

And I may be romantic
And I may risk my life for it
But I ain't gonna die for you
You know I ain't no Juliet-

Maybe in a year when I'm in a completely different mental space I'll look back and wonder what I saw that was so meaningful. Part of me hopes that will happen, almost.

Have made myself a Central Perk-sized bucket of coffee, stolen a functional laptop from the living room (so cannot afford a new laptop right now. Am really freaking out that my baby has started bluescreening every ten minutes, no matter what weird fixes I try. Would just wipe her and start again, but I don't have a copy of windows xp. Hence, omgpanic), and gone back to bed.

Today = start of six days off work, after working eight days in a row. Which, yes, is illegal (the latter, not the former) in this country, but idiot that I am, I agreed to it, and now I feel like... to be honest, I don't feel as bad as I was expecting, but I will be spending most of today in bed and on the sofa, unable to do anything useful at all. Not only am I in pain that is epic like epic cat (have given up trying to find appropriate metaphors for the level of joint pain I sustain on a regular basis and instead have invented a new measurement scheme: 'timid cat' (level 1 pain) all the way through 'epic cat' (about level 7-8, so I'm not actually in tears) and frankly, if I am able to type, I haven't got to level 9-10, so I don't see myself ever needing a relevant moniker for that sort of incredible awfulness, other than offline mumbling while I'm curled up in the foetal position waiting for painkillers to work) but I'm also brainfogged, which makes anything more complicated than opening an update window pretty difficult. Writing is okay today, though; I'm not sitting around for half an hour trying to figure out how to formulate a sentence like 'I made a cup of coffee', which is good.

Uh, yeah. Was planning on doing Important Things today, but, well, no. Having panic attacks at doctors and bank-shaped people will have to wait until.. I'm going to say next Monday, because that will give me enough time to stop feeling like a ball of anxiety about doing Important Things, and also give me enough time to have recovered from work enough to, you know, be able to walk down a flight of stairs without wanting to immediately sit down (or stab myself in the face, whichever = NO MORE PAIN sooner).

( under here, because I twit a lot. )

(flung into the ether by LoudTwitter.)

I have removed everyone from my reading list here. I am taking a break from the internet but would like to leave myself the option of having somewhere to write from time to time. My updates will always be public. You will be able to comment and read what I post even if I do not 'add you back' etc. I would like to think of this space as more of a public blog than anything else. To be honest, the only reason I've not moved to a blog is that I like having silly icons, and there are communities I like to participate in.

Today has been.. strange, and long, and stressful, and full of finding comfort in the weirdest places.

( under here, because I twit a lot. )

(flung into the ether by LoudTwitter.)

( under here, because I twit a lot. )

(flung into the ether by LoudTwitter.)

( under here, because I twit a lot. )

(flung into the ether by LoudTwitter.)

( under here, because I twit a lot. )

(flung into the ether by LoudTwitter.)

( under here, because I twit a lot. )

(flung into the ether by LoudTwitter.)

( under here, because I twit a lot. )

(flung into the ether by LoudTwitter.)

( under here, because I twit a lot. )

(flung into the ether by LoudTwitter.)

( under here, because I twit a lot. )

(flung into the ether by LoudTwitter.)

( under here, because I twit a lot. )

(flung into the ether by LoudTwitter.)

( under here, because I twit a lot. )

(flung into the ether by LoudTwitter.)

work is apparently on Google Street View now. this is weird and amusing. (our house isn't, though. bah.)

( photo under here. )

hope that worked, anyway. it's just the view from the street, facing the front of the building. work = the first three floors (out of seven). all those window displays are from last summer's sales campaign, and it's sort of weird to see that my displays are on googlemaps.

Stuck in bed with a cold. Well. Not so much 'stuck' as 'I seem a bit unable to stand up for longer than a few minutes without falling over in agony'. Probably a hellish combination of catching the horrible cold, being knackered after a week at work, and having the last tendrils of a creeping (fading, though) hangover. Probably a good thing the trip to Blackpool has been cancelled due to boiler!fail, because.. yeah. Doing anything more useful than lying around in bed for most of the day is probably not going to happen. I may possibly attempt to get up and put on silly nice clothes to cheer myself up and go lie on the sofa instead. Possibly.

Currently managing to read three books all at the same time. Not literally all-at-once, just.. I'm a few chapters into Singling out the Couples by Stella Duffy (which is MASSIVE INCREDIBLE AMOUNTS OF LOVE so far, I haven't gone OMG HEART at a book like that in ages), I'm partway into Stephen King Goes to the Movies (trashy easy reading for when, like now, my brain is made completely out of mush and cannot make sense out of anything), and I'm also re-reading Only Revolutions (the full-colour US import I ordered in at work finally arrived, I exploded with joy, and, yeah. Am convinced I am going to eventually have twelve copies of OR, each one slightly different in some insignificant way). I wish I could say this is a new record, but if I counted all the books I've currently half-read, sitting in piles all over the house, then.. it'd be a much bigger number.