I left my foo in San Francisco
Dec. 1st, 2017 10:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fandomonymousThis fucking month. That's not a bad thing but it is definitely a thing!
Things got a really specific kind of rocky with the PartnerBeast but it's fine now and it made us even better. Some negative emotions needed an outlet, and finally got that outlet, and it hurt until it stopped hurting and started being a relief. <3 <3 <3
I've been a bit brain foggy at the office but otherwise it's fine? I'm taking on more (partially because I wanted to, partially because we're short staffed) and my projects are mostly out of my hands now, so, eh.
My parents continue to be aggressively themselves, and this isn't necessarily a good thing. Sigh.
Between San Francisco (which had both RogueCel and Paper Tree[1]) and General Holiday Things I've been feeling....actually creative???? Or at least crafty again. I actually have a crazy procedural art/Twitter bot idea (that might have uh, weird legal concerns, but hopefully not?) and I'm trying to tackle both my origami and Gunpla backlogs, go Kawa. Of course, there aren't enough hours in the day to get into this the way I really want to (let alone play games the way I want to, sob forever) but it's nice to go from "I like consuming all the culture" to "I feel like making something".
Housing stuff looks like it could Actually Happen oh god I don't want to say too much in case there's some issue waiting in the wings but like. I have a contract and my application is almost ready to go. My parents are giving me incredible amounts of money so I won't even be in debt while I do it, which is just mind boggling. I want this so badly. Here's to hoping.
New York is great, New York holiday season is great, cold and dark days are the fucking worst.
This is all to say that apparently, the world is full of weird magic. The magic only exists after you do two things: (1) acknowledge the difficult parts exist, and (2) strive to work with and around them.
The difficult parts for me: not everyone I want to feel for[2] will return that in the same way. Not everyone I want to feel for will be conveniently available for me logistically. But I shouldn't close my heart, because people are awesome and not repressing feelings, even and including the hard ones, is the trick to weird magic.
I want more weird magic in my life, and that's a goal to work on along with the rest. Time to get to work.
[0]That post, unlike every other one of these monthly updates, is access list locked. It comes with content warnings about family drama, infidelity, and weight stuff. If you can read this post but not that one and really want to even given those warnings, comment to tell me so.
[1]Paper Tree is a store in Japantown that is a store specifically about origami while also having room for other paper crafting, which is basically the opposite of any other craft store I've been in. It is the kind of place with books from origami conventions and models by Robert Lang honoring the owners and like. I knew Bay Area Rapid Folders has been a thing, but I hadn't known this existed, hadn't realized how desperately I had needed a space like this to exist until I walked in, and it was wonderful in a way I still have trouble describing.
[2]Read as "romantic love", maybe, but less intense and not /necessarily/ super sexual though that tends to be part of how I express it. Disentangling types of affection is both really hard and extremely necessary as a dedicated non-monogamist (and maybe even for monogamists too, but I shouldn't speak for them on this). We need more words for love. We need even more words for love than what the ancient Greeks had or Homestuck trolls do, and we need it for similar reasons as needing the whole alphabet soup of queerness. If you know good resources for categorizing and naming affections, let me know, please. <3
- Kit broke up with me literally the day after my last post.[0] Basically, logistics and health are hard and they're hosed and so didn't feel they could invest in me the way that I clearly wanted to. Which was very, very true - I've even posted here about the things their health has made them miss, some of which were very important to me - but also, UGH.
- But on the flip side, I used it as an excuse to force my anxiety to STFU and do things I wanted but felt guilty about wanting, and that was great - not being completely hawkish about money or alcohol or food (I've stopped tracking) was just soothing and what I needed, which sounds terrible but was also fantastic. I drank, both at home and at bars, both alone and not-alone; I spent the evening with a dear friend supporting her work in local theater and spent good time together on the subway far too late at night; I spent money on books and snacks I didn't need but made me happy (though given how I plowed through it, maybe I emotionally needed to finally read The Ethical Slut).
- This emotional upheaval carried into San Francisco, which was so ridiculous it deserves its own sublist.
- {sex/kink/swing details elided} happened. (tl;dr: I got some, both in a sex club style setting and not, and while this isn't my first go at sexy parties or casual-ish sex it's also very different from past behavior.) Might do another post just with the details on there under a content warning because um I pushed myself a lot in good ways and that could be worth exploring in writing? Or maybe I'll post on Fet for once - btw, if you're reading this and want my username on there, contact me in private.
- Roguelike Celebration happened. I haven't actively contributed to the roguelike community since IRDC because god I was so exhausted post-IRDC and also Life Happened, but I forget just how much this is My People and I agape-love it so dearly. The people were so good and the talks were fascinating and procedural generative art and culture is wonderful and I watched a sub 2 hour Nethack ascension and ugh ugh ugh. <3 The decor was all Nethack-themed, ASCII monsters and signs with in-game messages. I took the Elbereth, printed in canvas in a monospace font and placed on the floor, back home with me and it is now under my bed, keeping me safe.
- I spent a day walking around San Francisco. I started near the baseball stadium and worked my way west, getting to the Golden Gate Bridge before sunset. Japantown is a marvel, the hills are Very Scary and Real, and the weather changes were immense. I love exploring cities alone, and having a chance to do it with eyes wide open due to complete unfamiliarity was a privilege and a gift.
- {cool person in the Bay Area} happened, which is at the intersection of the first two points but also deserves its own point. We've kept in touch and it's comforting and good. I'm hesitant about long distance things because {trauma elided}, but like, I'm not going to close myself off emotionally to something that has been good and continues to be good, and that's...an interesting place to end up. It's also inspired me to reach out to other non-New York awesome lovely people, which again. Hard. But good. So very, very good. <3
- {sex/kink/swing details elided} happened. (tl;dr: I got some, both in a sex club style setting and not, and while this isn't my first go at sexy parties or casual-ish sex it's also very different from past behavior.) Might do another post just with the details on there under a content warning because um I pushed myself a lot in good ways and that could be worth exploring in writing? Or maybe I'll post on Fet for once - btw, if you're reading this and want my username on there, contact me in private.
This is all to say that apparently, the world is full of weird magic. The magic only exists after you do two things: (1) acknowledge the difficult parts exist, and (2) strive to work with and around them.
The difficult parts for me: not everyone I want to feel for[2] will return that in the same way. Not everyone I want to feel for will be conveniently available for me logistically. But I shouldn't close my heart, because people are awesome and not repressing feelings, even and including the hard ones, is the trick to weird magic.
I want more weird magic in my life, and that's a goal to work on along with the rest. Time to get to work.
[0]That post, unlike every other one of these monthly updates, is access list locked. It comes with content warnings about family drama, infidelity, and weight stuff. If you can read this post but not that one and really want to even given those warnings, comment to tell me so.
[1]Paper Tree is a store in Japantown that is a store specifically about origami while also having room for other paper crafting, which is basically the opposite of any other craft store I've been in. It is the kind of place with books from origami conventions and models by Robert Lang honoring the owners and like. I knew Bay Area Rapid Folders has been a thing, but I hadn't known this existed, hadn't realized how desperately I had needed a space like this to exist until I walked in, and it was wonderful in a way I still have trouble describing.
[2]Read as "romantic love", maybe, but less intense and not /necessarily/ super sexual though that tends to be part of how I express it. Disentangling types of affection is both really hard and extremely necessary as a dedicated non-monogamist (and maybe even for monogamists too, but I shouldn't speak for them on this). We need more words for love. We need even more words for love than what the ancient Greeks had or Homestuck trolls do, and we need it for similar reasons as needing the whole alphabet soup of queerness. If you know good resources for categorizing and naming affections, let me know, please. <3
no subject
Date: 2017-12-02 02:09 pm (UTC)For the record, I have a nasty trigger point around infidelity but am happy reading about explicit sex! If you happen to write the post about sexploration in SF and you have an access list for explicit posts then you'd be welcome to add me to that.
Oh, and I know someone who gets wonderful paper from Paper Tree, but she's an ex-metamour and I can't figure out which paper it is that she gets, and I don't want to talk to her. Frustrating.