I can't believe how much I'm enjoying waking up and getting out of bed, now that I'm not going to that toxic work environment. Things are going pretty well right now; I'd like to find the energy to start working out again, but I'm not pushing right now. I'm so excited to start the new job; I timed it and it was a 4 minute drive to/from my place. It's a little bit of a annoyance in the morning because I have to deal with one way roads, so basically I have to drive past it to get to it, but I think there should be some back roads I don't know about that would help with that.
In, I don't have a job, problems: my game has a patch coming through this morning, which means I won't be able to play for an hour or so. THE HORROR. F1 is finished until March 2023. I think I'm going to watch some old seasons and the tech show on the streaming service is really cool, so I'll keep learning about the sport. Just waiting for the next 2 books of a sci-fi series I started to come in from the library. I have a project to read all of the Hugo Award winners and I just finished "The 3 Body Problem" by Cixin Liu. It was really good and I truly enjoyed reading it, which surprised me b/c I would called it very hard core technical sci-fi.
One of my mental health battles is that I am a big time disassociator. It's a hard thing to fight against, b/c of the nature of the beast. Plus, as a coping mechanism, it's really good at it's job. One of my favorite online therapists just called the mechanism "brilliant" and that you have to acknowledge that it is, before you can even start dismantling the habit. After finding out about the mass shooting at another queer club in Colorado, I was well into disassociating about it and just kinda not dealing with my feelings about it. Then, the account for Pulse Orlando posted about it. I completely broke down in tears, sadness, anger, and loads of other emotions I'm not sure I have the words for. Pulse happened in my first year of running Pride for my small city, a week before the festival. We had our Pride drag pageant the night after. I have a picture I got that Monday morning, purely b/c of where I live and by accident: the city workers were on our square to pull the flags down to half mast, while the banners for the festival were being put up. I came under a lot of pressure to cancel, I had to sit through a meeting with lots of city, police, and FBI representatives, the city pulled the approved permit and I didn't get it back until Thursday at 6 pm (tents were coming in that Friday morning, so I had to have a conversation about "what are the fines for setting up on the city square w/out a permit), the emails I got from people offering security and their own guns, creating a security plan with guarded lists of volunteer information and a safe space to run to (another caveat is not every volunteer is out to their family, so we had to be careful about who was called or how the person was identified in an emergency)...I had forgotten how absolutely hellish that week was.
My BFF, who is a queer person and a pastor, called me to tell me that he had been asked to speak at a vigil and how quickly that had happened (it was the day after the night of the shooting). I just said, "We've gotten so very good at vigils". We were both stunned at how truly callous me saying that seemed. And all of this **waving around at previous paragraphs** is me as a grown ass adult with access to therapy, decent mental health, maturity, and emotional regulation, and how hard it is for me. And this society asks children to deal with it, all the time. It was too much yesterday, but I tried to ride it out as best I could.
�