siena-sevenwits

[siena-sevenwits]

I love the old timey phrase "you forget yourself". bro that was so impolite like do you even know who you are rn

#it’s a favourite of mine

[siena-sevenwits]

I joke, but everybody is welcome to hang out here. I don’t have a DNI. if you think some of my thoughts are cool and interesting, and think some of them are taking the Christian thing a little far, that’s cool, you’re free to just take the stuff you like and ignore the rest of it. but maybe don’t be surprised when the Christian thing rears its head in a way that’s less subtle, because it is behind all of it.

#This is my outlook exactly.

[siena-sevenwits]

haha bro you fell for my epic prank where i used my body to shield you from a fatal injury so that i could collapse into your arms and be held by you as you push my hair out of my eyes and tell me i'm going to be okay and to just hold on in a panicked voice while i laugh because i'm delirious from blood loss and tell you not to cry, even though we are both very much crying. you got totally tricked dude.

[siena-sevenwits]

When I was younger and researching the autism diagnosis criteria and symptoms, I thought “oh I couldn’t POSSIBLY be autistic.” Because when I read “takes everything literally” I thought it literally meant EVERYTHING and I was like “I don’t take EVERYTHING literally, just most things!” And I just realized the other day that it didn’t actually mean EVERYTHING and that was an overstatement.

#oh. oh. My next optometrist vision’s going to be different. (I do wear glasses when needed for distance but - um. Yeah #I’ve always done my best guess using reason rather than vision alone and maybe that’s not a good idea.

[siena-sevenwits]

Please be wary of imposing things that have worked as good spiritual habits for you onto the lives of other people as law.

I'm afraid even the best teachers and pastors have done this but it's precisely because these habits were born out of sincere desire that it worked for them, and it's admirable to have strong self discipline and dedication and wish to share such habits as ideas with other people but please don't let anyone tell you that you are sinning if you don't:

Read the bible at a specific time of day

Read through the whole bible every year

Never miss church ever (even if you're sick)

Schedule your travel so that you never miss church

Avoid being in a room alone with someone of the opposite sex

Have a bible that's literally physically in bad repair

Many, many other things I've heard people speak as if they were law

#sacred

[siena-sevenwits]

i have too much joie de vivre for this

#oh wow - I think I needed to read this. I do let insecurity about overstepping hood me back a lot #or I worry my enthusiasm might be taken as flirty/creepy/too much - but we miss a lot of the joys of community if we let those fears write #the script. obviously we need to check ourselves too #but it’s about finding that happy medium between consideration and the befriend instinct

[siena-sevenwits]

THIS CERTIFIES

that the Bearer has

PERMISSION

to make as much really terrible

BAD ART

as they need to make

and it’ll be

OKAY

(I have a Hugo Award and make a living drawing stuff, and I say it’s cool!)

Super Official Seal of Officialness

Ursula Vernon’s Certificate of Bad Artistry, for those days when it’s just not coming together.

[siena-sevenwits]

She let go of the breath she had consciously been holding.

#solitary giggle from Oliver Cromwell

[siena-sevenwits]

The average person writes 2.5 books in their lifetime. FALSE.

Brandon Georg Spiderson, who lives in a cave and writes twenty books before breakfast is an outlier and should not have been counted

#cfsbf #coreander's old books #solitary giggle from oliver cromwell

[siena-sevenwits]

.

#It's Sunday and I somehow made the world's most utterly perfect bowl of ramen and I feel like I somehow discovered the Lost Chord #because how can it ever be this good again. And yesterday I got to go to a professional production of The 3 Musketeers on rush tickets #and I am a theatre lover who seldom gets to see pro theatre because it's pricey so this was splendid! And my brother and I are driving #to evening Mass together and he's said he's willing to help me talk out something I'm trying to figure out with my writing #And all in all God is so kind it's crazy.

[siena-sevenwits]

I'm sure there are many more factors at play than merely the rise of trope publishing and booktok demand, but the older I get, the more content I am with the notion of just. never getting published?

at this current moment, posting my stories fanfic-style on some online platform for the select few who are already invested in them sounds 100 times more appealing and fulfilling than going through all the stress of getting traditionally or self- published only to never hit the shelves of a Barnes & Noble

#I've shifted this way too

[siena-sevenwits]

[sidles up to you in a dark parking lot]

Hey. Do you want elbow patches. Yeah I noticed the elbows of your sweater are worn through, I can fix that for you. I got tapestry yarn, loads of it, all different colours. Price? Depends on what you're offering. Homemade cookies? Yeah, I can work with that. Bring 'em tomorrow, same time, same place. Love you too, man. Love you too.

[siena-sevenwits]

Robin’s eggs. (American robin) May 2019.

[siena-sevenwits]

RECOVERY

I spent a lot of my life depressed without admitting it to myself and then i spent a year so depressed i could hardly make myself do the bare minimum to keep my body alive, and now it's about 3 years since i got up from that lowest point and while i am still struggling with myself things are objectively a lot better.

and i just want to put a couple things i've learned, both to remind myself of how far i've come, and in case any of what i've experienced helps anyone else.

You can't run from the darkness

When you're super depressed it's easy to focus on how much you don't want to be depressed. When everything is darkness you tend to wish you could escape that darkness.

but you can't. The darkness is all around you. You can't run away from it without running deeper into it.

instead, follow the light.

don't think of it as escaping depression, think of it as seeking joy. Don't run away from the darkness, walk toward any lights you can see.

At first it will be very small things. The taste of a food. The way your favorite color looks. A smell you like. For me one of the first things i could find to remind me of joy was the way a warm shower feels.

I would just stand in the shower and lean into the tiny, tiny joy of that feeling. I would describe it to myself, how it felt good, what about it felt good. It didn't cure me, it didn't make me less depressed, but it was a little point of joy to focus on, to breathe into like a tiny candle flame in my darkness.

I would memorize that feeling, so that later, when i felt like nothing ever brought me joy anymore, i could think, no, that's your depression lying to you, you felt joy, however small, right there in the shower just yesterday. And, maybe there is more somewhere else.

Even today, it's been a hard week, i'm feeling a lot of hopeless and helpless feelings clamoring away at me, but... i have spicy soup. And spicy soup is a NEW joy. I found spicy soup joy as i was following any little light i could out of the deepest part of my depression.

I never put hot sauce in soup before then. But today i am drinking the broth of a very spicy soup and as much as everything else is complicated and difficult and scary and dark, there is a bright mote of joy in this sip of spicy soup. And in the next one. And the next. I enjoy it, i love it, all the more that it is new, and if i had given up four years ago, i never would have known this small joy, this new favorite tiny thing.

Who knows what other little joys i may find?

If you have come to a place in life where you have lost the knowledge of how to feel joy, it is important to remember that feeling joy is like anything else in life. The more you practice, the better you get, the more of it you can do at higher levels.

And there are only so many minutes in the day. The more of them you spend acknowledging what feels good, the less of them will be left for feeling bad.

you can't escape the darkness by fleeing from it, but you can find the light by moving toward it.

Chop Wood Fetch Water

Another thing i learned was a truth about the exercise advice you always hear.

For where i am in my recovery now, common exercise has very little impact. I don't really get the endorphins people talk about, and i don't tend to feel better about myself after i work out unless i already feel pretty okay about myself to begin with. i don't mean to say there is no point in me exercising, but, i walk about ten miles a day holding onto 8 energetic dogs and i do a fair amount of lifting and bending and stuff for my job, and it's fine but it's not, like, doing a whole lot for me at this point in my recovery (tho i do think more recreational exercise will come back into play a stage or two on in my healing process)

HOWEVER

There was a year there where i was only getting out of bed to go to the bathroom. When i was only able to force myself to eat just enough each day to stay alive because i'd made a promise to myself, and that promise was almost all i had left.

and the right kind of exercise is what pulled me out of that.

the RIGHT kind.

See, someone close to me needed help with a physical job. That was an important part and why this method is known historically as some variation of Chop Wood Carry Water -- it's intensely physical, which is important, but also, it helps the people around you. These days our personal communities tend to not need wood copped and water carried the same way. But you can get the same effect helping someone move all their furniture, doing all the yard work for your friends and/or family, volunteering for a charity that builds housing for homeless people, SOMEthing physically taxing that helps people.

In my case, my aging father needed help re-shingling the roof. So i promised i'd help.

So i got up every morning because he was expecting me. And i climbed the ladder because he would see me if i didn't. And i lifted and carried and hammered and worked hard. It took a week of six to eight hour days.

Right away, the fact that it was helping someone else made it not matter so much that it didn't feel like it was helping me at first. I couldn't deny that i was doing something good, that my existence had positive meaning, however small.

But very soon, it changed something fundamental in my state of depression. You can't do physical labor in the sun 7 hours a day without drinking a bunch of water. Without working up an appetite. Without getting very tired at the end of the day.

See, i had been struggling to make myself drink enough water, i was fighting to make myself eat even one small meal's worth of food each day, and i couldn't get a good night's sleep to save my life. And these things all made my depression much much worse. You think you get sad or angry from skipping a meal, consider being chronically undernourished. You think your mental state is worse after pulling an all nighter, think about what never getting a good night's sleep does.

But a couple days into this job with my father, and suddenly i was hydrated, i was eating full meals, and i was sleeping soundly at night.

THAT is what pulled me out of that deepest part of my depression.

So in a way, it was exercise that saved me. But not how people often say "have you tried exercising?" More like pushing myself physically to the point that my body demanded the things that previously i couldn't get it to want for itself.

Instead of forcing myself to eat i was craving food. Instead of staying up to all hours and then tossing and turning, i was physically exhausted and slept early and hard. (and, weirdly, being physically exhausted was somehow a relief from being emotionally/mentally exhausted)

Lastly

Healing often isn't noticeable while you're doing it

"healing is a process" is something you hear a lot, but i think it's more helpful to say something like

"Healing is like growing your hair out from short to long. You can look in the mirror every day and not notice it happening. And even when you can tell for sure it's longer than it was, you still can't really do anything with it, and it may seem pointless. But then one day you can tie it back in a ponytail and you realize how much it's grown and how many options are open to you now and you're really glad you stuck with it"

Now excuse me while i go meditate on the joys of my remaining spicy soup.

#this is important #all kinds of health

[siena-sevenwits]

I don't think anyone really knows what it's meant to feel like to be human, and I think that's part of the reason why we keep telling the story of becoming human all the way through our history.

#oh my gosh #neverending storytellers

[siena-sevenwits]

Help! I mostly read classic lit growing up, and now my video game fanfiction reads like I was paid by the word.

[siena-sevenwits]

Suddenly struck by the need for a story about a Victorian lady naturalist who studies those cutesy Victorian flower fairies, but like, as a completely dead-serious scientific endeavor--just because they're adorable and feminine and impossibly twee doesn't mean they're not a vital component of the ecosystem, Bob.

#I love this! #And yes that's probably exactly how it would play out