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atreya300 · 3 years

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Slenderman and Creating Real Tulpas

I remember a couple of years ago finding out about Slenderman. It was so creepy that I looked into it a lot, especially when I heard the theory about Slenderman being a Tulpa. As if he wasn’t creepy enough just by being a made up story on the Internet, kids were killing other kids, or stabbing other kids, in order to “please Slenderman”. Clearly a game that they had invented and taken deadly seriously.

A Tulpa is an intended hallucination which can be sentient and have its own thoughts and personality. It is (according to the Tulpa Community, but not, I may add, folkloric legend) only seen by the person who created it, who has done so by prolonged periods of thinking solely about what the tulpa looks like, talks like, moves like etc, thus developing, in essence, another person who is sharing their body and mind, but functions as a separate personality. We know of lucid dreaming, as I have often done it myself. We’re aware that our brains are more than capable of producing extremely real and vivid hallucinations.

So is it entirely impossible that if enough people all put enough thought power into the creation of the same, singular individual, that a tulpa could be formed which could break free of the constraints of individual minds and be a person all of its own, with its own free will and the power to manipulate others? I believe it is possible. Call me crazy. My tin foil hat is firmly in place. It’s hilarious really when you consider that I laughed down the Flat Earthers, yet here I am saying that it’s possible to create an imaginary friend who can turn into a mind-bending, master manipulator.

I didn’t have many friends growing up. So I was one of the kids who didn’t mind admitting that I had invented an imaginary friend. His name was Bill and he was based off of Bill from ‘Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’ because I was obsessed with that movie. I would talk to him whilst walking home from school alone, ask him what he would do in my place during different situations that I was struggling with and he always had an answer that I imagined. I would say, “Bill, do you think [insert boyfriend name here] is a dick?” and in my head he would instantly say, “Hell yeah he is, you need to dump his ass!”. Of course, I never once thought that I had created another person. It was my imaginary friend. In my head. Made up by me. Well, me and Alex Winter. His instant “responses” was just my own subconscious mind telling me what I really, truly felt, without having to consciously think about it.

Having perused the Tulpa Community it seems to be an extremely dangerous rabbit hole. For one, what they are describing as “tulpas”, at best, mostly seem to be an adult version of an imaginary friend and at worst, a real mental health issue, possibly Dissociative Identity Disorder which is incredibly serious and is being passed off as something that is perfectly normal and almost a uncommon achievement to be able to create a tulpa, rather than the reality which is that there is real medical and psychological help out there for cases such as DID and it should certainly not be explained away as a deliberately induced imaginary friend who will solve all your problems for you. Passing it off as such could potentially make the case even worse. I’m not a psychologist. I’m just using common sense. If you cultivate something, it grows.

So. I have made a decision that I don’t buy into the Tulpa Community. There are also a lot of comments on YouTube videos and forums that are quite blatantly people who are full of absolute shit and others who are just clearly attention seeking. I thoroughly enjoyed the brilliant sarcastic responses to those comments.

Now let’s get serious (ish). Bear with me. Let’s get back to the theory of many people being able to collectively produce a tulpa.

As I said before, I became obsessed with Slenderman. I watched videos (all of Marble Hornets), read newspaper articles, looked at pictures, read stories, until he became my every waking thought. After a week and a half I developed sensations such as paranoia, racing heart, dizziness and the feeling of constantly being watched by something just out of the corner of my eye. I began having horrific nightmares and would wake up drenched in sweat. I stopped being able to lucid dream and wake myself up and was forced to play out the nightmares, helpless. It got to the point where I didn’t want to sleep. The times that my boyfriend had blessedly snored loudly enough to wake my conscious brain, I sat up in bed, exhausted, trying desperately to keep my eyes open and not fall back to sleep. Every shadow in the bedroom seemed to resemble Slenderman and I was convinced that as soon as the lights got dim or it was dark, he was there in the shadows waiting. I stopped going to bed before my boyfriend. I didn’t want to be in the house alone.

Looking back, naturally it all seems totally stupid. Me, a grown 35 year old, scaring myself silly because of a kids’ story on the internet. But what if it really is possible to create a tulpa by using enough collective subconscious power? Thousands of people in the world at the time were reading those same stories and scaring themselves silly like I was. If it was possible to create a tulpa, Slenderman and his fame would most certainly warrant it.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with the 80’s movie ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’, the main bad guy/killer is Freddy Kruger, a demon (who was a bloke who killed kids and then got burned in a fire by their fucked-off parents, then he came back from the dead in peoples’ dreams, as a...you know what, I don’t fucking actually really know what kind of thing Freddy is) who kills people in their dreams. Enough people get to know about him and he suddenly can break free of only being in their dreams and can exist in the real world, killing whomever he chooses in reality. Freddy, is a tulpa. He existed in reality, purely because all the kids talked about him, described him to each other, then dreamed about him, which cemented him more in their brains, until he became a reality. By what was, if I remember correctly, the 407th film featuring Freddy, ‘Freddy vs Jason’ the townsfolk had worked out that the only way to defeat Freddy, was to pretend he didn’t exist. No one was allowed to talk about him, no one could mention his name, and anyone who dreamed about him was given dream suppression pills so they ceased dreaming altogether (boy didn’t I crave Hypnocil during my Slenderman nights). In this way, Freddy became weak and the town was safe (for a while - Stage Right - freaky hockey-mask-wearing-dude-with-mommy-issues).

My point is that from my personal point of view, the Tulpa Community are people who have really good imaginations, like myself and are doing nothing more than imagining another person. They are not “creating” a tulpa. Not in the sense that I think they think they are anyway. I sort of feel like a tulpa is akin to a golem who is created to protect someone or something and is capable of physical destruction in the real world.

I digress. Touching on Slendy for the podcast is something I’ve wanted to do for a while now, but I’ve hummed and hawed because, let’s face it, I’m scared. Slenderman did become a bit too real for me, even if it was in my head and my mind playing tricks on me, but it put me through sheer terror, I was legitimately scared of my own shadow so opening this can of worms is a big deal for me, even if it seems utterly stupid for a grown woman to feel that way. If two young girls can pretend that killing their friend as a “sacrifice to Slenderman” is real, then who’s to say if enough people genuinely hallucinated Slendy and his creepy, murderous personality, that other people could not be compelled to kill? He would become his own person. I’m a tin-foil hat wearing silly girl who believes a lot of ridiculous things (except Flat Earth, you guys are wrong - just saying), but from a mass hallucination point of view, I do genuinely think this could be plausible. And by delving back into this research, not only am I opening up the likelihood of scaring myself silly, into seeing shit that isn’t there, I would also have to be held (partially) responsible for creating the master Slenderman that wipes out the world by making people kill each other. Hmph. And Ted Bundy thought he had some great ideas.

Also, “Tulpamancy” is a thing. Although not according to the Tibetians, where the tulpa originated. Funny that. Almost as if it’s a made up word. (It is. By the Tulpa Community.)

As for the pretend “Tulpa Community”? Some of these people envision their tulpas as characters from ‘My Little Pony’. Make of that what you will. I wouldn’t personally be taking career and life advice off of a fucking horse. All I’m saying.

#slenderman #mystery #weird #tulpa #monster #murder

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seenashwrite · 6 years

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Dearest Nash, I've touched on this before in (I believe) in a discussion re: why some mainstream fics get oodles of notes while more original ones do not, *but* I wanted to get a bit more specific here. There are certain writers here whose writing has a definite vibe to it (if you will) that separates their work from others, and your name is one of the first that comes to mind. Bear with me, because trying to detail what makes your writing stand out is difficult while trying to articulate a Q

^ this is a gif with parts 2 - 4, just FYI

Hmmm… this is a bit of a brain buster. But I can answer it, and I think succinctly, maybe with a touch of that Spidey sense you mention:

Thank you for your inquiry, hope that helps!

I kid. But this is a brain-turner. And a characteristic which, like you say, ain’t limited to me. I’d honestly throw comedians under this umbrella, too, not because I’m necessarily gunning for a laugh every time, but because it’s pretty much their job to take a “basic” (a tenet or fact of life or present reality or whatever) and present the observation with a twist. I think of storyteller comedians specifically, your Patton Oswalt-s, Maria Bamford-s, Kathy Griffin-s, and John Mulaney-s.

So if I can sum up, assuming I’m tracking with you, what you’re more or less driving at with the “how” is this –> Is there anything beyond simply personality, or an auto-pilot thought cascade (for lack of better terminology) that contributes? Are there things someone could do/be proactive about, to perhaps cause this same sort of reaction to happen in their brain?

I think there just might be.

Folks reading this, let me ask you a question, and you cannot look it up:

What was the name of the Sherpa guide who led Sir Edmund Hillary up Mount Everest?

His name was Tenzing Norgay.

Nash, what in the name of the frozen corpse of George Mallory does this have to do with Lion’s question?

I shall tell you.

My father told me that fact when I was quite young, so young I legit couldn’t even ballpark my age for you. The context was that having little facts tucked away in your brain may come in handy. Not in a Jeopardy kind of way, more in a conversational way. I’ve no idea why the man thought the Sherpa guide who led Hillary up Mt. Everest would ever come up during a conversation with enough regularity to justify my knowing that fact (aside from him randomly quizzing me throughout my life) but hey, I guess it just did.

But speaking of Lil’ Nash, the situation for her was that she was the eldest of all the Nash litter by miles… like seven or eight years, I’m not bothering to check. So I had a lot of alone time, and my grandmother was my chief babysitter, so prior to kindergarten and then til I was in about second grade (so: all day long during the week, then every weekday after she picked me up from school), I was pretty much always at her house. Yeah, there were toys, but not a lot to do. And I’d read. I’d been reading on my own for a decent while, not because I was some prodigy but because my dad read to me *constantly* when Lil’ Nash was Itty-Bitty Nash, and it “took”. My mom also, every time she went to the grocery store always - and I mean always - brought back a book for me. It might’ve been an Archie comic—-

Mandatory #fuck the CW’s Riverdale tag

—-or a Babysitter’s Club, or Sweet Valley High, Judy Blume, Madeleine L’Engle, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, you get my point. Some small paperback. It would piss Dad off because he’s a cheap bastard and two buck books once or twice a month were really gonna cut into the savings [eyeroll] but also, in a way, because I’d kill it in a half day/a day. Wouldn’t put it down. After awhile, I started writing my own silly little kid stories, then - and this is where the creative writing love came about - I started writing soap operas for my Barbies. (When I was older - like, 5th grade? 6th grade, maybe? - none of my peers were still playing with Barbies, and I got made fun of when, at a sleepover, they saw my stash. And I was like - No, no, no. Those aren’t for playing. That’s my cast.)

Time went on, and when I was bored at post-church lunch/dinners, I would also read the old encyclopedias at my grandmother’s, the ones from the late ‘60s/early ‘70s that she had for my mom and my aunt. As I got even older and became fascinated with rooting through the boxes in gran’s basement, looking at all the cool old clothes, I stumbled upon my aunt’s collection of Whoa-Hooooo Shit There’s No Way My Grandparents Knew You Read These books. Those kinda Harlequin-esque ones, except my aunt’s tastes run close to mine, none were the same shtick with different covers, shmultzy-sappy romance, there was always some sort of intrigue along with the sexy times, and she also had, like, every legit V. C. Andrews (meaning: not the ones from the ghostwriter, this was way before her death) book.

What is my point? I read a LOT. Now-a-days, other than fanfic (which… straight up: I don’t read a lot of that, either. I peace out on probs 80% of it before the third-to-fifth paragraph. It’s gotta sell me fast, yo) I haven’t read fiction in probably, oh…. 12 years? I think the last ones were the first couple Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Wait, no! I lie! I read the 50 Shades books when I was traveling 2x/wk for a job about 4 years ago, and I needed the laughs. It worked. Oh my days, that woman can’t write. The screenplay might’ve been worse, it goes her, then Buckleming, then everyone else. It’s bad. In any event, past decade or so, it’s more historical stuff and true crime and science stuff and all that old fart jazz.

Okay, so that’s #1: Read. And not just anything, be well-read, and that doesn’t mean developing some level of expertise, by “well” I’m saying to cover the spread. You’re building your tool kit, is all. You won’t use most of it, but it’s nice to have options. You also don’t always have to get this stuff from reading now-a-days, because podcasts. Cover the spread there, too. Lemme look at my bookmarks….

[Spongebob narrator voice: A few moments later]

I’m back. Science - Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe; General current stuff without being news - CGP Grey’s Hello Internet; current events with shittons of pop culture, past and present - Greg Proops’ Smartest Man in the World; fun history stuff - The Dollop; entertainment stuff - How Did This Get Made.

#2: Keep a notebook with you and jot down turns-of-phrase that spark something in your brain - things you read on websites, on twitter, in articles, things you hear people say (real life, TV, movies, podcasts), and write it. Don’t snap a pic with your phone or make a note in your phone. There are studies behind this, I’m not hunting them down, you’ll just have to trust me, but there are, and it goes to being reflexive, a brain “muscle memory” thing, if you will. You’re not doing it to plagiarize, you’re doing it to dissect it, kind’ve like you did with the example you gave on me —> went from punch action to punch spiked with booze to a punch with a spiked gauntlet.

Which leads to #3: Mental dictionary. I have a large vocab repository, and it stems from the tons of reading - I stop and look up stuff if I either don’t know it, or it’s used in such a way that I think they’ve got it wrong and want to double-check that maybe there’s another usage I don’t know - and also stems from a drive to combat the (still fairly thick) deep South drawl I can’t kick, and not for lack of trying. But see, I couldn’t have whipped out that progression if I weren’t aware that one definition of “spike” is “to add alcohol to”, or of the common shtick in stories of spiked punch like at high school proms typically, or knew about the existence of spiked gauntlets / old school armor.

And I guarantee you that a good chunk of people didn’t really “get it”, and just thought “Nash Be Nashin’, that nutty gal”. So they “get it” on that level, but don’t Get. It., if you see what I’m saying. And that’s fine. Maybe it got something cranking in the back of their mind and it’ll hit ‘em in the middle of the night, or they’ll be watching Game of Thrones or something, see a gauntlet and be like “Oh goddamnit, I just got a throw-a-way one-liner from three years ago” and have a chuckle.

Related, re: looking stuff up and things that people “get”? I didn’t know fuck-all about Twilight, but it seemed of import to the folks around 5 years younger than me, the Nashlings wouldn’t shut up about it, so I got a good working knowledge of it. Same with Harry Potter, and through it I got to “know” J.K. Rowling, who I find to be an exceptional writer, so that was great, and I’ve watched the movies for the most part over the years at Christmastime, and I don’t give the first shit about what “house” I’m in, nor do I care about what Patronus I’d fart, but I have a working knowledge of what those are, and horcruxes and who Snape and Voldie are, you get my point. I can keep up. But to do it, I had to take the time to look it up. One thing I would not trade for gold is Michael Sheen chewing the goddamn scenery in that battle segment from the last Twilight movie. Have I watched the movie? No. But that scene is the shit. And that baby CGI is horrific on several subtle levels. And not-so-subtle. I’ve digressed.

Back to those notes: So if you’ve got these notes jotted, you might see something else and think “I feel like that could’ve been snappier…. why do I think that….” And you’ve got a resource at your disposal, that little notebook. Hell, jot that thing down - things you think could be done better. I have in many documents a highlight around chunks of scenes for my big dog story where it says in bold above or below “DO BETTER”. Meaning: there’s a better way to get from A to B, but I’m just not quite there yet. I’m pretty quick on the uptake and can crank out something snappy on the fly (like say, in CASPN chat or when banging out a short reply or thank you note) but there’s definitely times I gotta slap a DO BETTER on it and walk away til that snappy something-or-other light bulb goes off.

Here’s a recent one where I backtracked, matter of fact - that noir spoof thing I wrote? Along with my co-writer, Moscato? There was a line that I couldn’t hit with a good zinger, so I just said moments were going by like a fat hamster on a wheel, which is cute, but not really grooving with the setting/the vibe. Less tipsy, when I was correcting some inelegant formatting and a misspelling [sigh], I went “Oh! Why didn’t this occur to me last night? Right. Wine.” So the line is now about moments dragging like a rolling donut with a copper on its tail. Get it? The cop’s a fat ass. The donut-cop stereotype.

…….Fine, it ain’t my best, but it fits better. Moving on.

And this leads nicely into #4, and a specific tip I can impart - assuming you’ve got a passable-to-high level of vocabulary in your tool belt, practice messing around with making nouns into verbs, and twisting random stuff into descriptors and using bizarre words/things in metaphors/analogies. Like, I say “adulting” quite a bit. Ali - @littlegreenplasticsoldier - I thiiiink was writing recently about Sam being drunk, and he’s a tall wobbly Jenga tower on his last Jenga. Going back to the noir, pulpy detective style, try messing with the whole “S/he was like a ___ that ____”. Add on to stuff that’s well known - He was like a dog with a bone, if the bone was a ____ and he was a ____ and we were in a ____. (I have *nothing* in mind to fill those blanks, by the way, feel free to twist it into sumpin’)

What else…. okay, here’s a #5: In drafts, let yourself wander, and see what kicks out. It can be fueled by silliness or anger, but I don’t reckon you’re gonna get the “snappy” you’re aiming for if you’re down in the dumps and going full-court-press angst. The best stuff, IMO, comes from the space in between goofy and pissed, and that is The Land Of Snark. You can always re-style it to bend more dry or wistful should you need to, certainly, depending on the situation.

Have a sample of a primo Nash Digression that was fueled by ire in a recap from Season 12 (episode 19). I had said - RE: the random inclusion of the character Joshua, which still pisses me off because they burned a character that held massive potential for future stuff as he’d been shown to be the only angel with direct access to Chuck, so, y’know, that could never come in handy, like ever again in the series, right? - the following.

Mandatory pre-emptive #fuck Dabb

[Spongebob narrator voice] A few moments later —>

On god, I have no idea where that came from, and here’s where we go back to ol’ Spidey up there, because end of the day?

All that other stuff’s the foundation, sure, but there’s always gonna be the weird iggy, the thing that can’t be learned or taught, whatever the quirky synapse is that fires off in my/our brains. In my experience, it’s an ADD-ish sort of jam mixed with the Nostradamus effect. Meaning, (A) we’re at Level 10, rapid fire thought processing >50% of the time, and (B) throw out enough stuff for long enough, some of it’s going to stick. And I whiff it plenty. Multiple times in CASPN chat I’ve been like “Whoo, tough room” when something falls flat.

A specific example: @mrswhozeewhatsis - and I think you saw this, but anyone else seeing this may not have - gave probably the most fantastic analogy I’ve seen regarding the whole “getting it” thing, and while it was on the topic of meaty plots that get too far into the weeds (my specialty) and how it can lessen appeal to a broader audience, it still applies here.

She said “Sometimes, when I’m reading something of yours, I feel like there’s a joke I’m missing. It’s like watching Spaceballs without having seen Star Wars.” I say that to say - nobody’s gonna land references that cover the spread 100% of the time. And, y’know, fine. I figure maybe it’ll prompt someone to do a quick google for - well, let’s use Spaceballs. Most folks will no doubt get the Star Wars part, but maybe not Spaceballs. Maybe they’ll check it out, find something they enjoy. Or learn a new word. Or get a brainstorm for a story. Who knows?

Last tip: Don’t actively mimic anyone’s style. Much fail. And I don’t only mean because if they’re on a social Venn diagram with you, would likely recognize themselves in your stuff——

Takes a moment to wave to the peeps still trying with me! #bless your hearts

—–but because it’s fucking hard. I did it broadly on the noir thing, that’s not a hard thing, to homage generalities, but the way I’m messing with doing this on that silly Princess Bride series? Purposefully styling it like Goldman? It’s good challenging and all, and it is making it feel more in the groove with the book/movie, but I have to be in the right frame of mind or it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard, and when I have pushed it, then gone back, it’s sloggy, soggy garbage.

I say all that to say: it’s an amalgam of brain-wiring/personality, and world/life perspective(s), and knowledge acquired over time. The first just is; the second will evolve in myriad ways, maybe for the better, maybe for the worse; the last is the one where you/we have control, we can fill bucket after bucket of information, and the well won’t ever run dry.

Sorry this took so long. I kept adding and subtracting. This is the edited version, if you can believe it. Welcome to Nash Brain. 😉

#Dear Nash #becominglionhearted #Writing Advice #and / or #Writing Stuff #maybe #Writing Tips #unsure #we'll go with all of it #ah I know #Writing Style #that's the ticket #Queueby Dooby Doo #Dad's on a blog post and #he hasn't been queued in a few days

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rhythmic-idealist · 6 years

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A short while ago, when I was loudly narrating a barrage of “everything that’s making me upset right now,” @commanderfraya posed the question (paraphrased, here, from something like three separate questions in a set of about six) “what is the path I can set myself on that is going to be the thing that clears my Soul Gem, instead of just hypothetically caring about so much that I put out and work for an abstract idea of good and shrivel up into a Grief Seed?”

(@commanderfraya, I do not expect you to read this through. I do not expect ANYONE to read this through. It’s tagged to you as a thank-you, and a very, very heartfelt one.)

With that in mind, I’m thinking out loud about the life plan, and because I’m really, really excited about what I’m coming up with you all can come along with me.

(The place where this started, when I wrote that sentence, is not where it ended up. I want to reread this, connect all the little dots I’m missing or refusing to, and get that excited again.)

Cons of studying music therapy:

have to contend with potentially ableist professors and readings

with certainty, have to contend with some ableist professional relationships

the culture around studying music therapy (at least in my school, which was very “we’ll know if you’re one of us,” and there were other things too) is what burned me out so hard last time

I don’t want to be a classical music performer, and I have to study classical music performance

Pros of studying music therapy:

get to be a music therapist. The fact that this makes me as absolutely giddy as it does is conclusive proof imo that this is actually what I want to do, but wait, if that’s not proof enough that I love and feed off of music therapy as a passion, there’s more:

get the credibility to run a music therapy student podcast. I would be SO EXCITED about this guys, you cannot believe, I started sitting here and planning it out and then went “wait. shit. I have ZERO credibility.” (that’s why this post is happening.) and if I do the podcast NOW, the inevitable question of my involvement with music therapy will come up, and then the inevitable question of why I left after a semester, and I’m not prepared to answer that publicly yet. but listen. discussions with various disability advocates, or just friends, or professors, about recent papers published. interviews with local music therapists. interviews with musicians, too, and psychologists, and social workers, child development professionals, people who manage NICUs, and so on and so on. but I’m REALLY excited about 1) interviews with music therapists and 2) chances to broadcast, to the music therapy community at large, my take on current research.

I will have accommodations and a diagnosis on file. saying “I know I have some trouble with communication, and won’t know it’s an assignment unless you tell me ‘this is an assignment, and this is the due date,’ and that’s why I don’t have the thing you expected me to have this week” should really be enough, but I’ve learned from experience that if you say “I’m diagnosed with autism and-” people will IMMEDIATELY go “oh, so you need-” and repeat back what I just said.

The big, looming spectre over all of this:

things I can’t publish on Tumblr. There’s a possibility I will tangle very scarily with the administration of the school I studied at. There’s a possibility that doing this will impact my future career, at other schools.

So the pros win, genuinely, because I think all of the cons can be solved. The answer to the first two is “I love advocating for myself and others, and will be damn loud about it” and “I will have accommodations and a diagnosis on file.”

The answer to the third is I will just have to pull through and make it my own education and my own take on everything anyway and that’ll be enough, and because I will have accommodations and I will be good at what I do, I will have the grades to get through and the quality of work for a letter of rec and that is all that matters,

The answer to the fourth is that I’m growing more disciplined in classical practice, and this summer is my test run for that. It’s proving doable and rewarding. I love how my bass sounds on Bach chorales.

THE PLAN, then, and this is the part that’s just really good:

Finish my AA in music. I’m going into my second semester of that, and will, after it, have two more before I have a degree in music (with a focus on classical performance) and will transfer.

One major, major complaint was “in the meantime people are still being deported and homeless and suicidal and every other fucking thing I care about and I’m really going to be, with all that going on, with the time I could spend dedicated to fixing these problems, with the knowledge I could have been a social worker by next year if I started down that path already - I’m going to turn away from at least some opportunities to volunteer and to take to the streets to be a musician?”

So when I turn 21, I’m going to become a CASA volunteer.

This requires me to be really, really reliable and take a child’s life and future into my hands. The fortunate thing is that I know for a fact I can do this. I am putting in pointed and concerted effort to become a reliable person. It is hard work, and I am going to be able to keep doing it.

I have a job offer, part-time, for the preschool social-emotional-development-through-music program with which I’m currently interning.

Everything, literally everything, takes a backseat to:

the CASA job.

the college work - AA-central coursework first, and optionally ASL, because my mother is hard of hearing and losing her hearing progressively and it is that important.

the part-time job.

This is going to be fulfilling because protesting, other volunteerism, and political work is still going to be happening but in the backseat position it has been in, but the difference is that I will be doing a world of concrete good in my work and as a CASA volunteer. (The rest is what I’ve scrolled back up to add, because yeah, I cut this short.)

So then what? Then I study music therapy, which means I’ve moved away from home. What happens then?

The music therapy podcast. I organize it by myself, because I want to, though I frequently invite other students to collaborate on episodes.

Or I organize it with a friend, if I find a friend like Amy again. Not saying "Amy who” here for anonymity, but she has been my best friend for a long, long time.

Work. How am I working? Is music freelancing enough? Do I want to take a break before my transfer, and if so, how to I spend it meaningfully? Do I want to take a different route after all, study social work, spend TEN years doing that before I come back to music therapy? That could be good. I could love that. I would miss the music therapy podcast, and have to not think of social work as a transitional phase, to be committed to it, but there’s a balance between understanding that life can involve multiple careers and being committed to the current one.

It’s a job I would love, and a way I would love myself for the next ten years.

Every, every single thing I say is pointing me toward social work. It really, really is, and I could do it. The only thing I would regret is change. That’s - the feeling that I’m giving something up now, that I’ll never know what would have happened if I kept following the path I’m on.

Maybe I don’t need to know. Maybe I need not to, that’s why people change paths, ever, that’s why I’m not doing a million other paths that I’ll also never know because I’m not considering them. I just need to decide if the next ten years of music therapy are a loss.

The next fourteen years - four years for college. It’s a lot of college! I’m going to be doing that much anyway.

I’m.... not sure they are. I think that sticking to music therapy just because I’m here - that feels like a loss. I don’t think it gets me anything.

I think all roads lead to social work.

I think I could love the person I am as a social worker, be a good one, and I love kids, and I love human beings in general, I would be so, so happy, I swear to God.

It’s maybe the first time I’ve made a choice my mom will vehemently disagree with as the right one for me, in a way I will care about, and will feel as almost a strict mandate that it has to be another way, in my life.

I’m 20. That has to happen eventually.

I want to be a social worker. My throat is tight and my stomach is sick but it’s what I want to do, and those feelings are the anxiety I get and need to address eventually about being wrong about anything, about having been wrong and changing it, about the idea that I just need to act like I knew things already, all the time, or that I did, and I’m stupid for not doing them, and I’m conforming to expectations, and then I get sad about it instead of fixing it.

It’s an anxiety about having been wrong. I can’t twist this to assuage it.

So I just gotta not. And do it anyway.

Good thing I have therapy tomorrow.

There’s an unplanned digression from the plan. I’ve separated it out.

If I evaluate my position as a student once I turn 21, and I genuinely know I cannot commit the time to be a CASA volunteer responsibly, will my life still be fulfilling without it?

Yes. Working on it, but I think that the preschool program is that important.

Then again, I’m doing the preschool program right now (albeit unpaid), and right now is when I had the crisis of feeling like I’m not giving enough to the things that I actually care about, that I am shirking good I could and genuinely want to be doing, and would feel better for doing.

(I feel- trapped, genuinely, when I am choosing or feel like I am choosing not to help something that I should care, and do care, enough to help- like why have I trapped myself in this position, there are lots of people who care more about being musicians than about being activists and I am not one of them, so why am I pretending to be, why when I both genuinely, viscerally hate the feeling of not helping and also other people hurt for the lack of me helping, there’s no good coming from this choice for even me emotionally and I am making it only because- what, it might do good for someone else, it’s a narrative I want to fill? that’s the conflict, and I’m getting off track/backtracking us a lot, but I should have filled you in on that earlier)

To the less Madoka-literate of you, and only those who don’t mind spoilers: this is where I take a brief digression to talk about the Soul Gem and Grief Seed metaphor. Soul Gems give you your power, and allow you to do good in the world, but you are required to do some things that are arguably selfish - the good you are doing has to be motivated by healing yourself, in that way that Phoebe Buffay hates, and we learn (in watching my favorite character try to refuse this) that this does NOT negate a good deed, and no amount of martyrdom or pushing yourself aside makes the deed itself any better - to keep your Soul Gem cleansed.

If it goes for too long without being cleansed - if you try to do a lot of good, and refuse to take the rewards of it, or you expend too much energy doing the kind of good that comes without things that are rewarding for you - you turn into a Grief Seed. This is bad.

So that’s what I need to work out. Is this going to be good enough, if all I am doing is music and the part-time job.

When I am paid for the part-time job, I think it will feel better, and I will feel more comfortable making some of the grander, more permanent contributions to the curriculum that I’ve danced around for right now because I didn’t want to give away everything I want to do and then have my boss own it. She and I talked about rights today; I retain rights to activities and lesson plans that I create, even if she keeps using them when we part ways, and it won’t be interpreted as me stealing her program.

The PLAN, again.

My time is prioritized to school, teaching/work, and CASA.

I finish my AA in music performance.

I transfer to study music therapy.

I keep working part time, hopefully, while studying music therapy.

Fuck. That means I need to study at the college I left. I don’t know yet if that will be an option, once the thing I can’t publish here has gone down.

I should tell my boss I don’t know if I can make more than a one-and-a-half year commitment as a paid employee, because I might be leaving. Music therapy is an extremely uncommon major, and if I do not take it at exactly the school at which I took it, I will need to travel very far away.

Fuck.

Fuck indeed.

Okay. [Long, heavy sigh]. Okay.

I don’t want to get an undergraduate in music performance.

I don’t. I don’t it would burn me out that would be a thing that would turn me into a Grief Seed. I would hate it so much and I would feel useless and I do not enjoy putting myself on a stage for classical performance because I do not feel good about it, or like I am good enough at it, and I’m not interested in fixing that enough for another two years of school.

If I’m going to switch majors I need to do that now. I am not prepared to switch majors for a semester, change my mind, and come back to music. I don’t want to walk myself into a hole where it feels like the major I switch to is one I’m trapped to. I’ve done that to myself almost already.

If I switch majors, the likely candidates are:

Social Work.

Really social work’s the one. But, for argument’s sake:

Child Development.

Jazz. More on that below.

“More on that below:”

Or I could just stop. I could just stop, and study jazz, and work for the preschool program, and bring in money as a freelance musician for a while. I could just fucking stop and live for several years while doing this, and see if the finances are good enough that I can pour my soul into politics and activism and all the work I want to be doing. I’m okay with studying jazz without being in school. I’m good enough to be a freelance musician now, and with that and a part time job at the preschool I can sustain myself. Musician jobs, when you look in the right places, pay well. I would have time.

I don’t like that I know I’m ignoring something.

Thoughts right now, that aren’t as nice as they seemed when I started this post. I’ve worked some things out, so I refuse to say we’re back at square one. In fact, we’re not. I’m scrolling back up, editing, and making more lists.

#dear diary

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