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// Note: I just gave up halfway through writing this post. Now, I'd usually just delete it or put it in drafts. However, I haven't been posting on tumblr as much in the past month since having a baby, and something tells me it'd be salutary to fling something out here. Hello, I'm alive, having thoughts, squirming around making tiny marks on the wet sand of the universe

contemplating a 20h art teaching gig that I super do not feel qualified for but also feel excited to teach. (it'll probably fall through for reasons unrelated to me.) the specific thing I want to teach is "how to make something that looks good when you are bad"

I think this is a reasonable focus because the audience is largely programmers who at are a conference for something else, and I am someone who stopped actively developing technical skills in painting a while ago (I'm not good enough to have stopped, but I was no longer interested in the kind of project that demanded I be technically excellent) in favor of "just making things that looked beautiful to me"

in the week where I've been thinking about this class, I've been collecting the kind of painting (made by people who are good) that could have been made by people who are bad. not quite "my five year old could have made this" territory, but in "a person who has 10 hours of painting experience could paint this, if they could only think of it". There are many! (uh oh, as this post became more fleshed out and real-feeling, I slipped out of the lowercase register...) So, the course would be about how to think of it.

I'm not good at that, but I've thought a lot about it

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scrungly girl. scrunglrina. miss scrungles. scrunglebeast.

I'm relieved tumblr has a culture of calling cats 'scrungly' in an adoring way because I don't find newborns cute at all and would be kind of :| about being expected to find mine cute. but I am much more confident I can find her scrungly (positive)

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scrungly girl. scrunglrina. miss scrungles. scrunglebeast

I'm relieved tumblr has a culture of calling cats 'scrungly' in an adoring way because I don't find newborns cute at all and would be kind of :| about being expected to find mine cute. but I am much more confident I can find her scrungly (positive)

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a lot of writing by mothers for mothers is intensely offputting to me. it's the most emotionally presumptuous genre I've ever encountered. If you look for books or blog posts about pregnancy and childbirth, a good % of the wordcount is devoted to anticipating and soothing your feelings. ("you'll be anxious... you'll be excited... it's going to be okay"). I'm about to implode with misogyny

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I'm relieved tumblr has a culture of calling cats 'scrungly' in an adoring way because I don't find newborns cute at all and would be kind of :| about being expected to find mine cute. but I am much more confident I can find her scrungly (positive)

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me, doubtfully contemplating how much I'll want to cuddle the baby (rest assured I'll do it a lot – it doesn't seem hard or anything – I just don't know whether I'll want to): I'm already cuddling her all the time...

spouse, taking an earbud out: what?

me: I'm already cuddling her all the time. with my guts

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I read this and asked 81k what it was, and he said he wanted to process it a few more days before telling me. I said "okay" but also did the pelican baby meme irl: "judgmental girlfriend ear provide good support for secret. evil girlfriend very soft and comfort, perfect place to confide vulnerability"

Absolutely infuriating moment just now when I was journaling about “why am I not doing [thing that I supposedly want to be doing, and yet continue to not do]”, and when reading back the words I had written, it was painfully obvious that this the answer is textbook ressentiment, which I previous thought I was too mature and wise for. Completely bodied by myself.

This is exactly the sort of thing that journaling is supposed to accomplish, but doesn’t mean I can’t get a little grumpy when it does.

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gendered conflict in relationship my behated

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Thirty-seven-year-old bank employee Brian Terlaine is apparently spending his entire adult life avoiding any activity or decision that might give him the smallest bit of satisfaction until both of his parents have died.

Despite the fact that he is a grown man capable of forming relationships, seeking a job, or wearing any article of clothing he chooses, Terlaine has apparently opted to postpone any such choices until his entirely healthy parents Tom, 68, and Barb, 64, are no longer alive to second-guess or disapprove of them.

Full Story

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Made an egregiously stupid in hindsight mistake that wasted several hours of other people's time but it was a stereotypical woman mistake so maybe I can spin this as a transfem win

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never mind! this one is good

me out loud, on page 4 of tumblr drafts I'm clearing out: what are you talking about? oh, my god. shut up.

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me out loud, on page 4 of tumblr drafts I'm clearing out: what are you talking about? oh, my god. shut up.

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two bigender people awaiting a child, arguing over who gets to have the gender neutral parenting term

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ate solid food & went on a walk and i'm normal now

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I'm aware this is massively ungracious but

some time sago I posted art that I thought was pretty bad, because I obscurely felt that posting even bad art was good for me somehow (although now writing that out I find it hard to justify it. is it???)

and it's getting a bunch of circulation. I see the damned preview in my notes even though I'm not even the OP of the post (meaning it's getting linked somewhere, or people are coming to my reblog to get a minimal-commentary version). someone DMed me to tell me they'd buy a print of it if I ever made it available that way (I'm considering telling them they can just have it for free if they pay for shipping, since it was a real possibility it'd get trashed otherwise)

and I'm grumpy...

not in a "why doesn't my actually good art get attention" way (which I think would put this overall sentiment in such childish territory I wouldn't post at all about it; I used to crave attention for creative projects but a decade of posting numbed me) but in an "I'd rather to be unknown than known for something bad" way. I have decade+ old fic up on AO3 that I still get positive comments on & I know it would be a stupid idea to take it down, but in order to not take it down I have to carefully not look at it. when I see the image preview of this art in the notifications I feel a small ping of badness, every time

I think this is a personality trait that's fundamentally antithetical to success or progress, but I feel "I don’t like spinach, and I’m glad I don’t, because if I liked it I’d eat it, and I just hate it" about trying to change it

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Man, I don't even think "feeling my skills increase" is enough of a "thing in itself" that it would have occurred to me to list it! I have definitely felt it, and it feels great, but it seems like "the type of experience it is" is 'adjunct'.

Same goes for 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, and maybe 6. The actual immediate experience that 'feeling skill increase' or 'experiencing social bonds' is often adjunct to is some type of thinking? Making conversation, getting faster at some cognitive task...

Like, I think romantic love is like, 30-80% thinking (together). And that the % thinking is higher at the beginning, when the emotional peaks are the peakiest.

My top list looks like

Experiencing romantic love

Writing fiction (when successful)

Reading fiction

(Good) sex

Coding and painting (lumped together because subjectively very similar experiences, although the prima facie Thinkiness Quotient is different)

Posting online

Risk taking (another 'adjunct' experience; for me it's usually adjunct to running social events or public speaking)

High quality, medium-cognitively-challenging conversation with friends

Eating/Drinking

Logic puzzles

What % do you relate to the statement, "I enjoy thinking, and practically enjoy nothing but thinking – all the activities I find enjoyable are a type of thinking, and the thing that makes them enjoyable is the thinking itself."