#for an introvert all my highlights weirdly involve human interaction

[xing-hua]

keep me smiling ☀️

[night-filled-mountain]

Personal miscellaneous.

The simultaneous up side and down side of quarantine (for me, I mean--many people’s down sides are obviously much, much lower than this) is having so much time.

And I don’t even mean having time to do things, just...having time to think.

On the one hand, this has always been important to me, and increasingly hard to do in recent years: taking some time to myself to just Contemplate My Life, and Get In Touch With Myself, and feel like a distinct, individual human being who’s In Touch With Her Past and In Touch With The Universe and Fully Present In Her Body, etc. I’ve never been able to do that stuff automatically, if that makes any sense. Like...my husband and I have talked about this, and he feels like he gets his sense of self from the people around him and his interactions with the world. I love the people around me, and I love interacting with the world, but I’ve never been able to shake that deep dark lifelong introvert need to take some time out and make sense of things in the quiet of my own brain.

But then you’re not going to work or social engagements, and your sleep schedule gets thrown off--or rather, goes all to hell, because this is on top of waking up at all sorts of odd hours with chronic pain--and your ADD is thrown into overdrive by the lack of structure, your concentration on “productive” tasks and even fun tasks goes to pieces, you’re isolated, tired, and ornery, and you just...can’t...stop...thinking.

Sometimes I’m tempted to write/post about my thoughts, but then they’ll look different in the light of day, and I can’t be sure what to snatch on and examine further, or what to let go as the unhealthy product of an unhealthy brain that’s only going to gnaw away at me if I let it.

Lots of death stuff. Change, fear, loss, depression, the same old (practically lifelong) songs. Lots of identity stuff, lots of relationship stuff. Lots and lots and lots of baggage from a certain intense toxic wonderful-and-terrible romantic friendship that I’ve occasionally posted about before. Lots of that apparently ubiquitous quarantine impulse: “Should I write to her? Should I check on her? Will I spend the rest of my life wanting her, needing her, like this, and comparing her to everything in my life now, and finding it wanting? Is it actually something else I want and need, something she may have given me (along with all the pain) but that I can actually seek and find in other people and relationships, or within myself, if I’m willing to try? How the hell do people let these things go?”

Also lots of Tumblr stuff, weirdly enough. Because my feelings about sexuality and relationships were in the past, and maybe still are in insidious subconscious ways, deeply tied into the culture of this site (or the circles I’ve tended to move in on this site), and nothing has ever made clearer to me the incredible cocktail of Very Very Helpful and Very Very Toxic that is Tumblr Culture. I both want and do not want to write more about this. As with everything else these days, I don’t know which impulse is healthier.

 This August, almost certainly, my husband and I are moving in with our two best friends (the lease is signed, Dragon’s lease is ending, I have no idea what the world will look like at that point, but assuming none of us are sick, there are no laws/advisories against moving, and we can manage it in a way that’s safe for everyone involved, it is presumably still happening). I’m very excited to be a part of that household. I’m hoping--and expecting--that it will bring me to a calmer and happier place, and do something to quiet this obsession (ex-roommate wouldn’t associate with my friends, and didn’t like it when I did, either--she used to socially withdraw from me if I came home after spending time with them--these are the kinds of things I need to remember).

Dragon and I are doing Zoom storytime every single night, reading books out loud to each other. He read me The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, and I’m now reading him Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner. Before and after reading, we just talk about our days and laugh and love each other dearly. It’s truly, truly wonderful, and I treasure every moment.

Before quarantine started, I was reading Silence of the Lambs for the first time. I’ve since finished it, then re-watched and discussed the movie with Kit, followed by Red Dragon, then Manhunter (possibly my favorite), then plunged into reading the book Red Dragon (well into it now but not done yet), and finally started re-watching the Hannibal TV show with Kit, though we probably won’t go past season 1, and neither of us has any intention of ever watching season 3.

...This very high concentration of serial-killer media probably does not sound healthy at all, but funnily enough, it’s been one of the absolute highlights of this time for me. Something about plunging back into this universe--this very dark, very complicated, very Problematic universe, only bits and pieces of which I will ever deign to have any relationship with at all--has made me feel incredibly safe and happy and invigorated. And the whys of that would be a whole other discussion that has very little to do with anything I usually post about on this blog (...though I don’t think my love for Critical Role or [especially!] LA By Night is entirely unrelated to my general love for Very Dark Stories With Rays of Hope).

On Saturday, Kit and I picked up a ton of homemade food from Dragon’s front step and attended his epic Zoom seder, and on Sunday, we hid our Easter baskets from each other and hunted them down and ate some of the eggs we’d dyed, and right now, I should be making annotated lists of recommended e-books, and tutorial videos for Hoopla and OverDrive and Kanopy, and doing virtual trainings to make me a better librarian.

Also, I’m trying to write a novel about a medieval heist gone wrong.

And to catch up (well, catch up further) on LA By Night.

And it’s stormy outside. And I still have to write that post about Veth.

This has been a Quarantine Update.