#i haven't worked on my thesis in days and march is coming to an end soon

[tardis--dreams]

My mother complaining about me not getting better- like, I'm sorry? I already feel guilty as hell you don't need to remind me??

[deathlygristly]

I am reading the reblogs and tags on an older post that goes around the dash occasionally. It's about reading. I'm sure you've seen it - someone talks about Divergent books and 1984 and then someone reblogs it and calls 1984 rape apologism? Which is really weird?

The spousal person ordered a print of this Kate Beaton comic many years ago and he hung it up in the hallway and he told me to go look at it whenever I said my writing was bad:

http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=44

The first two panels do a fairly decent job of explaining 1984. Which is just....a really simple book. It's like wow look fascism sucks! And that's it, pretty much. Like yeah, obviously you could write papers and essays and a thesis and probably do a whole body of academic work on the particulars of it, but really it's just that Orwell thought fascism sucked. Which it does, so I don't see the problem?

Anyway I am pretty sure a lot of the people on that post come from a very different society than I do, even though the education system they say they hate is the American one. Which, hey, our education is locally funded and controlled so maybe it's just that my working class southern Appalachian rural county schools were a lot better than their schools? Or is it maybe what I've suspected before, that I graduated before No Child Left Behind?

I can't recall my English teachers ever being authoritarian to the extent so many other people claim their English teachers were. Not that I can recall that much about English or school at all, really, but I think I would remember if they marched around all "No, your essay is WRONG and only MY opinion is right!!!" all the time.

But then it's true that I don't remember it that well because I just wrote essays the night before they were due or sometimes in the classes before English if it was a class later in the day, and then I got a good grade and nice comments on it and then I got on with my life. I don't think I ever invested nearly as much emotional energy and idea of my self-worth into English class as the people on that post did. Which maybe that's why they remember it so well? Certainly it's probably a large part of why they still have Big Emotions about it.

Anyway my point is that sometimes I read how people write about their own reading and I'm like oh. This is why I shouldn't care what people say about my work that much. I clearly did not write it for these people who experience the world and fiction and the written word in a way that I cannot imagine at all and that I would have never known existed as a possibility if I hadn't read their own words about it.

Like the version of the post that gets the most reblogs ends with an essay about how in the last few decades people have come to expect characters to be "relatable" and to be like them and to think and experience things the way they do? And there's all this self-identity and irrational and false beliefs about your own moral purity involved?

If you come to my work with that sort of thing in your heart you will bounce off of it, and I have finally come to understand that the bouncing off is for the best for both of us.

If you're new here and you haven't read my stuff yet, here's the pinned post with the directory on my Simblr: Story Index.

Anyway, gotta go to bed now. It's just....I don't think I ever realized just how differently people experience fiction and books and the written word from how I experience it before. Like in the tags someone said they expected 1984 to be more Hunger Games-esque? How is that person perceiving reality? I want to live inside their brain for a bit to learn.

[nerdnag]

The time has come for me to finish my philosophy bachelor's.

...Lots of ramble below. I mostly just need to get my thoughts out, but there is a plan by the end!

For those of you who were around in May, you may recall that I struggled a lot to get a sort-of-presentable draft ready for my supervisor, hoping to be able to hand the thing in before the end of the semester, and was then completely slammed down into the dirt by said supervisor when he returned the draft a few days later with... pretty strong words about it. Few of which were positive. I couldn't bring myself to read the comments he'd left in the actual document at the time, because the email was enough to bring me to tears.

Yeah.

I mean, he wasn't wrong, it was just a bit shocking to have him go from "hey, how's it going for you, the thesis treating you well? oh and here's a link to a fun video i found on the internet" one day to almost-kinda-petty critique the next. And also, I am wholly unused to disappointing teachers, supervisors, mentors or superiors of any kind. That may sound strange considering my ADHD, which should in theory have gotten me in lots of situations like that, but my entire life, I've usually managed to make use of three things that have helped immensely to get things done well and on time: 1) special interests/obsessions/hyperfocus, 2) perfectionism and performance anxiety, and 3) high IQ. Number one has helped with motivation and creative flow; number 2 has helped motivate me through shame; and number 3 has helped me "bullshit" my way through assignments/relatively easily create a coherent and acceptable final product without doing all of the actual work I should have done (...and also making the actual work I do put in a pretty good quality).

But for some reason, these tactics didn't quite work out this time. I could come up with many different ideas about why this was, but one really important part of it was probably the fact that I've been heavily overloaded with work at my job and still haven't fully recovered from the immense stress I was under from March 2022-June 2023. I might not be able to recover from that period of my life without doing some pretty extreme changes in how I live my life, and although I've been working on trying to make some of those changes over the course of the first half of this year, it hasn't been impactful enough yet.

And so in the middle of this, of trying to recover from a backlog of both work and stress, while still being under quite a lot of stress at work (although not even remotely compared to how it was a year ago), I was also trying to write a bachelor's thesis in my spare time.

Oh, and did I mention I also took on a volunteer position in my spare time from April onwards that has demanded quite a lot of time?

(Jfc why do I do this to myself. ...Because it's fun and I am bad at saying no. That's why.)

Anyway, enough rambling about what's happened and the reasons for it - long story short, I realised I wouldn't be able to finish the thesis in time, and so I told my supervisor I'd hand it in by the end of the summer instead. And wouldn't you know it, the end of summer is closing in. :)

So with the help of my partner, I managed to finally open the document containing my supervisor's comments, and rather than lose myself in complete and utter anxiety and horror over the words, we could sort of laugh over how unnecessarily harsh he was being. (I guess my supervisor actually was a bit disappointed, since he'd seen before that I was more capable than that. I don't blame him.) I also realised that it wasn't quite as bad as I had imagined, and that my life isn't actually over and done for. So yeah. (He even had a couple of positive comments for me, actually.)

Then we made a plan for how to tackle this thing. I'm going away on the 22nd of July, so the goal right now is to have a finished draft to send to my supervisor on the 21st. Then he can read it, give comments, tell me whether he gives his approval or not, and after I've made any necessary adjustments, I can hand in an opposition version by the middle of August. Since I am currently on vacation, and I do need to actually try to wind down from work as well, I've settled on working on my thesis for 3 hours each day, starting tomorrow (the 13th), and my deadline each day is noon. If I realise after this Sunday that I need more time, I'll increase it to 4 hours every day.

It should work. I know what I need to do, and my supervisor's comments are clear. I enjoy writing and doing research and I will finish this in a way that I'm proud and happy about.

So there. That's my promise to myself. I'll climb out of this hole, fill it in with new dirt, and then start building the collapsed tower of blocks up again.

[bestbonnist]

Chapter 146.2

This chapter was a turning point for Fushi. They examined their priorities and realized that going home was most important. However, their reasoning is shit. I cannot stress enough how bad their reasoning is. Everything in this chapter is geared towards Fushi's decision at the end, so let's just go through it in order.

First they get hooked by another way to help Mizuha make friends. I'd like to note that they ask Mimori to teach them to make mud balls specifically because they want to show one to Mizuha later.

Mud balls themselves are another sort of trophy, just like the feather hair-ties. Fushi likes trophies a lot themselves; the clearest example is the doll they replicated in Chapter 69 because they wanted to show it to March. When they finally give it to her in Chapter 134.1, it comes as an unempathetic response to March's grief over Parona's death. When Fushi shows up after going missing for what I estimate as at least a week, March won't give them the enthusiastic response they're hoping for.

Since their conversation with Satoru, Fushi's been reassessing whether they can actually stay away from their friends for centuries all over again, especially since they know that their friends have assumed that after they die in the present era, they'll be free to pass on. They took a break from fighting knockers for one day to initiate their plan with Funa's body, but it's still weighing heavily on their mind. Mimori's arc works as a sort of thesis for the present era; on some level Fushi recognizes this and uses her as an example of what they should do. So her telling them directly that she's glad the knockers took her body is another crack in their resolve. They won't listen to Mizuha when she tells them to let the left hand stayed because it's proved that it can control her whenever it wants, but when Mimori, who is knocker-free, essentially tells them to wait and see how it plays out, they can't refute her.

It also helps that she revealed that removing her knocker didn't actually fix anything. Her life is the same as it always was, the only thing that's changed is her determination to enjoy it. This is meant to show the reader that although Fushi and the others failed to solve all of Mimori's problems, she'll be fine. But Fushi takes this as "you failed so there's no point anyways."

Fushi also just doesn't want to deal with Mizuha right now. They're bad at handling her, everything they do just makes things worse. Although they haven't acknowledged it, they know that she isn't like Kahaku at all, so they've lost a good part of their motivation, but they also don't want to throw her to the wolves. It would be a great time to back off like they think Mimori implied, but Fushi still has this obsession with being the good guy. Everything's lined up so that they can leave in the easiest way possible, but they haven't quite tipped over the edge yet. What pushes them to return to March is this:

Fushi made something specifically for Mizuha because they thought she would appreciate it and their effort would be rewarded. Not only does it not work, she outright rejects it and Fushi's response is along these lines: "March would never do this to me. I'm going to go back to my friends, because they appreciate me." Satoru told them that even if they eradicate the knockers, they won't be able to see their friends again, so they've decided to go for instant gratification instead. Like I said earlier, this will not go over well on their friends' side.

I doubt they're going to give up on the knockers entirely, but for now, they just want to be with the people they love. They may even go back to school routinely, as evidenced when they tell Mizuha they'll see her tomorrow. But the way their whole fantasy of seeing March again is framed—like she's Mizuha's replacement right now. Like she's their proof that everything is fine (their reward for doing a good job? Their TROPHY if you will???)—makes them look unwell. Which they are.

This analysis is focused mainly on Fushi, but I think I should touch on Mizuha's behavior in this chapter. She's gone right back to her reliance on Fushi, making it look even more like her attempt to control them was something the left hand encouraged and assisted. When it potentially ruined her relationship with Hanna, she doubled back and returned to them because when it comes down to it, she still trusts them by default. Like we saw at the start of Chapter 145.2, her newfound control was an act. I'm including the panels I'm referencing because it's just a really pretty sequence, you know?

Fushi, similarly to how Mizuha tried to give Hanna a feather hair-tie, used a mud ball to communicate their feelings to her. But Mizuha finds a trophy is meaningless in this situation, and like how Hanna threw her hair-tie away, she drops the mud ball on the ground. Fushi doing what she wants and asking for instructions doesn't make her happy anymore. I'd say based on her desperation, her fear right now is that she exposed too much of her weaknesses to Hanna, and Hanna didn't like what she saw. She still has the mud ball at the end of the chapter and Fushi knows that she and Hanna got into a fight. Whether or not they'll try to intercede or leave things entirely to Mizuha will be affected by how March and the others react to their return.

[edicus]

March 13th, 2020

100 days of productivity: 3/100

So my classes have been cancelled next week. They say it's going to be online but I haven't gotten the specifics and it's making me slightly worried as this is my last semester of uni... And my thesis conference has been cancelled as well :( But I guess it's for the best. On the plus side: I made some progress on a very annoying project and my project partners have been a big help. Hopefully this will get better come May. I have a concert at the end of month that I've been working towards... It would be a shame to miss as they've put a lot of work in it! Take care and stay safe people.

[peaamlipoetrydoctor]

Happy New Year 2022

[[Alt Text - the image is a screengrab from my Instagram account, so it appears in the square 3x3 format that has become such a well-established visual language in mainstream social media. The images are all taken from my daily walks during or shortly after First Lockdown 2020. TL peach-coloured roses. TC the statue of the shepherd plus sheep in Paternoster Square. TR a glimpse towards St Pauls through the Paternoster Square development. CL a sandstone church, Myddleton square, at dusk. CC the trouser legs of the statue of Fenner Brockway, Red Lion Square. CR from the shoreline of the Thames, looking back towards the steps and up to the sky and to the cranes above. BL the bright turquoise painted shop front of Epic Pies, with the image of me taking the photo appearing reflected in the glass door of the shop. BC two young men in smart casual business wear walk in front of a graffiti'd monster, with the Barbican towers in the background. BR inside the Barbican complex this time, two red hot poker flowers in the garden in front of a tower.]

Apologies in advance that this might be quite a dull post for anyone else who comes across it but I haven't yet summarized my year in writing for 2021 and it's finally occurring to me that if I don't, no-one else will... My plan, then, is to write up the summary today and over the next couple of days, I'll put a copy of the poems that are already "out in the world" into the few posts following, for future reference.

So, first up, I have to acknowledge that 2021 was when I completed my doctoral thesis and had the corrections accepted:

Working through climate grief: A first person poetic inquiry.

It's on its way into the British Library ETHOS database and can also be found on my supervisor's website, Dr Steve Marshall / writing.

Turning to poetry, I think I will always have a special heart-leap of joy at the thought of Allegro Poetry, which was the very first poetry journal to publish any of my work - and double bless the editor Sally Long, who took a piece both in March (Lockdown, issue 26) and September (Spring Equinox in Leeds, issue 27).

Next up, I was included by Dissonance Magazine in their month-long special focus on NaPoWriMo writings , April 2021(National Poetry Writing Month).

This was "I Come From" which was one of my early doctoral poems about the shifting consciousness of coming to see myself as within-Nature and from-Nature, not separate-from or superior-to, as is still quite normal, I think, in many Western culture contexts.

NB I see that Dissonance had to go on hiatus in May 2021 due to a personal emergency, and I vm hope that the emergency is loosing its grip and normality is returning...

Also linked to NaPoWriMo, my poem "Rage is the Thing with Wings" was a featured poem in response to one of the daily prompts, chosen towards the end of the month (Day 25) by convener and curator, Maureen Thorsten. A sort-of nonsense poem, but a fun one to write.

In May, Muse Pie Magazine accepted "Small Talk" for Shot Glass, an online journal for short poetry (14 lines or fewer).

In the summer, Wingless Dreamer accepted a villanelle about Midnight, "The Midnight Hush" and (yeay!) it placed as one of the 10 finalists in that competition; I had another piece accepted in the Decembre competition later in the year, "Hope in Mid-Winter", although that one had to content itself with simply being published.

In October, another moment of great gratitude - three poems published in issue 2 of Paddler Press who, to my astonishment and joy, then picked one of these to be one of their Pushcart Nominations for 2021 - "Before Lockdown, I Used to Walk to Work..."

In November, "The Postman's Park" appeared in the 2021 City Lit anthology of creative writing, Between the Lines 2021.

And then, at the end of November, another joy, another first - placed as a finalist in a competition that carried a modest cash prize for all 10 finalists. This is officially the first time I've received ££ for any of my writing. And there's been QUITE a bit of writing over the years.

This was "To My Executors" for the Literary Taxonomy competition. The challenge is to write a new piece linking someone else's first and last lines. Here, the source material was from Katherine Mansfield.