Step 3: Forgiveness

Part of the mantra of this excellent reddit thread is forgiveness when you don't meet your goals.

Please forgive me, I skipped an evening. Okay, two. In my defense I as a) hosting the amazing Marion at my house, and then seeing the *super awesome* Bend It Like Beckham the Musical (which as a theater person I was totally amazed and impressed by).

We had a study session at the Museum of London, which was fantastic - we got to look at a number of corsets from the 1850s and 60s, including some very special ones from around 1853. (I can't spill the details too much!)  It's always amazing to me what a little goodwill will get you - I was allowed to "ride along" on short notice after my first visit a few weeks back when I donated copies of my pictures to help flesh out the museum's database. Turns out, object records in large collections are very sparse, so any information is often helpful. Plus, it feels good to share. :)

We followed that with a walk down through St Paul's Churchyard, then south to the Thames and across the Millennium Bridge, past the Tate and the Globe, under the Southwark bridge, past the Clink and the remains of the Palace of the Bishops of Winchester, the Golden Hinde, and through the Borough Market, then took the Tube and a red bus to visit another of the costume community. I love meeting new folks, especially mellow cheerful, incredibly lovely tea-giving new folks.  It was a delightful afternoon.

Right now I'm taking a break from a marathon session sorting, photographing, and inventorying my mudlarking finds for the export license. I'm about... halfway through, I'd say? The Chelsea finds were the biggest bag, and there'll likely be more of them soonish. (It's been WEEKS I tell you. I am ITCHING to get down to the foreshore again, augh augh augh.) Entertainingly, the gent at the Arts Council who's been so helpful so far took a look at my images and went "hm, we only license items over 100 years old, so you can leave out the 2-pence pieces."  The ones I'd left in for scale. Whoops! He advised me to use a ruler next time, which... makes sense.

I'm still feeling a little queasy after this week's food poisoning, but I'm so, soooo much better. We might be headed to Oxford this weekend, or possibly the Cotswolds for some walking, or maybe to Hampton Court for the tail end of the food thing, or or or... so much depends on the weather, which was gorgeous this morning, but is clouding up again.

It's definitely starting to feel like fall here. It's a little disconcerting because I haven't had any of the markers of my usual year to tell me that the summer is passing by. All of my friends are headed to Burning Man. I've missed Costume College and so much more already, and I'm missing Burning Man and Gatsby and and and...  It's a trade off, and one that feels painful right now, but that I expect will have been a bargain when I look back on it.

Nonzero

It's only almost 1am, but I'm still getting a tiny bit of writing in, so that's something, right? Baby steps. Baby steps.

Feeling much better today, though after I tried eating non-rice items my stomach started gurgling again - so we'll see.

Lindsay linked us to a long Reddit thread on getting motivated, and the thing was called "No Zero Days" - the idea being that you don't have any days when you do nothing.

So today, I did laundry, cleaned up a bunch more of my mudlarking finds so that I can inventory and send the export paperwork, started the inventory for my first box of stuff to send home, did a bit of sewing on my Regency day dress for bath, and finally got up the courage to cut the linen tablecloth that I'm using for the ballgown. I also read and closed a ton of the "interesting article I'll get to later" tabs that'd piled up. So that's not zero.

But now it's one. (See what I did there?)  And I'm going to bed.

Baby steps

I just wrote this to a friend who reached out after my last post: "I think the big thing is to just start writing, even a little bit, every day. And go from there, I guess?" So even if it's just a tiny thing, here is my little bit for today.

I'm back from a whirlwind, exhausting trip around the Mediterranean. It should tell you something when your fitness tracker's weekly step total doubles when you're "on holiday".

And I'm sick with some kind of stomach thing. In the past five months I've vomited more frequently than in the last two years. This isn't a reflection on the quality of the food so much as on the lack of control one has over one's food when traveling and eating out a lot. Some of those things I *knew* didn't sit right. Some of them I sort of expected to come back and haunt me but I didn't have better options.
Not this time though, and this was new (and I'll cut it for those of you who don't want to know):

Fermata

I haven't written in awhile.

Let me start over.  I haven't written in awhile, because I've been depressed and lonely, even among all the wonders of London.

No, that's only part of it. Let me try again.

In mental health circles right now there's this concept of the "media diet", which is to say to cease reading and looking at things that have a negative impact on your mood, mental health, and ability to function.

Yesterday I unfollowed some people on Facebook (unfollowed, not unfriended mind you) because I realized that this is a thing I needed to do.

Here in London I'm basically living in a bubble of silence. I barely know anyone here, I have Mike for company and occasionally meet someone I know from Elsewhere for coffee (or randomly on the tube, or randomly in Kew gardens, etc etc etc). But I have so few friends here and no real way to meet more. I realized that in an average week I talk to three people in person who aren't Mike, and all three are people who I'm buying things from. Occasionally a tourist in the neighborhood will ask me for directions. Once in awhile there'll be one of those bizarre, rare "strike up a conversation with a Londoner" moments. But they're maybe a monthly occurrence if at all.

And so I've done what depressed, lonely people tend to do these days: I trawl the internet endlessly, especially Facebook and things that make me feel more connected to people in my old home. A lot of people have already forgotten me, which was a bit of a shock; in the end having a job that you work 10 hours a day is apparently about the same as moving 5000+ miles away. People don't see you at events and you cease to exist.

But there are some trends in my social network which I just can't handle, to wit, that people on both the left and right are sealioning the shit out of each other, making anyone who expresses even a small disagreement the subject of harassment and emotional threats. This isn't healthy. This isn't dialogue, discourse, or the mature civility that I crave. And in the end what I realized, is that this is silencing me.

I don't want to write about anything substantial because I'm worried what people will say. Not because I care necessarily that they disagree, but because I'm so *tired* of feeling like I'm fighting everyone, like everyone is going to jump all over me for disagreeing. That's silencing. And then recently, for not agreeing loudly enough.  That was the breaking point for me.

I can only take care of one person at a time, and right now that person needs to be me. I've done a shit job of it recently and that needs to stop. I don't have the energy (because fuck you and your fucking spoons) to handle the crises of the entire world; I'm burnt out and it's 1pm in London and I haven't even had a shower or breakfast yet today.

I hope, and please if you're reading this, hold me to it, I hope I can write tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. Even little things, even a bit. I have so much research backlogged, and I have so many story ideas simmering along, waiting for me to come back to health.