What Now [TL:DR]
Apr. 17th, 2025 09:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nyykiWhat now
After making a major life decision the next step is to work on how that affects the other things near it and what making that change does for other initiatives (at least for me, but I understand what the word consequences means). Some decisions can be done with a lot of the thinking and planning before taking action, but some don’t do this all that well, and in many cases what will result from a decision is difficult to speculate until the tire hits the tarmac. It’s also counterproductive in some situations to switch to the thinking of post-implementation while some chance that decision won’t need to be. made So I’m now assessing how the decision will affect my life moving forward.
I have decided to no longer expend any effort or (if possible) mental energy on attracting or locating romantic relationships. I want to stop expending energy toward something that’s not getting any return – that smacks of hope thinking. So it’s time to evaluate how this will affect my life and what other plans I’ll want to make to fill in the gaps that effort was designed to fill or help in filling.
Again, it’s not my intention to avoid such entangling alliances should they come my way, but the effort to rectify my solitary condition is taking too much out of me, and it’s also leading to depressive episodes. So I’m stepping out of the game, off the board, away from the flame the other moths are throwing themselves against.
These issues also benefit other facets to my life, so this isn’t all about how I don’t seem to trip anyone’s trigger, or at least anyone I’ve come in contact with so far.
Issue One: Roommate
My roommate is problematic. I’m living with someone who I’m pretty sure has ADHD and is self medicating with nicotine and alcohol along with caffeine. She’s in debt to me, working a table service industry job that is about to become a much bigger concern because of supply chain and tariff issues. Her age is also a factor – she seems to be in good physical health, though not going to a doctor makes that uncertain, and both smoking and drinking to excess tax a body. She got her cosmetology license, which she’s let lapse, because she wants to be accepted as a woman without working on aspects of her presentation that scream male, and her low-pitched voice and deportment has gotten in the way of her getting a chair at any of the places where she’s applied. I won’t assume that it’s bigoted salon owners behind this, but an owner of a styling salon has to factor in customer reaction, and she absolutely will not pass. I’m being supportive, but this is not a healthy situation for me to be in thanks to the crazy increase in natural gas prices and homeowners insurance. I swore that when I moved in here I wouldn’t be The First Bank of Nyyki anymore, but here we are. What’s the real world situation here? I’ve overdrafted the last two months, and for the first time in multiple years I have a balance on my primary credit card. What’s sitting on there are my bill payments for power and exterminator service, nothing more. I’m hoping the warmer weather will solve some of the tight money issues, but I’m not sure how that’s going to play out. Also, I haven’t bought groceries since November of 2023, relying on my roommate to pick a few things up to keep things from getting dire and letting her grab stuff for me, most of it fast food or things from restaurants, which aren’t the most healthy sources for nutrition and needed substances.
I’m in a tight space here, because in a roommate I need someone who can help me out because I can’t do some key things like know what I’m taking from a group of cans in the pantry, and this is discussed up front before a roommate moves in, but this means I get folks who are down on their luck and their finances are unstable, and this can turn into a debt. So my roommate situation has got to change.
Add to that her car – it’s registration has been out for several years, as was her prior car, and the car hasn’t been inspected in a while . I keep wondering every time she takes me somewhere if she’s going to get pulled over and ticketed, or a worse case of her getting told she can’t drive or getting her car towed. I’m not all that up for walking home from my infusion clinic that’s located in Rowlett, especially thanks to me having no easy way to get myself out of such a situation (no folks who could pick me up, accessibility issues with the transport for hire service interfaces, etc.). All of this is normal for her – she’s used to taking side streets and being furtive in the presence of police cars to minimize notice of her car. That tense energy bleeds off from her, so I have to clean that out of my system – it’s no wonder I have higher BP readings when I first get to the infusion clinic.
Some of you might be wondering why I haven’t brought any of these concerns to her. That’s because she deals with any constructive criticism by shutting down and turning into a radiating stress ball of sad, and it’s an avoidance technique. She will consider the issue done when we finish talking, so there is no follow-up on anything we discuss, and she’s got a problem with remembering things, important things, like agreements she’s made and things she’s told me she’ll take care of. And she doesn’t look for ways to resolve problems, she continues to hope they’ll go away. I realized years ago that there was no value in trying to work anything out with her, and this flies in the face of how I operate, so a lot of stuff is left unresolved and I’m left uncomfortable and feeling like my feelings don’t matter. She often uses a tactic of postponing discussion on something until “the next day”, and as you might imagine I’ve got stuff where the next day hasn’t come after several years. She isn’t a supportive person, and she doesn’t exhibit empathy, at least not in a way I can perceive, until things start to get critical.
This leads to the point – I need a new roommate who’s going to pay their half of the bills and the small amount I ask towards the mortgage. I also need somewhere for my current roommate to go, where hopefully she’ll figure out how to move forward with her life. I have mixed results with finding roommates, and at this point a potential roommate either needs to already know me or come with a vouch from someone I know and trust.
Issue 2: Socialization
I fit the definition of an extrovert, the social facilitation variety. I like to get people in a social group interacting, playing off each other, and having fun. Since I’m looking at a solo life there’s value in increasing my social interaction. Last month I left the house once – to get my infusion at the clinic. That’s what I have scheduled this month too, and maybe two in May because I’ll have a doctor’s appointment requiring a trip to get labs drawn, or possibly three if my annual checkup with the transplant clinic puts the date there. Notice the trend – I’m leaving the house for medical reasons and nothing else. Visitors to my home are rare, , so I’m sort of living a hermit lifestyle. I have social interaction online – I’m in four PBEM role-playing games right now. But still I have days where I’ll get a single email in a twelve hour period. This is not good. Also, I’ve done the online social interaction thing for 34 years now, and I know it’s not the same for people like me. Online interaction isn’t going to cut the muster.
How have I managed it so far? By shunting the need aside. I understand on a core level about letting go of needs to survive – I grew up in a very abusive household, and I learned early on how to do what it took to survive. This is how I’m shutting down the desire to find a romantic partner – I’m letting that drive fall by the wayside so I can survive the other stuff. This gets a lot harder when another table leg is missing – a table can have three legs, but a two legged table requires a huge amount of support. Note also that this isn’t suppressing or stuffing feelings down, if a need can’t be met I let it go, because it’s counterproductive to worry about things I can’t change or obsess on them – we live in a rare time when someone’s needs might all get met, and this is not normal across human experience, so if something isn’t in my life I cope; after all, a lot of people think human companionship is also a fundamental need, but I’ve lived with minimal amounts of it for a long time now.
So I’ve got to figure out a way that I’m less isolated. Note that I do get phone calls --flamingsword calls me every week and we have a nice talk about many things, though so far we haven’t gotten onto the topics of nautical cargo vessels, footwear, sealant for letters and the use of signet rings, leafy vegetables nor monarchs. I also have a couple of others I talk to via phone, along with my weekly editing sessions with lanalucy. But that’s not enough, and my roommate isn’t giving me much social interaction either – she comes home and heads out to the back patio most of the time to watch things on her tablet and smoke because it’s a no smoking house, and at least one day a week and often more pass with no communication between us because our life flow is so different; she’s also a second shift worker most of the time, so our schedules don’t match (this also often means that I wind up eating at non-healthy times).
Issue 3: Self-Protection
The hardest part of this endeavor is not continuing to expose myself to broken glass and razor wire – self harm isn’t my schtick. This means I need to disconnect from things romantic. But cold turkeying isn’t productive, so I want to work out a plan for it.
First off, a majority of what I’ve read in the last two to three years, at least when it comes to fiction, has been either stuff with a romantic component or out and out romance. I know some folks can read these things and live vicariously through the romances the characters go through, but I’m not one of them – there’s a point in most of them where I feel the hit that comes from reading about something I might never have again. This is going to change my reading habits a lot – for one thing, I’m going to probably read a lot more nonfiction than I have in the last year. I had a plan of alternating between one nonfiction book and a work of fiction, back and forth, but in the last year it’s been shifted a lot towards fiction more than anything else. I’m at the mercy of the Library of Congress’s National Library Service for the Blind and Print disabled program, so I’m not the boss of this situation, and I’ll read the works of authors I’ve grown fond of, but I don’t know that I’ll pick up much stuff that has a romantic component in it unless the synopsis is enticing enough, and I’m going to be less picky about science fiction and mysteries. I don’t read westerns, war fiction, horror, or much fantasy – the big problem with a lot of epic fantasy is that in the end it’s all about the magic, so I’m a lot more selective, and I’m going to continue that. This will, however, probably give me the space to do that deep dive into Terry Pratchett’s Discworld some of my friends have suggested to me.
It's not only what books I listen to – there are songs I won’t be seeking out moving forward, even though I love the tunes. Hurting oneself isn’t a sign of healthy self care. Some of these songs key to specific times and events, because music is great at doing that, so this isn’t a light choice, it’s down to a survival one.
The bigger problem is in what I write. I’ve written two classic love stories, both of them edited, and I’ve got ideas for two more, with the next one into the plotting and characterization stage, but I don’t know how positive it’d be for me to dig deep into those works. Likewise, my next two Holly and the Wizards novels involve romantic content, and I plan to finish them, but I’m not sure when. I’ve got one speedbump to get past in a novel that starts out feeling like a romance novel but takes a drastic turn in the next two chapters after what I’ve already written, and I’ve got other things in progress that might or might not get any attention for a while. This is part of my dual extended middle fingers to genre conventions, because I float across genres like they never existed (Like Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Roald Dahl, and many others). Still, once I manage to procure covers for them there will be fans, I hope, and shippers gotta ship. So I can’t excise that from my life right now. Still, this is going to change my focus some in what I write. I don’t need the stuff in my face for multiple hours a day if I want to maintain my normal upbeat positive outlook.
This is also probably going to involve me cutting some friends out of my online circle. I’m not going to do it here, because nobody here is going to cause me mental unrest, but over on Zuckerphuqt there will be some culling. Why am I keeping that account active? Two reasons – there are people there that I can’t find elsewhere, and it’s a decent place to announce the publication of my stuff. If that second item turns out to be false I’ll be much more prone to shutting that vector down.
Issue 4: Identity
I’ve been working hard with my higher power to rid myself of the thoughts that my inability to attract anyone (yes, anyone, not someone) is a failing of mine. The reality of it is that I’m isolated and out of public contact because of reasons outlined above. Also, my friends aren’t coming up with anyone who might find me interesting enough to want to hold my hand, much less do anything more. It’s way beyond being touch starved or deprived, though I don’t have a good word at the moment for the extreme isolation that’s involved (touch gulagged?). And this can be hard to take. I was told in meditation that it wasn’t me causing this, it was willing participants who weren’t interested in getting their participation award. Okay, but still, that can, thanks to the labyrinthine twisting’s of thought, come back to being an issue centered on me.
What doesn’t help is how greater society views independents as somehow failing – outside a diner or seats at a bar, how many tables for one have you seen? The other troublesome factor is that my life is about sighted guide for the most part – our society isn’t equipped to deal with blindness these days. Table kiosks don’t have an audible option and few servers know to fold a receipt so a blind person can know what line to sign on, and a tip is its own issue. This means that so often people see me with someone and make the jump to us being involved romantically. In a recent conversation I joked that I could buy scrubs sets for those guiding me so people would get that it’s someone helping me, not someone dating me, but that’s a funny idea and nothing more. Of course there are some people who would hit on someone who was with someone else, but I have no interest in those people, and nobody’s asking us if we’re involved, probably out of politeness or fear of rejection. And this leaves me slogging through life alone for the most part. I hate this. But what am I to do? Work on myself and get to where I don’t let those identity issues bother me, because I know I’m a valid person who has a lot to offer. Offering it to someone else doesn’t seem to be in the cards at this point. I don’t like it of course, but as Ringo said so well, “It don’t come easy”.
So…
I’m thinking about this, and I don’t think I’m going to let this define me. I prefer the belief that I’m taking care of myself over the more popular label of a loser in the love department. And myriad other factors are playing into this, like my health, my disability, and where I own a house. I’m going to make the best I can out of what I’ve got and what I’ve created for myself, and try to continue being the blonde, blind, badass broad that I know myself to be.
After making a major life decision the next step is to work on how that affects the other things near it and what making that change does for other initiatives (at least for me, but I understand what the word consequences means). Some decisions can be done with a lot of the thinking and planning before taking action, but some don’t do this all that well, and in many cases what will result from a decision is difficult to speculate until the tire hits the tarmac. It’s also counterproductive in some situations to switch to the thinking of post-implementation while some chance that decision won’t need to be. made So I’m now assessing how the decision will affect my life moving forward.
I have decided to no longer expend any effort or (if possible) mental energy on attracting or locating romantic relationships. I want to stop expending energy toward something that’s not getting any return – that smacks of hope thinking. So it’s time to evaluate how this will affect my life and what other plans I’ll want to make to fill in the gaps that effort was designed to fill or help in filling.
Again, it’s not my intention to avoid such entangling alliances should they come my way, but the effort to rectify my solitary condition is taking too much out of me, and it’s also leading to depressive episodes. So I’m stepping out of the game, off the board, away from the flame the other moths are throwing themselves against.
These issues also benefit other facets to my life, so this isn’t all about how I don’t seem to trip anyone’s trigger, or at least anyone I’ve come in contact with so far.
Issue One: Roommate
My roommate is problematic. I’m living with someone who I’m pretty sure has ADHD and is self medicating with nicotine and alcohol along with caffeine. She’s in debt to me, working a table service industry job that is about to become a much bigger concern because of supply chain and tariff issues. Her age is also a factor – she seems to be in good physical health, though not going to a doctor makes that uncertain, and both smoking and drinking to excess tax a body. She got her cosmetology license, which she’s let lapse, because she wants to be accepted as a woman without working on aspects of her presentation that scream male, and her low-pitched voice and deportment has gotten in the way of her getting a chair at any of the places where she’s applied. I won’t assume that it’s bigoted salon owners behind this, but an owner of a styling salon has to factor in customer reaction, and she absolutely will not pass. I’m being supportive, but this is not a healthy situation for me to be in thanks to the crazy increase in natural gas prices and homeowners insurance. I swore that when I moved in here I wouldn’t be The First Bank of Nyyki anymore, but here we are. What’s the real world situation here? I’ve overdrafted the last two months, and for the first time in multiple years I have a balance on my primary credit card. What’s sitting on there are my bill payments for power and exterminator service, nothing more. I’m hoping the warmer weather will solve some of the tight money issues, but I’m not sure how that’s going to play out. Also, I haven’t bought groceries since November of 2023, relying on my roommate to pick a few things up to keep things from getting dire and letting her grab stuff for me, most of it fast food or things from restaurants, which aren’t the most healthy sources for nutrition and needed substances.
I’m in a tight space here, because in a roommate I need someone who can help me out because I can’t do some key things like know what I’m taking from a group of cans in the pantry, and this is discussed up front before a roommate moves in, but this means I get folks who are down on their luck and their finances are unstable, and this can turn into a debt. So my roommate situation has got to change.
Add to that her car – it’s registration has been out for several years, as was her prior car, and the car hasn’t been inspected in a while . I keep wondering every time she takes me somewhere if she’s going to get pulled over and ticketed, or a worse case of her getting told she can’t drive or getting her car towed. I’m not all that up for walking home from my infusion clinic that’s located in Rowlett, especially thanks to me having no easy way to get myself out of such a situation (no folks who could pick me up, accessibility issues with the transport for hire service interfaces, etc.). All of this is normal for her – she’s used to taking side streets and being furtive in the presence of police cars to minimize notice of her car. That tense energy bleeds off from her, so I have to clean that out of my system – it’s no wonder I have higher BP readings when I first get to the infusion clinic.
Some of you might be wondering why I haven’t brought any of these concerns to her. That’s because she deals with any constructive criticism by shutting down and turning into a radiating stress ball of sad, and it’s an avoidance technique. She will consider the issue done when we finish talking, so there is no follow-up on anything we discuss, and she’s got a problem with remembering things, important things, like agreements she’s made and things she’s told me she’ll take care of. And she doesn’t look for ways to resolve problems, she continues to hope they’ll go away. I realized years ago that there was no value in trying to work anything out with her, and this flies in the face of how I operate, so a lot of stuff is left unresolved and I’m left uncomfortable and feeling like my feelings don’t matter. She often uses a tactic of postponing discussion on something until “the next day”, and as you might imagine I’ve got stuff where the next day hasn’t come after several years. She isn’t a supportive person, and she doesn’t exhibit empathy, at least not in a way I can perceive, until things start to get critical.
This leads to the point – I need a new roommate who’s going to pay their half of the bills and the small amount I ask towards the mortgage. I also need somewhere for my current roommate to go, where hopefully she’ll figure out how to move forward with her life. I have mixed results with finding roommates, and at this point a potential roommate either needs to already know me or come with a vouch from someone I know and trust.
Issue 2: Socialization
I fit the definition of an extrovert, the social facilitation variety. I like to get people in a social group interacting, playing off each other, and having fun. Since I’m looking at a solo life there’s value in increasing my social interaction. Last month I left the house once – to get my infusion at the clinic. That’s what I have scheduled this month too, and maybe two in May because I’ll have a doctor’s appointment requiring a trip to get labs drawn, or possibly three if my annual checkup with the transplant clinic puts the date there. Notice the trend – I’m leaving the house for medical reasons and nothing else. Visitors to my home are rare, , so I’m sort of living a hermit lifestyle. I have social interaction online – I’m in four PBEM role-playing games right now. But still I have days where I’ll get a single email in a twelve hour period. This is not good. Also, I’ve done the online social interaction thing for 34 years now, and I know it’s not the same for people like me. Online interaction isn’t going to cut the muster.
How have I managed it so far? By shunting the need aside. I understand on a core level about letting go of needs to survive – I grew up in a very abusive household, and I learned early on how to do what it took to survive. This is how I’m shutting down the desire to find a romantic partner – I’m letting that drive fall by the wayside so I can survive the other stuff. This gets a lot harder when another table leg is missing – a table can have three legs, but a two legged table requires a huge amount of support. Note also that this isn’t suppressing or stuffing feelings down, if a need can’t be met I let it go, because it’s counterproductive to worry about things I can’t change or obsess on them – we live in a rare time when someone’s needs might all get met, and this is not normal across human experience, so if something isn’t in my life I cope; after all, a lot of people think human companionship is also a fundamental need, but I’ve lived with minimal amounts of it for a long time now.
So I’ve got to figure out a way that I’m less isolated. Note that I do get phone calls --
flamingsword calls me every week and we have a nice talk about many things, though so far we haven’t gotten onto the topics of nautical cargo vessels, footwear, sealant for letters and the use of signet rings, leafy vegetables nor monarchs. I also have a couple of others I talk to via phone, along with my weekly editing sessions with lanalucy. But that’s not enough, and my roommate isn’t giving me much social interaction either – she comes home and heads out to the back patio most of the time to watch things on her tablet and smoke because it’s a no smoking house, and at least one day a week and often more pass with no communication between us because our life flow is so different; she’s also a second shift worker most of the time, so our schedules don’t match (this also often means that I wind up eating at non-healthy times).Issue 3: Self-Protection
The hardest part of this endeavor is not continuing to expose myself to broken glass and razor wire – self harm isn’t my schtick. This means I need to disconnect from things romantic. But cold turkeying isn’t productive, so I want to work out a plan for it.
First off, a majority of what I’ve read in the last two to three years, at least when it comes to fiction, has been either stuff with a romantic component or out and out romance. I know some folks can read these things and live vicariously through the romances the characters go through, but I’m not one of them – there’s a point in most of them where I feel the hit that comes from reading about something I might never have again. This is going to change my reading habits a lot – for one thing, I’m going to probably read a lot more nonfiction than I have in the last year. I had a plan of alternating between one nonfiction book and a work of fiction, back and forth, but in the last year it’s been shifted a lot towards fiction more than anything else. I’m at the mercy of the Library of Congress’s National Library Service for the Blind and Print disabled program, so I’m not the boss of this situation, and I’ll read the works of authors I’ve grown fond of, but I don’t know that I’ll pick up much stuff that has a romantic component in it unless the synopsis is enticing enough, and I’m going to be less picky about science fiction and mysteries. I don’t read westerns, war fiction, horror, or much fantasy – the big problem with a lot of epic fantasy is that in the end it’s all about the magic, so I’m a lot more selective, and I’m going to continue that. This will, however, probably give me the space to do that deep dive into Terry Pratchett’s Discworld some of my friends have suggested to me.
It's not only what books I listen to – there are songs I won’t be seeking out moving forward, even though I love the tunes. Hurting oneself isn’t a sign of healthy self care. Some of these songs key to specific times and events, because music is great at doing that, so this isn’t a light choice, it’s down to a survival one.
The bigger problem is in what I write. I’ve written two classic love stories, both of them edited, and I’ve got ideas for two more, with the next one into the plotting and characterization stage, but I don’t know how positive it’d be for me to dig deep into those works. Likewise, my next two Holly and the Wizards novels involve romantic content, and I plan to finish them, but I’m not sure when. I’ve got one speedbump to get past in a novel that starts out feeling like a romance novel but takes a drastic turn in the next two chapters after what I’ve already written, and I’ve got other things in progress that might or might not get any attention for a while. This is part of my dual extended middle fingers to genre conventions, because I float across genres like they never existed (Like Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Roald Dahl, and many others). Still, once I manage to procure covers for them there will be fans, I hope, and shippers gotta ship. So I can’t excise that from my life right now. Still, this is going to change my focus some in what I write. I don’t need the stuff in my face for multiple hours a day if I want to maintain my normal upbeat positive outlook.
This is also probably going to involve me cutting some friends out of my online circle. I’m not going to do it here, because nobody here is going to cause me mental unrest, but over on Zuckerphuqt there will be some culling. Why am I keeping that account active? Two reasons – there are people there that I can’t find elsewhere, and it’s a decent place to announce the publication of my stuff. If that second item turns out to be false I’ll be much more prone to shutting that vector down.
Issue 4: Identity
I’ve been working hard with my higher power to rid myself of the thoughts that my inability to attract anyone (yes, anyone, not someone) is a failing of mine. The reality of it is that I’m isolated and out of public contact because of reasons outlined above. Also, my friends aren’t coming up with anyone who might find me interesting enough to want to hold my hand, much less do anything more. It’s way beyond being touch starved or deprived, though I don’t have a good word at the moment for the extreme isolation that’s involved (touch gulagged?). And this can be hard to take. I was told in meditation that it wasn’t me causing this, it was willing participants who weren’t interested in getting their participation award. Okay, but still, that can, thanks to the labyrinthine twisting’s of thought, come back to being an issue centered on me.
What doesn’t help is how greater society views independents as somehow failing – outside a diner or seats at a bar, how many tables for one have you seen? The other troublesome factor is that my life is about sighted guide for the most part – our society isn’t equipped to deal with blindness these days. Table kiosks don’t have an audible option and few servers know to fold a receipt so a blind person can know what line to sign on, and a tip is its own issue. This means that so often people see me with someone and make the jump to us being involved romantically. In a recent conversation I joked that I could buy scrubs sets for those guiding me so people would get that it’s someone helping me, not someone dating me, but that’s a funny idea and nothing more. Of course there are some people who would hit on someone who was with someone else, but I have no interest in those people, and nobody’s asking us if we’re involved, probably out of politeness or fear of rejection. And this leaves me slogging through life alone for the most part. I hate this. But what am I to do? Work on myself and get to where I don’t let those identity issues bother me, because I know I’m a valid person who has a lot to offer. Offering it to someone else doesn’t seem to be in the cards at this point. I don’t like it of course, but as Ringo said so well, “It don’t come easy”.
So…
I’m thinking about this, and I don’t think I’m going to let this define me. I prefer the belief that I’m taking care of myself over the more popular label of a loser in the love department. And myriad other factors are playing into this, like my health, my disability, and where I own a house. I’m going to make the best I can out of what I’ve got and what I’ve created for myself, and try to continue being the blonde, blind, badass broad that I know myself to be.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2025-05-16 06:39 am (UTC)I spotted a post on Latest Things, and you sounded interesting.
>>I don't want to come off as a naysayer in my responses to you, but some things are sort of a big deal or a hill too tall to climb.<<
Yeah, that happens. It's frustrating to have a whole list of options, and then realize that most or all of them don't apply to you.
>> "Hope Thinking" is my own way of putting it <<
That makes sense.
In my observation, hope is for situations in flux. If you already know the outcome, wishing for something else is false hope, which is not helpful. The key is to avoid despair in situations that do have some flexibility.
>> "Be, then react accordingly, leaving the postgame analysis to others"<<
That is very astute.
>> Hope is often thought of as the last thing left in Pandora's jar <<
I love that you remember the jar part! Sometimes the last thing is forboding: knowledge of future doom, that would remove all hope. They're kind of different aspects of the same thing.
>>And BTW, the May issue of Scientific American has, in a math article, clear calculations to decide if it's a good risk to buy a lottery ticket. Timing, got to love it, it's what makes synchronicity more than a dead-end mental wandering.<<
Fascinating. I think we get Science News and Discovery.
We rarely buy lottery tickets, but will occasionally when the pot gets really big -- on the off chance that the Universe feels it would be useful for me to have ridiculous amounts of money.
>> so unless someone's aware of suppressed immune system needs I don't feel comfortable around others <<
In that case, consider if you have any caregivers you consider trustworthy, and if so, ask them about any groups for such people. That's the best route to find other folks with the same safety needs as yours. If there isn't a group, consider whether you might start one. The topic could be anything -- a book club, a craft club, a support circle, etc.
>>By blind I mean close to a hundred percent, maybe a tiny amount of light and gross motion perception but nothing else <<
Bummer. I know, hmm, at least one or two people in that range, more who are legally blind, and a bunch with assorted impairments. So it's something that comes up in my audience periodically. I did a couple posts about games:
Games for Blind People or Blackouts
Inclusive Games from Terramagne
>> (until the folks down under get their optic nerve regeneration tech out of testing).<<
I wish them luck with that. Nerves are bitchy little things. But it would be super useful tech if they could make it work consistently.
>> Oh, and I also know I'm statistically (ugh, adverbs...)<<
I like adverbs.
>> in a small minority -- I don't like bitter drinks,<<
Supertaster, perhaps? There are loads of different genes for tasting bitter things; some people have more or less. So if you have a lot of those, you're less likely to enjoy things with many bitter notes. Supertasters are folks who can distinguish more and subtler flavors than average.
What flavors do you like? There are a lot of interesting things beyond the bitter ones. Sweet? Fruit juices, especially the less common ones. Simple syrups can be made with a huge variety of things, and commercial versions are widely available. Sour? Again, fruit juices are promising, but there are a few sour syrups too like green apple. Salty? I'm a big fan of gourmet salts. And there's cheese, a whole world of flavors and textures. Also cheese fans tend to be super sociable.
>> which means bars and coffee purveyors aren't on the wanna go list, <<
You might consider the clean and sober crowd, who also tend to avoid bars and have a hard time finding safe social spaces.
>>and because my sight isn't bullying into my sensorium my already exceptional hearing gets overloaded at places with lots of hard walls or noisy reflections.<<
I know that feel. For me it's like getting hit with a wall of sound. But then I can hear owls flying and bats squeaking, so I'm way outside the human norms.
There are noise-cancelling technologies, but I haven't bothered with them because they're guaranteed to bug me and unlikely to help much anyhow. I do carry earplugs in case something is unbearably loud, but they only sort of help. Too much of my hearing is spread through my whole body.
>> And going places solo is problematic -- without someone to help me navigate a place it can get way weird, <<
It's hard to find a good seeing-eye human. I've done it a few times, but I always worry if my odd relationship with spacetime is going to cause an issue. But I got the job done without crashing us into anything.
>> and I cultivate an avoidance of public restrooms because of the theoretical international contest to make every single one of them different enough from others that developing a skill in their navigation is fraught with modifiers and variable failure percentages.<<
*laugh* I hear you. Did you know there is actually a "hide the toilet paper" contest among architects? That's one of the most sadistic things I've ever seen. At this point, hell, I'm lucky if I can get any of the equipment to turn on. Most of it's motion-detector operated now, and a lot of that tech can't detect me. I suspect that places put annoying tech in restrooms to discourage people from using them. The law only requires that the restrooms exist and have technically functional fixtures, not that people can actually and do indeed use them.
>>unfortunately the property values for my neighborhood have gone up almost fivefold in the past twelve years,<<
That sucks.
>> I'd love for someone GBTI etc. friendly to move in next door, but I don't think it's all that likely to happen.<<
Well, they're about 10% of the population, even in a well-to-do neighborhood.
>> That said, anything's possible in a constantly changing universe, and one of my friends wound up with a boyfriend because the family member the friend was taking care of managed to butt dial a person who my friend hooked up with.<<
*laugh* That is so awesome.
>>I'm sort of thinking that when I can manage to get covers for several of my books I'll get people who're interested in what I write to interact with, and that'll open doors.<<
That's worth exploring. Hmm, libraries and bookstores often host author events. Of the two, a library would probably be more likely to accommodate your safety needs.
>>Okay, on to the pantry et al... My pantry is shallow -- it's a cabinet on one wall of the kitchen with shelves in it, and it's, maybe, six inches deep.<<
So can racks won't fit unless you turn them sideways. However, you could get trays or bins that would allow you to label the sides in some way, which would prevent cans from mixing by shuffling around.
>> Good ideas though -- a bar code reader that'll run on my antiquated Android phone would help a lot. <<
Here is a list of some options:
https://www.upperinc.com/blog/barcode-scanner-apps/
>> Braille and I have agreed to go separate ways <<
Yeah, it's useful for some folks but not everyone. However, it's not the only tactile system.
>> I've played harder surface hand drums, like congas and cajons for long enough the pressure sensitivity in my palms and fingertips is long gone,<<
Oh wow. My musical ability is limited in this life. I can play a sea drum (which has tiny beads inside that sound like waves) or our PVC drums, but not more fancier than that.
Have you ever tried using a different body part? I can detect very fine details with my lips and tongue, but apparently that's not human normal.
>> and of course colors won't help at all. <<
I was thinking of a tactile color-labeling system. Feelipa is based on geometric shapes and would be the easiest to make at home by cutting shapes from adhesive foam. Coloradd is more flexible but more fiddly, better to do with a line-n-dot pen or puff paint. Peas are green, carrots are orange, etc.
*ponder* Or you could just buy little plastic vegetables meant as children's toys, or make them out of felt, and have an actual model of a carrot hanging from the bin.
>> My big resistance to using dots or other labels is that they get expensive (like all things relating to the servicing of a minority's needs and wants) so I can't justify that direction. <<
True if you buy things labeled for medical use. But very often, they're just taking an ordinary product and jacking up the price. So if you think what it does, you can often find a much cheaper version. I've seen line-n-dot pens cheap, that's one of the few cheap supplies, but there's also puff paint. Adhesive foam can be used to cut shapes, and is available in stick-on letters if you could read something an inch or two tall and about an eighth of an inch thick. Cords can be tied into knots; some people color-code their drawstring pants or hoodies that way. Beads come in many sizes and textures that could be used to distinguish things. It's just a matter of thinking about what things you wish to distinguish, and then what kind of marker would be easy for you to sense and remember.
>> And my biggest issue with such things is when I get them delivered and need to put them in the freezer, fridge, or pantry, so when they come into the house. It's a challenge, and I don't have friends close thanks to the property value issues.<<
Yeah, that's hard. I think some kind of barcode scanner would be the best solution there. However, if you get groceries delivered, some delivery people might be willing to tell you which is which.
There's another way that would require more planning ahead but zero guessing. That is, arrange your purchases so that things have different shapes and sizes. A can of tomato paste is smaller and skinnier than a can of peas, and corn niblets often come in a short can. A macaroni box is tall and thin, while a cake mix box is thicker. Heatable things come in different shapes too -- we get a shrimp fried rice in an oval container. You just have to tell your shopper NO substitutions on size/shape that would cause duplication.
If you go online, you can find the dimensions of cans, boxes, etc. on some websites. It's a bit extra work, so I'd probably pick a handful of favorite things to avoid having to look up new stuff all the time. It does help that some containers are standardized though, and some like broth come in either a can or a carton. Juice bottles are different shapes and textures too. You wouldn't even have to do it all at once, you could experiment with one category like canned goods or boxed goods. It depends how much you value independence vs. time and energy, that balance is up to personal priorities.
>>This is one of the inherent challenges for folks who have fringe or non-mainstream spiritual beliefs. Upon reflection it feels like I've done things that limit my resource options from mainstream sources.<<
Very little mainstream anything suits me.
>>I've got sources for some excellent stuff<<
That's good.
>> I've got an effective screen reader <<
Then keep an eye out for fiction on Dreamwidth. It's a lot more diverse than what's in the bookstores nowadays. A couple times recently I've gone to a bookstore and not found any books I wanted, and the Universe started having a kernel panic attack and throwing random things at me in hopes something would appeal. The first time I came home with a stuffed axolotl for our weird stuffie collection. Then I figured out that hitting the magazine rack is more effective, so that's good.
Here are a couple of original stories that have a very classic flavor and do not involve sex/romance.
"Bone" by Karl K. Gallagher
Scientific discoveries aren't always made by scientists.
https://gallagherstories.substack.com/p/bone
"Child of a Wandering Star" by Derin
You’re not supposed to do it, of course, but it’s not unheard of for parents to try to ensure good destinies for their daughters by timing their conception carefully. Most hatchings take place under somewhat clear skies, so the gods that bear witness to the young larvae and claim them for their paths are stars. And stars are notoriously regular in their habits, for the most part; if you want a sturdy and caring daughter born under Zimma, or a strong leader under Yorlu, then it’s all a matter of timing.
But there’s always a gamble.
https://derinstories.com/child-of-a-wandering-star/
Oh, and podcasts are popular, some of my vision-impaired friends are really into that. It's not something I'm into so no recs there, but it is very common on Dreamwidth.
>>Thanks for a well thought out response -- some of it isn't something I can do, but I appreciate the effort.<<
*bow, flourish* Happy to be of service. Challenges come up in my Hard Things posts sometimes. It might take us 20-30 comments to find an actionable step that will work, but we usually manage to find something. And if nothing else it's good practice with creative problem-solving.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2025-05-16 02:31 pm (UTC)Re: the quote from my second Holly and the Wizards novel, Stacy is fifteen years old, in a polycule, bisexual with strong gynophilic leanings, an ADHD recipient, and a wizard -- writing her is fun. And I don't have an issue with defining my characters with delimiters since I created them, and my perspective on identity isn't something I want to dig much into for what is sort of an YA market; plus the books tend to be long -- the first one is 1049 pages, and it has a clean break point so I'll publish it in two parts. This is a series that frustrates me a lot, because the covers are among the simplest I need., but I no longer have the ability to create them since I lost my sight in 2003 thanks to acute hypertension. I've got two done with three more started and in differing levels of page count so far.
Hmm, you strike me as someone who might find interesting things at www.magnetsandladders.org, if you're not already familiar with the site and initiative -- they've used 22 of my creations, including a single work of poetry called "What I Did Last Summer" -- I tend to keep my poetry in the lyrics I write. Oh, and regarding music, I've got a bachelors of music from the University of Texas at Arlington in jazz studies; I'm familiar with the ocean drum you mentioned, since I have two of them -- one that's a 22 inch Remo and the other is goatskin headed and I use it for early music situations. I have enough hand drums that when someone asks how many one I purchased makes I reply with "One more" -- counting them is a bit of a chore. Oh, the other things people often ask about me and music, I play/can perform on 14 different instruments, though some performances won't be well received -- my clarinet ability is not my highest performance level among the instruments I play. My principal instruments for my degree are trombone and voice, the latter the one I passed the vocal barrier in.
Yes, I am very much a supertaster. Sweet turns for me in under a second as it changes with contact with saliva, plus I try to avoid things that affect my blood sugar unless I'm in a crash or precipitous drop condition. Sour also turns, though not as severe. Salty lingers and also, as expected, makes me consume water to deal with it. Savory and I get along okay when we meet.
Oh, regarding your language interest, Sa Sargah Sagu-- hint, ancient Egyptian.
Here's the other thing about having a long list of options that don't fly -- As you might have observed, I'm a possessor of an analytical streak and I'm often told I have a nimble mind, so others can get frustrated when they spool out options and I have reasons why those things won't work -- it's not me being a Yeah But, it's that often they're great ideas that I've already come up with, analyzed, and found issues with them. Oh, and in case you're wondering, I'm not neurodivergent as the APA/DSM-V defines the term, because high cognitive performance and the ability to code switch on a dime means I have a lot of friends with neuro-spiciness. My brother was an early adopter of Bipolarness that manifested a lot as ADHD, so I learned how to navigate flight of ideas situations; it drove his first spouse nuts, because she couldn't follow three conversations happening at the same time.
Scientific American is a recent add to the magazines NLS provides for blind/VI folks; they also give me access to Psychology Today, Smithsonian, and on an occasional basis Popular Science, along with Asimov's, Analog, and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.
I don't buy lottery tickets unless I get the numbers in my head -- this is rare.
Oh, another piece of the puzzle -- almost two years ago I contracted a pair of fungus strains that a normal immune system would invoke the geddoutahere protocol -- The result? Close to a month in the hospital and a dance that got to the 48 hours from lights out territory. Before that I was less concerned about socializing with all y'all plague rats (because anyone who isn't way aware of not infecting others is that way to me), but since then I've become far more wary.
I'll check into those posts of yours. I've got a shrinking support network thanks to pesky things like life and its converse That's a real problem, and I'm always looking for more safe people. I also have a beta reader pool that's far smaller than I think is productive, so I'm also always looking for readers -- I'm thinking you might have sources and strategies for that issue.
Yeah, I've not seen anything so far about how the optic nerves are way up on the complexity scale for human anatomy, so regenerating optic nerves might gateway to other nerve regeneration protocols, and the big kahuna of the nerve family, spinal cords, might be closer in reach too. And from what I've heard they're getting results with their protocol. Optic nerve damage is close to 100% of my vision barrier, thanks to way acute hypertension back in 2003, so they get that done and I'm a lot further down the road.
Noise cancelling is way problematic for me, though I carry a nice set of earplugs if I need to enjoy the silence -- this is something that frustrates several of my former help sources, they're some level of visio-typical, so their hearing isn't keyed so close to survival and threat assessment. Anything I've tuned out may be able to eat me. I've been moving away from people who have the empathy of Al2O3 or carbon crystal.
I've been test-thinking a language that has far less parts of speech -- eschewing prepositions like Finnish does, using suffix and prefix sets to handle adverbs and adjectives, relegating conjunctions to punctuation, dropping articles, taking a different approach to nouns and verbs that's tied to agency and the ability to generate action, and also dropping interjections all the way into punctuation. My recent thinking also includes doubled vowels of the same type to denote character of the sound between hard and soft (though the ashe will need it's own handling), making the schwa into a regular letter, and things like that. I don't have com lang skills, but like so many other arenas I know enough about the structure and infrastructure of the topic to explore it.
I use guide humans a lot, though I have effective cane skills and I did great with The Mighty Guide Beast when he was working and still breathing. I don't get out near enough to justify getting another guide beast, and my current pet dog who I call many things, including The Holy Terrier, isn't up for things like that -- it'd also require an interesting harness, because she's got a lot of JRT in her so she's got short legs. Note: The Seeing Eye is way protective of their trademark, so they try (though it's clear they're less than successful) to get people to not use their brand to describe all guide beasts. Guide [insert critter type] is the preferred term.
Hide the toilet paper, that sounds sick. That's up there with mandatory attendance at Nickelback concerts.
Okay, now the link to the barcode readers has elevated this response into the Attention You directory so I can dig into that. I've got a wonderful app on my phone that reads an RFID, or if you prefer, Arfid, tag on my prescription bottles -- way useful, though not anywhere near universal in execution.
Using a different body part gets into logistical issues and can also weird out the 'danes. The tip of the nose is way sensitive in most people, which is why people doing MLM sex toy sales will suggest that people test out different vibratory devices on the tip of their nose to gauge intensity of effect.
I think I might be familiar with that shrimp fried rice container.
I keep running into recommends for Bone, so I think I'm going to check if it's available through the NLS.
Oh, a filter for recommendations -- vampires are a huge turn-off for me. I've got friends who can't comprehend why I don't find parasites sexy, but I think that tells me more about them than it does me; I get the whole seduction angle, but it takes me nowhere. Regarding fantasy, I'm also resistant to stories where it winds up being all about the magic -- I want the characters to be the crux of the biscuit, not the magic. And I'm also not a fan of transformation stories where the transformation is the destination -- that's the start of a journey, and when it's treated as the primary terminus I feel cheated. I wrote a continuation of a classic fairy tale titled "After Ever After" about that.
I'll explore a bit more here regarding other reading options. I'm not embedded deep here like I was back in the LJ days, so navigating the culs du sac here is not something I'm skilled at so far.