needs more floral blazers

It feels petty to include this? But the original version of this entry was "Why Isn't Ien Working On And The Next" and this kind of sets the pattern. 

Basically, August 2017 I fell into a new fandom, and it was nice to be able to venture into a new sandbox! After having the WIP pressure of ATN, it was nice to write and post a few oneshots, no strings attached.

Anyways, I sign up for a holiday exchange for this fandom, which of course, being a deadline, means that I want to avoid it. I post ATN ch 10, I post ATN ch 11, and then I’m like okay ien you’re a co-mod of this exchange, your friend is the mod, let’s not make her hate you, so I come up with the following plan:

finish giftfic

post giftfic

reply to recipient’s comment on giftfic

go back to ATN

This seems like a good plan!

...up until my recipient never comments!

Which again, feels kinda petty! But with the way I process things, and the way that brains are wired in general (According to the Completion Principle, your brain is wired to know when you were done with a task. When you finish that task, your brain can use the energy it was using to focus on that task to now focus on something else. When that task isn’t finished, your brain can’t put that activity away, because it’s still not finished. You continue to spend mental energy on it in the background, even when you’re doing other things. (Yes this is quoted from a video from a YTer I have a crush on)), I couldn’t focus on ATN, because it wasn’t its turn yet.

And while I was writing other things in that fandom, and enjoying them, nothing got to the completion point, because I was waiting on other things to be completed first.

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And then it’s just a long, looong stretch of stalling while in neutral.

Despite what this idk-public-diary-entry write-up implies, things weren’t awful All The Time. There were some good times!

But overall, my writing felt incomplete.

And then I had difficulty writing, and I felt incomplete.

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I really don't know how to talk about my last relationship.

It had a big impact on who I was, who I thought I was, who I thought I could be, and how I viewed myself.

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In October 2019, I was offered a great position:

full-time (money!), temporary with the possibility of being brought on permanently (which meant that I had the option to try it out, and I could turn it down and not worry about the length of employment affecting my job history as much), barely a commute (just seven minutes with morning traffic), a great match to my skillsets (secretary/receptionist'ing), and I jokingly told a friend that it was a 95% match for what a dream job would be. It was in health care. . My dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer the day after my birthday. Which he told me a week after that. He's since gotten radiation, and he's fine now (in that field of health), but I'm still amazed at how out of left field it was. During a pandemic, his huge health scare was a thing other than the thing that's scaring everyone. And it wasn't like he had a remission from his 2016 colon cancer episode, this was a different cancer. They were objectively good things/not the worse options, but it was just really hard to come to terms with.

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A thing that also happened in June 2020 was that I was diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum.

This is also something I don’t really know how to talk about! Because it ties into nearly three decades worth of insecurities and difficulties and loneliness and pain and conflict and the messy end to the best relationship I was ever in and- 

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[long rant on my health care receptionist job and CoworkerA, who told me not to do things that I hadn’t done, doesn’t understand technology, who had some daily critique for me on no you’re not supposed to give that employee those gloves or I’m the one that’s supposed to do that and you know you can just and you know it’s easy to, who stopped responding to me when I would greet her in the morning, and who made me uncomfortable that one time she hovered at my desk after asking me for something and when I was like you are making me uncomfortable she basically gaslit me about it, and I emailed the company owner about it and she was great and understanding! and later in talking to our supervisor she was like you two need to stop picking at each other and I was like this is why I didn’t go to you about it in the first place and the company owner was like ‘maybe we can find a way to move you to another branch’ and then my supervisor kept brushing that off as not something that was possible with my job, and yes I did quit this job in February because I could not stand the emotional drain and turmoil and upset of dealing with CoworkerA]

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I put in a PTO request for the autumn equinox, because I like taking solstices and equinoxes off, because I'm most invigorated to clean. And I was going to do a full deep clean of my apartment. I wake up that morning. I find myself alone in my bed. I find the door to my apartment wide open. I find CatB in the stairwell the next floor down. I didn't find CatG in my apartment building, on my block, or anywhere else. What really needs to be pointed out is that I got my cats in March 2018. I had an ER overnight crisis visit in June 2018, but I spent the entire night wanting for the evaluator to arrive in the morning so I could get back to my cats. My cats had been surrendered from the same home - but that home had surrendered four cats, if not more. I couldn't decide on one over the other, and since they already had years together, I figured it was best to get them both. (Not to mention, I was working 40 hrs between two part-time jobs, so they could keep each other company while I was at work!) (As well, I'd lived in a two-cat household for fifteen years, and this way I wouldn't have to worry about getting one cat, then deciding to get a second cat later one, and them not cohabiting well!) (And there's the fact that petting two cats at the same time is a great feeling!) The benefits were truly endless! Because in the ER, and through therapy afterwards, I realized that this was my emotional fail-safe: I can't kill myself, because I can't guarantee that B+G would be adopted together, and I don't want them to get separated. And it worked. They grounded me, gave me a reason to want to live that next day. I had B, and I had G, and things were going to be okay. This was really cemented by the pandemic. My human interactions went from being 40 hours a week with someone I was always on yellow alert with, with seeing my parents about once a week, socializing maybe twice a month, to being 40+ hours a week with someone I was always on red alert with, not able to see my parents for six months, not seeing anyone... but at least I had B, and I had G, things were going to be okay.

...up until I didn’t, and they weren’t.

B is a beautiful cat, and warm, and friendly, and affectionate, and if I were to kill myself and she were returned to the Humane Society then she would be adopted. It's hard. . Which brings us to now. I'm... here.

I'm an anxious, depressed, autistic, heartbroken, suicidal, unemployed mess with communication issues, workplace trust issues, connection issues...