#anxieties

[glowcowboy]

my ability to be scared despite literally nothing happening knows no bounds

[deebrisbyfish]

Happy New Year! Here's hoping this year is a smidge less anxiety-inducing than the last, but I'm not expecting a lot, honestly. lol That said, I AM doing something NEW over on PATREON for backers at the 5 dollar a month level: NEW STRIPS IN COLOR!! This will be an exclusive feature for Patreon patrons online, so join today for a snazzy new way to enjoy FINDING DEE! Woot!

[zedecksiew]

Rings Of Reminder

It wasn't an existential threat like it was for many---but 2025 was for me still quite a wrestle. The past two years have been.

I am still not over stuff that happened in 2023. Maintaining friendships is hard; I am often angry; I always feel like I am nothing at all.

But hey! I am finally getting the therapy I need; Sharon and I have been working more on our house; and my personal + political convictions took a hard, clarifying tack left.

Unalloyed goods.

+

A practice I began as a countervailing force against the internal roar of:

"You have made nothing! You are too slow a writer! You don't know how to design games! You are not worthy to make art! You are too naive and stupid to understand the way the world works!" etc

are these rings. They don't fit me super well and scratch easy; none of them cost me more than RM50. I like how understated they are.

I get a ring whenever I finish a personal project and it is fully out in the world. I have five rings now:

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SHRINESHARE, an art folio made with Sharon Chin and David Blandy. Featuring 16 (and counting) artists from around the world; exhibited over a half dozen (and counting) times around Malaysia and the UK. Inspired by Amze Emmons' Help Yourself, and explores ways we can shared ideas of the sacred without depending on the temples of the state (museums, institutions).

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A PERFECT WIFE, a contemporary horror adventure made with Amanda Lee Franck, Scrap World, and David Blandy. (Physical copies here!) About a pontianak, a refugee community, and the impunity of patriarchal power. (This ring is also shared with A CROCODILE, EATING, a shrine and art installation about how pain is metabolised, for WEIRD HOPE ENGINES. That show is the reason we made A PERFECT WIFE---it was a fundraiser to get Amanda, Scrap and me to the UK. But the crocodile should really have their own ring!)

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TO PUT AWAY A SWORD, an adventure campaign for David Blandy and Daniel Locke's ECO MOFOS!!. About dead mecha, and what to do what to do when the ruins of hypercapitalism still poison the garden you're trying to plant, after its collapse. Pretty personal to me, as I live next to an aging petroleum refinery; it is the focus of our IRL environmental activism. (Sequel coming soon!)

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CHAPTER SERF, a full TTRPG fan game for Warhammer 40K. (It's free, obvs.) You play peons serving the setting's demigod supersoldier man-children. About toil under feudal lords who were never raised to mind your humanity. My most recent project, and one am unreasonably proud of; a lot of the design work in this is me test-running stuff that will be part of my big 2026 game project, Inshallah.

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THE TIDE RETURNING, an adventure campaign for Yochai Gal's Cairn; it is part of the Cairn 2E Box Set. About mangroves as a landscape; conflict between a settler-colonial project and an indigenous resistance; cycles of repetition, of consequence, of justice. Colonialism that I return to often, given my homeland's own history and the horror abroad in the world today. Every return comes with more clarity.

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Because these rings are loose, when I wriggle my fingers they turn around and around and rub against each other with a pleasing (annoying?) clinking sound, and they help remind me I matter.

I am working on a book now---the wayang puppet on our library shelf isn't ornamentation; they are both patron and research informant!

Maybe I can add another ring, soon.

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In 2026 I will still be fidgeting my fingers, clinking my rings together---but it is a tic I hope to rely on less and less, as time passes.

In 2026 I hope I will be less angry.

In 2026 I hope I can be well enough to be a better friend to the many, many people who were friends to me, who I can never adequately thank.

I hope 2026 will be kind to us, all.

I wish you all bread, and I wish you all roses.

[classycookiexo]

[cornishpadfoot]

Remus being obsessed with not having any stubble... partly because Sirius complains about it poking him.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[“The family therapist David Freeman once concluded a public lecture on intimacy and relationships by saying that if there was any one thing he hoped his audience would remember from his talk, it was the awareness that one does not know his or her spouse, his or her children. We may believe we have a perfect idea of why they act as they do, when in reality our beliefs reflect no more than our own anxieties. Whenever we ascribe a motive to the other person, as in “you are doing this because...,” we discard curiosity and immobilize compassion. The person who knows has nothing to learn, has given up on learning.”]

Gabor Maté, Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder

[alive on all channels]

[wanderingmind867]

I know I should probably tell my dad about my limited social interactions on here sometime. But also...well, I don't know how to do it. I don't know what I'd say. Because my dad and I both know that I'm very socially awkward. I have no friends my own age in real life. I'm super dependent on my dad at this stage in my life. He does my laundry, runs my showers, cooks for me, cleans the house, makes my bed, etc. I feel ashamed of this, but I've let it happen. And I plan to correct it eventually, but it'll take time. I can't go all into the deep end at once!

But yeah, I feel like my dad should know there's people who like my posts often and engage with my stuff and all that. But I don't know how to explain it to him, and I don't want to make it sound like I'm some kind of social butterfly on here. I'm not. I'm really not. I can't let him think that, even though I don't think he would think that. But it's just hard to know what words to use, so that's the big problem I have here. It's awful.

You know, I think this is a good indication that it might be okay for me to make a new post tagging everyone to a post again. I want to make one again anyways, but I haven't found the time to do it (and I also haven't wanted to tag everyone and find it I already did this exact thing two weeks ago today). So I'll try to tag people to a post again in a bit, but I think I'll do it only after I've worked on some schoolwork and done some other stuff too.