are you into any physical media collecting (casettes, records, DVDs, art, etc.?)
Yeah, video games.
I keep a collection of games (PS2 (though that is greatly diminished from when I had ~70 of them in the 00's), PS3, PSP, PSV, GBC, N64, GBA, DS, 3DS, Switch and Super Switch) with the full intent of loaning then out like a library for my friends to enjoy.
The last time I did a big loan out, I wrangled up a tasting platter for switch games and lent someone a console and 8 games to mess about with and see if they found anything they liked. And I wrote a quick zine for getting started and what each game was and what to know going into each (cause they were pretty new to video games and I wanted them to have the best chance of enjoying them).
It's my opinion that to be a good evangelist for video games I need to reduce the barriers for others to give stuff a go.
That, and for gamedev reasons (cause I'm an indie gamedev on the side) I like having a library of good and bad examples of design choices I can play and learn from (just reading articles of bad choices is nothing compared to struggling to use bad UI or stumble with bad UX).
A fun game you can play at everyone else's expense is to go to a cafe or drink place and when they ask for your name give an obviously wrong gendered one and see what new and wonderful ways they change your name to fit the gender they clock you as.
It's mischief (actually me legal name, I am very proud I found something that fit me so well), transfem and three and a half years on HRT.
I have lots of things wrong with me, so I made this side blog so my mutuals would stop being sad if I posted honestly about my struggles. So if you follow this I apologize in advance that we can't be mutuals but I do love you.
If I say anything seriously concerning feel free to reffer to this guide on how to not take me seriously because I am unfixable and irreparably broken and complaining is how I cope with that fact.
Interests: Almost all natural sciences, space, linguistics, game design, system design, conveyances in door handle design and their inappropriateness in where they're put.
I would play more video games if I wasn't spending my time trying to get better at writing smut and non-smut fiction.
So I was reading a big post on transmisogy and remembered that talked about (in part) being sent to schools that parents know would lead to physical abuse.
And I remembered that my parents wanted to send me to the same school as my older sister. They didn't ask my opinion, the only person they asked was my second mom: my older sister. (She was a bit hit and miss at being a backup parent (cause she was only a year and a half older than me and was very much pushed into authority roles over me and our younger brother) but she thought about my well-being a lot more than my parents did)
So they wanted to send me to the public school cause I'd not manager to get a scholarship at the local private school (a test they didn't try to do any practice or revision for, they just assumed I could ace it blindfolded). My sister had to convince them that if I went to either of the public schools we had nearby I would not survive high school.
Not in a "won't flourish" style but because another kid had already made an attempt on my life in primary school and I'd been dealing with several years of bullying and exclusion already.
She managed to do such a good job of explaining how bad the public schools would be for me that I changed to the private school for the last year of primary school. She might have been a jerk who was part of the torment I went though at home (but that was later, she got older and wanted to be allowed to think only of herself for once, even if she was a little too keen to trample on me to make herself feel powerful) but she was also the best parent I had.
Which is to say, my birth parents were terrible at their job and I understand why they had child services called against them.
Okay...so for a bit if an exercise in self awareness I'm going to be as generous as possible and list out all the disabilities I have. (Current count: 17)
List under the cut cause no one actually wants to read that. Happy to chat about these in DMs if anyone has any questions.
Autism: I recently learned that when I was 5 my teachers thought I was so autistic I would never be able to live independently. Later testing found that wasn't the case, but I do find myself empathizing and finding similarities between autistic folks and myself. I wouldn't call myself autistic...but that's probably cause I have a powerful urge to never admit to being disabled or maligned ever and to punish myself if I wanted to since I would be "stealing" the attention someone who "actually needs" help would need more than me.
ADHD: I got some of the symptoms, and done a few self diagnostic test and they said I had mild ADHD. I have a kid who's actually diagnosed with combination inattentive and hyperactive ADHD. I got time blindness, I'm very distractable, I task switch often. I'd probably fall more in the inattentive category.
Burnout: I got real bad burnout a decade ago and it messed with my short term memory, so now I can keep secrets really well cause I'll forget them instantly. That got better over time, but I still push myself too hard and manage my time and rest poorly so I'm at risk of doing it again.
Incomplete skeleton: I broke a bone and it healed wrong and gave me arthritis for most of a year with the two bits of bone grinding on one another. Had surgery to remove the smaller bit that was causing the issue. I can feel storms approaching with that bit of my bones that stayed behind.
Bone set wrong: I broke an arm, but the X-ray was read wrong so they never set my arm properly, by the time they realised the mistake and put me in a cast my arm had set wrong. Now if I use my dominant arm too much I get an ache that can take hours/days to go away. This has gotten worse in the last year or so.
Disordered eating: I forget to eat constantly and snack to make up for that. I'll forget to eat breakfast and have snacks to make it to lunch, forget to eat lunch too and then try to have a bigger late lunch, then be too full to eat dinner on time. But if I skip dinner I'll end up starving close to bed time and often just try and go to sleep rather than eat.
Eating disorder: I'll withhold eating as a form of self flagilation. Also if I get a stomach bug (frequent occurrence cause my snack based diet is lacking proper nutrition) I'll end up throwing up a lot and then be unable to keep down food for a week or two as I slowly start back on an all liquids diet so I don't starve (still will not eat for the first few days of being sick).
You might think that was two of the thing. But disordered eating is just eating in a way that ruins any schedule your body tries to follow. An eating disorder is normally a brain thing, like my utter confidence if I eat food when I'm not feeling the best that I'll throw it back up and should abstain instead.
Chronic pain: this is just gonna be a quick list of all the body parts that often hurt and why I think they do
Hips (I think my shoes are doing this...or HRT...or it's translated from my feet)
Ankles (they swell up often, dunno why but it makes walking hard)
Knees (this one I had x-rayed and they could find anything so maybe it's also translated from another problem, probably ankles)
Wrist (its the wrist right next to my messed up arm, so it's probably that)
Fingers (no clue on this one, sometimes they just ache for no reason (or a good reason like poor ergonomics at my desk))
Lower back (I kinda hope this one is just period pain)
Organs (I think this one is either digestive issues or muscle pains)
Incontinence: I always get caught off guard by my needs to take toilet breaks. Got worse on HRT, but that could also just be an age thing and started getting worse coincidentally at the time I started HRT.
Sleep deprivation: one of my jobs wakes me up most nights so I don't get a full night of sleep pretty much ever. So that probably makes most of the rest of my disabilities worse.
Fatigue: either from my lack of a sport or physical hobby I have a very small reserve of endurance (which has gotten worse since I had Covid). I have started a sport recently so we'll see if that poor of energy grows. But I do fall asleep sometimes early in the afternoon cause I'm too tired, don't even plan to, just wake up hours later to learn I passed out. One time I fell asleep on an overpass on a walk home. Just couldn't make it that last kilometre home and apparently needed to nap right then and there.
Migraines: I get light sensitive, irritable and exhausted often. A quick nap normally beats them. No good idea what sets them off, but at least I don't have auras. Have started taking pain meds about these recently.
CPTSD: I forgot about all the rape and abuse...which is probably a sign of the same thing. Pretty sure the panic attacks I have when people try to get physically intimate with me and the very intense urges to self harm surrounding those encounters is this. I'm gonna talk to a therapist about that some day, all the doctors I asked said I should...and so do my friends.
History of suicidal depression: speaks for itself
Psychotic break: had a psychotic break when I was 10-ish (2001 or 2002) and now I have a trigger that will give me intrusive thoughts that haunt me for a few hours/days and chills and fatigue. I accidentally spent a few days trying to make sensory deprivation happen just with my imagination and had a really bad success. Probably counts as CPTSD too.
Second Psychotic Break: in 2010 I did it again and this time I focused too hard on my own thoughts and got to a point where if I got into a medative state (slightly dissociative episode more like, I'm not good at meditation) I was able to see my own thoughts forming. Ended up with a literal echo in my internal monologue for a few months and was convinced I wasn't human or real and this was me starting to break down. If I don't get enough physical contact with other people this comes back, I essentially have a ritual of listening to other people's heartbeat and putting a hand on my chest (or back before I had boobs just watching my chest pulse) to feel my own too and watching them sync up to calm this down.
Glasses: I became shortsighted as a kid by straining my eyes trying to read in the dark...and then hid this fact for a year cause I was convinced my mom would hurt me or punish me for costing her more money.
I feel like my long term tech projects always sound weird but have very mundane context that makes them boring. For instance, I am currently trying to:
Power a dumb pin barrel switch with USB power exclusively through my love of adapters
Make a MacBook Pro less Mac and less book and most importantly more pro
Remake a USB thumb drive in its own image (poorly)
Find a use for 5 raspberry pis (can't be a home server)
Jank a $2000 webcam to work as a normal USB device
How I react to other people displaying mental health symptoms: "That's entirely acceptable, Pet. If we look at the circumstances we can see what set you off and any reasonable person wouldn't hold that against you. Take your time and we'll continue when you're ready."
How I react when I display a mental health symptom: "Ohh you fucked up, Girl-y. Everyone now thinks you're sub human (the correct assumption to make about you cause you barely exist) and you've lost any respect they had for you. Worse still, they'll activity avoid you from now on our of fear for what else will set you off."
On a scale of 1-10 how similar are the two approaches? I feel like I give everyone as much patience and kindness as I can, and same with myself. That's exactly as much kindness as I can stand to offer myself.
