#ref notes

[autogeneity]

so it would seem a significant amount of the difficulty I was having reading long-form fiction (specifically) might have been down to...the formatting?? fiddled around with fonts and sizes and spacing and apparently I just get distracted far less with this configuration?

would sure be nice if my brain informed me of what was bothering it rather than just taking a hike anytime something is not up to standard but hey

[autogeneity]

I don't actually very much like the experience of being very focused on something. think I used to, once? but now it feels...tunnel. like tunnel-vision. and with the same association of darkness. claustrophobic.

and seems in fact true that when I get too absorbed in like programming I more often end up in weird rabbit-holes because I'm thinking about this and only this and not, like...laterally, and would be better served by taking a walk than staring harder

it is possible that I am actually doing a completely different thing now when I "focus" than I did as a kid? it doesn't seem like it should be necessary that you lose sight of the forest for the trees by mere fact of paying attention. but perhaps since I am more distractible now, I am doing more active (though subconscious) inhibition of things that appear "unrelated" and losing things of value

[autogeneity]

the universe is vast and a life is long, there's more to it than a few shitty months, there are more possibilities than I have conceived of, more out there than I know, and all of those things continue to exist even if I can't see them right now. the world is bigger than this moment.

[autogeneity]

feeling optimistic about this rebuilding, but I need to be careful not to get ahead of myself. experienced the feeling of a small something healing earlier today. but the feeling of insight or improvement is not identical to the process. it takes practice and time for real adaptations to occur. I have to do the slow work, not just catch a glimpse of the destination.

[autogeneity]

so I have these eccentricities of habit-formation/behaviour-change/etc, right -- where small, incremental changes don't work, and large, identity-defining changes through inflexible rules work better. this works well when it works. but it works through rigidity, and consequently is brittle. it can falter in the face of the uncertainties and inconsistencies of the real world.

this has been especially troublesome with the intermittent illness. if I am inconsistent enough, it chips away at the critical element of being able to believe I am [person with trait]. and it is difficult to build back, with the difficulty of starting small. I need a dramatic disproof! that I can hang everything off until the next time it all falls apart.

and "softer" rules don't work for me, because as mentioned in the rules post, if I can negotiate it, I probably will, and in fact not only that but I will probably get stuck on that with decision paralysis. it has to be non-negotiable.

so now I am working on a way of reframing small, actionable steps into an identity-defining change. I am aiming for identity as "person who shows up", and then, later, "person who finishes what they start".

in practical terms this isn't actually any different to "walk 5 minutes every day", but it perhaps applies a different motivational mechanism to do so. not an "I am doing something small" but rather an "I am building something large" -- I am not building the fitness in tiny steps; I am actually taking fairly modest steps towards building the type of person who shows up no matter what. and importantly, not a "letting myself off easy".

I think this is also possibly a way of approaching the building fortitude against being sick thing.

[autogeneity]

funny that I figured out I could leverage my aversion to contradiction in order to get myself in line to achieve consistency, by deliberately inducing contradiction

but not that I could leverage my need to Fix That in order to get shit done, by breaking shit on purpose

[autogeneity]

lamotrigine brought me down to planet earth from the hella dissociation all those years ago, but I didn't realize then that the effect, like...keeps going! if you take more

first time we increased the dose I reduced it again because it seemed to inhibit even the mildly dissociative "spaced out, just vibing" type of states. and I rather like vibing sometimes!

then we tried increasing it some more when my depression got rough few months back. but I also, again, took it back down, because it was making me weirdly emotional?

few days back I came to notice feeling increasingly spacy again. and had the thought, "I'm not sure I'd ever want to cuddle with anyone at all tbh" which is very 2017!autogeneity-coded of me. so I decided to experiment taking the full dose again

anyway so completely coincidentally, today I felt an unprecedented kind of desperate touch starvation and was held back from bad life decisions only by how messy my place is and that I don't want to do all those dishes rn so I can't invite anyone over

[autogeneity]

*points at brain* why is it so angery