#thinking through

[blabbershere]

[whentherewerebicycles]

I read a lot of self-help/counseling books about parenting, family dynamics, relationships, etc and sometimes I’m embarrassed by how new age-y and touchy-feely all that stuff can be. (yes I’m aware that this skepticism and aversion to talking about feelings was instilled in me by my upbringing.) but honestly I think that even though the rhetoric of self-help type lit can feel a little cliche or simple sometimes, some of those concepts have genuinely been so transformative for me and have moved me so much closer to being an emotionally healthy adult. some of those things I didn’t know you were allowed to feel, and some of them I didn’t even know you could feel—as in, I had never really seen an adult person model those things and had no idea that they should ideally be part of a healthy adult’s inner emotional repertoire. I think the concepts that have been most powerful for me are:

1. practicing active listening with yourself.

ie, consistently checking in with yourself and asking yourself open-ended questions (what are you feeling? why are you feeling it? what do you want right now? what do you need? what would you like me to know?) and then attentively listening to the answers with empathetic, nonjudgmental curiosity. just the whole idea of being curious about and attuned to your own inner emotional life, and consistently making time and space for yourself to process what you’re feeling. also: as in active listening, not jumping to fix something or propose a solution, but understanding that sometimes what is most valuable and fulfilling is just being allowed to work through a thought, to talk through an experience, to gently work loose the different threads in a tangled knot of feeling.

2. practicing self-compassion.

not forgiving yourself everything or having no standards for yourself but just, like, being warm and caring towards yourself, especially when you have failed or messed up in some way. just not being merciless with yourself, you know? I think what blows my mind the most about this one is that I always thought that if you forgave yourself too easily or went too easy on yourself you were just encouraging yourself to be a lazy, self-rationalizing, self-justifying piece of shit. but, amazingly, it turns out that when you extend compassion to yourself, it seems to put you in a better position to pick yourself back up, look at the situation again, and think what you want to do next time to reach a different outcome. it’s almost like humans can think, work, and learn better when they are not being flooded by waves of shame and self-loathing.

3. reparenting / learning to parent yourself.

this concept came latest to me, but I kinda sense that it may be the theme of my early 30s. I am still learning to let go of the need to receive certain things from my parents: affirmation, acceptance, meaningful engagement, recognition of my autonomy, loving curiosity about who I am as a person. I am also still learning to accept that no matter how much I try to offer those things to them—trying to model those behaviors, in a sense, as if they’ll suddenly pick up on what I need from them—they are not really able to hear me or to accept those things from me. I am still making peace with the fact that I can’t fix their damage, and that I may never be able to have a real relationship with them—they love me in the ways and to the extent they are capable of, and no further, and that hurts but it also isn’t my fault. It isn’t because of anything I did or anything I am; it happened a long time before I was even born.

that is tough! that is tough and there is still a lot of grief bound up in that—I feel it and I also feel that I am not quite ready to unravel that particular tangle of feelings yet! but I think that the concept of learning to parent yourself has been really freeing for me, really powerful for me, because it helps soothe the yawning-abyss feeling of blank despair and panic I feel when my brain kinda whites out and starts yammering if I can’t get it from them how will I ever get it / how will I ever be loved / who will ever make me feel accepted and seen / if the people who are supposed to love me unconditionally don’t even like me that much how will I ever feel okay / how can I ever let anyone know me if not even the people who have to love me accept me—etc etc.

but yeah. idk the idea that you can give yourself those things—and in doing so, sort of retrain or recondition your brain—has been really powerful for me. you can give yourself another chance. you can be for yourself the person that adults in your life should have been, but were unable to be. you can, for instance, give yourself a language to express and interpret your own inner emotional life. you can teach yourself—calmly, firmly, and lovingly—how to regulate your own emotions so that you are recognizing them as real but not letting them burn you or destroy your relationships with other people. you can accept yourself as you are (as opposed to what your parents thought you should be, or really, what they thought their friends thought a “normal” child should be). you can be interested in your own thoughts, feelings, and passionate interests, instead of dismissing them or apologizing for them or treating them as embarrassing. you can take care of yourself physically, by preparing food for yourself and moving your body, not as punishment but because it makes you feel better. you can teach yourself to make healthy choices—to stop engaging in physically and emotionally self-destructive behaviors as a way of escaping from or burning down your own life. and you can change the way you talk to yourself, replacing the inner voice you internalized (from your parents, your church, whatever) with the voice of a compassionate adult who recognizes you as an autonomous person with inherent dignity and worth.

idk man! it’s pretty lifechanging stuff!! a big part of me has always been terrified of raising a child, because I keep thinking god what if I just get trapped in the same cycle, what if I dump all my unprocessed baggage on my kid, what if I wake up one day and realize that my child is a complete stranger to me in the way that I am a stranger to my mother, and what if that doesn’t bother me, what if I don’t even seem to notice what’s happened? I worry a lot too that even with the best of intentions, even if I am trying so so hard, there will be things I fail to do or give to or teach my child just because I’m not even aware that those are things that healthy adults naturally are able to teach/offer to their children. I see in my relationships how often I’ve failed to be a good partner because I don’t know what being a good partner looks like, I don’t have any model of what attentive, present, secure emotional intimacy looks like—and the abyss yawns again! that white-out panic: how can I do the thing I was never taught? how do I learn to see something whose absence I don’t even register, because I never knew there was supposed to be something there?

but no: slow down. slow down. I can learn these things—even if it often feels like learning a second language in adulthood; even if I will never be as fluent as a native speaker, will never have full command of the idioms. I can be a better parent, just as I can be a better teacher and mentor than many of the models I had (toni cade bambara: I can rise above my training; I can teach better than I was taught). and I can also accept, I think, that the work of undoing generational trauma is not going to be work that one generation alone can repair. I can work at patiently unraveling my little piece of it—can do the best I can with the tools and the time I have—even if, inevitably, I will hand the greater part of that tangle of feeling and pain onto my child, who will have to continue that work in her own way, in whatever way she sees fit. and even if I don’t have a child—it is still good and right and important, this learning how to be human. this patient work of discovering less damaging, less destructive ways of being what I am.

[jesuswalle]

Represent, Represent.

Lately, I’ve been fortunate to be part of some speaking engagements where I can be in front of college and high school students. This experience has been very good to me so far. I’m reading a book called “Latino Leaders Speak”, as I’ve been going through it has been very clarifying in terms of what my goals can be to younger people.

Students need encouragement and they need to see people that they can relate with so cool things. Even though I’m only 5 years out of college, I still have experience that matters to them. As we move on in life, we have the opportunity to speak into other people’s lives. Let’s learn to accept and use our experiences and our identities as useful elements of learning and encouraging. As people see our lives, they get a glimpse into what they can inspire to be.

[kindnessisstillhere]

A Little Time

How difficult to breathe,

Take a moment, step away,

When something is a challenge,

Causes your wits to fray.

So many uses of some time,

Give us some distance to unwind,

To look for that other view,

Which makes simple what we could do.

But how much would be lost then,

All the quick actions of never again,

Options there only for quick thinkers,

For the instincts to make decisions,

And the people willing to judge them?

Both in moderation are needed,

Momentary choices for consequence unknown,

And well thought out, informed decisions,

That still can’t always be predicted.

How difficult to recognise the times

When either is the one you need.

Either way it’s just a little time,

Human’s can’t hit pause on that.

[radicallysadposts]

9:04 pm

A friend just told me on the phone that I have the ability to make a bad decision seem like a good one.

[voxfeles]

I feel super duper negative. I’m working out to fight it, but oh boy.

Been smoking cigarettes this week, and I have non today, so I bet that’s part of it. Also probably need food.

I’m not going to complain about the things that I kind of want to complain about. They wouldn’t matter to me if I didn’t feel so bleh. I’m pretty sure it’s all in mah head.

However, no sugar, no green, no tobacco, no alcohol. I just need to spend time with me in my head today. 

[aniviacryophoenix-blog]

Why I can’t Roleplay Anivia

// Hiatus post. I don’t know if anyone cares or can help, but some thoughts under the cut.

1: She is incredibly old, and her story play out over centuries. When you meet someone, maybe you reflect on it overnight, decide a day later you’d like to see them again. For Anivia, this is no shorter than a year. And even if she does come up with those small interactions, the person she returns to is a different person - body and mind. She’s used to this. But in a roleplaying setting, it just doesn’t happen.

2: She rarely seeks out others, and is singularly motivated to her personal goals. When Anivia runs into another person, the contact is purely incidental, and 99% of the time unremarkable to her. The day you met the Cryophoenix was another day a mortal slowed her down. She’s not going to come check up on you at random. She’s not going to be in your area for -handwaving- reasons. And you’re certainly not going to be in hers. Forcing these things to happen feels more and more like breaking character.

3: When she does seek someone out, it’s for a very specific goal. Usually something they should know about. As a story this is fine, but in roleplaying, it means I’m forcing an outdated and completely unpublished interpretation of Runterra on you, and without saying anything about it literally questioning you about that world you are completely in the dark about.

My biggest problem is that I know the story that I want to write for Anivia. A story for the whole of Runeterra… I’ve been carrying it around for years with literally no way to begin to realize it. And it’s not just one story - I can think of a million divergent paths off the top of my head. This blog already had three different canon characters with very different histories and motivations. I could go write drabble after drabble for years, but each piece seems increasingly futile, because 1: I already know that story, and 2: nobody else has any reason to care at all because they’ll never be able to interact with it in any meaningful way without me trying to drive around the entire universe for them.

But roleplaying isn’t just about big over-arching stories, it’s all the little interactions that happen to. But what’s out there, really?

Anivia sees your muses celebrating Snowdown. “Oh, you needed snow? Of course you do. Make sure you tip with… well, actually there’s nothing for me to gain here.”

Anivia sees your muses celebrating any other holiday, including all the festivals and community events. “Well, better not interfere with that, don’t want to snow on their party.”

Anivia happens upon your muse in a compromising situation: “I know you’re busy procreating, but I need help with something.” With what? Oh… well I don’t want to force shit on you, so I’ll drop that.

Anivia finds your muse dead, dying, or injured: “Damn, another dead mortal… wait, am I going to have to break down another door?”

Someone is trying to secure diplomatic arrangements? Great for a 1-off thread. Oh, except we both need to have the same view of the political landscape of the world. And then we have to figure out a reason to appear in the same place. And by time we’re slogged through all that, one of us will probably have lost motivation and crashed.

Anivia is enjoying the local thoroughfare. Wait, no she isn’t. She flies away.

Anivia joins you for a meal. Well, not really, she’s not going to eat. Oh, and she has no real conceptualization of small-talk.

Anivia can fight with her bitter enemies. Wait, except that she doesn’t really know about any of them. Primarily because they have to fight her from the shadows instead of seeking confrontation. So I guess she’s fighting enigmatic principles. Which is really just done alone.

Anivia is transformed into something not Anivia. Great. Something to work with. Oh wait, that’s just not roleplaying Anivia.

Well, Anivia can always make minor misinterpretations the things other people are doing due to her general unfamiliarity with the world. Or spit out hard-truths/wisdoms at random from an alien perspective. That’s neither incredibly desperate nor frowned upon by the community-at-large at all.

Every direction I look, I feel like I’m cut off, be it by my own interpretation of the character, my unwillingness to force my ideas on other people, or the general unfavorability of Anivia even being able to appear in any particular situation. I gotten some real nice comments and compliments from people about how I’m dedicated and persistent and somehow a “good writer,” but after three years of hanging around, I can count on my hands the number of people I’ve roleplayed with.

So what really is my value here, what is the point of this blog? Taking a quick look at every post I’ve ever made (there are only 450 of them ever, it’s not hard), my legacy is 1: Complaining about Ekko; 2: Talking about Kindred; and 3: Trying to defend Riot. By volume, this isn’t an Anivia blog, it’s a reflective blog on social awareness and the nature of writing that sometimes mentions Anivia. In fact, even I have written from the viewpoints of as many different characters as I have threads with Anivia.

It can be said that complaints come from an uncreative mind, but creativity isn’t all of the problem here. I’d love to race Valor and Shyvana through the streets of Demacia, then end up stuck trying to pay recompense for the inevitable fallout from the strict Demacian regime. I’d love to be hired by Piltover or Zaun as a magical resource to fuel the next technological breakthrough/disaster for whatever promises they’re willing to make. I’d love to spend hours talking to Ryze about the theory of ice magic, and watch him grow increasingly frustrated with his desire for haste and shortcuts overcoming his abilities to utilize it. I’d love to see Sejuani try to buy my allegiance away from Ashe with promises to confront the stirrings under the ice in return for blocking key passes in the Freljord. I’d love to confront Azir’s disgust with his new shape after the ascension ritual via the body I’ve worn for eons without complaint or difficulty. I’d love to get embroiled in the middle of the Noxian and Demacian war machines as a free agent while harshly criticizing both worldviews. I’d love to sit on old-Maokai’s head and watch the sunrise, insisting that the poor tree needn’t do a thing, and see how his own volatile nature compels him to action despite the serenity of nature.

There is a key theme here though: in all of these straightforward one-off stories, Anivia is not the causative agent, despite making the story what it is. Maybe I’m just bent the wrong way, but the underlying cause is clear to me: Anivia’s goal is by and large imperceptible to others, and she is dedicated to it. And her base state is inaction - something she’s fighting to overcome but that is an essential part of her being. If she’s talking to someone else, it’s to further her fight against whatever it is she’s fighting (yes I have headcanons, no I don’t think they’re worth sharing). If she’s not presently fighting against that, she’s doing nothing, despite being more than willing to share her wisdom with people. She’s not going to go out looking for them unless I start putting together elaborate large-scale stories and expecting other roleplayers to make themselves intimately familiar with them, and want to be involved.

And in my experience, they don’t. When I first started trying to put things out there for people to look into or work with, the only feedback that I ever got (from someone I trusted a lot) was, “That’s stupid. It shouldn’t be X way.” And honestly, that was crushing. In the end, I’m bad at self-motivating. I know there’s a big fan-fiction writing community out there that I could toss my hat into if I really wanted to. I could theoretically make this a story blog with character development and little interactions on the side, but even the thought of trying to write something consistently makes my stomach do flips, on top of the knowledge that nobody’s really going to be interested in something they have no way of interacting with. I’m not comfortable pushing my ideas on other people - whether it's from inside my own stories, or by looking for people to take up whatever motivations are necessary to seek me out.

The other option is that I can trash this farce and make myself some sort of league-centric personal blog. But that doesn’t feel right. I need to think more.