i consume a lot and in consuming a lot (of trash) it's nice to find nuggets of reassurance that tell me i'm not as alone as i think.

recently, these have turned on a light bulb in my head:

ohhh thaaat's what it is!, a self-diagnosis

for nearly a month, i have been feeling floaty, outside of myself, and going through the motions, as mechanical as motions go. i've been wondering why i have felt so... not emotionless... but removed from experiences. my memory is already terrible but it has become worse and almost non-existent because of how numbingly routine my days are (thanks, work! ). it felt like a reach but i thought, maybe this is dissociation?

i hardly am a candidate for such big, serious things but i looked up the definition on webmd and psychology today anyway, which then led me to the depersonalization wikipedia page where it all clicked at the last word of this sentence:

acute trauma? no. motor vehicle accident? thank goodness, no. imprisonment? the pandemic?? the lockdown??? quarantine???? yes?!

as a last bit of validation, i searched for dissociation covid 19. maybe it would return no hits, maybe a lone one from reddit, or, better yet, an actual study.

honestly, that was all i needed. who knew self-imposed quarantine could impact what seems so automatic, like my bodily awareness and sense of self? haha...

(help me quietly), an epiphany

i love finding things from others. i discovered this article on caring for others and yourself from the newsletter Culture Study by Anne Helen Petersen thanks to write the dreams down!.

Petersen states that people are actually very willing to help; they just don't know how to make effective use of that willingness. and we're even worse when it comes to asking for help. she points to many reasons for our hesitation, but this one resonated with me the most:

3.) You’ve always been the helper, whether in your vocation/job or just within your friend group. Again: to ask for help would be to undercut that identity. See especially (but not exclusively) Moms, care workers, teachers, etc.

and let me add to that: "see: the eldest sibling, INFJ-T (The Advocate), acts of service as a love language, a better listener than speaker, etc. etc. ETC."

i don't really need to say more except for that i love her solution to being a better helper and a better help-asker: a Google Forms survey. it's quite clinical and removed (which is her whole point!), but it does a great job at allowing vulnerability to be approached in a less intimidating way.

writing to explore curiosity, a change of ways

i recently watched a video about why smart people write bad. in it is an excerpt from a much longer conversation about writing with Rachel Jepsen, an editor and writing coach. while i'm not finished watching the full conversation, wow! i'm amazed at how precisely Jepsen addresses the roots of writers' weak points, whether it's the school system's failure to embrace failure as part of the learning process (i.e. you must write an essay in this particular way with unflappable conviction! no changing your mind!) or the missed opportunity to treat writing as a conversation rather than a monument set in stone. it's definitely led me to rethink how i tackle writing and has flipped on its head my past reasoning for liking the essay form because it is "formulaic." now i see that it shouldn't be. or that that shouldn't be its defining feature anyway because where's the creativity and curiosity in that??

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now to marinate in those.