SSI and Bad JuJu...

My SSI hearing for disability is coming up soon. At least soon enough that I'm starting to get paperwork in the mail from them. More requests to 'prove' my mental health disability.

This just causes bad juju with me. It makes me think of the two years I was homeless and desperately clinging to any ray of hope that would get me off the couches of friends and frienemies.

I’m okay now. I've been safe, stable and housed for almost three years even without the help from SSI. But I hate all the judgement by people who think I'm faking my disability.

I realize they have all the reasons in the world to be suspicious. So many people do succeed at working the system. I hate that too. It just makes problems for those of us who really need the support.

Bad ass in training... a recovery update.

Things turned to total shit in June. I went into hiding.

I'm mostly okay now. There have been big changes.

One of my goals for recovery was to eventually take up the martial arts. But, with my health issues, this is a problem.

One: Blood thinners. I will only be able to learn movements and forms. I will never be able to spar with a partner because a single hit could result in either internal bleeding or another blood clot.

Two: My non-specific chronic inflammatory condition that had me 100% sedentary for a really long time.

So, the first step here is just to get my body accustomed to movement. I'm happy to report that I'm doing exceptionally well with this.

I've been doing yoga every morning.  :)

I mix movements from my yoga deck and do them along with some of the Mindful Yoga routines done by Corey Roos of White Cloud Wellness.

I don't follow Corey exactly. I don't listen to the mindfulness training while I'm doing the poses. I listen to heavy metal, LOL.

Yeah, you heard me right.

I listen to the Metal Goddesses playlist on Spotify.

So far everyone from Corey himself down to my therapist thinks it's awesome that I listen to heavy metal while I do my morning yoga.

*shrug* what can I say. It's like my way of meditation, Knitting while watching horror movies. This is the part of me that is pure shadow. I can't do anything self-improvement wise that isn't equally made of light and dark like me.

Hey, it works.

So, anyway...




It used to take so much work to motivate me to do the yoga. Now my whole day is shot if I don't. So, that's a good thing.

--

I'm also writing again!!

Current work in progress is about a part succubus girl and a male siren. A lot of it is available to read and critique on if anyone is interested.

Tarnished Awesome still has the potential to be Shiny Awesome... but... ow.

So, I was explaining my current situation to someone, and I kept the detials just light enough for her to get the full picture, but without revealing any deeper information that could mess with anyone's privacy filters... and then I threw that in my journal... because... I'm journaling the fuck out of this thing.

Emotionally I'm too much of a mess to do any real writing.  But, I figure I can turn this around at some point by keeping a very close eye on my fluctuating emotions.  Now the next time I have to write a character that's suffering from some separation anxiety, I can harvest those emotions from my journals.

So, I took that letter and tossed it into my journal... because some of it is just story gold.  And then I realized that HEY, this is a great way to update people on what's going on with me.

Ergo:

- - -

Things seem to be normalizing out a bit... but, everything is still in a state of flux. I'll have times when I'm fine with everything that's happening, and I'll also go through periods of anxiety and depression. I cried myself to sleep the night before last. Put up with nausea the entirety of yesterday... slept 'okay-ish' last night. Tummy seems calmer today. 

Ever have one of those relationships that starts off with so much promise? Like "This thing! This thing is AWESOME! Look at my new shiny! Isn't it awesome?" And then you find out that your new shiny is nothing more than flaking nickel plate over already tarnished copper?

Fuck... it just hurts so much, because he does this Jekel and Hyde thing. 

Jekel reminds me of someone I lost a long time ago. And where I no longer grieve that 'person', I still deeply grieve the way I 'felt' when I was with that person. Jekel is that level of awesome, and a bag of chips. I mean... my gosh... the awesome.

Whereas Hyde reminds me of my very emotionally abusive ex.

You see the issue?

So, on the one hand, I'm smart enough to not let Hyde anywhere near me. Our relationship has been placed on 'long distance until further notice' status.

Also, I understand the problem. This kid (20 years my junior) has simply NEVER had any sort of positive role model. No one has ever taught him that all that he knows about relationships and how to treat one's loved ones is wrong. And, like it or not, people are not born with practical common sense already installed in the programming. They have to learn that shit, and there are extenuating reasons why he never has.

So... now I'm in that tender place of knowing that I am his last, best hope for any sort of a mentor. So, I refuse to abandon him completely. But, I also need to remain emotionally disinvested enough to stay safe for my own mental health reasons. My self-worth doesn't depend on his success or failure to 'nut up' at this point. 

I'm fully aware that it could take years for him to learn from his mistakes, and I'm okay with that. I'm patient enough for that.

But, fuck... it hurts to be just on the other side of that wall from the 'awesome'.

I have an amazing mentor though... so, at least I have that. It took my husband 8 years of trial and error and watching me fuck up and fall flat on my face and then fuck up again and fall so far in the hole we both thought I'd never find my way back out again... Hubbs is brilliant at this sort of thing. I've learned volumes upon volumes on how to play the 'long game' from him.

So... there's that too (sorry I'm still on coffee - brain is all scattered at the moment). Anyway. 

Having this experience is giving me a new appreciation for what my husband went through when he found me as a broken thing and re-forged me better. 

So... LOL, yeah, it hurts. But it's a worthy hurt. I'm learning from this and I LOVE that, but fuck... 

... ow...

Where the hell is my Ariste implant?! (i.e. struggling with identity)

In a fictional verse of wonder, written by Walter Jon Williams, people with multiple identities have one hell of an advantage.  A wetware implant that allows each voice to operate independently.  Each individual personality can be assigned to his or her own project, and the overall result is that one physical body's worth of a person can multi-task like a son of a bitch.  Aristoi

I've been trying really hard to let each of my projects flourish under the same level of care and attention, and the result I got was overworking myself into major meltdown space.

*sigh*

The experts have told me that I need to just focus on one thing at a time.

It's a struggle, but I see what they mean.

For the month of July and probably a good portion of August, I will be letting my Amanda Harris voice come to the foreground.  Amanda writes psychological horror and is participating in the 2015 Camp NaNoWriMo.

During the month of August I will be working on getting Amanda's work published.

September I will return to my anti-bully campaign, The Bronykin Alliance.

October, November & December I will be back with Amanda for NaNoWriMo2015

Past that... I'm not really sure... I have other voices that need attention.

If you need to reach me, my email is companion.anne@gmail.com

Updaty post is all updaty and shiz...

Um, yeah... I just said that.

Anyway, this is a general update post, but it also has some foreshadowing on my new project.

Up first, HEATH:

In the aftermath of my afternoon in the ER, whatever was up with my kidney's is done and over with.  My INR isn't 100% on track because I skipped several days of my meds trying to get it down from "oh my god, I could bleed out at any second."  I get it tested every Friday, so let's just hope that it all works out.

SKIN:

I don't know if it's hard water or what.  I know it's not allergies or detergent or anything like that.  But my skin is ITCHY!!!  I was scratching so often and so hard that I was leaving long, deep bleeding furrows in my flesh.  The Beloved One had a fear that I would either scratch myself bloody or contract some sort of weird staph infection if I didn't get it looked at.

As a result, I now have a dermatologist prescribed goo that I have to slime myself with regularly.  It's basically mineral oil and white petroleum jelly with a tiny bit of medicine in it to combat the itchy.

So far I don't think the medicine itself is strong enough because I'm still just as itchy if not more.  However, my skin is SO HYDRATED now!  Once the stuff absorbs, my skin feels wonderful.  So, this isn't so bad after all.

WEIGHT GAIN:

During the homeless crisis I gained a lot of weight.  I know I'm only making it worse by using TONS of real sugar in my coffee and basically living a sedentary life.  Don't worry... I'm working on it.  Baby steps.  First things first is tackling that sugar thing.  But, um, UGH!  The artificial stuff tastes SO nasty.  (shudder)

THE ARROW IN MY KNEE:

I blame my friend Brandy,   If it weren't for some random Facebook push about something awesome she did in the Game of Thrones Ascent game, I probably could have gone my whole life without descending back into the world of Facebook games again.  *le sigh*

As it stands, I'm at something like level 98 or so and climbing in the game.  And THEN I decided I needed something to do while my vassles were questing and such and I decided to look into simulation games.  I have no gaming budget, so I have to go with what's free, otherwise I'd just give in to the Beloved One's demands that I stop Facebook gaming and play The Sims.  Nevertheless, I did find a game called City Girl Life, where I play a recent college grad moving to New York City and making a name for herself.  I get to decorate an apartment, work a job and wear cute clothes.  It's mindless fun and I like it.

Now, I did also download a bunch of REAL games.  Free to play, via Steam.  BUT, I can't play any of them because my computer is falling apart.  The case is cracked.  The fan is broken.  It randomly overheats and shuts off.  If I try to game an actual game, the computer can only handle the extra strain on the processor for about twenty-minutes.

Getting a new computer is on the list.  But there are are a lot of other things that are going to have to come first.

SOCIAL MEDIA:

I'm getting good at this social media thing.  I'm getting retweeted by some pretty upscale entities.  I think that's pretty bad ass.  It's also a skill that is going to be seriously important in the upcoming months.

NEW PROJECT:

I'm still going to try to keep up with my project of building resource lists and posting about things that I'm passionate about, but this new project is very Little One-centric.  It's a new BIG THING that will operate with me in the background and allow her to serve as the public face.

Step One is having something to call it.  I've brainstormed a short list of names and I'm going to start a poll on Friday, October 3rd.  This will give the poll a full week to run and then the Little One and are going to announce the winning name/label/title/whatchmacallit on the evening of Friday, October 10th.  Hopefully I'll have the entire project off the ground by her birthday on the 16th.

Without going into too many details.  It's essentially going to be an awareness campaign / non-profit organization.  I hope it will eventually take on a life of it's own and become a movement.

In general it's just really cool to have a BIG project to work on again.  It's also a mommy thing and gives the Little One and I something to do together while introducing her to the value of non-traditional 'work' rolls.  She has a pretty niche brain.  I'm not sure that a normal 9-5 job is what's exactly in the cards for her.  Opening her up to a potential career path at an early age is just kinda bad ass.

#ThisIsWhyIRock

Epic *facepalm*, is epic.

Back when the Beloved One and I got our new place there was some excitement about catching up on missed shows.  There was one new show in particular that caught my interest in it's trailers, but I hadn't had the means to check it out.  Sadly, all available 'catch up on what you missed' options were missing the first two episodes.

In a fit of stupidity I decided to try torrents.  Our old roommate torrented the hell out of shit all the fucking time without a problem, why couldn't I?

Erm... yeah...

Months of pop ups, slow browsers, and other weirdness later we decided it was time to dig out my old external hard drive, back up my important files, and scrub my whole computer clean.

And, of course - I was told - VERY EXPLICITLY - to NEVER DOWNLOAD ANYTHING EVER AGAIN.

Erm... yeah...

Did I mention the fact that I'm occasionally stupid?

~~~

I've been learning to get by with honest to goodness free, online - and other TRUSTED stuff.  I found image editors online vs. using Adobe products.  I have been using Google Docs or OpenOffice vs. Microsoft Office.  And so on and so forth.

Hah - then I decided I needed a juxtaposed image to make a point, but my online image editors didn't seem to be able to work in layers.

Queue: quick internet search for free image editors
Queue: download and install
Queue: clicking the 'accept' button without reading what I was accepting
Queue: noticing I was clicking the 'accept' button without reading what I was accepting
Queue: ABSOLUTE AND COMPLETE PURE FUCKING PANIC

Oh... Oh... what have I done?

Queue: UnInstall
Queue: Delete

Queue: More PANIC

~~~

Natutally - my internet starts slowing down - my browsers stop working - panic panic panic.

So I Avast, I scrub, I scour,

Chrome won't load Facebook
Chrome won't load Netflix
Netflix tells me my Silverlight is corrupted.
Chrome won't download Silverlight without erroring out.

Clearly I have to kill Chrome right?  Right?

Delete - UnInstall - (back up bookmarks first, of course)

~try to find Chrome again~

Firefox times out.
Opera times out.
I.E. times out.

Um... um... umm... more panic.

FINALLY - One of them downloads Chrome.

Queue: sign into Chrome

Chrome will not load Facebook
Chrome won't even download a damn theme!

~~~

Queue: Giving up completely and waiting for the Beloved One to wake up and fix it.
Queue: Trying to catch up on DVR shows and ignore the fact that I'm not being distracted enough because I don't have something in my lap.
Queue: Getting so bored I try again without waiting for the Beloved One to wake up.

QUEUE:  CHROME SUDDENLY WORKING JUST MOTHER FUCKING FINE FOR NO APPARENT REASON!

Queue: *facepalm blog post*