Greenstorm's Journal

The other day I was talking to my counselor about ADHD, and I told her I really had no idea if that applied to me. My mind started working very differently after the accident, but my life also changed around that time: I went through school, which was 100% damaging to my mind even without the accident; I switched from a job with daily hard labour which is great for me to a more desk-focused job where I only go out a couple times a week for a couple months and no longer bike commute; I lost a lot of my social network and thus both physical and emotional regulatory support but also the need to mask; I added a ton of responsibilities to my life; and I have a life plan besides dying as soon as I can't work anymore which kind of increases the stakes of everything.

When I listened to the Ologies podcast on ADHD, where she interviews an expert in the field, I learned that about 10% of folks with ADHD acquire it. Some % is genetic and some % is prenatal environment, I believe, but I'd have to re-listen to remember. Anyhow, I didn't have this sort of memory/cognitive/focus issue before school and the car accident, but also I've had these liftstyle changes, and some of the experience of ADHDers sounds more familiar to my life now. So, I don't know.

My counselor ran a screening on me and it was hilarious. The screen was sixteen questions. I am mostly completely unable to answer quiz-type questions, to borrow a phrase "I'm too autistic for this" because my answer is always self-evidently "it depends" but other people seem to have no trouble? It took an hour to get through the sixteen questions, of which the most notable were:

Do I find myself making careless mistakes when engaged in something boring or repetitive? No! I make a ton of careless mistakes when I'm in a hurry, but if something is especially boring or repetitive I know that's where mistakes creep in, so I am extra careful and check my work. I do a kind of data entry at work sometimes where mistakes are important, and I know my mistake percentage is lower than most other people's, but that's because I check my work. A lot of people don't recognise that they make mistakes, so they don't check their work, so they submit more mistakes. So I don't know if I make more mistakes in the first place, but my finished work specifically on a boring job has fewer mistakes. Now on a novel job I tend to make more mistakes than the average person? So is the answer yes or no?

Do I interrupt people frequently? No, that's annoying. When I was very little my kindergarten report card said that I interrupted people a ton, but that's because I did my work really quickly and, having nothing else to do, I would wander around and interrupt people. When I was supplied with books to read after I was done and told that behaviour was bad I stopped it. As an adult I hate being interrupted while I am focused, so even if I have the impulse to interrupt other people frequently (which I sometimes do!) I will put a lid on it because it's obnoxious. So is the question asking if I have the impulse to interrupt people, or if I'm capable of suppressing the impulse? Is the answer yes or no?

Do I feel compelled to move around as if driven by a motor? (And my therapist adds: I hate this question, I'm more in my head and compelled to think about things, but I've never been compelled to move my body even though I'm ADHD) Unequivocally, no. My body never feels like it needs to go. I need the results of it moving a lot, but it never feels like it needs to get up and move. I do like to have something to think about, and if I'm going to not be thinking about something I often like having the space delineated so I don't get stuck there, but this is the only question I can really clearly answer no to.

Do I fidgit if I need to be still (one question) and do I get up out of my chair if I'm in meetings etc and supposed to be sitting down (a different question) My body isn't constructed to sit upright in a chair. After about half an hour, maybe an hour if I've been practicing a lot, I'll be in hairly substantial physical pain. So I may fidgit as a tool to manage the pain, or if I'm in a situation where the power differential allows I'll get up and sit on the floor, stand against the wall, etc. I'm definitely able to be still if there's a big power differential, and I'm able to be still if my body is comfortable (thank you, savasana) but as a rule I won't be if I'm in a chair. So is the answer yes or no? Are people with specific disabilities more or less prone to ADHD? Is this another poorly thought out question?

Do I have trouble waiting my turn? Unequivocally, no. I love the experience of seeing other people get/do their thing. I feel happy for anyone in line in front of me when they get to stop waiting and finally get their turn, for instance.

Do I have trouble unwinding or relaxing? Yes. If there's something I need to do in the next little while, I can't dip into relaxation and then dip back into action easily, so I tend to leave myself "on" because it's super hard to transition from relaxation to work mode and vice versa. So technically I don't have trouble relaxing, I just need certain situations where it's appropriate to be very relaxed and those don't come along often, but I answered yes anyhow.

Do I fail to remember appointments etc? Yeah. This is a post-school or post-accident thing: I used to be able to see or feel the entirety of the next month or year ahead of me. Now I might remember there's a thing, but nothing about it, and I need to look it up in my calendar often. So yes, I fail to remember things all the time.

Do I have difficulty focusing on people when they're speaking to me (one question) and do I get easily distracted when there's activity or noise around me (another question) Yes and yes. But. I have really shitty verbal processing, both incoming and outgoing. Before school/the accident my reading processing and focus were really great, but I'd say I'm 20x or so slower at processing speech than writing. Except, after the accident my writing processing became less and I had to switch to speech-to-text for a lot of writing, I'm slowly getting it back but it's nowhere near what it was before. So I have a ton of difficulty focusing on speech but that's because I often can't process at talking speed, so my understanding starts lagging behind the conversation and I have to choose between processing what someone just said and retaining what they're saying now. If there's background noise around me this process is magnified significantly. I have had conversations where I retained and processed at conversational speed but they are mostly I think with a specific subset of other autistic people. So, is this a question about processing? If I removed the processing difficulties, would it still apply? Or is ADHD the processing issue to start with? I answered yes to both these questions but I'm uncertain of that, and I wonder if text communication counts.

Do I have trouble finishing a boring task? Again, yes but. Not finishing a task isn't so much about whether the task is boring, it's that not finishing something is a method for managing PDA: if I am not finishing something, I'm sort of not actually doing it, which means that I don't need to start a task in order to begin it, I'm just doing some prep to make the later task easier. PDA lets me do a lot in service of prepping for things, but it almost never lets me actually Do A Thing. So for instance I can do six sinkfuls of dishes no problem, but I will leave three or four pieces of cutlery in the sink becaus I can't "do the dishes" but I can "make it easier to do the dishes later" by getting a bunch of them out of the way. Likewise I can't "plant the roses" but I can get some of them in the ground so the actual planting will go more smoothly. I don't usually get bored or lose focus and wander away; the non-finishing is as Waymond says "strategic and necessary" and is the only thing that allows me to start on any project. I don't remember what I answered for this one.

There were some other questions I don't remember, but you see how my counselor was luckily patient and filled with understanding humour every time she asked a question and I laughed and said "I'm too autistic to answer this question! Here's the situation, does it count?" and how the sixteen questions took an hour only to come up with me being dead borderline: just on the likely-ADHD side of the inattentive scale and just on the unlikely side of the hyperactive scale, within a point or two of the cutoff either way. I almost always score that way on quizzes, so I should have guessed, but interpretation (do sensory processing and pain management techniques count?) would influence the result a fair bit.

Seems like the Catherine White Holman wellness center in my province, which is for genderwhatever folks, offers actual ADHD assessments for free to genderwhatever folks, and I might hop on that. If medication will help whatever is going on with my mind, I would like medication, please. I definitely hate the feeling of wasting a lot of years being unable to live happily and comfortably when I could have taken a solution that's at hand earlier.

Anyhow, that is the funny story of my epic 16-question ADHD screen and kind of the story of my life where I suck at being categorized because I'm pretty sure the categories were designed with humans in mind instead of whatever I am. Seriously, could *you* answer those questions without a ton of associated exposition?

Counseling shortly with my PDA counselor. Things have been such a mess lately, I need to come into this one with some serious intention so as not to get bogged down.

What's most on my mind?

Basically how do I know how much to bend myself to deal with people? Specifically I think I'm trying to sort out lying for folks, which I hate to do.

This includes how to cope with how uncomfortable I am with the clusterfuck between J and K and whether I should get out of that whole scene, how to handle people who ask "are you ok?" and I either have to lie or else I say no and then spend the next half hour comforting them because they had no plan lined up for that answer, and how to handle my boss who offers to lessen my workload but refuses to take on anything I ask of him and then turns around and asks for feedback and how things are going - I'm guessing it's not ok to say "shitty, because you keep saying you're going to help and never do so maybe knock that off".

If that somehow gets resolved quickly enough, or gets bogged down, I need to build some way of doing transitions that doesn't hurt me. When Tucker comes and leaves, when I leave a visit, even going from a phone call or a video call to my own time: those are difficult for me. Most counselors are kind of fluffy about that sort of thing but this one will probably have actual practical advice.

Mind blown.

Talked to the PDA counselor today. She's reading a book called "unmasking autism" and in it there's a distinction between "camouflaging" which it describes as hiding oneself in order to be more socially acceptable and "compensating" which it describes as using a bunch of workarounds.

I am completely a compensator. I'm upfront about things and present them carefully to normalize them, so I get ahead of them. I use humour and commonalities to deflate tensions. I play up my strengths and minimize my weaknesses. I (deftly?) avoid situations which I won't do well in. And I do this because I don't expect anyone to ever give me true accommodations so I have to make them myself.

It means that I feel more at ease with myself in public situations that camouflagers? Because some parts of me are out and visible. But it also means that acceptance is always predicated on my doing so much work, explaining, setting tone, presenting, highlighting, soothing, connecting. I don't just get to sit down and be me and have someone else do the work of reaching out, meeting me halfway, exploring who I am and coming to their own acceptance.

Work is where this falls apart. I can do the interpersonal compensation, but the rigid union structure prevents me from bending my time and energy to fit into the work I'm given and I hit burnout hard. Is there a way to set up within this structure so I'll be ok? Hard to tell.

I met with the counselor from my work's employee line (virtually) yesterday. To recap, the employee line ghosted me a couple times and sent me to an inappropriate counselor once, I escalated through three ranks of people, I got an appointment scheduled for a month after the escalation and three months after my most recent attempt to get help.

And this counselor is fantastic. She's so great. I am so happy with the experience in several ways, including her ability to have a conversation where tangents were both welcomed and well-controlled (so additional context and information could be added without derailing the whole thing, this is such a skill), empathy on weird things, explicit offers on how she can support me with questions each time about whether I would like that thing or not, and-- well. Anyhow, she was great. She's booking four weeks out so I'm hoping to get good use out of her on my decision-making, which I've come to question lately, just as I'm using the PDA counselor to get PDA tools and will no doubt eventually come back to my first and main counselor (not gonna see more than two at once, oof) to honour and explore the way my heart drives my life.

So this work counselor has sparked my energy to start the first step of diagnosis: the screen. Gonna do it.

Eep.

I found a PDA-competent counselor in my province. This isn't the biggest guns, but it may be useful, depending on her waiting list. Here's what I wrote, for posterity (neurodivergentcounseling.ca):

Hello!

I know you're taking folks for your waiting list right now. Hopefully you can let me know if you have a sense for how long that waiting list is, or if it's very long can steer me in the direction of someone else who's PDA competent. Here's the situation:

I'm a 40-year-old somethinggender person who moved up to the BC interior nearly 5 years ago. My life has been intense but pretty good overall, and I've been pretty good at driving towards the things that are important to me and hitting those targets (thank you, suspected PDA, which does not let me survive while settling for less than what I need). For most of my life I've lived in what a friend calls a "pocket universe" of probably mostly-ND people (in hindsight) and although I've had significant struggles I've felt pretty ok with my community.

Moving up north I joined a company that was full of my kind of people and it was ok-- until that company went under. There aren't many jobs in my small town so I took a job with the provincial government. Everyone there is the kind of normal I only thought existed in movies: monogamous, cis, straight, has kids, takes kids to hockey, goes fishing. I used to think my superpower was connecting with anyone, because I was great at finding commonalities with folks-- I think that because I didn't believe in, or hadn't experienced, normal that I was more accepting and people found that a relief. Now, though, my local partner is moving away and I don't have any community in this town. I've learned about PDA and it fits me on a level I didn't think possible, and I've come to realize that other folks' experiences are not as similar to mine as I thought.

I don't have community up here and I need community to feel ok. With covid everyone has shut down into their live-in family group; I'm poly to my bones and kinda solo-poly/RA/I don't do closed nuclear family groups that way so I can't just join them, but no one wants to conect. With covid folks don't travel up here, before this all started my plan was to hold big events a couple times a year and get my socialization mostly from that. With covid folks are even more hostile towards differing viewpoints and opinions and feelings, and they other folks so hard; I don't feel safe around people who other so intensely, since I am so deeply other myself I find it both feels unsafe and is not the way I want to move in the world.

My beautiful farm that I've had up here encompasses all my special interests. I live in my own house, which I own, on acreage. I can trial a hundred varieties of tomatoes or preserve endangered heritage pigs or geese here. I love the land, this land, like I love my family (well, less complicatedly than I love my family) and like I love myself-- and I do love myself, and over the years have really come to be grateful for who I am.

I need to make a life plan, or a five year plan, that lets me keep or re-create the parts of my life that I love and also find a way to survive and thrive in the normativity at work or change jobs, and that lets me find community, and that lets me hold my boundaries around people I'm in community with in a way that feels non-antagonistic but also protective of me. My dad was the worst kind of verbally/emotionally/keep deniability around it but be super mean and provoking and undercutting kind of abusive and I really suck at negotiation and healthy conflict.

I'm feeling really underwater right now. I'm moving out of the despair part and into having energy to move, but I can't figure out how to move, what direction I need to go in. I know you have experience with shaping your life to fit your PDA, and I'm looking for tools and experience to help guide me on doing that. I'm looking for someone to ask me the right questions. I'm looking for someone to offer suggestions and understand when I say no immediately, but maybe those suggestions can work in the back of my brain (thanks, PDA). I'm also kinda looking for affirmation that this is a reasonable label for me and that all this internal pushback on demands of every sort, especially joy, isn't just some sort of misshapen trauma response. And, I guess, I'm looking to stop having trauma responses to things like diversity and inclusion workshops at work, or my brother saying something in a family facebook chat.

Anyhow, that's the long and short of it. Be well, and I hope to hear from you.

Cheers,

Yesterday was another appointment with the trauma therapist provided through work. The previous time I'd spoken with her it was pretty useful but this time was, if I'm honest, a bit of a shit-show.

I used the term partner. She talked about my "husband".

She lectured extensively about how women "like us" think about many eventualities at once, whereas men like my husband usually only take one thing into consideration when they're making a decision. Oh, and men are always more worried about financial things.

It honestly was too much energy to deal with it all so I agreed along but it was not comfortable even a little.

By the time she was shocked and worried that if I was thinking about buying property with someone I might want to discuss the exit plan before we signed anything it barely even registered.

The gist of what she's saying is, concentrate on actionable things and take actions, and basically don't think about things where actions can't be taken. Additionally maybe be creative about what actions can be taken because there's usually something.

We also got our "post-covid" flex info from work, we've known for awhile they'd be calling us back to the office Sept 7th but that something was in the works for some kind of remote flexibility.

Turns out their plan is-- I get it, but I don't think it's super well thought out. Basically there's room to work remotely 1-2 days per week for normal folks, then for folks who want to work 3-5 days remote there's a more rigorous process with approval from higher-ups (not that we have any higher ups right now, different story) and you are likely to lose your permanent office/desk.

On the surface that makes sense, right? Not using the desk much, might as well not pay for the space to keep it, and as I've noticed this year it's not really feasible to ride the middle line of a couple days from work and a couple days from home per week without paying for a second set of equipment out of pocket. But it super disincentivizes folks from coming in for a day a week to keep in touch with the rest of the folks in the office and I'm a little concerned about that. Forestry is 10000000% politics and relationships and maybe 2% science.

On the other hand it's probably not as bad for me: my town is in the bust part of the boom-bust cycle so our office is empty on the best of days. I don't think anyone's going to remove my name from my cubicle. And I suppose that in the summer folks are taking a lot of vacation (lifers can have 8 weeks or so of vacation, or sometimes more) and also a bunch of us are in the field pretty often. For relationship-building it might make sense to try to go to the field once a year with almost everyone rather than keep abreast of them in the office. But still.

Speaking of in-person, the parade of summer students is occurring. I took one out two weeks ago (I think?), another one last week, the same one this week, and each in succession next week. I think the following week or two I also will take out the third summer student. The first two haven't been in the bush before and-- I'm glad I checked before we left the office because the second one didn't have any water with him. He also didn't bring the water to the block, so we walked a kilometer and a half back for lunch and to the block again, but I think he's getting sorted out. They are both enthusiastic, polite, and friendly kids.

My ex-previous-job friends were talking about how much energy summer students bring into the office, especially back in the days when there would be 40 of them (I think our whole office is 30 people nowadays, and in the office they were speaking of there were 12 by the end?). I think it's true. Supervising or managing folks who have never had a professional job before, or who have never been to the bush, is sure different than handling someone who has some idea of what they're doing.

These daily writings were supposed to be exploring my emotional landscape but they're coming out pretty much like news bulletins. Well, like news from before the shock and disaster era of news. I guess I haven't felt spacious and energetic enough to really dive back into there. I've been working my way through a pretty great video (youtube https://youtu.be/diE7f6CKj6c ) by Sarah HendrickX called Hiding in plain sight: shining light on women with autism profiles. It's... there's a lot to unpack in it, and I'll no doubt write more about it in the future. It's an odd feeling to be seen in some ways so clearly, but to still have to accept such ill-fitting labels as "woman" to get that info. It's like cutting my arm off to escape a trap, but at the same time once I'm out of the trap I can't drive home without the arm. It's damage.

There are good things in the world too. I got my shipment of Ugandan vanilla beans, which smell truly amazing even compared to other vanilla beans. The tomato trial with seven or eight ripe varieties so far feels like a completion and proper fit of self into the world, more than I can describe it makes me happy. Being happy in that way I wish I had someone to talk about it with, but here we are. It's been cold and raining, below 10C at night and below 20C during the day, so my trial is going to be fairly representative of my conditions and I'm less likely to need to evacuate for a wildfire. The green cherry tomato I got from the grocery store, that I saved seed from, has ripened some fruits so it's early, and they taste amazing even though they're the first fruits off the plant. I am impressed.

I'm just putting off going out into the cold in fuzzy socks to do chores, though, so I'll go get the pigs their bounty of spoiled dairy and their grain and watch the baby geese and maybe harvest some more cucumbers for sunomono. It's definitely sunomono season.

It's good, out there, but it's not enough time to grow back after everything else.

This was supposed to be the last day of the high-level heat. Most places in the province beat their previous all-time heat records, most on two consecutive days; in some cases the new record was over 10C higher than the previous all-time record. Lytton broke both the Canadian all-time high temperature record and was also hotter than Las Vegas has ever been in recorded history. Nowhere hit 50C so at least there's that. Fort has not been spared. With careful curtain and air management I've been able to keep my main floor 8C or so below ambient at the hottest time of day and the basement has stayed 16C below or so. Thank goodness for the basement! But doing the largest possible air exchange at night to cool the place and set up for the next day has brought in hordes of mosquitoes; over dinner I swat enough of them that there's a noticable scatter, not quite a pile, around me. I'll be glad when that's done.

The fire danger rating jumped from moderate to high or, in many-to-most places, extreme in the last few days. As our high temperatures roll out, the edge of the incoming normal summer weather brings thunder and lightning. I, and everyone, hope that it brings some rain with it. I'm here alone; I don't think I have it in me to evacuate all the animals on several fronts.

As I do chores later in the evening to avoid the heat it's clear that the days are getting shorter. The sun was below the horizon by 10:30 and I'm sad about it. This year it feels like summer has actually arrived; we missed it entirely last year.

Today the yarrow started flowering. The air is hot and wet and with that semi-medicinal herbal scent breathing is like drinking hot herbal tea. A haze has settled on the horizon and the sun set through browns and reds. My pigs are quite alright -- they've made two champion wallows and don't seem to have suffered from the weather, maybe related to their origins in Georgia -- and all the other animals seem to have pulled through too. Tomorrow is supposed to be 10 degrees cooler, and I should be able to go outside after work and get some things done. I could also break down all the pork loins and shoulders that have been chilling since Saturday but it's been too hot to butcher them further in the house.

My counselling appointment was very good today, I saw my regular chosen counselor for the first time since before my weird medication/concentration camp breakdown (during which I mixed up my counseling and Dr's appointment and so missed both of them). Talking with her I began the process of knitting up the chaos into narrative, the process of making meaning of the world that allows me to drive forward. As I'd realized before I'm not quite sure where forward is, though, and I suspect I need to sort of learn to be just where I'm at again. Last weekend was a good start, there were hours of sitting on the grass with the dogs and watching cottonwood fluff and crooning to the geese and just existing, which I had not done in quite some time.

From three sources in the last week I've heard I need to learn to inhabit that space at will and I'm not sure how to do it. It's an innately unpeopled and demand-free space. It can't exist in proximity to transitions into and out of the world of humans.

I don't know. It does need to happen though.

Now to shower, and to sleep, and to maybe wake up into a day where I can go into the greenhouse after work and harvest myself a salad without dying. This was a good year to plant cucumbers and melons, they're so happy in there. It was not a good year to do a trial test to find varieties that would grow and fruit in my normally-cool climate. The trial is compelling anyhow. Early evidence supports the Lofthouse and William Schlegel tomatoes, plus stupice and bloody butcher and definitely sweet cheriette. My green grocery-store cherry looks like it was open-pollinated; at least all 8 or so of the plants I grew from it are very uniform, and they seem to be doing well too. Very exciting!

I hope you're both warm enough and cool enough, wherever you are, and that your air also smells like flowers.

Talking about The Problematic Double Metamour Issue with my counselor, and she said: how will you feel in this situation you're anticipating? And I said: angry, resentful, violated.

Later she said: you could talk to your partners about this beforehand, you don't have to wait till it comes up. That might help you feel more supported when the event happens.

Actually pretty funny, that I'd need to be told to tell my partners how I feel. But, I did need to hear it. Because I've been told so many times that if I have any issues relating to a partner having other partners, if I have any negative feelings or thoughts about that, if I share them I don't deserve to be told about those metamours or about the happier moments in those relationships or anything like that. That I deserve to be in a dadt relationship rather than an openly poly one.

So, when I feel this way I don't access support from my partners, I don't feel seen, but I still try to provide support to my partners. Thus, resentful. Taken advantage of. Unseen plus hurt plus giving, that's a feeling of violation.

My anger tries to push my boundaries back to a safe or comfortable place.

In this case anger can just be used as the energy to tell my partner how I'm feeling, and to ask for what I need: to reach out for that connection past the legacy of being told it's not ok to share this part of myself.

If the partner rejects this part of myself, I can deal with that situation when it comes to it. I don't need to hide myself in order to be an easier poly 101 experience. I can practice focusing on communicating my own feelings and frame them as such, and if that's read as an attack/feeds into someone's poly guilt I'm with people I trust to work through that with me.

So. Counseling.

I told my counselor about PDA yesterday. They hadn't heard about it before, and also wanted to know what it meant to me, in my daily life, so I spent a lot of time talking about it. They asked some questions about connections to things I'd mentioned previously. And I just kept talking.

And it was joyful. They asked how I felt about it and basically:

I feel so much lighter.

I understand things better. I understand why people don't accommodate me in certain ways and why they don't seem to notice when I accommodate them in ways that would be helpful or thoughtful to me.

People are -so different-. Most people are -so different- from me on a scale I hadn't previously imagined. Like, there are probably many (most?) people for whom wanting something, or wanting to do something, doesn't cause a huge amount of internal pressure and conflict. And I don't mean "wanting to violate society's rules" I mean "wanting to get a glass of water". What would it even feel like to not do internal gymnastics and have to work against internal pressure for every. single. thing? No wonder folks always seem like they have so much energy!

Probably doing societally-mandated stuff is much easier for everyone else than it is for me. Everyone looks at me and says "oh, I wish I could [be poly/not live with my partner/sexuality stuff/follow my passion] like you" and I say "well, you can, you just have to accept the trade-offs" and they say "oh no, it's especially hard for me not to do the normal thing, it's different for me than you, you wouldn't understand" (this is the Universal Conversation), well. It seems like they are probably right, it is different for me than them. I do still have to deal with the consequences of my choices: smaller dating pool, no one understands me, in contravention of legal stuff, blah etc etc. But they don't have to deal with the same consequences because the decision to conform is just not as difficult for them. They might not like it, but it's not like dying every second for them. It's probably worth it for them to be makin those choices and I'm just like the kind of inspirational poster people hang on their walls and ignore than an example of a life path they never thought of before. That's super bitter, but hey.

I feel more at peace with myself: how I am is real. I can accept that better now and get on with building my life.

The only way I'm so functional is because I've built my life this way. I've been driven to create a life of what Harry Thompson calls "freedom" because then I don't have to control everything around me so much. But, without this life I've built I'd be much less functional.

It's annoying that the thing is called "pathological demand avoidance". Like, seriously.

I've often been in situations where my abuse legacy/need to conform so as not to get hurt is in conflict with my demand avoidance. Sometimes that can feel like a hard freeze: nonverbal, feels like moving through molasses when I move my body. The more I resolve my boundaries the less this happens but I can still be caught in moments by little things, especially things I feel like I should do: help with the dishes, put down a book and pay attention to someone.

People who ask me for things, especially in relationship: they're not deliberately asking me for things that are really really really hard. Those things maybe aren't hard for them. They're not trying to be unimaginably demanding. They're not trying to break me.

Asking people for little things without leaving them an "out" is maybe more ok than I thought it was. Making a statement and letting someone approach it as they like, rather than asking pointed questions that require a specific response, is not a kindness but is instead just confusing to folks.

Other folks have created strategies, like two do-to lists or focusing on the larger task to accomplish a smaller part of the task, that are just like the ones I've come up with. I can tap into other folks' strategies, and I can refine my own, now that I have a clearer idea of how my mind works. I don't have to chisel everything out of the unknown myself.

Maybe I can have easier relationship discussions now? I can ask for things clearly since I understand they're not a default, or I understand that they're not intuitive to other folks. And I can be clearer on what I can offer and how I can offer that.

This is why I want so much information from the people I care about. Because they can't ask me for things directly("you never do things I ask you to do", ouch) I have to know what's important so I can do it on my own (for instance, I can do dishes on the nights I'm not asked because I know it's important, but not on the nights when I'm asked).

So many lightning bolts going off everywhere.

I'm not failing to do all this stuff because I just don't have enough willpower or whatever. Stuff is just genuinely different for me, and now I have a roadmap to it.

Joyful.

I am so glad to have this counselor, and to be able to access them. I don't feel pathologized despite coming up with a thing that literally says pathological. And I can share that joy and find help in how to keep crafting my life. How amazing is that? How many people have someone really in their corner?

The seasons are turning. Suddenly all the deciduous are yellow and a little orange-- there are no native purples here, and only the occasional red. We've had regular heavy rains again but often just overnight. Yellow aspen against the blue sky is so lovely. The tires got changed, so now the 4runner sounds like a tank again.

I survived last week. It felt awful, but I did it. I'm feeling more ok right now, out of the guilt spiral enough that I can imagine a future again. I called the work counseling line twice last week for on-demand counseling, one session of which was really good and one of which was ok. I'm supposed to be signed up for a longer term thing - one reason I haven't really wanted to go the work counseling route is that it's supposed to be short-term only, as well as not being able to select for poly-friendly etc - and they were supposed to call me back last week to schedule appointments, but of course they did not. I think out of the ten or so attempts to get counseling I've made in my life, I've actually been called back by 2.

So I need to call them again.

Mom also texted me and asked to come visit, I'm not sure if she just knew through the ether that I felt bad or if she ran out of stuff to do there, but it was a very welcome request. She should be coming up within the next week or so.

The results for the covid test finally came back. I first started trying to get a test on a Friday, got through to the very busy line on Monday, got the test Tuesday, and heard back on Saturday-- a little more than a week cut out at the time when I most needed to be getting hay and straw lined up.

This week I'm in the field making up for not being able to go out for the last two weeks, so I'm super super busy. I guess this weekend or next week I'll be hoping that everyone still has hay and straw left. It's maybe unlikely that they will, but we will see.

Black Chunk (who still needs a better name) finally had her babies. There are 4 little ones out there, one red girl and 3 black and white boys. She's nursing properly and they're lively and dry. The weather is still up around 7C at night. So that's good; I also think there are some folks looking for boars in the area since the other Ossabaw folks cut all theirs, so I'm evaluating them for prospects before I castrate them all.

That's a enough of a data dump for now. I've had a couple real long days and I am going to eat a lot of food and watch youtube videos, primarily also about food.

I hope you're all well.