Greenstorm's Journal

I've been dreaming hard the last couple weeks. These are the long, complex, deeply social dreams I used to have when I was younger; days or months or a lifetime passes and I have enmeshment and intimacy with people. Some of those people exist in real life. Sometimes upon waking I find that they never did and that's pretty devastating because my feelings of care and connection remain.

I also haven't been writing much about non-garden things. Whatever is going on with me has made it difficult. To describe it I will conceptualize writing as having four components: having an idea to write about, being able to form concepts into words, actually doing the push to start (executive function?), and the physical labour of viewing a screen and navigating a keyboard and web interface. Right now I can do the first two but not the two. Bits of things to say float around in my head but I can't sit down and dig into them.

Normally writing feels companionable, clarifying, and positively connecting. I'm putting myself out into the world as myself (this is a practice for me that requires constant, er, practice, which is why this journal is public). Anticipating that connective feeling usually drives me to write in the same way that anticipation of a conversation with a friend might drive you to use your phone. There's usually not a barrier to me for starting. Lately I'm unable to anticipate or conceptualize that feeling in advance so I'm not able to start easily.

Furthermore my body is tired all the time, my elbow had been hurting, and there is still something weird with my vision. I quite often sit or lie there thinking of exactly what to say but the physical experience of writing feels overwhelmingly uncomfortable to me. I have an optometrist appointment this week so we'll see if there's an obvious cause for the vision; if not I'll follow up with my doctor because it has been awhile with this blurry spot in my left eye, with difficulty focusing, and with a patchy/bleeding overlay on light surfaces. Luckily basketweaving seems to have fixed my elbow. I probably just needed to work the unused accessory muscles hard.

Having said that it would be good to find a good speech to text device.

On the opposite end of that I've been doing an evolution deep dive and every once in awhile there's a Stephen Hawking quote. I cannot tell you how soothing it is to hear an AAC (augmentive/alternative communication) device being used. Part of my autism learning has been exposure to folks with situational mutism, that is, folks who sometimes lose the ability to speak but other times are fine with speaking. I get those periods, and I get periods where I can force myself to speak but it's really really uncomfortable. Having just one person in my awareness who uses AAC sets me at ease on an unexplainably deep level, like maybe someday I can do that too when I need it.

I've been pretty busy lately. I'm still very very tired a lot but I've been able to spend a couple hours at a time outdoors somedays. I took two day-long basketweaving workshops and learned to make willow baskets (!!) which felt really joyous and fun. The first one was on Friday, my Friday off, and was a small class full of delightful people including the person who runs my local food bank. It was a nice chat-and-work day. The second class was on Sunday, it had more people and was a lot quieter but I still found so much joy in making the basket. Not quiet pleasure, but actual joy, like a leaping of the heart.

I seem to be able to connect to the things in front of me right now. I may not be connecting well to the internet but every time I see my baby apple trees and tomatoes I'm happy. Those baskets and my pottery feel good. A seed exchange with the food bank person was lovely and I like her generally. It remains such a relief to experience joy and connection again after a winter without.

Some things are more complicated. The pottery studio in town seems to be turning from a "show up sometimes to volunteer" to "carefully navigate people to find out information and push a little but maybe ultimately be a structural/organizing force myself". I'll do that if need be but I'm a little bemused. I've been able to dodge the garden club and landrace gardening organization; I've been good at organizing long enough to know that the second I take anything on I'll be running the whole thing. It may be that if I want the studio to stay open I need to step in, though.

That's always how they getcha. This might be a record timetable for being sucked in though.

Also complicated is stuff with Tucker. With the exception of that one evening (which is scarring from years of society and probably relationships using "your partner feels hurt in this situation" and "you shouldn't be poly because it's bad" and which I totally understand) he's been really present and loving and available. Realizing that I have no obligation to interact with him, I am wondering if I'd like to explore how our interactions could be if 1) he's not in a job where he's super burnt out and 2) I have my mind and sense of enjoyment back. Both those things are true now and they might not have been true for a very long time. I guess we'll see how things go and I'll self-monitor.

Meanwhile counseling today will involve a deep dive into my symptoms that might be medication side-effects (this counselor has lots of experience with autistic folks on various medications, we tend to react differently), some way to track symptoms and make decisions about trade-offs, and hopefully a strategy to approach my doctors and an approach to deciding what do to next. I'm feeling woozy a lot but happy, and I think I need to clear up the woozy before I'm driving 4 hours a day dodging logging trucks on resource roads. If I were in the city it would be fine, but with this much driving it is not.

More random things: donated a bunch of seeds to the burgeoning local garden club for them to give away as prizes, that may count as having given 120 or so packets of seed away locally. Big win.

Food bank can take both eggs and inspected frozen pork. Come to think of it, I wonder if the local teaching kitchen would mind hosting a bacon workshop? That might let me get out from under some pork belly. Contributing to the food bank is a win-win-win; I get to support the part of my community I most want to support, I don't have to run a perishable food retail business (though maybe I can tax write-off a sufficiently big donation?), and folks get food.

Cats are eating 1/2 can a day of wet food mixed with 1/2 can of water each. Their energy levels and coat quality have noticeably increased.

I guess volunteering with the pottery studio is volunteering? I've been looking for something to volunteer with for years here but it's mostly only during working hours. For instance the health and wellness fair that has all the clubs and volunteer folks put out a booth and people from town can go look is Tuesday afternoon, with just a touch of after work time.

I ordered a new, bigger collar for Avallu. He'll let me brush his right feather but not his left so I'm glad I'm working on it a little at a time. He's really enjoying this routine brushing, as am I. He's getting extra snuggly. Now if only I could maintain a routine.

Did I mention I have like 275 apple seedlings growing? Extraordinary. I feel so lucky.

I've been listening to a podcast called "Evolution Talk" lately. I was initially skeptical about 10-15 minute episodes written in an easy-to-digest style since I normally like very fact-based deep dives. The guy comes from a radio play background too, and has voice actors for folks like Charles Darwin. I've found over time though that it's a delight: short enough episodes that I can usually keep my attention through one without having to turn it off and rest, and he's a very clear but comprehensive thinker. He also does a bunch of series on a topic and he really digs into subjects like popularly-unknown folks who worked on pieces of the idea of evolution, multiple theories and how they're supported, etc. He also has his sources on his website which is becoming a requirement for me to take something onboard.

It's been raining and snowing and raining and sleeting. My towels are out on the line and have been for a couple days. On the other hand it's supposed to be 25C next weekend? This is a very springy spring.

Anyhow, very long update but I'm still in here. I'm just less physically and emotionally able to internet than before.

When we're actively together, it's good

When I give explicit instructions, it's good (for awhile?)

When we have a scheduled conversation where I explicitly ask in advance for empathy and structure the conversation, it's good

When we travel together it's good

When we hang out in the evening and share dinner after chores it's good

Relationship discussion via messenger seems to work best

Email works for important communications until it does not

When I give him a script for something (make me tea when I'm upset) it's pretty good, though sometimes takes awhile to kick in

Morning brunch together is very nice

Sex has tended to be good



Logistics around dropping barriers while having other partners is not good

When we have a scheduled conversation where I don't structure the conversation, it's not great [Edit to add: relationship conversation]

When he goes away for a long period of time to Events, it's not great. Routine Vancouver stuff was fine

When we fall out of routine it's not great

When something needs to be handled by thinking it through ahead of time it's pretty bad

When I expect him to be proactive on something new it's bad

When I ask for a commitment to something it's often not great (except for showing up to an in-person thing)

When we make plans to do something out of the house that doesn't involve buying tickets or a hotel room we don't tend to do it

When I rely on him as the go-to person for emotional/high stakes situations in my life I'm setting myself up to fail

When I structure my life around shared routine it's great much of the time and truly terrible roughly 15-20% of the time

When something else is taking up his attention and energy it goes badly

When he is starting up a new relationship and I have even clearly stated expectations of him it goes badly


If I was going to go no-contact for awhile, when we were both healed we'd resume contact and slowly build and back off contact to a comfortable level. It would be tentative. Declining a part of the new connection wouldn't have the same meaning as removing it from an established dynamic. Invisible parts of the structure would not remain lurking like tripwires.

If I don't go no-contact I need to be very intentional about this. I may not be able to manage it at all-- if I don't do a good enough job maintaining my boundaries then anger will come in and do the job for me. Given the number of years I've been waiting for Tucker to come to me with his half of the "what is this relationship anyhow" discussion I can't wait for a collaborative discussion. So, what do I want out of this, given which parts work and which parts don't?

Seems like I need 1) other folks with whom I communicate regularly and 2) chunks of time where I'm not communicating with him. Sounds like most of our interaction should be either in person or during pre-agreed discussions where we know what we want out of it.

Do I want to arrange chunks of time together with high focus and very sparse communication in between?

If so, what size chunks and with what regularity? It's going to be so tempting to go back to seeing each other twice a week, but that will only lead to another set of breakup posts during his next Event. It's too much enmeshment then being dropped for me.

I need to remember that I'll miss him no matter what. The guiding principle can't be to not miss him. It has to be feeling supported, loved, together when we're together, without giant interruptions to my quality of life.

Gonna chew on this one today.