~27 days ago I wrote shortform #42 and mentioned that I experienced a very low low that day, among other things, and gave a super vague description of said low: “The very low low sucked, but I don’t want to talk about it further here. I will be okay, and I have a good support system to talk about it with.” For the following 25 days or so I stopped writing, withdrew into a shell, and alternated between hiding in that shell and frantically packing the house up. That sucked :( I don’t want to stay in a shell anymore, so i’m kicking it apart and emerging to live a more full and whole life like I prefer to do. Hello world, once again! :)
I had a close friendship with an individual for 6+ years. On Tuesday February 9, while walking through Costco to pickup groceries for that evening’s little get-together birthday celebration, I received a text message from said individual wherein they terminated our friendship and blocked me. Over the last ~27 days I spent too much time wracking my brain trying to come up with some explanation for why they did that, for why they threw me away, for why they retreated into a shell of their own, and more., This was [and still is] new emotional terrain (I’d never experienced anything similar before) for me and goddamn did it wreck the shit out of me. It still is in some ways, but some time has passed and the emotional knife wounds don’t feel as raw or as open as they were initially, thank you “time passing” and having a good group of friends, family, my therapist, and so on to lean on and help me process everything.
I don’t want to stay in the shell I retreated into so I’m writing about what happened (it’s feeling well cathartic, it’s great), making myself emerge, resuming my social and other habits, and trying my best to live fully again. A few more words on what happened and then I’ll move to other topics.
Dear individual who used to be my friend, but chose to terminate our friendship by nuking me from orbit via text message:
Go get some help, seriously. What you did was cruel, and I don’t want you to do that to anyone else, please don’t do it to anyone else, because it hurts too goddamn much. I didn’t realize that when you spoke over the years of all the people you’ve blocked, who you said were toxic, or made you too anxious, that that practice and designation would one day extend to me, because I work hard to be a good friend to my friends and work hard to learn from mistakes I make and improve. I make mistakes, and know for a fact that I once hurt someone else I was friends with in the past by saying something off the cuff without realizing the impact, but I never act with conscious malice towards my friends. We had no conflicts over the past number of months, nothing I (nor others I’ve talked with) can identify as a trigger event for blocking me, so...why’d you do it? Communication exists so that people can talk to each other, and the normal and good thing to do is to talk to your friend about what’s going on, tell them if they did something wrong, talk about what you’re going through. We had a long history of communicating well about our friendship, what was going on in our own lives, discussing emotions, negotiating boundaries, and so on. Why did you choose to destroy that practice and terminate our friendship? I can’t be friends with you again after how badly you hurt me. I know you’ll probably never read this, but if you do read it...just go get some damn help and don’t do to anyone else what you did to me. If you want to contact me, you can since I didn’t block you (I don’t do that to friends or former friends, it’s wrong and cruel), but I probably won’t be a nice conversation partner until another few months have passed, the emotional wounds are still too raw, and I’m angry at you.
Life moves on, time passes, and the wheel keeps turning. Onward to new topics and experiences!
Sometime next week I’ll be driving to Virginia and will start living there. I’ve never lived outside the Houston area and am immensely excited to try living in a new-to-me place, even though I will miss a lot about where I’m from and miss a lot of people (I will NOT miss the weather though). I think it’s probably a good thing to move far away from wherever is home at least once in life, so I’m happy to be embarking on that adventure now.
There are so many things I haven’t experienced yet that lead to a more whole and fulfilling life. I’ve decided to prioritize pursuing those experiences and having fun: for too many years I allowed my happiness set point to stay too low, I allowed myself to wallow or remain depressed or hide in a shell, I allowed myself to think deeply and extensively about ongoing problems in my life and the world without taking many actions against them, and so on. Now...I allow myself to raise my happiness set point, to cultivate fun, to experience more of the lovely riches of being alive, to take regular and consistent good actions against problems, and to live more fully and deeply!
Life is better when I write, when I create, when I produce. So, back to it I go :)
Movies and TV shows can have some excellent and inspirational music, lately I’ve turned to such music for mood improvement and for having a fun sonic environment. I wrote this while listening to, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lovYZqGVPBQ&ab_channel=BillalKamali, and I’ve really enjoyed listening to it.
I read this yesterday and it was profoundly impactful, probably in a positive way. Reading that felt a lot like reading about myself in many ways, because I have ADHD and saw much of myself in what was described (though there were differences). If you have ADHD or know someone who does, go read that article.
I’ve noticed an uptick in “a year of lockdowns”, “quarantine retrospective”, type posts around LessWrong and elsewhere. That surprised me because I’m surprised we’ve all been in quarantine for over a year now, it feels ridiculous that life in so many ways for so many people had to shrink or stop for so damn long, it sucks. One benefit of where I’ve lived during quarantine is that going outside has always been permitted, more things have been open, and people (after the first 2-3 months or so) didn’t have to basically shelter in place in their dwellings for so many months. What I’ve heard about the restrictiveness of lockdowns in many Californian cities, in New York, and elsewhere scares me, because that would be hell to live through for me, personally. And so many of the intense lockdowns just...didn’t have to last this long, or be put in place at that level of intensity in the first place, if decisionmakers had made more prudent, “rational” decisions (I’m basing these opinions off of Zvi’s COVID posts, discussions I’ve seen on LW and other forums, and the little bit of research I’ve done myself) regarding how to effectively handle the pandemic. This last year has increased how much I value living in an area where personal liberty in many specific contexts is usually prioritized (not all contexts are priortized here in Texas though...this state’s government is too damn obsessed with regulating people’s bodies, and some other things; but it is a pretty good place to be for freedom of association, movement, and some other things) at the expense of the collective in some ways. Living in a political monoculture scares the hell out of me, because that seems to be when there’s the highest probability of losing freedoms I care about, among other things. This has made me reevaluate how quickly I want to move to Seattle or other blue-tribe dominated places, mostly because I’m not familiar with living in a monocultural blue-tribe place and am almost exclusively familiar with living in a deeply mixed blue, grey, and red tribe area like Houston (I have no interest in living in a purely red-tribe place, though it would be culturally familiar and easier for me to deal with in a lot of ways versus a purely blue-tribe place). Ugh. I think I’m ranting at this point and am not being very specific, so I’ll stop the politics stuff for now. This paragraph rant is mostly me venting quarantine related frustrations cum “where do I want to move to / live” considerations.
If you are reading this, how has a year of lockdowns, of quarantining, etc. affected you? How are you doing now versus before the pandemic?
Shortform #43 Egress Shell
~27 days ago I wrote shortform #42 and mentioned that I experienced a very low low that day, among other things, and gave a super vague description of said low: “The very low low sucked, but I don’t want to talk about it further here. I will be okay, and I have a good support system to talk about it with.” For the following 25 days or so I stopped writing, withdrew into a shell, and alternated between hiding in that shell and frantically packing the house up. That sucked :( I don’t want to stay in a shell anymore, so i’m kicking it apart and emerging to live a more full and whole life like I prefer to do. Hello world, once again! :)
I had a close friendship with an individual for 6+ years. On Tuesday February 9, while walking through Costco to pickup groceries for that evening’s little get-together birthday celebration, I received a text message from said individual wherein they terminated our friendship and blocked me. Over the last ~27 days I spent too much time wracking my brain trying to come up with some explanation for why they did that, for why they threw me away, for why they retreated into a shell of their own, and more., This was [and still is] new emotional terrain (I’d never experienced anything similar before) for me and goddamn did it wreck the shit out of me. It still is in some ways, but some time has passed and the emotional knife wounds don’t feel as raw or as open as they were initially, thank you “time passing” and having a good group of friends, family, my therapist, and so on to lean on and help me process everything.
I don’t want to stay in the shell I retreated into so I’m writing about what happened (it’s feeling well cathartic, it’s great), making myself emerge, resuming my social and other habits, and trying my best to live fully again. A few more words on what happened and then I’ll move to other topics.
Dear individual who used to be my friend, but chose to terminate our friendship by nuking me from orbit via text message: Go get some help, seriously. What you did was cruel, and I don’t want you to do that to anyone else, please don’t do it to anyone else, because it hurts too goddamn much. I didn’t realize that when you spoke over the years of all the people you’ve blocked, who you said were toxic, or made you too anxious, that that practice and designation would one day extend to me, because I work hard to be a good friend to my friends and work hard to learn from mistakes I make and improve. I make mistakes, and know for a fact that I once hurt someone else I was friends with in the past by saying something off the cuff without realizing the impact, but I never act with conscious malice towards my friends. We had no conflicts over the past number of months, nothing I (nor others I’ve talked with) can identify as a trigger event for blocking me, so...why’d you do it? Communication exists so that people can talk to each other, and the normal and good thing to do is to talk to your friend about what’s going on, tell them if they did something wrong, talk about what you’re going through. We had a long history of communicating well about our friendship, what was going on in our own lives, discussing emotions, negotiating boundaries, and so on. Why did you choose to destroy that practice and terminate our friendship? I can’t be friends with you again after how badly you hurt me. I know you’ll probably never read this, but if you do read it...just go get some damn help and don’t do to anyone else what you did to me. If you want to contact me, you can since I didn’t block you (I don’t do that to friends or former friends, it’s wrong and cruel), but I probably won’t be a nice conversation partner until another few months have passed, the emotional wounds are still too raw, and I’m angry at you.
Life moves on, time passes, and the wheel keeps turning. Onward to new topics and experiences!
Sometime next week I’ll be driving to Virginia and will start living there. I’ve never lived outside the Houston area and am immensely excited to try living in a new-to-me place, even though I will miss a lot about where I’m from and miss a lot of people (I will NOT miss the weather though). I think it’s probably a good thing to move far away from wherever is home at least once in life, so I’m happy to be embarking on that adventure now.
There are so many things I haven’t experienced yet that lead to a more whole and fulfilling life. I’ve decided to prioritize pursuing those experiences and having fun: for too many years I allowed my happiness set point to stay too low, I allowed myself to wallow or remain depressed or hide in a shell, I allowed myself to think deeply and extensively about ongoing problems in my life and the world without taking many actions against them, and so on. Now...I allow myself to raise my happiness set point, to cultivate fun, to experience more of the lovely riches of being alive, to take regular and consistent good actions against problems, and to live more fully and deeply!
Life is better when I write, when I create, when I produce. So, back to it I go :)
Movies and TV shows can have some excellent and inspirational music, lately I’ve turned to such music for mood improvement and for having a fun sonic environment. I wrote this while listening to, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lovYZqGVPBQ&ab_channel=BillalKamali, and I’ve really enjoyed listening to it.
I read this yesterday and it was profoundly impactful, probably in a positive way. Reading that felt a lot like reading about myself in many ways, because I have ADHD and saw much of myself in what was described (though there were differences). If you have ADHD or know someone who does, go read that article.
I’ve noticed an uptick in “a year of lockdowns”, “quarantine retrospective”, type posts around LessWrong and elsewhere. That surprised me because I’m surprised we’ve all been in quarantine for over a year now, it feels ridiculous that life in so many ways for so many people had to shrink or stop for so damn long, it sucks. One benefit of where I’ve lived during quarantine is that going outside has always been permitted, more things have been open, and people (after the first 2-3 months or so) didn’t have to basically shelter in place in their dwellings for so many months. What I’ve heard about the restrictiveness of lockdowns in many Californian cities, in New York, and elsewhere scares me, because that would be hell to live through for me, personally. And so many of the intense lockdowns just...didn’t have to last this long, or be put in place at that level of intensity in the first place, if decisionmakers had made more prudent, “rational” decisions (I’m basing these opinions off of Zvi’s COVID posts, discussions I’ve seen on LW and other forums, and the little bit of research I’ve done myself) regarding how to effectively handle the pandemic. This last year has increased how much I value living in an area where personal liberty in many specific contexts is usually prioritized (not all contexts are priortized here in Texas though...this state’s government is too damn obsessed with regulating people’s bodies, and some other things; but it is a pretty good place to be for freedom of association, movement, and some other things) at the expense of the collective in some ways. Living in a political monoculture scares the hell out of me, because that seems to be when there’s the highest probability of losing freedoms I care about, among other things. This has made me reevaluate how quickly I want to move to Seattle or other blue-tribe dominated places, mostly because I’m not familiar with living in a monocultural blue-tribe place and am almost exclusively familiar with living in a deeply mixed blue, grey, and red tribe area like Houston (I have no interest in living in a purely red-tribe place, though it would be culturally familiar and easier for me to deal with in a lot of ways versus a purely blue-tribe place). Ugh. I think I’m ranting at this point and am not being very specific, so I’ll stop the politics stuff for now. This paragraph rant is mostly me venting quarantine related frustrations cum “where do I want to move to / live” considerations.
If you are reading this, how has a year of lockdowns, of quarantining, etc. affected you? How are you doing now versus before the pandemic?
Cheers,
Willa