Field Notes

 I have felt the overwhelming urge to document my life lately. 

On paper, here, in voice notes, in emails and text threads and photographs. 

I know that this urge is somehow related to the striking rise of fascism in the United States. I've been obsessing a lot. There are so many reasons for that. My partner and I are actively looking at leaving here. I'm hoping we'll be gone by August 2026. And I also think that a big part of it has to do with how much truth is getting erased right now. I just don't want all of our stories to be disappeared. Just like the people. 

I turned the camera on yesterday, and I haven't been obsessing as much since. It was like I was finally able to let it rest, because I was doing something about the madness. My brain has been able to settle a little bit more. 

Who knows, I might just be able to make something beautiful

 I'm very behind on my DW friends page again. I'm sorry everyone! It's to the point where I just read the first page of the friends page and then will keep reading from here on out. 

I'm writing on my lunch break at work again. I feel like someone who is an actual put-together-adult but is hiding her feral nature from everyone around her. But last night I managed to set the programmable coffee pot AND pack a lunch for myself for today, so I'm counting that as a win. 

Speaking of: I got a programmable coffee pot and it's kind of revolutionized my life? 

This is such a basic thing, but let me explain. In my 20s I picked up some strange snobbish tendencies. I've been exclusively using a French Press or Chemex for years at this point, which both make fine coffee but they are very fiddly and fussy. The dishes are inconvenient and annoying, and they've started to feel like work. 

At my temp job I'm helping to digitize a bunch of files because this whole floor is moving to a different floor of the building, so they're clearing out a lot of things and putting them in a free pile. And there was a new, programmable coffee maker. My coworker Chesh suggested I take it home, and after a bit of coaxing I ended up grabbing it. (My primary concern with it was that I am trying to downsize right now, so taking an appliance home felt weird). 

And let me tell you ... I've never had a programmable coffee pot, but now when the cats make me get out of bed at 5:30 in the morning demanding breakfast, I have hot coffee waiting for me. And I haven't noticed a difference in quality/taste of the coffee! Which is WILD to me! What else have I been snobby about all of these years that is just making my life harder for no reason?

It reminds me of when I finally got an ereader that I liked. Downgrading from a Kindle Fire which was super buggy and obnoxious to a Kindle Paperwhite made me actually love that format of reading. 

Anyway - I've been making these small but impactful adjustments to how I live in the world and it's been really interesting. 

Ack, my lunch is up. Will write more of substance later.

 Ok so I'm trying to figure out how to get a cut to work and it's suuuuuuper annoying. 

I wrote a really long post and then when I was done writing out stuff I tried to put it under a cut but no matter what I do, it only puts a small part of the text under a cut. 

Is there a fix for this? 

I've tried going into the HTML on the post and messing with it that way and it won't work. I've tried cutting all the text I want to put under the cut, then starting a new cut, and it just pastes exactly how it used to be. Do I have to re-type everything under a cut? 




I've privated the entry for now because it's SO long that I don't wanna clutter up peoples reading pages and my own blog

This has been a really lovely weekend!

A friend of mine that I haven't been in touch with for years was in town, and so I got to see him on Friday night and Saturday. He was here to help judge an architecture student program at his alma mater, and of course that also meant that we got to see one another.

It was so good to see R. We've drifted apart, but that's mainly because his (now) wife went to get her MLIS in Canada about 10 years ago, and we've both not been the best at keeping in touch.

This whole friend group is one that I sort of fell out of touch with, but have been slowly getting back in touch with after a wedding last year acted as a reunion. It was like no time had passed. And they all loved meeting E, who was kinda stoned for most of it. At that wedding my ex JF and I kind of made up. There was no animosity on my end, but he has a really hard time being friends with exes after breaking up and so we never really became friends afterwards. But in my opinion we were always better as friends than as significant others, and I'm very glad to have him back in my life.

We get together for like ... game nights, he's invited E and I to a few parties at his place, and we saw one another for his birthday last summer. I laugh so hard when I'm hanging out with him.

And R&R (the guy I saw this weekend and his wife) were at that wedding as well. They live out in Portland now, so I basically never get to see them. But again, this weekend it was like no time had passed. He invited us out to stay with him, which was really sweet. At the end of our hanging out, he even said "I know that an open invitation isn't a real invitation so as soon as you and Ezra have dates you'd like to come out, just confirm them with us and we'll figure out our work schedules." 

Total sweetie.

When I see this particular group of friends (I'm going to start referring to them here as the NField Crew) I am particularly reminded of my early-mid twenties, which is when I was seeing JF. I feel simultaneously younger and older. Mostly I just feel really settled right now.

As for today, I spent most of today at home working on writing.

This course I'm writing lectures for will be the death of me! I want so badly to move on to something else. But I am proud of the work I did on it today. I also managed to get some cleaning done, including sweeping + mopping the living room and entryway floors! 

Here's a bit that I wrote today that doesn't make sense in the final cut of the lecture, but that I want to hang on to. Basically, it was a little bit too personal but I want to keep the bits for future reference.

Here is that bit: 

( Gender and Sowilo )

Current daily wordcount: 2,355
Fanfic: 882
Course Writing: 1473

I'm going to reward myself with writing more fanfic. I have a cursêd kandreil omegaverse fic I'm working on. (I am actually having The Most Fun with it, and I think I got a good internal voice going for Kevi)

Just a quick post to let y'all know about this thing that a friend sent me - Sapphic Stuff Your Kindle Day! A bunch of ebooks from self-published authors are either free or $.99 today.

I would love to support more self published authors; I think they don't get enough love and they get to tell really awesome stories.

Anyway, link is here!

Welp, I had awful car trouble this morning and now I guess I have a day off from the Horrid Temp Job, which is good. 

I had such a weird experience yesterday regarding my business and it has sent me into an absolute tailspin. 

There's a new conference happening up north, and way back in May I applied to vend at it. I had just assumed I didn't get in because I never received an email. The conference is Nov 1-3 and I wasn't planning on going because it's 3 hours away. 

I got an email yesterday from the organizers of the conference with details. The event is 14 days away. 

I emailed them back right away, saying I had never heard back from them and therefore couldn't do it anymore. They emailed me with proof of a $300 invoice that I paid to vend at the event. I haven't replied to that email yet, I'm not sure how. Then I remembered what happened: I paid the invoice in July, when I was suffering from daily migraines from a terrible work situation. I was in an absolute fugue state and thought I was paying a fee for a different conference I'm vending at next weekend. And still, I think it's really weird and suspicious that I never got an actual email, no marketing materials, no other communication from them. I don't know what to do.

I just ended a temp job on Friday, I've barely had any weekends to myself, the book launches on Nov 4, and I'm terrified because I truly do not have the money I need to make this happen. Because this isn't like a conference where I can show up and it's an easy thing; I need to find a place to stay. I had RSVPd for a wedding on Nov 1, it's my family's women's weekend that weekend. But I read the fine print and there's no way to get a refund - the last time to get a refund was Sept 1. 

I've been spiraling ever since, and I don't know what to do. My mental health has been in a freefall. How could I do something so stupid? How did I lose track of this? I feel so completely blindsided and scared about money. And there's also the fact that it's a *new* conference - I don't know if enough people will be attending who would be interested in buying my ritual oils and books to make it truly worth it. 

I think tomorrow I might reach out to the organizer again and basically say "Hey, there was a mix up here. I was having a severe health issue when I paid the fee for this, and because I haven't received any other communication from you I didn't put it together that I was supposed to be there for this event." But that just sounds so STUPID. I've searched through my email and only finding invoices from them, no actual communication. 

This is so weird. 

I don't know what I need. I feel like posting on Dreamwidth is really shouting into the void, but if anyone has any comforting words I would appreciate them. I feel like I'm coming apart at the seams. I'm having a serious functional drop, barely able to do anything, and all of my edges feel sharp. 

I'm vending at another market tomorrow and then teaching on Monday and I just. Want to collapse.

 

EDIT: 

Thank you so much to everyone who commented on this entry. What I didn't mention last night was that I had applied with a friend of mine who is also a professional tarot reader and they didn't receive any communication either and had accepted other gigs more locally to where we live. I adapted an email script from 

shanaqui

and sent them the following: 

 

"Hi, thanks for clarifying this. 

I saw myself in a lot of photos for the first time in a long time this weekend and ... wow, really trying not to beat myself up.

Gonna attempt to get back into a more regular yoga/strengthening routine. I just did a relatively chill Yoga With Adriene, and was a little winded at the end, so definitely need to work on that. *nodnod*

In other news, it's basically the season where planner nerds like me think a lot about what system they want to use next year as we see new planners go up for sale. And ...

While I've been loving Bullet Journaling, I think my planning needs have changed. I don't use my bullet journal as much as I did when I was solely working for myself, and I find that I keep simplifying my monthly spreads in order to get them ready in time to use them. I also want to incorporate more things like morning pages, so ...

I think I'm going to try a hobonichi techo cousin for next year!

It's the A5 version, so there's more space to write and have a general art journal. I've been thinking about it for a while as a way to actually get me to do Morning Pages, but the more I think about my planning needs and how they're shifting the more this makes sense. I think I'll use the weekly view to plan out some time blocking as well as to-dos, then the daily pages for more longform journaling.

I really love the way this person is using theirs in this video./a>

I became rapidly obsessed with the stickers she's using here. It's not my usual style but goddamn it's cute! Reminds me of using the mood stickers on here, but in real life. I have a feeling I'll be buying some of those in the future.

Here's a link to the shop I found./a>

I would like to purchase the Hobonichi through a small biz based in the US but it sold out really fast. It looks like they'll be trying to restock, so I'm hoping to be able to buy once they restock.

 Today has been very busy. I don't know how well I'm adapting to having a full time job and a book launch and getting married. 

But tonight ... tonight has been lovely. I cooked dinner. It was simple, but it was good. I did laundry. 

Laundry was essential tonight. I am so low on clothes I ended up wearing my medieval shift dress all day while working from home. I ... did not have to be on any zoom calls or anything, thank goodness. 

After dinner, I had a lot of work to do for book release stuff. It is ... wow it is so hectic. But I threw on Practical Magic while I did it. Partway through the movie A told me that Jupiter is the closest to the earth that it has been and will be in our lifetimes. So we went out and looked at the stars for a bit. Fortunately for the stargazers, today is the day after a new moon so even though we're in a city the stars are out. 

Now I feel like I've got some fibro kicking in so I'm off to bed.