#i am too stressed and tired and burned out for this discourse again

[janiedean]

@starrology101 Sansa’s going to end up with two grown men who assaulted and harassed her because they’re ugly?

I'm just

not counting this was in reply to a post I wrote in 2021 and like... it's been two years whatever but not counting that if you read it you missed like the entire point and I'm not gonna get into it again but like

nor tyrion nor sandor have ever assaulted or harassed her, like sandor lit saved her from a mob and didn't beat her when joffrey ordered it, tyrion actually tried to stop that and after he was also forced to marry her by his father (when he absolutely did not want to either but hey that wedding was apparently coercitive just on one side??) he made a point of not having sex with her when technically it was within his rights so like........ dunno where you got that notion but that shit didn't happen in either books nor show so idk what to tell you

blackwater being assault is like..................... if you see it like that you can but he absolutely didn't do anything to her, he was drunk, he left and she thinks he kissed her when that never happened so like again everyone is free to be as uncomfortable with blackwater as they wish and I absolutely will not be the person saying you have to find it romantic or suck it up or whatever but it was meant for it to be what makes sandor want to get better and she romanticized the shit out of it after make out of that what you will

'two grown men' tyrion in the books is 24 and sandor is like 27 and no way sansa gets with either of them before wow which means she'll be at least 16 which makes it an entirely reasonable age gap within westeros customs and norms like lit no one thinks sansa should have been with either of them in the actual canon so you do you

'because they're ugly' my pal idk how to explain it anymore when it's obvious in the text but grrm has a thing for beauty and beast narratives, the entire point of that trope is that one of the two isn't stereotypically good looking and certainly that ain't sansa out of whoever else it is and sansa in the beginning thinks marrying a pretty guy is the bee's knees and then the narrative goes like 'yeah all the pretty guys you thought were great are also horrid people inside' and in this kind of narrative the point is realizing that what you thought was a+ in the beginning isn't what you actually want/need so yeah two **ugly** guys that everyone treats like shit because they're not standard attractive and have trauma and so on will be more likely endgame options for sansa's bc her entire shtick is falling in love with someone who's **ugly** outside and not so much inside which neither sandor or tyrion are so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

idk if you read the books but all of sansa's asos chapters + affc ones are her basically thirsting after sandor and convincing herself he kissed her first so she can like tell herself a narrative where *she* picked the guy who was her first kiss and so on when everyone else is basically exploiting her and fucking littelfinger took that like............ that's basic romance novel 101 idk what to tell you take it up with grrm not me

tldr: sandor or tyrion (not both) are the only two characters that are viable for sansa as love interests looking objectively at the narrative, you don't like that go take it up with grrm but I can 100% assure you that either of them is way more likely than the guy she thinks is her brother and is the only one of her siblings she wasn't close to while she was the only one of his siblings she wasn't close to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#jesus christ guys this post is from 2021 #i have nothing against j*nsa as a fan ship but there's no way it becomes canon like #i'm begging y'all i also didn't gaf for jondany being canon i'm not on their blogs denying possible text evidence they'll bone #it's 2023 are y'all seriously still discussing about j*nsa vs sansa/not standard attractive ppl #i'm begging you all PLEASE #i am too stressed and tired and burned out for this discourse again #janie replies #anti-jonsa #i'm not even tagging it but god #sansan for ts #sanrion for ts

[veridium]

To read part one, click here

It is a relative quiet morning at Skyhold, and Inquisitor Amarantha Trevelyan is taking some time to humor some of her favorite guests. Though, her entertaining style causes a point of conflict between her and Commander Cullen, and both finally reckon with the harsh realities surrounding their bond.

Amarantha was actually dancing, and the event caused a stir of confusion and elation around her that almost emanated throughout the entirety of Skyhold. Cassandra was deep in her thoughts, strolling down the stairs to the main courtyard, when the spectacle caught her eye.

There she was, their serious and careful leader, dancing. Or, more partaking in a dance beyond herself. Hand-in-hand, she side-stepped in a circle, three young girls connected to her. It was quite an image: Amarantha in light adventuring gear, sturdy, scuffed boots and all, making lighthearted memories with children. She had heard reports from the Inquisitor’s intervention on the behalf of a young girl in the Hinterlands refugee camp, but she thought that more anomalous. Clearly, Lady Trevelyan had a soft spot beyond reproach.

Cassandra smirked, standing and watching. She wished people could experience more of this boundless joy here. It was good for the soul.

The dancing circle came to a stop, the girls giggling with shyness. “Lady Trevelyan, do it again! Please! I want to try!” the girl in the middle squealed, her long braided hair swishing behind her.

Amarantha took a breath – she had no idea where they got all this energy from – and laughed at the question. “Okay, Ruth, but remember what I told you! Don’t hold your breath this time,” she warned jovially, before slipping her glove off her right hand.

Cassandra’s look became one of intrigue as she waited for the “it” that the Inquisitor was going to do again.

Amarantha’s exposed hand began to swirl a pattern in the air, like she was hand-painting something invisible. Soon, ribbons of energy began to form, and Amarantha’s eyes began to glow even more than they usually did. Then, when the ribbons had become almost opaque in their blue/grey coloring, it snapped. Flurries of snow and sparkling ice plumed into the air around them and began to fall to the ground.

The girls watched silent, in wonder, up until the pop. Then, it was flagrant dancing, giggling, and trying to catch the flakes in their hands. One girl – the same one with the braid – held out her palm, too, and looked like she was trying to mimic the trick with her own.

“Argh!” the girl growled. “Mother can do it! You can do it! Why can’t I?” her tone irritated.

Amarantha had been watching the other girls run around her, but when she saw the one staring at her own hand, she drew closer and crouched down in front of her, hands grasping the girl’s forearms softly.

“Ruth, do not become frustrated. It took me a long time to be able to do what I do. It’ll come along for you, just keep to your studies, alright?” Amarantha’s light, encouraging smile was almost too good to resist. Ruth pouted for a moment, but then she nodded, giving up the cause for now.

“Thank you, Lady Inquisitor.”

Meanwhile, back where Cassandra was standing and observing, the Seeker wondered just how expansive the Inquisitor’s reputation was for Mages across Thedas. Surely, she had always known it would change the makeup of Mage politics forever, but she never quite grasped the context of a child’s life. Children everywhere, who would come to know themselves and their capabilities, would look to her as a sign of something beyond their circumstances to aspire to.

From over her shoulder, Cullen’s voice rang. “I do not know why she insists on spending time with the children of the pilgrimage like this. She scares the troops,” he observed, coming to Cassandra’s side.

They both watched, and though Cullen would assume she would understand, it had become more complicated for Cassandra as of late.

“Commander, she represents something magnetic in nature. Hope, in a time of violence. Surely we must see the need to sympathize,” she advised, keeping her eyes on the Inquisitor and the children.

“Yes, but you know as well as I that children with Mage abilities are liabilities, and without proper infrastructure—“

“What are you two doing there? Trying to start a sculpture garden in our Courtyard?” Amarantha called out, holding Ruth’s hand comfortingly. Cullen and Cassandra stiffened up, both unable to think on their feet what to respond with.

Amarantha looked down at the girls. “Run along, young ones, I have some tasks to attend to,” she said warmly. The girls nodded and frolicked back towards the direction of the Mage tower, presumably to visit their parents lending their energies to studies.

Amarantha exhaled contently, watching them run before approaching her two friends. “Seriously, though, is there something wrong? You looked like you just watched a horse walk on its hind legs,” she joked, dusting off her pant idly.

“No matter, Inquisitor. We simply were curious about what you had been up to this morning,” Cassandra tried to make conversation, but she could still feel Cullen’s rigidity beside her.

Amarantha watched her speak, but she, too, could feel Cullen was not on board. “Cullen? What of it?” she asked shortly.

Cassandra looked at them both before taking a step back. “I have to check on the Smith works. If you’ll excuse me, Inquisitor, we will speak later,” she said, withdrawing. Amarantha nodded and let her go.

Now, the Inquisitor’s gaze was only on Cullen, who stood in front of her unafraid yet cautious. “Cullen, what’s got you so tongue-tied?” she pressed again, stepping closer. Cullen’s jaw tightened as he couldn’t escape from her gaze, the specks of red and brown in her irises could burn through a mountain façade if she willed it enough. And he meant that quite literally.

“Amarantha, I—“

“Come on, now,” she interrupted. This made him a bit more impulsively upset.

“I was simply telling the Seeker about my concerns for the Mages who arrive here and practice their abilities out in the open with so much vulnerable to their power should they make mistakes. Particulary the children,” he explained, hands resting on the handle of his sword.

Amarantha’s eyes caught his grip on his sword, and something viscerally defensive brewed within her. “They are children like any other, Commander. We’ve discussed our feelings on Mage liberties before. I will not yield now,” she responded, walking over and leaning up against the stone railing of the stairs.

The Commander sighed, remembering all-too-well those heated and at times bombastic arguments. “Yes, but as the leader of the Inquisition, you must take heart the perspectives of all, not just Mages.”

“Ah yes, because Mages are the front-and-center of all negotiations at all times. Even if it is to dehumanize them and their needs,” she retorted, her eyes narrowing with critical energy.

“I will not re-embark on this discourse with you for the sake of our—“

“Our candor? Or our relationship?” she asked harshly.

Cullen paused and swallowed stiffly. “Both, if I can help it.”

Amarantha scoffed and shook her head, looking out at the Courtyard, towards the stables.

“You did not used to be so confrontational,” Cullen remarked.

“When,  Cullen? When I insisted on bringing the Mage rebellion onto our forces? When I spared Alexius’s life? When I did not take the deserting Templars’ lip service when we all know they hate the idea of being led by someone like me?” Amarantha was tired, and maybe she was looking for a fight, but she didn’t think Cullen would be this way simply from watching her play with children. It was a defensive nerve for her, and she assumed he would know that by now.

“I have stood by all of your decisions and understood the difficulties in balancing them,” he replied, arms folding rigidly as he turned to face her.

Amarantha eyed him from her periphery. “I have to remain a mediating voice here. Between Solas, Dorian, and Vivienne, I must synthesize ideologies into something attainable, something good,” her voice had softened, feeling the pressure on her shoulders to be something bigger, aspire to something bigger, not just for herself, but for her kind.

Cullen was silent for a moment, contemplating what would be the best way to disarm her tongue and get her to be like she normally was: jesting, assured, thoughtful.

“Amarantha, you are right. You have so much to balance, and that is because you are so much more than a Mage or a person,” he was going to continue, but she cut him off:

“’A Mage or a person,’ my, how that summarizes the politics of the last age,” her words began to sharpen even more. “Tell me, Cullen, and tell me honestly: does your friendship require an implicit amnesia for who I am, for all that I am, or does it reckon with the fact that one of your confidants is not just a Mage, but your technical superior?” she bit down hard on her words.

Cullen began to become angry. “You question my loyalty to you? After all we have done?”

“No, not as a Commander. You are beyond reproach in that regard. I am speaking of us as friends, as people who have depended on one another for advice and comfort. People who have recognized each other’s imperfections.”

The medical staff in the courtyard infirmary eyed the two, who were visibly upset with each other. People wondered if it was because of Inquisition events, perhaps a battle or a skirmish. Few actually dared to wonder if it was more personal in nature.

Cullen sighed, the stress in his voice ever-apparent. “I cannot deny that at times I have felt disconcerted by who you are. But you have proven me wrong, you have proven every assumption I have made about you wrong,” he tried to save the conversation one last time.

“Me, but not my people,” she breathed, her eyes beginning to show hurt.

“Amarantha, I cannot just drop my experiences down on the table and let them go. You know how difficult my life has been, and where Mages have been positioned in it,” his candidness was even more devastating to her.

Her face was forlorn, but then, as she turned away from him, it hardened. “You remind me so much of Gregor,” she let it slip out, and the ache of regret shot up her back like lightening.

“Gregor? Who is that?”

“He was a Templar at the Ostwick circle. My peer, who I shared sleeping quarters with…I, I cannot tell this story,” she stopped herself, waving her hands in the air, eyes closed.

Cullen stepped forward after her. “Why? Did you do something…?” He knew he shouldn’t have asked, but the curiosity did kill the cat.

Amarantha turned and stared at him from the side. “Would you reconsider your sympathies for me if I did? Resign me to the stature of another idle Mage?” she bit back, trying to get him to back off.

“Amarantha, please,” he said, eyes rolling.

“No, you know what, fine. My peer? Her name was Briona,” she stepped closer to him assertively. “The Templar Gregor? He became infatuated with her. She was beautiful, and intelligent, and charismatic. But, she just happened to have an interest in necromancy. He used his power and privilege to regularly invade her privacy. Search through her belongings, read her letters to her family, sift through the books at her desk. He found a book on necromancy that she was sent by a friend, and became enraged. When he confronted her, she stood by her choices, and did not want to change who she was for the affection of a Templar. He beat her for it,” her words ached with pain at the last two sentences.

Cullen was defensive, but he couldn’t say that the story she told was uncommon. He knew as well as she did that he could not say it was an exception to the rule. Though, he detested Templars who broke the boundary between them and Mages for their own hungers.

Amarantha held back the tears she knew were preparing to show. She looked away, exasperated. “Every time I see a young girl who is excited by herself, who feels confident in who she is, even as a Mage, I see her and I see us, who we could have been had someone told us not to hate ourselves. I may be a mediator, Commander, but I am not heartless. The mage rebellion sent Briona and I on the run, and Gregor never stopped trying to hunt her down. I had to kill him myself, when he found our camp one night. If I didn’t, I would have lost her,” she held her arms to her chest.

Cullen watched her speak, the walls he had mentally constructed around him began to crack, though it was painful and counter-intuitive to his entire being.

“That was a disastrous circumstance, and I do not blame you for doing what you had to do to survive,” he finally spoke, though not daring to step any closer to her. “I am, however, disturbed that I remind you of someone who was clearly malicious and corrupt,” he was hurt, and now the situation seemed to be devolving into mutual hurting for the other’s sake.

“I did not mean to say that you reminded me of his violence. Before things went all wrong, Gregor used to speak just as conservative as you did. He would never imply that Briona or I deserved harm, but he wouldn’t insist on the opposite, either. He was always on the side of caution, of sticking by what they knew to be true: Mages were dangerous, and must be contained.”

“I still take offence to it,” he said.

“Cullen, I want you to understand,” she took a step closer to him. “I know you have feelings for me. I know because I…I feel a peculiar way about you, too, and it isn’t out of thin air. I cannot deny it, and it would go against all of my behavior towards you to do so. You and I have a connection that is uncommon, one that I appreciate. But I do not know what you wish to make of it, nor do I think everything within you is pleased with being infatuated with someone like me.”

Cullen’s stomach churned with anxiety as she spoke the ominous underpinnings of their dynamic out into the open, beyond ambiguity, beyond suppression.

“I think this conversation would best be continued in private,” he became standoffish, the mind of a Commander trumping the mind of a friend.

Amarantha shook her head. “No, because Maker knows what saga may unfold if we consort in a dimly-lit room.”

“Amarantha…fine. But, if you believe me duplicitous towards you, that is the farthest thing from what I intended,” he managed to spit out, though he wanted to say so much more.

Amarantha looked down and exhaled deeply. “I know you mean well, Cullen. But I also mean well. And for you, that seems to mean something very different.”

A moment passed before the Inquisitor spoke again. “Being with me would be torturous on your virtues, Commander. It would grade on you, and force you to engage with a new and terribly hypocrisy. And for me it would mean looking those girls’ in their faces, and making my life an apologia for the Circles and the Templars that enforced those walls.”

“I disagree whole-heartedly,” he said, “Amarantha, I meant what I said before. You are so much more than one or two identities, you are the Inquisitor. You can be so much more than what others see. You need to free yourself from the image you are trying to convey,” he went so far as to place his hand on her shoulder. Underneath it all, he still swore that he could find and reconnect with the woman he had come to know, come to be so fond of.

“Cullen, you cannot even free my image from the horrors you’ve endured and the choices you’ve made. How can you demand of me to do it three times over?” Amarantha’s tone was cold, judgmental even.

With that, Amarantha slid his hand off her shoulder and began to walk up the stairs. Cullen followed her to a point, but then stopped. “Amarantha!” he said, trying to get her to stop.

And when she did, he felt an ounce of dwindling hope. Though, it was quickly dissolved in what she did next. Her shoulders turned and she looked down at him, her face looked as if it was made of stone and mortar.

“Commander, I would appreciate if you could refer to me with my title, out of respect for the Inquisition’s forces and efforts for the people,” she corrected, lingering eye contact for a few seconds more, before turning back around and continuing up the stairway.

Cullen gave a solemn nod, chest raised and tightened with air. He didn’t know if this meant the end, or something far, far worse.

#oc stuff #Amarantha Trevelyan #cullen rutherford #fanfiction #dragon age #dragon age inquisition #dragon age fanfiction

[aspire-to-the-light]

Executive Momentum 2: Combo breakers and self-care infohazards

(Previous)

Sometimes I succeed at something, and then I feel proud and productive and capable and good. So I feel motivated to succeed at more things, and I build up a streak. Every aversive task gradually becomes easier, because I feel confident and I’m on a roll. Every distraction becomes less and less tempting, because I haven’t thought about them in a while and they’re just not very salient. I get into flow and tasks become effortless and focus doesn’t require any willpower.

If I’ve just sent five aversive emails, it’s easier to send the sixth because I feel almost like I’ve practised - I just type out the same “dear x / best wishes, y” thing that I typed out five times already today, add some information, and casually hit the “send” button. On the first email it always feels somewhat like I’ll hit “send” and the world will end, but by the sixth email my system one has usually accepted that I will not be instantly smited when I hit “send” and everything will actually be fine.

I work more efficiently, so I finish tasks faster, so I end up with extra time on my hands, so I get even more ahead of schedule and become less and less stressed about everything I have to do. I make it to all my appointments on time and organize maintenance-tasks on schedule, so everything is set up for me to succeed - I have meds from my doctor, piles of advice on essay-writing from my tutor, snacks in my cupboard in case I get hungry but I’m too focused on work to want to cook, the right amount of scheduled social events for me to meet my extraverting needs. 

I get into a routine and good habits, so I’m less likely to forget important things (eating, drinking, taking my meds, showering) and it’s easier to start work at 10am because 10am is just when I start work, this is routine, I do this every day. Getting my morning routine done efficiently lets me start my day with more focus and energy. My evening routine means that I get to sleep on time and get enough sleep, so I’m not only always well-rested, but my sleep schedule is consistent enough that I can agree to commitments at X time without worrying that I’ll be asleep at X time and unable to make it.

I feel awesome about myself and my productivity, and proud of the work I’m doing, so the work feels good and affirming. I get really deep into the subjects I’m studying, so they feel more interesting. I clear my backlog of tasks, so suddenly work doesn’t feel overwhelming or aversive or like I’m drowning in too much to do, because my goals feel real and achievable and there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

I end up not even wanting to procrastinate. I've been away from Facebook long enough that I find I’m just not interested in it any more. I’ve forgotten what my video game rank even is, so I don’t feel any pressure to play more to increase it. I haven’t distracted myself with Discourse in ages, so Discourse doesn’t feel particularly salient and it just doesn’t even cross my mind to tempt me.

This is what a really good life looks like, for me.

Self-care memes are an infohazard.

This is not true for everyone. There are plenty of people who don’t work like the above. I do tasks all day and feel proud of myself and motivated to do more tasks; some other people do tasks all day and feel tired and burned out. Those are the people who need self-care memes.

(And it isn’t a binary either, it’s a spectrum from one to the other. Everyone will feel tired and burned out if they do enough hard work, it’s just differences in the level of “enough hard work” and the seriousness of “burned out”.)

Self care is an infohazard for me, and probably for anyone else whose brain works like mine.

I do a bunch of tasks and feel good about myself. Then I reach some kind of natural stopping point - maybe I’ve finished one essay and it’s time to start on another. At this point, I could continue on my positive feedback loop, write the other essay, and have a really good day. But there’s often a voice in my brain that says do we have to, I don’t want to write an essay, I’d rather watch a movie.

There’s certainly an argument for this voice representing some kind of real need that I should respect. But there are ways to respect this need that are better (take a fifteen minute break to do an easy non-essay-related task like tidying my room, while drinking some coffee) and ways to respect this need that are worse (spend the rest of the day on Twitter).

And when I’m deep enough into my positive feedback loops, this voice goes away. When I’m in a really good place and I’ve been getting all my essays in on time, essay-writing feels good and flow-y, and the subject I’m studying feels fascinating, and Twitter just doesn’t feel very tempting. So I’m inclined to think that this voice maybe doesn’t represent the most important need in the world.

Self-care memes, all too often, give ammunition to this voice.

I should write the next essay. If I write the next essay it’ll be interesting, I’ll feel good about myself, I won’t have a panic later tonight about whether I’ll miss the deadline. And it’s better to start the next essay now when I’m still in flow from the last essay, rather than take a break and then have to exert a huge force of willpower to get started again. But the voice says, “Come on. Everyone needs a break sometimes. It’s okay to take time for yourself! You’re tired. If you need to watch a movie to feel better, you should watch a movie. Take care of yourself and you’ll make up for it by being even more productive later. Just one movie.”

So then I watch a movie.

...and then my brain is in movie-mode, and starting work again feels aversive, and I’m kind of emotional about the ending and curious about what happens next to the characters, so I watch the sequel. And then I am impressed by the sequel so I want to write on social media about it. And then I’m distracted by social media. And then I get into a negative feedback loop and stay up til 4am and then have a panic about how I’m going to miss the essay deadline. So then I give up on life and watch twenty movies, feeling successively more guilty about each one and enjoying each less, until I’m watching crappy horror movies and crying about how it’s impossible for me to do anything and I’ll never achieve my dreams.

It’s so important for me, right now, to get these ideas out of my head. “Ahh, I have done a good few tasks, so now I’ve earned a break and can scroll Facebook” is a poisonous way of thinking, for me, because scrolling Facebook doesn’t ever make me happy. It’s more of a cached thought about what a small part of me thinks that I want, than something I actually want. It just kills my good feedback loop and sends me on the path towards Being Up At 4am Crying Because I’ve Done Nothing.

But it’s really hard, because “if you have done lots of work, then you deserve a relaxing break, and should do whatever thing you’ve been having distracting intrusive-thought impulses to do” is so ingrained in all of us. It feels like the entire of social media and all your friends and your teachers get together to be all “TAKING BREAKS IS IMPORTANT AND OKAY! DON’T BURN OUT!” and it takes quite a while to do enough introspection, gain enough confidence, and be aware enough of the influence, that you can respond, “Nope, my brain does not work that way.”

These memes are probably important for lots of people. I am sure there are people who need to be concerned about burn-out, and ensuring they don’t work too hard, but I have the opposite problem where if I don’t work hard enough then I feel awful about myself and lose myself in a maze of instant-gratification activities that are never actually that gratifying and only make me feel dead inside.

I do need to do self-care. But self-care for me looks different. Self care usually means switching tasks - from something intellectual to something physical, or vice versa. If I’ve been doing an essay, I should switch to physical exercise or tidying my room. If I’m tired after carrying groceries home, I should sit down quietly and process some emails. But I should make sure that I keep doing things I endorse, that give me a sense of achievement and let me keep my flow. Small easy tasks are often good, because I can complete them quickly and then reward myself with a square of chocolate - so it’s good self care if I tidy my desk and treat moving each individual item off my desk as though it’s an achievement.

Social interaction is also very important, but that doesn’t mean idle small talk. Social interactions that feel aligned with my goals, like teamwork meetings or update-each-other-about-work-progress discussions or how-should-we-improve-ourselves conversations or interacting while doing a task together, tend to be better and leave me feeling more refreshed and happier. Politics debates occasionally leave me feeling good when they felt like practise as to how to construct a good argument and/or when papers were cited and I learned something, but fairly rarely.

Language learning apps have been really wonderful for me. I used to use Duolingo, and have recently switched to Lingvist. They give me tiny, easy, achievable rewards - every question I answer correctly, I get to feel proud of myself - but unlike video games, the rewards don’t feel fake or flimsy. Learning new languages is consistent with my long-term goals and meshes well with my intellectual versatile internationalist identity, so it leaves me feeling happy and self-consistent rather than hollow and not-like-myself. But simultaneously, I can do Lingvist on my phone while curled up under some blankets in bed and munching on a toastie, so it actually meets whatever legitimate need is hidden underneath the you-should-take-a-break impulse. After I’ve done some language-learning, my mind is in an intellectual career-focused flow-y sort of mode and that makes it easier to get going on tasks again.

Realising that self-care-as-usually-advocated was infohazardous for me was a fairly small part of something bigger and harder.

When I’m in a negative feedback loop, being distracted and feeling guilty about it and being unfocused and stressed and demotivated and getting no work done and fucking up my sleep schedule, it’s fairly obvious to me that I need to break the loop. Reset somehow. Go to sleep, and when I wake up, it’ll be a new day. Go exercise and work the emotions off, and try to work again after getting back from the gym. Take a shower to ground and calm down, then switch tasks and see if that helps.

I don’t know why it took me so long to figure out the importance of not breaking positive feedback loops, and sustaining them. “If you’re enjoying work and in flow, don’t take a break and do distracting unhappymaking things like scrolling facebook” is, uh, fairly low level and in-your-face.

I should try and set things up so that I won’t be distracted when I’m in flow. I should avoid scheduling Skype calls in the middle of a work period. If I need to do something that might break my loop, like going outside or handling something tiring, I should push that to the end of my day where if it goes badly then I can just reset my loop by going to sleep and getting a fresh new day. 

I’ve taken some steps that were really helpful. It was great when I ditched my to-do list and replaced it with a schedule. When I need to remember to do a task, I just schedule “do this task” for the next time period when I’m free to do the task. That means a bit more of my time is taken up with rescheduling - I get given an essay deadline of Friday, so I schedule “do the essay” for Wednesday and Thursday, so I have to take the paperwork currently scheduled for Wednesday and bump it to Saturday - but it means that I don’t have my loops broken by being unsure what task to do next and ending up doing unendorsed things.

It’s also helped to think of lots of tradeoffs in terms of sustaining positive feedback loops. If it’s late but I’m working productively, should I stay up to sustain my productive-working-and-getting-stuff-done loop, or go to sleep to sustain my routine-and-sleeping-on-time loop? Which loop has the bigger feedback multiplier, which is harder to sustain / easier to break, which loop is more important not to break?

It’s not just important to avoid “self care” like ditching work and going on Facebook. It’s important to avoid breaks. If university terms have holidays in between, I should make sure I regularly schedule reading academic things over the break, so that I sustain my “read about my subject, so become interested in my subject, so want to read more about the subject” loop. I should put very high importance on never skipping regularly-scheduled things even if I think I have a very good reason for skipping. If something isn’t bad by itself, but makes me think about unproductive things - I endorse getting a graphic design job, but it might make me think about art, and then the voice in my head would say things like “why don’t you take a break and draw some fictional characters fighting a monster” - then I should probably avoid it for the sake of mental purity.

It’s important to not take on so many commitments that I can’t handle them all, but equally important to avoid a situation where I have not enough commitments. There always needs to be a task for me to do that feels important, is endorsed, has concrete good consequences for doing it that I can feel good about, has some negative consequence if I don’t do it (even just “I let this person down”) so that I’m not tempted to just-not-do-it, is challenging enough to engage me, and contributes in some way towards me being-more-of-the-person-I-want-to-be and achieving-long-term-goals. If I end up with free time, then I might fill it with movies and gaming and social media, and that would only make me unhappy.

If you’re completely at the other end of the spectrum, and work tires you, and you need breaks to make you feel better, then I probably sound like a manic workaholic who is going to burn out horrifically any day now and crash terribly. I offer you a deal; don’t try to rescue me by persuading me to take breaks and watch movies, and I won’t try and rescue you by pressuring you to avoid any non-work activity.

(Next)

[thelifeoftuan]

Take

Give and take. As some people may have gleaned, there has been something “off” about me, and it has gotten pretty noticeable. Yeah. News flash, y’all, something about me has always been “off.” People sadly don’t notice it until it becomes something of the sort of a physical manifestation... like a now-visible tumor. I’ve been feeling extremely down lately. It’s like most of my days are filled with this vague, grey feeling. Apart from work, I spend most of my days just laying in bed. A lot of times, I’m sleeping (trying to sleep). Naturally because I’m tired. ...but ironically, unnaturally, so. If that makes any sense. I know enough, just from my own personal history and my training thus far, that my symptoms have been consistently pushing towards a more severe spectrum of depression. I’ve dealt with this before. Actually, to say “dealt” means that I effectively handled it, which, again, as we all know, is the furthest thing from the truth. I know this goes in the opposite direction of any sort of recommendation, but I have been trying my absolute hardest to rack my brain around this problem I’ve been having. I’ve been trying to figure out why I’ve been feeling this way. I know when people look at me or read between the lines, they can tell. Even from just looking at my face and my demeanor, if they catch it at the right moment, they can tell. Something about me has changed. And that something has worsened. But be it taboo or discomfort or simply lack of caring, they never really want to say what that “something” is. But let’s be honest, we all know what’s happening to me. It’s always like this. I always feel like I’ve fallen into this glass box filled with water and I’m drowning, and everyone can see that I’m drowning, but no one does anything. Some people watch. Even worse, others simply pass on by. “You shouldn’t feel like this. You don’t have any reason to. You’re almost done with residency. You kicked ass. You have a job in your dream city. You’re a success story. Why do you feel this way?” Whether I think these thoughts to myself or I conjure them up as what others would say if I ever talked to anyone about how I have been feeling, that has really been one of the main factors of why I feel like I can’t talk to anyone about this... because I’m afraid they won’t understand. Or worse. They won’t listen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am well aware all of this is some sordid irrationalization. But can you blame me? I’ve gotten burned multiple times... and I’d rather not go through that again. So I isolate myself. ...but isn’t isolation what got me in trouble in the first place? ... ... ...so you see the predicament I’m in? If there’s one word I can use to describe as accurately as I can how I’ve been feeling, it would have to be empty. I feel empty. Like there is nothing there. Nothing left. And it’s a harrowing feeling. I know that it’s not true to feel that I am worth nothing and that I mean nothing. ...but I just can shake this feeling. At first, I could not understand for the life of me why in the world I have slumped into this phase. But now I think I’ve begun to see where things went wrong which, as this should come to no surprise to anyone, I have reached this conclusion many times before. It’s not like this is new to me. ...but regardless, it is still distressing. I think the trickiest thing with residency, and being a doctor in general, is to not lose yourself in your work. I think that’s why there are so many “wellness” initiatives out there these days and why it’s an ACGME requirement to have a wellness curriculum built in for residents (and attendings, for that matter), because burnout is a real thing. It’s a real and dangerous thing. A physician who is unwell cannot take care of patients. It’s been scientifically studied and proven. And physicians are some of the worst groups of people to fall trap to losing themselves in their work and neglecting their wellness. Even before I started my medical career, even before I started medical school, I kinda fell trap into these slumps. And each time, you can trace the root of the problem to the same conclusion that I have gathered this time around. I spent too much of my time and energy caring about everyone else instead of myself. Yeah. Surprise, surprise. What a shocker. ...This isn’t a new concept. Part of me gets real riled up and pretty pissed, mostly with myself, because I, for some godforsaken reason, have found myself in this horrible slump so many times over, you would think I would learn by now. It really irks me just how much I have not learned my lesson after so many times. ...I do want to take a brief discourse though and try and defend myself and entertain the idea that I am not completely guilty for what exactly happened to me (although we all know that that is wishful thinking). A lot of the things I did as a resident, and as chief resident for that matter, I did for the betterment of my program. Often times, my execution of tasks may have been a little skewed--skewed in the way where I would put a lot of the workload on myself so that I can spare that same or often even a fraction of the workload from my colleagues. I didn’t do it for any praise or thanks or merit. I did it out of the kindness of my heart. That is the honest truth. There were a lot of instances where I could have been completely apathetic, put myself and my health and well-being first, and had others--especially those of my colleagues infamous for bitching and whining about how hard they have to work and how tough/unfair their schedules were--to suck it up and “do your job” and “do as you’re told.” But literally every time, I opted to choose the path that would cause the least amount of damage... for others. I would take the tough shifts and the tough months. I signed myself up for an extra month of wards so that my colleagues would not have to do more than what they believed was expected of them (because trust me, what is actually expected of them is completely different). But regardless, though it’s an assumptive statement, it can be said with accuracy that if other said candidates were put in my shoes, they would not have done the same thing. I can just hear it now, just how much other people would have complained and whined and thrown a fit if they even did a fraction of the work I did, even just this past year. Hell, EVEN JUST THIS PAST WINTER! I don’t want to revisit the whole Winter Jamboree business, nor do I want to sound excruciatingly petty or whiny. But honestly, one of the things that frustrates me is that working adults my age and older could not get their shit together or even put their selfish motives aside for just one goddamn second to recognize that they have a bigger responsibility and it’s not always about them. And it frustrated me even more that I let that affect me so much, not just with how I ended up feeling about these people and about residency, but my decisions, especially as chief resident! It was like these mofos took advantage of me. And I let them. And I don’t even know why I did it. Because honestly, if it were the other way around, these select characters would never have shown me the same courtesy. To stack on top of all this, the even more important matters were my responsibilities as a physician and to my patients and to my work. A lot of people are under some variation of the misconception that senior residents have it easy or that pediatrics is one of the easier specialties. It honestly is not. My training was exhausting as a first year resident. And it only got worse with the subsequent years. But despite that, I persevered. I wouldn’t say that I carried the roles 100% correctly, but I feel like throughout these past three years, I did my training justice and made the most out of it like I was supposed to in order to become the best pediatrician I could possibly be. Other people might not have the same mindset and they’re comfortable with skating through, not following the rules (or even blatantly and openly breaking the rules), and choosing the easiest path with the least amount of work. But that’s just not me. And maybe that’s a big fault of mine. Who the hell knows? Maybe I should be as selfish as these ingrates who think their shit don’t stink because they’re a fucking doctor. ...I don’t know, is that the attitude we’re supposed to have as physicians? I don’t think so. I see my role as the devoted servant who is so fortunate to be granted these opportunities to make a difference in people’s lives, save and heal, empower and protect, prevent disease, and nurture these precious young lives I’ve been charged with caring for. That’s my job. That’s my role. That’s my duty. I don’t see why anyone in medicine would think any differently. That’s not to say that I am the epitome of the definition or that I am some sort of saint for what I did, because I know that there have been numerous, numerous occasions where I took the wrong step and have made mistakes and faltered. But through it all, I felt that it was my responsibility, my obligation, to provide to the best of my ability the care that I think my patients deserve and the work and effort that I think my program deserves. But I think in doing so, in doing all of that, in my failed endeavors of pursuing fellowship, in completing the four toughest rotations of residency during the busiest and toughest winter I’ve ever experienced followed by an absolutely horrendous rotation the month after, in the stress of trying to find a job, in the frustration of dealing with other people who are selfish and inconsiderate, in the strain of being chief resident... I lost myself. Again. I had put my life on hold for so long, and after all of the fatigue and abuse (sometimes self-inflicted, sometimes not) I endured... I honestly feel like there was nothing left of me. I was empty. I am empty. I finished my adolescent rotation, the absolute worst rotation of my entire career, Friday, March 29, jumped straight into a 24-hour shift on Saturday, March 30 into Sunday, March 31... and when I got home that morning and after I awoke from my stupor, I sat there all day with the realization that I had trouble feeling anything. I truly felt and feel empty. I know that I “shouldn’t” be feeling this way. I have secured a good job following residency in a city that I am excited to live in. I have light rotations for the remainder of my residency training. I am almost done with 24-hour shifts and mommy calls. My vacation and road trip is finally coming up. I really have no business feeling this way. ...but I still do. Maybe when I finally go on my vacation and road trip, I’ll rediscover myself again and breathe some life back into my soul. I feel like for so long, I have given so much, so much of myself, to other people and to my job and to my patients and to my future and calling, that I forgot to save a little bit for myself. That’s the thing not only about being a physician or a resident but about life in general is that it’s a give and take. People who take all the time don’t succeed. And honestly, people who give all the time don’t do so hot, either (exhibit A). I love my job. I truly do. It has been the one true aspiration of mine to become a pediatrician. And I am so, so effing proud of myself that I have made it this far and that the dream I have worked so hard to achieve is finally coming true. It was an effing difficult journey getting there, with so, so many setbacks and failures and perils. But damn it, I made it. And I feel that what I am doing is the most meaningful and impactful thing I can ever do, and I cannot imagine myself ever being anything else except a pediatrician. ...but lately, I’m just not sure if it was worth everything that it took from me. It’s just the most depressing thing... to feel like this, to feel empty. To have made it this far and to come up, well, empty. I feel like a big part of me is wrought with this sense of guilt and failure that I let things slip this far. I am not a martyr. I am not a saint. I am just some poor sap who really cannot regulate his emotions or find that balance between his sense of duty and sense of self. I am that hapless fool who continually runs into the wall, putting other people’s well-being and happiness far before my own and suffering because of it. And I should really stop that. Maybe those select and irritating colleagues of mine have the right idea. ...actually, no. I’d never advocate for anyone, nevertheless a physician, to act and behave the way those mofos did. But my advice would be this. Don’t just give. Don’t forget to take. There is a part of life, an important and essential part too, somewhere tucked within the deadlines and long work hours and sleepless nights and stress where you are supposed to take something for yourself. There is a balance. And that’s what life is all about. Balance. Things fall out of balance and you end up suffering the consequences like me. I work myself down to the bone and end up shattered into a billion pieces. And now I have to put myself back together again. And that is always a more harrowing task than we would like to think. I feel like I have given so much to this life. It’s time I take some of it for myself as well. I deserve it. Anyway, I just needed to get these thoughts out into words. You know me. These days, I feel like I’m really all I have to depend on. Some days, it’s comforting to know that I have made it this far and can handle things on my own now. And then there are times like this where I feel like it would nice to sit down and talk this out with someone who would be willing to listen.

#empty #give #take #residency

[whitenoised1]

→ Leaves home to attend Daewon Prep School, where he would earn a perfect score on his SATs, combined with extracurricular activities and high grades pushed him to the top of his class. Loneliness. Liked by most. Incredibly studious, throws himself blindly into his academia. Restless. Suppression. Free moments are filled with noraebang singing to ost ballads and sky gazing. → Accepted to KAIST and majors in mechanical engineering with an emphasis in aerospace specialization. Earns a name for himself. Interns under the world’s smartest individuals. Not a genius himself, but a hardworker standing out from groups of MENSA minds. Somewhere between logical and emotional. IQ measured at 130. → Completed the graduate program atMIT – America is fast-pace. Everyone is moving around him. Bar-hopping and programmed hookups. Hangs music posters on his dormroom walls, inbetween constellation maps of Capricorn. Calls his mother two times a week. → From then on, he undertook an apprenticeship program at NASA before accepting a job offering. Almost fails his first stress test. Settled down. Rejected three times for the astronaunt program. Fear. Failure. Sweaty palms, adrenaline rushes. Applies again and is accepted.

______________

full name  calls itself do kyungsoo date of birth  12 january, 87. orientation homosexual. gender  cis male. species unidentified occupation  now mechanical engineering professor at kaist university, former aerospace engineer/astronaunt for nasa. current location  seoul, south korea. linguistics  korean, english, conversational chinese. education  mechanical engineering with an emphasis in aerospace specialization and a minor in physics at kaist. aerospace engineering and physics dual masters at mit (aeroastro). financial stability  well-off.

________________

INTRODUCTION

These are memories.

He can recall spicy kimchi and tobacco from his childhood. He can recall the taste of it on his tongue and the stench rolling off his father’s cigarette pipes. Grass sticking to the soles of his feet as he explored his village, too hot summers and sun burnt skin. Fast-forward, he experiences heartache for the first time from a boy who already has a girlfriend. It takes him four years before he ever dates again. Spends his time locked away in his bedroom, singing and studying complex algorithms. He claims he will not love anyone ever again. Eight years will change that and then it won’t, repeated cycle. He stares at the night sky from his bedroom window, knows where he wants to go. English is hard. Loneliness is a constant state and he cries himself to sleep. Each Valentine’s Day, he receives chocolates and gifts on his desk. He politely declines. Every year up until he earns his master degree, he graduates top of his classes. His mother is always there in the audience to weep, her hair has changed from strong black to gray.

They’re not his, but they are his. He opens up connections to learn and to observe. Humans need purposes. He once existed to exist and was intimately connected with every piece of stellar remnants. Pulsating, thriving among countless structures. Hotwired with no individual identity, becoming self-aware through the memories and emotions of these humans. He feels contained.

_______________

The ten membered crew of the current mission include 1 biochemist, 2 astrobiologists, 1 aerospace engineer, 1 psychiatrist, 1 physician, and 2 combat pilots. The mission Praedirus-118, is to observe, record, and categorize the complex phenomena that occur upon the surface of the planet’s ocean.

FEBRUARY 12TH HOUSTON manages to make my days of rest, my Sundays, feel like Mondays. Days orbiting in the spacecraft is abstract at best, our bodies are hardwired and condition to a 24-hour daily cycle. Today, I woke up gasping for air, oxygen starvation in the worst ventilated area. I move to another sleeping location.

Calories Burned: 2092 Steps Taken: 9024 Hours Sleep: 5hrs 24mins

FEBRUARY 23RD I spend most of my days contemplating why we’re here, the astrobiologists have no idea how to even start discerning this organism. If it is that. We’re constantly trying to establish a connection with the living plasma. Inscrutable, someone says it’s nothing more than a game. First encounter and it looks nothing like our own kind. Another crew member makes a joke about how it should look ‘like’ us, that the movies had it all wrong. It was utterly arrogant to assume other intelligent life we will encounter would have been exposed to the same evolutionary pressure and that our bipedal mammalian structure was a blueprint for all life forms in the infinite universe. But how are we expected to communicate with a being beyond ourselves. Praedirus is a sentient planet linked into a hive mind. It would take years to study over all the files and information shoved away into multiple archives. Everyday, we are conducting experiments. I am no psychiatrist, I do not understand the technical discourse of dissecting it’s behaviors. I am objective – truths are supposed to exist independently of us observing them, but I do acknowledge the significance of Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.

Calories Burned: 2092A Steps Taken: 9224 Hours Sleep: 6hrs 14mins

MARCH 1ST Space is sublime loneliness. The methodology of which we prepare merely warns of it’s effects. Even surrounded by a crew and constant communication with my family back on Earth, I often feel alone. I miss my mother’s homecooked meals, my father’s need to blare pansori at all times of the day, I wonder what Niclas is doing. Unlike a few of the others, my bunk is filled with things from home. Cassettes, mixtapes made by a former friend, I am sentimental and cannot throw them out. I like singing, any music genre … and I keep old Rolling Stone magazines underneath my pillow. I am both logical because science requires me to be, but I am also sentimental and afraid. Sometimes I catch myself gazing at the planet below. Talking to it.

Calories Burned: 2132 Steps Taken: 9022 Hours Sleep: 5hrs 13mins

APRIL 10TH There’s a lot of fighting among the crew as tensions rise. I offer my suggestions and try to assist as much as I can. Stepping on toes is inevitable. I am equally opinionated, but I am not blind. We cannot communicate with each other properly, let alone Praedirus. After dealing with an unexpected radiation storm, hazardous looming over an alreadyt impending failed mission, this is threatening moral. Our experimentations are unauthorized, communication back with Houston has been sporadic. We are terribly desperate. I helped to construct together the x-ray we’re using to bombard the surface. It was my idea and any consequences will fall back on me. I cannot help but to think that we are trying to reign over the ocean. We will tell ourselves that this mission is to educate and to communicate and liberate. We will say that we aren’t here to plunder nor control. It turns my stomach. No results yet.

APRIL 18TH Today, I found my ex’s watch in the lab. I do not know where it came from. I am scared and refuse to tell the others. We plan to board pods and explore the planet tomorrow. This log will be incomplete, I am tired.

MAY 1ST We d o nt [ know ] we w il and cannot k now. The ot hrs are dea d.

Calories Burned: 0 Steps Taken: 9124 Hours Sleep: 0hrs

MAY 15TH I am back, but I am different. I called the names listed in my phone book today. There’s only 4 of them and I left behind messages. I do not recognize mom, but I know she is important and I know who she is. In my bunk, there’s a multiple photographs of Niclas and someone. I do not recognize who the other is. The back of every single polaroid reads Kyungsoo and Niclas. What is happening to me.

Calories Burned: 0 Steps Taken: 9364 Hours Sleep: 0hrs

JUNE 4TH Jinri keeps looking at me. I AM NOT HUMAN. I AM NOT DO KYUNGSOO. I AM NOT HUMAN. WHAT AM I.

I can sense deception and I feel it under my skin. She tried to kill me by placing my body into a pod and launching me into the depths of space. This is another me. We’re going back to Earth now.

Calories Burned: 0 Steps Taken: 10424 Hours Sleep: 0hrs