#i havent been out a lot since covid

[the-kipsabian]

.

#death // #really tho just. losing two family members within a week from one another is. really rough #even if it is from natural causes and old age it still feels very sudden #and even if we werent that close it still hurts #little things remind me of the grandparents i dont have anymore. like making dinner and realizing im not eating their cooking again #or my grandmas favorite songs. its just. rough #im just thinking a lot. and not looking forward to two funerals within the next few weeks #just.. yeah. i feel kinda fucked up on the inside. more so than usually but for once not cause of myself #its. odd to me. grief hasnt really been constant in my life in years. apart from losing my brothers cat few years ago #before that i lost my other grandma like eleven years ago. since then immediate family has been okay #its just weird. i dont really know how to grief. it comes in waves and odd memories and it feels really.. idk. off to me #ive had few crying fits over some random things but i just feel. numb. maybe its cause of the sudden frequency of these #or cause i dont know how to deal. its strange to me. feels out of place to mourn something other than what i made myself lost #maybe its cause while there was a connection there was a larger disconnection. i havent seen either of them since covid started #idk. regrets and shit and whatnot. i just feel all but nothing at the same time #just. just saying. idk. just wanna clean my brain a little. its been a difficult day. sorry #night is an absolute mess on main

[crazywolf828]

Biggest problem with being depressed (or really just having ADHD tbh) and having like super long hair is that it's such a fucking hassle. Like I've put off washing it thoroughly for longer than I'll admit because gods it takes so much fucking energy. And then even after the shower letting it dry is just awful.

Don't tell me to cut it I love it though. Been growing this shit since I was a kid.

#like as in other than trims (and one truamatic experience that left me fearful of salons) ive never cut my hair #its like down to my lower thighs #i do need a trim real bad though i have a lot of split ends #i havent gone out really since covid started though #and it had been a while before that too #its been my dream since i was a kid though to have long hair #my mom showed my some lady named crystal gale and i was like that. i want that. #anyway this post got out of hand #don't mind me

[0verstepping]

.

#anytime i hear a song with references to suicide or addiction i think of my friend rob #who passed from an OD in...2020 i believe? a month or 2 before covid #maybe 2019 coulda been either #i always feel shitty because a few years prior we talked for the first time in probably a few years prior to that #and he was like hey man we should hang out its been a long time #and like a lot of adult relationships it didnt really happen we havent been close since high school #but i always feel like that was him reaching out and he did talk about some other shit #and i always wonder if we rekindled that maybe things would be different maybe i could have helped maybe i could have done something #i know its obviously no one elses fault but #i just #yeah

[stonedopossums]

have to get a covid test. my job is already mad at me for being out sick the past week they are NOT going to like this.

#richie.txt #my test isnt until monday and since we dont know if i have covid or not i have to quarantine until then #and until i get my results #heres to hoping they dont just fire me for calling out #started having symptoms on Wednesday and its j gotten worse #havent lost smell or taste ive just been in a lot of pain and i cough almost every time i take a breath #ALSO im fully vaxxed and ive gotten the booster so if it is covid i hope it doesnt take me out

[pixelnrd]

hello! ive binged your blog this past week and have been so invested and impressed with how professionally everything has been done. I particularly liked the snippets of your 'process' you've hinted at in other asks. I havent been around since the beginning so i wanted to ask what inspired you to undertake such a large project! or, rather, did you expect it to be as big as it became? each generation has 70+ daily posts, their portrait headshots, family portraits... i love it! were you trying to build an audience when you started out? was it a covid project that you had time to build a huge queue for? i think ill be starting my own narrative simblr here soon and i'd love to hear your thoughts or advice about your journey with it, if any.

Hello and thank you for such a lovely message, it's so nice to receive feedback on the quality of my Decades Challenge because I do put so much effort in behind the scenes thanks to my agonising perfectionism!

As a project it has grown beyond what I thought it would be, to a point that I had to reign it back in in early-2022 because I couldn't keep up. I'll put more detail under the cut ✨

The Langstons started as a covid project in 2020. I was an unemployed student with a lot of time on my hands. I'd done legacies before and was pretty good at getting close to the end so that was the 'project', to do the Decades Challenge. And while looking for inspiration like cc and builds etc I found simblr and discovered people were posting their Decades Challenges here with narrative attached. By this stage I'd already played a fair bit into my Langston family (they had 4 kids by that point) so I decided to start posting my sims as well, which pushed me to put a bit more effort in with shots, story, editing etc because I had imposter syndrome. I didn't intend for there to be much narrative or story, and I think that's pretty obvious when reviewing the 1890s Langstons, but it started to grow as I was posting because I wanted to give my sim characters justifications for their life paths I was sending them on... and it all kind of took off from there, as a Decades Challenge story.

Covid over 2020 and 2021 in my country forced us into hard lockdowns, and over those 2 years I had heaps of spare time for home-based hobbies - so I just kept pushing myself to keep going with my Decades Challenge for something to do. I got really into creating storylines and costuming and wanting to do the project 'justice' because of how much effort was going in and how many generations I needed to cover to finish it. Then I stared doing lookbooks, creating portraits and character pages, and then making cc (which was a fun side project).

I wanted to build an audience at the start because I wanted to gauge whether anyone was as interested in my sims as I was in others', and when I stared getting feedback and responses to my posts it was very validating and flattering, so that spurred me to keep up. I never dreamed it would get the audience it has now! It's nice being told that something you are making is good. IRL at the time, I was pretty miserable - I graduated my Masters without a job, I was trying to conceive and failing, I was lonely due to covid and lost some of the best years of my 20s - but simblr made me happy and was a distraction from those hard things and so I really poured effort into the thing that brought me happiness.

2022 and 2023 forced me to pull back from my Decades Challenge project due to pregnancy and becomming a parent. It felt very natural to drop it at the time, but since finding my groove with parenting and my new life I still want to finish this project because it's been nearly 4(!) years of effort and I'd hate to leave it so close to the end. So that's why I'm still here - in a reduced capacity to what I was in 2020 and 2021 at my peak - trying to get it done. I don't post lookbooks or do cc anymore, because I just don't have the time anymore. But everyone is so encouraging, I have made some nice friends here and I'm constantly in awe of and inspired by the sims, content and stories others are creating. There is so much more potential for historical gameplay in the years since I started my Decades Challenge - farming! horses! infants! - and I hope that my project has inspired others to have a go! That's the best legacy I could hope to leave...

#asks #answers

[nikethestatue]

Gonna preface this by saying this is negative toward sjm sorry .

Now that the ship war is nearing its end within less than a year, I can’t help but feel how so stupid this whole thing was! Sjm lost a ton of devoted readers and gained a lot who will quickly move on from her once the hype dies down. She should’ve said Elain is going to be next back after acosf. She should’ve at least put an elriel crumb in hofas. Instead she dragged it out and only made her whole fandom angry at her, and will only cause half her fandom to leave. I used to try to justify her decision but not anymore, I’m just over it. Lost a lot of respect for her (saying this as someone who’s read her since 2014).

I think we've all agreed that there are a lot of missed opportunities. I feel like it's too late to talk about it now--the opportunity was RIGHT THERE in HOFAS for SJM to start building up Elain--but she didn't take it.

It's been 3 years, which havent seen any positive resolutions to the ship war, no one's ever addressed it either. Everyone is tired and frustrated and people left the fandom in droves. I dont understand the strategy--if any--behind all of this, but it's on her and on BB.

I guess i can understand between Covid, moves and babies it was a busy time for her, but i think she got too involved in the show and it was the biggest mistake for her.

[wewontdieunbloomed]

this is part two of unlearning the bad things i unconsciously learnt from last year.

part one was the negative default pessimism i fall in to, which i keep calling it me being emo which means i dwell in my “misery” for far too long, instead of trying to think of something positive to get myself moving out of the bad zone i am in. as we are often told, sadness and negativity gets comforting, it feels like you are protecting yourself. but one cannot see beauty in life and find joy for oneself if one does not make oneself vulnerable.

and so making myself vulnerable is what ive been doing. trying to romanticise this state that im in, a liminal space, at crossroads. its not the most ideal, too many things are unknown and for the first time in my life im dealing with having barely any structure to my days, with nothing to do yet so much i should do.

it took me quite a while to stop lamenting this unknown and start returning to the foundations i built this blog and my entire philosophy off, the whole concept of “lest we die unbloomed” of making sure i dont realise one day ive wasted my time. and in small parts i like to think ive made progress on that

the focus now is the second part. i lost a lot of my attention span and impulse control, and today i reached a horrible point where i am sitting on the kitchen floor at 9 with no dinner, having ruined my microwave dinner out of a lack of common sense. i am not sure if all this recent muddling is because of covid brain fog or the horrifying amount of screen time i have had recently, but i was so sick of it. i have done a lot of things on impulse recently, and though today i had a really fulfilling day spending time with people i havent in a long time, when i got home and im back to reality of the things i havent done and been procrastinating for too long on, i felt horrible. this need to change, i realised.

so this is part two. it calls back to one of the values i set as something important to myself, being honest with myself. i know what im doing now is not working. i know that even though i use my planner im not sticking to it. i know my todo lists are not helping me. then why do i stubbornly stick to methods i know dont work? i told myself a year ago i would not change my system if it doesnt need to be changed. i have forgotten that i need to change it when it does. how silly! so im changing.

so in the last 2 hours in order to get myself up ive written todo lists on paper instead of in my journal. used a timer for every single step from shower to sweeping the floor to brushing my teeth. enough lazing around and letting simple things occupy too much time. its a parkinsons law thing.

enough doomscrolling and opening instagram when i have nothing to do. im setting a limit for a block of time in the day where i am not allowed to use social media, pwrhaps not any internet at all. i need to make drastic change, even if it seems inconsequential. it might not be academic but its personal. and my personal life and what i want to do with my time is worth taking big measures for, because it should be more important than all that revision for exams i used to do.

so the point f this ramble is to clear things out with myself. make some sense of whats goijg on. have a direction. tomorrow i have an interview. ill come home and do the chores i have to. prepare for my afternoon activity. go for lunch and my afternoon appointment. go for a run. buy dinner. write my applications. research on uni stuff. read a book. and all the other tint things i need to give more importance to even though they seem inconsequential. it sa new mantra ive gotten into ever since part one of this. that “this is the way” this is the new way. enough lazing. its time to go hard and be rurhless. take things up a notch because when else can i do it? go big from experiences to measures i have to take to discipline myself. this is the way.

04.04.2023

#productivity #motivation #100 days of productivity #self improvement #student #lifestyle

[a-very-tired-raven]

Aw dammit, you guys are makin me wanna post this now(10:05) instead of 11:00, but im strong lmao (WARNING, long post ahead)

Anyways, i wanted to start this post off, by giving a thanks to all the truly wonderful people ive met on this platform from this year, last year, when i first joined, and the years to come. Youve all made my experience here wonderful, and to be honest youve made me feel so very very welcomed, and especially loved.

I came to this (wonderful)hellsite during a really lonely time in my life. A few years ago, around the later days of june, 2019, looking for more undertale content. What i didn't expect to find at all, were all the wonderful people im so so so very glad to now call my friends.

All of you, and i mean all, of you invited and welcomed me into your blogs with open arms, kindness, and silly jokes. Even going to the lengths introducing me to your other friends and making me apart of your friend groups. And...i genuinely cannot express how thankful i am for that.

Im so serious, i feel so loved and cared for every single day now, i always have someone to vent or talk with, someone to joke and ramble with, so many people that ive intertwined into this little online family of mine.

Weve all been through..a lot these past three years. What, with covid, loss, hate, and so much more. What im grateful for, is that i havent lost any of you, which not only am i suprised about, but also so grateful. You guys make me feel like the best verison of myself, and make me feel..well..me. we've all stuck together and looked out for each other, helped each other out with our problems, and shared art and stories.

Ive had the pleasure of meeting some very fine, brilliant, and respectable people thus far, and have had the honor of talking with some astonishing young friends. Ive even had the pleasure of gaining followers, and have received fanart of my own characters!! Which, i would have never guess would have happened. Ever. And yet it did, and that means so much to me.

So i suppose what im trying to do, or well..say here, is that all of you have turned my life for the better, and id like to thank you for that.

Thank you, @let-love-run-red @ratsoh-writes @und3rwat3r-a5tr0naut @vrnicky @a-gods-somewhat-mortal-form @icelingbolt @shimmer-lamp and @glaucus22 for being my very first friends in here, for welcoming me so warmly, and sharing your art and introducing me to so many cool people. I wouldn't have had as good as an experienced as ive had with you to have shown me kindness in the way the way you did

Thank you @glitchysquidd for giving me the honor of seeing your artwork, and goofing off with me from time to time.

Thank you @mochamashi @kuvvydraws and @underfell-crystal for being so nice to me, and taking time out of your days to chat and listen to my stupid little jokes

Thank you @luminawithherdaemonlinh @wisteria-and-crocuses and again @mochamashi for all the fanart youve sent me iver the months, and all the kind and craziness youve shown me. Thanks for going on crazy little rants with me wisteria, and a big thank to you lumnia for supporting me and my art for so long

Thank you @shimmer-lamp for being there with me since day one, for letting me vent and trusting me enough to confide in me at times.

Thank you @rainbowut @the1920sisntaphasemom and @scienceisfood for giving me so many ideas and laughter, i really do appreciate you guys and i feel as if i dont say it enough. You guys so are hilarious- seriously, i appreciate it

Thank you so so much @hearty-dose-of-ranch @kioko-noodles @fruitsnackart @skele-fucker @sendryl and @und3rwat3r-a5tr0naut taking me in your friendgroup so fast, and so warmly. Before you guys took me in, all of you inspired me and my art so much...i could hardly believe i was actually talking to you guys and was considered a friend??! My hands were shakey, my breath was wobbly, and yet you guys never thought twice about including me. You all have been there for me since ive met you, you all have (patiently)listened to my stuttering and ramblings without a second thought, youve all introduced me to so many cool things and have made me feel so so loved..i cant possibly thank you enough. Youve done so much for me

Thank you @ratsoh-writes for enduring my chaos and bad jokes. Youve made my dumbass feel incredibly welcomed, not to mention being such a big fuckin inspiration??? Youre one of the reasons i started to get confident in my art man. Ive used your art as references so much- and youve been such a good friend to me as well?? Be angry about me gettin muchy all you want, i love you ya stinky sewer varmit.

Thank you @springbon-t-art for showing me kindess even more since i joined the hellscape that is tumblr. Youve showed me nothing less then gentle smiles and kind words, and i thank you for that. Your art has inspired me for years, and most likely years to come from now. So thank you for inspiring me enough to pick up a pencil and start scribbling down on the floorboards

And a big big thank you to @let-love-run-red love...i dont even know where to begin. You've helped me through so much, you've inspired and taught me so much fuckin stuff...you've been one of the best damn friends i could ever have. You've supported me and my cringe drawings since the day i entered your inbox as that shy little anon on that late August day.

Hell, you're the damn reason i started writing. I still remember the tips you given me, all the advice and confidence. And i sincerely thank you for that. You have shown me nothing other then kindness and hardcore support. And i cannot express how much that means to me

And theres so many more people i have yet to thank but unfortunately cannot due to tag limits and my memory. Id have to make another post and make sure i havent forgotten anyone lmao, but thank you all!! To my close moots and followers, to the big inspirations ive yet to summon up the courage to talk to

I seriously, would have not made it this far without you dorks, and i sincerely, and genuinely, hope ive made an impact at least a fragment of the size you guys have made on me. Thank you all for giving me a place to call home on this little site.

Right now the time is 10:41 as i wrap this up, so im gonna go ahead and post this(probably willl be 11 or 12 by the time you twerps get to this point lmao)

So HAPPY NEW YEARS!!

And happy many years to come!!! I cant wait to see what this years brings us, what bonds strengthen and friends we'll meet. Thank you for the wild ride and for all the adventures to come!!

#jeep.jeep #yearly call out post(affectionate)

[aropride]

oh my god . okay i havent complained abt it in a while but since december 2021 when i got covid for the first* time (*you’ll see) ive been getting dizzy/lightheaded a lot, have random coughing fits, am even more sensitive to heat (i cant breathe in hot cars Like i start choking which was already a thing bc asthma but its worse now), and have frequently almost passed out after walking around for too long or just after standing up. (idk how many times ive actually passed out bc i cant remember really but its happened at least once). at first i chalked it up to Being Out Of Exercize and then i was like wait this isnt normal. and i wasnt eating well at the time and brushed it off as that but it continued even after i started eating somewhat better (altho it was a little less bad)

anyway eventually i was like yeah i probably have long covid or smth (also have pots symptoms guessing caused by covid) but i dont have a doctor (& dont know how to get one & dont have money & dont have transportation) so i havent been officially tested for anything

but the one thing that kept me from being like yes this is definitely bc of covid is in my senior year of highschool (started in sept 2020) (a year i have very few memories from so hard to compare symptoms) i remembered always being super out of breath + dizzy + lightheaded after walking up the stairs to my classes on the second floor. like id have to stand there for a second and breathe n shit and my friend was like “thats not good u should tell ur doctor” . but yeah i was like well maybe its just asthma and im exaggerating and its always been like this

WELL. i just remembered. in february 2020 i had this really awful cold. oone of the worst id ever had. coughing my fucking lungs up, couldnt breathe well, everytthing tasted weird. it lasted abt 2 weeks. You can see where this is goingg. i literally remember my mom saying like “wouldnt it be fucked up if tbat awful cold u had a couple months ago was covid” during like may2020.

and EARLY 2020 IS WHEN MY SYMPTOMS STARTED. and they got worse for a couple months and then stayed the same and i guess i got used to it UNTIL. i got covid in dec2021.

(ID: the “newsflash asshole” meme but the guy speaking has been edited over with a stick figure wearing a mask with wide eyes. the caption reads “newsflash asshole! it’s been long covid the entire goddamn time!” end ID)

#text #IM GONNA LOSE IT . #need to add ‘first covid infection’ to my List Of Big Things I Forgot About #health tag #<- new tag just dropped bc i know im gonna forget this revelation in like a week

[auggietopia]

i started this blog in december 2019. it was the first tumblr i was ever truly active on, and i had no idea how tags or anything worked. i was freshly 16 and at the age where i was just starting to discover who and what i was, and a lot of it came through in the poetry i posted here. i had very rigid ideas of what literature and poetry was, as i had stopped doing it for a very long time. i wanted attention. i was eager, although i didnt know it then. i was hopeful.

covid hit three months later, in march 2020. i was in the year group whose gcses were cancelled. i posted one poem right as covid hit, in march, and then my last poem i posted in september of 2020 around when i started sixth form, after the longest summer i will ever have in my life. it was also the best summer i have had in my life. i spent 5 months calling with my best friends so constantly to the point i woke up at 6pm and went to bed at 9am just to talk to them. i realised my identity and tried to come out to a mother i would quickly find out was transphobic. i made a lot of friends. i started to gain some real footing on who i was.

i blinked and i am in march 2024. it is four years and a few days since i posted my second to last poem, which is a number that feels truly shocking to type out as it feels like it has been a year at most. in 2019 i turned 16, but in 2024 i will turn 21. this fact upsets me as the absolute formative amount of ageing i went through between the ages of 13-16 feels like it was my entire life and that there isnt room for anything else worthwhile to occur. on my 18th birthday, i held the frog teddy i bought for myself and listened to lord huron at full volume to block out the fear blurring its way into the edges like a migraine. on my 19th birthday, i was alone and terrified in my university dorm. i can't even remember my 20th birthday because of how insignificant it was. ageing, past the age of 18, went from being something exciting to something terrifying in a way i told myself it never would. and yet i am still here, and yet i still age. in a few months, it will be my 21st, and it will likely be at home, and it will likely be alone.

in the space between 16 and now, a lot happened. there were some pretty good things. they sit tiny next to the fact i lost my best friend in 2021 because they turned out to be quite literally the worst person i have ever known on this planet. i will never forgive them for what they did. realistically, every problem i hold against them is so small in the scale of the universe that maybe it isn’t worth holding onto at all, but i have not learned that lesson. i am aggressively refusing that lesson, in fact. at least for right now.

my mental health also took the biggest nosedive it has ever taken. sixth form shut down all sense of self discovery i had once i begin to nosedive in my academics and lose all of my friends. i still havent regained my footing. it has been 2 years since i left sixth form, and i still havent regained my footing.

but it is nice to look back over this blog and not regret a single thing i wrote.

all of this is to say i am going to start posting here again. and, in the most cliche way possible, i am going to do it for me this time. and i am going to post whatever i want without caring whether or not it is refined enough, because life is scarily fleeting and i can do whatever i want.

i was first allergictodrowning, and when i thought that was stupid i became autumndrowns, and now i will be something else that i havent decided yet but it will definitely be equally as stupid. :)

#writers on tumblr #writing #my work #poem #fiction #literature #my writing #do most of these tags apply? no #can anyone stop me? also no #poetry #poems #covid #covid 19 #mental health #art in covid #i am cringe but i am free

[lucidicer]

thank u @birdietrait for the tag 🥹🫶

get to know the blogger 🤞

1. show your wallpaper

i will take any opportunity to do so 🤭

2. last song you listened to

blue - dreamnote <3

3. currently reading?

nothing right now! but i plan on reading no longer human since i just recently bought it :D

4. last movie?

the first saw movie

5. last show?

the gap the series 😁

6. craving?

i only just got my appetite back but pizza real bad

7. what are you wearing rn?

one of those silly print shirts in the mens section and some sweatpants

8. how tall are you?

5'4 / 165cm

9. tattoos?

i have none currently but i have a lot i want and have planned out

10. glasses/contacts?

dont have any but my eyesight is god awful, i get double vision a lot and i can barely see a couple meters in front of me 💀💀

11. last thing you ate?

cereal, only thing ive been able to eat pfhfjfh

12. favourite colour?

green

13. current obsession?

hasanabi 🤕 idk what happened yall ive been enjoying his content for years and then boom suddenly he got a real tight grip on me

14. any pets?

15. favourite fictional character?

this is a complex answer because im unwell okay 💀 but this is separated into two categories of those i kin and those i do not because i feel theres a very distinct way in which i enjoy the characters that are from such a different perspective that it's important to distinguish them so for ones i kin its ian gallagher and for ones i dont its mac mcdonald 😁

16. last place you traveled?

havent been able to travel anywhere in forever cause of costs and then covid :( but turkey! it was like 9 years ago at this point :( i miss it so badddd

not tagging anyone specifically cause im still feeling real overwhelmed lmao do it if u want to

#olli.txt #cw blood

[vocaloid-song-showdown]

hello !

i feel like i owe everyone some sort of explanation for why it's taking so long for the poll to get started considering it's been like a week since i planned for the the polls to start :(

i'm currently in the process of moving which while super neat and funky means that i don't have a whole lot of free time rn ?? and having started this while recovering from covid (i'm better now thankfully) wo much planning ahead means that now i kinda have to do everything all at once. it doesn't help that the new place i'm at doesn't have wifi set up yet and my reception is also not that great </3 </3 </3

i havent forgotten about this at all and i will get to it as soon as i can, but it might be a little bit longer than i originally planned and expected

thank you so so much for being patient w me and i hope the next time i post it'll be for the formal finalized bracket :'D

(also since it is taking longer than expected to get it out, here are the bracket and honorable mention playlists! i wanna have these ones out at least so it's easier to familiarize yourself w songs you might not know or just relisten to favorites that made it)

#updates #idk how else to tag this one sorry orz #im also a little sleepy so no rambles in the tags today. ty again for being patient w me though :') #also ty to everyone who reads the notes fhdjdh its always kinda bonkers but also really nice whenever someone responds to them ^^ #but formal bracket post as soon as everything is done being moved ! which will hopefully be super soon #the plan is to finish tomorrow so it should be this week for real this time #no wifi and poor reception might complicate things a little but i do still wanna get it out as soon as i can :'D #EDIT :: also ill reply to the messages and asks i got regarding the bracket as soon as i have a bit more energy ( ^^)b

[compassionatereminders]

hi! i hope you're doing well. i've wanted to submit an ask to you for a while but i've just been too shy and nervous to.. but ive decided to just go with it

early february i got sick with covid and had to stay home from school for a few weeks. as i was recovering i fell into a light depression and havent really had the courage to reach out to anyone about it. i've since recovered from my illness and im back in school but my depression has gotten a bit worse. ive become a lot more irritable and restless and ive spent most of my time alone or asleep instead of talking with my friends like i usually do

folks around me have started to notice.. im thinking its just the weather or seasonal, but im not entirely sure

Regardless of why you're feeling this way, it might be a good idea to bring it up to someone. Like a trusted adult or the school counselor or a teacher or your GP. Because the earlier mental health struggles are treated, the better are your odds for a full recovery

#chat with kat #coronavirus tw

[selective-yellow]

this isn't really a big deal but I kinda can't stop thinking about it. I'm more bitter than anything

my little sister recently reached the year mark since she got her cancer diagnosis and in a month it'll be a year since the lump was successfully removed. her birthday is next month and we have a lot to celebrate!

late last year she went through about a month or so of chemo before stopping due to negative side effects (she is still undergoing other treatments, just not chemo). around this time my work went from "Maaaaybe yall can come in 3 times a week" to "minimum four days in the office no exception!!! *unless approved by HR" I immediately spoke with HR and told him everything, that I wanted the exception bc I did not want to risk my sister. Considering this was during the holidays (meaning lots of people would be traveling) and I was already the only one masking in the office while almost ALL of our covid safety measures had been laxed or out right removed, it felt even more urgent to me to just stay away. Not to mention my wife had some health issues at the time as well, so i had a few reasons to WFH. He understood and told me he would meet with my managers and see if they would approve it.

The funny thing though, I never actually got the exception. That was the last I spoke of it to anyone (no one at my work, save HR and one coworker who had shared with me her story of her chemo journey, knew about what was happening and to this day i still havent told anyone; I'm one of those people who will immediately burst into tears when I'm asked Are You Okay? and at the end of the day i just didnt want the attention) and since neither of my 3 office leaders reached out to me about my situation, I sort of had no choice but to assume they either didn't know/HR hadn't gotten around to them, or they DID know & my exception wasn't approved anyway. So I kept coming in and for months I just masked and stopped attending pretty much any work event. If it involved being together, I passed. I did what I could to just minimize contact as much as I could. occasionally i just said fuck it and stayed home whenever I just wanted to but for the most part I was still coming in, feeling bitter and alienated.

I guess I could have pushed and pushed them, but at that time I was pretty mentally beat down and didn't have the energy to argue what I thought at the time was a "sorry but no." besides, like I said, she ended up doing less chemo than we thought she would

eventually as time passed the urgency decreased bc she was better. Her health improved and we reached a point where we felt she wasn't at risk anymore - she went back to work, was going out like her old self and it was obvious she was healthy. I decided if she felt safe enough to go out, that was a weight I could take off my shoulders and work started going back to "normal"

I met with HR a few months ago to go over my "return to office" and, baffled, I told him I never actually got the exception and was still coming in. He basically just said, "Huh. Well that's great. Remember, four days. Bye!"

I still had no idea if my office leaders were ever told what was going on with me, as again not one of them spoke with me about it and my time in the office.

two weeks ago I had a meeting with my boss, and at the end he out of the blue asked how my little sister was feeling? I told him she was doing so much better, which is true and he was glad.

So he knew the whole time...?

I know he was going through a tough time too. 2022 was rough on him. But I was still???

So you knew.

It sort of floored me. Someone knew the whole time. Did my other managers know? Did they just assume someone else had talked to me? Was it just all miscommunication? Or did they decide being present in the office was more important? I can't say i was mentally present but at least I filled a desk huh

I dunno. I want to think it was just miscommunication. Or just an unfortunate oversight due to too many balls in the air. It happens.

But fuck man. My sister had cancer. The whole point of asking for an exception was to protect yourself or family members. those months were so miserable. I was so miserable at almost all times, I was crawling through every day just fully bitter and resentful that I couldn't be fucking safe at home. And I really hate knowing now that it didn't have to be that way at all.

#work woes #cancer mention

[squeeneyart]

🗣️

wip game

🗣️Talk about your favourite WIP

it's Breathe in the Salt, BITS is my long-term baby and it stems very much from where I was in mid-2020

I don't think it would come as a shock that how I write Martin is influenced by my own feelings on loneliness and isolation, and one of the reasons I think it's been difficult to get back into it is because a lot of things have changed since I started writing it! It was something I started in the height of COVID isolation when any plans of moving out of my parents' home had been stalled indefinitely. Since then, I moved out and switched jobs. I moved on with my life (tma was still there though dont worry i havent gone a single day without thinking about tma since late 2019).

But these things, these thoughts, never really went away, and I'm really happy to be planning out the rest of the story (now that I'm the type to plan things out on paper, haha) and eventually bringing it to a close!

also one of the reasons I finally finished the most recent chapter was because during the relisten we got to a Tim episode and I remembered it was time to get Tim back in here, lol. I was sitting with just the first half of it written because I had so much trouble jumping back into writing all four of them (on a phone call! where only two of them could be visibly described! why did I do that to myself!)!

thanks for the ask!

#morning-softness #not art #ask meme #tma // #do i think the earlier parts are good. who knows #the point is writing it felt good!

[haloburns]

yknow. i dont talk abt being disabled a lot on here past making jokes but like

i was gointhrough emails on my uni account and deleting a lot of things, and watching my condition raipdly get worse in spring of 2021 through those was surrel. like i remember most of it because of constant recounting to the doctor's (the amount of doctor's messages too is wild), but it's also so weird for me to read an email to my Chinese lang prof telling her I couldn't participate in class that day because brain fog was so bad even after sleeping all fucking day.

like, in my mind, i went from a normal able bodied person to pretty severely disabled over the course of two years. i told my other disabled friends i hurt all the time and theyre like "well how long has this been going on" and i was like "oh two years, but im thinking maybe more. but i dont have chronic pain, it just Happens To Me" and this was BEFORE i had a chronic fatigue crash that cemented CFS in my body as a real and present thing. now i have to contend with it every day, along with the complications its brings.

now, i've been dealing with chronic pain for. an inordinate amount of years now. i've been disabled MUCH longer than i've been aware. the further back i think, the more i realize i've hurt and i either didnt realize that wasnt normal or i told people and they brushed me off.

my knees hyperextend. they have my whole life. (i had to go back and find picture evidence of this because my mom didnt remember) this causes a lot of pain on my feet, and has at least since middle school. i didnt like playing outside bc it hurt and was exhausting, but everyone assumed it was bc i was a bookworm and fat. i remember sitting next to the older family friend i was at the zoo with because both of our feet hurt from walking. i was 10. she was 60.

and i just wonder... how much did my doctor not notice??? i went through precocious puberty and she was never concerned. i started puberty at 7, and got my first period at 9. i havent grown since age 11. my tits are massive for my height bc THEY didnt stop growing until i was 21. she never mentioned my knees bending back, but she did mention my back/posture being a little weird (not weird enough to FIX apparently. ps i have a small unnatural curve of my spine, not sure if its scoliosis or not). my mom constantly feels guilty bc no one noticed, but tbf i never brought it up. i never thought i was hyperflexible/double jointed but it turns out i AM which means i was just a dumbass adhd kid who assumed everyone was like that.

and like. my joints are causing more and more problems. i started having more problems after my surgery as a result of the stress on my body, who knows what's gonna happen now that ive had covid??

i hyperextended my middle finger in my sleep and now it hurts to use. my right hip hyperextends and possibly subluxes on the regular and i cant fix it. my shoulders are WAY more mobile than they used to be, and i can force my left shoulder out of its socket to some degree while laying on it. the tips of my fingers bend super far down and my thumb apparently "looks like rubber" bc of how far i can bend/wiggle it.

idk, i had a point but i lost it. being disabled is weird and surreal for me, and most days i dont mind bc it makes me the funniest person in any room, but some days it REALLY fucking sucks

#ecto speaks #my posts #disabled talk #disability talk