The Journey

My therapist shared this poem with me today, and it really resonated with me. There are some things you have to do for yourself, because you are the only one who will understand.

The Journey

by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Adding my Tumblr

I started a new mini-blog on Tumblr, if anyone who reads this would like to follow me there. It’s mainly for smaller musings, the sort of thing I might have put on Twitter 10 years ago.

No one talks about 39

I’m older now than I ever thought I would be. I know that’s the nature of aging, and it’s been true since I turned about 26. I couldn’t envision a life as an adult when I was younger, it was just inconceivable. In my depressive moments I felt like this was because I wasn’t supposed to be here, that I was taking the place of someone else who deserved to be alive in my place. Now I don’t feel that way as much, because I spend every year building the kind of life that I couldn’t conceive of when I was a child.

Some people around my age are terrified of getting older. I do worry about getting older in that I worry about losing my abilities and I’m scared of dying and not existing anymore, but the people I hear voicing their fears about aging seem to be afraid of the concept of aging itself. They’re the ones who think the 90s were a decade ago, can’t believe this film is turning 20 years old this year, or feel like they’re too young to be having children. I’m not judging these people, their feelings are their feelings. But I don’t feel the same about the concept of time passing.

Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the future…

I always think of that bit of music when people complain about time moving too fast or too slowly. It’s a perception game, but time is always passing us by.

When I was a child, at the start of some summer vacation, my father posed this question to me: what if, at the beginning of every day, you were given one hundred dollars. You can spend it, invest it, do whatever you want. But at the end of the day, any money left over will disappear. You can’t save it for another day, you only have it for that day. What would you do?

I was irrationally upset that I couldn’t save the money, not because I had a goal in mind but because I felt like there was a “right” way to use the money that I hadn’t thought of. It took some explaining for me to understand that he was talking about time, trying to impress upon me that time is a use-it-or-lose-it thing.

I’m older now than I have ever been, and I will never have more time ahead in my life than right now. There is only the present moment and a vague idea of the future. I don’t want to take any time or ability for granted, I want to enjoy every minute I have.

Burnout

About a week ago I started feeling kind of numb, like the amplitude on my feelings and responses to life was being flattened. I chalked it up to getting through a few months of emotional ups and downs (mostly ups to be fair, but it was still a rollercoaster) and decided to listen to my body and take more time to rest between work and the social obligations I had already planned. I was adamant that it didn’t feel bad to be numb, it just felt quiet and maybe a little disorienting (since I’m used to feeling things so strongly).

Unfortunately, in the next few days I experienced a few hard things one right after another. A project I had been devoting a lot of time and energy on at work had to be redone from scratch (with other projects needing to take a backseat), and I had a very uncomfortable interaction with someone I’m very close to. The shock of those important things going awry knocked me off my axis so much that I spent most of last week nonverbal, crying quietly throughout the day then collapsing on the couch to watch movies or TV shows until bedtime every evening. I barely had the strength to feed or bathe myself, and even with spending time with loved ones and friends over the weekend I haven’t recuperated much since then.

I’ve been on a years-long research journey trying to figure out if I’m autistic or not. I’ve had friends on the spectrum (whether they had been diagnosed professionally or not) my whole life, and while I found it easy to get along with them most of the time (we had a lot in common!) I still felt like I was more neurotypical than they were. I could ask other people about their interests and look like I was interested much more plausibly, I understood tact and how to soften my words to keep other people from getting offended. But the older I got and the more I learned about autism, the more I started to see some of those traits in myself.

There are still some things that don’t completely resonate with me though. I don’t have a totally inflexible sense of right and wrong, I can tell white lies if I need to or I feel like it’s what needs to be done to get through an interaction. I don’t have “safe” foods that I always eat without fail (though I have foods I prefer over others) and I don’t have insurmountable sensory issues when it comes to food. The more I think about it, I have gentler presentations of a lot of symptoms. I’ve been discounting them for years because they weren’t totally debilitating.

Well, things are debilitating now. I can’t put my feelings into words, so I can’t ask for help. I get overwhelmed at work, but I don’t have the support or security to tell them how much I’m struggling. I’m afraid they’re going to accuse me of lying about my capabilities to get this job, when I feel like the conditions of my job have changed so much that it’s destroyed my previous ability to pivot and solve problems.

I’m worried that I’ll never get back to my old processing capacity ever again, that my brain, body, and soul are just damaged beyond repair. Like if an athlete goes too hard too fast, ruins their muscles and joints, and is unable to do basic living because they didn’t take care of their body. I tried to take care of my mind, but I’ve also been told from a young age that I can just do more than most people so the standards for me are different. I didn’t practice rest or relaxation after a certain age, and I certainly didn’t do the work to figure out what my neurodivergent brain needs to rest and recuperate.

Ultimately, I feel like I don’t have time to rest. I have work to do, I have bills to pay, and I have people to take care of (emotionally, not always physically). I’m so worried that if I fall apart, the people who are around me will get resentful of having to take care of me (because I did a bad job) and they’ll leave me, and then I’ll really be in trouble.

Building Lore Around A Song

I really believe this song is talking about forming a relationship with someone you meet online, who ends up ghosting. I might be reading into it, but my experience of chatting with people in old AOL, Yahoo, and especially IRC chat rooms gets pinged pretty hard at some of these lines.

The Great FMP Rewatch: G-D I hate this part

I was so excited to restart watching this series. I love Sousuke and Kaname so much. I love Melissa Mao. I even love some aspects of Kurz Weber. Khalinin is still great (so far). The 2002 pervert jokes are few and far between, even if they’re still there.

But G-D DAMN do I hate the bullshit arcs taking up episodes 9-13.

Episodes 9-12 (the A21/Behemoth arc) do drive the overall story forward somewhat, but it’s so hard for me to care about Takuma and Seina and A21. I’m not even sure they want me to. We get a good AS battle and foreshadow Tessa’s Whispered abilities and her working together with Kaname, but I can’t get over how it starts with blatant provocations to make Kaname jealous right after we had a joke episode introduce the concept (Part Time Steady).

I’ve said many times that I have issues with Shouji Gatou (the writer of the light novels FMP is based on)’s penchant for love triangles with one extremely weak side. It’s here and in the criminally underrated Amagi Brilliant Park: you have a male character who is very good at a couple of things and is kind of a failure in a lot of other respects (Sousuke with his military training and little to no social skills, Kanie with his smarts and business savvy but delulu narcissism), a beautiful, intelligent, courageous female character with slight tsundere tendencies who works extremely well with him in a variety of scenarios (Kaname here, Sento in ABP), and a frail, boring, underage-looking, waifish female character with some special power who is also there and everyone keeps insisting is very beautiful and a total catch (Tessa here, Latifah in ABP). Should I do a rewatch of Amagi Brilliant Park after I finish all four seasons of FMP? It will take me substantially less time, but I have things to say about that one too…

This is my main gripe with Tessa as a character: on paper, she’s super interesting. She’s a genius with an unfortunately more genius older sibling, so she has an inferiority complex (completely glossed over in the animated series, probably fleshed out in the novels). She is a Whispered like Kaname, so she has a rare insight into what Kaname is going through. She’s spent a long time with the SRT (Sousuke’s squad), and she’s earned the respect of almost everyone in Mithril.

Unfortunately, in the anime she’s a jealous teenage girl who falls over almost every chance she gets. Like I said in the last entry, she FORGETS HER STATION AND RESPONSIBILITIES when trying to explain to Kaname what her relationship is with Sousuke. What would it be like if she was written to be competent, even more so in her element?! If she took pride in her work and how much her subordinates look up to her, and felt confident enough to go after Sousuke on her own? And what if she had to weigh her feelings against the fact that she is his BOSS?? So much of her actions towards him read to me as desperate or forced, especially because he only really sees her as his commanding officer. I know he knows she’s a girl his age too, but at this point Sousuke is too consumed with his rules and patterns of behavior to break the chain of command and really look at Tessa that way. It bothers me when the story tries to Make Fetch Happen with her.

This only gets worse in episode 13 when Tessa enlists Sousuke’s help to win a mock battle against Melissa Mao (over a bullshit conflict that comes out of nowhere). Mao is astonishingly childish in this one, but we do get a scene at the end where they make up and recognize each other’s strengths. Also Tessa buries her face in Mao’s boobs and Mao just lets her. 2002 strikes again!

I just looked up the studio responsible for season 1 of Full Metal Panic (since I know Kyoto Animation took over for TSR), and it’s Studio Gonzo! They’re responsible for some truly iconic 2000s era anime (Welcome to the NHK, the original Hellsing, Gankutsuou, Afro Samurai, Samurai 7), but their work really suffers when they don’t have enough of a budget (that’s the case with all of the aforementioned). I think FMP isn’t, ahem, gonzo enough in the art department to really be impactful. They did excellent work on Hellsing and Gankutsuou (especially for the time period), and I even love the wacky fantasy scenes in NHK, but apart from the mecha battles there isn’t much about FMP that is especially artistically creative or at least out of the ordinary for other anime of this time period.

Assorted thoughts

Khalinin being present for Seina’s final moments and telling her his name is still a nice moment
LMFAO at Tessa’s “declaration” to Kaname that she’s fallen in love with Sousuke and “may the best woman win” (and Kurz is excited about this? Not even about Sousuke being in a love triangle, but he’s actively cheering for Tessa?? Ridiculous)
TESSA. You need to STOP inching your body along on top of Sousuke when he tries to crawl away. You are a MENACE.

The Great FMP Rewatch of 2024

It recently came to my attention that I haven’t watched any anime in over a month, which is a decent dry spell for me. My friend group I usually watch with is unavailable/going through some changes, so we haven’t been able to keep up with our shows. I’m also not particularly interested in any new or ongoing shows on streaming platforms, so I don’t really have any pressure to watch anything that’s not an old favorite.

And since it’s been a few years, I decided it’s high time I sat down and watched one of my favorite series of all time: Full Metal Panic! (2002-2018)

Look at all that 2002 energy and detail!

I will definitely be watching the three main (serious) seasons, but depending on my mood I may also watch the joke season Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu. Fumoffu was technically the first FMP story I watched (absolutely wild that that was my introduction to this world), but as I got more and more into the main story I started to just see it as a waste of time. Too much jerking around and not enough real intimacy building.

I’m definitely looking forward to The Second Raid, that’s when I really feel the series hit its stride and really started to develop the characters. Kaname and Sousuke don’t change a ton between the start and the end of the first season, despite the huge life shifts they go through. It isn’t until TSR that we see Kaname becoming proactive about her situation and Sousuke really thinking about his feelings and the impact of his decisions.

That’s a lot of vague spoilery stuff, so for anyone reading this blog who doesn’t know what Full Metal Panic is I’ll say this: it’s a mecha/action/comedy/romance anime (it’s a lot). A teenage mercenary is assigned to infiltrate a Japanese high school to guard a popular girl with latent psychic abilities that would make her a target for militarized groups (mostly global terrorists). He is terrible at blending in with normal civilians (because he’s a child soldier), but eventually he makes friends and establishes a close relationship with the girl he is guarding. For her part, as she gets pulled more and more into his world by various kidnapping attempts, she learns to harness her psychic abilities (as well as her existing bravery and forthrightness) to protect herself and her loved ones. There are also hijinks with the mercenary group our male lead is a part of as well as at the high school, and there’s a bullshit love triangle that I like to ignore most of the time (because Sousuke and Kaname are OTP).

The action is packed, the jokes are mostly pretty good (thanks in large part to the excellent voice casting, minus Mr. Filet Mignogna), the romance burns achingly slowly, and the animation really gets good once Kyoto Animation comes on the scene. Every time I start the first season I remember, “Oh yeah, anime in the 2000s was a little rough…” but I even relish getting through it because I know how great it gets later.

Assorted thoughts while watching FMP episodes 1-9:

Sometimes people pronounce Kaname’s name more like Konami and that bothers me
I think this relationship dynamic (hyper-competent vs autistically oblivious) permanently scarred me
Karenai Hana is still one of my favorite anime theme songs of all time, and I still want it played at my funeral
The scene where Mao hears the order to destroy Kurz’s M9 is heartbreaking, I felt such a sense of loss
The 2002 obsession with panty shots/calling someone a pervert is killing me!!
The A21/Behemoth arc is a real snooze (and where I ultimately stopped), particularly because Tessa is so annoying. “I’m the captain of a…what is it again?” Are you serious right now?? You can’t be a legitimate rival to someone like Kaname if you don’t seem like a credible threat. Get your act together, you big baby!

My inspiration for 2024

Seasons Change

I think I’ve finally hit my breaking point with capitalism, and I’m almost there with life in general. It’s supremely frustrating to know that I have to go to work every day to make money in order to come home and be able to eat a meal requiring minimal preparation and watch/listen to some entertainment before I fall asleep and do it all again. I used to find fulfillment in my work, I knew I was doing good, necessary work so that people could get healthcare they desperately need. Even though I’m still doing that, I can’t get the same satisfaction out of a job well done as I used to. I used to feel like my job was making provider’s lives easier, so they could see more patients and provide good care. Now I feel like I’m working for a money dispensing machine that people are constantly abusing, then complaining about.

That’s not to say that I blame people for complaining about the US healthcare system. It is awful, and I want to make it better however I can. But ultimately I don’t have the power to do that by myself, so until we reform healthcare again I’m stuck working for a very stable, very lucrative monster.

It feels too early to be thinking about a career change, even though I know several people who are younger than me who have made multiple career changes. I’ve worked my way up from housekeeping/light labor to customer service to office work and now to specialized technical white collar work, all the while expecting pay to match my level of skill (at least, to my knowledge). I don’t generally like to be in uncomfortable/insecure situations, and changing my career and income would be extremely uncomfortable. I’ve been trained from an early age to be self-sufficient and self-reliant so I can get myself out of any situation and only ask for help when everything I’ve done for myself hasn’t worked, so the idea of changing careers and being dependent on anyone else when I’ve worked so hard to become this independent is terrifying.

Still, this is a natural step on my anti-capitalist journey and I want to allow myself time and space to really think about it in a revolutionary way. It’s so easy to get caught up in what is and what has worked in the past that it’s hard to really make a new vision of the future happen.

I did a journaling exercise the other day that involved me brainstorming five alternate lives I could see myself living, and because I’m where I’m at they all revolved around changes in occupation. I thought about how I envisioned my future when I was a child, and it always involved some form of performance or expression for or with other people, so that we could share emotions and make memories. I wanted to be a travelling storyteller or a Broadway/opera singer or some other sort of artist, and with every day that goes by I feel more and more existential angst that I’m not able to create or practice art.

Capitalism is a progressive disease. Work is no longer a way I can contribute positively to the world, it’s a necessary evil because we need money to meet our material needs of survival.