I have a big post-trip post to work up...

[sciatrix]

...but I keep getting myself snagged on feeling totally overwhelmed and avoidant about actually talking to or engaging with people. I'm tired and while it was generally a good trip, I walked into the house with some significant construction work to do and it won't be done till tomorrow or the next day, and everything is still a GIANT mess. I sort of want to surge ahead and work on ALL THE THINGS--a collaborative piece asking how biologists actually tend to define sex in practice rather than theory! revisions on the manuscript that just got accepted with revisions! submitting my one manuscript I have in prep! handling the data from my other study!--but at the same time, I want to curl up and do absolutely nothing and hide. Not an option, but there it is.

I am beginning to notice and grapple with just how disconnected I am most of the time from what's going on around me, right now, and just how much time I spend wandering around some kind of disassociated. It... it sucks? And I have valid reasons for being tired, but I don't know what to do about it, and I'm impatient with everything else going on.

Bah. Tomorrow I'll see Spider-Man in theaters--won't be Miles Morales, but it should help--and do about a half-day's worth of research, and then maybe I'll sit down and work out my manuscript revisions. Hopefully I can sit down and talk about the cool things I did and saw on my trip then--the Disabled Academics mixer! the incredible reception we got to our joint poster! all the cool research I got to see! the excellent discussion I had with a colleague on science outreach and rural/Southern America, and how you have to target silly beliefs without threatening identity! and then all the other things, like the distillery in Wisconsin and the incredible Maryland Crabtowne joint Rat took us to, and and and--

there's so MUCH! Half my life is spent twitching and wanting to reach out for more things, and the other half seems to be sitting back on my ass and going "oh god no no no too much." Middle grounds, brain! We should do middle grounds!

Anyway, my little orange trash child is curled up in my lap. I missed him a lot,, so I'm glad he's feeling cuddly again. I'm going to pause and spend some time breathing and petting him, I think.

Comments

[notasupervillain]

Hugs. I feel you.

[cimorene]

I really relate to your feeling overwhelmed about engaging with people. I have been startled lately with how little I can deal with that when I'm tired too, and of course sometimes I'm forced to engage with people even though I'm out out of spoons for it, and at first I manage to do it more or less how I do when I'm not too tired, but the more and more tired I get, the more my ability to put on a public face and emote at them and stuff just... erodes...

I ended up scraping the bottom of the barrel there last week, in a state where I could only manage to turn on Face for the actual verbal interaction bits and it would just turn itself off like a phone running out of battery in between, and meanwhile I completely lost most of my ability to regulate my own emotions and spent five days on an emotional rollercoaster, distracted by everything, and wishing desperately for the sweet release of dissociation because it seemed like the only way to take a breath.

[brainwane]

Wishing you the best as you settle back home.

[boxofdelights]

how you have to target silly beliefs without threatening identity!

Any advice on how to figure that out would be very useful, whenever you feel like engaging with it.

[illariy]

Dissociating often is no fun, hope the trip goes okay!

I am interested in your opinion of the newest Spiderman - I saw it a few days ago and now want to read lots more takes on teh film :D