Things That Are Nice

Yes, it's a slow day at work today. And without a forum to blab all my random thoughts on as they pass across my BRANE, well, they've got to go somewhere, haven't they?

NICE THINGS. LET US DISCUSS NICE THINGS.



Um, I won NaNoWriMo - does that count? I didn't even realise that they'd turned on the proper workcounter while I'd been offline, and logged on this afternoon to find my homepage covered in fireworks and a giant purple bar added above my name. 50,000 words in 30 days? Well, actually, considering I last updated on the 21st, and only really started writing on the 4th, that's more like 67,000 words in 17 days.

And I'm not even finished yet. But I thought I'd take a break after hitting the climax of the novel to get some perspective, and edit some continuity (and argh, grammar correction for all those run-on sentences) into the bulk of the novel before writing the ending. It's all good, though. I'm pretty sure I know where I'm going.

But I have rediscovered the joy of the discipline of writing every day. It's like priming a well, the more you write, the more story spins out of you.

So I'm currently writing the threatened quick little RDJ sexfic as threatened on twitter over the past few weeks. (If you are disturbed or offended by the idea of fanfic - LOOK AWAY, LOOK AWAY NOW.) Of course anything involving our favourite reclusive circuit-bending ginger knob-twiddler is never, ever going to be simple or quick, is it? Ha ha, I'm talking about Sandy P, of course. I'm writing a memory/narrative expansion of the affair she alludes to in in Chapter Nine of Pulse.

And it's also kind of creepy and weird - because so much of her career and her back catalogue and working method in the novel was based on Aphex Twin while I was writing her (I deliberately pitched her as a kind of cross between RDJ and Kate Bush for "Great British Eccentric" status.) manouvering the two of them into bed has really odd incestuous overtones. Fuck, they even share the same birthdate, though that was accidental. (I wanted her to be 3 years older than Erol, and gave her my best friend's birthday as I wanted her to be a Leo.) But hey, I mean, that whole "spooky twin" thing is often quite intoxicating, both in relationships and friendships.

(though ha, maybe I should ask mine own twin about that, eh?)

Anyway. Yeah, time to go home now. Hurrah.

"It's Just The Internet"

I think I've clawed myself out of the black hole for now. Being bipolar, in some ways, always feels like walking down the dividing line of a major highway at night, in the fog. WHOOSH. The truck passed this time, you dodged it this time, but you never know when another is going to appear, from which direction, or how close. Sometimes you see the headlights as they come, sometimes you can't, and you don't know until they're on top of you.

Some people give a shit. It's enough.

Of course, there are just as many people that don't. And worse, there are the kind of vultures that seem to take some perverse pleasure in another's pain, whether gloating (assholes) or worse - taking that whole "cluck cluck" concern troll attitude - while clearly twisting and manipulating or deliberately misunderstanding everything that you say.

I mean, why on EARTH would anyone be upset about being thrown out of a community they've been a part of for a decade? How WEIRD. How UTTERLY BIZARRE.

These are the kind of people who say things like "it's just a messageboard, it's just the internet" if you get upset by the deliberately rude or horrible things that they say or do. As if messageboards and the internet are solipsisitic playgrounds populated solely by robots and scripts, instead of being comprised of individual people.

I mean, isn't this what Web 2.0 was supposed to be about? Social networking, connectivity, all that gubbins? The internet isn't this weird little world populated by freaks and people who are "not quite right" (I mean, if they had a real life, what on earth would they be doing on this weird interweb thing?) and hasn't been for a long, long time. The communities and relationships and dynamics that form on the web are JUST AS REAL as the ones that form "in the real world." Especially, as in Web 2.0, the "web" and "IRL" interact and overlap with increasing frequency.

I sit in front of a computer for 9 to 10 hours a day, for my job. That's not unusual, at all. I have more interactions with the people through my browser than I do with anyone - friends, family, etc. - except perhaps the colleague that sits opposite my desk. My family are scattered around the globe. Ditto my friends - and even the ones that still live in London often live at the end of an hour-long journey on public transport. Is it somehow more wrong or creepy or weird to reach out or connect to people using a messageboard or twitter or facebook/MySpace than it is to use, say, a telephone?

So when someone turns around and says something like - and I quote - "if participating on a msg board can impact your life to the extent that you feel suicidal, then i really think you need to stop participating."

Take that quote and replace "messageboard" with "place of employment" or "school" or "church" or "social club" or "family life" or any of the places that you find your community. Yes, many of these communities are voluntary, but it does not change the level of engagement or involvement that one feels towards them. The pure physical *means* of engagement does not determine how "real" these communities are to those that are involved.

Now replace "participating on" with the phrase I actually used - being EXCLUDED FROM. Excommunicated. Shunned. Especially when no reason is given, and no recourse is available. Have you ever been sacked from a job? Have you ever been expelled from a school, or excommunicated by your chosen religion, or even simply "friend-dumped" by a social circle? Being ejected from a community - it HURTS - no matter what the medium.

This idea that the internet is somehow "not a real place" and that one's actions on it - or other people's actions towards you - somehow do not have very real emotional impact - is TOTAL BULLSHIT. And is totally in line with this horrible, selfish, solipsistic view that somehow other people on the internet are not real, that they are just playthings for your amusement.

If that, seriously, is your attitude towards the internet, and the social media utilities on it, and how individuals use them, then I'm not sorry. It's YOU that has the serious problem, and it's probably YOU that should stop participating.

Insomnia

The insomnia is one of those nagging awful things about depression. Basically, I love sleeping more than I love anything else, except maybe eating and writing. Sleep is a world where I go where I'm divorced from this body, divorced from the petty concerns of reality. I think I would even prefer nightmares to sleeplessness. But no. You don't get that choice.

I'm riddled with thoughtworms to the point where I don't know what thoughts are mine and what aren't. Over and over, the same images and symbols play in my head and there's no stopping them, no diverting them. You can change the subject momentarily, but stop concentrating, stop paying attention for even a moment, and they slip back in.

The sense of powerlessness is the worst. The sense of NOT. KNOWING. WHAT. YOU. DID. WRONG. It is, actually, psychological torture. First, the excommunication, the shunning, the being forcibly ejected from your community. But worse than that is the not knowing, you have been charged with a crime, and they will not tell you what it was. You are being punished and forced to pay for a crime when you don't even know what it was.

In the absence of information, paranoia runs wild - wait, is it really paranoia if 51 different people are, indeed, very much out to get you? No, I don't think it is.

It's not one post, or even one argument you're being punished for. It's your entire personality.

I'm already aware of the reasons that most people dislike me. It's not just that I'm a woman, I'm a woman who doesn't conform to gender expectations. I'm mentally ill and I insist on actually talking about it, instead of shutting up and going away and locking myself in some box where people don't ever have to be confronted with either 1) the darker and less pleasant aspects of the human brain or 2) their own fears and prejudices about people whose bodies or brains don't work the same way theirs do.

We don't have to go through the character assassination again. Whatever bad thing you think about me, I'm certainly more than capable of coming up with something much, much worse. Do you know what its like to be locked in a room with someone who will not stop saying the most vile, negative, awful things about you? YOU'RE SHIT. YOU'RE USELESS. YOU'RE HOPELESS DIFFERENT. EVERYBODY HATES YOU. EVERYBODY *FEARS* YOU. GIVE UP NOW. THERE IS NO HOPE, THERE IS NO LIGHT, YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS, YOU HAVE NO ALLIES. You'd either try to leave the room, desperately, or you'd become cranky, miserable, short-tempered.

Now imagine that the room you're locked in with this seething pit of negativity isn't a room, but your own head. This is depression.

There are only two ways out of the room. One is suicide. The other is pure escapism. Writing, drawing, making music, dreaming. If I stop writing, I will die. Simple as that.