National Coming Out Day – I’m Still Gettin’ Bi

I got pretty much nothing done last week, but I’m feeling much better now, so I’m looking forward to getting back in the swing of things. I tried to write this post yesterday, but it just turned into a jumbled mess, so here’s the short and sweet version:

Yesterday (Thursday) was national coming out day, and in that spirit I’ma remind y’all that I’m bisexual. Coming out and being visible is a privilege, and one that I don’t take for granted. It’s also important, because queer folks (who can do so safely) being visible is part of moving toward a culture where we don’t just assume that everyone is straight and cis. It’s a way of pushing back against our current culture where people can be fired and endangered because of who they are, and where people risk losing friends and family members because of who and how they love.

Anyone who thinks it’s unnecessary to share this information publicly should probably keep in mind that every time a straight cis person mentions their spouse in casual conversation, they’re doing something that many queer people cannot do without mentally calculating the very real risk of rejection or anger. Every time you go into a public bathroom and don’t worry about your safety, you’re doing something that many trans folks, including children, can’t do. Coming out isn’t a bid for attention. It’s just the constant act of swimming against the currents of a culture that fundamentally assumes we don’t exist, and often asserts that we shouldn’t exist. We’re essentially forced to do it, or allow ourselves to be erased. If you want it to not be a big deal, then fight homophobia and transphobia and all the other bigotry that makes the world unsafe for your queer neighbors, friends, and family members.

All that said, here’s my favorite song about coming out as bisexual, because it’s hilarious and cute.

This is the bi pride flag! I drew it. No, the layers aren’t even. I’m trying really hard not to let that bug me, because it is late and perfection is a deep pit where madness lurks.

Writing days this past week: 0

Tips for the ADHD Creative: Part One

Always always clear your workspace before going to bed.

Yeah, we’ve all been told this as kids, but I think it’s especially important for all people whose focus and executive function is naturally unreliable. I can leave a project in the middle, plan to clean up my office in the morning, and really mean it, and then it can suddenly be a week later. The office has just gotten messier, and I’ve been too stressed to go in there for days. I only know how long it’s been because my poor houseplants have shriveled up in the intervening time.

Sleep is when our brains tend to do a major reset. My mood and motivation when I wake up is at its least predictable. I may have been fired up to finish that project when I went to bed, riding high on many hours of focused effort, and I still might wake up with zero interest in continuing it right now. Then, that project is suddenly standing between me and any other work.

I tend to feel guilty when I leave something unfinished, especially if it produced some sort of mess. The guilt stops me from even wanting to clear up the project so I can do other things, because I feel that if I’m interacting with it at all, I should be finishing it. This is a trap. It’s a trap I could have avoided if I had cleared up the night before, before my brain reset.

Yes, it’s a bit of a dilemma if you’ve been working for twelve hours straight, and now it’s 4am, and you desperately need to sleep so you won’t be a sad potato in the morning. You’ve got to weigh the potential results, though. If you stay up an extra hour to force yourself to tidy up while you still have a teeny bit of momentum to work with, you’ll definitely be tired in the morning. If you don’t do that, and you do go to bed, and your brain resets, and you can’t face the mess, and you can’t use your workspace for anything else until you do deal with the mess, how many hours or days will take for you to recover from that?

If you work on your couch, like I did until recently, make sure you get rid of your old coffee cups and hide the TV remote before going to bed. Fluff up your pillow. Don’t leave anything in your spot that would require an extra step before getting to work. Charge your computer. This applies to digital mess, too. If your screen is full of the thing that you were working on before, will you be able to go straight to work on other stuff, or will you panic when you open your laptop and start binge-watching Youtube videos on time management instead?

For me, this means that I have a rule now: I can’t go to bed until my desk is clear, my chair is ready to sit in, and my laptop is charging. I know from experience that the cost of me being tired in the morning is not as long-lasting as the cost of me feeling stressed about going into my office. I’d rather plop down at my desk with a cup of tea and blearily mess around until my meds kick in than spend three days avoiding my office by doing every household chore and errand I can think of and then telling myself I’ll get back to the writing work tomorrow.

Whatever the space and resources are that you need to work, make sure they’re ready to use before you do something that you know tends to reset your motivation, whether that’s sleep or video games or another activity. You can’t necessarily count on having the energy later, but you can try to help take care of your future self when you do have it in you.

Bonus: Your office plants will look prettier.

Writing days this past week: 7

I’ve Decided Not to be Afraid Anymore

At least, not of creating things. Heights and ants will probably always freak me out. (Don’t judge me. Ants are so creepy.) I am sick of letting the chorus of negative voices in my head have a say about what I do, though, because I really can’t do anything well enough for them. They are literally never satisfied, and they never will be, because they don’t actually want me to improve. They want me to stop. Doing nothing with my interests and talents is a shitty option, but it’s the only thing that keeps those asshole voices at bay.

This is a process, obviously, because nothing ever happens overnight, especially major changes in self-image and behavior, but I’ve been working on adjusting the way I think about myself. It’s one thing to remind myself that I have a right to mess up, and I do, but it’s another to tell myself that I’m already someone who can handle that. “I think I can” is different in impact from “I’m already there, and need to keep moving.”

It’s okay to be confident. Lots of people know that, and live it, but I haven’t. My experience was that any time I felt confident about any aspect of my life, I got smacked back down by someone, or reminded that I had messed something else up. It hurt, and it made me wary, because learning from the past is part of what makes us the really successful monkeys that we are. But, I don’t want my future to just be more of my past, so I’m telling that adaptable part of me that it needs to adjust its expectations accordingly. It doesn’t work so well with hopes and dreams for the future, but it kinda gets the here and now, and it really lives in the past. So, I’m changing the material it has to work with, slowly, one thought at a time.

I’m someone who can handle making mistakes. That’s true. I’ll probably still remember them sometimes when I’m trying to sleep, and cringe, but I really believe that anything worth doing is worth doing badly. I want to do things with my life that are worth embarrassing myself over. I’ve only got the one life to work with, and I’ll be damned if I’m willing to waste it for the sake of people who haven’t got my best interests at heart, trying to reach standards that were only ever designed to be impossible.

“Done” is so much better than “perfect.” “Perfect” is a fantasy, but “done” is right there, waiting for us to get around to it.

Dogs have it all figured out. Be as goofy as possible. Lie around in the sun. Cuddle with the people you like. Bark at the ones you don’t until they go away.

Writing days this past week: 3

The Unapologetic Bigness of Lady Sybil Ramkin

I just re-read Snuff, by Terry Pratchett, and I was struck again and again by the fact that Vimes’s wife, Sybil, is one of the best examples I can think of of a fat woman just casually existing – in a romantic capacity – in a story. She’s not fetishized, but she’s not desexualized, either. No one is especially sexualized in Pratchett’s books, but she’s in a healthy romantic relationship, and it’s implied that there’s plenty of mutual physical attraction there. There are a few humorous references to the impressive effect of her expansive bosom on impressionable men. She’s attractive, and she takes up a lot of physical space, and it really feels like there was no conflict there for the author. That shouldn’t be so rare, but it is.

There’s a sweet scene where she and Sam are in bed together that paints a great little picture of realistic intimacy. She rolls over to talk to him, and this shift in her weight causes the already very fluffy bed to bury Vimes. Her bigness is never depicted as something wrong – It’s just part of her presence. It’s a part of her charm, but not all of it.

She also takes up a lot of social space. She was already the richest person in Ankh-Morpork when she married Sam, and she has a massive social network. She’s extremely generous, opinionated, and confident. She breeds incredibly dangerous dragons as a hobby. She’s fierce as hell when she needs to be, and doesn’t apologize for knowing more than others, whether that’s about dragons, etiquette, or history. She calls Lord Vetinari, the tyrant of Ankh-Morpork, by his first name. She proposed to Sam, not the other way around. Sam may not always be the most attentive or responsible of husbands, but he loves Sybil and never seems to resent her for being so powerful. He maybe resents her a bit for taking away his bacon sandwiches, but he still worships the ground she walks on.

She’s just an awesome character, constantly popping into the narrative to say something insightful or hilarious, and she once again makes me wish that I had read these books when I was a teen, because I desperately needed more examples of women who take up space and don’t say they’re sorry for it. Too often, we teach young women to shrink themselves into as small a space as possible, and then are shocked that they don’t thrive. Women are almost exclusively rewarded for smallness and delicacy, and our largeness is rarely celebrated, even though it can be an absolutely glorious and powerful thing.

My dragons aren’t quite as explosive as hers, but I think they’re pretty cute.

Writing days this past week: 2