I thought it was a good idea at the time...

 So it is the start of the year and I do some annual tasks, one of them being archiving last year's book list and starting a new one. I've been tracking all the books and fanfics I've read for the past 6 years. 

Now I've picked up a book called Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke and I've been reading many people's reviews of last year's resolutions and their goals for this years New Year's resolutions.

last year's numbers were 78 books and 146 fanfics, sure I could blame the pandemic and being forced into lockdowns, but then how do I explain 2018 and the 150 books and 106 fanfics I read that year? 
My average is 100 novels a year, and maybe 5 or so are audio books but the rest were once trees. Hours and hours spent sitting and reading. If I spent that time working out I would be fittest fit person there ever was. 

Books are my happy place, they are addictive. I have a whole ritual when Anne Bishop releases a new book and I celebrate like it is Easter. 

but...
I think I need to spend time doing other things...Now only time will tell if I'm going to relapse back into my bad reading habits.
(But of course nothing counts until after I've celebrated Anne Bishop's new book release, 9 WEEKS AND COUNTING!!!!!!!!)
 

 You get used to things don't you? 
I can't even remember the last time I drove a car that wasn't my little thing. Now I have to drive my mother's heavy-steering all-wheel drive vehicle from the mechanics. At school traffic hour. On several busy main roads. I pre-apologise to all other drivers if I am slooooow. 

Also if you find someone slow on the road, well maybe, just maybe, they are a dutiful child used to driving something light and nippy doing a favour for a parent. A parent with a very different car/truck/bus/cruiseship-on-wheels!

 Huzzah! New computer is unboxed and still working out the kinks. The rationing of time spent on my poor old overheating laptop is over. This is actually the first PC I have owned. Sure there was a family one in the early 2000s that had a screen so beige and boxy it fit the whole nativity scene at Christmas time. But this is sleek and black and awesome with 5 fans. Oh the luxury of 5 fans! There will be no critical overheating in my future! 

I did submit a review for the company where I noticed a bunch of 1 star reviews, some of which were faulty items that burnt out at 3-6 months, so fingers crossed I'm not one of them but right now I am just happy! ....except for the few wrinkles, but that is all Microsoft 10's fault for being so pushy and 'internet required' and filling the basic system with useless apps rather than letting you pick if you want them or not. 

 I have had my first trip in an ambulance! I was in so much pain I only remember the paramedic had very defined eyebrows. I can also add myself to the great number of Australians who have experienced ramping.
It was a very educational trip to the Emergency Department because I found out the hard way that I have bad reactions to several strong pain killers. So not fun. 
I should be fine, I have a cornucopia of pills to help be achieve health again. Though my head still feels like a jelly dropped at the top of some stairs. 

My last post was private as I was just archiving my book lists, but now I feel I should share some of the things I was reading before.
( Let the linkspam commence! )

Recently I have gone through emotional changes and this past week I seem to keep finding the same topics popping up again and again, which I choose to take as a sign that I should try to work through some of my feelings. 

I grew up in an environment of conservative and progressive influences, I'm sure many people have but all in our own unique recipe of the two. Since the deaths in my family I have found I am more body confident than I had been in years. I am also feeling much more settled inside myself as a person. For the first time in forever I feel like my internal storm has truly abated and I can see the internal scene and all the accumulated debris. Which lead about the terrible realisation that much of the dissatisfaction was actually external input. Semi-regular flippant comments about hair and weight, dating and boys, physical ability and life goals, that I thought I had ignored actually cut me deeply. Now those thoughts which were not my own are now literally in the grave with the persons who made them.  

I am not a good self-critic. I can only analyse things in hindsight if I am prompted to do so. Basically much of the time I flail and hope I come across other people who give me ideas to make sense of my reactions and life. 

I have discovered I do in fact have quite a lot of internalised misogyny linked to a sense of inferiority related to my disability (Internalised Ableism Alert!). I don't even know if misogyny is really the right word, a more apt term might be Toxic Femininity. I push back against amatonormativity a lot. I feel that expectations of romantic love force themselves on me all the time, but might I be letting them in to torment me? My last post 'Females Love' talked about this. I have internal expectations of what women are, very traditional European ideals. If I write them out specifically I see how silly they are and can rebuke them but there is still this deep vague sense that they are correct. 

Being in Queer spaces has exposed me to many people of different genders and many different journeys those people have made to get there. I have no gender journey, do I? How am I female then? How do I know? up rises the 28 year old monster of memories of comments, expectations and traditions (this monster it seems has always been present lurking beneath the surface and informing my experiences, but it lets itself be seen every so often). I have no role models who are aromantic or disabled in the same way I am, let alone both. Truthfully I was never really interested finding any. One group I am intrinsicly connected to is my bloodline, so they sort of became my 'best fit' role models for certain things, and it certainly makes sense when it comes to health history. But what of the rest of history?

Half of my family migrated to Australia after WWII, and they kept almost nothing of their old home countries, very little sense of culture was passed down. So I, wanting some sort of anchor clasped whatever I could. Much of that is from a time almost unrecognisable, but I absorbed it and in many ways I thought it applicable to me. Deep inside I still think it is applicable to me, but that is just causing me pain, but is it worse to keep pushing against external factors I invite in or to remove all the internalised issues themselves?
Here is a list of some which I abstractly know are not true to my experience but they are specific to my sense of who my family is and in turn who I am. 
(TL;DR I've had this list of stuff subtly reinforced in me for 28 years, now I'm deciding to try to purge it. I'm so screwed) 

• Love can grow from passion
• Certainty-of-marriage-partner at first sight/Love at first sight is real
• a long-term relationship is the most significant relationship you will have outside of children (Sometimes not even children)
• a partner gives you better social status
• families arrange suitable suitors 
• family approval is of the upmost importance
• you must master the duties of a housewife
• sacrificing everything for love may improve your future
• Being submissive is better
• being slightly masochistic will serve you well because life/love is painful
• get married as a young virgin 

 Why are all the good songs about romantic relationships? 

• I find a catchy song
• Start learning to sing along 
• Get stuck or confused by garbled lyrics, bad enunciation or overpowering instrumentals
• I search up the lyrics
• Find out song is about love or love-loss

Rinse and repeat for every song I like.
#aromanticproblems

....well not every song. 'Getsumei Fuuhei' by Mika Arikasa for The Twelve Kingdoms (AKA 十二国記 AKA Jūni kokuki AKA Juuni Kokki AKA Record of 12 Countries) is great for those roadtrip times when you need something poetic about ..uh...the world and prayers and vows and ...other stuff? Upbeat and catchy though.