![[image: a close-cropped photo of a giraffe with its front legs spread out and its head down near the ground, eating some grass]
giraffesindeed:
giraffe ii by mournjargon on Flickr.
Hey, my photo ended up on Tumblr and I actually noticed! Neat.](http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxer1q0EsF1qj462wo1_500.jpg)
The Last.fm/Tumblr weekly top artists service is no longer available. (Update: OR IS IT?!) -
This is a bit sad. Unlike pretty much every other automated-posting thing I’ve seen, I liked that thing.
Update: Hm, I went looking around and it looks like the Yahoo Pipes thing to create the feed does still exist here. It does seem to break periodically but it looks like it’s possible to put it back again after all. Gosh, Tumblr is annoying sometimes.
Today I went to Centrelink with my identity documentation (so now my claim for Austudy can be processed) and came out to my mother.
Both of them things that past versions of me would have (and in fact have) avoided for way too long.
Progress!
[image: a close-cropped photo of a giraffe with its front legs spread out and its head down near the ground, eating some grass]
giraffe ii by mournjargon on Flickr.
Hey, my photo ended up on Tumblr and I actually noticed! Neat.
![[image: Mathieu Amalric, a small white guy with floppy dark hair and a bit of a beard, wearing a suit without a tie. He’s sitting behind a table or desk with his hands clasped in front of him.]
I borrowed The Diving Bell and the Butterfly from the library and watched it today. It shot straight to the top of the “movies that have made me bawl my eyes out” list. Holy god. I actually had to pause it after the worst (best?) scene and look at inconsequential things on the internet for a few minutes, because otherwise I would have been trapped in an emotional death spiral all day.
However, it also reminded me that Mathieu Amalric has a place on, uh, one of my other lists.](http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvii5fGWu11qabpawo1_500.jpg)
[image: Mathieu Amalric, a small white guy with floppy dark hair and a bit of a beard, wearing a suit without a tie. He’s sitting behind a table or desk with his hands clasped in front of him.]
I borrowed The Diving Bell and the Butterfly from the library and watched it today. It shot straight to the top of the “movies that have made me bawl my eyes out” list. Holy god. I actually had to pause it after the worst (best?) scene and look at inconsequential things on the internet for a few minutes, because otherwise I would have been trapped in an emotional death spiral all day.
However, it also reminded me that Mathieu Amalric has a place on, uh, one of my other lists.
(Source: fuckyeahmathieuamalric)
Like a rare blood disorder. No, wait, stop quoting the Mountain Goats and tell your good news!
Okay.
I complain a fair bit on Tumblr, but today I have happy things to say!
As is probably obvious if you’ve seen my posts over the last few weeks (or months), things at my job were not going so well1 and I quit at the end of last year.
I did so having applied to go to university and study photography this year, although I didn’t get an early offer in November so I wouldn’t know for sure until mid-January or even early February if I would actually just be blobbing around wondering what on earth to do with myself.
Last week I realised that first-round offers came out on January 16th instead of some nebulous “in the future” time that I didn’t have to think about just yet, so I spent a few days in a state of horrible uncertainty (mixed with near-certainty that I wouldn’t get in, thanks pessimism).
But then the offers were released and I had an offer for the one course I want to do! Enrolment is next Tuesday and I’m happily looking at subject descriptions and public transport options and trying to get up the nerve to deal with Centrelink and apply for Austudy.
My plan is to major in photography, but also do the minor sequence in professional and creative writing that the degree offers, and cram in as many extra writing/critical theory/artwank subjects as I can.
So I guess this is the start of a new phase, in which I actually have some idea of what I want to do with my life and make every effort to make it happen.
Also referred to as “ruining my life”. ↩
I just spent a longish and agonising while replying to an email from a member of my immediate family, which they sent me almost a month ago.
(Edit: In my not-especially-kind paraphrasing, their email basically said “although I have no real idea about what’s going on with you, and I’m basing this almost entirely on things you say on Twitter, I think you should take antidepressants.”)
In my reply, I tried really hard to strike a balance between explaining my reaction, explaining why they were wrong, and not giving in to the implied requirement that I justify myself and disclose my private business and medical details.
(Yeah, my actual diagnosed chronic illness probably doesn’t exist. I’m probably “just depressed”. I probably have no real understanding of what’s going on with myself. Ugh.)
I closed it out with links to The Gorilla in Your House and Cure Evangelism, Again, two great articles I’d saved thinking I might need to ask someone to read them and hoping I wouldn’t.
I don’t really have a good sense of how my email will be received but it will be good not to have it hanging over my head anymore. And I guess if its reception isn’t great I can grit my teeth and become more of a hardass about not accepting any unacceptable treatment.
I don’t feel great right now.
Second update: Got a reply back, and it was pretty much the ideal reply. Feeling much better now.
“I don’t miss Facebook one bit. I’m sure if I knew what my friends were doing there I would miss it. But I don’t.” — Dave Winer
imathers replied to your quote: It’s a common mistake! You understand. You see men…
This is a really good thought, so I went to the site and… what? I can’t understand what’s going on.
Haah, sorry!
The letters columns are Jenna responding to comments (mostly?) by readers of Hitherby Dragons, which I guess is a long-running fictional universe with a lot of interconnected stories and mythology and stuff. Random recent entries won’t make much sense without any of the history, but “read from the beginning” is a pretty big ask at this point.
After a long hiatus, Hitherby started up again about a year ago; that particular storyline, while it still hooks into the older stuff, is relatively comprehensible on its own as long as you don’t think you’re supposed to understand everything (you’re really not, even if you’ve read everything so far.) It starts here. Or, you could look at the first storyline in the canon, which is more accessible and also lovely. (It gets really messed up, but that’s not until later.)
I have all these browser tabs open with articles and recipes and music in them but I can’t seem to get a handle on reading/listening/copying/otherwise consuming the content and then closing the tabs.
I’ve been getting a massive amount of Stuff Done but when I’m not Working On Stuff I’m weirdly aimless and I don’t feel like I’m using that leisure time well. It’s not rewarding. Have I forgotten how to goof around enjoyably? Should I just Work On More Stuff?
I think maybe I’m just not yet used to not being so stressed and exhausted and unwell-feeling that anything beyond basic self-maintenance and going to work is impossible.
During today’s episode of Clean All The Things I found a “birthday card” (writing on the tag from a gift bag) from my 21st birthday, given to me by the person I’d been “not having a relationship” with for a goodly chunk of time until just before said birthday, and who I didn’t really get over until probably six years later. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it.
“Bad people are sympathetic. Not all of them are sympathetic, I mean, monsters exist, but a lot of them are. Just because you kind of feel for a guy doesn’t mean he’s not drinking of the mead of human suffering, that he isn’t clothed in the garments of righteousness and self-justification, that he isn’t taking his meat and bread from exploitation of cruelty, or that he isn’t pleased to turn the world around him into those who support him and get cookies and those who oppose him and should suffer (for challenging, arguing with, tainting the image of such a wonderful and caring man.)” — And again.