hanging my tomorrows on the bones of yesterday

Back in the heyday of Livejournal this went around -- my friend nyyki is revivifying it here. It’s Elf Meme II: Son of Elf Meme! Okay, maybe not that, but we could all use some connection and holiday cheer, right?

Step One:
Make a post (public, friendslocked, filtered ... whatever you're comfortable with) to your journal. The post should contain your list of 10 holiday wishes. The wishes can be anything at all, from simple and fandom-related ("I'd love an icon that's just for me") to medium ("I wish for _____ on DVD")
to really big ("All I want for Christmas is a new car/computer/living space/TV.") The important thing is, make sure these wishes are things you really, truly want.

- If you wish for real life things (not fics or icons), make sure you include some sort of contact info in your post - whether it's your address, or just to ping your DMs, or your bare-faced email address if that’s how you roll - where a Holiday Elf could get in touch with you.

- Also, make sure you post some version of these guidelines in your journal so that the holiday joy can spread.

Step Two:
Surf around your friends list (or friendsfriends, or just random journals) to see who has posted their list. And now here's the
important part:

- If you see a wish you can grant, and it's in your heart to do so, make someone's wish come true. Sometimes someone's trash is another's treasure, and
if you have a leather jacket you don't want or a gift certificate you won't use - or even know where you could get someone's dream purebred Basset Hound
for free - do it.

You needn't spend money on these wishes unless you want to. The point isn't to put people out, it's to provide everyone a chance to be someone else's holiday
elf - to spread the joy. Gifts can be made anonymously or not - it's your call.

There are no rules with this project, no guarantees, and no strings attached. Just...wish, and it might come true. Give, and you might receive. And you'll
have the joy of knowing you made someone's holiday special, which is a great feeling.

---

1. I could use some books to help me think differently about other peoples headspaces. If there’s a book that explained a different type of person to you, I’d like to hear about it. Possibly also to borrow the book?

2. Tea recommendations? Tell me what teas you like, and why. If you are getting rid of a tea that you wanted to like but can’t really deal with, you can send it here, I’m basically a bottomless pit of plant-flavored hydration. *sips tea*

3. When I downsized to move here, I gave away my soul the stencils for messing with my bullet journal and I am now wishing I had not. If you have bujo stuff you don’t use, I am in the market for all of that stuff.

4. I want to start getting rid of some of the Japanese EGL fashion dresses that I have, most of them are an Asian XL or XXL in size. I need an accountability buddy for listing them on LaceMarket or someone to give them to who will love them and take them out of my closet. If you can help with either thing, give me a DM.

5. I could use someone’s brain to pick about how to do website stuff for modern HTML and Wordpress, and especially if you know how to do this for any blind/vision impaired folks. People who can help my friend nyyki navigate doing this for herself.

6. I want That MotherFucker Over There to not be president, so light a candle or whatever that looks like for you. Please.

7. I really need someone to talk to about doing Shadow work who knows their own emotional safety limits. I don’t know how to talk about the wack shit that happened to us when we were kids that made us think we were better off cutting off whole parts of ourselves, while also having to deal with looking out for someone else’s distress and feeling like I have to manage their feelings. The task switching is way harder in that state, and I want people to be safe, but I also need to stay on task with an accountability buddy or something. Idk. Something along those lines.

8. A multitude, a plethora, a veritable cornucopia of different colors of blue paint. I want to do something new to my painting, bc I am bored of it looking like this.

9. I want links to pet pictures. Do you have a pet? I want to see them, and tell you why they look like a good pet.

10. I want you to have good end-of-2025 holidays, and I want to help spread that love around.

---

So, when you see this post a wish list? And let me see what I might be able to help you with.

Hit my DMs for anything, or I’m on Discord as @.flamingsword - yes there is a period before my name.

[Edit: there’s a blank copy to use in the comments]

Early November projects, in no particular order:
• bought some Yule gifts and sent them
• started knitting a sock for Merlin and making smellgoods
• pictures of the knitting and perfumery: https://imgur.com/a/pzNAKME
• I married two of my friends! (To each other, not to me, lol)
• Ghost is sloooowly coming out of his Depressive episode!
• voted in the constitutional election
• unexpectedly listened to 15 minutes of fireworks on Diwali (happy belated to all who celebrate!)
• failed utterly at writing a poem every other day this month, but oh well.
• made plans for Turkey Day / Wolfenoot - https://nationaltoday.com/wolfenoot/
• bought cheeses and things for charcuterie board for same.

It’s been slowly sliding toward the dark of the year, and today my bones ached from the pressure change from last nights storm. But at least that’s over with for now. TDOR is always a good day for me to keep my head down and engage carefully with everything, why should the weather be any different?

How’re y’all, then?

Imgur post of recent projects, if you want to see pics of what I’ve been up to lately.

So far so good on my eyes not hurting today! 🤞🍀

What I have been up to the last month, in pictures.

Right now I am making a second fawn clip, and pinning together some tie strips to sew for more masks. And petting a very needy Sage kitty, who needs one million attentions.

Since Tumblr now has it's own [occupy] tag, I think maybe we need an LJ comm. But I may be too busy to start one. If anyone else wants to help but can't protest in person, you are welcome to lend your internet-fu to the cause.
( On to the Newsmedia links roundup! )

The Bad: I spaced out a lot at Flipside, and then again at A-kon. I thought it might have been the heat at Flipside, but A-kon was indoors and mostly air-conditioned. :\ There really are a lot of budgetary concerns for my attention. The more things there are to pay attention to (like 16,000 geeks in one place) the easier it becomes to drop all of it, and I'd forgotten about that. No wonder I was such a space cadet in school.

As far as bad things go, that's not that bad, and the software changes that I'm trying out seem to be functional.

The Good: I got to spend four days with art freaks and then another three days with anime nerds. MY PEOPLE! I LOVE YOU ALL. I have bathed in weirdness and belonging, and my soul feels clean. Clean enough to identify some goals!

The Thinky: Some of these goals require successfully predicting the behavior of large groups of people, figuring out ways to put safety features into social technology, and
The Make Dallas Weird project is going to take about 90 years, I think. I'm going to have to become a political creature in order to make the city ordinances more accepting to the things that attract geeks to a city. And I need a second branch of this plan to transform nerds into geeks so that the ones we have already become visible.

Listing out unfulfilled human emotional needs will help us predict the shape of the future. Basically all the people who've ever been right about what the future had in store went with predicting that humans want emotional fulfillment, convenience, comfort, and fun.

In other news: I am now reading Soulless by Gail Carriger. It's a steampunk Victorian comedy of manners, the kind of book the Anita Blake series could have been if it had an ounce of proper decorum. It is hilarious, and I owe many thanks to mig_unit for it.

*I was going to do the April Fool's Day post about how Xenoix and I had broken up, and put the 'details' under a cut-tag that only went to the words "Do you know what day it is?" Unfortunately I just don't feel like it. I feel kinda crappy, physically, like sinus-shoggoths are trying to invade my throat. What I wouldn't give for some nice homeopathic Elder Sign extract! . . . See? I just am not funny today, and I don't feel like failing continuously. Meh. :|

*So: in order to come up with some direction and feelings of continued utility and relevance, I've decided to go through old journals for records of my uncompleted goals. And knowing me there will be enough things that I've forgotten about to fill several pages. I'll then winnow them down according to whether they appeal to me currently, see what I've got left over, and post it up here to see if any themes emerge. Y'all might have to help with that bit, I totally won't be able to spot the obvious stuff. If you get the sense that I'm kind of down on myself at the moment, you'd be right. I had to explain the way my memory works to not one but two different co-workers today, and other people's pity is uncomfortable to me. I'm kind of glad that "I meant what I said, even though I may not remember it later" a convo you only have to have with people once.

*I was at the library the other day to find Women From Another Planet which apparently they don't have in any library in Texas (fail!). And when I was up in the psychology section for books on the autism spectrum, I picked up a mis-shelved copy of The Sociopath Next Door and read a bit. And it disturbed me. I'm not gonna lie. cluegirl says it's a fascinating read, and I believe her, but I'm not entirely sure that people understand sociopaths correctly. Because according to the most fundamental definition, I qualify. I don't feel shame or regret when I've hurt someone. I feel stupid and like a failure, because hurting people is bad for a system which ~hello, I live inside of~ and I hate making bad judgment calls that I will have to fix the repercussions of later so I try to be as nice as is reasonable and practical. I don't feel jealousy, or fear of mortality, or greed in any normal sense, and my expression of a lot of emotions is not what it is for other people. But just because I have fewer and more limited emotions doesn't mean that I want to destroy society or be a serial killer. I would have to also be under several delusions about my impact on the world and in a lot of chronic emotional pain for either of those to occur. I think it's possible that there's another invisible spectrum in human behavior, of the weight and importance of feelings. For some people emotions are this dominant, inexorable force. I have no idea what that's like, so my lack of affect must be just as freaky to them as their paradigm is to me and the sociopaths. :\

*When I was a teen, every day was Opposite Day. I'm an adult now. Can I have just one Apposite Day? That's all I'm asking for.

I am buying new CDR, and you know what that means. MIXTAPES!

Filk for elucreh, 2 pop-punk mixes for ultimatebryan, a stirring collection of soundtrack action themes, and the usual mix of weird things that I've found this year. Whoever wants in knows where to put a comment. :)

NEW PLAN: WE ALL CHANGE OUR LAST NAME TO 'WHO' AND SOME OF US START GETTING DOCTORATES!

:D?

I just found this, so this poem isn't the reason that I'm going to get a map of the moon tattooed on my back. But it perfectly explains why I've wanted to.

Not The Moon by Margaret Atwood

What idiocy could transform the moon, that old sea-overgrown
skull seen from above, to a goddess of mercy?

( You fish for the silver light, there on the quiet lake, so clear to see; you plunge your hands into the water and come up empty. )