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green fire
Jun. 8th, 2019 11:55 pmI've spent all of today (and really yesterday) headachy and lethargic from histamines. The car was covered in thick pollen, enough pollen that it also got inside the car. Dad says that yesterday he watched the pollen blow off the tree and it looked like the tree was on fire for hours, that's how substantial the flow of pollen was. (Dad also saw a groundhog yesterday. It was a banner day for Dad seeing cool stuff in the yard.)
I've always been pretty aware that my emotions tend to be related to my physical state rather than whatever narrative I'm telling myself at the time - this comes up both in conversations about why I don't believe technology will ever reach the point where I can upload myself into a computer, and in conversations about how I get a lot done. I'm a good advocate for myself but part of that means I tend to make a plan for what I want and then follow that plan and not be deterred by "oh but I'm feeling anxious" or whatever else, because a huge percentage of the time that's allergies, or being sleepy, or wanting to eat, or not having had enough salt, or the room temperature being uncomfortable. I develop warm feelings for whoever gives me food I like, is another example. Whether I think you're attractive is closely linked to whether I've relaxed my shoulders. People have told me before that I seem like a brain walking around but I'm so much my body that Scrooge's line about "you could be a moldy bit of potato" resonates in ways I'm not sure it's supposed to. I ignore a huge amont of this input.
But I'm having a hard time of this lately. It feels like the boundaries between me and the rest of the world have gotten blurry. It's directly related to the stress of current politics; I can tell that much. Even if I wanted to disassociate, I couldn't really, because too many of the people connected to me are in direct non-trivial danger from some of the stuff that's going on, plus there's a "flood the zone" aspect to the push of lies and destabilization which would overwhelm anybody. I feel like I probably have a pretty good handle on that stuff, and to the ways I can respond to it that are productive. I've also built in space for stepping away and continuing to do things which are not reactive - for not being disrupted, for being defiantly, stubbornly my preferred self.
Yet now when I feel awful I tend to think it's because I feel awful. And in this case it really could be pollen, it really could. But it could equally be because this is a sensible way to feel now. I hate not being able to write that off, although I will continue to treat it as irrelevant to my goals.
I've always been pretty aware that my emotions tend to be related to my physical state rather than whatever narrative I'm telling myself at the time - this comes up both in conversations about why I don't believe technology will ever reach the point where I can upload myself into a computer, and in conversations about how I get a lot done. I'm a good advocate for myself but part of that means I tend to make a plan for what I want and then follow that plan and not be deterred by "oh but I'm feeling anxious" or whatever else, because a huge percentage of the time that's allergies, or being sleepy, or wanting to eat, or not having had enough salt, or the room temperature being uncomfortable. I develop warm feelings for whoever gives me food I like, is another example. Whether I think you're attractive is closely linked to whether I've relaxed my shoulders. People have told me before that I seem like a brain walking around but I'm so much my body that Scrooge's line about "you could be a moldy bit of potato" resonates in ways I'm not sure it's supposed to. I ignore a huge amont of this input.
But I'm having a hard time of this lately. It feels like the boundaries between me and the rest of the world have gotten blurry. It's directly related to the stress of current politics; I can tell that much. Even if I wanted to disassociate, I couldn't really, because too many of the people connected to me are in direct non-trivial danger from some of the stuff that's going on, plus there's a "flood the zone" aspect to the push of lies and destabilization which would overwhelm anybody. I feel like I probably have a pretty good handle on that stuff, and to the ways I can respond to it that are productive. I've also built in space for stepping away and continuing to do things which are not reactive - for not being disrupted, for being defiantly, stubbornly my preferred self.
Yet now when I feel awful I tend to think it's because I feel awful. And in this case it really could be pollen, it really could. But it could equally be because this is a sensible way to feel now. I hate not being able to write that off, although I will continue to treat it as irrelevant to my goals.
