BIT #5: The End is the Beginning is the End

I am so hugely grateful for a paper diary right now. It allows me to fully disengage from the virtual world, which I am finding increasingly does not spark joy as it did. A lot of emotional mining is taking place, with more than the normal amount of people sharing stuff without due care and attention, because they don't care what I feel. I know you don't need trigger warnings but (like alt text) they're not hard, and yes, I KNOW this is not a you problem, but sometimes, it might be.

My brain comes back to that session of therapy where, I think probably for the first time ever, someone else reminded me that if other people got upset at what I was doing, that was their issue and never mine. Except, sometimes when a particular person wants to keep ramming home distressing memories around their own mental health, or someone else is using their fear as content, I have issues.

So, most days it is easier to walk away. In one case I'll simply unsubscribe.

I think this image is going to stick with me for the rest of time. There's a poem about it, half-written, which is likely to replace one of the weaker entries in the recently-competed pamphlet, because there is no better visual example of how the world works right now. Religion is being used as a weapon. Fear is an acceptable tool to shock and sensationalise, and crucially ignorance has never been more potent than it is right now. Put all three together and...

None of this is new, but what is, centres around the perceptions of ourselves, of the events we are been shown and told and asked to believe. I wonder if this is actual video as well, whether it has actually been created by some AI nutjob, but its crass stupidity makes me feel that it must be real, because stupid people wouldn't see the issue here. Those people wouldn't even consider they were being manipulated in the first place. They think that this is normal now.

Being mined as a resource has destroyed people's lives for centuries.

Nobody is going to save you except yourself, someone I greatly respect told me a while ago. I think about that a lot, but increasingly other people are picking up slack without asking. I see it and it is hugely appreciated as a result, and it is the near constant reminder that reality, such as it is, depends on the community you find yourself a part of. My poet mates, every one of them, are fucking heroes of the first order. If they're not a mate, a lot of shit will not and does not mesh.

I realise now it is me putting distance between me and them as well, that there are some people who would like (I sense) to be closer but there's simply not that empathy from them that they are doing the work in the same way I am, and that is absolutely fine. Not everybody is going to be my friend and long may this continue because there simply not enough mental energy generated by this body to allow such sustainability to take place.

This is never about quantity. It ALWAYS needs to be quality from the first hurdle.

I don't even need particularly to be doing anything this afternoon but am picking my way through a bunch of tasks that should have been done, that need to be ticked off by this time next week, when I should be doing a Thing for seven days which supersedes everything else on the list. I still don't have a formal confirmation for this either but at this stage in proceedings, it doesn't matter.

There is so much going on I'm not that fussed if it doesn't take place.