jkatkina

So follow-up to some of yesterday's navel-gazing (which I ended up talking with TL about with a bunch this morning, crystallizing some stuff), I'm trying to think of boots-on-the-ground strategies for rewiring some of the habits I talked about last post.

1. Less tumblr. not going to say no tumblr because I know myself and know cold-turkey doesn't work. "Less tumblr" also as a catch-all for rapidfire and algorithmic social media; I can't just start using facebook again instead and call this one done, lol


2. Strategic use of discord. i.e. cultivate the friendships and spaces I'm interested in instead of trying to be everywhere scattershot. This means using spaces for what they are good for, not what I want them to be good for.


3. Take the void I feel from the reduced time spent on 1 or 2 and turn that discomfort towards picking away at things that take time. I know from past experiences simply cutting stuff out doesn't work; I end up doing nothing if I haven't come up with a replacement behaviour, and it's bad for the long-term mental health. In this case I'm leaving it open-ended: read a book or a paper you've been putting off looking at. Pick away at a response to someone else's stuff (don't have to finish it, just have to put a little time in). Write a blog post. Meditate, or try to. Make the body move around or go outside. Think about some character or plot work I've been putting off.

I don't expect any of it to feel good: at this point I've kind of given up on the idea that my brain will chemically reward me for anything I actually want to be doing. That's the point: I want to start learning how to earn that slow dopamine.

Anyways, the habits hopefully I can do something about, and trust that my brain will slowly shift back towards something a little less wired towards constant small dopamine hits. I have no conceit that I'll get back everything I've lost, but just being able to focus a bit better will help. There are, after all, concrete things I can do to shift that.

The other stuff... I'll keep working on in the ways that I can, but that's way less concrete and way more, like, therapy-and-self-work based.

I've tried to keep the replacement behaviours to relatively low-stakes things. I'm not ready to start combining the dopamine rewiring with the creative and social fears, but that's the eventual hope.

and hey, I did this rather than scroll through tumblr. if both things are kind of meaningless uses of time then I haven't net lost anything by doing this, and have spent a little time reminding myself how to put words down in an order.

A friend of mine had his top surgery a month ago. He's healed enough he can start posting pictures, grinning and topless.

( gender and surgery )