My chosen family (have you read adventures in chosen family yet? I need to write the next one) has its own substack now, and three of us have now written intro posts. My partner and my other partner and myself.
We are very weird. I’m not sure everyone is ready for how fucking weird we are.
the politics, they are too headache
It’s election day for the midterms here in the US. I voted by mail last week and I am so anxious already and I know it’s too soon to be anxious, so instead I decided to point my anxiety toward this substack, which is why you’re getting this chaotic mess of a post today.
You may have noticed that I’m not capitalizing substack most of the time. I don’t like to be part of a Branded Thing, which is more than a little nonsensical considering that I spent so much time during the past fifteen years trying to work on My Brand. I think my brand now is more like my toxic trait: I want to be in the group chat but nobody is allowed to perceive me until I am ready.
tell me you were raised in a Puritan-inspired culture of work = worth without telling me you were raised in a Puritan-inspired culture of work = worth
On Sunday, my day off — no chores, I can be invisible — I spent all afternoon and evening and most of the night rearranging my room, but in a very careful way so as to keep from disturbing the temporary equilibrium that is my body. I am not suffering from migraines, subluxated arms, or brain fog at the moment, which I chalk up to how extremely careful I was when moving all the furniture around. I do have sore muscles, but I think that means I used them correctly?
My real-life Tetris skills are enviable. I moved a desk, two bookcases, an armchair, and a king sized bed without breaking anything, ruining the wall, or breaking my own self. I think this is the first time I’ve gotten all the way up to exhaustion and then stopped, rather than pushing further and injuring myself. I moved the king sized bed completely around, to the opposite wall, and several times during the sloth-paced rearrangement I thought, maybe I can just have the bed in the middle of the floor like this? Maybe it wouldn’t bother me? (It would bother me)
can’t stop, won’t stop (should probably stop now while I am ahead)
I started another substack specifically for my deathwork. I plan to write resource posts several times a month, and I did set up paid subscriptions for it, because I want people to be able to help me support the dying and their loved ones & chosen family, which will be so much easier with some financial support. The first post is up and there’s always a free subscriber option.
If you’re wondering if I have some sort of requirement to inject some Tolkien into almost everything I do, maybe that’s My Brand.
Or maybe the quotes are just so good and always seem so appropriate to what I do and what I want to be doing.
oops
Rounding out the past week or whatever amount of time it’s been, I decided to post quotes by Ursula K Le Guin on my Mastodon account since I miss seeing them in my twitter timeline which I do not have any more, and apparently the quote I chose five days ago is meaningful because at last count it’s been boosted (like a retweet? a retoot? lol) 81 times and favorited 127 times and if this keeps going I’m going to fall off the internet, which I currently picture as a flat-earth type of concept with all the internet-famous cats pushing things off the edge.
Speaking of Mastodon, the federated network is currently groaning under the weight of so many new people using it, and I have been tempted more than once to start my own private instance but I know better than to put more things on my to-do list so NO, I will not be doing that. I will shuffle around my Patreon pledges to start supporting my server admins, though. And I will set up an account at a smaller instance so that I can take some pressure off the instance I’m currently using.
in conclusion,
I am resting and tired, I have Full Moon Energy, there was a full lunar eclipse early this morning, it’s election day, I want to take a nap, my brain feels itchy, maybe today I will remember to eat more snacks that have protein in them.
Some days are just chaotic. Thank goodness for my mood stabilizer because this is a bouncy day — high energy and overstimulation combined with medium-intensity depressive feelings, which I really really do not like experiencing.
HERE ARE SOME PLACES WHERE I SOMETIMES EXIST1
nixkelley@mastodon.social
Nix#1514 on Discord (obviously please tell me who you are)
m.me/phoenixvkelley on the damn FB Messenger
+1 734 386 0537 for good old-fashioned texting
email me nixkelley at proton.me
(I know that subscriber chat is a thing now for substack, but the android app doesn’t have chat yet, which means that not everyone who might want to participate would be able to do so, and so I will not be starting any subscriber chats until it’s reasonable to assume that everyone will have access)
Love all of this and you so much 🥹