"for a moment that I could just understand"

another day of backing myself into corners.

So, I recently got my hair dyed. Went to a salon, spent three+ hours and a lot of money to make this happen. I love it, I want it to always look like it looks now, and I'm sad it took me this long to take the plunge. But! it means I've developed this anxious, combative relationship with myself.

I don't like not washing my hair every day. I've been trying like hell, and being too sick to leave the house for a week has certainly helped in that regard, but I just plain don't like it. However, I'm playing this game of chicken, where I've basically set it up as a moral failing each time I do wash my hair. Light attempts to sell me on the idea that i can be redyed if it gets too dull, and that I shouldn't be working myself up about my own hygiene rituals. It's barely been two weeks, so hopefully I'll find some sort of happy, or at least a less crazy-making medium soon.

I'm also a little confused as to exactly what I'm writing on my body now, other than "i have disposable income" but I want more tattoos, more piercings. In my more woo-woo moments, the tattoos have felt like not something I'm creating so much as something that's always been there, that I'm revealing. I'm not an artist, I don't know how this works or if it does at all, but I've heard the myth of sculptors needing to figure out what a block of wood, or ice, or whatever wants to be before they start cutting, and I feel a little bit like that about my skin, that I just need to be patient and brave enough to figure out what comes next, what bit to force to the surface with blood and pain, by means of a nice man with a needle.
****

As you may or may not know, I'm involved in Readercon. And the internet has been talking about it a lot. Fortunately, I'm a small fish in a big pool, and while I doubt that much of the furor will ever find me here, I'm very cautious about my opinions in public, I don't want it to look like my dismay is the same thing as the concom's dismay, I don't know how to draw the line between them.

And I want to ask so many people, what do you think we should do? Not because I'm looking for someone else to tell me what to do, but because I want to know what looks like solutions to the rest of the world. But I don't know how to say that without sounding like I want the people saying there is a problem to also bear the burden of coming up with the solution or that something can't be criticized unless the critic knows how to fix it.

And I need/want to figure out more about how an all-volunteer collection of strong-willed individuals messages itself, and how other people draw the line between their personal feelings and speaking for the con, and if there's a way to explain the difference to anyone. Readercon exists because of the people who make it work, but it also exists beyond them. And I over-complicate this for myself because I do want to get more involved, but I don't come naturally to collective languages, sharing the subject "we" with anything other than Light and the beasties makes me feel false.

But if there is to be change, and I want there to be change, and I want to be a part of the change, I need to back down from all my oppositional yous and y'alls. And I spoke to Bespoke about it for a while yesterday, which went some interesting places and ended up giving me seventeen more gopher holes to go down.

I want to feel like I can say "we fucked up, and we're sorry". But I think I want to purchase something if I'm spending my coin taking responsibility, and I don't think it's going to end up being that kind of transaction. I need to learn to do this for myself, even if all I end up buying is a praise that is never quite satisfactory, there will still be that small satisfied feeling that I get from trying to do a thing as well as I can.

"for a moment that I could just understand"

another day of backing myself into corners.

So, I recently got my hair dyed. Went to a salon, spent three+ hours and a lot of money to make this happen. I love it, I want it to always look like it looks now, and I'm sad it took me this long to take the plunge. But! it means I've developed this anxious, combative relationship with myself.

I don't like not washing my hair every day. I've been trying like hell, and being too sick to leave the house for a week has certainly helped in that regard, but I just plain don't like it. However, I'm playing this game of chicken, where I've basically set it up as a moral failing each time I do wash my hair. Light attempts to sell me on the idea that i can be redyed if it gets too dull, and that I shouldn't be working myself up about my own hygiene rituals. It's barely been two weeks, so hopefully I'll find some sort of happy, or at least a less crazy-making medium soon.

I'm also a little confused as to exactly what I'm writing on my body now, other than "i have disposable income" but I want more tattoos, more piercings. In my more woo-woo moments, the tattoos have felt like not something I'm creating so much as something that's always been there, that I'm revealing. I'm not an artist, I don't know how this works or if it does at all, but I've heard the myth of sculptors needing to figure out what a block of wood, or ice, or whatever wants to be before they start cutting, and I feel a little bit like that about my skin, that I just need to be patient and brave enough to figure out what comes next, what bit to force to the surface with blood and pain, by means of a nice man with a needle.
****

As you may or may not know, I'm involved in Readercon. And the internet has been talking about it a lot. Fortunately, I'm a small fish in a big pool, and while I doubt that much of the furor will ever find me here, I'm very cautious about my opinions in public, I don't want it to look like my dismay is the same thing as the concom's dismay, I don't know how to draw the line between them.

And I want to ask so many people, what do you think we should do? Not because I'm looking for someone else to tell me what to do, but because I want to know what looks like solutions to the rest of the world. But I don't know how to say that without sounding like I want the people saying there is a problem to also bear the burden of coming up with the solution or that something can't be criticized unless the critic knows how to fix it.

And I need/want to figure out more about how an all-volunteer collection of strong-willed individuals messages itself, and how other people draw the line between their personal feelings and speaking for the con, and if there's a way to explain the difference to anyone. Readercon exists because of the people who make it work, but it also exists beyond them. And I over-complicate this for myself because I do want to get more involved, but I don't come naturally to collective languages, sharing the subject "we" with anything other than Light and the beasties makes me feel false.

But if there is to be change, and I want there to be change, and I want to be a part of the change, I need to back down from all my oppositional yous and y'alls. And I spoke to Bespoke about it for a while yesterday, which went some interesting places and ended up giving me seventeen more gopher holes to go down.

I want to feel like I can say "we fucked up, and we're sorry". But I think I want to purchase something if I'm spending my coin taking responsibility, and I don't think it's going to end up being that kind of transaction. I need to learn to do this for myself, even if all I end up buying is a praise that is never quite satisfactory, there will still be that small satisfied feeling that I get from trying to do a thing as well as I can.