collar
yesterday an online friend asked me so like... what's the deal with 'puppygirls'? and i don't... really consider myself a puppygirl, not in the sense that some people are, but i do consider myself a dog, which is close enough that i felt honour bound to give a genuine answer.
it got me thinking about the collar i wear around most days, and i realised i haven't actually... seen it in a little while. i think it's probably been at least a week at this point. i'm sure it's around my house somewhere, but it was disconcerting to realise that it's actually, seriously missing. i never meant to get this way; the collar thing started as a bit, then it was a social signalling thing, then it was because people i thought were cool wore them, and at some point along the way it's apparently become a part of me that i am deeply attached to, if apparently prone to misplacing.
the friend group i hang out with on monday nights want to have a group "here's a presentation where i tell you about a thing i'm interested in" day. i enjoyed this kind of thing, in the past, but last time i had nothing interesting to share beyond what i had been doing at work. i've been thinking about this one for weeks. i don't want to talk about what i've been doing at work again, but it doesn't feel like i've been doing much else.
a couple of years back, just before i left my previous job, i dyed my hair for the first time. a few months later i dyed it a lot more thoroughly for a pole competition, but also because i really wanted to. after that i kept switching for a while, every few months when one colour had faded out.
it's been ages since i bleached my hair, so it's grown out and now the lightened part starts halfway down the side of my face, more grown out than not. i havent even dyed it in a while - i think one of my closest friends might only ever have known me this way, though i don't quite remember.
i think i have been less of a person lately. i dragged myself out of doomscrolling twitter all day, but the price was ending up back on reddit instead. medication helps once i decide to do something, sometimes, but it also means failing to do that feels more personal; here i am, sitting on the floor in a pile of bad habits and vacant inertia, and i can't even blame the unmedicated adhd any more.
i want to talk to my friends more, but i don't know how to start that conversation because i find myself with nothing to talk about. "how are you doing" doesn't really work more than once a day, i struggle to talk about work for various reasons, and i'm not really doing anything else that works to share. i spend plenty of time reading useless reddit analysis of the pokémon go pvp meta, but i don't think anyone really wants to talk about that.
but.
but.
my favourite feline emotional barometer gave me her latest reading a couple of weeks back. you still think too much. i've related some form of all this struggle to two different people in the last few days, and both of them understood, i think; but both of them also said they would in fact talk about the pokémon go pvp analysis, if i wanted to. i don't claim that any of my problems are insurmountable. maybe i have been doing poorly lately, but it's not like i'm on a deadline to be an interesting enough person.
last year we went to germany and i made the last-minute decision to dye my hair freshly just before we left. it's about that time again and i'm getting the urge back, but what colour? i've been purple, i like purple, but i've also done it a lot. i wonder if blue would work better with my current style, or green? red again, maybe? i do like the way red feels. i'd be tempted by pink, but i'm afraid i've made a friend who pulls off pink hair better than i ever will, and i'd hate to feel like i was stepping on any toes. i'll have to think about it.
three years ago i was really into pole as a performance sport, before it became too much of a burden on my lone executive function. ten years ago i dropped out of artistic skating because it was hurting my feet. eleven years ago i stopped playing piano regularly because i had no one to play music with, and thus i lost all motivation.
some of my friends have been getting into, or back to, playing their various instruments lately. i never learned how to play well with others in a way that didn't involve spending an hour learning sheet music. but i want to. oh, how i want to. i miss playing music with friends so very deeply.
this morning i ate caramel slice with a friend who, when i met her almost two years ago now, helped push me to stop moping around and take ownership of my failings and the things i needed to do to be better. i think i made some good progress back then, though i've slipped back again. still, i think the path out is still the same.
i think the person i am is built out of the blocks of my life, and i've been picking some kind of poor quality blocks lately. some of them were good picks, the people especially, but i really ought to start throwing some new ones in there, for variety and structural integrity if nothing else. take out some of the dull ones, but also, apparently, try to tone down my assumptions about just how deathly boring they are1. try to get back into piano, maybe. colour my hair again, it's been far too long and i miss having it. find my fucking collar. that seems like a good place to start.
A/N: the evening after posting this, i learned that one of my partners was reading it because she came upstairs, wordlessly came over to me, then pulled my collar out from the gap between the chair i was sitting in and the couch next to it. i am eternally thankful for the creatures that i love and who are apparently better at keeping track of different parts of me than i am. thank you dear~
though this won't work well because the secret part i never mentioned to the other people is that pokémon go pvp analysis bores me to tears, so even if other people are surprisingly open to listening i am not getting into it :)↩