Earth & Tea

Just the funeral to get through next week and then (hopefully), the big emotional rollercoaster of the last week will be behind me. I spent most of yesterday feeling... not subdued, exactly, but somehow low, like the weight of all those ups and downs of death, birth, and legal ordeals was sitting heavy and grey on my chest. Spent some time in the garden to ease it, cuddled Jasmine a lot, and made vegetarian schawarma for dinner to distract myself.

A belated New Moon Tarot reading (Motherpeace deck) laid out exactly what I would have known if I'd have time to listen to myself properly lately - the need for gathering myself and honouring emotions however deep, being caught currently in the process of relearning how to listen to/trust intuition above and before logic; the need for calming and repetitive work to prevent energy from turning into worry. We're in Oak Season now and I need to take the time to start focusing properly again.

Jasmine is so desperate to go outside in the sun and the wind, but she's not allowed for almost another week. Makes me feel so cruel, even though it's for her own safety.

Planting some bean seeds today since my runners aren't looking happy and I think they got too blasted by the winds too soon after coming out of the greenhouse. We tried the first of the radishes yesterday - always so much nicer when they're freshly picked than they are if they've languished in the shops for a time!

Today: cleaning, catching up on some journalling, gardening, making a tagine, and skyping my best friend tonight. Tomorrow: a trek to the job centre (they're being slow about moving me to one closer to my new address so I have to travel 2 hours in each direction for a weekly 10 minute appointment, sigh) and then some quality time with the family. The weekend is having a new fence built, working all Sunday, and then getting myself ready for Wales and the funeral at the start of next week. I'm looking forward to the next weekend already...

Doing that thing again where I feel sad and lonely about fandom and online communication. I miss feeling connected to people through fandom but I don't have any interest in any active fandoms... and the minute there's more than about 20 people being loud about something I get frightened back into a silent space anyway.

Friendship and connectivity is strange nowadays - I'm not sure exactly what I'm lonely for in that sense. It's not the soulstruck emptiness of feeling neglected or unwanted or ignored. I've got good friends, I've got my best friend, I've got my mum and I've got my partner. I don't feel like there's a hole to be filled any longer, but I do sense something lacking and I can't put my finger on what exactly it is, other than (probably) fandom space. This might be the longest I've been floating without at least one person to be actively involved in fannish creation with, whether the fandom in question was popular, current, or of our own invention. I miss collaborative writing. I miss the excitement of passing the story back and forth, or building worlds and whole people up from minor characters with three lines in canon - I miss the joy that comes with being in that bubble and how it spills over into everything and everything inspires it.

How do I get involved with something and talk to people about fandom when I don't feel inspired by fannish spaces of late and reaching out to anyone in a non face-to-face environment is so terrifying? I always see things about how communicating online is so much easier than in person and how the screen gives you the mask to get behind and feel safe in sharing, but that's the complete opposite of my vibe. Talking to someone where I can see their face and hear their voice is always more comfortable than sending a message into the ether not really knowing who the person is that reads it or how my tone will come across. Posting something on a platform with a large audience is completely nauseating, but I don't know of any other way to make those kinds of connections.

Maybe I don't even really want them. Maybe I'm fooling myself.

King of Scars is out tomorrow, anyway. Perhaps there will be some noise about that?

In other ways, I think I'm doing better. The light is growing, slowly. I haven't felt too superfluous or exhausted to get out of bed for a couple of weeks, so that's good. Winter without medication is harder than I had hoped but not so hard as I had feared. And January is almost over at least.