Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

Ever get around to a task two months late and think "I'm sure it's not that bad, I've just built it up to be this huge thing in my head because of the nature of my anxiety brain and you know how that works, these things are usually fine!"

...and then you spend ages flailing and yelling, make several gloomy hyperbolic proclamations, fuck everything up due to not being able to see it, and consider yourself accomplished to be halfway done before you give up?

Some things really are that bad! And today I learned that one of those things is learning R from shitty slides that I can only hope benefited from a lot of explanation at a seminar I wasn't able to attend which even though it happened online was not recorded or anything.

Luckily, I'm in lockdown with someone who's used R and has a more practiced eye for spotting the bits of example code that are the variables I need to change in order to get it to work for me. Having never been employed in IT myself, this is not a skill I possess.

Today has been a bad brain day.

The precipitating event seems to be the e-mail that I got in reply to the one I wrote over the weekend, asking if my insufficient mitigating circumstances could be reconsidered. This e-mail just said

These deadlines were provided assuming you wanted to graduate as normal. As that’s not the case I’ll ask the Committee to review your application again.

I'm not usually bothered by text seeming like a harsh or cold medium, but it certainly seemed to be here.

There was just something about that inclusion of "want" that rattled me. It isn't for lack of wanting; I desperately want to graduate "as normal."

..and I didn't feel great about that phrase either. Sometimes I get sick of not being "as normal" I guess. I want to not have to be an exceptional case. I want to not have to be interviewd to be on the fucking TV because I'm such an unusual case and everyone I explain it to says "Oh yeah, I didn't think of that." I want to not be twice the age of everyone on my course with twenty years of self-inflicted negativity about how I failed because I didn't do this at their age. I want to not have to keep track of which partner I talked about to some acquaintance so they don't look at me funny when I mention a partner who can't be that same person.

I want to do all kinds of things "as normal" like go to the pub and hug my friends and ask Andrew to get me something from the shop and see my parents in the summer and at Christmas. What I want doesn't fucking matter; that's felt like it was the case anyway (my mantra for the last couple years: "You don't have to like it, you just have to do it" -- applied to everything from forgoing fixing the house to writing yet another essay) but it might as well be written in big neon letters across the sky now: what I want doesn't enter into it.

Also no one's talked to me about what "not graduating as normal" even means, so I'm not clear on the repercussions of having to do that exam in August instead of January anyway. But who cares; what was I going to do after graduating except get a job, something I probably won't be able to manage this summer anyway.

It wasn't a good day for my brain anyway, but this really seems to have crystallized a lot of things. I haven't felt this bad or cried this much in at least a couple of weeks.

One thing I didn't mention here is that the talking therapy self-referral I did here (talked about amidst a bunch of other things) actually happened really quickly; I got a phone call last week to arrange an assessment, which turns out to be tomorrow. I've got a little form to fill in ahead of that, which I'm doing tonight, so that should lead to some hilaribleak answers. I guess they might as well see what I'm there for right away!

12 What is your favorite snack food?

Tortilla chips and salsa. I've got stuff in the house to make salsa now; I'm looking forward to that.

--

Setting myself tasks for every day doesn't work very well. I said on Wednesday I'd try to do one uni-related thing a day, even if it's just an email or making a to-do list. I didn't do anything until yesterday, and in the last 24 hours I've probably done enough to count as more than one thing every day. But I couldn't do it before, and I don't really know why. I don't know why I could do it now.

Especially today. I had bad dreams (it must be years since I had one of those "my brother is still alive" dreams but here we are) and perahps as a cause or an effect of this have been tired and a bit out-of-sorts all day. But I still chipped away at a couple of essay tasks and went through a lot of e-mails, and wrote back to the careers people. It all happened in little five- or ten-minute chunks, with indefinite breaks in between, but it happened.

Catching up has made me miss my lecturers (well, two of them). I just got to a bit of a lecture(ish) recording from Viktor who's complaining about PowerPoint letting him down but making it relevant to the topic he's trying to tell us about. Which is so him. And I miss Eva, who's kinda scary in person (only because she'll just let you waffle on for as long as you want to keep talking, and then she'll wait a longish pause and say "yeah" in an inscrutable way) but who also has written the most human e-mails I've gotten from any entity at my university since lockdown began. I read one today that ends

As I said in my final "live" lecture, now more than ever we need people who are not too daunted by the task of digesting and critically evaluating complex information, and are able to base their decisions on empirical evidence. In this spirit, please make the most of your final weeks of university study, disrupted as they unfortunately are.

So about one hundred years ago, or not quite three weeks, I applied for mitigating circumstances for an essay that was due the next day. This was the first week that Andrew and I were living the way everybody in the UK is now since the lockdown: me hardly going out, and him not at all. I was not taking it well. I still haven't been able to finish that essay.

The next week I got that sweet e-mail about it, saying among other things that it'd be a while. Which of course I expected. Not only was this when everyone was just starting to work from home, I was sure they'd also have requests from a bunch of people in circumstances like mine, due to mental health triggers or increased caring responsibilities or whatever.

It's sort of interesting, having had to do this for the first time in Janaury, to compare: then, it took about a week to get the formal decision, and I was given an exttra week on all my essay deadlines. This time, I got this very human acknowledgement after a few days... and I just got the formal decision now. At about eight o'clock this evening, bless whoever's working.

Like all official e-mails from my uni, it's formatted terribly so the text is really too small to read on my phone screen but I do it anyway, at least to give myself an idea of whether the e-mail's going to be worth reading properly (lately, my experience has been that I'm getting a ton of basically placeholder e-mails as everyone scrambles to figure out how to do everything online, how exams are going to work, etc. and they are only lately starting to be informative enough that I'll have to investigate on my laptop sometime when I have a spoon). So I try to scan the unhelpful table that the information has been put in. I find the heading "Revised submission date," look at it, panic briefly that it's the 22nd, i.e. more than a week ago and only two days after my essay was due in the first place...and then see that it's not saying "22/3/20" like I thought/assumed. It's saying "22/5/20." The twenty-second of May. Wow. I laughed when I realized that, out of surprise but also relief. I was not expecting, even in these circumstances, to be given until the end of the semester. I hope that's what they're doing for all the mit circs they've been asked for right now, though. I think it's really good.

Of course I still want to get this essay done...not least because I have two new ones I haven't even started yet, and I still have to figure out how to do statistics for the third. I'm still finding myself almost completely unable to do any uni work at all. It's, ridiculously, Easter "break" now so I'm missing the structure of uni inasmuh as I was able to engage with it at all the pervious two weeks -- not a lot. Self-directed study was never my strong suit at the best of times and now I can barely keep myself fed and clean, so I'm real curious to see how this will work out for me! But I guess this mid-term essay is one thing I don't have to worry about.

Writing all this has made me realize that I never checked the score I got on the mid-term essay I did finish before all this shit. I'd forgotten about it entirely -- seriously, my thought process now went ...Viktor assigns mid-terms in all his classes and I have two so did I do the other one?! and I had to remember it all from there -- so I went to look just now and...it's pretty much what I always get, 62, so yeah that's fine. All our second-semster grades are going to fall into the uni's (well, really my Faculty, whch is huamnities) "no disadvantage" policy where any marks achieved (as long as we pass everything) will only be used in calculating our overall average if this is to our advantage. Passing my degree is all I was worried about anyway, since I'm only looking for a job after this and they really don't care, so passing everything is my main goal anyway, but it's weird to think that, as long as I can hadn in some halfway-serviceable essays, I will definitely get a 2:1 now.

I've been doing something practically all the time since my alarm went off (admittedly only at 9:30, I was surprised I slept that late). I think I hit the full house for allowed events today: a uni seminar I didn't understand, fixing my assistive software, counselling (via telephone), going to work, and watching Jodie Whittaker's first Doctor Who episode with Andrew and, via chat, miss_s_b and magister.

I didn't understand the seminar at all which is a bit of a dispiriting way to start the day. I'd missed last week's seminar, and homework...it's a class where we're doing, and writing up, a big semester-long project by doing a little each week, and having deadlines and stuff. I missed the last one utterly, and it seems to have been quite a big jump from "cleaning up your data" to "knowing how to use R" (statistical analysis software that I know nothing about). I sat there listening to this terrible-audio-quality version of my lecturer go through stuff very quickly, and I'm just very glad the seminars are recorded now when they can't be when they're in-person! So I have to go look at last week's, try to do whatever task I was supposed to do then, and then maybe this week's will make sense. I really hope so; I don't want to have to email this guy to ask questions. It never goes well.

Then I managed to fix my laptop, which just meant uninstalling and re-installing the software with a new license key I got e-mailed today finally. Windows is still not ready for the desktop. It's still having the same problems it was, lagging or freezing with Firefox, which I'd hoped to get rid of, but at least it works.

Then I had that counselling appointment I arranged yesterday. The person I spoke to was nice, couldn't fix any of my problems of course, but a bit of validation is one of those things that helps not as much as it could but more than I think it will. She also told me I can self-refer to talking therapies, which I didn't know -- I thiought I had to jump through hoops at the GP again -- so I did that once I got off the phone. The waiting lists are ridiculous even at the best of times so I'm not expecting anything any time soon but it doesn't hurt to add my name to the list.

The form for that made me wamt to either laugh or throw things: it had the most appalling list of options for the (mandatory, sadly) gender question that I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of bad stuff!

Quick basics: The standard amount of bad is "Male, Female." This excludes everyone who is not one of the two most popular genders, which is a lot of people! The next most standard is "Male, Female, Transgender." This implies that trans people aren't men or women, when a lot of them are! Next is "Male, Female, Prefer Not To Say." Plenty of people, including me, would prefer to say but we're not given any ability to. This makes it sound like non-binary people should be ashamed of their gender (or lack thereof). "Male, Female, Other" solves that problem. Really if you to know someone's gender and whether they're cis or trans (and this is not necessary nearly as often as it is asked!), you have to ask two questions: first their gender and then whether it is the same they were assigned at birth.

This form had (all bizarre parentheses in the original):

Male
Female
(Indeterminate)
(Not Asked)
Gender Variant
Transgender
Other gender not listed

I looked at that honestly baffled. And entirely lacking in an idea of which to choose. I took a picture of it to show my friends, a couple of whom obviously suggested "Not Asked" (on a mandatory question!). This is because I know -- and indeed am married to; Andrew was the first to suggest it -- some awkward sods. It was clear to me from options to later questions that this had been a form filled out by a clinician on behalf of a patient, which has apparently been uploaded without changing any of them. As a (trans) friend said, "It has an interesting flavour of “what cis people say when they’re not around trans people” about it, doesn’t it?"

I ended up going with "Indeterminate," partly because the mouse got stuck on that (like I said, Firefox is still a little non-responsive), partly because I realized that, if someone was looking at me and didn't ask me, "Indeterminate" is what I'd want them to think my gender was, and partly because it looked less like a potential error than "Not Asked" would; I worried that if I clicked that, it might look too much like a mistake when a human finally cast their eyes over this entry in the database, and they might well think "this person's name is Holly, they obviously meant to click Female" and "helpfully" change it for me.

I know I'm overthinking that (but hell, what else have I got to do these days), but this was pretty much what'd happened with the counselling intake form I'd done; it arrived with a few details I'd already given them, like my name and phone number filled in, and the radio button next to "Female" was ticked -- it was second along -- as we know, Male is always first in these kinds of things -- so I know it wasn't just a default and other rows of radio buttons weren't ticked at all. So hmmm. I wasn't very impressed with that. That form was not too bad; it had a third option which was something like Not Specified so I selected that and was able to feel like I hadn't entirely misrepresented myself on the form.

I walked to work and back, kinda tired but the weather was glorious. Weird gender stuff wasn't done for the day! On my way there, walking down a much-quieter-than-usual street, a single car zoomed by and a deep voice shouted out of it something like "are you a boy or a girl?" And here I thought I was very girly today, in my girl-trousers (wide-legged with embroidery on one leg) and wearing a bra and everything. I was somehow amused that my first bit of street harassment in ages happened after lockdown.

Speaknig of toxic masculinity, I was walking quite a long time before I saw anyone who didn't seme to be a man. Maybe they were having their one allotted Exercise (though does loitering outside a shop with a can count?) for the day, maybe the people they're with are all part of the same family. I know you can't tell just by looking. But I know who's used to not having to listen to the rules! I saw someone on mastodon saying she saw a racial divide in who was careful about distancing and protective gear, but where I was it was very gendered: black, white and brown men all acting like this.

When I got home from work, it wasn't long until time to watch the Doctor Who. This was the only episde of Jodie Whittaker Andrew had seen, so it was interesting watching it with him again. He said "My first watch of this, I enjoyed it but I also had some criticisms -- it didn't seem particularly thematically deep. But it's better than I remembered." We really admired how it was paced and filmed, and I love how it felt like it was taking its time over little things (like the excellent explanation of regeneration) while still having so much work to do in introducing all the new characters and everything.

9 What’s your favorite movie quote?

Nothing springs to mind, but for TV quotes, I can't beat The Thick of It. I've watched it so much that today when someone on Mastodon said

Got a labour candidate email: "we're in the thick of it, so vote X". Not sure this is a compelling message for a vision of the labour fuckity party. It's a slogan as useless as a chocolate dildo.

...it was all I could do to stop from correcting him (it's "useless as a marzipan dildo"). Instead I just said "They're like a sweaty octopus trying to unhook a bra," which was the first thing that came to mind.

But honestly, it could've been any one of a million things (though I'd be less likely to share the ones that are very misogynistic or sweary where they'd be seen by people who don't know the context).

--

I finished the essay by 10am; it was due at noon. I had to miss the lecture that's from 10-12 to do it, and then it was so rainy and cold I couldn't make myself go out for the other lecture 4-5, especially since I'd hit miserable rush-hour buses. I can catch up on the lectures, but it's bad for my mental health to miss as much uni as I have been this semseter; I still hate all the seminars and it makes me not want to go, and the less I engage the easier it is to keep disengaging.

Instead, I tried not to lose the whole afternoon to what should have been a more expected crash after my busy weekend, but it hit me by surprise. I think I managed all right: I did laundry and dishes and, since Andrew is out (he went to Blackpool to see Elvis Costello), I vacuumed. I made myself nice dinner without having to go outside to buy anything else (my main goal with it, tbh), and I just skyped my parents.

I didn't feel like I'd done much today, but now that I list it all out...well I'm feeling vaguely accomplished but also less surprised that my mood is so low.

15 What’s your favorite piece in a box of chocolates?

I'm honestly not a fan. I don't like most fillings in chocolates, I don't really like milk chocolate, and I don't like having to, worst-case, guess but even the best case is reading a map about which fiddly decorations or shapes I should be looking for in order to avoid the fruit cremes and the chewy things and the nougat. It's not very accessible! I just don't like this kind of chocolate enough to make it worth the effort.

--

Today was Day 2 of "...what do I do with myself?" diffrentcolours and I were planning to be with his family this weekend (where I was going to confound their ideas of gender) but he was too sick. So, having fended off all other plans, I didn't really know what to do with myself today.

Yesterday, same deal, I ended up with too many plans but today I didn't acquire any. There's a storm with a name again (Dennis this time, which must delight my friend Dennis), must we do this every weekend now? So I didn't even get out to walk Gary. But I did wake up early, knit myself a hat to be a (okay, but inferior) replacement for the perfect one I lost in December, did a bunch of uni work, made two relatively decent and very easy meals for myself, had a nap, watched a bunch of Brooklyn 99 with Andrew... I'm going a bit stir-crazy, it's not like me to stay in all day, but otherwise it's been a good day.

Mostly I'm proud of how much uni reading I managed to catch up on. For months now, whenever I've had a day like this with no external obligations, I've had the best of intentions but ended up accomplishing absolutely nothing. I'm so relieved that didn't happen today. It really does feel like luck; I didn't try any harder or want to do the things any more than I did before -- that wouldn't have been possible! -- I just...somehow found it easier today. The executive function, the activation energy, was finally there. Not a lot of it, but enough. It felt really good; some of the reading was boring as hell but it was a lot more fun than playing Kwazy Cupcakes or listening to podcasts or whatever else I do when I'm procrastinating and avoidant.

I was so unprepared for this week and I was sick of that. Not only have I done the most urgent stuff for next week, I've gone back a little to catch up on stuff I didn't get around to the last couple weeks (I honestly forgot one of my classes had a textbook...). And I at least looked at the questions for my mid-term essay due in a few weeks (the first one I wrote an essay about last semester, so it shouldn't be too hard!) even if I didn't start working on them yet at least I remembered they exist.

5 Would you rather go to an amusement park, a zoo, or a sporting event?

I like them all (assuming it's a sport I like enough to go watch it, so probably cricket, baseball or rugby) so this just depends on mood.

Right now I'd love for it to be summer and me to be able to sit on some grass with friends and a picnic and watch village cricket.

--

I've got the scores for two of the three essays I was stressing about in recent weeks. I got 62 on the Swedish universities one, which is about normal/expected for me (reminder for any alarmed North Americans that this is pretty good here!) but I am pretty pleased that for that last essay, my white whale, the albatross around my neck, I got 75. This wasn't one of those times that I just underestimated myself and hard work pays off. Yes I worked hard but that hasn't always had a lot to do with what kind of grades I get. I feel fortunate as well as accomplished and both of those are valid.

Had the last of my new classes today. Language and Mediality is cool. (Though I don't think anything is as cool as Language Policy and Planning from last semester. I'm taking Language Contact from the same lecturer and when he was talking on Monday about essay topics, he said that people who hadn't taken Language Policy and Planning could write about the status of a language "but if you have taken that, don't even think about it." I sadly watched the possibility recede before me; I love stuff like that!)

This class wins on essay topics, actually. He showed us a list that included audio description, which I'd love to write about as someone who actually uses it, and something that made me think, because of what I wrote yesterday because we can choose a gif of a movie/TV show and now I want to write about Janet becoming a non-binary icon.

25 If you had to teach a one-hour class with absolutely no prep time, what subject could you competently pull off?

People have shown interest in both of the essays I've mentioned I'm writing, and I said I'd talk about them when I was done. I still have one I haven't started, but as of about half an hour ago the other two are handed in.

One is about langauge policy in Sweden:

( my introduction )

I talk about one of those specific policies, called parallel language, in universities. It sounds nice -- doing everything in Swedish and English -- but it suffers from the same problems a lot of language policy does: it's too top-down, not taken up by the grassroots many of whom don't necessarily understand why it's been implemented or what it expects of them. The use of English varies widely between scientific and humanities disciplines, for what seem like good reasons: a lot of science is very international, while in humanities knowledge is constructed in reading and discussion and students overall don't engage or ask questions as much when their seminars are in English. Suggestions are to look at pedagogical as well as political motivations for language use and to remember that what langauge someone is taught in doesn't necessarily correspond to what languages they're competent and confident in using.

The other essay was about a lot of things, but my favorite (which was one of the things I was using to determine whether the tweet in the Twitter Joke Trial was really a threat or not) is speech act theory.

( Another essay snippet )

So for example, when someone holding a jar says to someone else "Can you open this jar?" the locutionary act is what they just said. The illocutionary force is going to be something like "I can't get this jar open and I'd like you to help." The perlocutionary act is, hopefully, the other person taking the jar and trying to open it themselves.

So many times in my classes I've come across ideas that my neurodivergent friends struggle with, resent, or have had to put conscious effort into learning (I talked about another, but kinda similar one in December: Gricean maxims. Speech acts are constructed very differently in "Ask cultures" and "Guess cultures," a dichotomy that'll be familiar to my fellow Captain Awkward fans.