Updates! Ray and I are out of the AirBnB and in the new apartment in Tampa. We are walking distance to Busch Gardens, although we’ve not been there. The apartment complex is pleasantly scummy, with the friendliest office folks I’ve ever met, and everyone I’ve seen here has been nice. I’m sure there will be exceptions later, but I’m just gonna treasure it for now. The inside of the apartment is old but clean and nice. Standard Florida-level bugs versus the horror that was the apartment in St. Pete. Other people might not love living here, but I’m happy so far
Internet is finally set up; Ray and I finally renamed the wireless so it isn’t generic: “MyWaifuIsBetterThanYours.”
My phone is in the middle of dying, so there may be some chaos in communication over the next few days. I’m getting a new phone (with an upgraded camera, better battery, and more storage, but still thrifty). I’m looking forward to being able to ZOOM a bit instead of kludging around such a shitty camera.
Today’s yoga and walk were boring: I tore open some bug bites in a bad spot on my foot and had to curtail exploration this morning. But I did do yoga on the patio this morning, even though I hurt all over from moving stuff yesterday.
Yesterday’s yoga and walk were FAR more interesting.
I won’t name any names (it all worked out in the end, but I know what it’s like to get dragged online because of casual mentions), but someone left me a comment a couple of days before that I blew off but kept coming back to me as making me intensely uncomfortable.–Scratch that; it was the way I handled it that was making me uncomfortable. Part of what I’ve been doing lately is getting more experience in handling emotionally challenging stuff, so I don’t shut down opportunities because I’m afraid of being more visible in public or whatever. Blowing off that particular comment made me feel like I accepted what it said (and I didn’t), and wasn’t providing good role modeling. I wasn’t calling for any good energy from the universe, if you will, but tolerating boundary-crossing behavior simply because I was worried about stating my boundary.
So I went back and made a response stating the boundary, and, because the person in question seemed to have made the comment in reasonably good faith, coached on how to give me access to the same feedback in a way that helped me instead of making me go, “Is this guy going to start grooming me?”
“Creepy” is the feeling of not knowing whether you’re in danger or not. The comment had elements of both supportive behavior and grooming/manipulative behavior; it was creepy.
But often people haven’t processed that they’re passing along toxic behavior unintentionally, AND I’m used to talking to a lot of neurodivergent people who do really well with directness, so I decided to go for as calm a response as possible.
I got a really well-spoken apology that didn’t reverse the helpfulness but released the appearance of being grooming. WHEW.
But I was, nevertheless, still upset afterwards. My inner pool of peace and calm was sloshing around a bit. The commenter in question had done brilliantly; it was just that I didn’t recover my equilibrium immediately. In short I was triggered, and that was my own business.
I was, as you might expect, unable to do balance poses for more than a second at a time. AHHHHHH. So I asked my characters for help processing, because why not?
The female character who’s been with me forever said I did a great job handling it and she was proud of me. HIGH FIVE. The goob said this sort of thing was hard for him to handle and he was “furiously taking notes.” The other male character, the Batman/Assassin dude, said it was probably better that I hadn’t called him out earlier. He’s protective of women in general and has ice-cold vengeance chill about this thing and also wouldn’t have handled it well.
I literally tried to walk way from an imaginary character. I did NOT want to talk to him. I put both earbuds in, turned up the music, walked faster, paced at stoplights, etc. Finally he told me that if I didn’t stop and tell him what was bothering me he was going to leave.
OUCH.
I gave him an earful about hating himself and thinking it was his job to save everyone instead of letting them learn how to save themselves. He’s thinking about doing something in the book that I don’t agree with as a human being or as his author (if that makes sense?), and he’s doing it because he thinks his only purpose in life is to do this assassin thing, and that he has to do it in order to pay for HAVING DONE THE SAME THING IN THE PAST. It’s a vicious circle of stupidity. It’s like the drug addict who drugs themselves to escape the fact that they’re a piece of shit drug addict.
He didn’t want to hear it. Who would do it, if not him? I named several other names. What would he do, if he wasn’t doing this? I reminded him of the bullshit answer he gave earlier in the book and asked him how he would feel if he was able to do that successfully. And then I reminded him just how big a favor his current employers owed him and how he could sell the idea to them–an approach that he himself had come up with. Why wasn’t he listening to the smart ideas coming out of his own mouth?
I don’t care if he kills people; some people just need killin’. But it should be HIS choice, not his bosses’.
By then I was back at the AirBnB and it was time to get ready for the move. He’s still shook. He was expecting to be hated for being an assassin. He didn’t expect me to get frustrated with him for being a tool.–It changes things, to find out that people like you for who you really are but want to strangle you for the awful things you do because *you* don’t like yourself for who you really are.
Right now he’s scared to think what I want him to think: “What if tomorrow could be different?”
I really like him and I hope he’s okay. But also I’m looking forward to writing this next scene with the other two characters, so Mr. Assassin will have some time to think about how he’s gonna use that fine self to do something he chooses himself, or rather that he has to do or lose all self-respect.
Don’t worry about not being liked, guy. More characters than you suspect even now know more or less the whole truth about you, are rooting for you, and have your back.
Anyway, after that: the move. We hired movers (Hall Brothers) and they were excellent. I was still so wiped that I was cranky and full of negative-self talk most of last night. I decided not to write. Today was also really busy…but I’m jonesing to be with my characters, so I’ll end this here and do pics tomorrow