I’ve been running with a deficit of spoons and a surplus of forks, lately. For those of you who don’t remember or know what Spoon and Fork theory are, you can read more about them in this post. In short, though, Spoon theory is a way of talking about how people (typically with an chronic health condition) measure their effort through each day when they don’t have the ability to do everything they’d like to do (named so because the purported origin of the theory involved using spoons as a visual aid). Fork Theory is a way of talking about how ongoing stress can pile up or accumulate to the point where action must be taken to avoid becoming overwhelmed (named after the “stick a fork in me, I’m done” saying). As someone for whom both hold relevance, my day-to-day life is a careful balancing act of making sure I’ve got enough spoons to deal with whatever forks need to be removed.
Continue readingMonth: November 2022
Infrared Isolation: Chapter 9
New to the series or certain you’ve missed a chapter? You can find the introduction Here and the table of contents Here.
Continue readingWhy Someone Might Hide a Small Injury in the Workplace
My shoes broke today. One of the eyelets ripped open when I wentto pull my laces tight this morning and I was forced to drive to work with what felt like an incredibly loose shoe even though the other nine eyelets in use were holding strong. When I got to work, I rustled up some heavy-duty tape, some tiny washers, and spent about fifteen minutes repairing my shoes. It was a rush job (that wound up breaking irreparably a little over 24 hours later), with most of the time being spent on making sure the laces could still move through the holes in the tape on the new eyelet and on all the eyelets I reinforced. It isn’t perfect, but it will last long enough for me to get through my work day.
Continue readingSocial Media Migration
I wrote a whole post about what feels a lot like passing the point of no return on Twitter’s decline and eventual collapse, since the day I wrote this is the day that the world’s richest man showed up to make “good” on a dumb-shit promise he made because he’s actually also a moron and has only managed to get this far because consequences don’t matter to rich people. I went on a whole rant about corporate dystopia and the collapse of modern civilization because there’s less and less metaphor separating us from sci-fi and cyberpunk dystopias every day. It was cathartic, but probably not helpful to read since most people probably don’t care. Twitter, despite how large it feels to me as an active user, is not that big. Lots of people rarely or never go on that site and, honestly, we’d probably be better without it.
Continue readingCompliments That Sting and My Short-Sold Self
I had what felt like a funny, appreciative moment at work today. One of my coworkers was introducing a new engineer we’ve hired to everyone, making the rounds of the folks who were present at the time. When he got to me, he introduced me and said (quote edited to use my correct pronouns since I’m not out at work and I’m not going to use the wrong ones on my own dang blog, even in a quote) “I don’t know what [they] do, but [they’re] great in conversation.” I laughed, the new engineer laughed, my coworker laughed, and I shook the new person’s hand before explaining that I’m a tester AND that I have an extensive collection of anecdotes about what you can prepare in a waffle iron. After a bit more small talk, my coworker moved on and I returned to my lunch.
Continue reading“Vacation” Just Means You Have To Work More Later
It has been a week since my close scrapes with having my car run over by a truck, running out of gas on the highway, and having a mental breakdown at my workplace. I got some rest, tried to unwind, spent some time taking care of the issues I could resolve on my own, and now I’m back at work. It is, unfortunately, like I never left. Yesterday was so busy that I had a stress headache and an overstimulated migraine at the same time, and wound up spending my evening sitting in a comfortable position on my couch while drinking plenty of water with all the lights off except the dim light of my television and my always-on christmas lights. All of which normally helps but didn’t this time (probably because of how long the combo migrache had been going on), so I would up turning to painkillers and eventually those helped. Sleep eventually killed the lingering effects of the migrache so I was ready to tackle today. Except this horrible combination of brain pains is already back because today is busy as well and it’s not like I magically got used to my new underclothes in twenty-four hours.
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