Greetings, Twitter. I have been sitting outside an urgent care clinic for three hours now with a heinous cough that came out of nowhere. I threw up my whole life yesterday morning for no appreciable reason. The high is 75° and it is going to snow tonight. What even is 2022 And the thing is (content warning: vomiting, again) I threw up everything I had consumed in every past life and then I was like, “Okay, that’s better.” And I did not do it again. I DID immediately come down with severe chills, because reasons?

Anyway, I’m actually here on this dark and stormy night of Novampber to check in on Jonathan Harker. It’s been a few days, but that way I had time for a fresh copy of my childhood book to arrive: #cleovamps Chapter 3 (we will eventually move faster but this is a big chapter)! Jonathan realizes that he is a prisoner! He realizes that he is a rat in a trap! He realizes that... Dracula is making Jonathan's bed >:[ #cleovamps

All right, on this festive Goth Christmas Day, let’s look at a little more Dracula. Here’s yesterday’s thread: threadreaderapp.com/thread/1189557… #cleovamps Jonathan (I love him) has arrived at Castle Dracula, Totes Legit (THUNDERCLAP) and spent the night; what he realizes later is, if there are no servants... Dracula does everything. Continental breakfast, housekeeping, mints on the pillow, everything. #cleovamps

My spine is doing that clicky thing I hate, so I am on bed, if not precisely in bed, with my favorite edition of the book. I love the annotations; they get me through the dry stretches My first edition was the one I read as an eleven year old, the Hildebrandt illustrated one, but I have misplaced it (give me Object Finding Energy pls). It is an abridged but no less dry edition, and I really want y’all to see the pictures I first saw. #cleovamps

Still playing Japanese romance games. So many of them remind me of that episode of The Simpsons where they did Lord of the Flies, and in the last 10 seconds, a narrator says in beneficent tones, “And then someone came to rescue them. Let’s say it was... Moe” “And then someone cured Shingen’s tuberculosis. Let’s say it was... Moe”

omg it’s September 1! [SPOOKY PUMPKIN DANCE] Halloween as a holiday, even commercialized, only wants you to be happy. It wants you to express yourself, if you wish, with a doofy costume of literally anything. Doesn’t have to be ~spooky. I wear a pair of $3 bat earrings and Halloween is happy for me.

For some reason I’ve seen a number of replies lately to people’s “assholes are shitty to me because (my identity/activities/interests) and that sucks,” to the effect of “only YOU can allow other people to make you feel bad. BE STRONG! STOP CARING WHAT THEY SAY!” and: wtf? “I myself manage not to care what people say! I live my life the way I want to! Conveniently, people are not being shitty to me for the same reason they are to you, and yet I’m running my mouth anyway because I think that helps somehow!”

This is extremely true. I already couldn’t drive *safely* because I tend to have panic attacks on anything more complex than a residential road. (Turns out it’s probably sensory overload.) After nerve damage to my right leg? Currently, I *physically* can’t drive.

https://twitter.com/mattzollerseitz/status/1035129936053510144

And you know what? Now that I know the cause of the panic attacks, I’d like to work on them. The nerve damage from the herniated disc is healing. But this shouldn’t be “Cleo, you’re inadequate at driving, fix it.” It’s that PEOPLE need public transport infrastructure.

I signed up for Mastodon yesterday. I... think I signed up for Mastodon. It was incredibly confusing in a way that I'm sure it isn't to longtime users, but it's definitely not off-brand Twitter. I currently am not using it just because I barely have the energy for Twitter on a good day. At this point I'm setting up various accounts to flee to if the other shoe, whatever it may be, drops with Twitter.

I’m having one of those days where I kind of want to write a thread, but I also feel so brain-clouded that I’m not sure I could articulate my thoughts properly. Mostly I am doing pretty well on higher Lamictal/lower Wellbutrin. Fewer physical anxiety responses. All things being equal/medicated, the anxious thoughts remaining are the sediment I get to cognitive-therapy my way through.

You know, I’ll say one thing for playing a samurai otome/romance mobile game (English edition of a Japanese game): you can memorize any number of “foreign” names if you actually care to. There is no excuse for saying “names that aren’t European are difficult/weird.” Just now I fully rattled off eleven (11) Japanese names, only double-checking the surnames I haven’t seen used in the dialogue itself yet. I am not confused about the difference between Mitsunari and Mitsuhide. I am not confused about surname-firstname order.

Oh, here’s the best part: this is about needing a refill on... medication for anxiety. Prescribed by a doctor I can’t get hold of. For three days. I’m actually on a lower dose now! It works great! You know what doesn’t work great? **no dose**

https://twitter.com/cleolinda/status/1027249680592322560

Like, I tried, y’all. I didn’t realize I was running low until Sunday, when I fill my Responsible-Adult Days-of-the-Week Box. I started calling on Monday. I only today ran out. I TRIED to stay ahead of the curve. (The pharmacist is going to spot me a couple doses, it’s not dire.)

Re: Political conspiracy theories I will not mention by name: anyone who’s familiar with the “tinhat” brand of fandom that insists These Two Costars Are 1000% Secretly in Love knows that you can’t logic with that. “They’re secretly gay but the studio doesn’t want it to get out so of course they’ll deny it!” “They’re married to other people in marriages of convenience so of course they’ll deny it!” “The record company wants them to appear single, it’s better for business!”

Tangent: one of the things I'm trying to pull myself out of a years-long writing slump is just make up 10-12 OCs and write "fanfic" about them. And it fascinates me that I have a strong enough idea of fanfic that I can do it without a separate IP to "fan." Just make up a setting and some OCs, and start writing various contradictory pairings, "the good stuff," the atmospheric or dramatic stuff, and see if anything comes out of it. And maybe those scenes are a characterization experiment that I discard later.

Sometimes I like to talk about various anxieties because I know I'm not alone in those thoughts, but also: I'm not saying that those thoughts are correct or rational. And I just realized something about my more recent writing anxieties. What I did not realize back in the day, back before viable self-publishing really blew up, was HOW MANY people love to write and long to tell their stories, fictional or otherwise.

To be honest, as someone who has a treasured limited-edition She-Ra doll on her desk, I’m not much into the new design. Delightfully, *the redesign isn’t FOR me* and kids are gonna love it. Why should anything else matter? And I say this because I think it’s important to point out, don’t confuse “this isn’t my taste” with “this is a travesty, fire up the petition machine.” No one came and took that She-Ra doll away from me, a 39-year-old woman who isn’t a kid in need of formative heroes.

I'm starting to have daydreams of You Know Who taking advantage of being overseas to just straight-up defect to Russia. I'm not saying it wouldn't be hugely terrible in the long run, but the writer in me keeps going "what if, tho." And it's maybe (?) the one thing that would get "he has been colluding and trying to tear this country down from the inside" to sink in with his supporters.

Medication update: two weeks on a smidge more Lamictal; two days on 100mg Wellbutrin down from 150 (we’re adjusting to see if it reduces panic and anxiety. I have bipolar II). Primary side effect: abject fucking nausea. From both. Could be worse; it’ll pass. Coincidentally had a primary care checkup for blood pressure/weight/etc this morning. I thought my three-month progress was lackluster, but after I told her that I’d been laid up after hurting my back AGAIN, TWICE like a fool, she thought it was great. I like her.

In the middle of adjusting my meds (doctor supervision) again, and I’m at the super fun stage where I’m googling “side effects” to figure out why I feel weird and unideal Currently we’re ramping up the Lamictal a smidge. This is a delicate proposition. One of the potential side effects is the Fatal Rash™, which I have never gotten, but I *have* had the Excruciating Back Pain and Crushing Depression.

I ended up playing a lot of mobile games while I was stuck in bed waiting for and then recovering from surgery. I mean A LOT. Some of them I played for half an hour and went, “Nah, this is bullshit,” and deleted it. But I wanted to *try* tons of stuff. One of the things I got really fascinated with as a writer is the choose-your-own-adventure/romance/otome genre. (You start to see plot and character tropes within the genre if you play enough of them. So many beating hearts clenching in your chest, omg)

Merry #sithmas! With luck, we will finish The Last Jedi today. Miscellaneous business first! (Too Many Tweets in These Tweets: A Star Wars Story) #sithmas

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hELP #sithmas

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