cool shit from other people

I have been feeling strangely isolated as of late, despite actually socialising. Usually this feeling would go away if I went to my Reading page, but it hasn't.

I've gone on a walk with Vara. That was last week, but it was nice, and usually I can go longer without getting lonely. Especially as I have done other social things since!

After X-pole started selling poles in India, someone I know from the pole studio I had to quit bought her own pole and started classes. I've been going to her to train, and that's a roughly weekly thing where I talk to her as well. She has just the one pole so she doesn't do group classes yet (group classes were one avenue where I'd meet new people, possible future friends). However, my instructor organised a get-together of pole girls, including her students, and I met a new friend, Nikki. We went and got cheesecake together and talked for two hours! It was lovely.

I also had a real-time discord typechat with a DW friend recently. So the data says I am connected, but I feel disconnected and I don't know why.

It feels different from the loneliness I used to struggle with before, because back then it felt like, life-threatening. Like an animal fear. But now it just feels like vaguely melancholic discomfort. I decided to write about it here because I've also had weeks of isolation without feeling any discomfot at all, especially when I was editing Bloodhunt Academy and doing little else. There are periods of writing that feel like Hermit mode and also feel comfortable. My theory is that I might feel differently once I'm deep into writing Book Two.

Sometimes it feels like the only way I'll know I'm not stuck in a timefreeze is by measuring the progress in my writing. I don't know if it's my brain, my circumstances, or the state of Everything, but thinking about a future is making me anxious instead of hopeful right now. I think it's definitely partly because tomorrow I'm launching the book and will have to reckon with how it does on the market, but it's also Everything in General. Like, TikTok kind of intimidates me, but is supposed to pair well with KU. I did a tarot reading asking about whether I should venture onto Booktok and drew Justice. At first I didn't know what to make of it, then cursory YouTube research enlightened me. About the new ownership it's going to pass into and associated legal agreements and political implications and... yeah. Now I know exactly why the Justice card showed up.

I don't even know how to explain what this anxiety is. It's not even my country and yet it's affecting Everybody. There's a certain amount of dread that I can't seem to disconnect from, unless I don't think about anything in practical terms at all, unless I stick to escapism, not even once in a while but All the Time. I've been meaning to post about k-dramas and CIX, and I haven't been able to, and I think it's because these feelings were in the bottleneck.

Well, tomorrow I'll do a launch post for Bloodhunt Academy and then I'll do the posts for all the fun escapisms I've been escaping into, now that this post has cleared the way, or something.

There's so many 'I think' and 'it feels like' in this post because nothing feels... certain or like it makes sense? I'm not sure. I don't know. How did my understanding of myself and my inner life fall apart like this when I'm literally spending more time with myself and my own thoughts than I have in years? I'm struggling to articulate anything going on within me. I'm also struggling to think about anything going on outside of me, except for random spurts of rage, which also aren't very logical or articulate. For example, someone has an opinion that is so harmful to people, that I don't even think about how to counter it or fight it with words, I just want to rip their tongue out and shove it down their throat until they choke and take their dangerous self out of this world. I don't want to have a moral high ground, I'm just angry and fantasising about violence feels like justice.

EDIT: That was not the note I wanted to end on, so. One thing about being in what feels like a timefreeze is that I'm trying to notice the things that seem unchanging? Mostly that's the critters I see on my walk in the apartment complex. The squirrels and cats and birds.