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going back to work is evil, parental leave should be, bare minimum, one month paid.
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Sometimes I go "hmmmm am I really autistic" and other days I make statements like "unfortunately I am not normal and keep a list of weird phenomena of perception and cognition in my head at all times"
- related, I am bad at taking surveys and self-diagnostics because I'm too deep into the metatextual parts
- related, I am stupid good at taking tests. School that is only tests is a joke to me
- but if there are papers to write, especially with deadlines? Bad Horrible Evil
- related, I am stupid good at taking tests. School that is only tests is a joke to me
- related, I am bad at taking surveys and self-diagnostics because I'm too deep into the metatextual parts
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I've really wanted to work on projects, especially my secret one, during the week I could take off but. Yeah. Everything on a back burner right now. This is bad cuz I wanna make things, but good cuz I am doing other important things (baby!!!!) and also rest is good
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I slammed through the entire Inheritance cycle in December so I could read Murtagh on Em's recommendation (she did this same thing a few months back, lol); The series is both "aw yeah this teen is cooking" and "ahahaha this is a teen writing this" and that is a good thing.
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Now that I'm reading Murtagh, I have this brainworm/mental link spinning: There are two kinds of homeschoolers: the overachieving perfect one who can accomplish anything and the one who's like, "why did no one tell me this??" 24/7
Eragon is the first one, Murtagh is the second. I try not to let the author bleed into too much of my reading but it does not escape me that there is a decade between the completion of the cycle and Murtagh and the main theme that lands particularly well is the titular character's lopsided education[1]. Like, this is obviously influenced by my experience of this phenomena (i.e. one can[2] shift from the first archetype to the second) but. There are a myriad of examples of "heavily researched thing the author has never experienced" (Brisingr's forging, cleft palate repair for two) and the difference between them (and here I also lump the other theme of Murtagh, too) and this are extremely stark to me.
I'm digging it so far; the way it's drawn out through Murtagh's musings on how to cleverly craft a spell and his limited vocabulary are fun (altho. I do kinda feel like it's also shining a light on some of the weaker aspects of Paolini's magic--it's described too well as a system to work great as a myth-style presentation of magic[3] but it doesn't want to be a hard system either), and it is a great thought to explore--I was just gonna iykyk this artisinal thought but look what it's done; maybe I'll come back to this some time, I do have a hankering to write a essay[4]
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holding a baby rules. It is hard to not feel the light of the world holding a baby
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on the flipside, parenting intrusive thoughts are quite something. Em and I compared notes and the theme right now is "I dropped the baby" with some um, interesting and improbable heights and/or results
the other theme is his and Thorn's PTSD and, while good, it does not land in the same way at all ↩︎
and arguably will ↩︎
Once and Future King, Lord of the Rings, Earthsea ↩︎
I struggle to find the balance between the level of polish I feel an essay should have and the level of polish I want to give my writing, tho, so we'll see if I have it in me to wrestle that, especially with this topic and with my current phase of life[5] ↩︎
"secret" artisinal thought in the footnotes: this period of enforced lack of sleep/weird hours that happens with a new baby is a) one of the reasons a paid month off bare minimum should be mandatory and b) reenforces how out of alignment I feel I am with how I perceive other people's views on sleep schedules. I feel so different with how hard I actively maintain a sleep schedule, but when it's thrown off I feel so validated in putting out this effort ↩︎