Subject: Hmmm . . . don't really think about myself much . . .
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Posted on: 2023-04-22 12:59:12 UTC

I can't sleep in a completely silent room; I need a fan or something running in the background. Yes, even in winter, when I'm too cheap to run my condo's heater.

Based on how other people talk about cooking and food, I feel like I don't enjoy eating as much as the "standard human build" does? Like, not saying I enjoy hunger, hunger is a bad feeling, but for me, eating is more "remove the bad hunger feeling so I can concentrate again" than it is "food tastes good, I look forward to it!" I guess it's partly a consequence of how little free time I get between work and sleep, but the shopping, the prep time, the clean-up, it all just feels like a chore to me.

My face defaults to a completely blank expression, and most of the time, I have to consciously think about emoting to make it move. (I'm generally more lost inside my inward thoughts, rather than thinking about the world around me.) This makes it tricky driving around the zoo, since we're expected to smile at guests; in the busier times of year, my face tends to get sore after a golf cart ride, from forcing my mouth to stay in an unnatural position for minutes straight. (And then of course, there's the guests who don't appreciate being smiled at by some working-class peon, as though I'm their equal or something . . .)

I keep books in a certain order on my unread shelves. They go: series books, sorted in order of the first installment's publication; standalone novels by author surname; short fiction collections, alphabetized by author or editor surname; full nonfiction books by author surname; nonfiction "essays"/short writings by author surname; the novels I rescued from abandonment in my high school lockers at the end of each school year, by author surname, and the nonfiction books I rescued from lockers, down to one remaining book. I also read them in a certain, cyclical order: a series novel; a novel from a separate series, a fiction, and a nonfiction. The two series novels can't be from the same series as the last cycle. These are The Rules, and my brain demands that i follow them! (Books I've already read have no particular order, except for series novels, of course.)

I've noticed recently I have a habit of wanting to put things I enjoy off for later. I guess part of it is that I enjoy looking forward to things, and partly that I prefer to get unpleasant/difficult things over with as soon as possible? But I also realized this was causing me to save the books published by PPC boarders for far in the future, which feels like I'm ignoring them/being rude. So I'm reading Painter of the Dead now, and Iximaz, I'm going to try to read Gloaming by the end of the year! (And Rosie, I don't know if you still peek at the Board, but I haven't forgotten about reading the thing you shared with me either, I swear I'm going to find time for that, too!)

—doctorlit has spent too long typing; he needs to wash the dishes quick before work!

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