L's Journal

Where are you and where are you going?
BookLoverL
Posts: 294
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 4:17 pm
Location: England

Re: L's Journal

Post by BookLoverL »

Yeah, unfortunately the damage happened long ago enough that I've completely forgotten what might have happened to the tab holder at all unfortunately.

I'll try and see if I can manage something based on your diagram, if I can't then I guess I'll have to give in and buy a new slider.

BookLoverL
Posts: 294
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 4:17 pm
Location: England

Re: L's Journal

Post by BookLoverL »

Finished a patch repair on a different pair of trousers that had a hole in the butt. Those trousers are ones I wear to casual things, so a visible patch with contrasting stitching will actually enhance them IMO for what I wear them for.

BookLoverL
Posts: 294
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 4:17 pm
Location: England

Re: L's Journal

Post by BookLoverL »

Ok, here's what I've gone with with the zip at the moment, using a combination of a chainmail ring, a paperclip, and 2 little wires with hoops on the end from the random jewellery kit my mum bought ages ago for some reason but never used:

https://imgur.com/a/3xndI8G

It's still a bit fiddly because the lever only activates when you pull the ring up, not down, so you have to pull it with one hand and then push the zip down with the other or something. But it's significantly easier on the fingers than trying to grab that one tiny lever with your fingernail, and zipping up is easier too. Might change out the paperclip with a more aesthetic pulling thing at some point.

I haven't really done this sort of thing before, so it took some experimenting to find something that wouldn't fall off.

basuragomi
Posts: 419
Joined: Tue Oct 15, 2019 3:13 pm

Re: L's Journal

Post by basuragomi »

If it works it works. Maybe you could do a dreamcatcher style weave in a chainmail link for a more aesthetic pull.

BookLoverL
Posts: 294
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 4:17 pm
Location: England

Re: L's Journal

Post by BookLoverL »

Yeah, basically the reason for modifying it would be that it still doesn't work quite as well as I'd like. It still works better than before, though - the fleece is actually potentially wearable now.

BookLoverL
Posts: 294
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 4:17 pm
Location: England

Re: L's Journal

Post by BookLoverL »

Thinking about ways of making washing the dishes more efficient, since I noticed that while I think I'm more efficient than average, I still do end up using a fair amount of water to wash up, especially for rinsing. So I was thinking about consciously trying to use a small amount of water and wipe it around the thing I'm rinsing with a dishcloth (not one used on the dishes when dirty, starting with a clean dishcloth and only using it on dishes that have already been fully scrubbed). Also using the washing up brush more for scrubbing, and trying to pre-scrub stuck-on bits into the bin more.

However, trying the water-efficient method today using tap water, while I did indeed use probably 6 times less water than before, I noted that our hot tap doesn't heat up immediately and therefore with the reduced water use wasn't running enough to actually get hot.

Therefore, is it necessary for health reasons when washing up to have actually hot water? If it is, then next time I try the more efficient method I can boil up some water in the electric kettle and put it in a pan to dip the dishcloth into, instead of rinsing from the tap. Otherwise I guess the colder water will be fine as long as the dishes are clean.

In terms of number of items to wash up, I'm extremely efficient about use of crockery already, but my mum isn't really, so there's more stuff than I'd prefer usually but I can't really do anything about it.

My previous method was:
1) Run the tap over the item to wet it
2) Apply washing up liquid with the sponge
3) Alternate scrubbing with the sponge and rinsing under the tap several times until all dirt removed
4) Rinse under the tap more to get all remaining suds off
5) Stand the item in the drying rack‧.
I did turn off the tap between rinses with this method.

The more efficient method I tried out today was:
1) If there are dried-on chunks of food, scrub first with the scrubbing brush into the bin.
2) Run the tiniest trickle of water from the tap onto the item.
3) Spread the water around and apply washing up liquid with the sponge.
4) Scrub with whichever is easiest of the sponge and the scrubbing brush, or both alternating, without applying more water, until all dirt removed.
5) Put a trickle of water onto the dishcloth.
6) Wipe the suds off with the dishcloth.
7) Stand the item with the drying rack.

I think the new method was effective for cleaning, but would really like to know if I accidentally was too efficient water-wise for good health, basically, especially since the water didn't get hot.

BookLoverL
Posts: 294
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 4:17 pm
Location: England

Re: L's Journal

Post by BookLoverL »

Lowkey mildly annoyed randomly that my haircut is no longer free. This is because I changed hairstyles, basically.

Before, I had generic long hair, and had figured out how to cut it myself with kitchen scissors.

However, a bit before I moved house, I had it cut short in order to look more queer.

I am extremely happy with the new look in terms of I actually feel stylish on a much higher percentage of days than before.

However, it requires 2x a year haircuts, unless I can learn how to cut *short* hair myself.

I think for the next haircut I will still pay for someone to do it, but definitely it might be worth me learning how to do short hairstyles at home.

The problem is I don't want just any short hairstyle. A buzzcut or other same-length-all-over hair will not have the right type of queer vibe. I also do not have very steady hands and short lengths are much less forgiving than "cut 6 inches off from the hair that is down to my waist". The style I have at the moment is a fade, so that at the time of the haircut it's about 1-2 inches on the top of my head going right down to a buzzcut at the neck. This style continues to work well aesthetically as it grows out for over 6 months. I think it will be quite hard to get the right sort of effect with home cutting and still have it look neat.

I really do feel a lot more comfortable with the short hair, and have a lot less number of days where I want to cover my hair up with a hat and pretend it doesn't exist. I don't want to go back to long hair. But if I'm going to achieve the fade-style myself then I need a lot better hand-steadiness probably, so that's why at the moment there is £60 for haircuts budgeted in my budget projection.

At least the hairdresser's I went to last time is pretty close.
Last edited by BookLoverL on Wed Jan 12, 2022 11:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

shaz
Posts: 420
Joined: Mon Aug 02, 2021 7:05 pm
Location: Colorado, US

Re: L's Journal

Post by shaz »

That is the eternal dilemma - short hair is easier to care for on a day to day basis, but it takes more cutting! Argh!

I'm growing my hair out from bald and found this video useful for shaping it up, especially the sides and back. Maybe it will help you. You do need clippers to use this technique - I use horse clippers. https://youtu.be/5JpAy_RTjos

BookLoverL
Posts: 294
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 4:17 pm
Location: England

Re: L's Journal

Post by BookLoverL »

Thanks for the link - that's definitely a helpful video! I think I'll have to watch some more videos to understand more of the hair theory and stuff before I'm actually ready to try it myself, and if I'm going to use clippers I'd need to get some too, but it definitely seems it could be more realistic to do a decent style at home than I thought.

Whatever I do needs to be relatively simple if I'm going to do it myself because with my Tourette's it's hard to keep my hands still for very long at once, so if I try to do something too complicated then there'll be a high chance of mistakes. But it definitely looks like it's possible to do styles that aren't just the same all over based on that.

BookLoverL
Posts: 294
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 4:17 pm
Location: England

Re: L's Journal

Post by BookLoverL »

Been considering the general status of the city I'm in, what I ought to learn about it, and what might be a good target for volunteering later once I've settled into my new job. Volunteering would be hopefully primarily focused towards improving local ecological sustainability and resilience in the face of the coming post-fossil fuel era, maybe with some support of local community groups if these are suitably non-bad for the climate situation.

Areas I've identified to learn about so far:
Ecology - including geology, climate, water, local wildlife. On this I've already identified today a charity that claims to be conserving the health of the local water catchment system, including having done work on removing weirs that prevented fish from swimming upriver or building fish passes around them. Definitely a possibility for the future I think.
Economy - while there are a good variety of employers here, and I've already acquired a job, it'd be good to know what sort of breakdown there is of economic activity across different areas, and what subsidies or taxes are in place that might be shaping those activities in certain ways.
Politics - I ought to research more into who exactly the various local councillors are (not just their names on the city council website), what sort of views they hold, when council meetings are held, etc., and get a better idea of how politics at both national and local levels affects the area.
Community - what local non-government groups exist, in the name of what causes, etc., who is successful at running them, that sort of thing.

Probably there are some more things to think about if I spend longer thinking, too.

Now that my own life is starting to move into better alignment I definitely want to start looking at how I can also contribute to the community. As we know, in systems such as cities and their surrounding ecologies, most people move along the path of the most convenient flow, so understanding how the existing systems in the area are set up and what effects they are having is the first step to identifying whether there are any leverage points which could be adjusted to make the area more sustainable, and therefore which volunteer organisations or pressure groups or whatever might be most useful to join, and whether there are any other actions I could take as an individual to improve the sustainability and the resilience of my area.

Of course, climate change, pollution, etc. are global issues, but since it's far too much for an individual to try to tackle a global issue directly, I think trying to improve the situation in the local area will definitely help. Plus, if it's possible to spread related ideas to people I meet at various groups, then it may be possible to encourage people in other areas to follow the example too, once there's an example of something good to follow.

Maybe I'm too idealistic about the possibility of any of these kind of systematic things being changed, but if I found the right leverage points to work at, I definitely think some sort of positive change could be possible.

BookLoverL
Posts: 294
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 4:17 pm
Location: England

Re: L's Journal

Post by BookLoverL »

Been reading this book about mycoremediation: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mycelium-Runni ... 1580085792 I'm about halfway through at the moment.

It's very interesting - by the sound of it mushrooms can decompose or bioaccumulate all sorts of pollution. Definitely something I want to learn more about for my future gardening and environmental projects, and also needs to be used on a wider scale to help clean up the mess we've currently made of the planet. There are even mushrooms that can break down and decompose toxic pesticides / chemical weapons / etc. that are otherwise stable in the soil for decades.

It does make me sort of hopeful, too - even if we as a species manage to mess up completely, don't do any mycoremediation ourselves, etc., and end up being reduced to a small number of humans living in much reduced environments while being back at purple SD level and tribal scale, over long enough timescale it's likely nature can use mushrooms to detoxify itself from a large amount of pollution and allow new life to flourish.

I'm really not sure why this isn't already being trialled more widely - probably due to the interests of large corporations making profit from not doing it, as usual...

Definitely though overall it seems like an understanding of mushrooms is an important component of a permaculture / systems thinking mindset about ecology. They fulfil all sorts of functions, decompose dead plant life and help build new rich soil, beneficial ones can give trees an advantage and also prevent more harmful fungi such as blights from taking hold...

Decomposition and decay is an important component of the natural life cycle, and frankly we probably shouldn't be concerned as a society with making everything so Permanent, but instead accept natural decay of things and be using sustainable enough methods that we can build a new Thing quickly and without environmental damage when the old one succumbs to its end. While wood is of course going to be decayed quicker than stone, mushrooms and plants with taproots and weathering can even gradually turn stone into dust. On the macroscopic scale, nothing lasts forever, nor should it.

Without accounting for decomposers such as mushrooms, frankly you can never have a complete ecological system.

Western Red Cedar
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Re: L's Journal

Post by Western Red Cedar »

A local environmental organization in my community has experimented with mushrooms as a means to clean up pollutants from a major river and some of the creeks that suffer from agricultural runoff. My DW worked with a mycologist at university, and I think they've been researching this topic in the Pacific Northwest for a long time now. Mushrooms are really exciting because it seems like we've only just cracked the surface on their ecological significance.

You would probably enjoy the documentary Fantastic Fungi if you haven't seen it - https://fantasticfungi.com/

BookLoverL
Posts: 294
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 4:17 pm
Location: England

Re: L's Journal

Post by BookLoverL »

Thanks for the recommendation, I might check it out at some point.

I finally started my new job today! Looking forward to receiving money again from that, since I've been living directly off my savings since the end of July.

BookLoverL
Posts: 294
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 4:17 pm
Location: England

Re: L's Journal

Post by BookLoverL »

New job is somehow already causing me anxiety only 4 days in. Will see if this improves after the training period concludes (and is therefore due to not knowing things I haven't yet been taught), or if it lasts longer and is more related to intrinsic factors of the job. But am significantly less optimistic about the potential longevity of this job now, despite it looking good on paper.

If I do end up quitting this one I'll have a crap looking CV a bit too since it'll have a 6 month gap in it followed by just a short employment period. But if I do end up quitting, I'll try to apply for jobs more efficiently this time. Maybe I should even look into something like warehouse work like my ex suggested, even though all my experience is in admin or education. Really though I am jealous that since we invented the computer, the job of calculating a bunch of maths sums for someone by hand no longer exists. If I'd been born 150 years ago or something I'd have been great at that job.

I could always try and go self-employed again I suppose, but I'm not doing tuition again for a bit at least because that was also stressing me too much, so I'd have to think of a business premise. Also I already established last time that I'm a bit terrible at marketing.

BookLoverL
Posts: 294
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 4:17 pm
Location: England

Re: L's Journal

Post by BookLoverL »

I have made a GP appointment to talk about concerns I might have an anxiety disorder of some sort, since I'm always worrying about random things and out of the 4 previous lines of work I've quit, 3 were due to stress. Hopefully if I'm able to get some treatment or therapy in that regard, then whether I end up staying at the current job or not, I'll be better at coping with a wider range of jobs in general. E.g. I get huge amounts of anxiety from phone calls, so when I was job searching I avoided jobs that would need me to make many phone calls, but if I had treatment of some sort, maybe I'd be ok to take those jobs.

The appointment is near the end of January, so I am gonna wait until at least a couple of weeks after that before I make a decision about whether to stay with the new job or not.

Mental health and neurodiversity-wise, I suspect I have definitely been consistently underestimating how far away from "normal" I am my entire life.

If I do quit the current job I'm going to make it a priority after that to apply for the non-means-tested part of the UK disability benefits that are available, even though they're really annoying to apply for.

BookLoverL
Posts: 294
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 4:17 pm
Location: England

Re: L's Journal

Post by BookLoverL »

Realised it's a while since I've put an update here, so thought I'd check in.

Honestly, I'm doing kind of rubbish financially at the moment and feeling a bit bad about it.

I ended up quitting the job after about 1 month of working there due to just how much anxiety it was causing me, so while I got paid for that bit, after that I became unemployed again. About a month after that I started doing a little bit of work on my dad's business on a self-employed basis, but that's only getting me £25 a week. So at the moment I'm earning very little, so I've ended up cutting back even on some of the leisure categories I did allow myself in my budget.

I still haven't got round to selling my car, but I should hopefully be able to get round to selling it soon. My dad put it in a price estimate site and it looks like if I clean it up and get it serviced I should be able to get around £2,800 for it. If that happens then that should fund a good chunk of my spending for this year at least, so that won't be too bad. I still have plenty of savings left from before at the moment too - the reason I've started worrying is that I haven't got a sustainable income at the moment and in the situation that I had no income, I'm only at 1x-2x yearly expenses, which clearly isn't enough to last for my whole life.

I got prescribed anxiety tablets from the GP and also a bit after that I finally had my appointment about ADHD, and I've been dxed with ADHD too now and am trying out tablets for that. They do seem to be helping me consistently get my chores done at least, but aren't boosting me up enough to consistently get things done on top of that.

I'm trying out making a fake timetable schedule for myself with fake subjects as if I were still at university, since I've always been pretty good at following a timetable like a robot. Thanks to the timetable, I've finally made progress towards applying for the non-means-tested disability benefits.

I still haven't actually applied, but I've now got together most of the info that I'll need to apply, which is a big step towards doing it. If I can get the benefits it's actually more than I thought it was and would be very helpful. However, the system is set up so that a lot of people get rejected and have to appeal, so even though I'm definitely disabled it's not a given that I'll get the benefits. Also, you have to reapply every few years even if your disability hasn't changed. But if I did get them it would take a lot of pressure off me.

I did start out trying to apply to different jobs I haven't worked before initially after I quit the last one, but I got demoralised and also got in a "I hate all jobs" mood after I got rejected from applying to a supermarket, so now I don't want to. So my idea at the moment aside from the benefits is to try and expand the self-employed thing I'm doing for my dad into having other customers, or think of another self-employed idea. I need to do more learning and/or research in order to get that going, though. I don't want to do tuition again, so I'd be looking for something else.

Overall though, at least since I have savings I'm not having to rush to find a new income stream, and since I'm technically self-employed this time, I won't have a big gap in my CV this time. So things could be worse. But yeah, with the extra cutting back on leisure spending, including reducing train travel, I am feeling a little bit towards "deprived" rather than "comfortably frugal" at the moment. But hopefully I can get my income back up at some point.

BookLoverL
Posts: 294
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 4:17 pm
Location: England

Re: L's Journal

Post by BookLoverL »

Update for the first time I looked at the forum in ages:

I'm still unemployed, but I started an accountancy-related course now, so I'm hoping to use that to get myself back into a job.

I haven't used up all my savings yet, either, so saving money before definitely helped a lot.

ertyu
Posts: 2893
Joined: Sun Nov 13, 2016 2:31 am

Re: L's Journal

Post by ertyu »

How's ADHD/meds?

BookLoverL
Posts: 294
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 4:17 pm
Location: England

Re: L's Journal

Post by BookLoverL »

I actually went off the ADHD meds in about August because there's a shortage of them in the UK and I couldn't get any (and then the ADHD caused me to forget to try to reorder them), but before that they were helping.

Overall I've had a few mental health issues the last couple of years tbh, but this year I feel like I'm getting things together again - as well as the college course, I'm doing some volunteering, and looking for cheap/free social groups to join instead of just sitting around at home becoming a hermit. So even with the lack of meds things are looking up. But I definitely seem more disorganised and more likely to forget to do certain house chores without the meds xD

The amount I'm spending is still low, similar to before, and I'm walking to and from college quite happily even though it's 50+ minutes each way. I guess I hadn't posted for a while because my income was even lower than my low spending so I've been feeling some impostor syndrome. But overall the habits I've learnt from here still shape my actions.

BookLoverL
Posts: 294
Joined: Tue Apr 09, 2019 4:17 pm
Location: England

Re: L's Journal

Post by BookLoverL »

I should dig out my copy of the book and redo stuff like my web of goals / evaluation of different parts of my life / etc. tbh. I got pretty directionless the last couple of years and ended up spending a lot of time playing a video game I got into while not doing much else, which was fun but ultimately kind of unsatisfying, so now that I've started my college course and volunteering and also the latest short term obsession I had with an anime seems to have burnt off the heat of the previous video game obsession a bit, I should try to remember what it was I actually wanted.

Doing something more creative would be nice, I think. I'd like to play my ukulele or sing as part of a band maybe, since I'm a bit too anxious at the moment to try busking by myself, but I'm restricted in meeting other musical types at gigs or something by the fact that my mum who I live with kicks up a huge fuss if I suggest walking as transport late at night and the final bus of the evening is somewhere between 10pm and 11pm, so I'm not really sure where I can go to meet people like that.

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