it’s been a hot minute since I’ve gotten on over here…lol
I’ve been hugely busy as of late between getting work done for my Inktober projects as well as getting stuff done around the house and for my blog. I haven’t been text blogging as much because of these things but also because it got quite boring to have to keep giving the same updates over and over again…
Anway, I’m please to say that I got some work done in my room this afternoon and I feel so much better about some of the work I need to do down the line. Case in point I have access to my apothecary shelf again so I can finally do the draws for the large-scale work for my blog. I’ve been meaning to get into my room again and get it purged, but it’s been a hot minute since I gave myself the time. I figure if I can get through at least an hour of work every time, I’ll have things completed soon… however, I don’t want to hold myself to that too tightly because I’ve said that before and nothing got done sooner… so let’s see how that goes… but I do feel awesome about what I’ve managed to get done so far… so let’s see how much farther it goes.
I went to campus of my own accord because I didn’t want to be cooped up in the house, and it was a mandated experience that I go do an artist date for my Artist Way project. I’m currently sitting at the library at CPP and wondering why I didn’t look up the Kellogg hours because THEY’RE NOT OPEN ON FRIDAYS and the exhibit I wanted to see is on campus… They’re also not changing out the Benton any time soon either, so there’s that. Is it going to plan? No. Am I mad about it. Also no. I can make my own fun… so there…
The thing no one ever tells you about healing your l self is how CIRCULAR the damn process is. I’m dealing with the same old wounds and heartaches and I’m wildly angry and frustrated with myself that it seems I haven’t learned my lessons.
Reminder: I’m not alone, I’ve never been and I won’t ever be. I just get through today and I’ll be just fine.
you know… it’s been a day of emotional highs and lows… I’ve deleted mt TikTok again because it was just dead weight for me and I don’t regret it but there’s also this anxiety and need to just get out and be impulsive, which I can’t do right now because that will literally cost me…
Random writing tips that my history professor just told during class that are actually helpful
Download all your sources or print them so you can turn off your wifi
Give your phone to someone
Just. WRITE. Writing is analysing, you’ll get more ideas as you write. It doesn’t need to be perfect, for now you can just blurt out words and ideas randomly. You can fix it later.
Create a skeleton/structure before writing.
Stop before you get exhausted. It’s best to stop writing when you still have some energy and inspiration left, this will also motivate you to get started again next time.
Make a to do list
Work in bite sizes. Even if it’s not much, as long as you put some ideas on paper or do some editing.
Simple language =/= boring language, simple language = clear language.
Own your words. If they are not your words, state this clearly in the text, not just in the footnotes.
STOP BEFORE YOU GET EXHAUSTED. Listing it again because it’s easily one of the best tips a teacher has ever given me.
I’m glad Lee Pace went into acting instead of becoming the charismatic cult leader the mad scientists were trying to create when they were genetically engineering him in the lab.
I mean… who’s to say he isn’t already doing that through his acting? (For a bit of clarity for people here… my portion of the statement is meant to be sarcastic and a joke…)
Head and tail end are stuffed w ultra plush fiber fill and the bulk of the body is packed full of weighted pellets that have a nice crunchy sound when you squeeze it. Not weighed yet, but it feels between 1.5 - 2lbs?
She doesn’t even have her mouth and flippers yet!!!! She’s fucking embarrassassed…
Smelling you
Finished! My mom named her Beans this morning lol.. She’s around 1.2lbs and soppingly pitiful
I was working on a history paper today and found a book from 1826 that seemed promising (though dull) for my topic, on an English Catholic family’s experience moving to France.
And it ended up not really being suitable for my purposes, as it goes. But part of the book is actually devoted to Kenelm, the author’s oldest son…and man, his dad loved him.
Kenelm seems to have had a fairly typical upbringing for a young English gentleman, although he is a bit slow to read. At twelve he’s sent to board at Stoneyhurst College—often the big step towards independence in a boy’s life, as he’ll most likely only see his parents sporadically from now on, and then leave for university.
When he’s sixteen, however, his father moves the whole family to France, so Kenelm gets pulled out of school to be with them again. Shortly after the move, his dad notices that he seems depressed. Kenelm confides in him that he’s been suffering from “scruples” for the last eighteen months—most likely what we’d now call an anxiety disorder.
And his dad is pissed—at the school, because apparently Kenelm had been seeking help there and received none, despite obviously struggling with mental health issues. So his dad takes it seriously. He sets him up to be counseled by a priest—there were no therapists back then—and doesn’t send him away to be boarded again, instead teaching him at home himself.
And his mental health does improve. His dad describes him as well-liked, gentle, pious, kind and eager to please others; at twenty he’s thinking about a career in diplomacy or going into the military—which his dad thinks he is not particularly suited for, considering his favorite pastimes are drawing and reading. He’s excited about his family’s upcoming move to Italy, and he’s been busy learning Italian and teaching it to his siblings.
Henry Kenelm Beste dies of typhus at twenty years, four months, and twenty-five days. That’s how his dad records it. That’s why his dad is telling this story. It’s not an extraordinary story—Kenelm’s story struck me because he sounds so…ordinary, like so many kids today. And he was so, so loved. His dad tried hard to help him compassionately with his mental health at a time where our current knowledge and support systems didn’t exist. You can feel how badly he wanted his son to be remembered and loved, to impress how dearly beloved he was to the people who knew him in life.
I hope he’d be glad to know someone is still thinking of Kenelm over 200 years later.
Anyway, that’s why I’m crying today.
so I fell down a Google rabbit hole a little bit. the whole book OP is describing is on Project Gutenberg (it’s called Four Years In France and the bit about Kenelm’s education starts at page 282), but I really wanted to focus on that bit because I think it’s remarkably understanding of mental health issues given the time period:
Scruples are, by no means, of the nature of religious melancholy; they are not inconsistent with the Christian grace of hope: they suppose innocence; for the sinner may be hardened, may be penitent, may be wavering, but cannot properly be said to be scrupulous: scruples not only preserve from sin, but have also the good effect (the gift of divine mercy,) of purging the heart from all affection to sin, as was manifested in the future life of Kenelm.
Yet this fear, “the beginning of wisdom,” acting on an ill-informed conscience, is hurtful, as it indisposes to a cheerful energetic performance of duty. I said to Kenelm, “If there are beings, (and we are told that such there are,) who are interested that man should do ill, they could by no other means so effectually obtain their purpose as by fixing our attention on that by which we may offend.” A priest, whom I had known in England during his emigration, and whom I had the advantage of meeting again at Paris; a man whose sanctity inspired Kenelm with respect and confidence,—said to him, “Unless you shall be as sure that you have offended God in the way in which you apprehend, as you would be sure of having committed murder, I forbid you to mention it even to me in confession.”
Just for some context and to translate this into simpler English: Kenelm developed these “scruples” after a serious illness which, among other things, tanked his grades and meant that he didn’t win an academic award he’d been trying to achieve. His dad directly links that illness with his mental health issues.
His dad describes “scruples” as Kenelm being afraid of accidentally sinning, and he’s so preoccupied with it that he spends all his time thinking about how to avoid sin than, like, socializing with other kids or spending time with loved ones or actively trying to dogood. It’s coming from a good place, but it’s preventing him from living his life (and also ignoring God’s mercy/the concept of confession, but like, it’s very clear that the dad’s most concerned with how it’s affecting the kid in general, and the religious stuff is how he’s able to explain it).
And I really like the priest’s “unless you know you sinned, on purpose, in the same way you would know if you murdered someone, you have done nothing wrong and therefore you have absolutely nothing to confess to me about.”
But what’s really interesting here is that the dad distinguishes scruples from “religious melancholy” – what we’d probably now call intrusive thoughts. Kenelm is afraid of accidentally sinning and is trying so hard not to that it’s interfering with his life; people with religious melancholy are being bombarded with thoughts of sin and are convinced that they are beyond salvation because of those thoughts.
But what’s REALLY interesting is a sermon I came across while Googling religious melancholy:
I come now to the last case I proposed to speak to, which doth relate to these unhappy persons, who have naughty, and sometimes blasphemous thoughts start in their minds, while they are exercised in the worship of God, which makes them ready to charge themselves with the sin against the Holy Ghost, to pronounce their condition to be without hopes of remedy, and to fear that God hath utterly cast them off […]
That their case is not so dangerous as they apprehend it, I shall endeavour to show by the following considerations.
1. Because these frightful thoughts do for the most part proceed from the disorder and indisposition of the body […] 2. Because they are mostly good people, who are exercised with them. For bad men, whose heads are busied in laying one scene of wickedness or other, how they may gratify their malice, or execute their revenge, or over-reach their neighbours, or violate their trusts, or satisfy their beastly lust, rarely know any thing of these kind of thoughts, or use to complain of them. But they are honest and well-meaning Christians of unhealthy constitutions, and melancholy tempers, who are so miserably harrass’d by them; who above all things earnestly desire an interest in their God and Saviour, and for that reason the least dishonourable thought of him, which insinuates itself into their minds, is so dreadful unto them. 3. Because it is not in the power of those disconsolate Christians, whom these bad thoughts so vex and torment, with all their endeavours to stifle and suppress them. Nay often the more they struggle with them, the more they increase […] It will be therefore much to your detriment to hide yourselves from your friends, and to quit the calling wherein you were exercised; in that people of dejected tempers never fare worse than by themselves, and when they have nothing to do […]
When you find these thoughts creeping upon you, be not mightily dejected […] Neither violently struggle with them; since experience doth teach that they increase and swell by vehement opposition; but dissipate and waste away, and come to nothing when they are neglected, and we do not much concern ourselves about them […] It is not therefore a furious combat with melancholy thoughts, which will but weaken and sink the body, and to make the case worse, but a gentle application of such comfortable things as restore the strength, and recruit the languishing spirit that must quash and disperse these disorderly tumults in the head.
To translate into simpler English:
Your intrusive thoughts are not a moral failing; it is a disease you cannot control.
The fact that these thoughts disturb you is a sign that you are a good person: you’re not imagining sin in order to plan doing it, it’s just coming into your head without you wanting it.
It is counterproductive to isolate yourself (since it cuts you off from support) or to just try really hard not to think about that thing you’re thinking about. Trying really hard not to think about it just means you’re thinking about it more.
Instead, remember that the thoughts are only thoughts (and won’t do anything without you acting on them) and perform gentle self-care.
This is from 1692. THE SAME YEAR THE SALEM WITCH TRIALS HAPPENED, JUST FOR A POINT OF REFERENCE.
ALT
