I last updated this story on March 2020, but I never stopped thinking about it and churning through my notes and tinkering, everything just got really slow while survival and adaptation took first dibs on my creativity. For a while I felt bad leaving a wip hanging in the wind, this was the first long fic I started posting to AO3 without finishing first, but I knew the end points roughly, and there's something to be said for having those earlier chapters locked down to keep one focused.

Been writing on it more diligently for a while now, and I'm guesstimating another six chapters to bring it home.

Electronic Thumb (88801 words) by feldman
Chapters: 13/18
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark, Bruce Banner & Tony Stark, Bruce Banner/Natasha Romanov
Characters: Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Bruce Banner, Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, Laura Barton, Nick Fury, Maria Hill, Clint Barton, Isaiah Ross (Marvel)
Additional Tags: Road Trips, Americana, Magical Realism, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Extremis is the third heat, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Iron Man 3
Summary:

Strange motels and high-roller suites, natural and unnatural wonders, learning too much about your companions’ biological quirks, meeting new people (and some very old people), wrestling with moral quandaries, ingrained habits, and also an alligator, finding your way and losing your grip and finding each other…

LinkedIn gives me Amway downline vibes. The selling of a worksona as a bland extruded product, the tide of AI written drivel copy, the swarm of hollow buzzwords. As the chief in SuperTroopers said, "Desperation is a stinky cologne."

I'm getting a decent hit-rate with my resume/cover letter game, at least. Haven't heard back from the place that gave me a personality test after the interview, which, having taken a grad level course on psychometrics that covered test design, feels like being ghosted for not coloring a kid's placemat "correctly". Trying to wrap my head around networking, so I reached out to a couple people low-key so far, testing out how to do this as myself (feels vulnerable but not terrible) instead of retreating into the old worksona (and feeling like an asshole extruding a product).

Been listening to Stacey Abrams book, which is both motivating and challenging. At one point she says, "Ambition should be heady stuff. It should make your neck itch and your palms sweat. Or if you're lucky, ambition may bring a smile to your face, the smile of actually seeing a different, bigger future." I'm nowhere near the smiling phase, but I certainly have felt that nervy unease in the service of others' audacity, let's fucking ride my own tiger for a change. I may even work myself up to buying some folks coffee, which is crazypants social butterfly shit compared to my baseline.

Also listening to the Feminist Survival Project podcast, from Emily and Amelia Nagoski of "Burnout" book fame. I'm still in the 2019 eps, which are a good overview and expansion of the book material -- which I found very valuable but haven't been able to reread for unrelated reasons. These quotes from the Nagoskis resonated for me:


Re: crying as one of a dozen methods for moving through stress: "Crying has been stolen from you by a society that doesn't want to see people's pain, or take responsibility for their suffering."

I've been downsized : (

I have no holiday season crush in my future -- a relief so strong I count it as part of my gilded parachute. My team is exceedingly capable, and I've prepared them as much as I could to continue without me.

I have never collected unemployment before; I have never been given severence before. The best I'd gotten up til now is, "can you work out the full two week's notice? turns out you really do contribute value and we'd like to squeeze as much as possible until you go". In contrast, this was the most tender and solicitous firing I've ever had. I'm walking away with excellent references and community contacts.

So there's cushion, there's a placement service I will engage with this week, I have breathing space and time, and a waaaay better sense of rudimentary networking than when I started 9 years ago. I'm not continuing into the new fiscal year, but I was gently returned to the tool crib at least.

The thing about changing your life, is that your life changes. 

Just over a year ago I found out I had ADHD and went on medication. It took trying the medication to finally convince myself emotionally that I wasn't [insert calvinist exploitation mottoes here]. That feeling of being balanced on a point, poised to go wherever I willed, the lack of any hard climb between the thought of moving and the body responding...that the satisfaction of accomplishment is not simply an abstraction but a physical and emotional sensation.

That saying, "the satisfaction of a job well-done" -- which I'd only ever heard in the context of my 'procrastination' or as a punchline aimed at lazy or mercenary characters on tv -- I'd always thought was 100% sarcastic. Like, "wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which fills up first". At best, finishing a task just meant I'd avoided the negative consequences of fucking up (this time). There was always another task or six, and probably half of them were little gutbombs of shame and panic I 'should' have been doing instead.

That has been the fuel I burned to get anything done. I was going to prove I wasn't a slacker and a flake, even though I knew I was, because I CHOSE not to be. And since my brain didn't do positive reward, and really struggled with task initiation, I stomped pedal to the metal on negative motivation. Don't fuck up a good thing. Don't add any more burdens to what you're already carrying. Preserve everything good you can, that's how you prove you should have access to it. Grab any scrap of extra credit you can manage, because you will need that cushion when the fuck-up inevitably happens... Some survival skills and patterns of thought are fabulous and clever, some are vicious and cruel. They are all me against me.
A pill, even when you switch to the cheap-ass tablets that work better with your day and aren't as prone to shortages, even if you make peace with needing it, even when you've squirreled away enough of a stash that you feel safe getting used to taking it most days...a pill can't rewrite your whole concept of "How this animal affects its enviroment and interacts with other animals", but it sure can necessitate the need to.

So there's brownfield remediation: setting my mind to do a task habitually involves whipping up negative emotions that are theoretically exorcised upon completion of the task, the more onerous or lingering, the more layers of gelatinous shame coat it. Every moment I *could* be doing something, I felt I *should* be doing something, or at least reminding myself of what I'm not getting done. Feeling like a shitbag even when 'productive'. I may be a slacker, but at least I'm wracked with guilt and stress boils, I guess? This summer I've been actively trying to build a better way.

That sounds very proactive and brightside-y, but it looks like me staring and crying and talking to myself and processing no small amount of school and work trauma. Chelating some of the shame out of my day-to-day. Feeding my understimulation. Accomodating my overstimulation. Setting up a comfortable home office. Searching for motivations closer to my heart than fear, more connection-focused than shame. Figuring out how to pace myself, now that I can stop-rest-restart without multplying the difficulty. Learning how to let myself rest.

To quote Nick Cave back in June, "When that special hour comes (6pm for me) and I close my notebook and laptop, I shut my eyes for a moment in gratitude and acknowledge the feeling of a job well done, thanking my muse for the gifts bestowed upon me. Then I allow that delightful weariness to wash over me, happy that the most cherished time of the day is upon me – when I too can take off my bra and put on my jarmies."

I sobbed when I read that, because I had never felt that 'delightful weariness' until medication, and had never felt I'd ever really earned rest. I've been trying to, ever since.

While also not completely tanking my job, which I really do love through the dissipating fog of burnout and panic. This anxiety is probably 40% catastrophization/habitual expectation management from the adhd, and 40% the fact my job significantly changed under me while I was rebuilding my department & recovering from covid & rehabbing a gnarly hip since January. Let's not even mention the 'rents right now beyond "boomers gonna boom". I had to stop reading "Autism Unmasked" by Devon Price last month because, hooboy! it was hitting me like a family reunion inside a recurring dream, and we're not unpacking all that. Not until we've negotiated a fruitful peace between ourselves and our work (and not just because it's my bennies that pay for the pills).

I've also been rewatching M.A.S.H., and am open to any fic recs that might be thinky, smutty, or preferably both.

In the past couple weeks I've had a d&c, been diagnosed adhd, gotten my period, gotten meds, and today I'm experimenting on my brain chemically.

( the stranger thing is I'm reliving the puberty and politics of the 80's )

( my brain still pulls to the left tho )

Okay, then! Markedly verbose compared to recently, but recently I was drowning. I felt like I was slipping under bog water. Turns out I'd been swimming an icy channel all my life, and here I stand shaking on a strange new shore.

Two years into this pandemic, many things have been coming to a head, and so I called in a professional and found a therapist. She does not talk very much, but it seems she doesn't have to? I feel like I'm tackling a hoarder house, only it's in my own skull.

I've been trying to be as honest and genuine as possible, taking off as many filters as I can identify, not curbing my language or metaphors, and taking the time to put shit into words.

Three sessions in, yesterday, she floated the idea of getting me tested for ADHD. I'm thinking of going ahead, maybe there are more tools out there I can use? But yeah, kinda out of left field in a way that, upon examination, maybe shouldn't be so surprising that something is zigging when it's expected to zag.

Having paid for my account for another year, I should probably also use it? Previous posts have been scrapped due to excessive whining, minutia, or numb blankness.

The last four months have been especially bad. Hitting the 18 month mark both Mr. F and I have been trading off a kind of functional breakdown where we alternate going batshit. Like, days where you're just trying to get home and safe, but you're both the screaming teething toddler AND the exhausted parent, where you've absorbed a bit too much human misery and bullshit and cannot trust yourself not to get into a parking lot fight.

We both blew a fuse this fall. We've been navigating through this pandemic, and we've been fortunate to not be economic roadkill this time around, but Mr. F has been effectively "on-call" since it started, and I work in food insecurity. We took a long weekend in Chicago, knowing it was our only chance before another winter surge. It was lovely, a much-needed balm, the aquarium brought me to tears with wonder and beauty, I had 90min of bodywork that cracked and squeezed me like a platter of crab legs, and we had the pleasure of tipping very well everywhere we went.

I feel like the world has been dissolving for a long time, and now these processes are catalyzed. I do wonder, if I had been a more successful GenX, if my parents had been financially successful Boomers, how terrified would I be right now? I dunno. Instead I feel I'm living through the fruition of a lot of evil that I've been powerless to stop being sowed.

So yeah, how does one make this into an emotionally sustainable lifestyle? I sound batshit just asking the question. I can resort to 1. safety first 2. honesty always 3. people are more important than things. I can keep believing that humans are not just the worst thing to happen to humans, they are also the best. I think I can. I can talk, and write, and try to tell stories again, as dead concepts ferment and compost in my head and perhaps become sweet enough to grow things in.

Middletown (1540 words) by feldman
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Black Widow (Movie 2020), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Yelena Belova & Natasha Romanov, Yelena Belova & Natasha Romanov & Melina Vostokoff, Yelena Belova & Alexei Shostakov | Alexi Shostakov
Characters: Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Yelena Belova, Melina Vostokoff, Dottie Underwood, Alexei Shostakov | Alexi Shostakov
Additional Tags: Found Family, red room redux, hurray for metaphors, this thing sparkles like a burlesque costume, top ten list of shitty childhoods number one
Summary:

Homesick. Feral. Eleven. Gloaming. Kitchen. Six. Metastatic. Diaspora. Zero. Airplane.

Been quiet here lately, and burnt out and busy everywhere else. Big changes at work, my team is growing as are my responsibilities, I'm daunted, but it's good in the long run even as my imposter syndrome flares up. I've just had more than enough of change, I can't even process "good change" as a thing right now.

I turned 49 last month, which means I have been on this earth for half a century. I celebrated with a follow-up from my primary care, and a first ever visit to a neurologist. Before the warranty expires, I guess.

The CT confirms I have a brain without any worrying bits, and the neuro was kinda checked out for the brief visit we had. He responded to my "no, I'm not going to go on topomax right out of the gate" with a little push back, then a nod, and then writing me an Rx for topomax anyway. My guy, I'm seeing a specialist because the brain fog of too many migraines is affecting my life, why the fuck would I go on a drug infamous for being "lobotomy in a bottle"? The PA who came in after to brief me about the preventive and the new rescue meds was someone I could work with, so we're trying a different preventive instead (this was the negotiation I was prepared for, and it went as I hoped). Follow-up on that should be fun, depending on who handles the telemedicine. Hopefully the PA, since it involves talking to patients?

The preventive is exerting the intended effect, which is fabulous. Less impressed by the anti-nausea part of the rescue cocktail, which does help in the moment, but then gives me full-on pregnancy-style get-a-glove-and-play-alien-probe constipation. Aspirin + cannabis is still a great option for off the clock, but I'm very glad to have something I can take and still drive.

Meanwhile, I take back nearly everything I've said about my laziness. I've literally been playing the game with half my blood tied behind my back.

My hematologist is a kick-ass diagnostician. Ten minutes of questions ranging back and forth from childhood through now, using the spotty test results in my record as landmarks ("I didn't have health insurance until I was in my 30's,"), and she crafted a thorough timeline of chronically untreated chronic anemia. I may never have had sufficient iron stores, like, ever. Even when I'm diligent for a couple years with the iron pills, my results are only barely normal. So Friday I'll be sitting in the chemo infusion clinic for 5 hours on a drip of essentially rust and sugar, so I can move from a "grocery store in April 2020" level to a "no longer invulnerable to Magneto" level.

Hat tip to my mom, who told me before my referral, "Oh, you were always anemic; we had to give you drops from when you were a baby!" Which was news to me, though I remember those green drops. The fact I was anemic before menarche was a Vital Clue missed for literal decades, as every doc was seeing the test result as a one-off typical menstruator's problem that a little supplement would fix. Also, she escalated my 'wheat gives me wicked heartburn' to 'mild gluten allergy'. Apparently one is supposed to be able to eat more than 1 slice of toast without breathing fire.

Corporeal maintenance, man. Gotta take care of the meat suit as best one can. Looking forward to gaining superpowers on Friday.

My vax welt is turning into a bruise, which is fascinating in a kind of concrete dodged-a-bullet way. Biology is amazing and terrifying.

In other news, I haven't had a migraine worth logging for 9 days *nervous laughter*. So something is working to calm things down finally, be it the supplemental B vitamins and Mg (it's been about 3 months which is the lead time on that intervention), or the Cephaly, which is a skull-friendly TENS unit I'm trying out. It helps that the sun is coming back as well.

I'm restless and unfocused, but I have hopes of writing again.