danielforshort - Tumblr blog

[danielforshort]

I feel like my work weeks bounce my mood around so much! A lot of my positive feelings still rely on how well I think I performed or how productive I felt I was. If I messed up (like last week I made twenty trillion little email mistakes that my coworker caught which was frustrating) I feel like I haven't earned my weekend but also I know I need a reset.

This week I am feeling so good about my work. I've been able to take notes, carefully send emails, do some writing, schedule meetings, etc. I feel like I'm on top of the world!

I think getting into the practice of writing up my day's accomplishments no matter how shitty I feel (something I was doing at the beginning of the summer but slipped out of my routine) will really help me leave my week behind and allow me to be grateful for what I did do and reset.

If folks have habits/tips for not letting academia/grind mindset rock your mood extremely, please share them!

[danielforshort]

It is so fulfilling and inspiring to sit down with professionals and mentors and describe your interests and projects and see their faces light up!! And hear them say over and over "this is so interesting and exciting!"

:D

[danielforshort]

I'll be soppy and romantic later but for now, this is just my work of art.

[danielforshort]

Tomato plants! Three of them were definitely dead, but I put them in the ground because of a whimsical hope they'd come back to life. They did not. The blue tags indicate were I've put some pea seeds (pea pods? Peas?) I'll put some yellow bell pepper seedlings in once they get a bit bigger.

[danielforshort]

Getting drunk on red wine, playing video games, enjoying a hearty meal, looking forward to a sleepy lay in tomorrow... what a blessed life I live

[danielforshort]

Northern VA Native Plant Garden

Wow oh my goodness life turned upside down and inside out and overall not great! But in an effort to practice things that would help my mental health I started fussing around in my garden. The new house I'm in has a front yard and a backyard. I've decided to devote most of my attention to the backyard. I spend a lot of time scrolling through Facebook Marketplace and my various FB groups looking for free gardening materials. I'm not really planning on staying in the house past the year (though I'd like to be done moving honestly) so i don't want to invest too much money in the garden. But time and energy are fine to spend; I'm enjoying playing in the dirt so I get an immediate return of "childlike joy at playing in dirt" and a possible future return of "oh I grew stuff!"

My goal is to have an ornamental side of the garden and a raised garden bed for things I plan on eating. Currently i have a ton of yellow bell pepper seedlings (I started them a bit late in the season but it's been unseasonably warm these past few falls and mild winters) and 14 tomato plants! I do not like tomatoes but I do like to grow things and they're so easy.

I'm planning on making my raised bed out of some bricks/pavers/garden stones someone gave me. It doesn't need to be huge or pretty or super stable, just a bit of a container for me to drop some plants in. Someone was also giving away plant soil which was great.

With all the weeds I've pulled up I'm hoping to fake/badly compost them. I'm too impatient to wait the months and months I need for them to properly break down. I've stuck them all in a black garbage bin to hope the 100 degree days will kill off their seeds so I can crumble them up in the bottom of my raised garden bed.

For the ornamental side of things I'm focusing on native Virginia plants! There's a great FB group dedicate to native VA plants and people are always giving away or swapping plants! A very generous woman gave me a ton of plants that I'll detail about later in this post!

First I'd like to document the weeds I pulled! I had so much fun weeding actually. It's a repetitive task I enjoy and I like to identify plants even if they are weeds. I used Google Lens for IDing most of them and it actually seemed fairly good at that. Without further ado a list of the different weeds I saw in my garden during 2+ hours of work :D

Note: None of these photos were taken by me! I was too focused on weeding to take good photos of anything.

Weeds

Erigeron Canadensis (Horseweed)

This one was fun to pull! It came up easily and hadn't flowered or gone to seed at all! I think Alexis Nicole has talked about this one before? I wish it had been growing in a part of my garden that didn't need to be weeded right that moment so I could have eaten some. Apparently "dried leaves can be used as a seasoning with a flavor similar to tarragon" (source: eat the weeds) I'm sure I'll find it again maybe in my front yard and I'll try to save some.

Oxalis Acetosella (Wood Sorrel)

God this one HURT to pull, emotionally speaking! I love wood sorrel so much and its one of those plants I can ID easily. Some of my brave friends will eat it when I offer it but most pass. Unfortunately it was right in the area I needed pulled up for my raised bed. I am hoping I can encourage it to grow in my ornamental side! Alexis Nicole has definitely talked about this one before. It had shallow roots and was easy to pull :)

Matricaria Chamomilla (German Chamomile)

Another one I did not want to pull up but had to! It had pretty shallow roots that came up easily. I actually collected all the ones I weeded and popped them in some water. I hope to replay in my ornamental side of things. Fingers crossed they've survived this shock. I have a couple packs of really old seeds so I've started some chamomile from seed. I don't know that it'll work. I think I have some growing in my front yard so I might try to transplant that.

Lactuca Serriola (Prickly Lettuce)

This plant was my second least favourite to weed. Its roots are strong and run deep. The prickles bit me through my gloves. It was satisfying when I got a good grip and pulled it all up but more often than not I heard the roots snap leaving good chunks under ground. It sucked. A lot of them were super big and tall. I know its edible but didn't save any to forage. I'm sure it will be back.

Solanum Carolinense (Carolina Horsenettle)

This plant is my mortal enemy. It bites you. Its stubborn. Its totally toxic. I hate it. This was the most predominant weed in the garden. It was tall and if I tried to reach around to grab a different weed it would scratch me.

Verbascum Thapsus (Common Mullein)

Lord this plant was a stubborn one. The roots were strong and deep but it was so satisfying when I got it out. I actually couldn't remember this one's name when I sat down to write this so I used the Virginia Tech website (link here) to ID it! It's a great website that lets you select features of a plant and offers ones that fit those criteria.

I had a lot of fun weeding and IDing these plants! I'll have another post up about the native VA plants I'm cultivating. I hope whoever reads this enjoys the post. If its just me I hope I find this useful as I start a garden art journal where I can draw and take notes on all these plants.

[danielforshort]

I'm actually so physically exhausted from work this week, which is incredible as I do not have a physically demanding job.

My team ran our first MRIs without the PI present!! And when I say my team I mean me and one other person!!!! I was so terrified as I felt really unsure of myself and incompetent at what was expected of me. I realised later a lot of that was because I did not have concrete steps/goals/expectations of what to do.

I sat down before the MRI days and wrote out a list of the tasks that needed to be done for the appointment (consenting a participant, opening different programs for the scan, etc) and sent it to my PI for review. I also gathered all the different scripts to put together a super easy to access way of guiding myself through an appointment. That calmed so much of my anxiety.

Unfortunately I didn't get to that till later in the day and I stressed myself out so much that I got a stress migraine and spiraled into an OCD loop for almost all of Monday. It sucks to lose so much time and energy to my illnesses.

The MRI appointments went really well and I think most importantly (for me) I felt confident and mentally present during the whole appointment. I wasn't overwhelmed or scared I wasn't doing the right thing.

Huge takeaway: I need to remember (and remind my team mates) that being autistic is a disability. I need accommodations to present me with the exact steps/expectations of me in order to keep myself regulated. We work with the autistic community in our research, so we do a lot of scaffolding and work to make sure all of our participants feel comfortable and know what is expected of them. Yet I forgot to do the same for myself!

I'm going to keep this in mind when I have my next one on one meeting with my PI next week. A huge drawback of being late-diagnosed and never receiving official accommodations is that I have to figure it all out on my own. I can tell when I'm distressed but I don't always know how to fix that/accommodate myself. My PI even asked (because I was really open with how anxious I was about running these MRIs without her) how to best support me/lessen the anxiety. I didn't have an answer.

Now I know that I was so distressed partially because I did not understand what was expected of me, and I can work on making sure that I am accommodated for that. But this can't only fall on me. Accommodating and working with disabled people means that my team needs to also understand and consider if what they are asking of me is accessible to me.

Being disabled in academia is hard! Academia is hard! My life has been so difficult lately and I feel like I cannot catch a break!! But I am not alone and I am determined to persevere.

[danielforshort]

Doom clock #2: need a roommate by Friday. This is hell. Hours and hours of looking for a roommate. So much work trying to do this. I feel like I'm doing it on my own.

[danielforshort]

I'm tired. I want to play in my garden and sit with my friends and read good stories. I don't want to dread my mornings. I don't want to dread my work.

[danielforshort]

Captions shouldn't be censored. If the video says fuck or cum or cunt the captions should say the fucking word.

[danielforshort]

Ohh the Monday sleepies got me... I'm so sleepy...

[danielforshort]

I have come up with a better metaphor than “you can’t pour from an empty cup” for burnout. You can’t boil an empty kettle. Pouring from an empty cup just gets you nowhere. Trying to boil an empty kettle can ruin the kettle, the stove, and burn down your house if you keep trying it.

[danielforshort]

[danielforshort]

My beautiful group of friends and I got to play our first in person session (for this specific crowd). I'm buzzing with joy and love and grief that I'll be leaving them so soon. I have to fly back to VA and all week I've been reflecting on how much love and joy I feel being here. Im not ready to call it quits on my PhD (I can and will persevere) but this trip has truly been a key step in dealing with my mental health. It's so hard to be in a place full of kindness and softness and healing and then to have to leave it. But I know this can't be life forever. I know I will miss my research eventually. I just need some rest. I will miss these people so much.

[danielforshort]

My life is hard and I am scared and I am lonely but also I am so loved. My friends are the greatest family I could ask for. Everything will be okay because I am loved by my friends.

[danielforshort]

The Report Card (Fantasy High Recaps)

I decided to make a post with all the recap links so I could put a link in my page’s description for mobile users since this website barely functions. Please let me know if there are any problems with the links. 

Junior Year

Episode One: Summer Scaries

Episode Two: Summer Breakdown

Episode Three: Not All Who Wanda Are Lost

Episode Four: Under Pressure 

Episode Five: Mall Madness

Episode Six: Party Politics

Episode Seven: Stress Tested

Episode Eight: Fracas at the Frostyfaire Folk Festival

Episode Nine: Vulture Clash

Episode Ten: Cursed Out

Episode Eleven: A Very Merry Moonar Yulenear

Episodes Twelve and Thirteen: Baron’s Game and Infernal Conflict (mostly the latter)

Episode Fourteen: Dawn of Justice

Episode Fifteen: The Last Stand

Episode Sixteen: Untapped Rage

Episode Seventeen: The Name

Episode Eighteen: Rock the Boat

Episodes Nineteen and Twenty: Ragenarok 

The Seven

Episode One: Party of Seven

Episode Two: In or Out

Episode Three: Big City Connections

Episode Four: Stone Temple Pile-Up

Episode Five: Reflections

Episode Six: Belles of the Baronies

Episode Seven: Bloppleganger Blitz

Episode Eight: And Another Thing

Episode Nine: Time & Space

Sophomore Year

Episode One: Sophomores Start

Episode Two: Mirror Madness

Episode Three: Havoc at the Hotel Cavalier

Episode Four: Heartache on the Celestine Sea

Episode Five: Leviathan Rock City

Episode Six: Pirate Brawl

Episode Seven: The Friendship Section

Episode Eight: The Row and the Ruction

Episode Nine: Falinel

Episode Ten: The Dangerous Mind of Aelwen Abernant

Episode Eleven: Revelations and Revivifications

Episode Twelve: Hellbound

Episode Thirteen: Crustaceans and Crushes 

Episode Fourteen: Daddies and Demons

Episode Fifteen: Blast from the Passed

Episode Sixteen: My Green Heaven

Episode Seventeen: The Forest of the Nightmare King

Episode Eighteen: Fearful Symmetry 

Episode Nineteen: Spring Break! I Believe In You! (Part 1)

Episode Twenty: Spring Break! I Believe In You! (Part 2)

[danielforshort]

okay not to over analyze a lighthearted piece of dialogue from freshman year but when gorgug dies and wilma&digby are upset because they don't know how to connect with him in that feeling, it makes me think abt transracial adoptee gorgug and the experience of white parents who fundamentally do not understand their child of colour and cannot bridge the gap to sympathizing with things they do not relate to. i know wilma&digby love him and i think they're good parents, but the stance in fandom that they're perfect parents is very strange to me tbh. their house is too little for their son to exist.