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Uploaded two older fics for A03 members: Crash-Landing and Stormshelters, with a shimmer of fresh grammar.

The archival efforts continue.

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I finished the Big Task yesterday, the one I have been working on most days for about a year and a half.

I didn't expect a dopamine rush from finishing this (though I did hope for one). Instead, it was like a string snapped behind me. A task I had been holding myself to with utmost firmness was over, and I was released. I toppled down, string cut, and ended up crying myself to sleep. It feels pathetic to even say this. There's no reason this should've hit my mind as though it were devastating rather than a joy. And yet, this was the effect. Even in the turmult, there was relief, but even the relief was stressful, because it was accompanied by a sense of, what next?

I woke up feeling able to do more. The Big Task has always felt like a task that would always at least partially occupy my attention until it was completed, limiting all other things, and it seems that it was. Without the pressure of it begging to be done, I cleared out three neglected areas of clutter in my home, edited a story, and meditated for the first time in quite a while. It was not joy I felt, but a continuation of simple relief. There's now a quiet space in the back of my head that was before an absolute cacophony of burning sound.

The thing is, there is more to do with the Big Task, but it is no longer the Big Task anymore. It is now passive, creative material that I can actively work with. It is an entirely different task now. It is a task that has flexibility and allows for thoughtfulness.

It's actually shocking, the... quiet. Even my shoulders feel lower. I know Big Tasks are supposed to be celebrated in order to cement a proper dopamine cycle that encourages the completion of even more Big Tasks. And I want to feel that. I want to be giddy about all the work I put in, and all that it can lead me to next. But I think maybe I already wanted to do Big Tasks, and this is the one Big Task that was blocking the rest from becoming actualized.

I do not yet know if this statement is accurate. Time will tell. It would be nice to feel pride and a sense of accomplishment, but the truth is that I still kind of think of my projects as things I'm doing that do not matter to anyone except for myself, which is... difficult to reconcile with. I have a hard time with things that might only matter to me. This particular task that I've completed was, in part, likely only possible to stick to so firmly because I have maintainted a deep sense that I needed to do it before I could move to things that mattered to other people, too. Which, again, is difficult to reconcile with. It would be a gentler way to view this task, if I could just appreciate the relief that I can give to myself, the momentary quiet in the background of my thoughts that I can achieve. If I could just let myself see something as meaningful because it's meaningful to me.

And it is meaningful to me, even if to no one else. I'll have more to do with it, yes, but in such a drastically different way now.

I can start the next steps. I'm not stuck in what feels like an infinite beginning. It's really an incredible thing, and though I don't know how anyone else would perceive it, at least I know it got me somewhere new.

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One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen.

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One thing I will obscurely note is that there is a definite pattern. Across months, the focus narrowed down and became abundantly clear. Selectivity forged attention, sleepnessness, devotion, sacrifice, both loss and gain. What was a wafer of cloud before is converging into raindrops. I follow a path that I traveled so recently, and understand that the loop is gaining critical mass. Spinning faster, gears grinding, smoking, building momentum - the feeling grows as a desire path cutting away from the circle, reaching out and inwards in the breath. I had always looked forward, but you meet the ground differently when you really dig in. It has hurt. So deeply and so cutting. It comes and it goes, like having enough air often does. I hope it matters to more than just me. It might have to be enough, if it matters only to me.

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hey man i see ur busy walking on your knees a hundred miles through the desert but if you’re bored with that me and my friends were thinking about getting together and letting the soft animals of our bodies love what they love. lmk

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Wonder if it's too late to be an aesthetic. Time has built itself around me, and I carry it like a backpack. I have spent such an awfully massive amount of effort trying to swathe myself in shapes other than my own, assuming what I am would be subject to disbelief and disregard, unless it was mingled with the familiar. After this self-imposed affliction, I need the kind of introspection that turns the microscopic into the infinite. I am a soft touch, but that's not the whole picture, and it's not the point, except for when it is. It's odd to feel the edges when you tear through something that doesn't have a name. I see razor bones and button nose, and I wonder who can even tell what's inherent or imposed. Always thought there was something here that everyone assumed the worst of, but no, most don't really work that way. The world has enough stumbling blocks without turning on yourself or someone else. You're probably okay. We're probably all at least a little bit okay. You're not inherently wrong; you're just watching yourself through a fictional gaze. We tell ourselves others will think awful things if we don't guard against it, and maybe some might, but most people just don't have the time. Even if they did, I doubt it changes much. You're fine (probably), and I'm fine (probably). You don't have to look the way you think you must.

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Love my wife so much. She's giggling over a video of a squirrel eating toast. The squirrel is so wiggly, and she's absolutely beaming at the screen. The squirrel is adorable, and she is adorable. What a person, oh wow, am I lucky.

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Sanctuary is now available for logged-in readers on AO3. Cas POV and soooo very soft and tender.

Enjoy!

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Got this from my author's blog, so responding here. Thank you so much, @angels--twice--descending! Messages like this really bring me a lot of joy... as well as relief. It's nice to know my fics are reaching their audience. So amazing to realize it's been over a decade of storytelling. 🥹🙏

There's more drafted on A03 (link) that I'm gradually uploading with new words. Please note that you do need to be logged in to see them. I hope you continue to enjoy, and thank you wholeheartedly for sticking around. 💛

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Today brings "Awakening" (with updates and new words!) to AO3. Had a lot of fun revisiting and adding to this classic. I hope you enjoy visiting memory lane with me.

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they say you can't pour from an empty cup but i've been doing it my whole life and aside from all of these mysterious ailments it's working out great for me

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"The Food and Drug administration has approved the U.S.'s first at-home alternative to the Pap smear, a procedure generations of women [and nonbinary and trans people with uteruses] have dreaded and often found painful.

The new device by Teal Health will offer a "much preferred experience," the company said in its announcement, and also aims to increase screening rates by making the procedure more convenient.

Traditionally, gynecologists have inserted a cold metal speculum deep into a woman's vagina to scrape cells from the cervix.

The Teal Wand — "built with empathy," the company said — uses a swab to collect a vaginal sample. Women will then mail the sample to a lab that will screen for HPV (human papillomavirus), the virus that causes nearly all cervical cancers. A growing body of research has found HPV testing to be highly accurate.

The FDA approval Friday [May 9, 2025] follows a U.S.-based study that found at-home screening was just as effective as that done in a doctor's office. The study also found women overwhelmingly preferred self–screening at home, and said they'd be more likely to stay up to date with cervical cancer screenings that way.

Every year, about 13,000 cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed, and more than 4,000 women die from the disease. Rates are down dramatically since Dr. Georgios Papanicolaou published a 1943 paper on how to use the Pap smear for screening, and it then became common.

But about a quarter of women in the U.S. are behind on such screenings, and medical experts say reducing that is key to the ultimate goal of eliminating cervical cancer. There's also a racial gap, with Black and Native American women far more likely to die from cervical cancer than white women. The HPV vaccine for teen and preteen girls, introduced in 2007, has also led to a global push to tackle the disease that way.

At-home cervical cancer screenings are already available in several other countries, including Australia and Sweden.

Teal Health says its self-testing device will be available starting next month [June 2025], in California first and then expanding. It will be by prescription, through a telehealth service, for women 25-65 years old who are "at average risk." The company says it's working with insurance companies to provide coverage."

-via NPR, May 10, 2025

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Imagining the chaos that would spread if Tumblr had a feature that tracked how many people saw and chose to ignore 0-note posts.

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Still so disappointed about the person that Neil Gaiman turned out to be.

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