cosmolinguist | Recent Entries

On a single tube train alone the other day, I saw two people in black thin-rimmed aviators and all I could thin was well now I know what I want my next pair of glasses to look like!

Never felt so much like a dad, possibly because that style always reminded me of my dad since that's what he wore when I was a little kid.

But one of these two people was a young person of ambiguous gender presentation, so I have hope that such things can become fashionable among the queers.

I'm due an eye test, and presumably new glasses, so I've been keeping an eye out for what kind of frames I might want (since the narrow rectangular thick-framed "hipster glasses" that seem to suit me best are not as readily available as they once were! the frames I have now are boring as hell, too big and too round for me even though they're not as much of either as has been popular lately).

1. What was the reason you began a Dreamwidth or LiveJournal account (or both)?
I started LiveJournal in 2002 when a new friend (soon girlfriend) heard me saying that I wanted to write more and suggested LiveJournal. "What's LiveJournal?" I said, and she gave me an invite code, and here I am.

I moved to DW in 2011, I can't remember which exact thing made me do it but it was after Strikethrough, before things got very Russian but I think they were getting pretty Russian.

2. How many DW or LJ communities do you subscribe to?
Five.

3. Do you have a favorite community or one you check out often to see what's new?
I mean, they're all on my reading page. Most are pretty quiet; one I made for covid-cautious people and don't use much myself any more either (its name is a pun based on "herd immunity," that's how old it is...). The best are thisfinecrew, for U.S. political actions people can taken (often online or relatively low-spoons) and thissterlingcrew, the British version of the same thing. Very useful communities to have In These Times.

4. How did you pick your user name?
This one was picked by D and another friend (I now cannot remember who) independently when I was looking for a new one.

5. If you could change your user name, would you?
It's clearly from a very specific time in my life, when I was using the name Cosmo and studying linguistics.

As for changing it, I mean, I could. I have. My LJ went through a couple of names too. I almost never re-use user names either; I just use whatever sounds like a good idea at the time. I can barely remember what it was before, and would probably prefer that one now. I did make a concerted effort to get away from puns, things based on my real-life first name, or both; no wonder this is what my friends suggested for me, this is my Brand.

While I'm here, another point I've been meaning to make under this tag for a bit but haven't gotten around to: having been writing about my life for half of it now, I find myself wishing there was a way for tags to become, like, dormant or something. There are lots of tags that I want to keep having but am not going to add new entries to, so I wish I didn't always have to look at them in the list or when I'm choosing tags.

( Just making a note of some uspol stuff. )

I thought I was doing okay on the weekend, but now that I'm back at work things are really rough on my brain.

Work is intensely demanding. My dreams were violent and graphic last night and I woke up wanting to do nothing more than call in sick but the work-placement person I'm responsible for started today and I had to be there to talk to her and try to find things to do despite having no idea what the rest of my team is doing and being in maybe the worst possible position to find tasks for a bright graduate who'll be here two days a week for a few months. I had two meetings in a row this afternoon with different parts of the org I work with that were properly existential: we stumbled over questions like "who's responsible for drafting the Scottish guidance on active travel?" or "what exactly do we want local authorities to do regarding the built environment?" This would be so unfair for a new person who feels like she's jumping in at the deep end just being in a meeting about what we're doing on one Government consultation.

I only realised today that I'd kinda conflated two different TfL invites and now the thing I'm going to London for tomorrow, I dint even want to and it doesn't seem worth it. I've got a train ticket I hate to waste, but bleh. Bleh!

Counseling is right after work on a Tuesday, so I managed to squeeze in a quick Teddy walk in the glorious sunshine (the weather has been amazing today, that's today's one saving grace) and then absolutely exhausted myself trying to explain my week. She's not available at rhe usual time next week but I won't be the week after, and the week after that she won't be, so I took the unusual step of fitting in an appointment at a different time next week; usually if my normal one doesn't work I just skip it, but it feels like I need more at this point.

I read something that seems particularly relevant on Long Covid Awareness Day, a day which as an online pal who has LC says says,

We are combatting willful ignorance. People actively do not want to know about Long Covid, and the long-term health consequences of Covid infections. They do not want to see us.

The thing I read is about "AI" as currently understood, and grief. And I'm glad it connects both of these things to covid.

Generative AI emerged during a global pandemic -- a global trauma of mass death (1.2 million people in the US died of COVID, and about 7 million globally -- these are, no doubt, figures that undercount how many actually died of the disease, let alone those like my son who died during that time period of other causes -- overdoses, suicide, murder, and deaths related and unrelated to the pandemic).

Mass trauma, mass death and, as such, mass grieving. But it was, at the time and still to this day, a grief interrupted, a grief buried, a grief denied, a grief unobserved. We were often not able to bury our dead, not able to hold funerals, not able to have wakes, not able to observe the rituals of death, not able to gather, to bring food, to hold and comfort one another.

And when we were told the pandemic was over -- it hasn't really ended; the World Health Organization says there were around 150,000 cases of COVID reported in the last month -- we didn't deal with our trauma. We didn't deal with our grief. We were supposed to bury our feelings; we were supposed to forget. It was back-to-school, back to work, back to "normal."

There was, in fact, a massive demonstration of grief – an outpouring of grieving in public – during COVID; and that was the Black Lives Matter movement, the protests that occurred in cities throughout the country particularly after the murder of George Floyd. This grief was not private or hidden; it was collective. This grief was not just personal, expressed by those impacted directly by racism and police violence; it demanded from protestors and onlookers, empathy, solidarity. This grief was expressive – even as we are always told with protest, as with grief, that that is not the “good way” to say it. The grief of Floyd’s death – and all the deaths – was not sufficient. It was not simply a marker or memorial of death; but it was an act of life, an act of repair. It was a demonstration of love and loss and fury; it was a commitment to the future.

I had this tab open before, but I've only gotten around to reading it properly now that it seems to echo that emotional literacy thing.

It's the arousal-valence model.

By identifying your current level of arousal and valence, you can start to build awareness of your bodily sensations and the connection between those sensations and your emotions.

It looks like a good next step for me in "what to do next," like it's all well and good understanding that I'm bad at identifying and acknowledging my emotions, but now what can I do to make this less of a problem for me.

Thanks everyone for the kind comments.

Surprisingly, I slept fine -- well, I was surprised anyway. I don't remember any of my dreams.

I am very amused that two of the smartest people I know (one of whom is a psychotherapist!) told me to play Tetris.

There are studies on this, often in particular groups of people who might acquire PTSD like healthcare workers or combat veterans.

I'm good at games like that and I love them. I have not literal Tetris but a similar simple colorful block-positioning game on my phone, which I play all the time anyway -- usually as something to keep me busy enough to be able to listen to a podcast or sometimes to watch something on TV, or sometimes to tire my eyes out enough to let me go to sleep.

But now I can tell myself it's medicinal!

I had a nice day: walking to and from angelofthenorth's this morning to help unload the van into her flat, enjoying the nice springlike weather for a change, and by the time I was home and showered it was almost time for said psychotherapist and her wife to visit, which is lovely as they are friends I rarely/never get to see, who were just nearby for the afternoon. I made dinner for us -- curry with sauce from a jar and added peppers and leftover chicken the others had last night. We're all pretty floppy, after those two had to take on tasks that were meant to be done yesterday by the two of us who were in Wales so much longer than we planned to be. But in a nice cozy way. No plans at all tomorrow, which I'm very much looking forward to.

The plan for today was to leave early, drive the four hours back to Manchester, and unload the van at angelofthenorth's flat.

I planned to be home by mid-afternoon. I was planning to make dinner, and I hoped to be back soon enough and with enough energy left over to walk Teddy at the usual kind of time, 4 or 5 in the afternoon.

We checked out of the hotel at 8, went for breakfast at the Starbucks in the Travelodge parking lot, and got on the road maybe half an hour later.

We'd just gotten out of town and on an A road/highway, I was just thinking about texting a quick "on our way!" for V and D to wake up to, but before I could fish my phone out of the pocket trapped by the seatbelt, ( details of car crash which sound scary so please be assured no one was injured! )

( And my pitch-black humor about the situation. )

The van was being driven by a friend of angelofthenorth's who has rented lots of vans, used to drive one for Argos, and was a very careful driver. He is a retired cop, so when we made it to a nearby lay-by/rest area, he called the rental company to report the accident, he described it very calmly and precisely, in slightly more technical terms than the lady on the other end was expecting. He said he hadn't been in an accident himself since 1990something, but all his skills were clearly intact from the many other incidents he'd called in like this.

The van wasn't badly damaged but wasn't safe to drive without the passenger side (he called it near side) mirror, and indicator/blinkers on that side too. (The mirror hadn't actually exploded, but all these things were hanging by the wires from the damaged housing.) So we had to call AA too, and wait for them to be able to send something big enough to haul a loaded Peugeot Boxer van.

The accident happened a couple minutes before 9am. After we were told "before 12.20," 11.40, 11.45 and 12.45, a nice man with a big yellow AA truck pulled ahead of us at 12.50, eliciting such cheers from the other two (who of course recognized it more quickly than I could) that I jumped a little.

We had to wait in the lay-by not far from where we'd set off, for a length of time that should've gotten us basically back to Manchester (minus stops to pee/get lunch/etc.). We were waiting there so long that angelofthenorth's blood sugar was a worry, but luckily it remained okay.

The AA man was efficient and kind, and it was a little bit exciting to get to ride in the back of his truck, which had such high steps that it reminded me of getting into tractors. He got us to the body shop he was told to take us to, we were told they would have arranged to swap our van for another one, but when we got there it was closed.

There was time pressure here too because we were also coming up on, and then quickly past, the time this poor guy was supposed to finish his shift, and his commitment to not abandoning us and our burdened van on a street somewhere in Swansea was coming up against not only the end of his shift and the beginning of his weekend, but the end of the time he'd be safe to drive -- he woke up at 4.30 this morning and I bet that seemed like a very long time ago as he was stuck with us while a surprisingly large number of telephone conversations were needed.

The looming fact that it was Friday suddenly loomed into relevance. The AA driver talked a lot about places closing early on a Friday, and already mid-afternoon I was seeing queues of traffic in Swansea as he drove us around. I hadn't expected we'd have to deal with Friday rush hour traffic of course!

Way too many frustrations, shenanigans and phone calls ensued. I'll spare you the grumbling and details but we by 2.45 we had the chance to use a toilet, by 3 we had access to a new van, by 3.30 we had swapped everything from the broken one to the new one (which while not ideal left me a little reassured by exactly what and how difficult it'd be to get it all into angelofthenorth's flat: before this, it'd been difficult for me to mentally separate what actually went in the van from the much greater amount of work I'd ended up doing in the sliding tile puzzle of moving things out of but then back into the storage containers).

Finally, we could set off.

It was 3.45.

Manchester was still four hours away.

I'd been hoping to be home by that point, showered, maybe had time for a little rest before I thought about walking Teddy.

At this point, the three of us determined that the best thing to do would be just to get home tonight, and unload the van early in the morning before it was due to be returned at noon.

It took longer than four hours, because we stopped for much-needed food in Abergavenny around 5, and maybe because this new van was limited to only going 60mph so we didn't benefit from the motorway/freeway driving as much as we might have.

I got home about 9.15pm, after an otherwise-uneventful trip back. angelofthenorth texted the group chat saying that a 9am start is planned for tomorrow morning, and then also saying "I feel like Erik should have a "please look after this goblin" sign round his neck."

I was very well looked after: helped to find food, to tidy stuff away that I literally just dropped when I opened the front door, hugged, and shooed off to a shower and bed.

I've never been so happy to be in my own house, hugged by my humans, and now in bed.

I am sure there was toothpaste in my washkit the last time I traveled... But there is not now.

Apart from this and lack of snacks (why didn't I think to bring snacks, ha), I am doing alright. I slept decently last night, and slept a lot more this afternoon, once the van was as loaded as it was going to get.

I feel for angelofthenorth, who basically has the same level of difficulty extracting the things she wants from the two big storage containers that I would've had if Andrew had decanted all of our house into similar, since that's more or less what has happened here.

Everything has been a sliding-tile-puzzle of needing to move things to get to other things, and all the tiles are heavy, and you also have to think about whether they're packed in a structurally sound condition and whether they can get wet.

We have been remarkably successful at furniture, but also some things have just been too difficult to unearth, particularly in the worst weather possible for this: rain and heavy wind. She has dealt with it all very well, being very practical about what can be replaced via Manchester's charity shops or Ikea.

All of this is such an emotionally exhausting undertaking. I'm glad I can at least handle some of the physical burdens for her.

I'm in south west Wales now, helping angelofthenorth get her stuff from storage so her nice flat will finally have her nice furniture and books and etc.

We're here with a church friend of hers who drove the rented van, and we'll get to meet local friends of hers tomorrow as we tackle it.

We had a little look when we got here and I can see why she's intimidated by the task at hand: there's a lot of stuff and while we don't want much of it, some of what she does want will be way at the back so everything else might have to get moved. I brought tape and scissors and a sharpie so boxes that have to be opened can be re-packed and labeled.

It's nice to have a few days off work, and to be only needed as a henchqueer. I've had a nasty headache most of the day, so my two wishes for tomorrow are that it fucks off and that we don't get the rain that is forecast here (the storage containers are open to the elements).

( For years I've been saying I wanted to read a book or a zine or something about fat transmasc experiences. I can't find any. So I've written this. (It's almost 5000 words.) )

I had a lot to do today: a kinda tricky day at work, walking Teddy, making dinner, visiting a friend, and I wanted to go to the gym.

And I did all of it! And some chores like moving heavy things around, finalizing the grocery delivery that'll come tomorrow, and doing laundry.

Feels good.

I need to go to bed, but I wanted to say -- particularly for our mutual friends here -- that D had his operation today; it all went just as planned (in his family group chat, his mum his back-on-the-ward selfie looked a bit woozy, and yes, but also he looked just like that before the op because he had to be there at 7 this morning!) and smoothly. He's home, tired and sore but able to watch TV, play video games, eat dinner, watch baseball with me. It's been a nice evening.

( Boring )

I didn't get as much done today as I might have hoped, but I did a good job of prioritizing what needed to happen today vs. what can wait until tomorrow. Really hoping I get better sleep tonight; it's been kinda shitty for a couple weeks and that takes its toll on everything else; I've had a low-grade headache most of the day and I think it's largely the broken sleep and weird dreams.

This afternoon, I watched the Nicaragua vs Dominicana in the World Baseball Classic.

It's so loud. I love it. I kept looking up because I heard the kind of crowd noise that my white ass expected to mean someone had just hit a home run or something, and instead it's, like, a check swing or what's almost certainly going to be an infield out or whatever.

Tonight, D and I are watching Japan vs. Korea, in the Tokyodome so I'm hearing more chants and drums and clapping than I've ever heard, even at West Indies cricket matches.

I love it, gotta soak this up as much as I can.

After two days of utter misery at work, I was amazed that I actually got to finish on time -- I had not been expecting to!

The unstoppable force of my executive dysfunction met the immovable object of a deadline to respond to the Government's call for evidence on Developing the automated vehicles regulatory framework.

Ugh. I am so disgusted by the whole concept of self-driving cars that it was...well, not the only reason it's difficult to write about, but it was definitely one of them.

In other car-related news, I'm always delighted to read that other people are noticing the same things I am: not only are car headlights too damn bright, but cars are too damn big.

...while bigger cars may be safer for their occupants, critics insist they are considerably less safe for other road users. "Whether you're in another car [or] a pedestrian, you're more likely to be seriously injured if there's a collision with one of these vehicles," argues Tim Dexter, vehicles policy manager at T&E. He is also concerned about the implications for cyclists.

Research carried out in 2023 by Belgium's Vias Institute, which aims to improve road safety, suggested that a 10cm (3.9in) increase in the height of a car bonnet could increase the risk of vulnerable road users being killed in a collision by 27%. T&E also highlights concerns that high bonnets can create blind spots.

This is also something I've read about in the U.S., thanks to Victoria Scott:

If, in the span of one year, 18 fully-loaded Boeing 747s crashed with no survivors, we’d reappraise airspace. We’d question how we build airplanes and how we train pilots. We would recognize this as a failure of the system, not as individual mistakes of 18 pilots. Our roads should be no different.

The good news is that we have sensible solutions in plain sight: lower speed limits, redesign intersections, build roads that prioritize pedestrians and cars equally, and most importantly, reward automakers for building smaller vehicles with better visibility. The bad news is these require some sacrifice from drivers. Safer roads have lower speed limits—likely enforced by ticketing in one form or another. These roads also require more concentration to drive on. SUVs and pickups would need to revert back to 90s sizing, and all of our cars would need to shrink. These are all a hard sell in America, admittedly, but until they happen, we keep losing lives needlessly.

I genuinely love cars, and I’ve owned some big trucks. I understand the appeal of high speeds and lifted rigs, and I’m loath to give them up. But even I can’t accept a future wherein 7,500 are killed each year, especially when the solutions are so tangible and the rewards so massive. I’d accept small sacrifices if thousands more could live decades longer. I hope the rest of America agrees.

I listened to the Twins game against Puerto Rico this evening, which was happening while I was making dinner and at the gym.

I figured my Twinkies would get hammered; PR has lots of good players. But two of the best, Francisco Lindor and Carlos Correa, couldn't make the team for insurance reasons. Made me laugh that the lead-off hitter is another Minnesota Twin, Willi Castro. (Apparently he's not as good any more but I still have such a soft spot for him! There were other former Twins on this team too, Eddie Rosario is another that got mentioned fondly by the Twins radio guys, Kris and Dan.

The Twins actually won! 6-3. Good start by Zebby (phew), good game by Alan Roden (who I keep forgetting about; one of the many players they got in the fire sale last trade-deadline).

I am not surprised at all that someone is gonna try to primary Klobuchar. I'm only mildly surprised it's someone I know online because he's on the same fedi instance as me. I just know him as the Cookie Mom and now he's doing a new thing!

He's campaigning on abolishing the Department of Homeland Security, bringing our neighbors home, and not taking the support of the DFL base for granted.

Hey guess which fuckwit totally spaced on agreeing to a meeting in London this afternoon!

Entirely self-imposed stress. Some combination of agreeing to a thing in March a few weeks ago when that felt very far away, and having last week off.

Starting work this morning after my week off, I settle down to go through my million emails and spot that one of them says"hey Erik I'll be there at 12.54"; "there" is London Bridge and the "today" is unspoken!

Luckily I was, barely, able to get a train there in time (glad it wasn't a morning meeting!), with D kindly getting up early to give me a lift to the station that's most useful: there's trains every 20 minutes to London but now I'm effectively on the 10.15 train when it would have been the 10.55 without his help. Makes a big difference when I would've been getting into Euston about the time I want to be at London Bridge...

I spent the first hour on the train triaging emails (and Teams messages). I'm a little frazzled now so I might give myself the gift of just staring out the window a bit now that we're leaving Rugby (about halfway through my train journey).

Could not be more perfect after my last post. Maybe I should do this every week...

What made you happy this week?
Greens winning the by-election for my new MP.

2. What made you sad?
Remembering random things from my childhood that involved my grandparents looking after my brother and I, and being the only person who's still around to remember those things.

3. What made you angry?
The U.S. and Israel making the lives of people in Gaza as well as Iran harder.

4. What are you looking forward to in the next week?
In a way, I'm looking forward to D having a medical thing done next Sunday, even if it'll mean some discomfort and disruption for the next couple months. Because it's been going on for years and could've been sorted ages ago. But now it finally will be.

5. What are you not looking forward to?
Going back to work after a week off that felt more like three days off.

Thanks to otter for sharing this video the other day: Emotional Neglect: Healing from the Hidden Trauma of What Didn't Happen

I got around to watching it and it hit me so hard I needed to write this huge long thing about it. It's mostly transcript of the parts of the video that I wanted to make a note of, because it's not very accessible to me otherwise. But my thoughts are sprinkled around the block quotes of course.

( Emotional Neglect )

( Emotions Draw Our Attention to What Matters to Us )

( Shame, and Phobia of Inner Experiences )

( Existential Loneliness )

( Unconscious Self-Abandonment )

( Sensitivity to Rejection )

( Using Emotions to Connect Your Inner World to the Outer World )

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

Possibly my most #dadcore thought EVER

Friday Five

Tired of winning

Bleh

Long Covid and other kinds of awareness

Arousal-valence

going to the tetris dispensary, need anything?

Between two artics

Extraction team

Ymlaen i Gymru!

With My Whole Chest

My day

Healthcare success

The roar of the crowd

Car shit

I love the World Baseball Classic

Paul Ference for MN

Onward to London?!

The Friday five

My introduction to "emotional neglect"

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March 2026

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