2023 - DEATH AND REBIRTH

 Well, 2023!! I got diagnosed with OCD! And I keep running into stupid stuff I feel like I have to do but now, with the aid of medication and insight, I can identify as the OCD and anxiety nonsense they are. Things like:

• "doing it right" even though I'm the only one who cares about it, then being upset when no one else cares about it
• frantically trying to do "enough" to celebrate holidays, then feeling like it's never good enough. For example:
• reading scary stories and watching horror movies all of October, then feeling guilty for not playing horror videogames
• having a delicious meal with family on Thanksgiving, but feeling bad for not feeling more gratitude the whole month
• fully celebrating Christmas by giving and receiving gifts, attending church, and reading scriptures about Christ, then feeling like I didn't think about Jesus enough
• making the same Christmas cookies every year, then feeling like something is missing

• trying to fix other people's problems, even though they never asked me to
• caring more about making other people happy instead of doing what I want to do
• trying to review all the dumb stuff I did wrong during the sacrament and being certain that I must not repent of it because I know I will repeat that dumb stuff, also, is it really a sin?? NOW I read scriptures during that time! 
• wanting religion to make sense
• going through all my previous journal entries and summarizing them every year!

Maybe in the future I will have tons of time to reflect on the previous year and want to read my journal entries for the whole year. I know that my memory isn't accurate, but I'm okay with that. I don't have to be a historian of my own life. 

There were some other milestone events for me this year. I had my third sinus surgery and afterwards I had a terrible infection. The pain was excruciating and I wanted to go into a medically induced coma until it was over. The nurse laughed at me when I asked if I could add an analgesic to my sinus rinse (specifically, that stuff you spray on the back of your throat when it's sore). There was a week where I wanted to die. I was really thinking about the most ethical way to end my pain, like it was something on my to-do list and people trying to guilt me out of it by saying they would be so sad were merely obstacles in my way. It's really hard to describe my mindset. It was different than being depressed, it was just feeling certain that there would be no end to my misery. Luckily, my ENT was able to get a real sample from the problem area. Black blobs came out of my sinuses like the witch of the waste's minions in Howl's Moving Castle. But unlike a wasteland, there was a lot growing in my sinuses--black mold and two different bacteria. 

Somewhere in here I presented at Mormon Scholars in the Humanities. I twisted Steve Peck's arm until he agreed to write an interactive fiction piece with me. After two months of discussing ideas, we realized that Steve needed to learn more about interactive fiction before he tried writing it, so I wrote a class that would introduce him to interactive fiction. That was pretty fun! We still haven't written an interactive fiction piece together but maybe that will change someday.

After I got proper treatment for my sinus colonization, I started to get some of my energy back, just in time to start grad school in the fall. *checks 2022's post* Long story short: I was accepted into the English MA program at BYU (where I work). The department refused to accept any of my credits from when I completed the coursework for the program in 2009-2011, stating it was expired. I found great loopholes for them, including a case where another BYU student had proof of prior knowledge from their job accepted as credit for their PhD program. I decided to start the program from scratch. That included taking intro to graduate studies, which was mostly our professor telling us that if we were serious about going into a PhD program, we had better try to publish something. Meanwhile, my Mormon Esperanto Society article was accepted for publication with the Journal of Mormon History, and three articles I co-authored with my friend Michael Austin on the literary lessons in church publications and the history of Mutual Improvement associations were accepted for publication (one has already been published in BYU Studies). Mike helped me so much with my graduate studies. We have similar low tolerances for BS and sometimes it's a relief to know that you're not the only one who thinks a critical theorist is just spinning their wheels. He helped with my papers that I wrote for my graduate seminars too--I feel like his apprentice, but he says I'm his peer.

My grandpa died in September, but I didn't get obsessed with grief like I did when my grandma died. Fall semester was jam-packed with work, classes, and homework. I had the experience, several times, of simply not having enough time to complete my reading assignments--something that is difficult for me and hadn't happened the first time I did my MA coursework. But we can consider this exposure therapy for my perfectionism (being forced to imperfectly perform the assignments and then realizing that the world didn't end). Another exposure therapy for my perfectionism and overactive sense of fairness happened at the end of the semester when my professor gave me a low grade on my paper. Oh well! You know what's more important? I'm happy with what I wrote and the research I did, because it was a topic I was actually interested in, and I explored it in a way that makes sense to me.

As I look ahead to the new year, I wonder if I might dial down my intensity a little. The whole schedule where I get my daughters off to school, work/class until 5pm, dinner/clean/be with family until 7pm, do homework for 2.5 hours and get ready for bed at 9:30pm is possible, but it really stresses me out. I ended up taking off some Fridays from work to try to catch up on schoolwork. But what if I took off an hour or two in the mornings for homework? I don't have to be productive every minute of my day. 

That said, if I wanted to pile more stuff on, more stuff I could feel guilty for not doing, I have three things:

1. Learn ASL so that I can teach Petra more signs. There is an app called Lingvano for that and I'm trying it out.
2. Find a way to make stretching and maybe some strength training part of my routine. My hip hurts and I'm too young for that. No amount of biking or walking is going to fix it.
3. Dedicate time to getting rid of stuff. We have too much stuff and I just keep procrastinating taking care of it. What if I spent an hour every Saturday just finding stuff we don't need.

I feel like doing things things could actually decrease my stress in the long run, but I need a little push to put them on my attention radar. I have enough crazy plans for next year (I've got like... four presentations to prepare??). I need to remember to take care of myself, my family, and my stuff. I know some of you are thinking: "what about God?" You know, as someone with scrupulosity, I have spent a lot of time worrying about what God thinks and what is right. I have enough obsessive interest in God that it's not something I need to remind myself about with a resolution.

I have OCD. Here's what that means in my case.

There's a place in the Old Testament where Jeremiah tells his people that they will be in bondage for the rest of their life. He had just confronted a false prophet who was telling the people that they would be freed from bondage in two years. Jeremiah told the people that they won’t be free for another three generations, so they should start putting down roots–both in the form of orchards and in starting a family. God then reassures them that he will visit them after the “seventy years,” a shorthand for three generations.

I think of how hard that must have been for the Judah (the portion of the children of Israel in bondage). They didn't want to accept that they would be enslaved(?) for the rest of their lives. Who would want to accept that? 

An anonymous author on Meatball Wiki wrote on the page for LongNow:

To plant a vineyard or orchard is an act of faith that everything will still be OK decades hence.

When I read that quote, I immediately connected it to the story in Jeremiah. I thought of how much faith Judah must have had to say, "I believe you, I will settle down and believe that everything will still be okay even though we're in a situation that at first glance, seems untenable."  I cried a little bit (thankfully, my student employees were still on break). Because I am in bondage to my mental illness.  

I was recently diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). OCD can manifest in a lot of different ways. They start with a normal thought -> action resolution. Hands are dirty, clean them until they don't feel dirty anymore. Feel bad about something you said to someone, apologize, feel better. Except with OCD, the "feel better" part is never complete. 

I don't have obsessions about contamination as OCD is frequently portrayed (compulsive handwashing, wearing gloves, etc.). My obsessions center around my self-worth, wanting to know if other people are okay with me, wanting God to make sense, and wanting to understand myself. Most of these obsessions center around "what if" questions. My therapist described these kind of obsessive loops as "rabbit holes" where "the more you think, the more confused you get." 

My compulsions seems to come in three main flavors that I have identified so far: apologizing, confessing, and reassurance-seeking. This is one example of an OCD loop with confession:

Here is an example of one with wondering whether or not I have OCD:

OCD is all in my head. That means that the cure is also all in my head. Breaking an OCD loop centers around stopping the obsession or stopping the compulsion. Stopping an obsessive thought means for me, recognizing when I am going into a rabbit hole and choosing to disengage by distracting myself (preferably with something neutral or productive). Stopping a compulsion means recognizing that when I feel like I have to do something, that it is probably a compulsion, and therefore I should make an effort to not do it. One of my problems is that the feeling of being compelled to do something is exactly the same as the feeling I have associated with the "promptings of the holy ghost." This is a giant problem and I am trying not to freak out about it. Luckily, there are multiple avenues to receiving revelation. I will just assume that the holy ghost will not communicate with me anymore in the way that my compulsions manifest.

People have told me that I have good insight into myself. It is something I am actually very bad at. That is one reason it took me so long to figure out that I have OCD. Another reason is because the stupid obsessions that OCD puts into my brain feel real and rational in the moment, and the compulsions sort of work. Another reason is because my OCD is mild compared to some people's. But as I learn more about OCD, I recognize more of it in my past. There is a certain way of thinking that is common with OCD sufferers, which maybe I'll get into in another post; the short version is, I used to pride myself in not being a black-and-white thinker, but my thinking actually defaults to black-and-white thinking most of the time. It can be difficult for me to accept uncertainty, paradox, and contradictions.

OCD is not something that I will ever be completely cured of. That is why I cried when I realized that Judah had to plant orchards while they were in bondage--because that is what I must do as well. 

My friend Camilla is an artist. She is open about how scrupulosity, a form of religious OCD, affects her art. This piece is about how her OCD will be with her forever. 

Camilla Stark, "This Will Be With You Forever," 2021 piece in that business card art show in Provo

2022 - Obsession and its consequences

I was kind of dreading looking back on this year, because I know that I have not been mentally well. I have tried to limit my description of my obsessive thoughts in order to protect the innocent, but if you play Admiration Point, you can get a feel for what it has been like. As I look back, I notice that I wasn't always miserable. I was tired a lot (probably because I write in my journal right before bed), and I had obsessive thoughts, but I also made new friends and tried writing in new genres. I did some really fun research and found out some interesting things. 

I continued to teach Sunday School for half of the year, and I read a lot of commentaries to try to understand what was going on in the Old Testament (spoiler alert: it is really complicated). "I'm down in the weeds, and am having trouble seeing the field."  I've had a dedicated personal project day (with childcare and no work) once a week for most of the year. I have not been bored during this time. It felt like it wasn't enough! Halfway through the year we started trying to conceive another child, an attempt that makes awaiting my period every month a bit agonizing. 

A big thank you goes out to my nannies and last-minute babysitters who make my work possible. 

January - I resolved to ignore my obsessive feelings. I thought maybe they stemmed from feeling unfulfilled at work, despite enjoying my day-to-day work. I toyed with several ideas to remedy this problem, from the ridiculous to the doable. "My anxiety is WAY worse than normal and I'm not really sure what to do about it." I started taking omperazole again, often waking early in the morning with stomach pain. I washed a LOT of dishes by hand while our dishwasher was broken; our stovetop was also broken for a while. A lot of our family members got covid and we were constantly taking tests. "I'm starting to seem slight unmoored, but that isn't going to change, so maybe I can just lean into that for my own benefit." I had several successful meetings of small group Sunday school: "maybe I should start calling it snacking on the word of God."

February - I started writing Admiration Point. "Have I just gone so far off the deep end that I don't even try to stop myself anymore?" I started taking Lion's Mane supplements (stop rolling your eyes, there are clincal studies) and they completely helped my focus. "I know I am a weirdo and I simply must make the best of it." More dishes. Petra threw up a lot and everyone was sick. 

March - I started playing getting back into playing guitar. I had my (second) sinus surgery. I watched a lot of TikTok during my recovery. "I'm ready to be healthy and useful again. But I think I need to wait another two days :(." I went to church without wearing a mask and started socializing more in larger groups. I watched Turning Red several times: "I'm not sure why, but I'm fascinated by the idea that my emotions could be a helpful, not a hurtful thing." I had "a wonderful day" where I worked on my game, started reading a book on Vardis Fisher, practiced guitar, played a visual novel, and made okonomiyaki with Adam. I felt jealous that Laura Bridgewater, BYU VP of academic affairs, "felt so sure that God didn't require her to stay home with her children. She literally had a GA tell her that" (I still have Mom guilt over not being a SAHM sometimes). 

April - "must I bear the burning shame of being thoroughly aware of my MANY weaknesses?" "Should I feel guilty? Of the sin of fangirling too hard?" I started a monthly casual meeting at work that I called a charcuterie salon, because I figured being as bougie as possible could make people curious and want to come? It has actually been pretty successful.  "I feel a flowering of creativity in my life." "I feel like my brain wants to write a LOT and it is starting to spill out in weird ways." I wrote and recorded a library parody version of the Echo Canyon song. I read and loved Heike's Void.  "It was in the seventies on my bike ride home today. I was listening to some French-Canadian folk music and it was a shining moment of bliss." I continued working on Admiration Point and doing some Mormon Esperanto Society research on the side. I saw a branching-story outdoor play in Salt Lake City. 

"my solution was, instead of a battle of our egos that I would lose [...] was to devote myself entirely to his aims." 

May - I started writing and publishing monthly library zines at work--my attempt to define work culture in my own image. It has been a very fun outlet. I compare it to Brandon Sanderson's librarians of Alcatraz series. Yes, it's a little juvenile, but in good fun and a productive mental break from my more serious writing. I saw my therapist who encouraged me to befriend the object of my obsessive thoughts (why??). I published an essay on how writing Wikipedia pages on church history has affected my faith on the ARCH-HIVE blog. After finding out that the Mormon author Bela Petsco died, I attended his funeral and created Wikipedia pages for him and his most famous book. I felt that I was being haunted by him. I got to see the Mountain Goats in concert with friends! "I don't know what it is about men singing backup but it's like the feeling I get when I see a man holding a baby. Like, they're actually being supportive of someone else whole-heartedly." I contemplated studying for an MLS (I decided I didn't feel excited enough about it to dedicate two years of my life to that). I continued working on the Mormon Esperanto Society article ("How am I still finding stuff?")

June - I attended a pre-conference publication workshop for the Mormon History Association conference and the conference itself. I worked really hard to network! I got Claudia Bushman to sign my copy of Mormon Sisters. I met Michael Austin (Mike) in-person, and he promised to help me with my Mormon Esperanto Society article. We began our friendship through online chess games which chess.com described as "wild" (i.e., often it was not clear who the winner would be until the very end). I met a bunch of other people too, including my internet friend Makoto. I invited most of them to join the AML Discord, which has been enjoying a little growth from our efforts. AC approved the proposal for my job to change from 1/2-time to 3/4-time (this just means I work 4 days/week instead of 3).  I kept working on Admiration Point, but I sometimes felt like I wanted to delete the whole thing "in a fit of shame." Skillick's Bride was a finalist for AML's short fiction award! I got covid and my immediate family had to miss the vacation we planned with my parents, siblings, and niblings.

July - I was still recovering from covid but was well enough that we had Ada's baptism as scheduled. Mike told me that the Vardis Fisher Wikipedia page I wrote a few years ago was well-written. "It has been a pleasure for another scholar to take an interest in my work."  "I feel at peace with my career and artistic achievements currently. Which probably means that something terribls is going to happen soon?" I was released from my church calling as Sunday School teacher and got called as the ward bulletin editor. On distributing the third library zine issue - "this is actually a good way for me to get more face time with library people." I flew to Ireland for the Wikipedia + Libraries conference, where I met a bunch of cool people and presented. "There was an amazing 8% cream yogurt at breakfast and I can't think of anything else." I also saw the Book of Kells and did other touristy stuff in Dublin, don't worry.

August - The pantry got flooded and we had to take everything out of it so the restoration people could take out the flooring and dry everything out. I hosted a baby shower for my sister-in-law. My parents watched my children while Adam and I went to Montreal for the International Esperanto Congress. I had the surreal experience of dancing to the YMCA song with people from around the world. I met a bunch of people I had only met online. It was so cool to meet other Esperantists in-person and discuss things with them. I bought so many Esperanto books! "My bahn mi had pate on it!" I participated in my friend's Adrift game jam, which was fun, but also, Adrift is so different from Twine. Mike was incredibly supportive of my fiction and non-fiction writing. Petra started going to a special-needs preschool. It's weird that I have no idea what she does there. I spent a weekend with college friends in Ohio, which was very fun, because my college friends are extremely funny. 

September - I had a very painful time when my work friend, who also was the object of earlier-mentioned obsessive thoughts on my part, insisted on better boundaries and I mistook this as a request for no contact. "I found some hypnotherapy scripts for dealing with grief, but none for altering memory." My maternal grandpa died. I helped Mike to write a Wikipedia page for the Corianton film, and he continued to give me feedback on my writing. I used OpenRefine to upload a small test batch of data to WikiData! I finished up Admiration Point and started working more seriously on my Mormon Esperanto Society research. We finally got floor in our pantry.  

October - Drove to my sister's in Albuquerque for a week, to make up for not seeing them when I had covid. Admiration Point received several in-depth reviews from being in the Interactive Fiction competition, which I attended to with great interest. I got a new phone and gave Ada my old one to replace her iPad that broke. I told Mike about the Relief Society General Board minutes being online and he OCR'd them all to make them text-searchable! Then I was like "Mike I wish you had been my thesis advisor!" and he was like "I bet that could be arranged." For my birthday, I looked at exhibits and Esperanto books in the library, ate sushi, hung out with my friends, and went to a music festival where I saw two of my favorite local bands, Little Moon and Goldmyth. "I can be sane again." 

November - Mike floated the idea of someone doing a selected works of Alice Louise Reynolds collection for BCC Press, and my two coworkers who are doing an exhibit on her were very excited about this idea, and decided I should be a co-editor with them. I was telling another coworker how many graduate credits I had and she was like "that's enough for TWO master's degrees, you should go back and make them let you finish." I researched a lot of policies and emailed several people, but in order to even apply for a policy exemption, I need to be a current graduate student. So in a fit of madness I decided to apply for the English master's program at BYU (I completed coursework in 2011). I am still working on my writing sample for this. I got three professors to agree to be on my thesis committee, should I be accepted, and I have a preliminary topic: speculative theology in Mormon fiction from the home literature era (early 20th-century). There was a bunch of stupid drama where the graduate office told me that none of my hare-brained schemes would work and that they couldn't help me. I have not given up on the idea of getting some credit for my decade-old graduate classes. I went to the Church History Library and looked at old correlation committee meeting minutes, which weren't quite as exciting as I'd hoped, but still had some interesting tidbits. Admiration Point won 20th place in the Interactive Fiction Competition! 

December - networked with more Mormon letters people at the Wayfare release party and the ARCH-HIVE scrupulosity show. I did some work on the Esperanto-USA search committee. Someone on Wikipedia started bullying me, and it reminded me of two years ago when I got taken to COIN, and I got very anxious about it. There were days I dreaded going to work because I didn't want to read more accusations against me. I'm still anxious about it. Luckily, my fellow editors have been supportive of me, but the feeling that someone is looking over my edits and waiting for me to make a wrong move is poop. Speaking of poop, there was more of it than normal coming from Petra, but thankfully, our prayers and a probiotic seemed to have fixed the problem. I ordered and received 19 volumes of the plena verkaro de Zamenhof (complete works of Zamenhof) from UEA. I just have a hunch that they could be useful in my future research on Esperanto culture. Mike responded to the reviewer's comments on our RS literary lessons article, and I did a little more research in the CHL (church history library). I hosted my parents for Christmas and we spent time eating, walking, and watching TV together. 

I have a bunch of projects lined up for next year, including, hopefully, finishing my scholarly article on the Mormon Esperanto Society. If I am accepted to graduate school, that will take up my personal projects time, but if not, maybe I will be able to continue the far-future Wikipedia-like that I had started writing last January. I would also like to figure out how to control my own thoughts better, or not freak out about them, but I am also trying to accept that this might be a part of my personality, and I should instead find good outlets for my obsesssions. If you read this far, you can consider yourself one of my hardcore friends/fans. I hope you have a lovely new year. 

Album review of WE

I have thoughts on WE, Arcade Fire's most recent release. I like to listen to albums as a whole and I think this one had a nice balance of slower songs with faster ones. There are common themes of introspection and wishing for change. Many songs are related to each other musically and make more sense as part of the album than as stand-alone songs. Overall, I don't think this album is better than Neon Bible or The Suburbs, but it is still very good.

"Age of Anxiety I"

It would be easy for the anxious breath rhythm sounds to get annoying, but they give the chill song its anxious flavor. Halfway through, the song transforms into a more rhythmic meditation with lyrics about just trying to feel something. Anxiety or depression? Why not both.

"Age of Anxiety II (Rabbit Hole)"

This song follows a similar formula as "Age of Anxiety I" with a spare intro that goes into a more upbeat, traditional song. There are a lot more synths than I remember Arcade Fire having. The synth pads with a little distortion that makes them sound flat remind me of 80s music like Erasure. The addition of glockenspiel (I think?) reminds us that Arcade Fire used to be baroque pop. 

"End of Empire I-III"

"It's not half bad. Spend half your life bein' sad. Don't be scared. Just chronically impaired. Just take my hand." Is this why Adam says my music is depressing? I find it cathartic. This is a sad ballad about saying goodbye to the American empire... or is it a breakup song? A harmonica and saxophone make an appearance. This is classic Arcade Fire sound, with Régine Chassagne occasionally octave doubling Win Butler's vocals, sweeping synthetic orchestra, and some real instruments mixed in.  

I think the first song has the same chord progression as "The Suburbs", but twice as slow. An allusion, or just determination not to change a good thing?

"End of Empire IV (Sagittarius *A)

"I unsubscribe": is this all the power we have in this stupid world? I feel a rush of righteous anger with "fuck season five" but for what? What kind of weaksauce protest song is this? What happened to "I don't want to give you my name and address / I don't want to see what happens next / I don't want to live in America no more!" from Neon Bible's "Windowsill"?

The backup vocals at 2:14 remind me of something and I cannot figure out what; PLEASE tell me if you can figure out what other song they sound like.

"The Lightning I" 

Compared to the other interesting music techniques on this album, this one feels simpler and a little generic. 

"The Lighting II"

Reminds me of "Ready to Start" from The Suburbs. It's interesting how the same lyrical themes from "The Lighting I" are presented in a more urgent way. This is the most popular song on the album but I much prefer "Age of Anxiety I." 

"Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)"

The first standalone song on the album gets back to the folk side of Arcade Fire. A peppy song about how it's okay to be sad and how a life without pain would be boring. I added it to my "Affirmations" playlist. A good bop and a message I can get behind.

"Unconditional II (Race and Religion)"

I'm confused at "I'll be your race and religion" being... a romantic offer? Is the idea that the singer is willing to give up their innermost identity of race and religion to be united with their lover? The beginning lyrics talks about how a street sign is a construct, so maybe this song is about trying to abandon those most ingrained "constructs" in the name of becoming "we". Kinda deep for an indie pop song, but still emotionally charged, which is exactly what I want.

"WE"

A low-key, forgettable song, especially compared to "Unconditional II," but a nice way to close an intense album! 

MATH ROCK

 When I was recovering from my sinus surgery a month ago, I spent a bit of time watching YouTube videos on the history of popular music. I enjoyed videos from SoundField on the history of blues and jazz. I would still like to watch videos on the folk revival of the 1970s, garage and riot grrl-like bands of the 1980s, and the evolution of electronic popular music in general. I watched the Soundfield video on hyperpop and it was extremely interesting! OIL ON EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES sounds genuinely experimental and not just like someone was trying to be edgy.

I looked up a chart on the evolution of popular music and I saw a genre called "math rock." I listened to a playlist on Spotify and I really liked what I heard and found a flowchart on Reddit that explains what to listen to next based on what you like about other bands. Weeks passed before I realized that Foals was on this flowchart. Yeah, the weird British punk band I told everyone was like Philip Glass for rock music. That's when I learned that minimalist rock music is called Math Rock. I'm not sure what the official definition is, but I read that Math Rock experiments with unusual time signatures and prioritizes musical textures over vocals or verses. They also seem to repeat arpeggiating chords a lot, like minimalism in classical music. Thanks to this little dive, I am catching up on the albums Foals released since Antidotes and I am enjoying them effortlessly. May your research dives into new genres be just as fruitful.

take the pressure off writing by convincing yourself that the stakes are low

 I miss the age of blogs. I miss hearing from my friends about whatever random thing was on their minds and instead I must be satisfied with photos of their amazing bakes, pets and/or children. I was re-reading some of my old blog entries last weekend and reflecting on the blog era of my life from the aughts until sometime in the mid-2010s. I was also mining a friend's blog for their upcoming Wikipedia page as one does. It's a good thing that my friends who are still writing are publishing books and patreons and substacks instead of just giving their writing away. But nothing really captures the extemporaneous, um, rough edges of a person's thoughts in a more open, but intimate way like a blog post.

One of my goals for myself is to stop seeing my writing energy as a limited resource. If I come at writing with the attitude that my ideas are scarce, they will be scarce. But if I have an attitude of abundance-- confident in my ability to write multiple things at once and get more ideas than I have time to implement--somehow the ideas and the motivation to write keeps coming. 

Speaking of coming from an attitude of abundance, I realized that after quitting and returning to my job over the pandemic, I have a different attitude toward my job. For one, working from home eroded all of my work-life barriers. I used to strictly try to not think about work off-the-clock. But now, I don't have the energy to care about that. I'm constantly e-mailing my work e-mail with ideas of articles to read or things to look at. For two, I have less fear. I know that if I disappear for six months that it doesn't matter, but that's empowering. Who cares if I e-mail the wrong person in my quest to get an answer to a trivial question? If I attract the ire of a harpist fanboy? It's insignificant and unimportant in the sense that it does not create capital for anyone involved, but that frees me to experiment and innovate. 

There is another layer to the stakes being incredibly low at my job. I make about enough to cover what I pay my nannies. My husband's profits from his employee stock purchase plan were ten times what I made last year. But instead of feeling bad about it, maybe my attitude that my job is just a fun hobby can take some of the pressure I put on myself to do a good job. Thus I make another naval-gazing entry into my blog that I feel fairly confident no one will read. And I feel great about that.

2021: Trying to fix my health problems

Hello to my superfans and bored acquaintances. Here is my year's summary:

January: I got a bit tired of my appearance. Adam gave me a shag cut that I really liked and have adopted as my new hairstyle. I did a bit of lockdown shopping (some of which was necessary), including trying out makeup. I guess I was just that bored. I wrote that even though I had changed my appearance, I felt the same. I told my boss I was quittting my job at the library, complete with a dramatic return of some fifty books I had been hoarding. Working from home without dedicated childcare was not making me happy. I published Mormon foodways. A. continued to dislike math and to like watching Sailor Moon. She lost her first tooth. P. got glasses. 

February: I started a hypnotherapy app for my IBS called Nerva. I know, hypnotherapy?? It is evidence-based! And after three weeks of doing the hypnotherapy sessions every day, I started to have less pain. A hypnotherapy session is a lot like a meditation, only the suggestions are more forceful. So instead of "try to relax" it is like "you feel very relaxed now." According to their studies, it can work even if you are not usually susceptible to hypnotic suggestions. I did the six weeks of sessions and still have lasting reduction in IBS symptoms. I recommend it to everyone with IBS. I can take a little ibuprofen now without getting a stomachache.

With homeschooling A., I started checking out a LOT of books from the Provo city library to read to her for our various subjects. "Is this what it feels like to be a library power user?" I wrote after ordering enough books to overflow my two canvas bags. I actually enjoyed hunting for books more than reading them sometimes. Most of the time I simply read her picture books about science and folklore. Occasionally we had fun projects, like when we measured the air temperature in different places around the house, or when we made a fancy pretend café to practice addition and subtraction within 20. Or when I taught her how to "animate" a sprite in Scratch by drawing a Pusheen that sticks out her nose.

I played a lot of chess. I got tournament-standard sets and tried to teach A. some chess, but mostly it was a welcome diversion for me. I also worked on Space to Grow, the videogame I helped my sister and sister-in-law make. I finished writing the community endings in March (under the duress of frequent interruptions from A.).

We found out that P.'s genetic condition was not inherited. I also found out that one of my most vocal critics on Wikipedia last year had died earlier this year.

March: I finally got antibiotics for a sinus infection that started in February, but I was pretty tired and grumpy all month because the antibiotics did not cure my infection. I hosted my sister and two of her kids for my little brother's wedding. I went to my in-laws' for Sunday dinner for the first time in a while and looked forward to more in-person events. I started getting physical therapy for my tennis elbow. I started drinking Rasa, an herbal energy drink, to help with my fatigue. I read some comic books to help as a judge for the Association for Mormon Letters. 

April: I panic-bought some Vita games after hearing that the PS store would be closing later in the year (Sony has since changed that after fans protested a lot). I made a few pysanki (Ukranian eggs made by melting wax onto them and dying them) that unfortunately got destroyed by my dog when I left them outside to air after I sprayed varnish on them. We discovered that P. is allergic to sesame. I played a bunch of strangers in chess and got annoyed with a type of chess player who only wants to play women for some reason. I played more than one of this kind of player. I bought some dice and the My Little Pony TTRPG to play with A. I also signed A. up for Girl Scouts. I started to miss my job. I actually finished reading a book after losing interest in reading over the pandemic. The book was Ninth House. I got fully vaccinated.

May: We hosted my brother and his family for a week while they moved into a condo in Utah. We mostly just hung out at home a lot. Sometimes with toddlers that is the least-stressful option. My laptop died. I felt pretty sad about that. More of the same homeschooling, taking P. to physical therapy, occupational therapy, or speech therapy, and trying to keep up with housework. I met with my friends in-person. I started playing the idle/adventure game The Longing about a soot goblin who must wait a year to awaken his sleeping god/king. A world of being alone for days on end felt like a fantasy world to me. I had a platelet injection done on my arm to help with my tennis elbow, but I fainted when they drew the blood and felt terrible afterwards. We had a very successful Esperanto club meeting where we played frisbee golf. I got a fancy new desktop. We met together with Adam's family for their traditional May birthday gathering called second Christmas. 

June: We vacationed in Escalante with my brother's and sister's families. It was really fun. I wasn't sure if I could make it through spooky gulch... I don't usually get claustrophobic, but I was feeling it then! P. didn't come with on that hike, but A. did, and she survived, haha. I hired two nannies and went back to work! To my same job as a Wikipedian-in-Residence. My boss happened to not hire my replacement in the five months I was gone and I was never officially terminated. I went to a few sessions of the Esperanto-USA convention and helped collect resources for Esperanto e-books for one of the sessions. I went on a few dates outside the house with Adam.

July: We spent time with Adam's family over the fourth of July weekend. I worked on Space to Grow during my "personal projects day", a weekly day off from parenting meant to focus on my creative work. I felt like it wasn't enough time to really work on stuff. I got called as gospel doctrine teacher in my ward. I stopped being interested in chess as much, but I still participated in an amateur tournament in-person with my sister-in-law. I think I beat one person, haha. I wrote a page for the Seventh East Press. I did some thinking about having a third child and why I don't like being a mom sometimes. I went to an ENT who tried to tell me my pain was coming from my jaw until he saw my CT scan, after which he recommended sinus surgery. 

August: I went to the NASK (North American Summer Class) advanced course for Esperanto. Tim Owen taught it and he is something of an Esperanto scholar. He lectured in Esperanto and gave us a few activities. It was fun to see his research and ephemera on Zamenhof and the Esperanto movement. I had an extended family reunion at Bear Lake, although mostly I hung out with my sister and her family. My brother had a wedding reception. A. and I got our allergies tested. I tested positive for allergies to peanuts and tree nuts, which really bummed me out. The allergist said it was oral allergy syndrome and I started sublingual drops to treat my allergies (my hope is that it will help with my sinus problems too). Adam's immediate family had a staycation--a whirlwind of activities that I somehow managed to mostly participate in. We had been going to church as a family, but with the Delta variant going around, we decided to switch off keeping P. home since we have no idea what Covid would be like for her. A. started second grade--quite an adjustment after being homeschooled for a year.

I was honest with myself in my journal about my maternal depression. I had hoped that going back to work would "fix" me, but it did not. I still try to avoid parenting my children a lot, but I also try to avoid outright neglecting them (at least their physical needs). I feel like I can't fulfill all of their emotional needs, but luckily I don't have to. I feel very grateful to babysitters and family members who are willing to sit with my children and listen to them when I'm not up to it.

September: I did a lot of research for my gospel doctrine class and I wrote "I am starting to realize that the members of my class may not have as many questions as I do. So I might be overdoing the research." We enjoyed delicious tomatoes from our garden. I went on a retreat to Park City with my friends. I did a journaling program for being "happy as a mother". I questioned the assumption that such a thing is possible for all mothers, but by the end of the month, I felt like the journaling prompts were really helpful. The daily prompts helped me feel more gratitude and examine my own assumptions and expectations about motherhood. P. finally started drinking from her straw cup. I had my sinus surgery. I watched the Twilight movies during my recovery and I can confirm that Edward is a selfish jerk. I think Space to Grow got its Steam release somewhere in September. I remember pushing a button somewhere to release it in two weeks, maybe back in August? I sent out several awkward emails to strangers to tell them about the game. I can't say that I really understand how to market a videogame, but we did have over 100 sales this year. People paid money to play a game that I helped with. That's a nice feeling.

October: I was the "groundskeeper" or dungeon master for a game of Bluebeard's Bride with some friends. I really liked the themes of feminine horror and I wrote a Mormon feminine horror Twine game based on it which I called Skillick's Bride. "The decision to focus on women's suffering is such a clarifying one." My sinuses got infected after the recovery period and I had to take a lot of medicine for that (and the infection is still present). "Joseph Smith owned MUMMIES. It's blowing my mind." I read some of The Tanners on Trial for my work on the William Clayton page, and it was full of juicy, if cherry-picked, gossip about the Mormon underground in the late 1980s. My parents visited us for Halloween, which was fun. We tried to bake some of the giant pumpkins that I grew. 

November: We all got sick. I judged games for the Interactive Fiction Competition (IF Comp). Anyone can be a judge, as long as you rate five games. This was kind of a fun exercise in reading other people's hobby projects. There is a lot of interesting experimentation going on out there. A. got into playing Minecraft. We visited my parents in California for Thanksgiving. I was worried about getting P. to wear a mask on the plane, but luckily, she still looks and acts like an infant and no one asked about it. 

December: I did some meditation stuff for two weeks to try to manage my stress. I tried to reduce my social media use, with some success. P. had eye surgery. A. got a little sick after her second Covid vaccine shot and Adam and I felt slightly miserable after our Covid boosters. I made candied orange peel for the first time. A. got diagnosed with ADHD-combined type based on surveys that Adam and I filled out. I watched lots of the Great British Bake-off and presented at the BYU library Christmas conference on the similarities between the ideals of Joseph Smith and Zamenhof (creator of Esperanto). I actually gave my Esperanto club a preview of the presentation and tried doing it in Esperanto, so presenting in English was comparatively easy. I continued to worry about over-intellectualizing my gospel doctrine lessons. Our dishwasher and our induction cooktop both broke. I received some nice gifts for Christmas and spent the break reading them and generally lying around and hanging out with family and friends. 

Games I played (but may not have finished)

• Amrilato - a visual novel that teaches Esperanto in a very boring way! Gxg.
• Spiritfarer - a game like Zelda with less combat and more helping characters find closure.
• Cozy Grove - a cute game about reviving ghosts on an island, but that became very grindy. 
• The Longing - existential idle/adventure game
• Tell Me Why - your character, a trans man, investigates the motivations and circumstances surrounding his mother's death and his relationship with his sister.
• Psychonauts 2 - Solve people's problems by going inside their brains and platforming there.
• Fallen London - an old-school browser-based RPG that is somehow still going. The writing is dark and entertaining and the setting is very much filled-out; the references to "tomb-colonists" and philosophical spiders are not just a passing jokes. A bit too grindy to hold my attention for more than a month. 
• Sunless Sea - Another game set in the Fallen London universe, but you are a sailor on the underzea. Good, bizarre fantasy horror writing. I found the resource-management stressful and boring at the same time.
• The Luminous Underground - an interactive fiction piece published by Choice of Games. It was nominated for a nebula award! The story was interesting, and the writing was good, but it was a slow burn that fizzled out before I finished.
• Animal Crossing New Horizons - I enjoyed the new DLC that added cooking and the opportunity to buy more art.
• Life is Strange: True Colors - a girl with the power to sense people's emotions investigates her brother's death and her own feelings. A worthy addition to the Life is Strange series.
• It Takes Two - A cute co-op puzzle-platformer. I just started it.
• A Rose of Winter - An fantasy otome game that has a western art style and music by Toby Fox! The routes are very short, but they defy typical dating game tropes and challenge the player to reflect on romantic love in various weird forms.

2020: Uncovering P's special needs and homeschooling

Overall, it has been a very difficult year. I almost didn't want to do my year in review because I just wanted to forget everything about it. We didn't go to the Universala Kongreso (international Esperanto convention), because it was cancelled. I was successfully a head judge for the novel category for Association for Mormon Letters (AML), the top-secret project I mentioned in the 2019 post. I've agreed to help any volunteers learn how to edit Wikipedia for AML.

P's special needs changed a lot of things. It made it so I didn't want to send A to school this year, or P back to daycare. Honestly, I'm probably high-risk for covid as well, with two bouts of pneumonia and a partially-collapsed lung in my medical history. This has made everything more difficult. 

I kept up Esperanto club meetings and my monthly movie afternoons. The highlights of my year have been the times where I socialized with other people or went somewhere outside my house. The ARCH-HIVE Discord has been a pillar of my social life, and my social media use is very high. I don't have a lot of other outlets for talking to people, which isn't something I thought I needed very much before.

I have so many projects that I want to do. I want to create an Esperanto curriculum for homeschoolers. I want to make a zine series about internet literacy. I want to finish working on the videogame with my sister. I want to make new games. I want to play weird old games and write blog posts about their design. When I think about all this content creation I have in mind though, it feels like I have no focus. Why did I start those Instagrams? What is the point of sending my writing into the void of episodic internet content feeds? I feel like I need my online writing to have more focus. On the other hand, if it's just a hobby, than what am I getting so upset about? I miss the days of just having two blogs to update, instead of having all this social media that has to link to it and image editing and all that stuff. But after watching successful artists on Instagram, having a purchasable product makes things more permanent and gives consumers a way to express their support. That's the attraction of zines to me--when writing is physical, even if it is amateurish, we value it more and take more time to look at it.

I'm not really going to make myself goals for next year, besides simply continuing homeschooling for A and special needs care for P. If I manage to do other things at the same time, that's great. If I just end up watching a bunch of Netflix and reading a few fantasy novels, that's okay too. I hope you are healthy and safe in 2021. Here's the month-by-month rundown:

January - read comics, had a lot of disturbed sleep, and played Oceans and My Little Scythe board games. I think I want to have reading comics in January be a tradition, at least for myself. I finished reading books for judging the AML novel category. Caught all the Pokemon in Pokemon Shield with the help of my sister-in-law.

February - P was in the hospital with RSV for five days. This was a bit of a turning point. I tried pumping and realized that she wasn't getting any milk out of me and stopped breastfeeding her. I also realized that she was developmentally delayed. I started worrying that she had a neurodegenerative disease (some babies with hypotonia die of this a few years after birth). We enrolled her in Early Intervention. Adam and I got to see the Little Moon album debut concert!

March - P got her helmet to make her head symmetric and I started meeting with specialists. We took a quick trip to San Diego for Adam's friend's wedding! I insisted on going to the beach a few times. I remember leaving work mid-March and taking a bunch of books home in case I could work from home and crying because I knew everything would change. It was difficult to change. I got A her own iPad and I really enjoyed playing the new Animal Crossing with two of my good friends. I started taking medicine for chronic stomach pain. We started doing home church with both sides of our family.

April - I got a rush from finding flour at the supermarket! I made psyanki for the first time, inspired by my friend Betsy's tutorial. I felt really sad when P's daycare told me they wouldn't hold her spot any longer. I woke up at 1am to look at meteors with A, but we didn't see any. I bought a double ocarina and started learning to play it. Made a bunch of bells on the stalk market (animal crossing)!

May - "A didn't do her homework until 3pm. Oh well! Who cares!" We celebrated Star Wars day and watched the original trilogy with A. I backed up files from two old computers onto our new media PC and gave away the old computers. I couldn't get StepMania (the PC version of Dance Dance Revolution) to work on our new media PC, which was disappointing. After P's swallow study, we started thickening her liquids, which helped clear up her chronic congestion. My mom started reading with A over Zoom every weekday. I started keeping my journal in Esperanto. Somewhere in here I started Esperanto and book review Instagrams. I got a cute new office chair.

June - I tried a non-diary diet to help with my stomach problems. It didn't help. We got a new purple mattress (it was incredibly heavy). A had her birthday, which included sleeping in our backyard in a tent with Adam. I got ahold of a copy of Ring Fit and started using it for exercise. P's MRI results came back unremarkable. Sometime over the summer my in-laws started coming three times a week to help watch the kids while I worked.

July - I attended a two-week long intensive Esperanto class. It was fun to meet new people and work on our Esperanto together. I got an endoscopy which came back normal. I bought the biggest and heaviest-duty swingset I could find online. I got a big PDF of all the issues of Esperanto Mormonaro and skimmed them all to find out about the history of the organization. We vacationed with my parents and siblings and their children in an airBnB in Holladay. It was so nice to visit with family, play games together and go on hikes together. I started doing some exercises in a chronic pain management app I found. I started doing some homeschool-like things with A and I enrolled her in My Tech High.

August - I decided on some curricula to try for homeschooling and we started getting into a homeschooling routine (start after lunch, at 1pm, and go until 3pm, which is tea time). I started taking P to an in-person physical therapist, and we started patching her eyes to help with their weakness. A had some dental work done. I had to move my office at work from special collections to administration. There were many times where I couldn't work because I had to go grocery shopping or take P to a specialist. Thanks to an exercise from the chronic pain app, I realized that I was feeling miserable about mothering P and decided to find a therapist. 

September - I bought some roller skates for me and A and we went out and skated on them a few times! A is still very timid about skating, but I enjoy it (it's just a lot of trouble to get out on them somehow). I started seeing a therapist for my depression. I was happy to find that Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun goes longer than the anime and thoroughly enjoyed it... except it hasn't ended yet! We found out that P has a rare chromosome duplication that explains her hypotonia and developmental delays. I started meeting with my sister-in-law once a week, and occasionally with a fellow homeschooling mom.

October - I joined a group for parents of rare chromosome mutations. We started going to sacrament meeting online. We got sick of homegrown tomatoes (but we really enjoyed them all of September!). We went to an airBnB up the canyon for a change of pace. I enjoyed Halloween, even if we didn't have as much socializing as normal.

November - I met with a geneticist about P.'s condition but she didn't have any additional insights. She was able to order genetic testing for me and Adam though, so we can at least know for sure if the mutation was de novo (new with her) and not inherited from us. If one of us does have weird genes, that could explain my fertility problems though. Stress from work started to bleed into my personal life when another editor questioned the validity of my editing as a BYU employee, and continues to this day. We started doing more puzzles and I got started on Christmas shopping really early (hello anxiety!).

December - After having a very pleasant Thanksgiving break, I realized that I was so burnt out at work from trying to fit in work in 3-hour segments, constant interruptions from my children, and the latest complaints about my work on a forum (to be fair, it's a vocal minority). I put in my notice of resignation, but continued trying to tie up loose ends. There are still a few things I'm hoping to finish in the first two weeks of January. In homeschooling, I found some new math curricula to try (Singapore Math and Living Math) and ordered/printed the necessary materials. I made little packages to send to my siblings and siblings-in-law to make up for not being able to meet in-person this year. I also made a choose-your-own-adventure Christmas zine! It was fun but also I wish I knew a better way to do it (other than printing out the document, cutting it up, gluing it in the right format, scanning it, cleaning the scan, and then reprinting).