The Life Experience ~ Spring '09

[bloodyrosemccoy]

What I Learned Since The Spring Equinox

• My sister thinks my lack of desire for a mate is weird.
• “Anhedonia” is the medical term for an inability to feel joy.
• Wasps are the god damn SUPERVILLAINS of nature. Now, I knew that some wasps were disgusting monstrous horror-movie-inspirations from the very depths of your worst nightmares, but I didn’t realize the sheer variety of horrifying parasitic atrocities they’d commit against trees, grass, spiders, butterflies, and beetles.*
• Wyoming and Colorado state laws require you to move to the left lane when you see someone on the shoulder.
• While Star Trek TOS is almost entirely made up of homoerotic moments, the winner of all the episodes I’ve seen was “Mirror, Mirror.”
• Octavia Butler is even more rocking than I was led to believe. Took me way too long to find one of her books.
• Mark Hamill can do three different crazy laughs.
• Bill O’Reilly writes kids’ books. I didn’t need to know that.
• When stroked, alligators can be sedated. They also make a hilarious warnk sound before they do.
• Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome perfectly describes my bedtime habits, and is in fact very, very difficult to treat. Take that, people who think I’m just not trying!
• It’s almost nice to find out you have a “disorder,” because at least you know you’re not a one-of-a-kind freak.
• In the world of my aunt, dark wizards and lawyers are apparently always hovering around little old ladies just waiting for them to have heart attacks. That’s why it’s imperative that it be kept secret from everyone, including, preferably, most of the little old lady’s children.
• Your hips have to be forward for front stance in tae kwon do. I’ve been doing it wrong for years.
• Even one stellar job interview doesn’t guarantee you the job.
• There’s a really nice section of Salt Lake City off on the other side of Downtown that I never knew existed—and which I should keep in mind for whenever I want to actually move out.
• I am not the only person in the world who thinks Strunk & White were full of shit! Yay!
• Bad movies based on good books touch a serious nerve in people.
• Uhura’s first name is Nyota.
• Arc flash is an ionization of the air around an electrical system with sufficient voltage and no grounding. It’s an impressive and unfortunate cause of death among electricians.
• Wire-wrap jewelry is pretty straightforward in its basics, but mastering it is less easy.
• There is such a thing as an antidepressant that works without making me fall down
• The life of a Mormon missionary is even more regimented and awful that I could have imagined. You’re never even supposed to be out of sight of your partner. I realize this is probably in order to keep missionaries out of mischief, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.

*I am of the strict mammalian opinion that being eaten from the outside in is fair, and the proper sequence of events is 1. Kill, 2. then eat. If that happens to me I’m bummed but figure, well, fair play. But eating alive, and/or from the inside out, is definitely a foul.

Comments

[neintales.livejournal.com]

Many people find lack of desire for a mate to be weird. I get funny looks about that myself, along with lectures of how I can't expect Mr. or Ms. Right to just 'fall into my lap' and how I need to go out and LOOK. Fortunately not from my mother, or my closer friends, but it is eye-rollingly popular for more distant relatives and well-meaning acquaintances to go for such discussions.

Also, yes, wire wrapping has been the bane of my jewelry making existence. I snap wire and waste wire sooo damn much trying to twist it, and my results are always horribly messy. Which of course means I need more practice, but practicing frustrates me terribly and burns through my equipment money so much that it's a complete and utter BLEH.

[sofish-sasha.livejournal.com]

Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome? Is that when your own sleeping habits don't match the whole day/night thing? In that case I have it too. When left to my own devices I tend to wake/get up around one in the afternoon, and fall asleep around, say, 3 or 4 in the morning (after lying in bed for hours).
At least in the summer. In the (long, dark) winter I just want to sleep as much as possible.

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

DSPS seems to me like one of those conditions that, like ADD, is far more pervasive than the psychologists think and so vaguely defined that there's no real point in trying to diagnose it in people. All I know is that, left to my own devices, I naturally try to sleep at around 5 AM and wake at 12:30 or so. If forced to disregard this schedule, I need another hour or more of sleep just to keep up.

As for the asexuality, I assumed that was the case with myself for a long time before realizing I have a desire for a specific mate, who I've never met or seen, which is quite frustrating. But so long as I'm not thinking of Her I have no real attraction to other people. Nowadays I call myself a monosexual.

[stagemanager.livejournal.com]

I am finding I am much more prone to reading entries if they consist solely of bulleted lists.

I don't have a lack of desire for a mate; I have just finally resigned myself to the apparent fact that I will never find one. Somehow, I'm becoming okay with that.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

DSPS sounds pretty much like me, too, with a pretty major delay. I do best falling asleep right around sunrise, and sleeping through most of the day.

Your first point actually just triggered a realization for me: I don't want a mate, I want a partner. I'm to sleepy to verbalize the exact difference there, but it makes sense inside my head.

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

"Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome"

Holy crap, I have this!! My medication makes it worse, too.

And I believe "Anhedonia" refers to the lack of feeling any emotions, really. It's the technical term for that sort of blah numbness that characterizes major depression.

"Octavia Butler is even more rocking than I was led to believe" YES.

[evilcresyluna.livejournal.com]

Oh darn, not quite my weirdness. While I do tend towards falling asleep at 3-4am and waking up early afternoon, I will continue to cycle through, going from that to sleeping at 8am-4pm, and so on. I once overslept when I didn't start my shift until 6pm. Today, I've been on vacation, so we went to bed 4amish, woke up at 1pm and I still took a nap around 6pm. Right now my work is so wacky and random with hours that it is pretty much impossible to definitely work on regular sleep/wake hours. Sometimes I go to work at 7am, or 3pm, or 3am, and sometimes I get out at 4pm, midnight, 3am... I usually don't do a full night shift but that doesn't mean I never do so.
Re: anhedonia - we usually use it in not just inability to experience joy, like "oh wow what a beautiful new baby! and a sunrise! and world peace!" kind of joy, but like enjoyment in anything. Everything is a gray dull unhappiness.

[marsdejahthoris.livejournal.com]

Huh, interesting. *found this entry a bit late, but felt the need to comment.*

*I'm asexual, and yes, people think it's very weird. My mother, on the other hand, thinks it explains a HELL of a lot, and has no problem with it, especially as it drops my chances of unwanted pregnancy through the floor. :) My mom is awesome.

*Mark Hamill kicks ass and takes names.

*I've discovered that my sleep cycle seems to drift anywhere from 3 AM to 11 to 5 AM to noon. ... I cannot seem to sleep past noon, whatever I do. But I can't go to BED before 3. ... And everybody else in my family goes to bed no later than midnight and is up by 8.