tei_

On 3/2/2022 at 9:55 AM, Mad Hatter said:

Psych: I'm sorry there was a fuck up with the insurance, we absolutely cannot proceed. But you know what, I'm bored let's have a chat anyway. Just to be very clear, it will be absolutely impossible to continue after this because of contract reasons.

Me: Spills life story.

Psych: Inteeeresting. Can you come back next week? I'll make an exception just for you, I'll sort out everything!

Fascinating, was not expecting that one! But if they're willing to put in some work to take you as a patient (and if you felt comfortable enough to spill your life story in the first place!) then that sounds like it could be a good fit? 

On 2/26/2022 at 6:00 AM, Mad Hatter said:

I’m veering off topic a bit, but I feel like this already is the culture in most places. So much so there’s few opportunities to give room for perfectly valid emotions like anger. Sports might be the only place where it is somewhat acceptable. Not saying that fighting in the rink is a good thing or should be part of the sport. Just not convinced that more shame is the answer when considering this in a wider context.

Yeah, I see where you're coming from! IMO, the question of whether there is too much or too little shame w/r/t expressing anger is too dependent on gender, race and class to have a single answer. In particular, it seems to me that white men who are able to project a certain image of power and authority have a much higher bar in terms of how much anger and aggression is socially acceptable to express, even in workplace environments like offices, even to the point of a kind of "boys will be boys" attitude to the reality of abusive behaviour in the home or workplace. Meanwhile women, nonwhite people, and anyone who can't fit into that specific projection of traditional authority has a much lower bar for socially acceptable anger, to the point that any expression of negative emotions is liable to be interpreted as being overly emotional/aggressive/unprofessional.

So maybe "shame" isn't quite the right word, but I think there is a certain kind of calibration of someone's capacity for looking at their own expressions of anger and evaluating whether they were reflective of the kind of interactions that are owed to other people, that needs to be calibrated upwards for some people and downwards for others. And I think it needs to be calibrated downwards for hockey players, in the same way I think it needs to be calibrated downwards for a lot of upper-class white men (related, of course, to the fact that the NHL has the most affluent fanbase of any major sports league in the US, and one of the most visibly white-dominated player demographics.)

On 2/20/2022 at 2:22 AM, sarakingdom said:

I can say with some experience that it's entirely possible to practice martial arts, the actual sport/art of literal fighting and getting all up in people's faces and putting their asses on the floor, in a full-contact way, without any fights breaking out and no punches being thrown (except sanctioned ones in the handful of arts that have them). So I call bullshit that checking in the game makes fights inevitable. There is zero level of physical conflict that makes the occasional fight inevitable unless the culture of the sport values aggression over self-control.

Yes, this is a great point. I haven't done a huge amount of training in martial arts, but I've tried out a few different classes/styles, and it seems like one thing that is remarkably constant across martial arts styles from very different histories and cultures is a heightened emphasis on protocol, respect, and hierarchy; much more so than in other sports, which often have those kinds of values in theory but don't really implement them in day-to-day practice. In many styles of martial art there are specific ways to speak to your teacher and other students, greet your opponents, dress, move around the space, etc., that are taught alongside the actual fighting. It supports the intuition that, if you're going to develop your capacity for violence and harm, you need to do so in concert with the development of your capacity for restraint and self-control.

22 hours ago, Artemis Prime said:

Just to clarify what I said, I don't disagree with you here. It is the culture of the NHL that makes fights happen and they could eliminate fights from games if they really wanted to. My point with the physical contact was that is presents more of an opportunity for a guy to sucker punch his opponent versus, say, tennis, where you spent the game approximately 75 feet away from the other player. 

Yeah, for sure. And I think in order to eliminate fights they would need to not just passively condemn them or try to remove the motivation or reward for them, but work to build a culture where losing your temper in public is considered actively shameful and undesirable. Which I don't really see being a priority, especially when so many fans clearly enjoy the fights. I went to another game this week, and was sitting beside some preteen girls who were shouting fight! fight! basically the entire time. If the fans want it, the players will do it-- not just to please the audience, but because of course the players grew up as fans, wanting the things the people around them taught them to want from the game.

Happy birthday!

Re. avoiding the news, I feel you, but I like to think about it more in terms of... information intake vs. what I can output. Taking in information about the world that helps you act in positive ways upon it is good. Taking in information in a way (and.... I think Being On The Internet is often that) that would prevent you from acting in positive ways is not good. So it sounds like you are managing your time, energy, and information well!

CONGRATS on getting the appointment with the psychiatrist! Even if this psychiatrist doesn't turn out to be The One, you have done the thing and entered the system and it sounds like the occupational health therapist is someone who can help you navigate the system. 

On 2/18/2022 at 5:36 AM, Mad Hatter said:

Hmm yes I see your point. My go to words are “idiot”, “lazy” or “I suck”, which are neither helpful or descriptive.

I agree that these aren't generally helpful words, and formulating more specifically what you're experiencing will be helpful both for you and for any doctor you talk to— but also, I think that "I constantly feel like a lazy idiot who sucks, and would like to not feel that way, and I am having a lot of trouble formulating a more precise description of my experience than that, which is also something I would like your help with" is a completely legitimate thing to say to a psychiatrist, and exactly the kind of mental quandary they're trained to help you navigate! 

6 hours ago, Epsilonte said:

Better a month early than a month late. Though... You should bring a LOT of books if you are going to wait there for a month.

VERY TRUE. And even so, if you're going to be a month late to something, the hairdresser's is probably a good choice. There are still consequences... only hair-related consequences, which can't get that bad. 

Flips! Driving! Hopefully not at the same time! 

Went to the rink today in between French practice zoom and interviewing-my-friends-about-art podcasting. Tried skating backwards for the first time. Fell a few times but not at high speeds 😂 

Gymnastics yesterday was, as always, low energy; I don't know if it's just something about Sundays? I usually take Sunday off my ADHD meds, but that didn't have a huge effect last session. This session, the time I'm training before I coach the adult class is just... there's one other class there, and the coach is a kind of quiet teenager that I don't really know but the CEO was enthusiastic about me going in to train at that time because it meant I could be the official Adult In The Gym for insurance purposes and he didn't have to go in and supervise. IDK! She never puts on music, which seems like a silly thing to make a differemce, I'm just used to the gymnastics club being a loud busy place and feel lethargic when it's not. 

However, I did manage to do some front layout fulls of the trampoline, THANK GOD, I had gotten into a mindfuck situation which happens, depending on who you ask, either when you twist too early in a front layout, or when you have hardcoded the "wrong" twisting directions into your body (i.e. I cartwheel and roundoff right but twist left, which is technically mismatched) and as a result end up going for a full and end up twisting half in one direction and then the second half back in the direction you came from, i.e. no net rotation at all. BUT I seem to have fixed it:

ALSO, there's a former competitive athlete who comes to adult gym who did a little pommel horse lesson yesterday, and I realized I'd been trying to be hollow in the back (front support) stage of the circle, when you actually want to be slightly open. Which makes sense, since your hips need to be open in the front and sides, why wouldn't they also be in the back. But I think that will help with my quest for mushroom circles. Whenever I actually work on pommel again. I never do it on Wednesdays because the gym is busy and I don't want people looking at my flailing. 

On 2/12/2022 at 8:35 PM, Artemis Prime said:

Oooh, hockey talk! I think fights in hockey are always going to be inevitable to a certain extent. It is, as you pointed out, inherently a violent game. And on top of the legitimate checks, guys take cheap shots all the time. So this guy's been throwing his elbow in your face every time the ref turns his back all night and at some point enough is enough and you take a swing. I don't think that's ever going away, and I judge the guy who was taking cheap shots more than the guy who threw a punch. Also officiating in the NHL (not sure about juniors) is notoriously inconsistent so there's also the attitude "if the ref isn't going to do something about this I will." Then there's the mentality that you have to prove that you can stand up for yourself, which is probably even worse in juniors where guys are trying to catch the attention of scouts. Overall, I would say it's less about honor than it is letting your emotions run away with you in the heat of the moment.

Yeah. I think part of the cognitive dissonance for me is the difference between the mens' and womens' games— the women do seem to get penalties for being violent in ways they aren't allowed to be, but they don't seem to have a culture of drop-everything-and-punch fights during games, so clearly it is possible to play hockey without frequent fights. I can see the argument, however, that fights are the natural extension of allowing checking in the gameplay, so you kind of have a choice between no-violent-contact-or-else hockey, or some-violent-contact-which-will-inevitably-sometimes-get-out-of-hand hockey. 

that path is gorgeous!

Went to a junior hockey game yesterday! Coming from a perspective of knowing nothing at all about hockey and trying to learn what the sport is from observation, it was really interesting to compare this game (men's hockey, players drafted into NHL teams regularly) with the I went to last week, which was the womens' team at the university. 

Obviously the biggest difference was that the junior team was, well, better, which I wasn't sure I would actually have the discernment to be able to see, but definitely could; the speed of the skating, the passing, the... idk, organization of bodies so that everyone always had options of who to pass to? Was just a whole other level. 

There's also the fact that the mens' game allows checking and the womens' doesn't. Which, if you had asked me before, I would have said I either had no opinion on checking, or would prefer to watch a game without it. But actually... the actual checking, the fact that you are allowed to put yourself a location someone else is already occupying in order to get the puck, I think actually did make the game more interesting to me? I mean... a lot of sport is kind of inherently about aggression? And I mean that in a good-to-neutral way, I guess; humans have physically aggressive feelings and it feels good to have outlets for them! So I'm not necessarily anti-violence. That's what I liked about the womens' game too! It wasn't not violent; the game itself was violent, even in the absence of "illegal" contact. 

So given that, I'm trying to figure out why the actual fighting in the mens' game... kind of ruined it for me? Given that I am not opposed to violence in theory— what's the difference between smashing someone against the boards, and punching him after for good measure? 

And I think part of it is the feeling of dishonesty or cognitive dissonance that there is around fighting. Like, it's not allowed, you'll get a penalty, it's not sportsmanlike. And yet, as soon as two guys pulled off each others' helmets and started punching each other... the cameras focused on them, and the crowd cheered, and the refs kind of just hovered around until one got the other to the ground. Clearly, there is also a perception that fighting is in some situations honourable and sportsmanlike and the only possible response to certain kinds of slights! Which I would be okay with, except, y'know, if fighting a guy for something he did in a hockey game were the only reasonable response, why stop with a little scrap on the ice? Shouldn't you come to the aid of your teammate, if he's fighting? Why not take it out back after the game, if that's the only way to defend your honour? Clearly, if the main goal of hockey is to be a game where people compete to put a puck in a net, deciding that fighting is OK is just... not super practical. 

So, OK, if fighting is in fact dishonourable and unsportsmanlike then... well, I'm going to think less of people who do it, and become less invested in the success of their team. Which is kind of where I'm at. Watching a fight makes me think, this is stupid, you're stupid, your whole team is stupid, now I'm less impressed with your abilities than I was before. 

There's also something almost infantilizing about the fights, that I find kind of creepy. Like, there's so much power and mature skill on display, and then suddenly they're being separated and sent to time-out jail like kindergarteners? idk, aren't they embarrassed? (Don't answer that. I'm sure they're not. I'm sure they think they're cool and assume everyone else does too.) 

On 2/9/2022 at 9:31 AM, Mad Hatter said:

This is what I imagined before remembering your challenge.  

If any opportunity arises for non-skating foot knives, I will definitely take it! 

On 2/9/2022 at 11:45 PM, WhiteGhost said:

From my experience it was a pretty easy transition from the figure skating ones.  The biggest difference was not having the ability to drag the toe as a brake, but it also meant less hilariously dangerously splaying yourself across the ice when you accidentally get your balance in front of your skates and the brake suddenly kicks in.

Huh, I don't think it ever actually occurred to me to use the toe as a brake on figure skates! So far the differences for me seem to be that I'm a lot more likely to pitch forward , since I'm used to the pick catching me, and I was used to using it for propulsion a bit, too, so I have to actually learn how to get momentum from a side-to-side motion instead of a "walking" kind of thing. Also, since I only ever skated in a "family outing to toddle around the rink in the park" kind of way, skating with the goal of eventually learning hockey means I would need to learn a whole lot more skating skills that I never learned in the first place— turning and stopping quickly, skating backwards, etc.

UP TO NO GOOD YOUNGSTER. WELL DONE

4 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

I've always seen assassins as basically rangers who hate running.

TRUE, I do still hate running. There will be no running this challenge except the kind with knives strapped to my feet. 

2 hours ago, KB Girl said:

Someday i want to learn how to play the violin.. is there an app for that too?

I... don't know! Honestly, probably! I keep getting ads for a piano-teaching app on duolingo, so...

A ranger? Oh no! I've been an assassin so long. Okay, not that long, but the Rangers is the largest guild, and as Plutarch, "I live in a small city, and I prefer to dwell there that it may not become smaller still," I didn't want to be a ranger, EVERYONE'S a ranger, come on now. But maybe it's time for me to accept that the real action is in Rome/that my entire life is a mediation of the driving need to do ALL THE THINGS with the necessity of choosing some subset of Things to actually get done,  at risk of being paralyzed by how very many things there are in the universe.  So: Ranger.

I went to a hockey game last week, and decided I wanted to learn how to skate on hockey skates/maybe eventually play hockey. So, I have three fitness Things that I want to keep up this challenge:

-Gymnastics: Wednesday/Sunday, with Wednesday being my main training day where I can go to the gym while EVERYONE ELSE is there and marvel at all the gymnastics happening, and Sunday I come in a bit early before I coach my adult class to do some flips.

Lifting: Tuesday/Thursday/Friday. I'm still trying for Thursday, even though i teach a Zoom class at 2:30 and had been spending Thursday mornings wandering around the house muttering maniacally to myself about math for a pretend audience. But if I take the car to the gym that morning then I'll have plenty of time. (I usually take the bus.)

Skating: Once a week! There's open skate Mondays 2:30-3:30, so I'm going to aim for that. I need to look up stopping, backwards skating, etc.

Other things I will do this challenge: learn python (I got a summer job that... has something to do with data science? I literally have no idea what it is or how I was chosen but hey), learn classical mechanics (my one class that I am taking this semester is first-year physics, which yes hilariously I am taking first-year physics and teaching first-year math, because when I went back to school I MEANT to take science classes that I'd been scared to take in high school because I couldn't do math, but then I had to take a math prereq first, and fell into a rabbit hole of math, and now need to get around to those science classes, and going from differential equations last semester to a physics class which does not have calculus as a prereq this semester is a really bizarre form of whiplash and confusion), keep practicing and making reeds even though concerts are cancelled for the entire month, buy peg dope and new strings for my violin and take it out of the case for 15 min/day, keep up my now weeklong duolingo streak (anyone want to be duolingo friends? https://www.duolingo.com/profile/_tei) and--

GO TO BED BY 11:30 AND AIM TO WAKE UP BY 8 SO I HAVE TIME TO DO ALL THESE THINGS

Here for workable bedtime routines, I need one of those 👀 

Wow, this is so cool! Truly the dream 😭 Following, excited to see how the setting-up process goes! 

nice nice! 

On 2/4/2022 at 10:10 AM, Emissary2Ornj said:

does the internal push-pull of "I belong here!" "But not as much as that other person - here you go!" ever get resolved?

Well, in this case, they're paying (or rather, their parents are paying) for gymnastics, and I'm there for free because the CEO said I could show up and nobody else is gonna stop me So I'm kind of supposed to be working in around the edges, haha.

Since lockdowns seem to be pretty much over here, and the virus is here for good, I guess decision-making about how much to engage physically with the world is left up to the individual. Everyone seems to be kind of subconsciously making these sorts of decisions, but I have decided that I would like to start Getting Out More, in contexts where I can wear an N95 the whole time. I don't know if that's the right decision. Part of me feels like... if you can't leave the house triple-vaxxed and wearing an N95...what's it all for? But then, diseases don't care about feelings. and yet, the ICUs are full of unvaccinated people. Roughly equal numbers of vaccinated and unvaccinated people are being hospitalized here, and despite what our math-challenged premier thinks, that means the vaccine works. If this is how it's going to be forever... do we stay home forever? I don't know.

Well, my partner and I went to a game of the university womens' hockey team last night, and we are going to a game of the local junior mens' team next week. Watching hockey live was a completely different thing from watching it on TV! When you're there, you can actually get a sense of how incredibly fast everyone is going, and the kind of force and energy being expended. I never even learned to skate on hockey skates; like a lot of women, I was given figure skates by default. Now I want to learn...

Apparently, Sunday gymnastics is always low-energy and Wednesday gymnastics is always So Much. Probably because Wednesdays I'm in the gym at the same time as, well, everyone else, including the competitive groups and coaches, and I feel a subconscious need to Keep Up even  if I'm just some weirdo training in a corner by myself and vacating a piece of equipemnt the instant a competitive athlete so much as glances at it. 

So, working backwards: 

Wednesday gymnastics: stayed three hours, had a good twisting day, managed to put back DOUBLE TWISTS from the trampoline onto a MAT! "Landing" would be an overstatement, but. I was DOING THEM. I had only managed a double twist once before, into the pit my last workout before covid, and twisting is really hard and scary for me, so. I basically did a bazillion of them in the way you keep doing a new skill when you want people to look at you and notice you doing a new skill. Plus, like, real gymnastics that makes me look like a real gymnast! 

Monday: lifting

Sunday gymnastics: not much, but then I coached my adult class and it was GREAT, two new people came and two of the people who had been coming, who I thought were ready to try back handsprings but was nervous about my own judgement, both did back handsprings! And they were pretty good! One kind of had it as a kid, and for one it was her first time in her life! A month ago dhe showed up saying the wanted to "do a flip" before her thirtieth birthday at the end of the session, and now she has front tucks easily from the trampoline, and the beginnings of a very solid back handspring 😍

Well I've only lifted once this week and it's Friday, so maybe this will be another two-lifting-day week and my goal next challenge will to get three lifting days a week. 

Hey, sooo, re. ADHD.

I could have written most of what you wrote in that section. I didn't really struggle in school, at least compared to people who were sent to specialists because they were noticeably struggling. I adjusted my school trajectory to avoid stuff I was bad at, yeah, but so does everyone. I'm a functioning adult, and could have continued appearing as a mostly-functioning adult to the outside world. But internally, I was getting more and more frustrated, especially after I decided to go back to school and try to learn, well, the exact stuff that I avoided in school the first time around. I couldn't organize my time, start or stop tasks when I meant to or needed to, decide what needed doing when, make priorities, or concentrate on anything.

And a lot of it had to do with distraction, and in the modern world distraction means the internet-- so partly I just felt embarassed, like, look at this lazy hack who can't stop scrolling stupid shit on the internet and do her work. And partly it made me feel like if the distraction was the problem, eliminating the distraction was the only possible solution-- if I could just stay away from the internet, I'd be fine! Well, yeah, maybe, but I don't live in a cabin in the woods, I live and work in the modern world and need to be able to use modern tools in an organized and reasonable way. I did, actually, used to be able to manage my distraction more or less with the cabin-in-the-woods method: for my last two years of university I had no internet connectivity at all in my apartment, and had to walk to school to do anything online. And even now, I have a dumbphone, because I don't trust myself with a smartphone. But after a certain point... you live in the world you live in, with the brain you have at the current moment, and my brain situation wasn't working. Aaaaand I only decided to try to get tested for ADHD when a friend (another Real Functioning Adult) was diagnosed with it, and said basically that to me.

So anyway, the attempt to actually get tested/diagnosed was a whole adventure, but eventually I just went to my GP and was like ??? and he did literally a questionnaire and we had a conversation about it (which. sucked. I, too, have tried to Do Therapy once and it was terrible, and talking about my feelings is the worst, but I psyched myself up to actually show some vulnerability for the ten-minute conversation and it was over quickly, lol)  and then he was like "cool, yeah, I'll write you a prescription for Vyvanse, let me know how it goes." And that was it! So now I have a prescription that-- well, not to have to Talk About My Feelings again, but-- it makes it maybe 15% easier to start doing stuff. I don't feel "high" ever, I don't feel like it's making me do anything, I don't feel in any way not-myself; actually, I feel more myself, because I just have a little bit more capacity to decide I want to do something and then actually carry out actions in accordance with my values and plans. I don't take it every day, I take planned breaks from it, and even on the days off... having gotten more into the habit of planning my day and avoiding distractions, the off-days are actually better, too. Would I like to eventually not need the drug, and go back to the cabin-in-the-woods, no distractions, organized-because-my-whole-life-is-just-set-up-that-way goal? Sure! Maybe one day life will be like that. But it's not right now and that's OK.

The question of "how much struggle warrants help"-- I totally get, and it's relevent in situations where help is a pie that can only be sliced so many ways, but I think what made me seek help for ADHD, or at least the things I want to improve about my experience of the world that are known to be improved with ADHD meds, is that in this case it's really not. Me (or you) trying a medication that could improve my experience of my life doesn't take anything away from other people, it doesn't close any door for anyone, it doesn't mean that other people who have the same (or worse!) struggles don't also get to seek solutions. Having a manageable daily experience of the world isn't a competition, so nobody's cheating. My diagnosis/medication is just about me-- I'm not trying to make any sort of argument that life is objectively more difficult for me than it is for other people, or that I need sympathy. I'm just trying to do my best, and this helps.

Two articles that really helped me contextualize how I think about this, and get used to the idea of taking medication:

The Buzzfeedification of Mental Health: on the face of it this could seem to be anti-ADHD-diagnosis, but it's really not. It honestly made me feel way better about seeking a diagnosis, because ADHD is a ~trendy~ diagnosis on the internet right now, and if you're the kind of person who has no interest in having a trendy diagnosis and using it to join an internet in-group (hiiii) then anything you find online about ADHD might feel off-putting. But really, the point here is that mental health, and mental illness, is culturally contextual. If you're diagnosed with ADHD, all that means is that a doctor thinks the medications and supports intended to help with a certain kind of struggle might help you, and struggles always take place within the context of your actual life in the society and situation you live in.

Lorien Psychiatry info on Adderall: Another reason that i was initially intimidated by the whole thing is that reading about medications for ADHD on the internet is kind of, um, terrifying. Obviously a lot of that is bias-- you're more likely to go to an internet forum to say "this medication was terrible, it fucked me up and I hated it" than you are to say "been on this medication for years, it helps, no major issues, all boring here!" Also, any medically oriented page is of course going to have to be concerned about side effects and dependency, and to emphasize those things in a way that can be scary. This page is written by a prescribing psychiatrist, and contains references to studies including stuff about side effects and dependency, but it's written in a way that is common-sense and... boring enough? That it makes t possible to put the scary information in its practical context. It also compares a bunch of the kinds of drugs that are commonly offered (and fwiw, my experience of Vyvanse matches up perfectly with the impression of the drug in this article; I'm lucky to not live in the US and have a drug plan through my work that makes it affordable for me, but that's not the case for everyone.)

Sorry for the novel! Long story short, I don't think you HAVE to pursue testing for ADHD, or that medication is the only answer. I do think that you are allowed to pursue it if you think it could help you, medication could be helpful, and can try a medication in a way that is low-risk and unintimidating.

Wednesday gymnastics was so much 😂 I thought I was going to take it easy/feel terrible because i woke up super early and couldn't get back to sleep, and felt weird and groggy the whole day... only it seems to be a pattern that when you walk into the gym thinking "ugh, maybe it's not even worth it" things suddenly start working. My back handspring was working, and my back handspring NEVER works! I strung a couple of them together standing on the rod floor, and maybe will be brave enough to do a back tuck straight from a standing back handspring soon. Also did a couple roundoff back handspring layouts into the pit from the REAL FLOOR. The real floor is my nemesis and I haven't "upgraded" my tumbling on it... basically since I was a kid... so if I could actually land that... that would be huge for me 😭

My swings on p-bars also felt a little less scary! They're still probably not even at horizontal, let alone a thing that could let me swing to handstand any time soon. But they feel so different from casting on a single rail, I think I just need to get used to the sensation.

Yesterday I did not go to the gym; I think I need to rearrange my gym days so that Thursday is a rest day instead of Friday, because Thursday I spend all day worrying about my teaching. Since the days I can do gymnastics are Wednesday and Sunday, there isn't really an arrangement of three lifting days that avoids having two lifting days in a row. But whatever, it's not like I'm lifting anything particularly heavy. I probably just need to sleep more haha

On 1/26/2022 at 8:29 PM, Emissary2Ornj said:

That (job) sounds so COOL. Maybe it isn't, given deadlines and resentment and stress; but what a neat thing to include on a resume! And get paid for, of course.

Yeah! I have also learned a lot of interesting things researching them, so that's nice. I have no background at all in history or musicology or theory, so it's all new to me

It absolutely makes sense that you're in a bad mood even if you eat the right things, and even if you know that the chances of your PPE failing are low— even with that knowledge, you still have to spend time thinking about it, and the constant precautions and making sure you're using the PPE right and wondering who has it and who's unvaccinated and whether you have it and don't know yet— all of that is  is an enormous mental load. Your brain is working overtime under the hood just to process reality... it can't be blamed for showing the strain. 

I'm so sorry you're in this kind of situation. It sounds like you're doing all the right things, as much as are in your power to do! 

Ooh... hello, everyone! So, my full-time job is actually playing the bassoon, but right now all concerts until March have been cancelled due to COVID. Soooo without the motivation of having to go to work, I need to keep practicing and making reeds every day. 

In addition, though, my extra goal is to get my violin out of its case once a week. I played violin as a kid and still have one, and would like to be able to play it well enough to attempt the solo Bach that I can't play on bassoon on it!