kaberett: Photo of a pile of old leather-bound books. (books)
some time ago [personal profile] sebenikela wrote a guide to getting Adobe Digital Editions playing nice with wine, Calibre and DeDRM, and it is super useful (in that I just got around to playing around with it, n months later, and have Made Use Of It). Sharing for the class, etc.

(I started down this path this morning because Foyles e-mailed me a notification about a sale, [personal profile] cesy gave me book tokens for my birthday, and I got sidetracked while trying to work out how to spend the money...)

I note, with amusement, that I started out convinced I must have an Adobe ID signed up somewhere; entering all the base e-mail addresses I thought might be associated with said account, and getting nowhere; giving up and starting to sign up, with the obvious plus-modified variant address, and... was told I already had an account. The reset password is... now stored in KeePass: apparently I hadn't got that set up yet at the point I signed up with Adobe.
kaberett: Photo of a pile of old leather-bound books. (books)
This Is How You Lose The Time War, Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Empress of Forever, Max Gladstone
Bookburners, Max Gladstone & various
check what T Kingfisher I do and don't have and then maybe (1) read the ones I do and (2) catch up on buying the ones I don't
the various new Seanan McGuire novellas
State Tectonics, Malka Older
Murderbot various, Martha Wells
Dragon Pearl, Yoon Ha Lee
The Vela, Yoon Ha Lee/Becky Chambers/Rivers Solomon/SL Huang
Hexarchate Stories, Yoon Ha Lee
Vivian Shaw???

From last time I did this:
Updraft, Fran Wilde
Nnedi Okorafor: The Girl with the Magic Hands, The Shadow Speaker
misc by Linda Nagata


(If you want to give me recs based on this list you are very welcome. Note that it is made up of "books I want to read that aren't available via my library", rather than being a complete listing.)
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
I remembered from last time that several of these points were trivial to resolve but I didn't remember how they were trivial to resolve and my wry comments didn't actually include details. ERGO.

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kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
Insight would be appreciated but mostly I'm writing this down this time so's I have it when I come back to this after the weekend. ;)

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kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
Also worked out last night: part of the reason I find it so very hard to ask for help is that I still - still - think of myself as toxic and unwanted; I work really hard at not vanishing from social groups, not deliberately fading, because for most of my teens that is what I did. I would show up for long enough to help, and then I would try to vanish again before I did any serious harm. (The reasons I believed I would are... long and tedious.)

So I position myself as caretaker and as advisor; I listen well and carefully and I offer opinions and I try very hard indeed not to "impose", even in the slightest, by requesting (or expecting!) reciprocation.

This is, as it turns out, a really bad basis for an equal and mutually-supportive relationship.
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)
Today's PHQ-9 score: 3 ("minimal depression", max score 27), at three days on 30mg citalopram. No intrusive thoughts this time (yet?).
kaberett: Toph making a rock angel (toph-rockangel)
specifically, there's a lot of "give me your current age so I don't ask you to time-travel", but actually... I'd like to time-travel, and it will be genuinely good for me to envisage two separate (positive!) scenarios. If you're interested in answers for past ages, then ask & I'll reply in comments.

I picked 25 fairly arbitrarily as a quarter century; I'm a little surprised - mostly pleasantly - by how close that is these days. :-)

I lived in:

Now: a ground-floor bedsit room in college accommodation, next to the Botanic Gardens, with huge south-facing sash bay windows. My room contains a sofa and a desk and a sink and a bed and a fair number of bookshelves and a coffee table covered in my tea collection, and I'm next to a kitchen that contains fridges and a freezer and horrible electric hobs and a nice-enough-but-not-lovely electric oven and a microwave. The front door's up 6 steps, and the shower's on the first floor; the back garden contains purple and white crocuses and narcissi.

At 25 (i): A two-bed flat in South Kensington, in London, shared with a friend, with level access (be it by lift or not). We've got a kitchen with gas hobs and an oven and a fridge and a freezer that we're not sharing with 8 other students, so it isn't full of gross months-out-of-date raw chicken; we've got a sofa that doesn't try to eat people, and a media set-up a bit more satisfactory than craning over people's shoulders to stare at laptop screens, so we can watch shows together without being uncomfortable. The tea collection's got somewhere sensible to live, and we've got a shelf in the living room dedicated to storing the shared perfume collection. The bathroom's big enough to store my shower stool in without getting in the way, and in my bedroom I've a double bed and a view of a tree. We go to the Science Museum Lates, and I spend lunchtimes in parks or visiting another gallery in the Natural History Museum.

At 25 (ii): I live in my home town, and here I can afford to share a house - rather than a flat - with friends. We're on a bus route or two, and I'm within easy pushing distance of my mum and the Various Other People I want to see regularly. The best bit? I get to do whatever I damn well like with the garden, within reason, so we've got herbs and bulbs in tubs, and a bay tree, and roses and wisteria up the back wall.

I drove:

Now: Nope: I'm officially Too Crippy To Drive, in ways that are highly unlikely to change, and positively-imagined futures don't erase that. This doesn't mean I'm upset about it, or the prospect of not being able to drive; it just means that my life's rather better when I'm not desperately hoping for the impossible or, at the least, improbable.

At 25: See above.

I was in a relationship with:

Now: Some Boys and a Girl and some extremely intense, close friendships built around poetry and music, and a few other ill-defined things, and it's lovely.

At 25: I've got no idea, but I'm looking forward to finding out. :-)

I feared:

Now: A depressive relapse. Not doing well enough this year to take up the PhD place I've been offered (which is not necessarily a sensible thing to fear; see scenario (ii), which is plausible and lovely, just different!). Everyone I love or care for dying. Being shouted at. Hurting people. Coming out. Moving somewhere more than a phonecall and fifteen minutes from my mum. London buses.

At 25 (i): Hurting people. Another depressive relapse. Breaking the mass spec. Hydrofluoric acid. Presenting at conferences. Disappointing Julie. Not doing enough activism. Being authentically myself in an academic setting.

At 25 (ii): Hurting people and another depressive relapse; they don't quite go without saying. Navigating meetings with Equalities ministers. Getting things hurtfully wrong. Not being able to help as much as I want to.

I worked at:

Now: My final year of a degree in Earth Sciences, specialising in volcanology. My student union's LGBT+ campaign. Lashings. VagPag. (Dreamwidth.)

At 25 (i): The second year of my PhD in isotope geochemistry, spending endless hours in the clean lab in the basement running columns, and even more time doing the three a.m. I'm-the-only-person-in-the-building dance around the mass spectrometer. My university's LGBT+ campaign. Lashings. The Big Sibling Project. Dreamwidth. VagPag.

At 25 (ii): The Big Sibling Project, including organising regular workshops. Lashings. National campaigning for trans* equality. Collecting a book of my essays for publication, self-pub or zine or maybe traditional publishing houses. Counselling - I'm beginning to be let loose on actual clients, which is daunting and exhilarating. Dreamwidth. Copy-editing, to bring in a bit extra. VagPag.

I wanted to be:

Now: Trustworthy. Safe. Welcoming. Brave.

At 25: Probably still the above, but I'll defer to my future self on that one. :-)
kaberett: A green origami stegosaurus (origami stegosaurus)
Hello, you.

I love you and I'm proud of you. You deserve it.

Well done for taking care of us. It's hard, but we've done it before and you can do it again. We're cheering you on.

Please try to remember that even when the stairs seem insurmountable (and when they are as nothing to getting out of bed), there are things you can do to make yourself feel better. I suggest: meditate (yes, you can do this while you're still in bed - that's allowed). Put on your nice dressing gown, the one that's like being given a hug (and say hello to the dinosaur for me). Have a shower. Get dressed in your clothes for taking on the world (no, don't look at me like that - you do have them, I promise. At the moment it's cargo shorts and your fuck-you jacket and your boots, but there's no reason it can't be corsetry or a suit). Put the kettle on. Put some food in your face. Find someone who loves you - they're around, and they want you to phone or text or call - and curl up with them on a sofa, or share some poetry, or give each other music recs, or talk about the book you just finished or pretty much anything else.

And these are suggestions: they're not orders, and they're not demands. But we've learned this enough times that it's worth trying to commit to memory, you know?

And even if you don't manage next time, or the time after, or you manage for a while and then you don't --

-- I love you anyway.
kaberett: A series of phrases commonly used in academic papers, accompanied by humourous "translations". (science!)
deadline 18th, 6 hrs lecture/practicals on 17th

... I have pre-emptively spent forty quid on Really Nice Tea because godDAMN I deserve a treat for being so nearly here

you guys

you guys

... I could hand in what I have now and not fail

I CANNOT EVEN with how much of a change this is from last year

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