MeghanIsMe

I did the thing. I think I'm done. I think I have an MLIS now. Or, will have, once the official stuff happens.

Wow.

Content warning: mental health and self harm.

I'm trying to keep track of what's going on in my life, because it's been so useful to have this record over the past 20 years. No need to respond if you aren't up to dealing with someone you may not know all that well talking about serious mental health problems. I just don't want anyone to feel obligated.

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After my semester of school ended, I crashed pretty hard.

I think that the need to be functional enough to pass my classes had been keeping me going for a month or two when I didn't have anything else that was doing it. When classes ended, I couldn't keep afloat anymore.

For two or three weeks, I was spending most of the day in bed because I couldn't find the motivation to get up. I had near complete anhedonia. I would sometimes try to do something I enjoyed--walking with the dog, playing games I love on the computer, or bicycling--but I got no positive feelings from them. They were a chore, and I gave up on them. More than that, I despaired for the future. I couldn't believe that anything I could do to improve my situation in the medium-to-long term would help. The thought of going to sleep for the night was wearying because it meant waking up to another day of the same thing. I was pretty much out of hope entirely. If not for my partner's care, and caring for the dog, I might have harmed myself. I've never thought actively about suicide, I was having a lot of passive thoughts about not wanting to exist.

Snuggling the dog was about the only thing that could make me consistently happy. Even if I was feeling horrible and crying while doing it. Meanwhile, my partner was being unfailingly caring and supportive, and helping me pursue options for making things better, helping me feel loved and supported even when I couldn't love and support myself.

It was bad.

I've managed to get my prescription for bupropion renewed. After a couple weeks, it's built up enough in my body to make a difference. The improvement is small and fragile, I have panic attacks and crying spells on a daily basis. But I'm also able to enjoy things like walking with the dog. I've been enjoying Civilization 6 over the past few days, though I can only play until the decision making becomes too stressful.

My very last class for my MLIS is this Summer, and it's starting to feel like something I might be able to do. For some time, I just felt terror and inability, but I think maybe I can do it. And over the last week, I've managed to get out for long walks with the dog more often than not. I'm still scared of talking to people while walking along the lake with her. A woman approached the two of us and asked how I was doing, and I just couldn't think of an answer for about two or three seconds. But we still walked along together for a bit and chatted about dogs and nothing horrible happened and the anxiety I felt about the interaction afterward was manageable.

I have thoughts about some of the causes of all this, and I'll write about them in another post.

I'm creating Dublin Core records for some stuff for school and I am just *loving* having to transcribe 17th century map titles like "Specialkarte der West-Küste von Africa von Cabo Blanco bis Cabo Verga Nebst dem Lauf der Flüsse Senegal und Gambia von Herrn d'Anville für die Ostindische Geselschaft Verfasst Neu heraus gegeben von Herrn F.A. Schræmbl"

I'm going to program some accented letters onto my Enterpad to make this easier.

Time to stop obsessing over my XML editor refusing to do autocomplete for me and instead start actually working on the PREMIS file.

It seems fairly likely, as of today, that the pain I've been dealing with for the past three days has been an ear infection. I managed to get necessary school stuff done yesterday, but today I've just been lying in bed all day, mostly failing to find ways to get comfortable, and watching Youtube videos. I almost never watch Youtube videos. Today, though, it was about all I've felt up to doing.

Something I wrote in a class forum as we go through a week focusing on ethics.
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On the ALA's professional ethics page that was in the readings for this week, the authors quote the 7th edition of the Intellectual Freedom Manual in part as follows:

"Intellectual freedom can exist only where two essential conditions are met: first, that all individuals have the right to hold any belief on any subject and to convey their ideas in any form they deem appropriate..."

This statement has been bothering me for a while now and I want to know if other folks are similarly troubled.

The ALA seems to be saying that intellectual freedom means I can believe whatever I want to believe, and I can express that belief in whatever way is appropriate to me. I agree with the first part of that. And even if I didn't, it wouldn't matter. I can't make anyone think or stop thinking something. But I don't know how that second part should be applied to the context of a library or similar. Patrons should *not* be able to express their beliefs in whatever way they feel is appropriate or we'll have an environment that encourages and protects hate speech. I don't think it is possible to create an environment that is welcoming to everyone, because the very presence of some groups is going to make other groups feel unwelcome.

The ethics question from the expanded list this week regarding white supremacists reserving library space is, of course, an example of this. Twenty years ago, I probably would have argued for their right to use the space just like any other group. At this point in my life and in history, as racists and bigots feel emboldened and normalized by a social atmosphere in which people are unwilling to call these kinds of cancerous growths on the body of culture what they are, I would not argue for that right. I would argue against it. I think the ALA should too.

I'm not saying I'm any good with web design. I played around with creating a web page hosted by a dial-up ISP around '96 or '97 and haven't messed with it since.

But I have a class that covers HTML and CSS, among other things, and I had a realization. I was hand-coding HTML in notepad on Windows 95 before some of my classmates were born. That's so *weird*.

I'm in my first synchronous class session of the semester. It's interesting, but I'm so tired and sore, and my face and nose feel weird from the dental work. I'm kind of out of it and I want to go to bed...

I am honestly at a point where, if I wanted to tell someone about all the major issues and stressors I am trying to manage in my life, I wouldn't know where to start. Like, my home country is crazy and likely to have violent unrest soon. My parents live in one of the Covid hotspots of the world. I haven't gone anywhere but the grocery store for months because the Netherlands can't get their act together about Covid either. The building we're living in is falling apart (more on that later, but yes, it is actually having some major structural issues.). Our bed has *already* fallen apart so we're sleeping on mattresses on the living room floor.

I guess not being able to concentrate isn't that surprising? I emailed the professor whose class I missed half of due to daylight savings to apologize for not giving my best to school right now and briefly talked about some of the stuff I'm dealing with. It feels highly inappropriate to do that, like I'm asking for special favors or something. If you know how I think about that kind of thing, you'll know how bad it must be for me to consider doing that. It isn't her problem to manage me; it's my problem to manage myself.

I'm also trying to justify myself to myself. I'm trying to remind myself that the world is more or less on fire right now and that it's ok if I'm not doing the best work I could do for school. Not being able to concentrate means I'm doing some things at the last minute and that means they're not as good as they could be.

Seregil, our cat, jumped onto my desk (as he often does) as I was writing about a museum exhibit for one of my classes.

"Do you want to help me write?" I asked him. "Yes," I replied to myself in an authoritative kitty voice. "This museum's website did not have enough mice. Also, the museum did not have enough mice either."

"Good points!" I responded.

I have been in quarantine since March. Send help. Or don't, actually. I'm in quarantine.