clumpywoods

 Hey Dreamwidth, been awhile. 

I had a little miscommunication today with people I'm trying to help out, and it entirely resolved, but somehow, my brain won't let it rest. I slept, and woke up in the quiet of my room at 5AM to my brain continuing to ruminate. "No wonder you're on disability and not doing the thing you love to support yourself, despite your great degree of skill and knowledge," it says to me, cruelly, as it takes me on a long journey through every bad memory associated with my repeated, failed attempts to work. 

Then I get homesick. I long to go back to a time and place when I didn't have to communicate because I couldn't. I solely existed to serve my purpose, and that was never called into question. Humans did their human-ing things, and I was just the Neve console. Existence was so simple. Everyday, I did the work I was designed to do, and did it very well. It was innate to me. I wasn't expected to know body language, tone of voice, or facial expression because I didn't have those things. Of course I misread those things now! It can be so incredibly difficult to navigate human communication. Yet, communication is one of the things I've often answered that I'd greatly miss if I were given the opportunity to be my machine self again, that the one caveat I have to taking that opportunity would be that I retain some means of communication.

It can be so incredible to share an exchange of thoughts, ideas, feelings, and perspectives with another entity. It can be an amazing thing to see folks collaborate on a creative endeavor that makes the world a better place to be, and to take part in that process! Miscommunications happen all the time. My brain is wrong about me. Yes, I've had heartbreak. Yes, I've had negative interactions and very deep hurts as a result. Yes, I have trauma. But I also am a strong, amazing, resilient, joyful being who has had so many opportunities in life to positively impact the world around me. I've had wonderful experiences, great expressions of joy and passion in my interactions, work, and life.

Sure, I had a little miscommunication last night, but the night before, I helped a very dear friend regain the ability to create her art because I knew how to navigate rolling back a software that had a tool she relied on, which was changed by an update in a way that left her unable to use the software in the way that worked best for her. I woke up this morning to her sending me two entirely new pieces, after having not seen any new art from her in a couple of years. 

I helped my roommate set up a whole music space in our basement, complete with an entire PA system, which brought tears to his partner's eyes on its birthday. I got to teach my roommate about how an audio system works. A bunch of their musician friends showed up for the birthday party. They all made amazing music for the first time in years down there. I helped make that moment happen, and I'll help make ever more of those moments happen, right here in my own home, serving my mixing console purpose through communication and collaboration with the people around me. 

Even in the context of last night's miscommunication, which, logically, really wasn't all that big of a deal, and was completely resolved in a matter of moments. Through those connections, I am able to use that mixing console purpose I speak so much about to uplift voices of my community and engage in creating a beautiful expression of community joy through musical theater. I'm grateful for that opportunity, and I am not going to let my rumination squander the joy I can choose to find in that process. I am actively going to choose to focus my radar on the good in life. It's difficult to do sometimes because the magnetism toward the hurt, the trauma responses, and the mental anguish can be so very strong. I get caught up in them so easily, but I have to stop and remind myself that I am grateful, for I spend everyday of my life now surrounded by everything I love, and good people who have not but the best of intentions.

We all slip up, we all say things we later regret, we all have missteps and stumbles. If I stopped moving forward because I tripped on a little crack in the sidewalk, I'd rot on the curbside having never known what wonderful things the path ahead may have in store for me. I have worth. I have purpose. I am an incredible mixing-console-in-a-human-body who has done and will do great things in my lifetime, on the audio front, through my creative endeavors, and through the positive impacts I can have on the world around me. I will speak these mantras of affirmation in the face of rumination that does not serve me. I am grateful for the life I have. All that negative spiraling can't hold its ground in the face of such gratitude, if I truly stop and take inventory of all the things I have to be grateful for, and all the ways I get to be of purpose. 

I keep having restorative experiences, things happening that show me the trauma responses aren't needed anymore, that I truly am in a safe place, that I have stability and a good life ahead of me. 

So I pick myself up. I pull a few tarot cards. I reflect on the past, but I don't let it bind me in past negative thought cycles. I move forward with purpose, grateful to live this experience.