Stitches are less visible when you use a thread a shade darker than your fabric.

a cartoon of a baby deer playing with a plant Alt: a cartoon of a baby deer playing with a plant

If you see this, quote with the energy you bring to bluesky

If you see this, quote with the energy you bring to Bluesky.

Black square with a red and yellow patterned heart appliqued on with rainbow thread

I started a new quilt!

Image of a square baby quilt. There are 9 blocks with green and yellow sashing and then a pink floral sashing between them all. 6 of the blocks has 90s kitchen goose style geese, and the other three have the pink floral. The binding has tiny strawberries on it

I finished a quilt for my cousin's brand new baby. I adore making baby quilts.

I'm super excited about the new season of Gastronauts on Dropout, but I really want to know when Thousandaires will come back

For me it's the fact that they based some of the game play off of gardening which has been broken since seasons came out.

I find it amusing every time I see a post talking about how the Sims 4 is a bad game and they list actual game features as the reason why. Oh no! People use the sandbox game like a sandbox!
To be clear, the Sims 4 because EA decided it was a cash cow and never fully play tested it.

According to the program I'm in the fawn/freeze happens when you get stuck in your dorsal vagal nervous system instead of alternating between that and the primary vagus nerve.

A recreation of a clippy suggestion made with a typewriter, watercolor, and colored pencil. It reads: hey! it looks like you are about to share a take on what is best for a community yeu are not a part of! would you like to fucking not?

I can't currently participate at in person activism, but I am the person whose number you can write on your arm in case you need help at or after an action.

Another website is www.pain-ed.com
I wrote down Peter O'Sullivan, but don't remember why.

The program I'm in is based on this University of South Australia initiative. Most or all of the clinicians have taken their course.
www.painrevolution.org

IASP Announces Revised Definition of Pain - International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) For the first time since 1979, IASP introduced a revised definition of pain, the result of a two-year process that the association hopes will lead to revised ways of assessing […]

In 2020 the IASP revised their definition of pain to "An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage"

Importance of energy conversation
• provides a way of managing your pain, rather than the pain controlling you
• keeps you from entering a boom and bust cycle
• conserves your energy so you can do more over time
• prioritize activities that are most meaningful for you

As you are working on pacing it's important to pay attention to your internal processes. Emotions, hunger, thirst, low oxygen saturation will all change how much your body can function.

Rest is an activity.

Your pain will increase the longer you stay in the boom and bust cycle. That's why pacing is the most important skill to practice in the program.

Image labeled "Activity lovely on a downward slope" There are three horizontal lines. The top line is over doing it, second is activity level, third is time. There's a diagonal line representing activity level starting just under the start of over doing it and going down to below under doing it at the end of the graph. A wavy line goes over the diagonal with the peaks labeled pain flare up. As time goes on the pain flare up happens at lower points on this scale.

Here's a visualization of this process. Your window of tolerance shrinks the longer you are in this cycle.

Today I woke up way too early, with lots of pain and anxiety, but then in my individual sessions they were able to help me process some of the anxiety, and I took a nap when I got home, so let's see how far I can get in my notes!

Yesterday I was so anxious and overwhelmed that I literally couldn't even think thoughts. We had group sessions in the afternoon and I took a lot of notes because I was sure I wouldn't remember anything.

The one that I find most annoying is "you didn't apologize in the exact way I wanted so you are now a worthless person."

Photo of a workbook page with a pie chart where each section is a different hour in the day. It says:, Ideal time pie. Instructions: fill in the wedges with what you would ideally like to be doing or what you would find more acceptable, given your pain level, during each one hour time black Examples: sleep, self care, work, family, friends, relationship, housework, leisure/recreation activities.

Photo of a workbook page with a pie chart where each section is a different hour in the day. It says:, Current time pie. The time pie below represents a 24 hour day. The wedges indicate one hour blocks of time. Instructions: fill in the wedges with what you are currently doing each hour. Examples: sleep, self care, work, family, friends, relationship, housework, leisure/recreation activities.

Time pie charts! Label different activities in different colors and see where your time is going right now. The second chart is for what you want your days to look like. You can redo these as often as you like. How can you start changing your current pie to be more like your ideal pie?

Simplify: change tasks to use less energy. Remove steps from tasks. Move frequently needed items to more accessible places. So tasks seated or laying down where possible. Use tools and equipment to save energy

Planning/prioritizing: what needs to be done daily/weekly/monthly. Identify high energy and low energy tasks. Identify what needs to be done now and what can wait. Adjust the plan to fit the energy you have
Delegate: what can friends/family help with. What can you pay someone to do for you.

For energy conversation
Pacing : break an activity into smaller tasks with breaks built in. Frequently check in with yourself and see if you need to pause your activity. Use slow, smooth movements. Remember to breathe.

We have this culture programming of "no pain, no gain". Always be making gains, always do the most.
But that's a great way to injure yourself when you are able bodied, not to mention when you are chronically ill.

A big part of pacing is avoiding the boom and bust cycle, which is when you do too many things because you are feeling okay and then crash because you were doing too much and are then unable to do anything. The space between your highs and lows gets smaller and your low gets lower.

First day of the functional restoration clinic, and then focus for this first week is pacing. I have a little head start on this because I've been doing what the long COVID clinic tells @garnettillie.bsky.social to do.

Erica Ishii on the set of Make Some Noise. She is saying "you not, what day is it?"

Brennan Lee Mulligan on the set of Make Some Noise with Erica Ishii on the right side looking shocked. He is shouting "It's Pride, bitch!"