Hey OP, I Feel Ya. I Really Do. But The Nice Thing Is That Theres An Easy Something You (yes You!) Can

Hey OP, I feel ya. I really do. But the nice thing is that there’s an easy something you (yes you!) can do about that! You can just ask, in a totally chill and platonic way, “hey, do you mind if I rest my head on your shoulder/put my arm around you/give you a hug?” It took me the longest time to realize that as much as I’m a touchy-feely person, so are many, many other people.

That’s only my experience, but I think it makes a lot of sense -- humans like touch, and we like feeling close to each other. And while a lot of the time that stuff reads as ““romantic”“ it really really don’t have to. By challenging that idea and being physically close with your friends, you can help to change that :) Plus, who doesn’t like being cozy with their pals?

Sometimes I get the worst yearning to just lean in and hold my friend, but like--platonically. I don't know his orientation but I wouldn't want him to think anything of it either way. I wish touch wasn't seen as such a romantic thing at times

Why is the venn diagram of people who enjoyed/want to see She Ra vs people who didn’t/don’t the exact same venn diagram as the people who are queer/out vs cishet?

Like. Am I really that intensely queer?

((don’t answer that))

I would like to formally thank She-Ra tumblr for inspiring me to re-watch this show. I’m 4 episodes in and I’m having such a blast. Every single character is so loveable and HORSE and GLIMMER and ADORA and BADASS SWORD, AAAARGH it makes me SO HAPPY

Sometimes I think about the hobbies and skills I’ve picked up over the years and I wonder... why?? What about these specific things makes me happy? Is there some underlying idea that I really love that connects all the dots? Or is that just the pattern-finding part of my brain seeking commonalities?

Well, let’s take a step back: How do we pick up new skills anyways? Clearly, at some point we were exposed to them, and clearly we decide that they are enjoyable and it’d be fun to continue doing them, but what feeds into that decision? Is there something inherent in us that connects to specific skills? Or is there something special about the way we are exposed to them?

And why does it feel harder and harder to pick up new things the more entrenched we become in the old ones?

I don’t pretend to have the answers. Instead, I’ve got a mental vibe-check that makes sense in my head (which maybe is a skill in and of itself). To me it’s all about mental models -- the way we fit things into our brains. When I learn a skill, I feel like I’m connecting dots, figuring out some set of ideas, shortcuts, connections, and memories that I’ll be able to draw upon to do the skill better and faster.

But generating these models from scratch sure isn’t easy -- think about how long it takes kids to understand grammar or basic arithmetic when they have nothing to build off of. And they don’t have anything else to clog up their minds while they’re learning!

So once we’ve got a few skills modeled, suddenly some things start coming more easily! Different skills have some of the same dots and connects, and rather than building new models from scratch, I can perhaps take bits off of ones that already exist.

The more pre-built models we have to pull from, the less appealing working from scratch becomes and the more difficult it seems. So, if that’s what guides me when I learn new skills, it actually makes quite a lot of sense that there are commonalities between all the things I’ve gotten into over the years! I’ve been taking shortcuts and cheating to learn the things faster!

So wait, what does this mean about my skills? It’s not that they’re actually getting any harder to learn, it’s just that we have less time and mental capacity to learn them, and that we like shortcuts (I mean who doesn’t). But now that I realize there’s a scenic route I’m missing, perhaps I should try to take it one of these days. It suddenly doesn’t seem quite as bad :)

ok, so!

The typical reader may now be wondering, “pile-o-words, what in the world are you going to do with this blog thing?”. well. now i have an answer!

You [reader] may have some Things that you think are cool. And you [reader] may want to share those Things with other people so that they hopefully can see your excitement and also get excited about your Things even if they don’t normally care or know very much about them!

I am going to talk about my Things and maybe also reblog some stuff about my Things and hopefully you get a little peek into my brain and also I get to tell you about things you wouldn’t otherwise get to hear about!

Here’s a list of my current Things, so that you know what to expect!

Short (or maybe long but no promises) programming stories, anecdotes, horror stories, whatever, written so that even if you don’t get the technical details, they’ll still make sense to you

Aro(-spec) and/or ace(-spec) things that I vibe with! Generally more on the wholesome side, or things that I experience and resonate with me :)

Cute fandom stuff. Hopefully even if you don’t like the same fandoms as me, you will also find them cute. But I’ll try and keep that to a minimum because I know it’s niche

And finally what you’ve already seen me post, things about my experience with tumblr or general things that happen to me IRL or on the interwebs!

I’m going to aim for about a post a day, maybe a few more, but we’ll see how this goes!

Enjoy! :D

I wish there was a way to say "I think you're so cool and I wanna hang out with you and I wanna be your friend" without sounding like

A. I'm a four year old

or

B. I have a crush on them