princessofburundi

1. What was the reason you began a Dreamwidth or LiveJournal account (or both)?
I started LiveJournal in 2002 when a new friend (soon girlfriend) heard me saying that I wanted to write more and suggested LiveJournal. "What's LiveJournal?" I said, and she gave me an invite code, and here I am.

I moved to DW in 2011, I can't remember which exact thing made me do it but it was after Strikethrough, before things got very Russian but I think they were getting pretty Russian.

2. How many DW or LJ communities do you subscribe to?
Five.

3. Do you have a favorite community or one you check out often to see what's new?
I mean, they're all on my reading page. Most are pretty quiet; one I made for covid-cautious people and don't use much myself any more either (its name is a pun based on "herd immunity," that's how old it is...). The best are thisfinecrew, for U.S. political actions people can taken (often online or relatively low-spoons) and thissterlingcrew, the British version of the same thing. Very useful communities to have In These Times.

4. How did you pick your user name?
This one was picked by D and another friend (I now cannot remember who) independently when I was looking for a new one.

5. If you could change your user name, would you?
It's clearly from a very specific time in my life, when I was using the name Cosmo and studying linguistics.

As for changing it, I mean, I could. I have. My LJ went through a couple of names too. I almost never re-use user names either; I just use whatever sounds like a good idea at the time. I can barely remember what it was before, and would probably prefer that one now. I did make a concerted effort to get away from puns, things based on my real-life first name, or both; no wonder this is what my friends suggested for me, this is my Brand.

While I'm here, another point I've been meaning to make under this tag for a bit but haven't gotten around to: having been writing about my life for half of it now, I find myself wishing there was a way for tags to become, like, dormant or something. There are lots of tags that I want to keep having but am not going to add new entries to, so I wish I didn't always have to look at them in the list or when I'm choosing tags.

I thought I was doing okay on the weekend, but now that I'm back at work things are really rough on my brain.

Work is intensely demanding. My dreams were violent and graphic last night and I woke up wanting to do nothing more than call in sick but the work-placement person I'm responsible for started today and I had to be there to talk to her and try to find things to do despite having no idea what the rest of my team is doing and being in maybe the worst possible position to find tasks for a bright graduate who'll be here two days a week for a few months. I had two meetings in a row this afternoon with different parts of the org I work with that were properly existential: we stumbled over questions like "who's responsible for drafting the Scottish guidance on active travel?" or "what exactly do we want local authorities to do regarding the built environment?" This would be so unfair for a new person who feels like she's jumping in at the deep end just being in a meeting about what we're doing on one Government consultation.

I only realised today that I'd kinda conflated two different TfL invites and now the thing I'm going to London for tomorrow, I dint even want to and it doesn't seem worth it. I've got a train ticket I hate to waste, but bleh. Bleh!

Counseling is right after work on a Tuesday, so I managed to squeeze in a quick Teddy walk in the glorious sunshine (the weather has been amazing today, that's today's one saving grace) and then absolutely exhausted myself trying to explain my week. She's not available at rhe usual time next week but I won't be the week after, and the week after that she won't be, so I took the unusual step of fitting in an appointment at a different time next week; usually if my normal one doesn't work I just skip it, but it feels like I need more at this point.

I read something that seems particularly relevant on Long Covid Awareness Day, a day which as an online pal who has LC says says,

We are combatting willful ignorance. People actively do not want to know about Long Covid, and the long-term health consequences of Covid infections. They do not want to see us.

The thing I read is about "AI" as currently understood, and grief. And I'm glad it connects both of these things to covid.

Generative AI emerged during a global pandemic -- a global trauma of mass death (1.2 million people in the US died of COVID, and about 7 million globally -- these are, no doubt, figures that undercount how many actually died of the disease, let alone those like my son who died during that time period of other causes -- overdoses, suicide, murder, and deaths related and unrelated to the pandemic).

Mass trauma, mass death and, as such, mass grieving. But it was, at the time and still to this day, a grief interrupted, a grief buried, a grief denied, a grief unobserved. We were often not able to bury our dead, not able to hold funerals, not able to have wakes, not able to observe the rituals of death, not able to gather, to bring food, to hold and comfort one another.

And when we were told the pandemic was over -- it hasn't really ended; the World Health Organization says there were around 150,000 cases of COVID reported in the last month -- we didn't deal with our trauma. We didn't deal with our grief. We were supposed to bury our feelings; we were supposed to forget. It was back-to-school, back to work, back to "normal."

There was, in fact, a massive demonstration of grief – an outpouring of grieving in public – during COVID; and that was the Black Lives Matter movement, the protests that occurred in cities throughout the country particularly after the murder of George Floyd. This grief was not private or hidden; it was collective. This grief was not just personal, expressed by those impacted directly by racism and police violence; it demanded from protestors and onlookers, empathy, solidarity. This grief was expressive – even as we are always told with protest, as with grief, that that is not the “good way” to say it. The grief of Floyd’s death – and all the deaths – was not sufficient. It was not simply a marker or memorial of death; but it was an act of life, an act of repair. It was a demonstration of love and loss and fury; it was a commitment to the future.