Trying to be Positive – in the Brave New World (by sarah)

Its a weird time out there at the moment and as I think I mentioned before I have found it hard working on The Punk Universe in recent years as the point at which our actual timeline and the fictional timeline were supposed to diverge into a slow multi origin apocalypse/societal collapse was Britian leaving the EU and a despotic badbusiness man getting in as the Predient of the USA... The story line contains plagues and forced isolations, climate change dissastors and nuclear war... so though I am still writing it I am not sharing it in the way I used to and the rate of writing on this project has decreased drastically.

Also a lot more of my real world work is based around community groups and things now and though I had toxic positivity that gas lights you telling you nothing is wrong and to keep smiling, I have started trying to make my corner of the world positive but without the denial - yes things are mad, bad and I am so very sad about the evils that are arising and try as I might there isn't anything I can do about the big picture, but big changes can happen with small changes and to badly not quiet quote one of my favourite fixtional characters Granny Weather Wax from the Terry Pratchett Discworld series -

I will do as much as I can where I can with what I can

One of the big things of late has been how divided and dipolled everyone is - poeple don't just dsagree anymore they almost instantly start calling each other names meaning no real discussion is ever had - this is bad. On top of that I feel that the internet is dead - or at least social media is - it didn't quiet happen in the way I predicted and is still on going (I wrote a horror story on it so we kind of don't want my exact prediction). So where does that leave me? Twitter used to be my main plateform, it was full of academics and authors who because I was there at the beginning actually talked to me - gave me advice and sometimes pep talks. I mean I also suffered from on line stalkers right from the get go with the 2008 incident involving police and what not marking a retreat from fame for me. But not it is kind of ubiquitous hate and scorn that sloshes around - how do you counteract that? And where do I find my new twitter?

I am on Bluesky, Mastadon and Threads as my relatively new ones. Threads is a depressing cesspool that just mimics Facebook and that isn't surprising as it is connected to Facebook and Instagram so most of my posts are just from my Insta account. And I love Instagram but it is a forced positive environment and that is kind of okk because I know that is what it is and I mainly use it to share images of cute things anyway. I was trying to counteract arguments that are demostratly false and though very occassionally this works and someones mind is changed or rather they were actually looking if info to make up their mind - the number of times this happens has dropped drastically this year with the last few months being even worse.

I have also always tried to prevent myself ending up with just an echo chamber as I felt that was dangerous and not helpful for a communicator now however I find myself seeking out curated spaces and have specifically joined a mastadon server that is about creativity and moral support. I have been fallowing groups that like Pawsitive News and find myself looking back across the years away from the social media I so loved and I did love it - it got me through times of being bed bound and gave me a voice when I most needed it - it is also the reason I ended up working at music festivals and got my art displayed at pestigous events globally and got to be part of charity anthologies organised by or next to famous authors I idolised - both of whom have crumbled to either bigotory or scandal since.

So what do I see as I look back across the years? I yearn for discussion forums on specific topics and find myself once more joining and setting up mailing lists for people. What I would love is for the blogosphere to come back but I know it can't ever be like it was in the early naughtes for blogs. But none the less I have kind of kept going with various blogs on and off and I am happy I have done so and occassionaly back blog stuff I wrote on facebook etc...

Bluesky - I forgot Bluesky... and yeah basically I forget Bluesky alot. I don't actually do well tryig to use all this stuff on my phone but no ones websites actually work properlly anymore but I am so sick of having an app for everything... And then there was finding out that the photo editing software I was paying for and using was actually training generalised AIs and being a security leak on my phone... ah yes the AI...

I feel that I may have written too much on the internet and maybe put too much art up as I am now loosing jobs and oppurtinities as people think myself is AI - AI is this instance being specific generational AI that steals art and writing and not the various decades long art projects or medical and educational uses such as read to speach. Did I train the damn things with my spewings? Or I am multiple - we the dyslexics ADHDers who use dashes instead of the appropriate grammer and write reams - yes we are legion and we used to be able to find each other on the internet and not feel so alone but know there are just ghosts.

But... I also love making zines, mainly little hand drawn booklets and you know they exist outside of the internet for the main part and they are made at groups with actual people and yes mainly you have to physcally be able to get there but the neural divergent community are finding ways to stick together digitally too including video calls when someone can not attend a group. The hybrid situation that use disabled people had dreamed off and been told no its too difficult and then...the pandemic came and we were like AT LAST... and then the world kind oftook it away again even though some people were still stuck at home more disabled than ever after brushes with covid induced death and complications.

I wont live the post covid world is full of tech stuff that keeps bamboozling me - I can't even pay for stuff anymore... and nothing is simple - an app for every restuarant - which you know for accessability could be great - social anxiety or speech issues means no problem you can still order independently but only if it is coupled with the option to order by just talking to staff if needed.

Again how do I make this postive? It all sounds depressing right?

Well I have been doing little bits of consultation and running workshops at conferences and so on that specifically look at these elements - mainly in the education and heritage sector but in culture in general including music venues.

Be the Change You Want To See

Arg!!! if I am not careful I will end up making inspirational posters with kittens on.

Anyway I think the upswing of the AI and social media decline - remember the horrible dipoled arguments? Well a lot of that isn't real people it is bots andthis has been a growing ssue for like a decade but ithas accelleranted recently. And it doesn't matter that they aren't real because the affect on our brains when we read it is real and detrimental 🙁 Also it empowers people to spout hate.... the upshot of all of this is that people are moving back towards physical makaing and creating or digital for small commuities - actual networks of people via things like Discord (obviously many still feed the internet at large but again worrying only about the little bit ofthe system you can actually affect).

I am not abandoning the internet but I am trying to be mainly helpful providing information that can help ie where my local warm spaces are and community fridges and sharing writing and art prompts. Obviously I mainly write horror and that isn't going anywhere I am just sharing the more positive and yes cutsie bits because I feel they are a kind of barrier that is needed at the moment and you know the nice and cute is a huge part of who I am as well - for years it was the part everyone expected so the horror and hard scifi were always a bit of a shock! But I think this coupled with the political commentary have kind of hidden this part of me and it would be easy to become and stay bitter about everything.

so the cute is back

I will share the cute and the other stuff will be there but with warnings so people can choose wheather they feel strong enough or want to enter that world. And I will continue to run real world groups and events as Science and Art is for everyone.

Also things that could be seen as negatives or at the very least contradictions actually mean I am in a unique place to build bridges and expain access needs etc... With the current revolation about being deaf my whole life...

I am:

A disabled sports instructor A dyslexic writer A blind visual artist A deaf musician

I have awards for all of these things that were recieved without the disability being taken into account or even at the time known about even by myself!

It is exhuasting but also kind of awesome and now it is time to make the world a better place one little...

act of kindness

at a time...

Back to granny WeatherWax -

Kind aint the same as nice

Who cares about user interfaces? (by alaric)

Developing user interfaces to software systems is incredibly rewarding.

If your software system has a user interface at all - and most do, even if it's just for service engineers - then interacting with a human is, presumably, part of its function. And since humans generally pay the bills or otherwise reward and motivate the development of software, I'd hazard a guess that whatever interaction your system has with the user might be the most important thing it does. So having a poor user interface might well mean that whatever else is wonderful about your software is meaningless, because nobody can use it.

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Tyroids and Singing (by sarah)

Back when covid hit I lost my voice - it was a whisper for about 18 months and the sore throat was horrendous. Of course we knew why this was as I was hospitalised with chest pains a few months after appearing to recover - my thyroid was inflamed, I did in fact have Grave's Disease or hyperthyroidism - it was over active and it had gone there from being slightly under active and the damage thyroids do isn't so much how high or low they are but the rapidity of that change - my eyes ached all the time but I was on medication relatively quickly and there was a lot of other stuff with mum etc going on. There wasn't really time to process it all.

Things improved and my voice came back and it wasn't quiet right, I always feel I have a lump in my throat and I find doing some of the sounds I used to hard... mainly I get coughing fits, and often I have a mild sore throat. Like my soft weirdly wide nails with ridges on them - they are kind of normal shape again - kind of but the ridgedness and softness remain - this is all just part of the corse with Grave's disease but the sore throat wasn't too bad and my voice was basically back so I started singing again - first at the monthly Folk Music Jam sessions, just whispers with the general melee, then I joined a Folk Choir that is lets you sing the part you want rather than being split into sopranos, altos etc... and then I joined a group called The Cryptid's and even wrote songs to make the general public sing!

I've got two project exploring voice coming up and I also got to be the Fairy Cryer and do announcements in my loud announcing voice including support from the actual Town Cryer - I even have my own bell for the role. And then a few weeks ago it happened...

The sensation of being strangled, the weird loud swallowing noise, wheezing and whistling when breathing which both kids hate and if I touch my neck I have like a flesh collar under the skin. The cough is worse, the sore throat worse - ear ache and my levels of tinnitus have shot up... and my voice is wavering, changing pitch and cracking randomly. And I have been blaming everything rather than facing the fact it's the thyroid again. I had been back under the GP's care for endocrine issues and I don't really want to trek back to the hospital but it is what it is. I have been mainly avoiding the Gloucester hospital since mum died and have been doing relatively well with that - I don't want to go to the hospital.

Its weird though because my main thing is that I really want to sing and that is the thing I have latched onto - if I have to have the thyroid removed what happens to my voice?

The Tangled Tale of My Career (by alaric)

I've been feeling a bunch of despair, boredom and ennui about my career lately; so I've decided to attack it in the way I know best - by writing about it.

When I was little, I wanted to be a scientist. Of course, that wasn't what I actually wanted - but popular media had created this vision of a mad scientist labouring in a lab making weird and wonderful things. I later learnt that what I wanted to be was called an "Inventor", which is a kind of engineer; the application of science to make things - the goal of building a fantastic machine is to get that fantastic machine, not to test some hypothesis. So it's definitely not science.

This was fed, in part, by the reading material I had around the house. My maternal grandparents had been an electrical engineer and a science teacher, respectively, so I had a mixture of O-level science textbooks and old cloth-bound tomes about electrical power distribution networks. Plus, my mother was a science fiction and fantasy fan, so I had stories like E. E. 'Doc' Smith's Lensman books (epic space battles, written by an engineer so tending to linger on the technical details) inspiring me. I saw technology as a way of solving real problems, and I found learning about it fascinating, and the challenges were engaging - and what's even better, I found I had a knack for solving them. The future looked exciting!

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Finding My Voice (by sarah)

This weekend just gone I sang with The Folk Chior at The Folk of Gloucester for the Christmas Makers Market and then on Sunday I went and rehearsed Wintery type festive music shenanigans for the Steampunks Christmas Reveals event which will be this coming weekend. It was difficult as I had missed over a months worth of rehearsals and I don't know how to read music (yes still) so there were challenges for both endeavours but I really enjoyed it and everyone seems to want to include me in the music stuff. I have also been attending the Folk at The Folk jam sessions - normally I just watch but sometimes I bring one of my songs - this time sadly due to a funeral most of the people were missing and they were desperate not to just have the same few people doing songs and so I gave them camp fire songs which most of them seemed to like. I even got recognised by someone later on - an elderly lady who has designated me as The Lady with the Silly Songs - who turned up at the textiles group I have been attending on Tuesdays.

I've even went along to a song writing cafe and attended a song writing workshop in Feburary all be it that I didn't get to stay for most of it due to Mary but such is the life of a parent and I still came out of it with one song, one poem and a spoken word/beatpoem/rap thingy. All this is not exactly new for me - I have been telling people about choirs and groups I have belonged to previously and even about song writing awards and things I received. But I have also been telling people people about all the times I've been told I am crap and not a musician and to take all my music down and so on. It is important I express these things because being neural divergent I still live with the music teacher's harsh words of primary school (I wasn't progressing in recorder because she had started sending sheet music home and not running through all the notes in class especially as there were now multiple types of recorders involved - she hadn't realised I couldn't read music but my mum sent her a letter asking for some extra lessons so I could either learn to read music or be taught the tunes individually - the teachers response was to chuck me out of the group and to act as a bar to me being in the school choir too). I hold all these comments within me - it goes for the triumphs too.

So there is a huge element of finding the confidence and freedom to actually go and do these things - ie if there is an audition I am probably stuffed, and choirs normally charge a membership fee which at points in the past has been too much. The irony of having sung in the Royal Albert Hall but to have been unable to join the village choir... and am dram clubs sinking so the show I actually got through the auditions for never actually happened and I had a good part!

The lists go on but it is not just the confidence - I have had issues with my hearing throughout my life more so since covid and the head injury left me with permanent tinnitus. I have a slight delay with things as I am feeling the music meaning that I may react slightly after everyone else... but I can guess where songs are going and when I say I feel the music I very much mean that on several levels and it can consume me from the core of my bones - vibrating all the way through me. I think I am more aware of sound than many people even with being partially deaf and at a couple of points in my life nearly completely death. I was too good in fact and people didn't realise how much of a problem there actually was with my hearing.

Voice is an interesting thing - I have spent much of my life being told it has to fit in, that I had to get rid of the extra noises or that I sound like a man or conversely am too high pitched. Well I am learning to point those bits back in my voice - I am learning my voice all over again thanks to covid and the graves disease I lost my voice even for speaking for over a year and have had repeated sore throats and of course the ever present choking lump that I just can't quiet swallow past. I no longer have Frightmare to use the stranger aspects of my voice at and actually I want to sing with them. clicks and whistles and purrs and growls and two voices, the undulations and braids of sound.

Also after dad died writing was hard - I would go to cafes and write with him and we would read each others stories and poems we'd written and without that there I have been bereft and when I was looking after mum there was no energy or capacity either mentally or physically - my hands didn't even work properly - all there was was cleaning and washing and phone calls to argue with everyone from hospitals to family about her care. But I have been trying to write, trying to create once more - but who am I on this flip side of everything? I feel I have been shattered so many times I do not know, I don't know what I like, what I want to do and I am now in my forties so all those dreams of carers seem foolish and lost to the tragedy of circumstance. None the less I am trying, I am putting words on paper even if they are just lists of stories I hope one day to write - I am keeping a diary again - or at least trying - it is a chaotic thing but it is beautiful (it cost too much) and I am even adding stickers because I like stickers and they are accents to my feelings and hopes and imagery has always been part of how I communicate - even if it is only with myself.

I went to a poetry writing workshop - I haven't done that for so long - and the woods whisper stories of the wild wood and industries and peoples vanished in time and I want to share that with the world. There is something of a song there trying to form and I feel like writing when I am there.

I am Finding my voice - again... it is both the same voice rediscovered and something wholey new.