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grammarwoman asks:
What was the last thing you binged, for any meaning of binge you'd like to use?So, yeah, I have a bunch of meanings of binged, I guess.
The last show I watched a bunch of episodes in a row was The Good Place, as Sky and I binged the last 5 or so eps all in a row to get up-to-date. Occasionally I'll watch a bunch of Dan & Phil Games in a row because I miss them in videos together, both showing their faces. Phil posted a video last week that features Dan, adorably, but off-camera. They're shifting the norms of what they post, and I'm along for the ride, but sometimes I just want them gaming and flirting, you know. A bunch of them playing Sims in the background frequently does the trick.
And I say "in the background" because honestly, the thing I do these days that feels the most like binging is having something on on my laptop while I'm also playing a game on my phone. It feels like I'm hitting the serotonin button in my brain over and over, scrabbling for all I can get. Often, I've got fic on the screen while I'm playing some puzzle game on the phone, flitting between the two, trying to get my brain relaxed and happy.
Dysthymia, the official word for chronic, low-grade depression, is a constant struggle. I am *on* all day long in my job, and I get lots of interaction and I feel good about the work I do. But I'm working with lots of different age groups, and adapting to lots of different problems, and a lot of it is improv. Some days I also have to take Sky to therapy right after school, or drive two towns away to pick up Q from his school. When I get home, and settle in my chair, I'm reading/playing for *hours* and it feels like I'm struggling to self-regulate.
For a while I stopped reading Phanfic, right after they came out, unless it was written by like, my fave top-tier authors who I knew would treat them respectfully and get the characterization right. As a result, I had over 50 fic notifications pile up in my fannish email to work through. I've done that now. I'm also reading Good Omens fic that my friends write or rec, and also always following certain Drarry and Victuuri authors who (less frequently now, but still) post new works or new chapters of longer running works.
When I'm not reading fic, I'm reading queer romance. I've glutted myself on everything KJ Charles has written in the past year or so. Now I'm catching up with Alexis Hall, who wrote a gorgeous trilogy that's like a queer Fifty Shades, except, you know, much more safe, sane, and consensual (not always sane, but they work it out). I recced it on twitter, and ended up having a lovely little convo with Alexis as a result too, so that was fun. It starts with
How to Bang a Billionaire, if you're interested. I'm on his steampunky stuff now, which I like better than the lesbian half-fey detective, which skews to close to Toby Daye territory for me, and doesn't do it as well.
I don't feel guilty, exactly, for the amount of time I sit on my chair in the evenings. But I do want to balance it out with other things--mostly because my knees aren't happy with me sitting for that long. We just acquired a free Nordictrack elliptical from someone Jay runs with, so I'm going to try to just spend 20 minutes of that time on it a day and see if that helps balance m out even more.
[edited to fix Alexis Hall's pronouns. He identifies as genderqueer, and when I double-checked on twitter, I noticed uses he/him pronoun]
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