hi!
um
my name is Melody. and this is terrifying.
i have so much i want to share with the world:
- i want to help people who struggle with things i've experienced, help them to find community and love and fulfillment.
- i want to share my appreciation for music, and maybe even make some original music that helps people understand and grow.
- i want to make software education more accessible, and advocate for good technical communication in today's distributed world.
but i've also been trapped by a number of challenges throughout my life so far:
- gender transition
- heavy video game / content addiction
- pathologically avoidant social perfectionism
that last one is a big one i'm still struggling with. it's prevented me from actually launching this blog and using it to share already-existing writing with various people. so ... right now i'm going to just write it out. whatever comes out. one draft with all the thoughts and anxieties, and then i can be Done with it and just share interesting things! here goes
social perfectionism
i've mostly figured out how to deal with it IRL, though i still feel a lot of anxiety approaching people i don't know. and i've made some progress online in the past half a year since i've registered this blog site. but writing these words with the intent of sharing with other people to read as My Blog feels so uncomfortably and unacceptably raw. surely i'm just exposing myself as a whiney privilieged woe-is-me nobody, surely my trauma isn't actually anything compared to anybody else, surely i'm hurting somebody by just expressing my authentic experience, right?
one of my greatest fears with the social perfectionism is that i've somehow missed some extremely obvious rule. or i'm demonstrating a total lack of some critical part of my brain. the very last thing i want to do is blindly say something offensive or bigoted or condemning, like casually endorsing pedophilia. i think this is largely informed by social trauma from growing up AuDHD and pre-trans in an entirely NT/cishet-normalized culture, as well as some 𝕓𝕠𝕟𝕦𝕤 𝕥𝕣𝕒𝕦𝕞𝕒 from the very cliquey first queer culture i joined.
the privileged survivor's guilt / trauma impostor syndrome combo goes hard. i had lots of opportunities handed to me growing up, i was never actively targeted by any bullying in my childhood - surely i'm not actually traumatized by any of the social isolation i experienced! that's just me being weird and egotistical. it'd just be rude and demeaning to pretend I'm like anyone else who has suffered actual hardship.
... i'm getting better day by day. i'm still active in my local community, making new friends, building strong relationships. i recently joined bluesky and started posting ~daily thoughts and jokes and pictures of myself - i'm pretty proud of that! i'm still terrified of cancel culture, of being forcibly removed from a space without an opportunity to understand and improve from my mistakes. but i believe strongly in restorative justice, and i believe i have something to offer by talking about the things i've learned in my life.
with all of that said ...
so what is this blog?
no regular schedule, no dedicated topics, just a place for me to express various thoughts that i think matter, in whatever way i think is reasonable. generally this will be around:
- AuDHD self improvement
- social perfectionism
- mental health
- queer relationships and polyamory
- behavioral addictions
- digital sociology
- philosophy
- music
- software
- education
i might make some blog posts into video essays. i might edit posts over time to refine them. if I have more thoughts about my own journey, they'll be under this pip-xxx series. any other specific-topic posts will have their own standalone title.
thank you for your time. i hope you have a wonderful day full of joy and fulfillment, however that looks for you. take care of yourself. <3