Autumn Hedonia

I’ve been watching Californication . Scanning every internet media streaming provider for a companion through a bout of the flu, or my new series long diversion from doing the dishes. After Younger . After The Legend of Korra . I never intended to keep watching. But there is something incredibly compelling, nay magnetic, about David Duchovny’s all-smoking all-drinking sex-addicted husk of a man, Hank Moody. He stumbles through his life like a drunk through a plate glass window, grasping and cynical, blunt and lackadaisical, and always with a witty comeback. Desperately drowning in a life of leisure that would make other men replete with glee, yet it somehow makes him feel even emptier inside, and further from his muse. Maybe the show is a hollow parade of tits and arse and a glorification of the softcore drug addict – maybe that’s the point. But I saw myself in Hank, my failings and my aspirations. The irreverent, tortured, luxuriant piece of shit who needs to exercise

The very first Dresden Dolls song I ever heard was “ Coin Operated Boy .” It was given to me as part of a mix CD made by my best friend in high school, Heidi. It was 2005, and we were both 14. That summer I remember eagerly awaiting the Dolls’ “ Live at the Wireless ” performance on Triple J radio, and rushing up the stairs in the converted church my mother’s friends lived in to the highest point of the structure to hit record on my tiny little radio/mp3 player and listen appreciatively through my headphones. I had missed the start of the performance, but unbeknownst to me Heidi had been recording at her place too, on a tape deck. She lent me the tape so I could stitch together the entire performance using an auxiliary cable and my laptop. I still have those recordings. They’re a bittersweet reminder, as my friendship with Heidi would be one of the most important of my life, and end sourly a few years later. I bought “ Yes,Virginia… ,” and later the self-titled album , from a

I’m eating warm plum brioche, standing in the kitchen. I’m making a lovely coffee with my coffee machine and fresh milk. My teeth are clean and I am not in pain. It’s raining outside and Vampire Weekend are playing on the Coffee Shop Indie radio station on Google Music. My afternoon is my own.

I just witnessed my mother scream at, strike and choke a Doberman puppy, for hours*. The dog is her pet of a few months. I am not overwhelmingly moved by animal cruelty, perhaps not any more than your average person. I am a pragmatist and have always accepted that some animals live and die by the wills of humans and those higher on the food chain. But I strongly believe in being humane, and causing as little suffering to animals (people included) as we can during the time we are alive. We should try to create a planet where as many beings as possible can flourish for as long as possible. Tread lightly. Propagate happiness.

I don’t experience jealously in relationships. There are things I have felt were unfair, maybe more than I should have , but I don’t go in for its resentment, insecurity and possessiveness. I feel like I never have, but all the same I have gotten somehow even less jealous than I was before. The more polyamory Dorian and I experience, the less jealous I am. I joked to a friend of mine that my jealously is actually at a negative value. I often experience satisfaction in situations that would make other people livid with jealousy.

When I first began my concerted effort towards recovering from depression, after I had first spoken to my doctor and been officially diagnosed, things did improve, and shift. As the heavy fog of not even having the energy to leave the house lifted, I began to (for the first time since I was 12) experience anxiety. I had these times where I was afraid to go to sleep, because I felt like bad things would happen if I did. It would just come over me in the evening and I would feel very paranoid and out-of-sorts and like sleeping was the one thing guaranteed to make it worse. I’ve never been one for nightmares or being scared of them, so it was very odd and worrying for me. I think I more subconsciously feared waking up in the middle of the night with gastro – which has happened. Eventually I would sleep, and nothing bad ever happened. I also got angrier as the depression... mutated, I think. I just stared taking a more active role in my mental illness. Less ketamine-like stupor of forbea

Previously, in ‘ Resolve ’ I explored and lamented the fact that there was no answer to why I was depressed and that I did not have the wherewithal to overcome it. I discovered, almost immediately after I finished writing it, in conversation via email to Andrea about the blog, that there was a very big reason (though only one reason of many) why I was depressed. And I had missed it, for years.

My first political cartoon.  Inspired by this photo. Tags: #trans #transphobia #bathrooms #toilets #labelling #gender #rights #identity #bathroombill

I’ve never titled a blog with a person’s name before. I didn’t want to. All the names on this blog are fabricated, so it is potentially both pointless and disingenuous. But there was no other way of doing it, because this blog is all about her. Andrea.

The time has come to make a 2016 New Year’s Resolution. In 2014 I resolved that I would beat my depression. I talked to my doctor, I had therapy, I took supplements, I went to the gym, I took up a sport, I talked to my friends, I tried to change my schedule, and I tried to change the way I thought. I did a lot of things. I’d love to say that they worked or that I succeeded, but it didn’t go like that, I doubt it ever does. Things changed, for sure. And I continued, and continue, to try and find ways in which things aren’t working, and try to fix them. I explored part of that in ‘ I’m Not Saying Sorry Anymore . ’ This is a continuation of that story.

Every now and then I come up with something I feel would make a good quote. A perfect statement or rant that, were I famous, might find its way onto Tumblr or Facebook or something. I’m not famous, and no-one has any especial reason to listen to me – but I felt this quote was worth putting out there anyway. I wish I could stand behind this quote in a lot of ways, I’m not quite this confident and centred and untouchable and full of fraternal sympathies as this might make me seem, but one day I hope to be. I imagine finding myself interviewed and the interviewer saying something like, “You take a lot of heat from trolls on the internet saying that you can’t sing, how does that make you feel?”

Bloc Party - Flux What is it with everyone on Tinder just looking for an adventure? There are people with photos of themselves climbing mountains and eating exotic food and kissing the foreheads of exotic children and swimming in deep blue seas like goddamn mermaids – and they’re still looking for an adventure as though their life is so humdrum and boring.

A letter tracing exercise. Maybe I heard it last night. Singing “ And All That J azz ” for the millionth time. The way my voice is rich and characterful and how it now has confidence in this song – knows it inside out – but is still so rough and unpracticed around the edges. Like there’s a narrow passage down which the notes run, and although my voice follows that passage pretty well now, instead of drawing a smooth, flowing, exact and practiced line, it's like a child or someone with fine motor control problems attempting it. Almost all within the bounds, but shaky and jagged and unsure, too textured and at times a little short of the mark. It made me sad in a way, because I’d hoped confidence was more (all) of my issue, and once I “broke through” that, the voice would follow. But I can’t escape the fact that I have a very untrained sounding voice. So not only am I missing the confidence, I’m also missing all the hard yards that go into molding a trained voice. Like the many

I apologise a lot. For a lot of things. All the time. In fact I do more than apologise, I inhabit my remorse in a perverse drama of penitence and self-reproach. I won’t just say sorry and try and fix the problem, I will say sorry, and sorry, and sorry, and sorry again with more desperate adverbs. I will tell you that it was all my fault, no matter what has occurred, no matter how unlikely the scenario, I will find a way and make a leap of logic you can neither follow nor repute – and blame it all on me. I will tell you what a terrible person I was to have done this thing, and all the awful things that I deserve to have come my way for having done it. I will inform you that I have been a terrible person all along, a truly worthless and defective human being from the very beginning, sinking to even greater depths with each misdeed. I will beg you to never let me be trusted with the responsibilities that have gone so awry, and further apologise for ever attempting to rise above my station

“Inadequacy” You never had it in you Just to give up, rather Than to try your hardest It was too much a part of you Just to give up, rather You held onto that sickness It was too much a part of you Better not to take that risk You held onto that sickness Never knowing if you could Better not to take that risk Than to have that hope crushed Never knowing if you could It is better to fear you won't succeed Than to have that hope crushed Just to find out It is better to fear you won't succeed Than to try your hardest Just to find out You never had it in you It's quite evidently a continuation of the “Better not to have tried and to live always in hope, than to have tried and live the rest of your life in the shadow of your failure.” maxim from earlier.