Sep. 22nd, 2023

don't bottle it up; communication is key!

Sep. 22nd, 2023 01:00 pm
this is transcribed from an excerpt from a letter i send my pen pal:
( click to see the original )
❝ i feel like as a kid, i took a lot of things very seriously and literally. things like "communication is key" really affected me, probably in a bad way--when i'm anxiously attached, i feel the need to tell the other person everything and to communicate all my feelings, no matter how trivial. this means i'll confront people on even the tiniest offenses. at some point, it loses its merit, because instead of letting things go, i make a big show of communicating my feelings about it. [...] i gain nothing by confronting people about things that happened only once and probably won't happen again. then i was reading about dbt and it said the same thing [another one of my friends] told me: i should only communicate my feelings (or do any action at all) if doing so will help me. it needs to align with my values and my goals. getting mad over small things, and being confrontational about them, doesn't help my goal of being a good friend, and of strengthening a healthy relationship w/ my friends. ❞
 
when coupled with "don't bottle up your emotions," "communication is key" became pretty detrimental to my relationships. i thought that these slogans were related to each other--something like "you shouldn't bottle your emotions; you should communicate them to others!" i very recently learned that something as simple as journaling or meditating counts as not bottling up your emotions. you don't need to tell them to anybody except yourself. 

i think that my misinterpretation of these two very popular slogans has enabled me to form anxious attachments and a compulsion to ask, tell, and confess. this, in turn, causes me to stay reliant on external validation for my emotions. i find it difficult to remind myself that my emotions are justified, that they make sense, and that i have the right to feel them, so i turn to others. i constantly want to tell my friends every thought and emotion that i have, so they can reassure me that it's okay to think and feel the way i do. i'm working on this now by using dialectical behavioural therapy and exposure and response prevention. 

i'm learning html

Sep. 22nd, 2023 09:09 pm
today i started learning html on codecademy because i want to have more control over formatting on dreamwidth and emails! penpalling (both email and snail mail) is one of my favourite hobbies, so i want to get better at making my emails look nice.

i want to try out/show off some things i learned! such as:

  • how to make a list
  • how to bold and italicize text (i already knew how though!)
  • i didn't learn this from codecademy; i already knew it from tumblr, but strikethrough
  • how to use commands like <body>, <div>, and <p>. dreamwidth seems to not like those commands though. 
i also know how to add images and videos! here's a gif i like: flowers. and here it is again, but a little bigger: flowers !!

i think that i've already absorbed some very basic/common commands just by messing around with html makers as i try to embed little gifs into my own dreamwidth posts. i was also exposed to some snippets of html while following "how to edit your tumblr theme" tutorials in the 2010s. i learned how to edit (but not create) css codes on myspace in 2021, so that's also been somewhat helpful as i start to approach html.
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