Unsolicited Advice

I've given up on the series of CPTSD book reports I planned. I spent too much time wanting to throw the books at the wall. Which is a problem, because most of them are e-books, and I'm pretty attached to my Kindle. Plus the noise would scare the rats. Almost all of the available books on the subject are formatted as self-help texts, and fall afoul of the same thing all self-help materials do. They're written for the lowest common denominator. They don't necessarily assume the audience is stupid, but they do assume the audience is starting from a place of complete ignorance. This is great if you are indeed starting from scratch, but irritating as fuck if you've already gotten past the 400-level research class and really just need to know how the last guy to run this lab kept the still from exploding all over the inside of the fume hood. The books also spend a lot of time holding your hand. They talk in circles and spew a lot of words reassuring the reader that they a

A third dance instructor has now had a serious chat with me about No Really, You Should Be In My Class. Just to be clear, none of these people are getting any money out of me. I work for the studio, and they're required to allow a certain minimum number of us to attend for free, as part of their rental contract. There's no clause that says they have to actively solicit the comps, though, and most of them are perfectly happy to just wait until someone asks. If anything, I'd be taking up a spot that could be sold to a paying client if the class gets full. Also to be clear, it's not like the entire studio is beating a path to my door. There are lots of teachers that rent space there, and since I fill in at the desk at odd hours I've talked to almost all of them at one time or another. They're generally friendly as people, but indifferent to me as artists, as they work well outside of my specialty. Circus arts is kind of not really a thing to most dancers; it's

So as soon as I set out to write a series of book reports -- a series of anything, really -- life slammed in on me. There's a bunch of stuff colliding messily in my head right now, which makes it difficult to get any of it out. I've been limping along, but I really need to get better at determining in advance what things I need to drop and when, rather than letting it get to the point where I just need to let the next thing fall, no matter what it is. In the meantime, I've given up, called out of the one thing I thought I was going to get accomplished today, and am holed up in my room to try and get some of this shit done. One of the things eating my attention is that a friend is going through a messy breakup. Or, rather, she should be going through a messy breakup, but she refuses to let go of her horrible abusive relationship. The details are unimportant, but, as Dr Nerdlove says, assholes gonna ass. Every time it happens -- which is often -- she runs to us, her friends,