December 5 update.
Hi again! Things are going alright here. Haven't felt much like writing, so I haven't written much, but I'm keeping busy.
A close friend of mine got married! The wedding went well, in my opinion. The ceremony was nice, the venue was pretty, the food was delicious. My partner served as one of the groom's attendants. I ended up playing a bit of fixer that day -- helped people a bit with their attire, tested the AV stuff, set up chairs, and made a couple of quick runs to town to get supplies.
I tried to keep an attitude that decreased stress, rather than increasing it... which is not usually how I operate, lol. I think I succeeded, actually. So that was nice. But yeah, it was pleasant. I came away from it feeling a bit sad that the families didn't seem to interact much with one another. Not that they had to... but to me it feels like trying to bring two families together is part of the point of having a wedding ceremony.
I've had more medical work done as well. We've found evidence of muscle spasms in my right shoulder and neck, so I'm on muscle relaxants for that. But I've also been having back/hip/leg pain for the past few years. I'm still waiting on results for that (and also results of bloodwork looking for autoimmune issues), but in the meantime I was fortunate enough to discuss some of my pains with a massage therapist and got a solid lead.
What we found that there seems to be something up with my right psoas. It's basically the muscle that connects your spine to your femur. And injury to it can result in pain in the lower back, hip, and leg. Between that pain and weird nerve sensations I've felt around the inner thigh and pubic bone... it definitely seems to line up. So we'll be looking into that, and in the meantime I'm trying to stretch and strengthen it.
I'm pretty hopeful that we'll be able to track down what's going up. It's difficult for me to keep track of all of what I feel and communicate that effectively to a doctor. But I think I'm getting better at being more assertive and more clear about what I'm feeling.
I did want to recommend a Jared Henderson youtube video that I caught this morning. It's kind of a confirmation of my gut feeling that many people (yours truly included) are experiencing screen poisoning, or something of the sort, and it's impairing our ability to focus.
Personally, I'm certain that going from just occasional TV watching, to now frequently having Twitch/YT on plus phone notifications plus whatever I'm doing on my computer has diminished my ability to commit my focus to any one thing. I'm just straight up out of practice, and I definitely feel that when I try to just read a book or even communicate a long thought.
So I really am going to try to cut back on having a bunch of shit going at once. It's unhelpful and arguably wasteful. Easier said than done, but resolving to do so, I think, is a big step for me.