I'm So Glad Everyone's Enjoying Dracula So This Seems Like The Perfect Time To Bring Up Carmilla

I'm so glad everyone's enjoying Dracula so this seems like the perfect time to bring up Carmilla

Carmilla is an 1872 novel by Sheridan Le Fanu and predates Dracula by 26 years. It inspired Bram Stocker to write Dracula! It's genuinely very well written and engaging (more so than Dracula, at least to me), and one of my favorite books.

But that's not the best part-the best bit is, that Carmilla is very very sapphic. It follows Laura, a teenager as she meets and falls in love with Carmilla, the vampire. Of course, other plot happens and the book has some really good quotes;

" 'I have been in love with no one, and never shall,' she whispered, 'unless it should be with you.'

How beautiful she looked in the moonlight! "

" You will think me cruel, very selfish, but love is always selfish; the more ardent the more selfish. How jealous I am you cannot know. You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me, and hating me through death and after. There is no such word as indifference in my apathetic nature. "

And Carmilla is what invented the whole lesbian vampire trope!

My Latest "Getting housework done" ADHD hack

This isn't anything revolutionary, it's basically just a modified pomodoro technique, but I've never tried it for housework before. I really struggle to motivate myself to do housework tasks - they just feel so unending and tedious and abstracted from immediate gains.

I find I'll often put off jobs until my house is a complete mess, then "waste" my weekend stressing out feeling I need to "catch up" on cleaning, struggling to get started because it's so daunting (executive dysfunction) and then being overwhelmed by pushing myself to clean inefficiently for hours and hours at a time.

My new method:

Begin with a leisure activity I enjoy - play a computer game! Do a craft project! This takes the stress of starting out of the equation.

Set a timer for half an hour. Decide on a single, concrete task which I will go and complete when the time is up. It might be putting on some washing or emptying the dishwasher.

When the timer goes off, do the task. Suddenly it seems less daunting, because it's only one thing, and I'm going to get to go back to the fun activity immediate afterwards. Often I find once I'm up and about, I feel like doing a few more chores - but I don't have to.

Go back to the leisure activity, set the timer again.

And crucially, this isn't a "only do at the weekend when the house is a complete mess" thing, it's a "do every day in little bursts" thing.

And I am FORBIDDEN from feeling guilty about returning to the enjoyable task. That's not allowed!

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vicky-poo

2 years ago