XP
Moving my personal blog and a new RSS feed URL (goodbye and thanks Micro.blog)
Hey :)
This is just a quick update on this post- RSS feed changes
I’m moving from Micro.blog to a new platform.
- I am going to be moving to a new blogging platform this weekend (for my personal blog). Maybe tonight. It just depends how things go.
- The aeryn.me domain will be moved to the new platform too.
- The new feed URL will be at https://aeryn.me/feed/.
- If you wish to continue to follow this blog in your feed reader, you will need to add it again because I am unable to add feed redirects on the new platform.
- My Micro.blog-hosted site will remain live for some more months whilst I continue migrating posts. But will eventually disappear, I expect.
- I do not intend to delete my account (I want to preserve timeline posts) but will let it lapse back to a free account.
- I will most likely not be posting to Micro.blog anymore. 🤷♀️
- I am now microblogging on Mastodon and still adding Micro.blog folks there gradually. I love that I can continue to follow, although there does feel like some distance now, which is a shame.
- I cross-post from Mastodon to Bluesky too.
Lastly, although I will potentially write about Micro.blog again in the future, I just want to say thank you to Manton, support people, and the community. Thanks for making me feel welcome and being generally a friendly, supportive, and wholesome place.
Bye and see you around
Aeryn x
Edit to add: I think I may have figured out a RSS redirect at the new place. Not sure.
RSS feed changes
Hey,
I am migrating this blog (aeryn.me) to a new platform soon. And all existing RSS feeds will break.
I have set up a feed redirect on the current platform. If you would like to continue to follow my blog, please subscribe this new URL.
The new feed URL will be: https://aeryn.me/feed/
This URL will be the Atom feed address on the new platform, and should be a valid redirect until I complete the move. But I’m not sure all RSS feed clients will happily ‘subscribe’ to a redirect, or not.
So, if you subscribe and you don’t hear anything within a couple of weeks, please check my blog again. I’ll be posting RSS/Atom feed options on the new platform once I’ve moved over.
I’m gradually following a bunch of micro.blog folks with my mastodon account. I think I’m making mastodon my new social home with Bluesky as well. But with micro.blog mostly going redundant, although I probably won’t cancel it completely.
It was pizza night with my fam last night. The four of us haven’t got together too much recently so it was extra nice. We watched The Wind Rises too.
This morning I am regretting how much pizza I ate.
It’s a hot day already! But I just got to the park and this guy is playing What’s Up by 4 Non Blondes on his guitar. 🎵🎸 📷
He’s good! and me and this goose were his audience.
Unfortunately some tractors arrived to begin mowing the fields and drowned him out.

I’ve had a busy day of photo editing. I’ve processed and published 2.5 projects. This is a personal best. Where’s my medal?
It feels good to treat my creativity as a labour of love rather than dump my work on my computer and forget about it.
Sitting outside with my coffee in the fresh air in the morning is my new thing. I’m loving it. I’m trying to make it a habit.
I have birds to listen too. Flowers, trees and raised beds my neighbour tends, to look at. I’m under cover in case it rains.
A pocket of heaven in the depths of suburbia.
It was a really beautiful morning in the park. I grabbed a few moments of peace with the birds and the clouds. A soundscape of birdsong, air traffic, motorway traffic.
Longer 10 minute version
YouTube (best quality): https://youtu.be/u3TiR2eb2UQ
Craft: https://aeryn.craft.me/SC8Pd2YLvObgQB
Breaking News, Breaking Hearts
Or,
I’m going to let my heart be broken, because what else is there?
A friend texted me out of the blue this morning to ask me how I feel about the UK ruling on trans people yesterday.
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything about it. I just kind of deflected, more interested in connecting with someone on a personal level rather than talking about the news cycle.
Because I’m really not interested in the news cycle. I am interested in what’s going on in the world. But I don’t want to take part in the discourse, or get overly involved in other peoples opinions and fears, particularly.
It goes without saying that I’m dismayed, fearful, and confused. And I wonder how this will affect me and other trans people in the days to come. How will it affect any person, trans or not?
But. I don’t feel that I need to tell the world what I think about it. And I don’t need to discuss the rights and wrongs, goods and bads and make hypothetical judgements on what might happen.
I have no idea what will happen. And I don’t think anyone does.
What matters to me is how I am with this information. What matters is how I’m going to look after myself. What matters is how I’m going to exist regardless of what other people think about me, or legislate about me.
It’s really hard to not worry about what other people think. It’s hard to not worry about what may or may not happen to me in my life.
But all of this worrying is pretty unhelpful.
I need to know how to look after myself right now. I need to know how to survive the day.
Because my heart is breaking. Has broken.
And that’s what I need to concern myself with right now.
And it’s not that my heart is breaking since yesterday lunchtime when I heard about this. It’s already been breaking for months, and years.
Maybe my heart has been breaking my whole life.
I am one of those sensitive people who can’t help but feel so much. (Even during those long, long years when I couldn’t feel anything.)
I was educated, or taught to actively squash and deny emotions and feelings. That things were real. Events were real. Feelings, not so much. Until that emptiness became my reality.
So what am I doing about this? The latest thing?
Well two days ago, I didn’t even know this was happening. Like I said, I don’t follow the news cycle, so I had no idea.
Because it’s too much already! This news it’s just a little bit more too much. A tiny little bit in a vast ocean of too much.
A tiny little bit. But still important. Not trivial. Maybe just another tiny/huge slice of an infinite pie of worry, and concern.
My heart is already breaking, already broken. Because of where we are at. As a species, a civilisation, as a culture, a society, a community.
You know what really broke me open in the last few days? A TV show.
I’ve been watching this show called Detectorists. It’s wonderful by the way. And this morning I’ve been trying to write about what I love about this show so much. And I was unable to really explain what it meant to me. And I put that down and moved on to this.
But I think maybe it’s quite simple. Maybe it’s that the characters in the show are just so kind to each other. They are there for each other. They are not at war with each other. They still have their conflicts and disagreements. They have competing agendas sometimes.
And yeah, it’s a bit of a fairytale God knows I needed, but it’s a stark contrast to what we see playing out in the media.
The contrast is what got to me. Is that people really are like that. But we only get to see that as a fiction.
In the media. And social media, we are at war.
And I can’t do it. I can’t be at war.
My heart cannot take it. I cannot let the collective BS outrage into my sanctuary. I can’t let the media do it, I can’t let my friends do it. I can’t let you, lovely Reader do it.
I am allowing my heart to break, and it’s a private process. I am allowing myself to grieve when the world gets too much. I am allowing my emotions to play out. And I come through it, and then I can keep going.
So that’s where I am at with this. With anything that’s going on in The Big Wide World. Because I don’t know what’s going on in The Big Wide World. Do any of us?
Because no one is really telling the truth. The media, and social media are only telling me how fucked we are. And I think we kind of are fucked in a lot of ways.
But the kind of mass hysteria sounds more like a collective grief process, than any kind of helpful sharing or informing.
So, yes I am unhappy with the latest thing. I am worried and concerned. I am fearful. I hope that’s ok, acceptable.
I’ve paid my dues to the media monsters who demand that I think and feel a certain way.
So, what’s next?
Well what’s next, is that I’m gonna get on with my life as best I can.
I’m going to show up for myself and my loved ones. I’m going to show up by speaking my truth as authentically and honestly as I can. And I’m here for friends, or anyone who needs a friendly smile, or ear, or a bit of kindness.
That’s it. If the boogey-man-monsters want to come for me, I’m sure they will. It will never change who I am, or what I am.
I’m learning that my sensitivity to life is something I have to embrace and look after, rather than deny, shame, or bulldoze into some other thing.
And that means my heart is breaking and I’m here to hold it as it breaks. And let a new me be revealed through that process. Because that’s life. Day by day. Every day.
Every, every day. Every day.
Every day.
Thanks for reading. I’m ok. I’m not ok. But I am ok.
A dream about having a mental breakdown
I had a very intense dream last night. I feel like I’m honestly a little bit traumatised by it still, a few hours later.
It was so strange. Basically, I experienced a mental breakdown in my dream and all of the consequences and interventions that go along with that.
Trigger warning for abuse
This is something I’ve experienced in my real life, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream like this. I feel a little bit shell shocked by it because of how intense it was and how I was responding to what was happening to me.
In the dream there were authority figures who were trying to help me by staging an intervention. At the same time there were other people associated with them who were trying to harm me, in a kind of obvious way. And I felt like the authority figures weren’t protecting me from that harm that was coming from their associates.
And there also were people trying to abuse me in a kind of covert sneaky way.
And I basically couldn’t really tell the difference between these different people. It was really scary. They were trying to hurt me and I was lashing out in return. I was like a wild animal. And the longer it went on for, the worst it got.
There was this overwhelming feeling of how I was the cause of it all, and how I was bad, and that everything that I could possibly do was wrong so that there were no positive steps I could take to help myself. And that these people could not see my truth, that I was innocent. That things were spiralling out of control, and that wasn’t my fault.
Then, the authority figures were trying to get me to a safe place where they could look after me. But I couldn’t trust them. I wasn’t sure if they were really helping me or if they were trying to harm me. So I escaped.
Then I was trying to get myself to safety, to my home where I could be secure and away from all other people. And whilst I was doing this, I managed to get away from everyone and I was alone. But in a public space where there were nothing but strangers around me. And it seemed to me that everyone was just as messed up as I was. As if the whole world had gone crazy. Like a zombie apocalypse of mental health issues.
And then I forgot where I lived, and I decided it was best to try to find the people who I thought were going to help me, but I couldn’t find them either. They had disappeared.
All this time through the dream, I relive the experience of terror through to confusion and onto my mind completely shutting down and going numb.
I got to this numbness in my dream. But I was also watching the whole thing because it was a dream. Really, really strange and unpleasant.
It was a real trauma dream. Of states of mind that I’ve experienced in the past.
I don’t know what to make of it all really.
It reminds me of times in my life when I’ve gone through this, I really couldn’t tell the difference between someone trying to help me and someone tried to harm me.
And that kind of paranoid state that I slip in and out of at times. Kind of delusional confusion where I’m not sure of anyone’s intentions and I get scared that even the friendliest of people might be an enemy in disguise.
And it’s not like there’s no basis for my fear. I have experienced abuse and manipulation by authority, and support figures in my life. People who are mandated by our medical or social support systems.
It’s a seriously scary state of mind to be in. These are scary times to live through.
All I have is my internal support system. If I didn’t have it, I would be in hospital screaming into the void.
It’s taken me a long time to acknowledge that this spiritual world is real and is inside of me and that I can trust it. And that the more I trust it, the crazier the outside world seems to become.
It keeps becoming more real. I’m not new to this journey. But every day is like starting fresh.
Dreams like this seem on one hand to be maybe my brain having a little short circuit. But I think it’s actually a message.
I don’t know how to end this post. These are just my experiences and thoughts. I don’t wanna spend a whole morning polishing my words into some kind of beautiful thing that will change hearts and minds.
My cacao today is infused with juniper berry, pink peppercorn, and orange. It is very tasty – earthy with a little fruity spiciness, and a touch of sweetness. Yum 😋
I’m excited that we have booked our family summer holiday accommodation. The last time I went way was 2019. So I’m feeling quite nervous about travelling and being away from home. But it’s a place I know well and it’s very beautiful.