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Apparently I Still Remember How to Swim
May. 20th, 2026 08:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badfalconToday, after spending approximately the last week oscillating between “this might be really good for me” and “everyone at the pool is going to stare at me in a swimsuit,” I actually went swimming.
And I was terrified.
Not of the water, weirdly enough. More of the people. Or rather, the version of people my anxiety had created in advance: everyone apparently poised and ready to point at “fat person attempting exercise” the second I walked onto poolside.
Brains are exhausting sometimes.
But the thing is… none of that actually happened.
Nobody laughed. Nobody stared. Nobody cared.
And the lifeguards were genuinely lovely. They helped me into the pool, asked if I needed the lift, propped my crutches safely out of the way, and then brought them back over while I was getting out. Just very matter-of-fact, kind, competent support that made the whole thing feel so much less frightening.
Once I was actually in the water, something shifted.
I didn’t try to force myself into “proper swimming.” The plan was always just:
I spent about 45 minutes in the water altogether. A lot of floating. A lot of walking. A lot of holding the edge and kicking gently.
And then, somewhere in the middle of all that, I realised something quietly incredible:
I still remembered how to swim.
Not perfectly. Not elegantly. But enough.
Enough to swim four widths of the pool after not swimming for what is probably decades
Which feels slightly surreal to write down.
There’s something deeply strange and emotional about rediscovering an old skill your body has apparently been holding onto all this time. Like somewhere underneath the anxiety and stiffness and uncertainty, there’s still a version of me that remembers how water works.
Now, to be clear: this was not some magical triumphant return where everything felt effortless and healing and cinematic.
I hurt
I’m physically sore. Mentally exhausted. The pool was louder than I’d expected, and the changing rooms freaked me out in that uniquely overwhelming public-changing-room way.
It was hard.
And yet.
The amazing thing is not that it was easy.
The amazing thing is that it was hard and I still came home thinking:
I’m going again next week
Which feels quietly enormous.
A few weeks ago I was genuinely scared that trying to move more would end in disaster.
Instead, I’ve somehow become someone who:
But also kind of wonderful.
And I was terrified.
Not of the water, weirdly enough. More of the people. Or rather, the version of people my anxiety had created in advance: everyone apparently poised and ready to point at “fat person attempting exercise” the second I walked onto poolside.
Brains are exhausting sometimes.
But the thing is… none of that actually happened.
Nobody laughed. Nobody stared. Nobody cared.
And the lifeguards were genuinely lovely. They helped me into the pool, asked if I needed the lift, propped my crutches safely out of the way, and then brought them back over while I was getting out. Just very matter-of-fact, kind, competent support that made the whole thing feel so much less frightening.
Once I was actually in the water, something shifted.
I didn’t try to force myself into “proper swimming.” The plan was always just:
- move around in the water
- float a bit
- hold onto the side and kick
- reconnect with the feeling of being in a pool
I spent about 45 minutes in the water altogether. A lot of floating. A lot of walking. A lot of holding the edge and kicking gently.
And then, somewhere in the middle of all that, I realised something quietly incredible:
I still remembered how to swim.
Not perfectly. Not elegantly. But enough.
Enough to swim four widths of the pool after not swimming for what is probably decades
Which feels slightly surreal to write down.
There’s something deeply strange and emotional about rediscovering an old skill your body has apparently been holding onto all this time. Like somewhere underneath the anxiety and stiffness and uncertainty, there’s still a version of me that remembers how water works.
Now, to be clear: this was not some magical triumphant return where everything felt effortless and healing and cinematic.
I hurt
I’m physically sore. Mentally exhausted. The pool was louder than I’d expected, and the changing rooms freaked me out in that uniquely overwhelming public-changing-room way.
It was hard.
And yet.
The amazing thing is not that it was easy.
The amazing thing is that it was hard and I still came home thinking:
I’m going again next week
Which feels quietly enormous.
A few weeks ago I was genuinely scared that trying to move more would end in disaster.
Instead, I’ve somehow become someone who:
- plays tennis voluntarily
- accidentally gives themselves sports-related muscle soreness
- and now goes swimming on purpose
But also kind of wonderful.
(no subject)
May. 16th, 2026 12:30 pmbeatrice_otterDoes anyone work on the Open Doors project at AO3? Or know someone who does? I am trying to do something similar on Ad Astra, and need some advice from someone who knows the OTW archive software better.
Specifically, there are a couple of people who had accounts and fic on the old Ad Astra archive who are now dead, and we would like to make sure that their works are preserved by transferring them to the new archive. We would like them all to have the same format that unclaimed works imported by Open Doors have on AO3--"by name [archived by archivist]". We have successfully achieved that with shorter works, but I'm trying to import a fic with 363 chapters and half a million words. It cannot be imported; the archive times out. I thought that if I imported the first chapter and then uploaded the rest of the chapters manually, it would work, but trying to import only the first chapter timed out the archive as well. Then I thought about importing another work that would import, changing the title and chapter text to the one I wanted, and then manually adding further chapters. But it's listing it as just "Archivists" in the author space, without the name of the original author.
Help!
ETA: figured it out myself!
Specifically, there are a couple of people who had accounts and fic on the old Ad Astra archive who are now dead, and we would like to make sure that their works are preserved by transferring them to the new archive. We would like them all to have the same format that unclaimed works imported by Open Doors have on AO3--"by name [archived by archivist]". We have successfully achieved that with shorter works, but I'm trying to import a fic with 363 chapters and half a million words. It cannot be imported; the archive times out. I thought that if I imported the first chapter and then uploaded the rest of the chapters manually, it would work, but trying to import only the first chapter timed out the archive as well. Then I thought about importing another work that would import, changing the title and chapter text to the one I wanted, and then manually adding further chapters. But it's listing it as just "Archivists" in the author space, without the name of the original author.
Help!
ETA: figured it out myself!
Never mind, I figured it out myself!
The issue is that when you are uploading a fic for someone else, you are required to put their email in the box so they are contactable. This person is dead and I have no idea what their email address was when they were alive, so I put in the archivists' email. So the system decided that it was just by Archivists despite having the name of someone else and having the box checked that it was someone else's fic that archivists was posting.
I made up an email to put in instead, and it posted as "by name [archived by archivist]" just as it should.
