Satellaview

😁

Ultimately, Star Wars is made by a lot of authors with a lot of different visions and external pressures. I’ve heard three main interpretations:

• Bringing balance to the Force means destroying the Sith, because darkness is inherently evil. Vader fulfills this by killing the Emperor and becoming redeemed in his last moments, “destroying” the last Sith. (Ignore the whole fleet of off-screen Sith retroactively placed there by Expanded Universe works.)
• Bringing balance to the Force means making the number of Jedi and Sith equal, and Vader fulfills this by killing hundreds of thousands of Jedi.
• Bringing balance to the Force means destroying the black-and-white view of Jedi and Sith, which definitely seems to be the position of the Bendu (an ancient loosely-all-knowing alien who shows up in a handful of episodes of Clone Wars, but has been treated by the broader franchise as disproportionately important). Vader fulfills this by breaking the boundary between Sith and Jedi in his dying moments—or maybe the prophecy was about Rey after all. (Doesn’t this make the shot of Luke’s face inside Vader’s helmet the most interesting? Almost as though it’s saying both “there is evil in you, but there is good in him too.”)

Which is “right”? Well, you’d have to ask Lucas, wouldn’t you? Or Rian Johnson, or Dave Filoni, or the entire writing team of Knights of the Old Republic, or any of the thousands of people who’ve written for Star Wars… There’s not just one answer.

I think any of these could be true, from a certain point of view.

It lets you view modern life from outside.

Which of the things we do every day are truly necessary? When you remove something or add another, what happens to the greater shape of society? What do our relationships to each other look like without cars, without jobs, without money? What might take their place?

What does it mean to be sentient? What does it mean to be human? What’s the shape of the gap between those two things?

I find it philosophically entertaining.

Rest for the mind. Anything that lets me not think and just kind of exist.

Long baths with nice-smelling bath bombs, meditation, even just deciding with intention “okay, this evening I’m just going to lay in bed and watch this set of YouTube documentaries that looks interesting, and if I fall asleep for a bit, I’ll just rewind when I wake up.” Put on an album and listen to it start to finish, and either let it wash over you or let yourself get lost in the little details.

I tend to “relax” by starting new projects, so finding ways to actually relax has been hard. If you’re a little bored and understimulated, you’re on the right track.

Good luck. Medical work is really, really hard, and I hope your new job is a hell of a lot better!

Okay, that’s fair.

“I didn’t know I was supposed to be home earlier” is kind of a weird sentence to hear an adult say, though. Like, that sounds like you don’t have a choice in the matter, like your partner gets to decide things unilaterally and you’re left hastily rushing to catch up.

Usually what I try to do is, when tempers aren’t high, work with my partner—outline the problem and work together, the two of us fighting against the problem. Explore the boundaries here, get creative—can you sleep in another room? Is it motion, is it sound, is it light that wake them up? Can you minimize that enough to learn how to not wake them up, or can they find earplugs/a sleep mask that help from their side?

It doesn’t sound like ADHD is the problem here, honestly. It sounds like your partner has you in kind of an unwinnable situation, and the best way to fix that is to renegotiate the rules of the game.

…Even leaving aside how your partner seems to communicate poorly then blame you for any misinterpretations without taking any responsibility for their own bad communication…

Why does your partner need you to be in bed before they can go to sleep? That’s really weird.

Like, you know how I handle this when I’m in your partner’s position? I say “cool, sounds fun, please do the dishes when you get in, I’ll probably be asleep by then.” If I wake up a little when they get in, I roll over and cuddle. Done.

It sounds almost like there’s another reason they want you home, that they don’t trust you or something.