Dominica May

2025 In Review Sitting amongst my packed belongings I have been fairly absent from my blog this year, but this post should address some of the reasons why. 2025 has been a rough year for me. After being laid off from my job in August last year, it has been a struggle for me to figure out what to do next. With the news of so many tech layoffs and the economy struggling to add new jobs, along with having many reservations around the direction the United States is headed in, I realised I had to really reassess what I saw in my future.

For those of you who want to know about what occupied a good chunk of my time and energy in 2025.

Identifying Triggers and Shame to Short-Circuit Automated Reactions, Defensiveness, and Trauma Responses Last week, I posted a silly video to YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram, wherein I talked about how sometimes I'll hear a song out of the blue, and it'll trigger a strong emotional response in me. In this video, I specifically talked about "All That She Wants" by Ace of Base, and how I only needed to hear the first three seconds of the song, before any lyrics played, for me to know what it was and then yell "Fuck you" at the Universe.

In which I analyse the lessons I'm choosing to learn after identifying a situation that triggers the heck out of me.

Some of the things I've been learning to help me grow from being a fearful avoidant attacher to being more secure.

Tears Stream Down My Face on My Mother’s 70th Birthday My mum preparing for caving, rock climbing and abseiling in New Zealand, February 2005 Today is a good time for me to re-share this picture of my Mum from a little over 20 years ago, shortly before she turned 50. Mum should've been 70 today, but instead her life was cut far too short due to pancreatic cancer, which she was diagnosed with not long after her 50th birthday.

My mum passed away almost 20 years ago. She should've been 70 today. I reflect on some of her history and the lessons I've learned from her here.

Bluesky deleted the bots or scammers that tried to follow me. 😆

Feel free to DM me on Discord for my address if you decide to. 😂

My player is from Australia so I should probably plug it in sometime and make sure I can still get it to work in the US with the different voltage. But it should be fine. It also takes batteries. 😂

I actually still have my original CD/cassette player, which was a birthday present I received during my high school years in the 90s. I haven't used it in years, but I still have it!

One of the Best Things You Can Do to Heal from a Toxic Relationship Have you ever felt at a loss after the end of a toxic relationship? Tried to sort out and sift through the details of what happened? Whether you ended the relationship, or were the one broken up with, knowing the relationship was toxic doesn't preclude you from experiencing some level of grief for the end of things. Sometimes you might be plagued with thoughts, wondering what you could've done differently to prevent your partner from behaving in a toxic or abusive manner towards you.

When you get out of a toxic relationship, it can be hard to know how to heal from it. Here's a sampling of what I did to help me heal from mine.

Let's Get Vulnerable with Dominica May. Tired of surface level conversations? Feeling lonely and disconnected? Come watch Dominica May have vulnerable conversations with her friends! Livestream time: Fri Dec 6 7:30pm US PST (GMT-8) Fri Dec 6 10:30pm US EST (GMT-5) Sat Dec 7 11:30am MYS/WA (GMT+8) Sat Dec 7 2:30pm AEDT (GMT+11)

Episode 3 of my vulnerable conversation livestream is coming up in a couple of days.

Join in to watch live on YouTube at youtube.com/live/2R_5WGD...

I'll be joined by 3 guests. You're welcome to join the conversation with us in the chat.

Thankful for the Friends who Support my Livestreaming Efforts This year, to date, I have gone live on my YouTube channel 17 times, and will hopefully do at least a couple more before the end of the year. I don't have much of an audience, and in fact rarely have anyone watching live these days. It would be nice to have a bigger audience, but I don't do these livestreams to build an audience or to try and get famous.

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the friends who've joined me in conversation for my livestreaming. In this blog post, I talk about my livestreaming experiences and invite you to watch.

Over the last few years I've been reevaluating my relationship with external validation and trying to focus my attention more on the people who matter most to me, so I feel like I relate to this.

Soup’s On! This project was originally created for a writing competition in August 2022. I published it on a different platform, but now I've decided to repost it to my personal, public blog to showcase this project to a wider audience. Data analytics and coding is my bread and butter. It’s what put food on the table in my house. So I thought, what better way to talk about it than to build you a demonstration you can explore yourself?

Two years ago, I created a coding project for a writing competition. I found a recipe dataset and reduced it to just soup recipes, then created an interactive website utilising my coding skills. Now I'm sharing the project with a wider audience!

Anyone else raised in an environment where they feel like they sought external validation over internal motivation? It's a wild ride to escape.

http://dominicacreates.com/2024/11/17/attempting-to-end-the-quest-for-external-validation-once-and-for-all/

Also, it's nice to know someone else agrees with me. I love discovering characters I interpret as autistic and seeing people agree.

Yes, you should! This show is so good. We're getting through 4 episodes a day.

Who's watched Death Note? I'm watching it for the first time with my daughter right now, and I'm convinced L is autistic like me. Only 12 episodes in so far though, so no spoilers please!