Sex Without Shame, Death Without Fear

"Just thinking out loud... 

I don't mean to dwell on this dying thing"

It's a shot of bloody perspective reminding me
that regardless of WHAT
I think and have experienced, regardless
of how much I do and how many hours in smug solitude
thinking I'm better, or smarter, or more spiritual
than you
That I know, that I can face it
ALL
It still remains more true
What is said in the book, title forgotten:
You truly feel, don't you,
that you are now completely disillusioned?
That may prove to be the most enduring
illusion
of them all.

And I am dying. Very slowly.
A decay no medicine, no surgery can erase
Time and entropy will take my place
and fill it with strangers
With a shot of bloody perspective...
An urgency that will fade with time
That I could die now while I'm ready
equipped with a fullness of uncanny surprise
the understanding that nothing
no matter how great could prepare me
The shock now is greater...
I wonder, if only,
Walking with giants, lit by a star
I would know now, to know,
to have no expectations...
Until the next moment,
of bloody perspective,
How far?

It may be harder to face living and knowing
that I will forget, and find boredom again,
a lack of perspective...
I wonder to myself, if the impossible can be done...
Not to deny death... Yes, that exactly.
NOT to.
What seems it should be within the reach of the mind...
I'm not sure it is:
To face Sex without Shame,
And Death without Fear.

A Forest of Sticks

I did two hours of job searching on Kijiji this Tuesday... It must have been effective. I had an interview yesterday morning, and was requested to go to two this morning. I had an offer to make some money distributing flyers to mail boxes, and have a training day next Thursday.The flood of responses is unprecedented. However, I don't really know how to ace the interviews yet. I hope I will do well in some of them. I am signed up for Job Finding Workshop Thursday afternoons at Goodwill and I have a one to one appointment next Wednesday with one of the staff there. I met an interesting and dynamic person at the workshop that I chatted to about Pokemon and D&D and got the contact information of so we could talk more. I'm going to have to practice promoting myself and answering interview questions at my mirror.

The weather has gotten warmer and it really feels like spring now. Pleasant breezes and warm sun dominate the weather. I got a sun burn while handing out flyers for 45 minutes on Wednesday. Despite the warmth, though, no leaves are on the deciduous trees yet. The evergreens are, as ever, green, but wherever I would expect foliage, I see a forest of sticks. It feels mildly disconcerting, but perhaps it is not time for them to be budding yet.

In other news, I have started a new hobby I've been meaning to take up for some time, Let's Playing. For the first time ever there are uploads on my YouTube page. I'm playing a game called Heroine Iysayana, which is a trilogy of JRPG spoofs make in RPG Maker available for free. There are a couple of other LPs of it online already, but at this point, it's become such a popular hobby that it's very hard to find games that haven't been done. Regardless, I'm having fun, despite the strange quirks of my system's audio and trying to figure out how to get the game to behave properly and how to record both game and microphone sound without either being too loud or having to deal with multi-channel recording and editing I don't know how to do yet. So far, I realize my recordings are rough, but I am having fun anyway.

I've been very busy, and I have to go out to my interview soon, but I really wanted to update this and let anyone who reads it know what's been new in my life. Perhaps I'll soon have work... really, this time... and be able to tell you about my new job soon. Here's hoping.

Thank you for taking the time to read my words. Please do feel free to comment if you have anything to say. Despite getting a modest stream of views now, apparently, I still don't have a single comment on any of my blog posts.

Rumination

It is nearly 3 in the morning, in a week in which I've been in bed long before midnight every day. I have a meeting tomorrow... Not with OW, not a job interview... A meeting with my worker at Goodwill. I am, for some reason, terrified, and although I know in my mind that there is no reason whatsoever to expect he will be anything less than impressed and encouraging at how much I have accomplished, learned, and done over the past few months, what I actually expect in my heart is to be told that I am an utter failure at job searching and at life no matter how hard I try. I have been feeling a deep malaise for the past two days, drifting between a depressed despondency and the edge of panic. I'm quite aware of it, and it's driving me crazy. I know I'm being irrational, but the capacity I seemed to have a couple of weeks ago to simply stop seems to have evaporated somewhere. Could it have something to do with the two consecutive days last week that I missed taking my pill because I'd forgotten to get more of them? Am I just really this insecure about not doing everything the way my Goodwill workshops advised me to? Is this a hellish conspiracy between my menstrual cycle and my self-destructiveness to throw me into the most hormonal mess I'll be in all month at a very important time?

None of my progress has been undone... And yet it all seems empty. I can repeat in my mind that I've come a long way and done a great deal, I can list my accomplishments - among them the fact that I've gotten two shifts of paid freelance work from my job searching... and none of it is enough for my inner critic. Why? I was capable of being so self-assured last fortnight...

I think I know why. I spent a modest chunk of Thursday and Friday last week job searching online, and it was completely fruitless. I tried posting ads for service on Kijiji, and got three responses: one asking if I was interested in a pure commission job from home, which I am not, and the other two, one duplicated across two ads, from characters who read as sexual predators seeking prey significantly less wary and streetwise than I. This abject failure and reminder of the dark side of humanity has been a harrowing and exhausting experience and has drained heavily on my hope. That's probably got a great deal to do with it. I feel I've been doing everything wrong because as of this writing, my last attempt was a horrid failure and it leaves me feeling incompetent and doomed.

Hopefully, then, moving past this to some other try, probably using a slightly different medium, will refresh and reinvigorate me. I am glad I was able to identify the seed of my malaise. Now, powers willing, may I move past it, and present myself and my accomplishments with the pride I deserve in my meeting?

Happiness

You know...

Over the last month or more... I've been... noticing how happy I am. I've been appreciating the love and support of my friends. I've been trusting that things will turn out okay and I'll get where I need to be eventually without rushing. I've been enjoying my humble home with my freecycled furniture.

I finally have a computer now that functions well enough to be well worth having. No substantial lag unless it's actually trying to do something difficult like stream. It cost me $20 from a fellow at an organization apparently called VPCC. I haven't been to that link, as I'm not on Facebook, but the man who sold me the computer linked me there. This computer was an upgrade after he gave me an older one for free, but it was so laggy that I could feel my blood pressure rising every time it took more than a second to register I'd moused over or clicked something or tried to open a window.

This one works smoothly and is well worth the $20 I paid for it. After so long using the hacked-up laptop and two days with the archaic tower, it feels so liberating and gleeful just using my scroll wheel to go down webpages and having it respond in realtime. I giggled to myself like a maniac to Pup about how I could scroll now, and felt slightly unhinged, while I was running D&D on Maptools for him, using a random map from Myth-Weavers, and needed to find the relevant part of the map key for a new room.

Speaking of Pup... It's been half a year now.
It... seems like so long, and yet so short.
Lots of progress has been made, and we are being better at interacting in ways that are healthy and happy for both of us. He still occasionally falls into fits I find utterly unbearable and I still sometimes take his weird and unreliable tone as a signifier of emotion and end up offended and upset about something he didn't mean and argues I know better than to take to heart. But... it's less frequent and less serious, less shattering. We're both getting better at being easy on each other.

My birthday yielded happy support from my patron, who gave me a gift card for Shopper's Drugmart and a warm brown vest. My mother also sent me a scratchy archaic tunic and a pair of wrap-around pants. I've never worn wrap-around pants before, and the design seems rather bizarre to me... but clever and playful.

I was able to enthuse happily to my counsellor the last time we spoke, and had many good things to say. That I've been talking to my mother again, that I find moments where I'm ruminating or running away and I stop... That the Pup I nearly broke up with two months ago is with me still and while it's far from perfect, there is love and happiness and sweetness there.

My request for funding for steel-toed work boots and a hard hat went through and was fulfilled in full, but I haven't actually gone out to get them yet. For the moment, I'm being lazy. But I will get around to it in time.

Taking advantage of a sale at Shoppers, and the gift card I was given, I now have a small supply of chocolate ice cream, and it's a real treat to have available from time to time.

I've been asked to dinner on Friday and have a date in about an hour... When did I become so popular, I wonder? Heheh... Strange and wonderful things.

I got a phone call from my dad today. He had a habit of cutting me off while I was talking, but nevertheless, we had a good and amiable chat. It's nice to hear from him again. The Daddy Dude seems to be doing well. Hippy dippy philosopher of sorts, as always. "May your path always shine." You too, dad. You too.
So much love. So much happiness. Has the elusive dream been reached?

Find out on the next exciting episode...