I'm having a count-my-blessings sort of day, I think. Last night I spoke with a lover I'd been angrily, stubbornly hoping I could improve things with, and told them that I thought I was starting to give up on them. They said they weren't surprised. Somewhat sad, but didn't feel they had the resources to do anything about it and it was somewhat predictable.
I felt restless for a while, but waking up today, I find myself at a turning of chapters. Bittersweet and refreshing. I don't like letting go of the past, but the idea that I really don't know what the future will be and have a fair amount of choice in the matter is... A good thing to come back to like this.
I am being still, so far today. I have spent some time appreciating that my bed is very comfortable and my blankets, when I use all of them, comfortably weighty to snuggle up under. I like this cozy little room in this cozy little house, with queer roommates who, even if I am in conflict with them, do to an appreciable amount of effort not to unduly take it out on me. They aren't perfect of course, but have done a magnificent job of being reasonable roommates who although they're somewhat messy don't make my life needlessly difficult.
I'm grateful for my friends, and the food banks and free meal systems in my city. I know this feeling isn't going to last, I'll come back around to thinking the world sees me as scum and only ever takes care of me out of a sense of reluctant obligation, but right now it seems like quite a few people really are putting some effort into making sure that poor folks like me have good food to eat, even if they don't see how they could ensure anything else for us.
Showing posts with label Optimism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Optimism. Show all posts
Sunday, January 29, 2023
Counting My Blessings
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
The Warden Sleeps
You wake up on the first day of the rest of your life. The depression is not gone. The stakes and struts on which it grew are all still here. So too are the habits and memories forged in its malign influence, and you've been through this before.
It sleeps. And though you can't tell when,
it always wakes. It will again.
For now, the world is little different, but you are. You can breathe a little easier. The house is the same, but for little day to day changes. The tasks you could put yourself to still intimidating. You do not stride boldly out. To move too boldly may bring it crashing down again.
You don't know what will wake the warden,
what to flee or move toward.
But for now, there is respite from its despising gaze upon all you think to say, upon the outcome of things not done. For now, there is some flavour to savour in even the interplay of bitter and sweet in a cup of sweetened instant coffee. It feels like you could have fun again.
Gaze upon the bones: your weight; the tasks left undone for weeks; the gentle and polite concern of coworkers; things it would have been nice to do... Under your feet, the ground trembles with thunder, a distant growl and long sigh, the half-disturbed snoring of latent depression. To look too long, too worried, too threatens.
Perhaps any of these could be worked on slowly enough to weaken its hold the next time it wakes without hastening the rise. Too much happy idleness just relaxing in the thin ray of light while it lasts will give it more to mock.
But perhaps that isn't quite true. What stinks in idleness is when it ceases to be relaxing and turns into a numb shell pressing the button over again despite increasingly diminishing returns in joy or soothing. That and a sense of abdication of duty to the screamers, whatever one's own good intentions. The knowledge that some suffer and you are not helping them will always rise to the surface sooner or later. Would that there was time for it to regain some of its weight... No, that isn't what's been lost.
It is not light what bites less into you.
Your callous scarring will not let it through.
And what is there really to do about that?
Well, perhaps if you can loosen the grip of the warden, just a little by little, and refuse its shaming at how much of your strength this takes, perhaps someday the skin of your conscience will feel again, less under the thick of this numb weariness, as base childlike sense-pleasure can now. Maybe there is some nobleness in that somewhere.
Saturday, August 3, 2019
I Like Being This Person.
Wait. I just said I like being this person. What happened?And then, everybody laughed. My lovers and I had been talking about norms, policy-building between us. How to stay in touch across time zones - fewer hours than across the ocean now. Planning to reserve one convenient hour to connect to one of our busiest people.
We were talking about leadership. In our group of five, three are far more followers than leaders by preference. Maybe, maybe that's more two, and the third is on the fence. Two of us are more leaders than followers - and I'm one. I'm the louder one, the one who draws attention to it more often, who usually asks what telecommunications program we're using to voice chat, and suggests something to watch or to play, takes responsibility for remembering things we agreed we have to talk about.
But we have another leader, who usually stays quiet, who spends more time watching and less time saying what he sees. He gives careful prods but not ostentatiously. It's not his way. And he and I, it seems we work together well. Me the circus ringleader, he around the shadows at the edge of the ring of light. I asked again that he remember to remind me, if my shouting becomes too self-serving - I don't want my trained assertiveness only to serve my own preferences. And I'll try to give him time, and bite down on my jealousy when it has a problem with sharing the spotlight.
I asked him to tell me out loud that it was alright that I was louder, was showier, was the ringleader kind of leader that I am. Whether we really do work well together with this being a prominent part of the nature of our double act.
Good. Because, I like being this person. And I wouldn't want to have to go without it.Wait... What happened?
And then, everybody laughed.
You're healing, he said.
Okay, crying. Crying again.
I'm on my second day of being back on my thyroid medication. There was a gap there for a bit, while we got more. But I'm just over the extra hormonal stress and mess of my period, and although I expected things to be harder while I was off my medicine for a week or so, and then back on again... All I've really had to cope with so far that's seemed worse than usual has been some waves of tiredness in the middle of the day. And I eat, and drink, and get excited with my loves and I listen to upbeat music, and they pass. And honestly, I have been getting short and broken sleep a lot of the recent nights too.
I've been here a month and a half, in the house of someone who wasn't surprised to see me, who wasn't pined after secretly for months on months - we've discussed my coming to see them for a long time, and they've said yes, that they would welcome me with open arms, and they have.
Our apartment is our apartment, they tell me. Ours including you (meaning me). Our food and drink is your food and drink too. You don't have to keep asking me whether you can have it.
Our apartment, then. It's a pretty place. Well maintained, simple and somewhat small but high quality and close to their work. I keep it tidier than they ever did - I asked first. We've discussed the matter many times, and I've gotten consent over and over again to go ahead and turn their lives upside down.
We watch heartful TV together. They've been showing me This Is Us. I've been showing them Steven Universe. They're started to show me My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and I've had a bit of fun riffing on it and analyzing it.
With some prompting from me, they started to shift their focus away from the idea of signing up for a code college which would require them to be at a physical classroom for months and pay up thousands of dollars later down the line presuming they can find better work after the schooling. They're taking on some courses on Udemy instead for now - there was always some fear that they wouldn't be able to stick to it, but I'm here to help now. To ask what they're learning, and remind them to study regularly... but not too hard. ♡
We're doing it together. I'm picking up a Udemy course too, and suddenly I have a six month plan, to end in a working store website and all the experience it took to build it. This morning, a Saturday morning, we each spent a few hours on our different projects, in the same living room, taking time from time to time to hug and kiss or give back massages.
I send them to work with packed lunches. We can save money that way, and still eat deliciously. They don't mind - they like the food I give them. I keep our apartment clean, and cook, and when they can't walk on their own, I'm there to help carry them.
And I'm working through this course, and from time to time I just spend my day watching YouTube videos, but it's okay. Because it's not all the time. In my spare time, I get to reach out to people all along the edges of my online social network. I got to spend a half hour not long ago telling someone struggling with grief that they were not as alone as they felt.
And I still fret, sometimes. Of course I do. I worry that work that isn't done in a hired position isn't real somehow, isn't worth as much... but I know that isn't true, it's just... just one of the things that gets passed along through the deepest social memes and habits. And I don't have to know that all by myself anymore. My lovers will tell it to me over again as many times as I need to hear it.
I've been starting to look through listings for a house for us to move into once the lease here ends.
My Stars want me to stay here with them.
Everything is different now.
And I'm starting to think... Maybe I really don't ever have to go back.
Thursday, April 5, 2018
Dear Future: Remember to Be Awesome
This post isn't written to Eoin, it's written to me, Serp, in the future when I look back over my blog, with someone else or alone. Hi, Serp.
I've been doing pretty sweet, despite a long stretch of repeatedly very little sleep. Today, I found myself listening to a very cheerful song I like on repeat, and went a surprising length of time without getting sick of it. Instead, I built a happy fantasy around the song. And like last week, I decided that instead of chiding myself for my fantasy and the expression of something I cared about but might never achieve... I would see where I could follow it. In this case, I followed it into the big empty football field near my house where I could expect other people not to hear me talking to myself, imagining something delicious, and deliciously plausible, if not necessarily likely.
I paced, and thought, and recited, arranging the words of a speech. And then I turned back to the song and practiced singing it, until I got through the whole song once or twice, along with the short speech. I came back home, and wrote the speech down.
Serp, I don't know whether you made it back to Athlone or wound up somewhere else. I don't know whether Eoin is with you, or whether he ever will be. But no matter where you are, or who you're near, remember how delicious that idea was. Go back and reread it, if it helps. You have the capacity to dream beautiful dreams. And I know that someday, if you keep trying, you will be able to make some of them a reality.
Maybe the plot I schemed up today doesn't work for you where you are now. Maybe you've seen a flaw in it that I don't see. If this particular one never happens, that's alright. You can think up something else. Something better. Just... remember that it's not a waste of time to dream beautiful dreams. It's not. It gives you ideas about how to get to them. You just have to be willing to look at them in the right way. You need a little hope for a brighter day. A little love to find the way.
And remember the vlogbrothers. Remember ToadyOne. Remember Elon Musk and Eliezer's Harry and Dave Moreland and all the other people who have inspired you. Remember that you don't need to be afraid of them. Follow their lead. Don't Forget To Be Awesome.
I've been doing pretty sweet, despite a long stretch of repeatedly very little sleep. Today, I found myself listening to a very cheerful song I like on repeat, and went a surprising length of time without getting sick of it. Instead, I built a happy fantasy around the song. And like last week, I decided that instead of chiding myself for my fantasy and the expression of something I cared about but might never achieve... I would see where I could follow it. In this case, I followed it into the big empty football field near my house where I could expect other people not to hear me talking to myself, imagining something delicious, and deliciously plausible, if not necessarily likely.
I paced, and thought, and recited, arranging the words of a speech. And then I turned back to the song and practiced singing it, until I got through the whole song once or twice, along with the short speech. I came back home, and wrote the speech down.
Serp, I don't know whether you made it back to Athlone or wound up somewhere else. I don't know whether Eoin is with you, or whether he ever will be. But no matter where you are, or who you're near, remember how delicious that idea was. Go back and reread it, if it helps. You have the capacity to dream beautiful dreams. And I know that someday, if you keep trying, you will be able to make some of them a reality.
Maybe the plot I schemed up today doesn't work for you where you are now. Maybe you've seen a flaw in it that I don't see. If this particular one never happens, that's alright. You can think up something else. Something better. Just... remember that it's not a waste of time to dream beautiful dreams. It's not. It gives you ideas about how to get to them. You just have to be willing to look at them in the right way. You need a little hope for a brighter day. A little love to find the way.
And remember the vlogbrothers. Remember ToadyOne. Remember Elon Musk and Eliezer's Harry and Dave Moreland and all the other people who have inspired you. Remember that you don't need to be afraid of them. Follow their lead. Don't Forget To Be Awesome.
Dear Memory: Back and Forward
Good morning, Eoin. I've had a pretty crazy week. If I were to presume I were bipolar, I would conclude that I have begun to shift back into the manic side of my cycle. I have slept relatively little recently... Although, naturally, it doesn't help that yet again I am in a house where I have grown to resent some of my roommates, and just about every noise I hear from them, which frequently happens late at night.
On the upside, much of the effect comes from happier things. I am attending more of my classes now... Although, still not all of them. I have grown closer and more intimate with some new friends, and have done some batches of writing. A sequence of three posts here which were explicitly about rationality for once. I plan to repost them at LessWrong (I can do that, apparently; it's a community blog now, with many contributors). A short story, a little over 900 words, which captured an idea that I got caught up in my head while I was out walking. I have been out walking a lot again, too. That also feels good. I have been very happy with the success I had in capturing and conveying out the idea. I got a prettier story out of it than I expected. It's viscerally violent, and yet transhumanist and optimistic.
I joined a bunch more Discord servers, and have been actually spending some time discussing things with some people who confuse and intimidate me with their high standards and down-to-business modes of communicating. I have been managing to resist the temptation to stop and ask for reassurance that I'm actually wanted there. Partly because one of the most no-nonsense of the bunch told me frankly that I was too valuable to discard just because I was weird, and was also very open about being annoyed with me a couple of times. I haven't always understood why. But he's not making a habit of hiding it if he has an issue with me.
Besides that, I find myself thinking... If I were to ask, and he told me that I was appreciated and welcome, it probably wouldn't help me for very long. If he were to tell me I wasn't, or that it was a stretch, it wouldn't help me at all. It may simply be that he projects an attitude of such greater knowledge, and engrossed preoccupation with greater and more important affairs, that I find myself instinctively assuming that it would genuinely be a colossal waste of his time. Or perhaps, more accurately, I would expect him to find it annoying again and get another minor swat to the ego because I ought to know better. And I kind of do.
I still think it's still important I have friends I can be vulnerable with, away from this high-tension scene. And again... I do.
I finally submitted my college applications to five of the six ITs in Ireland that I had planned to. Just to wait for responses now, on that front.
I think of you often. I have often had trouble getting a half-hour of work into my applications, because facing the task brought you to mind as thoroughly as ever. I imagine singing duets with you. Dancing with you. Cooking with you. Walking with you. Do you know what I remembered, the other day?
When I first showed you my little facial expressions ice breaker game, and you decided to read your subjects first, and the first one was "OK Go". And I think I must have looked magnificently baffled. "What? I thought you were going first...?"
Do you remember it, Eoin? Ah, such fun and silly times.
In... about three hours, at 10 AM, I have a Law test to write. I actually spent a couple of hours studying for it, for once. Although, to be fair, we have a really good practice resource for this course, in the form of a bunch of content quizzes with questions of exactly the same sort as will be on the exam, which auto-grades itself and can be taken as many times as we might wish. We also get a single page of notes we're allowed to bring in with us. So I did all of the quizzes relevant to the content, and I took notes on all the questions I had a hard time remembering the right answers to, or got wrong the first time around, and the principles on which they were based.
I haven't slept, although I am tired. I might actually manage to get some rest for two of those three hours, and then more after the test. I tried laying down, but my back was stiff and sore and my mind not particularly conditioned for sleep. I had been searching through my paperwork, looking for documents relevant to filing my taxes... That may have had something to do with it. Or, then, perhaps it had less to do with that than some of the things I found that had nothing whatsoever to do with tax.
I still keep scribbed notes and poetry, and especially drawings, from many years ago, even some of the ones that just seem dumb to me at this point. I happened upon a piece of writing that wasn't fiction. It was a little bitter reminder of just how insane I've been, at my worst... the times when I felt myself and my control, slipping, slipping. If we do get back together, and I read you these blog posts... Remind me, sometime, to read you my notes from The Day Everything Changed. It is not a pretty story. It is not a proud story. But it is a true story. And I remember hearing you voice your fears to me once, when I was in one of the worse fits I ever had while I was with you, that you weren't good for me. That you might be making things worse.
I think, perhaps... you will not think so anymore, after I tell you a story, not from memory, but from a record written on the same day, and never edited or changed since, about how bad it really was, once, quite some time before I met you. And yet, still not really all that long ago. You cannot realize how far I've come, until you can see the depths where I've been. I have to admit that I had almost forgotten how very little time has passed, and how truly awful it used to be. The feeling of slipping, slipping... and being afraid, a kind of visceral, in-the-moment dread, that I might not be able to maintain control of my own actions. Not even in my usual fallback manner of shutting them down entirely.
It's amazing to me how far I've come, these past few years.
On the upside, much of the effect comes from happier things. I am attending more of my classes now... Although, still not all of them. I have grown closer and more intimate with some new friends, and have done some batches of writing. A sequence of three posts here which were explicitly about rationality for once. I plan to repost them at LessWrong (I can do that, apparently; it's a community blog now, with many contributors). A short story, a little over 900 words, which captured an idea that I got caught up in my head while I was out walking. I have been out walking a lot again, too. That also feels good. I have been very happy with the success I had in capturing and conveying out the idea. I got a prettier story out of it than I expected. It's viscerally violent, and yet transhumanist and optimistic.
I joined a bunch more Discord servers, and have been actually spending some time discussing things with some people who confuse and intimidate me with their high standards and down-to-business modes of communicating. I have been managing to resist the temptation to stop and ask for reassurance that I'm actually wanted there. Partly because one of the most no-nonsense of the bunch told me frankly that I was too valuable to discard just because I was weird, and was also very open about being annoyed with me a couple of times. I haven't always understood why. But he's not making a habit of hiding it if he has an issue with me.
Besides that, I find myself thinking... If I were to ask, and he told me that I was appreciated and welcome, it probably wouldn't help me for very long. If he were to tell me I wasn't, or that it was a stretch, it wouldn't help me at all. It may simply be that he projects an attitude of such greater knowledge, and engrossed preoccupation with greater and more important affairs, that I find myself instinctively assuming that it would genuinely be a colossal waste of his time. Or perhaps, more accurately, I would expect him to find it annoying again and get another minor swat to the ego because I ought to know better. And I kind of do.
I still think it's still important I have friends I can be vulnerable with, away from this high-tension scene. And again... I do.
I finally submitted my college applications to five of the six ITs in Ireland that I had planned to. Just to wait for responses now, on that front.
I think of you often. I have often had trouble getting a half-hour of work into my applications, because facing the task brought you to mind as thoroughly as ever. I imagine singing duets with you. Dancing with you. Cooking with you. Walking with you. Do you know what I remembered, the other day?
When I first showed you my little facial expressions ice breaker game, and you decided to read your subjects first, and the first one was "OK Go". And I think I must have looked magnificently baffled. "What? I thought you were going first...?"
Do you remember it, Eoin? Ah, such fun and silly times.
In... about three hours, at 10 AM, I have a Law test to write. I actually spent a couple of hours studying for it, for once. Although, to be fair, we have a really good practice resource for this course, in the form of a bunch of content quizzes with questions of exactly the same sort as will be on the exam, which auto-grades itself and can be taken as many times as we might wish. We also get a single page of notes we're allowed to bring in with us. So I did all of the quizzes relevant to the content, and I took notes on all the questions I had a hard time remembering the right answers to, or got wrong the first time around, and the principles on which they were based.
I haven't slept, although I am tired. I might actually manage to get some rest for two of those three hours, and then more after the test. I tried laying down, but my back was stiff and sore and my mind not particularly conditioned for sleep. I had been searching through my paperwork, looking for documents relevant to filing my taxes... That may have had something to do with it. Or, then, perhaps it had less to do with that than some of the things I found that had nothing whatsoever to do with tax.
I still keep scribbed notes and poetry, and especially drawings, from many years ago, even some of the ones that just seem dumb to me at this point. I happened upon a piece of writing that wasn't fiction. It was a little bitter reminder of just how insane I've been, at my worst... the times when I felt myself and my control, slipping, slipping. If we do get back together, and I read you these blog posts... Remind me, sometime, to read you my notes from The Day Everything Changed. It is not a pretty story. It is not a proud story. But it is a true story. And I remember hearing you voice your fears to me once, when I was in one of the worse fits I ever had while I was with you, that you weren't good for me. That you might be making things worse.
I think, perhaps... you will not think so anymore, after I tell you a story, not from memory, but from a record written on the same day, and never edited or changed since, about how bad it really was, once, quite some time before I met you. And yet, still not really all that long ago. You cannot realize how far I've come, until you can see the depths where I've been. I have to admit that I had almost forgotten how very little time has passed, and how truly awful it used to be. The feeling of slipping, slipping... and being afraid, a kind of visceral, in-the-moment dread, that I might not be able to maintain control of my own actions. Not even in my usual fallback manner of shutting them down entirely.
It's amazing to me how far I've come, these past few years.
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
Dear Memory: A Little Return to Code
Hi, Eoin. Hi, blog which is a symbolic representation of the potential of talking to Eoin.
I'm not very engaged with my classes lately. I had midterms three days in a row last week, and I barely studied at all and arrived late to two of them, but the thing is... I think I still aced them. The one I have marks back for already went super well, although I struggled to remember how to do one of the questions for a while. It was just more of a challenge than usual, and that was actually kind of more fun, in a way.
I haven't gone to the gym in a week. I'm not sure when I will again. I slept during the day today, although I did attend my classes all the way through first and participated actively in them. Got another midterm tomorrow, have barely studied, but it's in a subject I don't expect to be hard: Business Information Systems.
I'm still procrastinating on filling out my college applications, and I feel worse about that than any of the rest. It's more important to me. However, here's what I have been doing. I spent a couple hours two days ago going back and writing in an easter egg to the first little game I programmed on Khan Academy. The bouncing basketball one. I showed it to some of my new friends, and even a fan community, and got some very positive feedback. People had some fun with it, and they seemed to appreciate the easter egg, too. And I've written out a bunch of steps to a program I've wanted to make since my stint of trying programming last year.
I've completed the first step, written out twelve and even after all those steps are done there will be lots more things to expand the program to include and make it more interesting, but it will be together enough that I should be able to invite my friends to start fiddling around with it by then and have something for them to enjoy playing with. I'm also making a point of using ample comments all over the place, and permitting myself to be sassy and emotive in them. I generally am, when I'm happy.
Just as it was the first time around, this is challenging in the way that my classes just aren't living up to much, and that makes it fun.
I've also been in a revitalised skitter about you, occasionally just drifting around, pacing while my mind is occupied with happy, hopeful imaginings of meeting you again. The reinforcement from Ampersand and from the one person from Ireland that I told about it has stoked up my optimism and dampened my fear. But that doesn't change my strategy or my resolve at all, I just... feel more giddy about it. Heh.
I miss you. I'll figure out my way somehow. I can't wait to see you again - but, I am going to have to. For now I'll just have to settle for the dreamy imaginings that are rarely more than an idle thought away, and visit me often while awake and even sometimes while asleep. Also, I've got Don't Cost Nothin' in my head, having watched more Steven Universe recently.
I'm not very engaged with my classes lately. I had midterms three days in a row last week, and I barely studied at all and arrived late to two of them, but the thing is... I think I still aced them. The one I have marks back for already went super well, although I struggled to remember how to do one of the questions for a while. It was just more of a challenge than usual, and that was actually kind of more fun, in a way.
I haven't gone to the gym in a week. I'm not sure when I will again. I slept during the day today, although I did attend my classes all the way through first and participated actively in them. Got another midterm tomorrow, have barely studied, but it's in a subject I don't expect to be hard: Business Information Systems.
I'm still procrastinating on filling out my college applications, and I feel worse about that than any of the rest. It's more important to me. However, here's what I have been doing. I spent a couple hours two days ago going back and writing in an easter egg to the first little game I programmed on Khan Academy. The bouncing basketball one. I showed it to some of my new friends, and even a fan community, and got some very positive feedback. People had some fun with it, and they seemed to appreciate the easter egg, too. And I've written out a bunch of steps to a program I've wanted to make since my stint of trying programming last year.
I've completed the first step, written out twelve and even after all those steps are done there will be lots more things to expand the program to include and make it more interesting, but it will be together enough that I should be able to invite my friends to start fiddling around with it by then and have something for them to enjoy playing with. I'm also making a point of using ample comments all over the place, and permitting myself to be sassy and emotive in them. I generally am, when I'm happy.
Just as it was the first time around, this is challenging in the way that my classes just aren't living up to much, and that makes it fun.
I've also been in a revitalised skitter about you, occasionally just drifting around, pacing while my mind is occupied with happy, hopeful imaginings of meeting you again. The reinforcement from Ampersand and from the one person from Ireland that I told about it has stoked up my optimism and dampened my fear. But that doesn't change my strategy or my resolve at all, I just... feel more giddy about it. Heh.
I miss you. I'll figure out my way somehow. I can't wait to see you again - but, I am going to have to. For now I'll just have to settle for the dreamy imaginings that are rarely more than an idle thought away, and visit me often while awake and even sometimes while asleep. Also, I've got Don't Cost Nothin' in my head, having watched more Steven Universe recently.
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
Dear Memory: Still Working On It
Dear Eoin...
I have been writing less often, and directing my thoughts here toward you less often when I do. I think the period of intense heartbreak and missing you since the last time I heard your voice in October is pretty much done.
However, my peace lies twined with my plans. I have unpacked the things I call my "shrine", symbols and trinkets that I like to keep together and revere as little treasures. The red bull, the antique horn, a musical jewelry box which holds some stones and jewelry... And my skull candle, my oath candle. I have contemplated it with happiness. A few years ago, I burned this candle hollow, so that a pillar's worth of wax ran out and left its eye sockets and nose hollow, just as a skull is meant to be, and stared intently at it for hours as it burned, making a promise to myself, in a desperate and unhappy circumstance, that if I continued to be unhappy where I was, I would move. Put another way, that same promise could be phrased, "follow your dreams".
It gives me peace and happiness to look on it, because I know I have not forgotten the promise. I keep my oath to myself. For my joy, and my health, if I find I am not content with where I am, I will change it.
I think the wax shell is probably too delicate in its hollowness to bring across the sea. I am thinking that before I go, I will seek an opportunity to burn the rest of it in a fire, and re-confirm with the destruction of my oath candle the same promise that made it what it is.
I am still planning to come to you, although you come into my thoughts less often. The intent to go back to Ireland is always close at hand there. I am committed to it so thoroughly that the idea no longer seems at all unusual to me. The processes are perhaps a bit daunting, and of course it will cost me more than studying in Canada, but there is much at Fanshawe to help prepare me. I will probably need to work part-time while studying. It's something I have made a point of avoiding in my studies in Canada, but when it comes to bringing myself to Ireland... If this must be a part of my plan, for it to work out financially, it will be, and that is that.
I was so excited to meet the representatives of Limerick, Sligo, Carlow and Tralee. One of them was named Eoin, too. I must have suppressed a sad smile when I recognised the name and was able to pronounce it at a glance. There is a little workshop next week as well about procedures related to studying at a foreign college.
This morning, I came in to the school library and sat down to read and study my Cost Accounting material. I put on music from TouHou and wrote down many phrases and sentences from the material in my schoolwork related cardcast decks. It was a bit of a distraction, and no doubt slowed my reading. However, the music was so appropriate for background music while focusing that as I was packing up to get some breakfast, it was with some odd surprise that I realized turning off my laptop would require me to stop listening to it (since that is what I had playing the music). It was as though the TouHou tracks had been accepted as just what life sounded like on some level.
From that early morning on to late evening, I have been busily tending to one thing and then another... I was exhausted and barely taking anything in by the time my last class ended (it is the latest in the day of any of my classes). However, there were some fun highlights. The professor makes Google Documents and shares an editing link with the students; we pour in, over a dozen of us, and start building something there. Seeing it come together in several pieces at once like that, some formatting, some writing... It reminds me a bit of ants, in a good way.
If you were to wonder of me, I wish I could tell you that I still love you, and with this strength of mine, I will come to find you. I will be healthy and hearty as I can be.
You never read the Discworld books, I think, but... There's one character in them, a Mr. Carrot who has been in various books corporal, sergeant and eventually I think captain in the nightwatch. He is an immigrant, a human (by blood) who had been raised by dwarves, and his defining characteristic is that he believes so strongly in the good nature of people that they can't bring themselves to disappoint him and act more nobly and honestly than they do around anyone else.
At one point, he and a bunch of the other watchmen are aboard a ship in a storm at sea, chasing after someone who has kidnapped Angua, the woman he loves, also a member of the watch. The others had expected that he would be sick and restless worrying about her, but in the hours before they expected to land, Carrot was soundly sleeping with such determination that even the fierce tossing of the storm could not wake him. Since, as he had said, if he arrived in an exhausted state he'd be useless to actually help the woman he loved.
I feel kind of like that about you. Not that you are in need of rescue of course. Just... I want to be stronger for you and not weaker. I want to be better for every influence you have on me and not worse. You deserve that.
I have been writing less often, and directing my thoughts here toward you less often when I do. I think the period of intense heartbreak and missing you since the last time I heard your voice in October is pretty much done.
However, my peace lies twined with my plans. I have unpacked the things I call my "shrine", symbols and trinkets that I like to keep together and revere as little treasures. The red bull, the antique horn, a musical jewelry box which holds some stones and jewelry... And my skull candle, my oath candle. I have contemplated it with happiness. A few years ago, I burned this candle hollow, so that a pillar's worth of wax ran out and left its eye sockets and nose hollow, just as a skull is meant to be, and stared intently at it for hours as it burned, making a promise to myself, in a desperate and unhappy circumstance, that if I continued to be unhappy where I was, I would move. Put another way, that same promise could be phrased, "follow your dreams".
It gives me peace and happiness to look on it, because I know I have not forgotten the promise. I keep my oath to myself. For my joy, and my health, if I find I am not content with where I am, I will change it.
I think the wax shell is probably too delicate in its hollowness to bring across the sea. I am thinking that before I go, I will seek an opportunity to burn the rest of it in a fire, and re-confirm with the destruction of my oath candle the same promise that made it what it is.
I am still planning to come to you, although you come into my thoughts less often. The intent to go back to Ireland is always close at hand there. I am committed to it so thoroughly that the idea no longer seems at all unusual to me. The processes are perhaps a bit daunting, and of course it will cost me more than studying in Canada, but there is much at Fanshawe to help prepare me. I will probably need to work part-time while studying. It's something I have made a point of avoiding in my studies in Canada, but when it comes to bringing myself to Ireland... If this must be a part of my plan, for it to work out financially, it will be, and that is that.
I was so excited to meet the representatives of Limerick, Sligo, Carlow and Tralee. One of them was named Eoin, too. I must have suppressed a sad smile when I recognised the name and was able to pronounce it at a glance. There is a little workshop next week as well about procedures related to studying at a foreign college.
This morning, I came in to the school library and sat down to read and study my Cost Accounting material. I put on music from TouHou and wrote down many phrases and sentences from the material in my schoolwork related cardcast decks. It was a bit of a distraction, and no doubt slowed my reading. However, the music was so appropriate for background music while focusing that as I was packing up to get some breakfast, it was with some odd surprise that I realized turning off my laptop would require me to stop listening to it (since that is what I had playing the music). It was as though the TouHou tracks had been accepted as just what life sounded like on some level.
From that early morning on to late evening, I have been busily tending to one thing and then another... I was exhausted and barely taking anything in by the time my last class ended (it is the latest in the day of any of my classes). However, there were some fun highlights. The professor makes Google Documents and shares an editing link with the students; we pour in, over a dozen of us, and start building something there. Seeing it come together in several pieces at once like that, some formatting, some writing... It reminds me a bit of ants, in a good way.
If you were to wonder of me, I wish I could tell you that I still love you, and with this strength of mine, I will come to find you. I will be healthy and hearty as I can be.
You never read the Discworld books, I think, but... There's one character in them, a Mr. Carrot who has been in various books corporal, sergeant and eventually I think captain in the nightwatch. He is an immigrant, a human (by blood) who had been raised by dwarves, and his defining characteristic is that he believes so strongly in the good nature of people that they can't bring themselves to disappoint him and act more nobly and honestly than they do around anyone else.
At one point, he and a bunch of the other watchmen are aboard a ship in a storm at sea, chasing after someone who has kidnapped Angua, the woman he loves, also a member of the watch. The others had expected that he would be sick and restless worrying about her, but in the hours before they expected to land, Carrot was soundly sleeping with such determination that even the fierce tossing of the storm could not wake him. Since, as he had said, if he arrived in an exhausted state he'd be useless to actually help the woman he loved.
I feel kind of like that about you. Not that you are in need of rescue of course. Just... I want to be stronger for you and not weaker. I want to be better for every influence you have on me and not worse. You deserve that.
Friday, January 26, 2018
Burn Out - Oceans
I woke up this morning feeling really exhausted, and very much wanting to go back to sleep. My system reacted to waking up before it was ready with awful indigestion that kept me returning to the bathroom five minutes after leaving it, until my gut and intestines were acclimatized to my being awake. I had a class to go to. No time to go back to sleep.
While in the bathroom though, I noticed a little detail of definition, a little inward crease running vertically down the center of part of my chest, that I had never noticed before. I've only worked out in my new routine three times so far. Is it possible it could already have made a visible difference somewhere? Perhaps I'm just more inclined to notice details of my body now. However, this is interesting. I might keep looking for new or developing details.
I'm pleased to report that on my days between workouts, I am looking forward to going back, although the curl-ups and shoulder presses are still kicking my ass pretty hard. If my tolerance for them seems to worsen, or fails to get noticeably better for another week or so, I will talk to a coach about it.
I had been looking at Thursday as my second-longest day of classes in the new term. However, it actually seemed pretty forgiving today. The law class I'm taking seems to emphasize different areas of focus than the previous law class, despite using the same textbook. This is cool. I expected to already know this stuff more than what I actually do, which demonstrates that the re-learning and reinforcement will be valuable.
For the last few days, I've been jamming a lot to a song called Burn Out, by Beatdrop, one of the artists I got a free taste of by supporting OCRemix before they got full charitable organization status. It may be one of the first dubstep type songs I've been tempted to try to sing along to. Admittedly, most of the dubstep I've heard doesn't have lyrics. The whole Revolution album has a pretty good pace and tone for my recent start on working out, and continuing to write and complete checklists, pushing to get quite a lot done. It's honestly been a pretty awesome week, but I haven't been getting enough sleep lately, and it's starting to take a toll in the mornings.
A classmate let me borrow her Intermediate Accounting textbook to photocopy pages full of exercises; I bought an old version which doesn't have the same questions in the same order, and the solutions are in an online key only provided for the current version, so if I want to have practice work I can actually check answers to, I'm going to need them.
Actually, this connects back to a weird story. Yesterday was a very packed-full day for me. I had stayed up very late having an awesome conversation with a couple of old friends and someone I had spoken to once about six months ago, but saw online and decided to try asking to play Xyzzy so that we had enough players for a game. The game went great, and we just kept talking. I have found a new awesome person. I also realized that I have been establishing a collection of awesome people and storing them in a little place of my own. I left Ashlynn's Discord server a while ago, having grown increasingly detached and alienated from the community there. Now... I'm building my own. Around the kind of friends I want to have. Some of them I found there. Some, I found in other places. I have my own curated pack of friends. That's... really cool. That's leadership I guess.
So, having stayed up late, I slept in and didn't have as much time as I had originally expected to do everything I planned to do. A session of homework, a meeting with one of my professors to talk about promoting me, my workout session, a bunch of classes, and a household meeting.
I started with homework and did some exercises from my non-current textbook. It was published in 2013, and some of the questions were exactly the same as the ones in the current version which we had taken up in class together, except for the dates, which had been edited to be one year in the future relative to the publishing date of each.
The last question I attempted to answer before heading out for my meeting involved parental leave. I don't really know how to account for parental leave yet. When is it paid out? Periodically throughout the leave? All at the beginning? All at the end? I acknowledged that I didn't know, but decided to attempt to answer the problem using the presumption that it would all be paid at the end. Unlikely, but it was the kind of book keeping I'd been dealing with the most. 17 weeks of parental leave, starting Dec 1, 2014. Okay. Excel, how many days is 17 weeks? So, I need to accrue 31 days of benefits within December and the 2014 year. That leaves 88 more days into 2015, and the last journal entry should be dated...
Um...
March 29th... My birthday. Specifically, my twenty-fifth birthday. Specifically, that one particular day that I started out by staring at my ceiling for half an hour, contemplating my accomplishments at my entry-level retail job and how poorly I felt I was treated there. My ambitions and whether I would ever do anything with any of them. That was the day that, ultimately, that I decided I was going to stop working as a stocker/cashier/donor greeter and go to college.
That... was a really creepy date to show up in my accounting homework. And... if it hadn't been this version of Intermediate Accounting Vol. 2 that I happened to find and picked up at the used textbook shop... it wouldn't have.
And with that bizarre experience feeling strangely profound and important in my head, considering how far I've come, and how many fascinating things I've been through in the past going-on-three years, I headed off to my meeting and told my professor the story of what had just happened.
Today, I actually included "rest and relax" on my list of things to do today. I'm not sure I've done much resting, but I have taken the day happy, and am not stressing myself out taking on more homework.
Law was fine and interesting, and then I went to the first of my Tax classes for this term. My Tax professor is a woman with a fairly thick Bahamas accent who blazes through slides so fast that sometimes I lose track of what she's talking about entirely while trying to figure out what she just said. However, after the lecture, we got to practice, and the practice was actually very clear, and hands-on, with checks and feedback at every step and a clear procedure to follow. I made forms with in-cell equations in Excel that filled themselves out with just a few inputs from the question, and was able to finish several exercises that followed the same pattern very quickly, then spent some time making the spreadsheets beautiful while the rest of the class caught up.
There was a concert at the school this evening, called the "Upside Get Down", featuring three bands I had never heard of: Kid Royal, Chad Price, and Texas King. Tickets were free, and I've kind of committed to participating more in the culture of the college, since I moved right across the street. It was one of the best things about Gate Lodge. I should milk it for what it's worth here too. I invited Ampersand, a local friend and crush, to come with me. He came to my house to hang out a bit beforehand. We shared fries and dumplings and played Ultimate Chicken Horse and watched a bit of TierZoo, then headed to the concert and listened to the opening band play.
They were pretty unpolished, amateurish in both lyrics and performance, and the speakers turned the music into a wall of noise whenever they decided to rock harder for a climactic moment. Not... bad, though. There was some ambition to try things that were difficult, and while the performance wasn't tight yet, I felt that these guys could be on their way towards becoming great. I kept wondering whether Ampersand was having a good time, and tapping my foot, swinging my hip, wanting to get more into the music, wishing people around me were dancing so that I could dance and not be the first one trying to. Wondering whether I was having a good time, mostly feeling tense and affectionate as over-amped love songs, and the lights, and sound loud enough I felt the rhythm hitting my breastbone like waves crashing onto a shore, created an atmosphere of awkwardness and tense romantic potential.
After the set, which Kid Royal closed well, with the best song of the bunch, I took Ampersand away from the noise. His knees were sore, he was getting tired. It had been fun and the music was pretty good, but he wanted to turn in and get some rest. Yeah, okay. It was fun. I walked him back to his car, and hugged him and waved goodnight with thanks for coming, then stood outside for a bit, wondering whether I wanted to go back to the rest of the concert.
After some indecision I did. However, the college doors had locked, and now it was a matter of finding an entrace that had student card access, as many of them don't. The easiest route to the concert was blocked by a security guard in blue who stiffly turned away anyone attempting to enter the free concert through an entrance which had been inexplicably designated exit only. In order to attend, you had to enter from the West, and either have someone open the nearest door from the inside for you (since it lacked a card access point) or detour the long way around the outside of the Student Union Building.
To be honest, this encounter seriously diminished what little was left of my interest in seeing the rest of the concert. However, I found my way to the allowed and intended entrance and inside just in time to hear the second band announce and perform their last song of the set, a song called... "Oceans". I stayed and listened, and softened and enjoyed. In contrast to their openers, this guy, Chad Price, and his band... They had polish. They didn't make the speakers emit a raw mess of noise at their dramatic moments, but made good use of silence to frame sound. His style includes a lot of shifting and bending his pitch around and stretching out vocal tones to play around the rhythm. A lot of people try to do that and it's something I often find pretentious and pointlessly frilly. But he built his style around it, made it fit, and kept the rhythm tight while playing around it. They were good. And it was a really nice love song.
This, I decided. This made a good end to the concert, for me. And I headed home, happy to have returned for that one special song. I found it on YouTube. I sent the link to Ampersand, to share that part of the concert with him in some sense too, and I reflected that... It had sounded better live, something I was delighted to be able to observe. I'm going to download this one. I'm going to make it my song of the day today on Facebook.
It's been a good day.
Also I misplaced my smartphone sometime between my tax class and the concert. I'm not particularly concerned, though. I'll probably find it again tomorrow, and I don't actually use it as a phone anyway, I mostly just listen to podcasts with it.
While in the bathroom though, I noticed a little detail of definition, a little inward crease running vertically down the center of part of my chest, that I had never noticed before. I've only worked out in my new routine three times so far. Is it possible it could already have made a visible difference somewhere? Perhaps I'm just more inclined to notice details of my body now. However, this is interesting. I might keep looking for new or developing details.
I'm pleased to report that on my days between workouts, I am looking forward to going back, although the curl-ups and shoulder presses are still kicking my ass pretty hard. If my tolerance for them seems to worsen, or fails to get noticeably better for another week or so, I will talk to a coach about it.
I had been looking at Thursday as my second-longest day of classes in the new term. However, it actually seemed pretty forgiving today. The law class I'm taking seems to emphasize different areas of focus than the previous law class, despite using the same textbook. This is cool. I expected to already know this stuff more than what I actually do, which demonstrates that the re-learning and reinforcement will be valuable.
For the last few days, I've been jamming a lot to a song called Burn Out, by Beatdrop, one of the artists I got a free taste of by supporting OCRemix before they got full charitable organization status. It may be one of the first dubstep type songs I've been tempted to try to sing along to. Admittedly, most of the dubstep I've heard doesn't have lyrics. The whole Revolution album has a pretty good pace and tone for my recent start on working out, and continuing to write and complete checklists, pushing to get quite a lot done. It's honestly been a pretty awesome week, but I haven't been getting enough sleep lately, and it's starting to take a toll in the mornings.
A classmate let me borrow her Intermediate Accounting textbook to photocopy pages full of exercises; I bought an old version which doesn't have the same questions in the same order, and the solutions are in an online key only provided for the current version, so if I want to have practice work I can actually check answers to, I'm going to need them.
Actually, this connects back to a weird story. Yesterday was a very packed-full day for me. I had stayed up very late having an awesome conversation with a couple of old friends and someone I had spoken to once about six months ago, but saw online and decided to try asking to play Xyzzy so that we had enough players for a game. The game went great, and we just kept talking. I have found a new awesome person. I also realized that I have been establishing a collection of awesome people and storing them in a little place of my own. I left Ashlynn's Discord server a while ago, having grown increasingly detached and alienated from the community there. Now... I'm building my own. Around the kind of friends I want to have. Some of them I found there. Some, I found in other places. I have my own curated pack of friends. That's... really cool. That's leadership I guess.
So, having stayed up late, I slept in and didn't have as much time as I had originally expected to do everything I planned to do. A session of homework, a meeting with one of my professors to talk about promoting me, my workout session, a bunch of classes, and a household meeting.
I started with homework and did some exercises from my non-current textbook. It was published in 2013, and some of the questions were exactly the same as the ones in the current version which we had taken up in class together, except for the dates, which had been edited to be one year in the future relative to the publishing date of each.
The last question I attempted to answer before heading out for my meeting involved parental leave. I don't really know how to account for parental leave yet. When is it paid out? Periodically throughout the leave? All at the beginning? All at the end? I acknowledged that I didn't know, but decided to attempt to answer the problem using the presumption that it would all be paid at the end. Unlikely, but it was the kind of book keeping I'd been dealing with the most. 17 weeks of parental leave, starting Dec 1, 2014. Okay. Excel, how many days is 17 weeks? So, I need to accrue 31 days of benefits within December and the 2014 year. That leaves 88 more days into 2015, and the last journal entry should be dated...
Um...
March 29th... My birthday. Specifically, my twenty-fifth birthday. Specifically, that one particular day that I started out by staring at my ceiling for half an hour, contemplating my accomplishments at my entry-level retail job and how poorly I felt I was treated there. My ambitions and whether I would ever do anything with any of them. That was the day that, ultimately, that I decided I was going to stop working as a stocker/cashier/donor greeter and go to college.
That... was a really creepy date to show up in my accounting homework. And... if it hadn't been this version of Intermediate Accounting Vol. 2 that I happened to find and picked up at the used textbook shop... it wouldn't have.
And with that bizarre experience feeling strangely profound and important in my head, considering how far I've come, and how many fascinating things I've been through in the past going-on-three years, I headed off to my meeting and told my professor the story of what had just happened.
Today, I actually included "rest and relax" on my list of things to do today. I'm not sure I've done much resting, but I have taken the day happy, and am not stressing myself out taking on more homework.
Law was fine and interesting, and then I went to the first of my Tax classes for this term. My Tax professor is a woman with a fairly thick Bahamas accent who blazes through slides so fast that sometimes I lose track of what she's talking about entirely while trying to figure out what she just said. However, after the lecture, we got to practice, and the practice was actually very clear, and hands-on, with checks and feedback at every step and a clear procedure to follow. I made forms with in-cell equations in Excel that filled themselves out with just a few inputs from the question, and was able to finish several exercises that followed the same pattern very quickly, then spent some time making the spreadsheets beautiful while the rest of the class caught up.
There was a concert at the school this evening, called the "Upside Get Down", featuring three bands I had never heard of: Kid Royal, Chad Price, and Texas King. Tickets were free, and I've kind of committed to participating more in the culture of the college, since I moved right across the street. It was one of the best things about Gate Lodge. I should milk it for what it's worth here too. I invited Ampersand, a local friend and crush, to come with me. He came to my house to hang out a bit beforehand. We shared fries and dumplings and played Ultimate Chicken Horse and watched a bit of TierZoo, then headed to the concert and listened to the opening band play.
They were pretty unpolished, amateurish in both lyrics and performance, and the speakers turned the music into a wall of noise whenever they decided to rock harder for a climactic moment. Not... bad, though. There was some ambition to try things that were difficult, and while the performance wasn't tight yet, I felt that these guys could be on their way towards becoming great. I kept wondering whether Ampersand was having a good time, and tapping my foot, swinging my hip, wanting to get more into the music, wishing people around me were dancing so that I could dance and not be the first one trying to. Wondering whether I was having a good time, mostly feeling tense and affectionate as over-amped love songs, and the lights, and sound loud enough I felt the rhythm hitting my breastbone like waves crashing onto a shore, created an atmosphere of awkwardness and tense romantic potential.
After the set, which Kid Royal closed well, with the best song of the bunch, I took Ampersand away from the noise. His knees were sore, he was getting tired. It had been fun and the music was pretty good, but he wanted to turn in and get some rest. Yeah, okay. It was fun. I walked him back to his car, and hugged him and waved goodnight with thanks for coming, then stood outside for a bit, wondering whether I wanted to go back to the rest of the concert.
After some indecision I did. However, the college doors had locked, and now it was a matter of finding an entrace that had student card access, as many of them don't. The easiest route to the concert was blocked by a security guard in blue who stiffly turned away anyone attempting to enter the free concert through an entrance which had been inexplicably designated exit only. In order to attend, you had to enter from the West, and either have someone open the nearest door from the inside for you (since it lacked a card access point) or detour the long way around the outside of the Student Union Building.
To be honest, this encounter seriously diminished what little was left of my interest in seeing the rest of the concert. However, I found my way to the allowed and intended entrance and inside just in time to hear the second band announce and perform their last song of the set, a song called... "Oceans". I stayed and listened, and softened and enjoyed. In contrast to their openers, this guy, Chad Price, and his band... They had polish. They didn't make the speakers emit a raw mess of noise at their dramatic moments, but made good use of silence to frame sound. His style includes a lot of shifting and bending his pitch around and stretching out vocal tones to play around the rhythm. A lot of people try to do that and it's something I often find pretentious and pointlessly frilly. But he built his style around it, made it fit, and kept the rhythm tight while playing around it. They were good. And it was a really nice love song.
This, I decided. This made a good end to the concert, for me. And I headed home, happy to have returned for that one special song. I found it on YouTube. I sent the link to Ampersand, to share that part of the concert with him in some sense too, and I reflected that... It had sounded better live, something I was delighted to be able to observe. I'm going to download this one. I'm going to make it my song of the day today on Facebook.
It's been a good day.
Also I misplaced my smartphone sometime between my tax class and the concert. I'm not particularly concerned, though. I'll probably find it again tomorrow, and I don't actually use it as a phone anyway, I mostly just listen to podcasts with it.
Monday, January 23, 2017
On The Plane from Iceland to Ireland
Written in the air on 6th of January, 2017
My breath hitches a little. I am on the last leg of my current journey, by air at least. There is an hour or so of bus yet. Irish security, whatever that turns out to be. Some waiting, of course.
After I arrive at my lodgings I plan on going out to local thrift stores to buy some of the things I elected not to bring from home; sheets, a towel, perhaps a pair of shoes or who knows what else might catch my eye.
For now, I am in the softly shaking belly of the great metal bird. Flight attendants dressed in brand purple have been showing everyone about, packing up the plentiful luggage wherever they will fit in the overhead luggage. The surge of speed when we take off scares me, reminding me of my old roller coaster nightmares, but I recover well, and now I am relatively comfortable. Crowded, and feeling the occasional aching and popping of my ears, but relatively comfortable despite that.
My first mp3 player runs out of battery and I switch to music on the second. Sarah McLachlan, her haunting I-miss-you winter songs. It occurs to me that long journeys have always been emotional to me; I have a habit of taking them for romantic reasons. This time is an arguable exception. At least, I see it that way, although I do look forward to meeting my dear friends in Europe. No primary romantic obsession this time though, just good and valued friends with possible benefits to be negotiated.
On the other hand, McLachlan's love songs have often caught at my heart. Ashlynn's recent musing about long-distance travel as a group only encourages me further to pine somewhat for her company beside me in my journeys.
Someday, my love, will we go together, side by side like the seeming partners who share my row with me? I look forward to that day, when you prove against all the world's biases that I don't have to leave love behind when I move on for adventure, for challenge, for fulfilment of potential or whatever else I may seek.
"This is how I see you, in the snow on Christmas morning; love and happiness surround you..." Sarah sings in a whisper, and my breath hitches a little again.
I try not to think about the delays of my RESP cheque, the one thing I am still very worried about in preparing for my term here. There is not much I can do about it now. Instead I think about Dublin and Athlone; the train I will take; whether I will be able to find a payphone to call my new landlord, since my phone will likely not have service in Ireland; whether I will be able to get a temporary phone or plan or something.
My ears crinkle, and the roar of the engines seems much louder all of a sudden. My mind wanders, wondering about astronauts and how riding a rocket bound for space compares to riding an aeroplane bound for the other side of an ocean. I think of the fair where I deliberately challenged my fear of fast rides, and the tree planting camp where I challenged my fear of failure in the face of hard work, and somewhat unintentionally, my claustrophobia. On the first flight into Iceland, I had a window seat, which meant the curving wall against my arm was close and closed-in, giving me an entrapping lack of space.
In the crowded and claustrophobic plane, I nevertheless managed to nap intermittently through much of the flight. For one moment, I think I suffered sleep paralysis again, that struggle to reclaim my body from dreams, to twitch, to so much as open my eyes. I was surprised I slept so easily.
In Toronto Pearson before we left, I dropped my boarding pass somewhere and panicked a bit about it, but the staff reassured me that it could be re-issued at my flight gate; all the data behind it was still there, and I still had my passport.
My sturdy work boots surprised me by setting off the metal detector. I hadn't thought of that. I thought the toes were composite, not real steel. Perhaps it was a protective shank. Anyway, taking off my boots before walking through again was not that much of a hassle. There was a place to buy power adapters at the airport as I suspected there might be.
Between the landing of the train from Union station and the terminal I needed to go to was a quite fast train suspended on high rails (on the subject of being reminded of my fear of roller coasters). Taking it was somewhat uncomfortable, and somewhat fascinating. It's not as though I had much choice.
To get through security, I had to let them throw away a Monster drink I had brought with me and my other water bottle, to buy another drink on the other side of security. I finished eating all the food I'd packed before leaving Iceland on the plane to Dublin. I packed well. The sandwiches were a little repetitive, not to mention deformed by the pressure of other things in my bag my then, but I had enough to eat and the fruit was a delicious side too. I can grab myself something to eat when we land, I suppose. It will be soon. The lights have already been dimmed for landing. It seemed short. It was a pleasure to pass the time by writing here. I look forward to sharing my little stories with my friends.
-----
It turns out, I was mistaken. The lights were being dimmed temporarily for turbulence or something. We still had some hours to go. Nevertheless, I present my record at the time here.
My breath hitches a little. I am on the last leg of my current journey, by air at least. There is an hour or so of bus yet. Irish security, whatever that turns out to be. Some waiting, of course.
After I arrive at my lodgings I plan on going out to local thrift stores to buy some of the things I elected not to bring from home; sheets, a towel, perhaps a pair of shoes or who knows what else might catch my eye.
For now, I am in the softly shaking belly of the great metal bird. Flight attendants dressed in brand purple have been showing everyone about, packing up the plentiful luggage wherever they will fit in the overhead luggage. The surge of speed when we take off scares me, reminding me of my old roller coaster nightmares, but I recover well, and now I am relatively comfortable. Crowded, and feeling the occasional aching and popping of my ears, but relatively comfortable despite that.
My first mp3 player runs out of battery and I switch to music on the second. Sarah McLachlan, her haunting I-miss-you winter songs. It occurs to me that long journeys have always been emotional to me; I have a habit of taking them for romantic reasons. This time is an arguable exception. At least, I see it that way, although I do look forward to meeting my dear friends in Europe. No primary romantic obsession this time though, just good and valued friends with possible benefits to be negotiated.
On the other hand, McLachlan's love songs have often caught at my heart. Ashlynn's recent musing about long-distance travel as a group only encourages me further to pine somewhat for her company beside me in my journeys.
Someday, my love, will we go together, side by side like the seeming partners who share my row with me? I look forward to that day, when you prove against all the world's biases that I don't have to leave love behind when I move on for adventure, for challenge, for fulfilment of potential or whatever else I may seek.
"This is how I see you, in the snow on Christmas morning; love and happiness surround you..." Sarah sings in a whisper, and my breath hitches a little again.
I try not to think about the delays of my RESP cheque, the one thing I am still very worried about in preparing for my term here. There is not much I can do about it now. Instead I think about Dublin and Athlone; the train I will take; whether I will be able to find a payphone to call my new landlord, since my phone will likely not have service in Ireland; whether I will be able to get a temporary phone or plan or something.
My ears crinkle, and the roar of the engines seems much louder all of a sudden. My mind wanders, wondering about astronauts and how riding a rocket bound for space compares to riding an aeroplane bound for the other side of an ocean. I think of the fair where I deliberately challenged my fear of fast rides, and the tree planting camp where I challenged my fear of failure in the face of hard work, and somewhat unintentionally, my claustrophobia. On the first flight into Iceland, I had a window seat, which meant the curving wall against my arm was close and closed-in, giving me an entrapping lack of space.
In the crowded and claustrophobic plane, I nevertheless managed to nap intermittently through much of the flight. For one moment, I think I suffered sleep paralysis again, that struggle to reclaim my body from dreams, to twitch, to so much as open my eyes. I was surprised I slept so easily.
In Toronto Pearson before we left, I dropped my boarding pass somewhere and panicked a bit about it, but the staff reassured me that it could be re-issued at my flight gate; all the data behind it was still there, and I still had my passport.
My sturdy work boots surprised me by setting off the metal detector. I hadn't thought of that. I thought the toes were composite, not real steel. Perhaps it was a protective shank. Anyway, taking off my boots before walking through again was not that much of a hassle. There was a place to buy power adapters at the airport as I suspected there might be.
Between the landing of the train from Union station and the terminal I needed to go to was a quite fast train suspended on high rails (on the subject of being reminded of my fear of roller coasters). Taking it was somewhat uncomfortable, and somewhat fascinating. It's not as though I had much choice.
To get through security, I had to let them throw away a Monster drink I had brought with me and my other water bottle, to buy another drink on the other side of security. I finished eating all the food I'd packed before leaving Iceland on the plane to Dublin. I packed well. The sandwiches were a little repetitive, not to mention deformed by the pressure of other things in my bag my then, but I had enough to eat and the fruit was a delicious side too. I can grab myself something to eat when we land, I suppose. It will be soon. The lights have already been dimmed for landing. It seemed short. It was a pleasure to pass the time by writing here. I look forward to sharing my little stories with my friends.
-----
It turns out, I was mistaken. The lights were being dimmed temporarily for turbulence or something. We still had some hours to go. Nevertheless, I present my record at the time here.
Monday, November 14, 2016
Term Hectic
Life has been a combination whirlwind and sinkhole for me recently.
I only just noticed I had not blogged in over a month. It's really no wonder that during the school months, I neglected it last year. I have my courses to handle, and right now assignments are getting on top of me. I have arrangements for my foreign exchange term to make, including lodging, furniture storage, finance and course selection. I have my primary and secondary relationships to juggle. A good problem to have, admittedly, but trying to stay sane while negotiating fights with one and jealousy with the other has been very draining.
In amongst all this, the biggest thing is trying to cope with my mood, my intense cravings for sleep, my utter not-willing-to-put-up-with-this feelings about the tumbling and crashing that keeps me from sleeping during any of the hours that the landlord and his family upstairs are awake (I'm so glad I'm moving at the beginning of December - oh, right, add that to the list of things I need to do and prepare for!). The schoolwork would not actually be much to get through if I could maintain my morale and just sit down and do 'em, but between exhaustion and exasperation, loneliness and pressure, it's a lot to manage and can easily leave me dazed and unproductive.
I'll get through it somehow or another. I have to, after all. I look forward to Ireland and the new term, after the arrangements and preparations and moving is all over. A new beginning, new lessons, a new setting. Europe! And when I come back, seeing Asha again in the summer months.
Well, why not dream far ahead, I suppose, right?
I only just noticed I had not blogged in over a month. It's really no wonder that during the school months, I neglected it last year. I have my courses to handle, and right now assignments are getting on top of me. I have arrangements for my foreign exchange term to make, including lodging, furniture storage, finance and course selection. I have my primary and secondary relationships to juggle. A good problem to have, admittedly, but trying to stay sane while negotiating fights with one and jealousy with the other has been very draining.
In amongst all this, the biggest thing is trying to cope with my mood, my intense cravings for sleep, my utter not-willing-to-put-up-with-this feelings about the tumbling and crashing that keeps me from sleeping during any of the hours that the landlord and his family upstairs are awake (I'm so glad I'm moving at the beginning of December - oh, right, add that to the list of things I need to do and prepare for!). The schoolwork would not actually be much to get through if I could maintain my morale and just sit down and do 'em, but between exhaustion and exasperation, loneliness and pressure, it's a lot to manage and can easily leave me dazed and unproductive.
I'll get through it somehow or another. I have to, after all. I look forward to Ireland and the new term, after the arrangements and preparations and moving is all over. A new beginning, new lessons, a new setting. Europe! And when I come back, seeing Asha again in the summer months.
Well, why not dream far ahead, I suppose, right?
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Dear Diary... I Quit!
After my vacation... Nothing seemed any better at work. I was just as disillusioned, cynical, sick of it, as before, and more so. There was another incident with one of my supervisors... I think I have largely managed not to speak of those here, though I thought about it. Simply put, two of the supervisors I work under have repeatedly treated me and spoken to me with disrespect I am just not willing to put up with... From the tasks I am assigned to and when, to how they respond if ever I question anything they've done.
Not long before my vacation, for example, I got a face full of really bad attitude just for asking, and trying to do it politely, where my supervisor had been, as I had not managed to catch sight of her on the sales floor for the past twenty minutes. I am not claiming necessarily that she was not there; I focus on my work while I am working, and people can sometimes come and go without me noticing them, but there was a point when I was looking for her actively, to deal with something that required a supervisor, and could not find her. I got no answer, just assertions that she knew what she was doing, for my information. Of course, the problem was that I didn't. Know what she was doing, that is. Or where she could be found.
This example is on the extreme end, but archetypal. I have brought up my issues with management before... The result tended to be that some meeting was had, behavior improved for about two weeks, and then everything slowly returned to the way it had been, disrespect included.
This has not been the only problem I've had with my job, that's made me more and more irritable with work since last September, but it's one of the easiest ones to remember and brood over, and after the newest incident, which I will not detail here, I decided I had had too much already, and was not prepared to take any more.
So I came in on a day I was not working for a meeting with the management. I asked to be placed in the processing room instead of in sales, exclusively and as soon as possible. Several days later when the head manager was available to talk to me, she explained to me politely why she would be unable to transfer me exclusively as I had requested. And I responded by stating politely that I would like to officially resign from my position. I had a resignation letter penned, signed, dated and in her mailbox the same day.
I have worked two shifts since then. After all, it's legal imperative and good form to give two weeks notice before actually leaving. Those two days, I've had a lightness in my step and a glee in my heart. Several customers have commented on my excellent customer service, and one even bought me a coffee. I am very glad to be leaving.
Funnily enough, both of my problem supervisors reacted with shock when I told them I was quitting, and almost immediately asked, "But why?". I kept diplomatically silent or evasive. I'm escaping from my troubles there, no need to make a scene and make enemies. It's not as though it's a secret that I've had troubles with them, but my experiences have told me that they don't accept or listen to direct criticism, so it doesn't seem there's any point in confronting them. It would be a waste of my time and energy.
Instead, I've been fantasizing and dreaming in my head about business ideas I would love to bring to fruition, and how. I don't actually think about college itself that much yet; I'm sure I will as September gets closer. I hope I will keep dreaming and fantasizing and fleshing out my plans, though, up until college and all the way through it. My studies should teach me enough practical skills to get those dreams started. I will likely begin some of the early steps while I am schooling. I look forward to it, and again and again I repeat to myself how much more skilled and more competent I've become. I don't have to put up with disrespect or answer to bosses who won't answer to me. I could find a better place to work, but I think I'd rather make one. I am already reading books that should help me.
The plot is afoot.
Not long before my vacation, for example, I got a face full of really bad attitude just for asking, and trying to do it politely, where my supervisor had been, as I had not managed to catch sight of her on the sales floor for the past twenty minutes. I am not claiming necessarily that she was not there; I focus on my work while I am working, and people can sometimes come and go without me noticing them, but there was a point when I was looking for her actively, to deal with something that required a supervisor, and could not find her. I got no answer, just assertions that she knew what she was doing, for my information. Of course, the problem was that I didn't. Know what she was doing, that is. Or where she could be found.
This example is on the extreme end, but archetypal. I have brought up my issues with management before... The result tended to be that some meeting was had, behavior improved for about two weeks, and then everything slowly returned to the way it had been, disrespect included.
This has not been the only problem I've had with my job, that's made me more and more irritable with work since last September, but it's one of the easiest ones to remember and brood over, and after the newest incident, which I will not detail here, I decided I had had too much already, and was not prepared to take any more.
So I came in on a day I was not working for a meeting with the management. I asked to be placed in the processing room instead of in sales, exclusively and as soon as possible. Several days later when the head manager was available to talk to me, she explained to me politely why she would be unable to transfer me exclusively as I had requested. And I responded by stating politely that I would like to officially resign from my position. I had a resignation letter penned, signed, dated and in her mailbox the same day.
I have worked two shifts since then. After all, it's legal imperative and good form to give two weeks notice before actually leaving. Those two days, I've had a lightness in my step and a glee in my heart. Several customers have commented on my excellent customer service, and one even bought me a coffee. I am very glad to be leaving.
Funnily enough, both of my problem supervisors reacted with shock when I told them I was quitting, and almost immediately asked, "But why?". I kept diplomatically silent or evasive. I'm escaping from my troubles there, no need to make a scene and make enemies. It's not as though it's a secret that I've had troubles with them, but my experiences have told me that they don't accept or listen to direct criticism, so it doesn't seem there's any point in confronting them. It would be a waste of my time and energy.
Instead, I've been fantasizing and dreaming in my head about business ideas I would love to bring to fruition, and how. I don't actually think about college itself that much yet; I'm sure I will as September gets closer. I hope I will keep dreaming and fantasizing and fleshing out my plans, though, up until college and all the way through it. My studies should teach me enough practical skills to get those dreams started. I will likely begin some of the early steps while I am schooling. I look forward to it, and again and again I repeat to myself how much more skilled and more competent I've become. I don't have to put up with disrespect or answer to bosses who won't answer to me. I could find a better place to work, but I think I'd rather make one. I am already reading books that should help me.
The plot is afoot.
Saturday, April 18, 2015
Angry Today, Happy Today
I woke up today angry. Angry at the birdsong that distracted me from my already fitful attempts at sleep. Angry at the dry sweat all over my body, and the heat at work where I'd been sweating yesterday. Angry at my roommates for not doing their parts of our planned spring cleaning. Angry at myself for not doing mine out of busyness and resentment. Angry at myself for being angry.
I felt uncomfortable with it, but was willing to put my anger and the tired-buzzed insomnia last night that fueled it down to any number of things; malnutrition, burnout, the one day this week that I took my daily pill late... It took me over an hour into my work shift today to realize...
Of course I'm angry. How could I have forgotten? Yesterday a co-worker I would like to consider my friend told me he thinks transgenderism is a disease. Yesterday, when I got home, I cried... and I expect it to just evaporate, do I? Like the gummy residue of yesterday's sweat?
And then after a long, tired day at work... it got better. I made a plan to visit one of my loves in a month, and challenge myself to get my biking legs back so that I can do it by bike. I took a bath. My roommates and I did the dishes... together. I ordered pizza. We hung out together and laughed at imgur. I guess after I realized I had a reason to be angry, it didn't bother me so much that I was.
The first part of my day was hell to get through.
And then, me and my friends... we changed it.
I felt uncomfortable with it, but was willing to put my anger and the tired-buzzed insomnia last night that fueled it down to any number of things; malnutrition, burnout, the one day this week that I took my daily pill late... It took me over an hour into my work shift today to realize...
Of course I'm angry. How could I have forgotten? Yesterday a co-worker I would like to consider my friend told me he thinks transgenderism is a disease. Yesterday, when I got home, I cried... and I expect it to just evaporate, do I? Like the gummy residue of yesterday's sweat?
And then after a long, tired day at work... it got better. I made a plan to visit one of my loves in a month, and challenge myself to get my biking legs back so that I can do it by bike. I took a bath. My roommates and I did the dishes... together. I ordered pizza. We hung out together and laughed at imgur. I guess after I realized I had a reason to be angry, it didn't bother me so much that I was.
The first part of my day was hell to get through.
And then, me and my friends... we changed it.
Monday, September 29, 2014
Scattered Rambles: September Update
I've been feeling like it's been a while since I've written. I've been feeling often very busy though, and use that as an excuse to do other things.
The fall sale happened at the store recently and was only slightly less successful than the last sale, which was record-breaking. I had a nine hour shift, and that was now... four days ago? I am planning a vacation soon, to combat an increasing sense of burn out. Robby and I are being transferred onto the same Ontario Works account. I am increasingly interested in cooking. The other day I bought $78 of Forgotten Realms fiction from Goodwill; 35 paperbacks and two hardcover books. Hopefully I will get around to reading a fair bit of it.
I am ever more anxious to see our roommate leave and the new one arrive. I have considered to myself whether I might still feel like the house is not my own, but if there is anything about the new roommate coming that should ease my fears it is that he is a naturally very gentle person, not inclined to be hostile over small matters at all.
I had a plan to design some Hallowe'en adoptable critters for a trick or treating community game on Chicken Smoothie, and drew up five line arts for it. I had already digitized one of them and made at least two dozen variations of the creature on it, when I dropped my laptop. No damage was immediately obvious; it had not powered down immediately and ran as usual for a couple more hours, but when it froze and I shut it down, I was unable to start it up again. It would not boot, even from a USB recovery OS my friends advised me how to set up (using Robby's computer).
Since then, I've been using my old, slow desktop again. It is frustrating; I cannot both run a game and play a video at once without disruptive lag. I plan to call the retailer's warranty line after work today (I have been unable to for the past week due to their Mon-Fry 9-6 hours conflicting with my work hours, but today I have an early shift). I have been entertaining myself by watching YouTube videos, but I download them first with clipconverter.cc; otherwise, they would be very choppy. I have also been playing Pretend You're Xyzzy more often with the guys, and I've been building cardcast decks to use in the games, based on my fandoms or on nothing in particular. I have three public decks that I have been working on: Grimith, Dwarf Fortress, and Serpent's Standard, which is where I put anything I think of that I don't mind sharing publicly and doesn't belong in the other two.
The fall sale happened at the store recently and was only slightly less successful than the last sale, which was record-breaking. I had a nine hour shift, and that was now... four days ago? I am planning a vacation soon, to combat an increasing sense of burn out. Robby and I are being transferred onto the same Ontario Works account. I am increasingly interested in cooking. The other day I bought $78 of Forgotten Realms fiction from Goodwill; 35 paperbacks and two hardcover books. Hopefully I will get around to reading a fair bit of it.
I am ever more anxious to see our roommate leave and the new one arrive. I have considered to myself whether I might still feel like the house is not my own, but if there is anything about the new roommate coming that should ease my fears it is that he is a naturally very gentle person, not inclined to be hostile over small matters at all.
I had a plan to design some Hallowe'en adoptable critters for a trick or treating community game on Chicken Smoothie, and drew up five line arts for it. I had already digitized one of them and made at least two dozen variations of the creature on it, when I dropped my laptop. No damage was immediately obvious; it had not powered down immediately and ran as usual for a couple more hours, but when it froze and I shut it down, I was unable to start it up again. It would not boot, even from a USB recovery OS my friends advised me how to set up (using Robby's computer).
Since then, I've been using my old, slow desktop again. It is frustrating; I cannot both run a game and play a video at once without disruptive lag. I plan to call the retailer's warranty line after work today (I have been unable to for the past week due to their Mon-Fry 9-6 hours conflicting with my work hours, but today I have an early shift). I have been entertaining myself by watching YouTube videos, but I download them first with clipconverter.cc; otherwise, they would be very choppy. I have also been playing Pretend You're Xyzzy more often with the guys, and I've been building cardcast decks to use in the games, based on my fandoms or on nothing in particular. I have three public decks that I have been working on: Grimith, Dwarf Fortress, and Serpent's Standard, which is where I put anything I think of that I don't mind sharing publicly and doesn't belong in the other two.
Friday, July 18, 2014
The Art of Frugality
Of Poverty I was Made, and I Know the Art of Frugality.
Excerpts from a conversation on July 10th
My secret on saving? Well, primarily, I suppose, it's a combination of two things. Firstly, keeping expenses low, and secondly, putting my savings away in a distinct account and treating it as different from the rest of my budget - once I put money into my tax free savings account, I do not take it out again unless I really need to in order to cover necessities like groceries, rent and laundry. I try to put $100 into my savings account every paycheque, if I can, which is twice a month. To be fair, a large chunk of my savings also came from my tax refund this year. Goodwill employees get a free tax preparation with H&R Block, and my refund was modestly impressive, perhaps in part because I was only employed for half the year, and that only part time at minimum wage. I suppose I can claim it is to my credit that I was responsible enough to save the extra money instead of finding some personal fancy to spend it on.
I could also share some of the things I do to keep expenses low: I entertain myself with low- to no-cost hobbies like watching YouTube, playing inexpensive video games and collecting images from various sources, then making them into tokens compatible with the Maptool program (I'm sure to most other people, it would be boring busywork, but I enjoy it). I buy cheaper brands and types of food supplies and do some cooking with simple ingredients. I keep a casual eye out for decent sales on practical necessities like toilet paper, soap, shampoo, etc, and buy non-perishables when they are very cheap even if I don't need them yet. It helps that I work at a thrift store, where I can find a lot of useful things at low prices, like clothing, utensils, dishes... even furniture and a vacuum cleaner.
I also, incidentally, have a habit of collecting potentially useful things when I can buy them for a dollar or two at the Goodwill where I work, including: shoelaces, pencils, soap, spare earbud headphones, an extra USB mouse, greeting cards and notebooks (I have long since reached the point of confessing to myself that I collect stationery not so much out of a genuine belief I will use it all but as a little hobby because I like to), gift wrap, and generic presents or gifts suitable for friends of mine.
Heck, I'm a scavenger by nature. That helps too.
I rarely buy clothing or shoes, because I recognize that I have enough of both, and I have a habit of preferring to wear my clothing and shoes until they are ruined, in order to feel I have gotten full use out of them. An exception is socks, which I buy occasionally from the thrift store and have a large collection of stored away for the future, many of which I have never worn. There is a reason for this. With socks as well, I like to wear them out, and so there are a large number of pairs of socks I am doggedly trying to wear until they get holes in so that I can get them out of circulation. There is another reason. From time to time, especially before I started taking my mood-balancing medication, I used to wear a brand new pair of socks as a way to treat myself if I was having a hard day and wanted to go easier on myself than normal, or just felt in need of a little bit of luxury. I still occasionally do this, which puts a new pair into circulation. I only ever choose to wear a pair of socks I have never worn before with careful consideration. There's just something special about it.
I think one of the vital things I do is leave myself a buffer in my budget for little treats and shortcuts. New socks are wonderful, but sometimes one needs more to cheer one up, like eating out at Subway for a meal, or picking up a coffee at Tim Hortons during my lunch break at work. I strongly suspect that some people fail by telling themselves they won't spend money on these kinds of extras, and using it all up, then finding that the temptation is too great and spending money they don't have anymore on extras anyway. Then they feel guilty. Why feel guilty? I give myself permission to get treats from time to time, and I budget accordingly, saving a fair amount of my day to day budget for little pick-me-ups and also unexpected needs - like having to replace something that breaks, or buy cough medicine and throat lozenges, for instance. And if I turn out not to need it all, great! That just means I have more money for next month, and maybe I can afford to get something really neat! Or make a donation to somebody or something I want to support.
Excerpts from a conversation on July 10th
My secret on saving? Well, primarily, I suppose, it's a combination of two things. Firstly, keeping expenses low, and secondly, putting my savings away in a distinct account and treating it as different from the rest of my budget - once I put money into my tax free savings account, I do not take it out again unless I really need to in order to cover necessities like groceries, rent and laundry. I try to put $100 into my savings account every paycheque, if I can, which is twice a month. To be fair, a large chunk of my savings also came from my tax refund this year. Goodwill employees get a free tax preparation with H&R Block, and my refund was modestly impressive, perhaps in part because I was only employed for half the year, and that only part time at minimum wage. I suppose I can claim it is to my credit that I was responsible enough to save the extra money instead of finding some personal fancy to spend it on.
I could also share some of the things I do to keep expenses low: I entertain myself with low- to no-cost hobbies like watching YouTube, playing inexpensive video games and collecting images from various sources, then making them into tokens compatible with the Maptool program (I'm sure to most other people, it would be boring busywork, but I enjoy it). I buy cheaper brands and types of food supplies and do some cooking with simple ingredients. I keep a casual eye out for decent sales on practical necessities like toilet paper, soap, shampoo, etc, and buy non-perishables when they are very cheap even if I don't need them yet. It helps that I work at a thrift store, where I can find a lot of useful things at low prices, like clothing, utensils, dishes... even furniture and a vacuum cleaner.
I also, incidentally, have a habit of collecting potentially useful things when I can buy them for a dollar or two at the Goodwill where I work, including: shoelaces, pencils, soap, spare earbud headphones, an extra USB mouse, greeting cards and notebooks (I have long since reached the point of confessing to myself that I collect stationery not so much out of a genuine belief I will use it all but as a little hobby because I like to), gift wrap, and generic presents or gifts suitable for friends of mine.
Heck, I'm a scavenger by nature. That helps too.
I rarely buy clothing or shoes, because I recognize that I have enough of both, and I have a habit of preferring to wear my clothing and shoes until they are ruined, in order to feel I have gotten full use out of them. An exception is socks, which I buy occasionally from the thrift store and have a large collection of stored away for the future, many of which I have never worn. There is a reason for this. With socks as well, I like to wear them out, and so there are a large number of pairs of socks I am doggedly trying to wear until they get holes in so that I can get them out of circulation. There is another reason. From time to time, especially before I started taking my mood-balancing medication, I used to wear a brand new pair of socks as a way to treat myself if I was having a hard day and wanted to go easier on myself than normal, or just felt in need of a little bit of luxury. I still occasionally do this, which puts a new pair into circulation. I only ever choose to wear a pair of socks I have never worn before with careful consideration. There's just something special about it.
I think one of the vital things I do is leave myself a buffer in my budget for little treats and shortcuts. New socks are wonderful, but sometimes one needs more to cheer one up, like eating out at Subway for a meal, or picking up a coffee at Tim Hortons during my lunch break at work. I strongly suspect that some people fail by telling themselves they won't spend money on these kinds of extras, and using it all up, then finding that the temptation is too great and spending money they don't have anymore on extras anyway. Then they feel guilty. Why feel guilty? I give myself permission to get treats from time to time, and I budget accordingly, saving a fair amount of my day to day budget for little pick-me-ups and also unexpected needs - like having to replace something that breaks, or buy cough medicine and throat lozenges, for instance. And if I turn out not to need it all, great! That just means I have more money for next month, and maybe I can afford to get something really neat! Or make a donation to somebody or something I want to support.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
A Shot of Proactivity
Hi, dear blahgh.
I did a lot yesterday. I've been doing a lot. I had my troublesome top tooth out, it was a premolar. I've been getting some nasty ache while it heals which sometimes reaches all the way up to just under my eye, probably due to the fact that the cavity in the root opened up an infection right against, or possibly in, some of the lowest part of my sinuses.
I got a referral and went for a psych evaluation. The psychiatrist said that my triggered mental images of being stabbed or otherwise hurt with almost any particularly scary object I see was OCD. It's what he said; not might be, was. I personally am not sure how much confidence to have in his apparent confidence, but I've just started taking the mind medicine he prescribed me. And holy hell is it ever bitter. For now I'm going to presume that means it would be dangerous to take too much of it, so they did their best to make sure no-one would want to. I'm being started on a quarter tablet, then half. I should be taking whole tablets daily within two weeks.
My roommate's Australian girlfriend is visiting and she is awesome. She cleans. She cleaned his room, she cleaned the kitchen. I helped her clean a box full of dishes from the place he and Robbit used to share. Then, because Robby was feeling tired and lazy and I would have been bored walking by myself, she went with me to the drugstore to pick up my prescription for mind meds, and we stopped in to get gardening supplies, which I've been meaning to pick up, and groceries.
Gardening is something I've been really wanting to try for a while, and I'm very excited about it! I planted seven trays of ten spots in those little pre-planting seedling trays made of decomposing cardboard, so you just tear them apart and replant them outside without having to take them out of their potlets. All cucumbers and lettuce, since those were the seed packets I had that suggested pre-planting in the instructions on the back. I'll be trying to follow the instructions as much as possible, because I'm very new to this and I know I don't really know what I'm doing, despite having helped my mom and dad in the garden sometimes while growing up. I'm sure what limited knowledge I do have will be useful, though. I really look forward to having home-grown vegetables during the summer. I hope I can keep a garden somewhat maintained. I imagine having the reason to be outside should be good for me, too.
So anyway, yesterday was awesome in many ways, I got a lot done - I even tidied up my room and went through my shirts to get rid of some by donating them to the Goodwill store I work at. I really do have more than enough clothes, so I got rid of anything that I probably wouldn't wear, either because it's not as comfortable as other options I have, or because it's too high-cut and shows my belly-button if I lift my arms - not that I have anything against that kind of shirt, but I can't wear them at work, and I rarely dress up to go other places, and I have no problem wearing longer shirts when I go out to other places anyway. I didn't toss all my high-cut shirts, but I did pass on a few. A lot of my clothes probably won't be good enough to go out on the sales floor, but I know that the "salvage" they get there (what isn't up to quality standards) goes to do some good too, so I'm sure they'll be able to do more with it than I was.
I was so energized last night due to my good mood that I stayed up late just because I wasn't tired. And then, unfortunately, I was woken up very early by my roommate packing his lunches into tupperwares. It sounded exactly like a kitten chasing the lid to a tupperware container around the kitchen floor, with a lot of scraping and sliding sounds. I'm going to ask him to try to do that in the evening, now that he's working morning shifts and is home earlier than 11:30 at night, so that I don't get woken up that way again.
Roommate's girlfriend is staying with us during weekdays for two weeks. I hope that I can continue to use her energy to spark my own. Maybe I can help my boyfriend out by stealing his bedding and insisting on washing it. He won't do it himself, but I really think that the mess he voluntarily lives in can't be good for him. Maybe I should be more like her, and clean his room like she cleaned our roommate's. I hadn't thought about it this way, but I may be neglecting Robby by allowing him to neglect himself when we both know he's in a rut.
For now, excitement abounds! Thanks for reading, and may you be inspired to make progress in your own lives as I am being inspired to do in mine.
I did a lot yesterday. I've been doing a lot. I had my troublesome top tooth out, it was a premolar. I've been getting some nasty ache while it heals which sometimes reaches all the way up to just under my eye, probably due to the fact that the cavity in the root opened up an infection right against, or possibly in, some of the lowest part of my sinuses.
I got a referral and went for a psych evaluation. The psychiatrist said that my triggered mental images of being stabbed or otherwise hurt with almost any particularly scary object I see was OCD. It's what he said; not might be, was. I personally am not sure how much confidence to have in his apparent confidence, but I've just started taking the mind medicine he prescribed me. And holy hell is it ever bitter. For now I'm going to presume that means it would be dangerous to take too much of it, so they did their best to make sure no-one would want to. I'm being started on a quarter tablet, then half. I should be taking whole tablets daily within two weeks.
My roommate's Australian girlfriend is visiting and she is awesome. She cleans. She cleaned his room, she cleaned the kitchen. I helped her clean a box full of dishes from the place he and Robbit used to share. Then, because Robby was feeling tired and lazy and I would have been bored walking by myself, she went with me to the drugstore to pick up my prescription for mind meds, and we stopped in to get gardening supplies, which I've been meaning to pick up, and groceries.
Gardening is something I've been really wanting to try for a while, and I'm very excited about it! I planted seven trays of ten spots in those little pre-planting seedling trays made of decomposing cardboard, so you just tear them apart and replant them outside without having to take them out of their potlets. All cucumbers and lettuce, since those were the seed packets I had that suggested pre-planting in the instructions on the back. I'll be trying to follow the instructions as much as possible, because I'm very new to this and I know I don't really know what I'm doing, despite having helped my mom and dad in the garden sometimes while growing up. I'm sure what limited knowledge I do have will be useful, though. I really look forward to having home-grown vegetables during the summer. I hope I can keep a garden somewhat maintained. I imagine having the reason to be outside should be good for me, too.
So anyway, yesterday was awesome in many ways, I got a lot done - I even tidied up my room and went through my shirts to get rid of some by donating them to the Goodwill store I work at. I really do have more than enough clothes, so I got rid of anything that I probably wouldn't wear, either because it's not as comfortable as other options I have, or because it's too high-cut and shows my belly-button if I lift my arms - not that I have anything against that kind of shirt, but I can't wear them at work, and I rarely dress up to go other places, and I have no problem wearing longer shirts when I go out to other places anyway. I didn't toss all my high-cut shirts, but I did pass on a few. A lot of my clothes probably won't be good enough to go out on the sales floor, but I know that the "salvage" they get there (what isn't up to quality standards) goes to do some good too, so I'm sure they'll be able to do more with it than I was.
I was so energized last night due to my good mood that I stayed up late just because I wasn't tired. And then, unfortunately, I was woken up very early by my roommate packing his lunches into tupperwares. It sounded exactly like a kitten chasing the lid to a tupperware container around the kitchen floor, with a lot of scraping and sliding sounds. I'm going to ask him to try to do that in the evening, now that he's working morning shifts and is home earlier than 11:30 at night, so that I don't get woken up that way again.
Roommate's girlfriend is staying with us during weekdays for two weeks. I hope that I can continue to use her energy to spark my own. Maybe I can help my boyfriend out by stealing his bedding and insisting on washing it. He won't do it himself, but I really think that the mess he voluntarily lives in can't be good for him. Maybe I should be more like her, and clean his room like she cleaned our roommate's. I hadn't thought about it this way, but I may be neglecting Robby by allowing him to neglect himself when we both know he's in a rut.
For now, excitement abounds! Thanks for reading, and may you be inspired to make progress in your own lives as I am being inspired to do in mine.
Sunday, December 29, 2013
An Empathetic Wish
That I could care for all mankind
as though they were my darkened sons
that lit the day and cast such light
to guide my sight through lonely storms
That I could dream as children may
of peace on earth and guileless trade
through age until my dying day
though naivety is born to fade
That I could live a life unfeard
the scorching brace of hate avoid
and suffer not the shyness
painful memories employ
That I could in my kin inspire
a love that from no heart would turn
Yet failing me, I close my eye
and live in shadows crisp and stern
as though they were my darkened sons
that lit the day and cast such light
to guide my sight through lonely storms
That I could dream as children may
of peace on earth and guileless trade
through age until my dying day
though naivety is born to fade
That I could live a life unfeard
the scorching brace of hate avoid
and suffer not the shyness
painful memories employ
That I could in my kin inspire
a love that from no heart would turn
Yet failing me, I close my eye
and live in shadows crisp and stern
Monday, September 23, 2013
Relief
Good news! I won't be homeless next month!
I called my landlord last night, who said he doesn't mind if I stay so long as he gets his rent as appropriate (it's $100 more per occupant not on the lease). I made the offer to my roommate to pay the same amount I had been paying while staying here and taking on half of the rent, $450, even though there is now another person to carry the rent, and he accepted that. "But just one more month".
At the same time, my roommate's girlfriend's mom is a realtor, and she has offered to help me look for places. She also started mothering and reassuring me immediately that my roommate would make sure I had a place to go before insisting I leave, that I would be able to find a place in the time I have, she knows I can do it. Things like that. It kind of makes me blush to get such maternal care. With such a source of help, "just one more month" should be fine.
So I told my friends about it, played some games and stayed up late last night. Part of my night also consisted of reading this page, which a friend of mine linked me to, and gaining some further insight into my relationship with my blood mother. Many of the points are very much applicable to her, to greater or lesser degrees. Not all. I suffered little physical abuse, for instance, and if my mom ever got pleasure from my pain directly, as opposed to from a sense of self-importance to which my abuse was merely a means, rather than an end in itself, then I didn't notice. I think I would have done.
I went to bed at about 4 AM, and woke up at half past noon, feeling happy and hopeful again. I have no regrets. Relief has come!
Anyway, I have some landlords to call. Good morning, bloggers!
I called my landlord last night, who said he doesn't mind if I stay so long as he gets his rent as appropriate (it's $100 more per occupant not on the lease). I made the offer to my roommate to pay the same amount I had been paying while staying here and taking on half of the rent, $450, even though there is now another person to carry the rent, and he accepted that. "But just one more month".
At the same time, my roommate's girlfriend's mom is a realtor, and she has offered to help me look for places. She also started mothering and reassuring me immediately that my roommate would make sure I had a place to go before insisting I leave, that I would be able to find a place in the time I have, she knows I can do it. Things like that. It kind of makes me blush to get such maternal care. With such a source of help, "just one more month" should be fine.
So I told my friends about it, played some games and stayed up late last night. Part of my night also consisted of reading this page, which a friend of mine linked me to, and gaining some further insight into my relationship with my blood mother. Many of the points are very much applicable to her, to greater or lesser degrees. Not all. I suffered little physical abuse, for instance, and if my mom ever got pleasure from my pain directly, as opposed to from a sense of self-importance to which my abuse was merely a means, rather than an end in itself, then I didn't notice. I think I would have done.
I went to bed at about 4 AM, and woke up at half past noon, feeling happy and hopeful again. I have no regrets. Relief has come!
Anyway, I have some landlords to call. Good morning, bloggers!
Saturday, July 13, 2013
To Share The Cup That Runneth Over
Someone on FetLife was asking for peoples' perspectives on the influence of our past parental abuse on those of us who have been abused and how it relates to our own desire to have, or to avoid having, children. Her voice was impassioned and full of a great deal of understandable internal conflict. It's clear she wants the good things that come with having children, and desperately wants to love and care for someone, but realizes that her scars may get in the way, and doesn't want to be a bad parent.
I would like to share my response with you all.
The best way I feel I can answer this is to tell my own stories related to it.
I was inspired by the subtle, psychological abuses of my childhood to be vehemently vocal about bad parenting when I see it, especially when parents become frustrated with their childrens' natural curiosity and desire to learn, seeing virtually anything other than quiet obedience as disobedience, even when they only the actions of a young, inexperienced human engaged with the world and trying to gain the experience required to be a wise, functional adult.
And then later, I found VHEMT.
I am not convinced that the human race has no chance of improving and willfully evolving socially and morally to progressively better states, and therefore don't think I actually want us to go extinct, but I definitely would prefer to see a smaller human race, with more quality, and less quantity, of life. The fewer people there are to share resources with, the bigger everyone's fair share can be.
And this is why I've decided never to give birth, even though the thought is a fetish of mine.
However, it doesn't mean I don't want to be a mother.
I am still scarred and rendered dysfunctional by my own past abuses. In many ways the wisdom and sensitivity gained from my suffering has made me a generally very patient and level-headed person, but I am also prone to fits of anxiety and rage. Furthermore, I am young, and at the very beginning of my career.
But someday, if I have greater financial stability, and if I have healed further and feel less controlled by my overpowering emotions, I will almost certainly want to participate in the growing and nurturing of children who were not born to me. I may foster-parent, or adopt. Or I may find my way into a nurturing role in my profession, or find my way into a household that accepts me in a role as a supportive carer and guardian to the children of someone else.
Personally, I find it hard to believe that any child, even in the best and most well-adapted of families, could not benefit from one more loving, supportive adult in their life to encourage them to be the best that they could be; And equally hard to believe that any parent, even with the best luxuries and availability of resources and time, would not benefit from one more loving, supportive adult who could share the stresses of caring for a child when they become taxing, and thus prevent the build-up of frustration that can lead to that frustration being inappropriately taken out on the child.
But to answer the question that stood out most to me in your post...
"If you feel, like you have love and tender loving care to give, who do you direct that energy to, if it is not kids?"
Why... To everyone, of course. Neighbors going through hard times. Co-workers. Friends. And definitely lovers, whether they be short or long term. Absolutely everyone, not only children, and to be sure not only our own blood children, can use some Tender-Loving-Care. It is one of the greatest weaknesses of our Western society that we tend to forbid one another from taking responsibility for one another, and in turn, we forbid one another from asking for badly needed help.
If you have love and Tender-Loving-Care to give, and you find no-one receiving it, if your cup runneth over with no-one to drink... Go to your best friends and congenial workmates, go to your lovers and partners and crushes, and if it is permissible within their circles, then go to theirs... go to those people with whom you can easily empathize, and encourage them to draw from your well of kindness whenever they are thirsty.
All too frequently the only socially acceptable answer, to create a new life in to nurture and build up, because for some incredibly stupid reason we have been forbidden to nurture and build one another, is the only one that comes to mind. But especially for those of us who are damaged and who runneth over, but sometimes also run dry... We know in our doubts that creating a life for our love and care, and then becoming overwhelmed and filling it up also with our frustrations and tempers, becoming bad parents... Is all too real a possibility.
Before you forge a new cup that you may not be able to fill all by yourself, then... I encourage you to seek out all of those cups near to your heart that are beginning to run low, and ask gently and patiently for permission to refill them. Break the stupid rules that forbid us from caring, mothering and looking out for one another. It is, of course, a delicate dance, and important not to be overbearing, but simply to be loving and available. But it's a well-known fact that parenting isn't easy. And this holds true whether the people you're parenting are children, or blood family, or not.
I hope this helped.
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Life Is Good
Good day, bloggers.
I really, really mean that.
Sorry I've not been in touch, life is pretty awesomely hectic. Let's see if I can fill you in with some brevity. Robby the rabbit boy is still around and still a source of great comfort and warm, easy, peaceful love that makes a lot of traditional notions much more attractive... Not that they weren't already, but it's more profound.
Perhaps more surprisingly, Pup's around again too. I didn't talk to him for a whole month... Then I broke the silence, and returned to find a puppy boy grateful and overwhelmed with good feelings to hear my voice and see my face again. For the two weeks previous, he'd been getting help changing some of his more difficult behaviors from a shockingly delightful lady who showed up on FetLife out of absolutely nowhere to flirt with me and ask about playing with me. I wasn't really interested, partly because of the recent chaos with Pup, so she found his page and asked me if she could play with him. I was only too glad to encourage her to do so with my highest blessings and deep gratitude. While I'd given up the Pup as a lost cause for me, I really wanted him to get through the grief I knew it would cause him breaking up with me and was incredibly grateful to have someone show up who seemed very much his type and who would probably do great things to soothe the pain, if only by being a very pleasant distraction who understood.
She surprised me. Not only did she enjoy him in ways I have no doubt he enjoyed quite a lot himself, she took on the task of training him according to his own desires to become a person who would be less trouble for me if I ever did come back. She's helped him, for his sake and mine, to be less argumentative, to stop and ask before going off on long tangents or trying to share all the neat things he wants to share with me... And, with an incredible cunning that blew me away when I heard of it, also came up with a way to give him some training in pitch recognition and at the same time, much more importantly, subject him to exposure therapy to force him to face and learn to deal with jealousy. In a way that he will accept, despite all its unpleasantness. She is a fucking genius, and I don't know what kind spirit sent her our way, but may it receive resounding thanks for her presence.
I'm not spending a lot of time with Pup. But we've spoken a few times. It has been congenial and pleasant. My lost cause, somehow... in only a month... has been found again, and retrieved safely and whole from the jaws of panic and hopelessness and fits of not knowing how to deal with his jealousy...
I don't know what to say, but thank you, thank you, thank you, and if I somehow deserve all this, I abso-fucking-lutely love who I am as a person on that count alone.
It doesn't stop there. For the past two weeks, I've been employed. I'm working part time, a minimum of 15-20 hours a week, with Goodwill retail here in London. And it's great. I'm primarily a stocker and unstocker, but I also clean the kitchens and staff bathrooms, since the new manager offered extra hours to someone willing to keep those areas clean, and housekeeping is my background. I had even been doing some independent work cleaning someone's bathrooms from time to time in the preceding few months. Serendipity to be sure.
My job has me on my feet walking a lot, up to 7 or 8 hours in a day, so my feet are often tired and sore at the end of a shift. My arms get sore too when I have to stock or pull from high racks, as apparently there are muscles that my arms has never had much need to use before that I use a lot when I'm holding them above my head. That pain only lasts as long as I'm doing it, though, and I'm sure it will fade with time and exposure. I need new shoes I can put cushioned insoles in. I've been told those will certainly help with my feet.
I want to give deep thanks to Goodwill (the job help branch) for helping me get here, and to Goodwill (retail) for hiring me, and to Robby for helping me get through the higher powered job search with my head high and confidence showing, despite being in grief over Pup, and for many, many other wonderful things that make me very happy, very often. And of course I would like to thank our mysterious friend from FetLife for helping Puppy grow and change and become not a pain in the ass.
And to all my friends and readers who have helped, or who have only witnessed the drama of my life, and elected to care about it... Thank you as well. I love you all.
I really, really mean that.
Sorry I've not been in touch, life is pretty awesomely hectic. Let's see if I can fill you in with some brevity. Robby the rabbit boy is still around and still a source of great comfort and warm, easy, peaceful love that makes a lot of traditional notions much more attractive... Not that they weren't already, but it's more profound.
Perhaps more surprisingly, Pup's around again too. I didn't talk to him for a whole month... Then I broke the silence, and returned to find a puppy boy grateful and overwhelmed with good feelings to hear my voice and see my face again. For the two weeks previous, he'd been getting help changing some of his more difficult behaviors from a shockingly delightful lady who showed up on FetLife out of absolutely nowhere to flirt with me and ask about playing with me. I wasn't really interested, partly because of the recent chaos with Pup, so she found his page and asked me if she could play with him. I was only too glad to encourage her to do so with my highest blessings and deep gratitude. While I'd given up the Pup as a lost cause for me, I really wanted him to get through the grief I knew it would cause him breaking up with me and was incredibly grateful to have someone show up who seemed very much his type and who would probably do great things to soothe the pain, if only by being a very pleasant distraction who understood.
She surprised me. Not only did she enjoy him in ways I have no doubt he enjoyed quite a lot himself, she took on the task of training him according to his own desires to become a person who would be less trouble for me if I ever did come back. She's helped him, for his sake and mine, to be less argumentative, to stop and ask before going off on long tangents or trying to share all the neat things he wants to share with me... And, with an incredible cunning that blew me away when I heard of it, also came up with a way to give him some training in pitch recognition and at the same time, much more importantly, subject him to exposure therapy to force him to face and learn to deal with jealousy. In a way that he will accept, despite all its unpleasantness. She is a fucking genius, and I don't know what kind spirit sent her our way, but may it receive resounding thanks for her presence.
I'm not spending a lot of time with Pup. But we've spoken a few times. It has been congenial and pleasant. My lost cause, somehow... in only a month... has been found again, and retrieved safely and whole from the jaws of panic and hopelessness and fits of not knowing how to deal with his jealousy...
I don't know what to say, but thank you, thank you, thank you, and if I somehow deserve all this, I abso-fucking-lutely love who I am as a person on that count alone.
It doesn't stop there. For the past two weeks, I've been employed. I'm working part time, a minimum of 15-20 hours a week, with Goodwill retail here in London. And it's great. I'm primarily a stocker and unstocker, but I also clean the kitchens and staff bathrooms, since the new manager offered extra hours to someone willing to keep those areas clean, and housekeeping is my background. I had even been doing some independent work cleaning someone's bathrooms from time to time in the preceding few months. Serendipity to be sure.
My job has me on my feet walking a lot, up to 7 or 8 hours in a day, so my feet are often tired and sore at the end of a shift. My arms get sore too when I have to stock or pull from high racks, as apparently there are muscles that my arms has never had much need to use before that I use a lot when I'm holding them above my head. That pain only lasts as long as I'm doing it, though, and I'm sure it will fade with time and exposure. I need new shoes I can put cushioned insoles in. I've been told those will certainly help with my feet.
I want to give deep thanks to Goodwill (the job help branch) for helping me get here, and to Goodwill (retail) for hiring me, and to Robby for helping me get through the higher powered job search with my head high and confidence showing, despite being in grief over Pup, and for many, many other wonderful things that make me very happy, very often. And of course I would like to thank our mysterious friend from FetLife for helping Puppy grow and change and become not a pain in the ass.
And to all my friends and readers who have helped, or who have only witnessed the drama of my life, and elected to care about it... Thank you as well. I love you all.
Friday, April 26, 2013
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.
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