Apr 18

Rapid Fire Ramblings: A Dumb Apology, O’Charley’s, Starting Kicks, Uncomfortable Positions

Sorry about the lack of posts with a lot of specific meat on them lately. I’ve been all over the place mentally and physically, as I said yesterday. Still, content! Rolling right along with the content.

Tonight, CJ and I went to O’Charley’s. This restaurant has been in Cape like forever. I think I went once and got a burger and was like “eh” and then I never went back? But we went a tried it.
Man, I felt like a fool.
We had a great fucking meal! Well, at least I did. CJ said his fish was pretty solid, but I had this “New York Pizza Pasta”? It was like a really fantastic pasta with a spicy red sauce, lots of peppers, and Italian sausage and pepperoni. It was AMAZING. A really fantastic meal! We had an appetizer of these chips dipped in queso that was pretty great too! I was really impressed. Why was I not going to this place? I do not know. I mean, you know, it’s a chain restaurant, but we got food that was pretty well better than, say, Applebee’s, at Applebee’s prices. I can get behind that.

I guess Kickstarter continues to be a thing? I just backed a third one, for a lot of money. (I got on the bandwagon and got one of those Pebble watches. I always wanted something like that because I am a lame nerd. So.) It’s just weird to me how all of the sudden Kickstarter is just… a thing. It’s what you do. It’s also something I’m 100% comfortable with, although at this point I have kind of spent a bunch of money on it and seen no return on my investment. But recently I learned that the lovely Cards Against Humanity was a Kickstarter thing? So clearly this is generally for the forces of good, right? Probably? I dunno. I need to stop kicking money at things… well, until something cool comes along, I guess. Then I’ll do it again. And again. I guess. You know. Giving up cash for vague promises of future products! Awwwwwwwww yeh.

Have I said this before? I’m going to say it again. You know, when you’re online in a chat, or writing a story, or something like that, it’s so easy to describe positions being comfortable. “Sure, yeah,” you say, “two normal people could snuggle up together like that, and it wouldn’t be awkward or uncomfortable at all.” And then you try to bring some of that stuff into reality, trying to lay on a couch or in bed watching a thing all snuggled, or even curled up and leaning against someone else on a couch, and suddenly even the stupidest simple position is like fucking impossible to get comfortable in. I blame the extra arm. There’s always an extra arm that, if it wasn’t there, the position would be comfortable! But instead, someone has their arm pinned somewhere awkward. It sucks. Being close shouldn’t be so hard! No fair, reality.

Later!

Apr 17

I’m Tired: A Completely Useless Post About Being Tired.

Hi. Here’s a boring post.

Today I almost drove off the road driving back from Sikeston. Like, seriously moments away from running my car straight off the highway into a ditch. Already I was exhausted today. I was kind of spacy in my classes. But driving home, I was just so tired, I was nodding off.

This isn’t an uncommon occurrence.

I figured up how much I work on a daily basis now. If I’m being conservative, on a normal Tuesday like today when I have ad set in the evening, I work… 12 hours? Not conservative, probably more like 14. Many of them are late at night, and the hours the next day start in the morning, where I get up around 5:30 to get shit done. I have more time off MWF, but often that’s when I need to do chores around the house, run errands, drive to St. Louis for an appointment, and so on. I take time off on weekends, and be lazy as fuck, but that just means I have more to do come Monday, in a shorter period of time.

I don’t know, I feel like I’m trapped in this thing, and I am just kind of tired. Even with time off, I feel like I just break even, and soon enough I get burned down again. It’s enough to make me want to return to caffeine.

The solution is to dump Kohl’s, but it’s a solution I can’t take. I need the insurance, as shitty as it is, and I need to have a summer job or I’m going to go broke. I hope after this summer, I can dump it, but then I’m just going to be worrying about next summer… I’m not sure if it’s all going to work out. I mean, hopefully Brer is here by then, and then I have more roommates, thus less expenses, and that will be nice. Or maybe I’ll have a full time job before it’s an issue again, and I won’t have to worry about it! I can dream, right?

Seriously, though. I’m fucking tired. I’m going to try not to be cranky but it’s hard! It’s hard.

Apr 16

Last Minute Linkdump

OH SHIT ALMOST OUT OF TIME DUMP ALL THE LINKS!

I’m currently watching this Let’s Play. It’s pretty good so far! Not particularly funny, commentary-wise, but really interesting, just because… you know… why does this game exist? I have no idea.

This website is still just kind of magical. I know it’s old. I just found it. Shut up.

Here are some interesting neighbor facts.

Why is the guy in charge of making Orangina commercials such an incredible furry? I have no idea. It’s kind of crazy. But awesome.

Sellers on Amazon are super smart.

Why didn’t I know about this song before now? I mean, goodness.

Well, that’s it. I’m heading to bed. So there.

Apr 15

Be Confident In Who You Are, Dammit.

I want to write about this article. Feel free to read it first, if you want.

It basically confuses the shit out of me.

There are many things I just actively don’t understand about this article. I think part of it is how it’s put together: the title is not what it’s about, really, and the format and flow changes pace a few times in odd ways. That could have probably been fixed with more editing and revision, though. No, what I don’t get is… well, a lot of the premises. I don’t get it.

That idea of “I must dress ultra-feminine to come across as simply feminine” is something I don’t understand. I’ve been told that. Like, I’ve been told that by people like my therapist. People have told me that. I’ll fully admit that, in general, I can tell people have an easier time around me when I do. When I’m wearing a skirt and such, or something very tight that makes it very clear I have breasts, there’s less… vagueness when people address me. That’s kind of nice in a way. Even though I’ve been me for awhile now, and most of the time stuff like that doesn’t make me stop and go “holy shit” anymore, when I’m having a bad day, that kind of thing can give me a smile.

However, here’s the thing. My goal is not to be recognized as female. My goal is to not be recognized as male. There is a difference.

When I’m dressed how I dressed before all this happened, just hanging around the house or grabbing a quick bite to eat or whatever, there is vagueness there. I am androgynous. I can tell a difference when people address me. People avoid pronouns and things in order to not have to make a decision, because they don’t know. This is a win for me. I’m okay with coming off that way, and most of the time as soon as I talk to them, they understand I’m a woman, as I make sure to make sure my voice isn’t sounding questionable in such situations. I’m not a very girly girl, I never will be, and besides for the occasional thrill, I don’t want to be. I don’t want to wear a lot of makeup, or even any makeup, most of the time. I don’t want to wear all this women’s clothing that just strikes me as absurd, such as the huge amounts of obscenely small pairs of shorts that exist in the world. If you like that stuff, rock on! I hope you have fun. I am not really interested in it. Haven’t been. Doubt I somehow will become as such.
If I know I’m going to have a bad or rough day, and I know that a rare mistake from a stranger would make me feel like garbage, sure, I dress a little more feminine to stop that from happening. But every day? I don’t know.

It just makes me worry about the author, I guess. Is her voice really deep? Guess that could be. I could see how that would make someone paranoid, but the situation she described at the beginning of the article wouldn’t have had anything to do with that, so I don’t see that being the main issue here. I guess, it just, to me, signals a real lack of confidence in yourself. Again, of course a mistake from someone is going to make you feel a little shitty. It does suck. But in the end, you’re you. You bounce back, and keep going, and be your goddamn self, and let nobody take that away from you. I feel like she does not have any confidence not just in her passing but in herself in general if she does not dress up the way she is talking about. Maybe that’s the lesson that the end of the essay is trying to transmit? It feels like there’s an undertone of that, but I don’t feel like that’s what she’s saying at all. She’s saying she could feel confident if there was someone who had already done it. That’s kind of bullshit. She’s letting herself eat herself from the inside.

I get insecurity. I have motherfucking been there, and I often go there when I’m having a shitty day. I used to sing songs about how useless I was and how much it would be better if I was not here. I get insecurity. But in transitioning, I mastered it, to a great extent. I’m not perfect with it. I doubt anyone feels 100% in control all the time. But I have fucking DEFEATED the biggest problem in my life, and you know what? People still love me. I’ve still got the best friends I could ask for, I am the girlfriend of two wonderful men who I love very much, and most everyone at my places of work are fantastic. Even my parents, who were insanely against it and kept saying they didn’t understand, are calling me by the right name and right pronouns now. The one thing that has always hung over my head is gone. How can I not be confident? I’m doing the right thing. I have skills. I’m intelligent. I can handle anything life throws at me.
So I guess I just wonder how she can have mastered what I would assume would be the biggest problem in HER life, and not feel that way. I wonder what’s going on. My psychologist has said I have things together a lot more than a lot of her transgendered patients. Is that really true? Am I in some way special? I don’t feel that way. But I’m just left wondering how someone can accept moving from being trapped in the wrong body to being trapped in a bunch of mannerisms they don’t agree with. How can they free themselves from one set of bonds and then be okay with fucking themselves up with another? I really don’t get it. I really don’t.

If you treat something like a problem, it is a problem. If you don’t, it’s not a problem. This is just how things go. Confidence cuts through barriers like what she’s describing. I highly doubt there’s a single ACTUAL professional who actively thinks that a woman, or a transsexual, can’t write about video games. Clearly, if there is someone like that, fuck them. However, I think that, if they have that ridiculous bias, which is not impossible, I fully admit, then it’s subconscious, and that sort of “thing I didn’t know I was doing” can be defeated by confidence. If your body language, and everything you do, reflects the lack of an issue, it’s not that hard to break that stuff down. But you have to believe in yourself, as a whatever you are, and know that you can do the job. If you waver, that’s an opening, one that people will take, no matter what the circumstances. That’s just a general life thing, right?

If you can’t succeed by being yourself, why would you want to succeed? Luckily, you can. You can succeed and be yourself. I read this article, which was described to me on twitter as “very smart,” and I just wanted to throw up my hands in frustration. This is sending the wrong message. It’s set up to show that the situations it’s describing, while clearly shitty and unpleasant, are just life. That’s just what you deal with, and the only way to push through them is to play a game you don’t want to play. That’s such bullshit.
Feel free to tell me I’m way the fuck too optimistic and don’t have a grip on reality. But seriously. That is such fucking bullshit.

Apr 14

Skylander Review Time!: Slam Bam, Ignitor, Terrafin, Whirlwind, Double Trouble

Let’s finish up with all these Skylander reviews, hm? Again, most of my experience with these Skylanders has been in the 3DS version of the game.

Slam Bam: This big Yeti man’s name is not… too… terrible? I mean, considering most Skylander names. For a melee character, he is also pretty great. He’s a little slow, but he hits really hard, and when you finish a combo with him, he does a ground pound that can hit a whole group of enemies, which is helpful when he starts to get surrounded. His secondary attack summons a block of ice: this is mostly useless, although when you level it up, you can break it with his punches to stun surrounding enemies, so that’s kind of nice, I suppose. But seriously, he hits hard enough to make him fairly worthwhile as a melee character, and he has TONS of HP in order to take the hits he’s going to take up close. He’s actually pretty good. A great bonus to get with the Empire of Ice Adventure Pack. Also, when he gets in water in the 360 version, he surfs on an ice surfboard. So.

Ignitor: What Ignitor has going for him is that his attacks with his fire sword swing in large arcs, letting you hit two or three enemies at once. The damage is decent, and he can control crowds this way. His secondary attack lets out a little will ‘o wisp or something similar which homes in on nearby enemies and inflicts a DoT, which is nice because you can easily make use of it while focusing on his normal melee hits. He’s a pretty useful melee character, to be sure.
Side note: since the 3DS version comes with him, Stealth Elf, and Dark Spyro, it’s weird to see Dark Spyro suddenly become the most useful in that group because he’s the only one with a dedicated distance attack out of the three. In the 360 set, Gill Grunt just kind of blows Spyro away in effectiveness, and Trigger Happy is still way more useful than him in most situations. It’s interesting. Well, to me, I guess.

Terrafin: Coming with the Pirate Seas Adventure Pack, Terrafin is a land shark, which is still a cool idea, so I will give it that. I gave him a fez to wear, and he looked awesome. So that’s cool, right? Anyway, he’s pretty middle of the road. His melee attacks are okay, but nothing to write home about. Being able to run around under ground and attack people is cool, but has less application than you’d think, and I found his little earthquake attack completely useless, at least in the 3DS game. I mean, you can potentially hit a group with that earthquake, but it takes a second to go off and I found myself missing all the time. Eh, again, he’s not bad, but he’s not going to be one of your front line people.

Whirlwind: I like Whirlwind. She’s awesome. I mean, she shoots FUCKING RAINBOWS. I had to have her when I learned that! The Rainbows arc, so they can hit enemies up high, too, so that’s nice. They’re also pretty damaging and you can rapid fire them, making them a pretty effective attack overall! Her secondary attack is letting out a little storm cloud. On the surface, this seems like it would be useless, but if you release it at an enemy who has gotten in too close, it knocks them back and does a ton of damage. I actually found it pretty useful, especially against beefier enemies who would get hit multiple times by the cloud as it stuck around for awhile. Whirlwind is aces. Highly recommended for your Air Skylander.

Double Trouble: The main problem with Double Trouble is that there’s no way you DON’T have a Magic Skylander, no matter what version of the game you’re playing. You’ll always have a Spyro. That makes him less useful out of the gate. However, as stupid as he looks, I really ended up liking Double Trouble. He’s not so much better than Spyro for you to consider him if you’re Skylanding on a budget, but he was pretty fun. For one, in the 3DS version, he has a Princess Peach-style hover jump, which makes it easy to get around. His main attack, a little lightning shot, lets you circle strafe like Drill Sergeant. Granted, it’s not quite as good at homing as Drill Sergeant, so it’s not quite as easy to do, but it also does a lot more damage, so it works out. His secondary ability is to throw little clones of himself out, which run around and deal damage. Throwing two of those out at the start of a battle is a no brainer, and when you upgrade them, the little clones can do things like light enemies on fire for a DoT. Yeah, I like him.

Well, I’ve now reviewed like a million Skylanders. Which one is my favorite overall? It’s still Dino-Rang. I fucking LOVE Dino-Rang. He’s still obscenely stupid in a lovable way, and his attacks, especially if you branch down the Boomerang path, are just extremely versatile and damaging. Yeah, so, if I were to recommend one extra Skylander, it would be him.

Okay, enough of these reviews for now. Well, at least until Giants comes out.

Apr 13

Sexy Maids Playing Sexy Card Games.

Back in my birthday times, I had a boyfriend get me a present! It was clearly the best game of all time, because it was a game involving collecting sexy maids and placing them in your private chamber to increase your amount of “service.” It is called Tanto Cuore. It is a game that I own. It’s pretty fun.

Tanto Cuore is basically Dominion. It came out in the waves of deck-building games that hit when Dominion became popular. However, there are several twists on the formula in the game that I rather like, which make it feel fairly different from a normal Dominion game. Let me go over them now.

First off, there is a mechanic where you can move maids from your deck into your “Private chamber” by burning actions. Once they’re in your chamber, they count towards victory, but they aren’t in your deck. It’s sort of like Island from the Seaside expansion. Not all maids can do this, but a lot of them can. The best part is the “Estates” of the game are maids that can do this. Moving those starting “Estates” out of your deck is awesome, even if it does cost 2 actions, which is a big setback. It also lets you stock up on little cards with small benefits early, then tug them out of your deck so you can use your big cards more often as the game progresses. It’s a nice little mechanic that doesn’t require you to always have to have certain “deck thinning” cards out for people to use.

Secondly, there are so many alternate ways to get victory points than just buying flat victory point cards! So many cards have little bonuses attached to them if you collect certain things. There’s a set of three “Crescent Sisters” who give you a point bonus for every full set of them you have. The “Estate” card, Colette Framboise (Did I mention I love how fucking ridiculous all the card names in this are, too? I love it.) gives you a 5 point bonus if you own more of her than any other player, which actually gives you a reason to buy “estates.” Ophelia Grail will either be worth extra positive VP or negative VP depending on if you have an even or odd number of her card in your deck. And so on. There’s way more strategy variety because there are more ways to rack up VP than “Buy Gold, Buy Province” in every permutation of the cards.

Third, they have this deck of “Private Maids.” You only deal two of them out at a time to buy, at random, and they are essentially buffs. Are the constant buffs worth spending your money on, instead of cards? You get to decide, but what Private Maids show up in the game drastically changes it. It’s pretty cool!

Finally, there is way more interaction between players in this game. It is SUPER EASY to attack players. In Dominion, attacking normally involved investing so many resources in attack cards that, in my experience, you ended out screwing yourself out of getting enough victory points. In this game, two Love (the “gold” resource) gets you a Bad Habit (a Curse) to throw on any player. If a player has 4 or more Bad Habits, they are worth -2 instead of -1. It’s trivial to use an extra buy to attack an opponent, or still do something useful on a turn with a shitty draw by playing a Bad Habit. It helps make a bad turn not so bad, and makes attacking a much, much more viable option, especially in card configurations with more buys on the board in general.

Seriously, it’s just a really fun “variant” of Dominion, and the flavor is totally stupid in an awesome way. Well, if you can laugh at the ridiculousness of Japanese Maid Fetishes or whatever. I mean, just by hearing the premise, you know if you’re going to like the flavor. I think it adds to the game, and the art is nice. I will definitely play more, and I’m interested in the expansions, but damn, are they expensive. This game is kind of expensive! Oh well. Give it a try if you can. It’s nice.

Apr 12

Skylander Review Time!: Drill Sergeant, Ghost Roaster, Stealth Elf, Flameslinger, Dark Spyro

Time for some SKYLANDER REVIEWS! Most of these I’ve only played with in the 3DS version, so keep that in mind, as the ability to jump makes melee characters a bit more viable in that version.

Drill Sergeant: Man, was I wrong about this guy. He looks so stupid, but he is really strong and really effective in combat. His standard drill missile attack is just fine, and does some decent damage. However, his little head cannon attack is just phenomenal. It tracks enemies, so you can effectively circle strafe, which is really powerful in this game, it turns out! Really powerful! The individual shots are not strong, but you can easily weaken enemies and then finish them off with the drills. It’s hard to recommend another Tech guy, since Drobot is fucking DROBOT, but he has been one of my go-to Skylanders playing through this new version, since I decided to not use my old guys much for a new experience.

Ghost Roaster: Really stupid name, and he looks pretty dumb to boot. Seriously, a lot of the Skylanders are kind of dumb, but I can understand the appeal? I don’t know who Ghost Roaster would appeal to. The other Undead Skylanders just look so much cooler, and if you’re going to use a melee character for your Undead, it just seems like Chop Chop’s shield would be the better go-to. Maybe that’s why he’s the pack-in with the Darklight Crypt, instead of his own dude to buy. Anyway, his attacks are fine. He has a decent melee attack, but it just doesn’t do as much damage as other dedicated melee characters. I really like his other attack, though. He summons two spirits, and you can send them at enemies to “possess” them and do a DoT. That’s pretty awesome. You can also consume them to do this skull charge thing, but I found that much less useful. Most of the time I did that by accident, and then had to summon more spirits, which was annoying. The possession, though, gives him some viability at a distance, as you can hit two guys with that and then sneak in to finish them with the melee. Again, he’s alright, but I’m pretty sure another Undead Skylander would be better.

Stealth Elf: Pretty useless. Her invisibility just isn’t something this game really has any use for. In the 360 game, she creates a little doppelganger that gets attacked, which is kind of sort of marginally more useful, but in the 3DS game she just goes invisible when she runs. So, uh, yeah. She can throw knives, which does like no damage but if you’re desperate for some distance attack, it’s there. Her knife combos don’t do any damage unless you land the whole thing. The final hit does a lot of damage, but you have to hit like 3 other weak attacks for that to connect. This makes her garbage in groups, and guess what! Most of the time you’re fighting groups. I will give her the up over Stump Smash, my other Life Skylander, though. She’s agile, which lets her get around quick, at least. Stump Smash has a lot of the same combat problems, looks more stupid, and is slow as shit. So… yeah.

Flameslinger: His attacks just aren’t fast enough for a distance character! They’re okay, I guess, but not being able to just fucking jam on the button, like, say, Trigger Happy, or just hold it down, like Drobot or Drill Sergeant’s cannon, just makes him harder to use. His rain of arrows attack is fine, but it’s really slow, and unlike, say, Hex’s skull rain, you can’t level him up to, say, run around while he’s charging it, because it doesn’t home in. It’s really unfortunate. However, his run, which leaves a trail of fire behind him, is shockingly useful. Since enemies, for the most part, just follow you blindly, it’s really easy to deal them some serious damage by kiting them along with that fire trail. This is pretty well what saves him, for me. Middle of the road, and harder to use than a lot of Skylanders, but I can’t say I didn’t derive some pleasure out of burning the stupid idiots who ran after me.

Dark Spyro: He’s just Spyro! To be honest, I haven’t used him. Because he’s just Spyro. Who I have already used. If I am wrong, and Dark Spyro has different abilities or something, please let me know, somebody!

More Skylander Reviews forthcoming. Also a review of the 3DS game, when I finally beat the last two frustrating levels. Whee.

Apr 11

You Can Also Transform And Roll Out.

I got my mother playing Draw Something, and she seems to be having fun! So I went onto the app store to see if there was anything else we could play that she’d enjoy. While I was there I stumbled across this thing in the featured apps called Saturday Morning RPG. It was supposedly an RPG based on 80’s cartoons. I could dig that. It was using a fairly standard structure for apps now, where the first episode was free, then you buy more, so I went ahead and played the first episode.

It was okay? It was okay.

The battle system is kind of a combination of a, say, Grandia style system, where the attacks you pick affect how soon you act, and a Mario RPG system, with little minigames for more damaged and timed defense presses. It was a pretty good battle system for a light and breezy RPG you’d play on your phone.
The battle system goes like this. You see an enemy on the field, and get into a battle. You scratch Scratch-n-sniff stickers before battle to give you buffs in a little minigame. You can swap and equip these stickers to give you access to whatever buffs you want, but the order you scratch them in is randomized, so you may not always get to the ones you want to use. Then the fight proper starts.
You have three main actions. Punch is your default attack. It does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING and is useless to try to use unless the enemy has, like, 2 HP left. Then you have a charge option, which lets you burn MP for a DBZ-style charge up to deal more damage on your next attack. This is the only use of your MP, and your MP recharges slowly over time in battle. Finally, you can use your items, which are basically little spells. Each spell has a set number of uses each battle, and you can only equip five. They’re 80’s references of a sort, for the most part. You can make guys explode with a Care Bear Stare, or trample them with Fruit Stripe Gum Zebras, for example. Each attack has a speed associated with it, and may or may not require passing a minigame in order to be effective. For example, when giving a Thundercats Ho! with your Sword of Omens, you have to do some rapid tapping to charge up the attack in order to deal the most damage. That’s a fast attack, though. The Care Bear Stare, which does a similar amount of damage as a fully-tapped Sword of Omens attack, doesn’t have a minigame, but is a lot slower.

Anyway, the battle system is simple, but keeps your attention. It’s fun. The rest of the game is kind of bad.

The entire premise is great. Fighting 80’s cartoon villain analogues with silly reference attacks is a good idea! But the problem is, it’s a good idea if it’s funny, and being funny requires writing. I was flat-out shocked at how there is basically NO dialog in this game. It’s ridiculous. There needs to be either 80’s cartoon writing that’s funny on its own ridiculousness, or you need to crank the references up so they’re smart and witty. Having a quest that just quotes this PSA and does absolutely nothing with it is just a huge waste of time. Was this just a group of programmers without a writer? If so, that’s a shame. They should find someone who can write some really entertaining dialog. That needs to be the basis of this, seriously.

Anyway, feel free to try the free episode if you want. Personally, there was nothing in it to make me want to buy the next one for a dollar, but maybe that’s just me. Maybe it’s fun enough. I don’t know. I just know I was a bit let down that the writing didn’t live up to the premise. Oh well.

Apr 10

Poetry Scribble: Success Poetry!

Well, okay, sort of.


To Do

Success is a lot like failure, to be honest, to the point where I can't tell them apart as I'm squirming and blushing and trying to figure out how to deal with the fact that I'm all tied up in all these obligations and problems and issues and general spikes driving themselves into pressure points on my body to relieve and or increase stress and it's just so hard to pick a direction when every direction makes you feel like the way you feel when you win or you lose, that hard breath punched from your gut that tells you that hey, it's okay, you've survived, and you're moving on, just for today, moving on to something better, just for today, moving on to something else and you never need be concerned with that again, and you turn around and there's all those new concerns, all of them, ready for their family portrait, even though they won't stay in place as you set the timer on the camera and the little light in front flashes and you try so desperately to convince Aunt thing-I-was-supposed-to-get-done-two-days-ago and Uncle failed-dreams-you-really-wish-you-hadn't-given-up-on-so-try-one-more-time to look all normal and happy and like things that you could, you really could, complete, or fail to complete, sometime, for real, but even as you study the picture, and see her there, and him here, eyes closed, expressions wrong, positions off, you still can't tell what needs to be done, what needs to be traveled to, what needs.

You still can't tell, no matter where you stand.

Apr 9

A Moment. Just a single passing moment.

I feel like I’m always writing about moments nowadays when I talk about this sort of stupid stuff. It’s never shitty days, or weeks, or years. It’s just one moment where all of the sudden I’m shaken. I doubt like I used to. A moment where I want to fall apart. Sometimes I do. Often I don’t, because I can’t afford to.

It’s nice to be able to fall apart, though. I’ve been doing it in front of CJ lately. A thing leads to another in my head and then I’m back to my old self, my depressed self, who basically can’t accept that nice things are happening to her. It’s stupid. It’s frustrating. It makes me cry and hide and generally want to smack myself. But he listens and has understood, which just… it’s nice. I mean, I’ve fallen apart in front of Brer before. He’s had stupid phone calls aplenty. He’s seen me fucked up too. But in person, it’s just… I’m way more vulnerable. I can’t hide. I can’t get out of the situation. Online, I can just step away. Even on the phone, I can just hang up. But there I am, a stupid fool, and I can’t get away… and it’s okay. He’s still there. I always worry that if anyone knows about my little episodes, they won’t want to be around me anymore. They won’t want to be here. I’ll stop being a positive influence. But it doesn’t work like that. I let it out, and I can move on. Bottling it up is bad shit… I’m glad I don’t have to.

Still, those are big moments. Those are big deals. The little stuff is just as upsetting, perhaps, but I have to just move on from it and keep going.
An example: Mike, a man I worked with long ago, stopped by Kohl’s. He greets me by my old name. I panic. There’s just this wave of remembering. It’s a link back to how things used to be. It shook me.
I recovered real fast. I told him my name was Alexis now, and asked him how he was doing, and then got back to work. But just these stupid moments. Stupid moments.

I’m fine. I’m great. It’s just unfortunate when I stumble. It bothers me to some extent. It shouldn’t be like that.
But oh well. I’ll get the worries out, on this blog or with those I trust or whatnot, and move on. Things will keep being cool. Cool? Cool.