The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

The future, right? That’s certainly a thing.

There was a time in my life where I never felt like I had one of those. Nothing in my life was going right, and there felt like there was very little I could do about it. Every day was simply another day. I’d think about what I needed to do that day, and do it. Sometimes not do it. It was pretty bleak I guess. I didn’t feel like myself, and nothing I did felt significant.

Then, for awhile, progress was made. I started accomplishing stuff useful in moving forward in my life. It was crazy. I started thinking about jobs, lives, futures. It was scary as fuck, sure. But finally I felt like I had some control over who I was and what I was doing. It was lovely.

Recently, I’ve lost that again. I’m doing things that are important. I’m preparing for the party this weekend. I’m continuing to kick butt at my continuing education. There are things going on that I feel are very important, but my actions feel completely disconnected with the bigger picture. I feel like I don’t have a grasp on that bigger picture, and all these other things aren’t helping me find it.

I feel like this keeps happening to me. I make some progress, and that feels great. But I don’t finish becoming myself. Things aren’t done. But I become unable to take direct action. The vision of the future fades. I’m left with nothing. I’m left in depression.

That’s really fucking frustrating.

I’m not out of the woods. I’m going to keep going. But it’s annoying it’s so hard. It’s annoying I can never seem to accept the things I have done as significant. How many times have I written this blog post? How often do I feel like this? It’s so stupid.

I tell Brer, and I tell my little blog, but I’m such a broken record that that doesn’t do as much as it should anymore. I debate doing things like talking to Mom, or other friends, but I get scared. I don’t want to burden people with this stuff. My mom would focus on less what I wanted to talk about and more her reaction to who I am, which is understandable but unhelpful. I don’t feel like the dynamic between my friends and I leaves me open to just throw out topics like that, even though I know they’d listen and support me. I always feel like I’d be ruining a good time. I tell my psychologist, but sometimes I feel like I’m preparing so much for our talks that some of these feeling stuff gets missed, because it gets to the point almost where I’m giving a speech because I don’t want to forget to mention “relevant” information.

As always, the solution is to just keep going. I always keep going, and I never stop. It’s hard not to wish to stop sometimes, though. Just as a fucking change of pace. Then at least it would feel like I did something. Something happened. “I ruined my education, lost my job, or worse, but hey, that’s something!”
That’s horrible depressing talk I shouldn’t engage in, though. I should just keep going. Always.

That’s right! I’m phoning it in! Since, uh, it’s almost today as I write this, and I was already in bed, about to go to sleep, when I remembered I hadn’t written anything.

So!

Uh.

Here’s some entertaining things to watch.

I’ve been watching this New Super Mario Brothers Wii LP for awhile now. It’s entertaining, if mostly just chaos. Just like the game is with that many players! It’s kind of fun to get a little of the feeling that many players would give you without actually getting that many people over. I don’t think I could get a group that would be, you know, committed to playing through it like these guys. We’d have fun for awhile, but that would be it. They were dedicated! Check it out.

Also, Phen linked me to this MST3K short I hadn’t seen before. It’s got a humor. Watch that too.

I’ll write something tommorow! Promise! Hopefully.
(Whew. Crisis averted. Shitty content made. Back to bed.)

Here’s an interesting side effect of me trying to take care of myself. At least, it’s interesting to me, and it’s my blog, so shut up, I’m writing about it, nyah.

Basically, in an attempt to take care of myself. I’ve been going to bed early. Now, this doesn’t mean particularly early for a lot of people. I’m going to be around 11 or whatever. However, it’s a huge bunch of early for me, who normally gets to bed at 1 or 2. This creates an interesting dynamic with my internal clock. It tends to wake me up early, because it knows how much sleep I tend to get. Therefore, I’m getting to bed earlier, but I’m waking up earlier, too. Since I normally wake up at 6ish, that’s getting pretty early. For example, today I woke up at 4 AM.

This is good and bad. For one, I’m still getting more sleep this way than I was before. It still might not be 8 hours, but when I wake up at 4, I do at least have the option of staying in bed for awhile, unlike when I stay up late, and I have to get up and go teach. Overall I’m more rested. At the same time, it still feels like I’m losing time. I mean, I’ve been grading for hours today already. I got extra time. It was working out. But it doesn’t feel that way. I’m so used to staying up late, it feels like I’m wasting my time sleeping when I don’t stay up. It’s not a fact. It’s a mental issue. But it’s still something I have to be concerned with.

Basically, I could have slept in today, but I found myself worrying about stuff I had to do when I woke up. I could have stayed in bed, but I wouldn’t have gotten to sleep due to worry. Now, I’ve knocked out the problem. I got my grading done, and I’m ready to face the day. That’s nice.

Or something like nice.

I guess my internal clock will just have to deal. Then again, in a few weeks, this semester will be over, and next semester will be much more sleep-friendly. Maybe I just have to deal a little longer. I dunno.

Sometimes I forget why I play games, I guess. I do it because it’s what I do. I mean, I enjoy myself, but often it’s not so much a thrill as a way to pass the time. I don’t always realize it, of course. It takes those rare moments to smack me out of it. Whether it be a game that’s so frustrating, I question why I’m using my leisure time on it, or a game so fantastic, it pulls me out enough to make me go “wait a second, this is so much damn fun!”

I don’t know. I got DJ Hero 2 in from Gamefly, and immediately after putting the disc in, I was thrilled. It drew me in. It made me feel excited and energized. After playing for hours and stopping, I stepped back and went, “Holy shit, I was having fun.”

I remember other moments like that in life, where I’ve looked at myself and realized, “Oh, this is happy, I guess. Crazy.” Like, say, the first time I saw They Might Be Giants in concert. I was completely lost in it. Completely happy, and it was extended over a long period of time. At times, the nostalgic feelings that creep up on me when I view a Christmas tree does the same thing. I feel fantastic. I feel loved. It’s great.

There are times I wonder if the fact that I feel this way indicates how horrible I feel most of the time. “Does everyone normally feel like this on a good day?” I wonder. I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. I’ve got lots of good in my life. It’s pretty solid. No, it’s just a heightened sense. A sense of getting away from everything, and of being completely free. It’s great when a good game experience can give you that rare moment.

Needless to say, I paid to keep DJ Hero 2. I’m really loving it. I’ll write more about it later. But it just reminded me how rare that feeling is. I guess I’m lucky the game gives it to me, at least for a little while.

I hesitate to ramble about the “kids these days.” I find some people doing that, in reference to their classes, and I just find that kind of… wrong. I dunno, I was a Freshman. I did stupid-ass shit like this when I was in school. That’s why it took so long for me to graduate. I get it. It’s no less annoying to see happen, but I get it. My students are adults, and they can make their own decisions.

That said, seriously, kids these days.

The current assignment we’ve been doing all week involves two things, giving an in-class presentation of 5 to 7 minutes and turning in an MLA works cited list. I’m not grading this hard. If your presentation is long enough, you’re probably pretty good on the content. That’s half the grade. The other half is having the works cited in proper MLA format, since that’s what we were studying. Simply follow the MLA guidelines, and you’re golden.

My students aren’t doing either.

I’ve had presentations that were a minute or less. I’ve gotten tons of Works Cited lists that are wrong even at a glance, much less when I zoom in to the specifics when I actually grade them. It’s ridiculous. There are going to be so many shitty grades on this, and they’re going to be upset about it.
The worst part is that I warned them. I begged them in class, please take this seriously. The assignment was designed to be easy points to make up for harder essays. It’s supposed to be a help. But every time I assign it, I get this sort of stuff. It becomes a lesson about following the rules, which is useful, I suppose, but not my intention. I don’t want to have to give tough love in the classroom, but I guess that’s how it is.

So much of school is simple. You follow guidelines, you get a decent grade. Maybe not a great grade, without knowledge of what’s going on, but a good grade, at the very least. You just follow the rules. Students, please follow the rules. Then you’ll get a good grade. Please follow the rules.

If there’s one thing I’ve been learning about, it’s taking care of yourself.

Early this week, I felt really horrible. It wasn’t completely a sickness. It was strange. I just felt like utter crap, to the point that I couldn’t do anything. I went to bed, and basically slept all of Monday and Tuesday.

Now I feel better.

I never take care of myself, really. It’s damn important to, and I really should. I’ve been trying to get sleep since. It’s frustrating, since I can’t do things like talk to a certain kitty when I’m going to bed early, but it’s not worth falling behind in all the shit I have to do, as well as just generally feeling bad.

So, in the interest of relaxing, I’m not writing anything more than this today. Sorry. But here, uh, listen to this amazing song inspired by Barkley: Shut Up And Jam Gaiden instead. Or maybe check out FakeAPStylebook’s new twitter feeds, FakeNNWMTips and FakeeEtiquette. Hilarious stuff.

I’ll be back tomorrow.

Sometimes it takes sleeping for hours and hours to make you realize how tired you are.

Sometimes.

It bothers me how tired I am. Falling asleep at my desk at like 8:30 PM is completely lame. At the same time, if I didn’t need sleep, I wouldn’t be doing that, would I? When I go to bed at 10 and don’t wake up until noon or later the next day, it just kind of proves my need. I needed sleep.

Part of me says this is me getting old. I mean, I’m getting older. Time is marching on. I can’t just stress my body out like that. I need to actually get 8 hours of sleep from time to time.
The rest of me says that this is simply a sign of how stressed I am. Now, I feel like, for the most part, things are under control. Maybe not proceeding at the pace I want, but under control? Certainly. At the same time, I am being pulled in a lot of directions at once with no relief. I know that, if I admit to myself how I feel, that I feel that I need more time to myself. I need rest.

I need to sleep all day on a Saturday.

So, you know, I guess that’s what I did. It would be better if I could go to a Prospit or Derse to get more stuff done during that time, but I suppose I’m not that lucky.

Basically, I’m tired! That’s what I’m saying. I’m tired.

Awhile back, I had tooth problems, as you could recall. Recently, I’ve started noticing an effect these problems had on me.

I stopped biting my nails.

For the first time in my life, I have fingernails. Well, on some fingers. Some not so much, since they were seriously bitten down that seriously. But I have some fingernails!

It’s really kind of fucking me up.

One would think that it would mostly be benefit. “Hey, I can pick up coins from the ground now!” and so on. But I’m not really finding it to be the case. I have years, literally a lifetime’s worth of muscle memory of how to do things without fingernails. Now I can’t do those things. Even typing this blog, from time to time I find my fingers hitting the keys in an odd way, because there’s a nail on them, and I’m not used to accounting for it. I feel like I can’t do the simplest tasks. It’s really stupid.

I mean, I’m going to try to keep them. But I’m not going to lie: I’ve been tempted to gnaw them off, not because of the bad habit, but just to let me work without having to adjust. It’s weird. Fingernails are weird. Someday I might master them. Until then, I’ll bumble about when, say, attempting to pull a paper off of a stack of papers.

It seems really stupid, honestly, but I’ve been using Epic Win for a week or so, and it’s pretty amazing.

I’m really good at keeping things in my head. I always have been. I’ve never really had to keep much of a schedule or anything like that. As I got more and more into all this teaching and schooling stuff, though, I started to have to give myself loose guidelines. I used my phone’s calendar to point out when I had to be places. But I still never really connected up and attempted to keep a list of tasks. I still kept those in my head.

However, it was starting to become taxing, because to remember them, I’d have to go over them often. It sort of started to feel overwhelming in a way. I had heard of Epic Win, and I decided to splurge and try it. I liked the cut of its jib, so to speak, and I figured it might be useful.

I don’t know if it’s REALLY proved useful, but I’ll tell you one thing it has done. It’s made me feel like I’m getting shit done.

I often feel like I’m not accomplishing anything. Nothing is moving forward. I’m not doing anything. It can get downright frustrating, and contribute to generally horrible moods I find myself in. In reality, though, I do actually get a lot of shit done, and just listing it, and then completing those quests… it really makes me feel more productive. It’s a nice feeling. It’s something I rarely feel. Hell, take this blog post. I have a daily quest set to write a blog. Just checking it off on there when I finish writing this helps me to realize how much work I actually put into this silly thing. It’s a lot. It is significant, and it’s something to be proud of, even if it isn’t the most amazing blog in the world. It’s awesome to get to see that.

It’s also making me more productive as well. Or if not more productive, at least a bit less of a procrastinator, as I tend to set quest deadlines in empty spaces, spreading my various tasks out a bit more, instead of doing them all on one day. That’s another benefit.

Yeah, I really like Epic Win. I wish it had a bit more functionality. For example, I’d love to be able to link to my character, show off my stats and loot, and such. It also seems a little expensive, especially since they’re selling additional character classes as DLC. But hey, I’m getting things done and enjoying myself. I mean, I have a quest log now. That’s way more badass than a list of chores. I can get behind that.

I believe I mentioned that I never actually dress up for Halloween. I always get some ideas or something, and then never follow through because of busyness or laziness.

However, I had a Halloween party to go to, at my brother’s house. I was thinking it might be nice to dress up.
Then I had a dumb idea.
Because of this recent comic by one Phillip Armstrong, Phanto was in my head. I got to thinking, “You know, with a little effort, I could create some sort of shitty Phanto mask to chase me around.” I threw the idea at Brer, and he got a chuckle. “Okay then,” I said, “Fuck it, I’m doing it.”

I doodled Phanto heads on some paper, and taped them to bits of an Amazon box that was sitting in the room. Then, with a gigantic roll of duct tape, I attached the head to one end of a hangar, and the other to a belt, and used massive amounts of duct tape, and additional cardboard, to create a shitty harness system so that Phanto would float behind me. It didn’t work perfectly, and of course, when wearing the thing, I couldn’t, say, sit down. But it was something. I took the big key by our door, to give Phanto a reason to chase me, and went to the party.

Of course, when I got to the party, nobody knew what Phanto was. Well, a few did, but were still confused. I guess it was more of a strange concept, seeing as I wasn’t dressed as any of the cast of Mario 2. But hey, I made more of a Halloween effort than I have in years, so I’m calling it a win. Something like a win. Yeah.