Some days, as I go through the ordinary tasks of everyday living, I find comfort in the humdrum moments of the life I live. Much can be said about the power of the familiar and the comfortable. Like a cliche in a pleasant movie, we enjoy the familiarity as much as we might decry the sheer normalcy of it. Everyone wants change, and excitement, and for the world to respond to us as we seek to interact with it, but few want it constantly.
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Play Some Happy Music, Sad Man
I had an awakening yesterday (a week and a day before this goes up), while I was preparing to run a Dungeons and Dragons game. I’d spent the day in what I like to refer to as “low energy mode” since I’m struggling to find even keel after a few tumulutuous weeks (relatively to the past few tulmultuous years) and was looking for a way to get amped up for my D&D session. I was genuinely excited to run it, but most of the day had slipped by in a fugue as I went about my work tasks and final prep. So I turned to music to shake me from my stupor and get my brain moving.
Continue readingSome of these Toxic People Apologists Really Need a Mirror
There is a segment of the population that, for whatever reason, views severing ties with someone as always the fault of the person creating distance. I say “whatever reason,” because you can usually figure out why if you dig a bit, but the reasons tend to vary per person and most of them deny it if confronted (at least they do in my experience). Normally, I’d list exceptions here, things that even these people wouldn’t argue with, but I couldn’t type out a single one without thinking of a time someone faulted me for ending a relationship with someone for exactly that reason. It is staggering, sometimes, to think about the number of relationship and abuser apologists I’ve encountered in my life, and how many of them were otherwise good, friendly, sensible people.
Continue readingBeing Single Doesn’t Suck. Being Lonely Does.
I’ve been single for most of my life. Which is probably true of a lot of people, but not something I frequently hear framed in those kinds of terms. None of my relationships have lasted very long (usually for good reasons, but not always) and I’ve spent most of my adult life seeking a romantic partner. Pretty passively, if I’m being honest. Partly due to life events and partly due to my distaste for online dating, but mostly due to my preference for a strong personal connection as the foundation for a relationship.
Continue readingI’m Just Gonna Unload All This Anxiety Over Here, By The Other Anxiety
I had an enjoyable day, today. Facebook was down for most of it and, as much as I’d like to say I got a lot done as a result, I definitely did not. Partly because I have already taken steps to disconnect myself from Facebook and partly because it was hard to focus while enjoying the feeling of being free from one of my larger, more nebulous anxieties.
Continue readingProgress Feels Nice, No Matter How Small
Because I write these posts a week in advance and then never look at them until the day before they post (to edit them), I’ve started to notice a lot of habits I’ve developed around my writing and the way I think about it. For instance, I almost always feel like what I’ve written is overly emotional in a way that will come across as self-indulgent. Or that some key element of it that was supposed to be subtle and clever was actually just clearly apparent and I spent too much time patting myself on the back for how terrible it actually is. Or that I’ve gone and made myself vulnerable on the internet and what I’ve written will surely be seen by someone who is going to figure out how to use it against me. Or, worse, that I wrote something about my past and someone from my past is going to read it, track me down, and confront me about it.
Continue readingMy Favorite Way To Waste Time
In childhood, declaring your favorites was a mercurial process, changing as quickly as you experience knew things and begin to think about the world in new ways. The common thread, though, is that it is always something fantastic or exciting. You have a favorite color, a favorite snack, a favorite patch of forest, a favorite park, etc. As you grow older, you still have favorites and you still appreciate all of those things, you but you start to develop more mundane favorites. Favorite soap, favorite plates, a favorite mug, favorite socks, favorite times, favorite beverage temperatures. It can seem a little depressing from the outside and it’s frequently held up as a sign of being a boring old adult.
Continue readingPandemic Reflections 18 Months In
I had the thought this morning that, if the pandemic got bad again and I was forced to work from home continuously or was partially furloughed again (with a corresponding return to actually life-sustaining unemployment benefits in the US), I am now in a position to really take advantage of the opportunity it would present. Which is a weird thought to have, given how royally fucked up my life has been as a result of the pandemic and the fact that I had similar thoughts during the initial furlough and work-from-home period.
Continue readingPuzzles Are Fun
I’ve always enjoyed puzzles (had a puzzle party when I was 4, because I loved them so much), but they represent a sort of one-and-done amount of entertainment that has made it difficult to justify the cost. The introduction of local programs that allow you to change out your used puzzles for someone else’s used puzzles (usually with a small fee to support the local business coordinating these efforts since you’re not buying a new puzzle, or using a store credit system similar to buying and selling old video games) has made it easier for me to get my hands on new puzzles and they’ve formed the backbone of my non-electric entertainment over the past year.
Continue readingLiving Life In Compatability Mode
I’ve been using the same copy of Microsoft Office 2003 since I got it with the laptop I bought for myself that year. When I went to college, I would send the papers I wrote on my laptop to library computers to be printed. The library at my college had a much better budget than I did, though, so they had the latest microsoft office version, meaning I got so used to seeing “File Name [compatability mode]” at the top of all my documents that I eventually stopped noticing it unless I wound up editing a file started on the library computers on my personal laptop.
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