After last week’s post about the end of National Novel Writing Month and my goals for maintaining my writing habits going forward, I feel kinda bad writing about my continued deep and abiding exhaustion. Being at work has been draining, as it always is, and I’ve found myself frequently feeling spread too thin. Doing too much is kind of my defining character trait at this point, since I can’t really seem to figure out any other way to live my life and do the things I’d like to do. There’s just too much that I need (or desperately want) to do. So, I’m going to talk about the thing I bought myself as a treat for being a Responsible Adult (aka, doing all my DIY and cleaning projects before people showed up for Thanksgiving) and then read during my post-Thanksgiving recovery weekend. I finally decided to buy and read all of the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels. Specifically the large color ones. This has been on my to-read list for at least a decade at this point, but I usually just forgot about them (my reason for not buying them in the past five years) or didn’t have Graphic Novel Money when it came to buying books (you can get more book per buck with a paperback and I spent a lot of years needing to manage my entertainment budget very closely). I mean, I really enjoyed the movie and one of my closest friends loved the graphic novels, so it felt long overdue. Plus, I got a huge Black Friday discount on them despite ordering them over a week before Thanksgiving, so that helped. It also helped that there was a Netflix show that recently released and I figured I ought to read the graphic novels first.
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I Feel So Relieved Already
Just one week later, not even seven full days getting my mole removed, and I’m already wondering what I was worried about. Sure, I’m still in the active wound-care stage of things, but I’m notably less self-conscious of the bandage stuck to my face than I ever was of my mole, and that’s even with the bandage feeling way more noticeable than the mole ever was. It just bothers me so much less. Honestly, the only gripe I’ve got about this whole process is how I have to shave every single day. I learned the hard way that more than a day’s worth of facial hair growth makes the bandages fall off much more quickly. Most of the other gripes I’ve had (such as how bad the wound looked) either faded away in the first few days or I’ve learned how to counter them. For instance, I might still be unable to bite into large things (like an apple), but I’ve gone back to drinking as usual and gotten the hang of eating various more easily bitten foods without making a mess or accidentally putting pressure on my wound. It has all become fairly routine at this point and while I’m definitely eager to get to the point where I don’t have something stuck to my face twenty-four hours a day, I’m honestly just happy to not have the mole anymore.
Continue readingMy 1000th Post: Today is the Day Tears of the Kingdom is Released
As this goes up, I am sitting in the parking lot of my local Best Buy. Either in my car or in the folding chair I keep in my trunk near the door. I think my Pro Controller for my switch is dying, since I’m getting a lot of weird input lag and short bursts of unresponsiveness that seems to be getting worse rather than staying the same or getting better, so I’m going to try to get one of the Tears of the Kingdom themed Pro Controllers if this store has any [they did not, but I managed to order one online that will arrive while I’m in New Jersey]. I’m not sure they will, since there is no guarantee that they’ll actually have in-store units of any hardware these days, now that scalpers buy up everything instantly. If I can’t get it today, I will probably wait to see if they ever restock rather than picking up a normal one. After all, I regretted just buying an OLED switch when I wanted one rather than waiting for what I figured was the inevitable upgrade or special edition unit that I just had to buy.
Continue readingIn Time
A thousand idle dreams
Race through my mind
In the time it takes
To change lanes
And I fly down the highway,
Windows open,
As the stereo blasts
A melancholic upbeat tune.
Post Vacation Check-In
Well, I had a great time. There’ll be more coming about all that (especially once I’ve had time to sort through pictures and decide what is going where when it comes to social media and my blog here), but I wanted to interrupted my previously planned posting order to do a few updates about my schedule. I’ll get those out of the way quick so I can talk about something more fun/contemplative for the rest of the post.
Continue readingSense Memories, Grief, and Growth
The last time I was updating my blog as rigorously as I am updating it now, I wound up stopping because I had too much stuff going on. Between work, my grandfather’s final months, trying to support my family during that time, sorting through my feelings about my family, and being forced to confront the loss of the one person who seemed to just be happy to see me any time my family gathered, I just didn’t have the time or energy to keep up posting. Plus, a lot of the time I spent on things like consuming media or resting vanished as I wound up driving back and forth from my home to my parents’ home. It was a trip that took about three to four hours to travel just one way, depending on the time of day and traffic, and I was doing that at least once a week, sometimes twice as I haphazardly worked from my parents’ guest bedroom when I could and had to return home when work demanded my physical presence. The only thing that made this segment of late 2018 (from November onward) and early 2019 possible was that I’d just gotten into podcasts.
Continue readingI Overstimulated AND Overwhelmed Myself at the Same Time Today
I spent a great deal of today staving off an anxiety attack. A lot has been going on lately, you know? I’ve also got a lot of stuff coming up on the horizon like an international trip, a wedding I’m a part of, job applications, needing to move this summer, and way too much more (mostly work stuff I’m not putting here because that’s transient stress/venting and I want to avoid venting about my job on the internet). Plus, I’ve have had a few long-running relationships begin to crumble over the last couple days thanks to people choosing the dumb wizard game over doing the right thing in support of someone they cared about (me, a non-binary person). It’s been wearing on me, to the point that I am a confused mass of emotions and exhaustion that vascillates between wanting to collapse and feeling mostly fine (which is mostly me coping for work since I need to be at least a little present and presentable while I’m on the clock). I need rest, I need some quiet, I need some love and support from my friends, and I need to not hyperfixate on the latest Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom trailer.
Continue readingA Rainy Grey Day in January
It rained today. It is the middle of January and, instead of the freezing cold, snow, sleet, and “wintery mix” I’ve grown accustomed to in the Midwest, it merely rained. It was a cold rain, to be sure, as the temperature is hovering right above freezing and driven below it by every gust of wind, but it was not a freezing rain. It plinked off my umbrella with a liquidity I don’t typically expect a month into winter. Usually it bounces off my umbrella with a plonk and snap, as the fabric repels the solid crystals or sludgy drops, but today it plinked and then slowly rolled away. I know the cold and bitter winter I expect is still hovering on the horizon, waiting for its chance to invade once these warm southern winds finally leave it be, but it feels like it lost any real chance it had to take hold this year, despite the havoc it wreaked around the holidays.
Continue readingThe Weather Feels Like March in the Middle of January
The weather has been unseasonably warm recently. Usually, at this time in January, the local temperature is bouncing around zero degrees Fahrenheit and the heavy cloudcover means I don’t see the sun for weeks at a time. This year, the only zero the temperature is jumping around is zero degrees Celcius. We’ve had multiple days with almost no wind, a decent amount of sun, and tons of humidity (enough that work is staying at a damp 20% humidity or higher instead of it’s usual mid-winter single-digit levels). All of which followed a week of blistering cold that finished off all the plants still clinging to life thanks to the unusually warm fall we had. Now, as I go for my walks amongst the browns and yellows of dead plant matter, it feels like I missed two months somehow and wound up skipping ahead to late March.
Continue readingThe First Taste of Wisconsin Winter
[Another casual reminder that I write these a week before they go up, since it’s currently summer in Wisconsin again]
It is snowing again today. Over night, the temperatures bottomed out in the high twenties and even hours after dawn, with temerpatures flirting with freezing for hours already, there was still the pale remnants of the morning’s frost on the deep green grass outside my apartment. Flurries of small, damp snowflakes fill the air like mist and dampen the world as the trees drip what remains of the snow that landed on them from their brightly colored leaves. I am bundled up against the wind and chill, my layers quickly dug out of the closet when it became clear that my usual fall garb would be insufficient for the day, and still I briefly consider turning around for a heavier coat. I walk along the sidewalk, tracing the same old path from my front door to my car, but far more attentively than in past months for fear of slipping on the ice that stretches across the sidewalk. Today, I miss the comfort of holding a warm mug in my hand as my new coffee cup prevents any heat from escaping it but I am grateful that my coffee will still be warm throughout my entire drive to work on this blustery, snowy morning.
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