goodbye nov
11/30/2023
Oops, I notice tomorrow is December. And? I'm working 7 days in a row again. I'm probably going to force myself to go to the gym after work, but... I really don't have time for anything, even when I manage it by restricting phone use and haven't logged on social media in two weeks. (Also, my wifi is unstable again. Yay. And it's hard to troubleshoot because it often only affects my PC.) At least my paycheck will be decent next week... I'm probably going to pay all my personal bills off with my first paycheck by default. And I need to cancel my insurance plan next day off. My experience with getting insurance and a doctor last year was a fucking nightmare, so I stopped seeing that PCP in the fall of last year. I got a new insurance this year, but only paid it monthly as an emergency and never used any service. Going to the doctor last year took too much money from my tax return, hopefully not using any services besides premium will give me enough next year... I was seriously planning on paying off my debt with it. My last PCP didn't even help me, yet my tax return was paycheck-sized and not huge like it was when I didn't have insurance.
I stopped playing vanilla Neopets.com but I ended up falling down a rabbit hole for petpages. Obviously the stuff from the 00s is long dead (I used to be obsessed with Christoph_Christine the black-and-white split Aisha and that Wocky based off of Inuyasha...), but things from the 2010s beyond aren't, albeit with watermarked Photobucket images. I found some interesting coding resources that are usable today! It's interesting because while a lot of the aesthetics are a result of what was "cool" at the time (tiny text, meant for desktop only, etc), there are similarities to the new web communities here. Neopets and most free hosts are static and a lot of petpages take advantage of that in really clever ways; I found some tutorials (you need an account to view these) for anchoring and how to make "blogs" that are all on the same page - because unless you make a "website" by linking separate petpages together (not unheard of, but a pain in the ass), you have to get creative. It makes me wish that the people who were making fancy pages for things unrelated to Neopets moved to Neocities or were aware of other free hosts, because TNT used to be so strict with the banhammer... And all the character petpages are lost to time.
Here are two 2010score pages that stand out to me (again, you have to be logged in to see them):
A lot of these resource pages are often connected to guilds, and when I see their affiliates section and "thanks to" in credits, it makes me sad. Neopets has been in my life for 21 years, but I never really interacted deeply in the community outside of being the village idiot on a now-gone forum that skewed mostly 16+ and the Neoboards as a tween, until I started playing by myself. But I'm mostly too paranoid to interact with the new community because social dynamics online have changed so much, it makes me paranoid. Apparently one artist I looked at as a kid is active on Neopets again, I might dust off my vanilla account to mail her...
...
11/27/2023
Not really much going on I guess, but some not so great things.
1. Attempts at productivity keep backfiring lol, but at least I'm not on my phone. One of the first pages I attempted to make before I understood how coding works was a review compilation of games I thought looked interesting from an itch.io bundle I bought years ago. They're on my PC unzipped, and yet... I just don't think I can play games on my PC (yet)!!! My Switch's SD card is also full (I literally have two Xenoblade games on it) so um... Not like I can scrape deals from the eShop right now. (On that note, Engage is 30% off on the eShop until December 3rd. lol!! You know I had to say it because you-know-who is in it...)
2. I called my boss asking why I didn't get paid for my vacation. I was told it's because I'm not a full timer. Except I basically work full time hours most of the time? Or I guess Not Enough to be actually full time on paper. Whatever. I'll take my L. I was on the right track with paying my bills off early with the first paycheck of the month before vacation. I'm honestly really tired of this job, but I kind of got this one by being in the state's workforce solutions before the pandemic; The guy who assigned me this job said I can call him again for another gig, but I honestly don't know if I'm good for anything besides another retail job... I did like doing stock though. The minimum wage is so fucking low here it makes me hesitate to just jump to a new job, my raise is not very much in the standards of other places ($12 an hour) but way more compared to the state wage of $7.25... This is why any advice that tells me to "just move" gets shot on sight. The paycheck I made from one week of work is ironically closer to part timer money...
3. My tablet broke. I think it's the stylus or something. I'm really bummed out about this because it broke right in the middle of working on something and I'm better at digital art than traditional now. (I don't have a scanner... I just take pictures with my phone lol) It might've been my fault, honestly. My sister gave me her XP PEN years ago and I ended up liking it a lot after the Wacom model I used broke, it basically replaced it. Luckily the Deco 01 v2 model isn't all that expensive and does exactly what I want. I never even used those buttons on the side...
When I look through my sketchbooks, it is interesting to me how I was better at traditional for a time until 5 years ago when my personal psychiatric crisis happened. But then I stopped enjoying it, I literally had a tub of markers and colored pencils I used to combine and use constantly. My traditional sketching now is ironically really disproportionate and hideous, but redoing digitally looks better. Maybe I can bootstrap myself to do traditional art for awhile...
blaH
11/22/2023
Some things...
First, my concerns about not having offline copies of my site were remedied a few days ago, after finding this Neocities downloader. Now I have an offline copy of my site and can just drag new stuff in the folders on the site, but I notice I still need to direct link to images to have them show up on VSC... oh well. Does anyone even know how to do that? Please be patient with me! My prior experience was literally Neopets and Geocities/Freewebs.
Second, my step one for restricting phone use even more is I was going to place my phone across my room for alarms, so no phone use before bed + I'd have to get up when it goes off. When I first tried this on Monday, I ended up waking up 2 hours before my alarm. On Tuesday, I ended up getting up to snooze but that's probably because I'm low energy when I'm likely PMSing. (Yeah, TMI. Don't care.) Anyway, this appears to be working, and I started playing my Switch before bed. Now I have a new page 70% done! Hopefully it'll be done by tomorrow.
Third, I uh... got the deposit for my paycheck early and I'm a little concerned about it. I thought my vacation was paid-time off, but it seems like I was only paid for the one week I worked. Jesus. I wasn't paid when I got covid earlier this year either, even though I did when I got it in 2021. I called work about it hours ago, but my least favorite manager is closing and told me to talk to my boss about it on Friday. Man... Now I know why I haven't taken a vacation before. (It was worth it though...)
Fourth, I told my mother about wanting to get a license next year. The thing is, my sister isn't going to let me drive her car (I know) and we probably aren't going to get a second any time soon. But I still want a license and the ability to do it, so I might try to talk to my dad about it tomorrow. (I'll probably bring up the truck thing even though I shouldn't take things he says when drunk seriously...)
Anything else? Kind of, I have something a bit loaded I want to post, but it'll probably have to wait.
i think i cracked the code
11/19/2023
I guess an 8hr morning shift is one way to come back to work... I think a new guy was hired on my vacation, but I noticed he didn't come in before I left. Not again!
Well, whatever. I did have a revelation at work though. My attention span has visibly been shot down worse in the last several years, and I think I figured out why. This has happened ever since I've been employed. Wait a minute... how did that happen? Social media fucked my attention span when I was a NEET, but I never had a large presence (I was too paranoid to talk to people when Tumblr was at its most Like That) so it didn't distract me. I still was able to play games on Steam before my old laptop stopped being able to handle it, and in 2017 I would play my modded Wii for a few hours a day. I technically first noticed this during the absolute hell of 2021, where working full shifts every day during the holidays made me so physically exhausted I couldn't do anything but lay in my bed on my phone. I was almost late to work one day from being online on my phone, so I did some interventions. I removed my browser, I removed Discord, I have no games or anything. (Actually, when I had FEH reinstalled I... forgot to play it sometimes???) My interventions continued last year, but even on my breaks at work I still gravitate to my phone despite having zero interesting things to do on it.
I fucking hate how modern society hinges on using smartphones. I hate how the "easy dopamine" is basically giving everyone some faux-ADHD (I've honestly become a skeptic of the diagnosis now despite being branded with it after dropping out). Flipping open your phone is zero effort for stimulation, to the point playing a video game, reading a book (an ebook, even), or drawing gets too boring quickly because you don't have instant gratification. I tried to play a game on my break but ended up pulling out my phone instead. Remember when the "ADHD kid" stereotype was that they can be glued to video games for hours, but now that's too much effort? I realized I can't even have my phone turned off 24/7 because I use it as an alarm clock, I need reminders to get through the day. I have a calendar on my phone with my work schedule. I wish I could just shut it off and throw it in a lake. But then work or family might call me. (I actually lost my shit at my mother weeks ago for putting her phone on "Do Not Disturb" without knowing when I needed an answer from her after work.) The fact children are being given these things by their dumbshit parents when teachers would punish you for having a flip phone out (not using it, just having it where they can see it) 15 years ago is insane. (My only IRL crush's kid had a phone. Is it any wonder why I haven't had another?)
So what am I going to do? Probably going to look into getting a new alarm clock and maybe one of those watches that can do reminders for Christmas... (Watches for medication reminders might work, since I have at least 5 reminders on work days and use a timer for my breaks.) I first got a smartphone when I was 23, because it was given to me. I didn't rely on it much because I was both a NEET and didn't have anything going in my life that relied on it. But if I'm living in society it's not avoidable. I think one reason why smartphones prevailed is because you can do so many things on it, but that backfires on me. I always end up gravitating to what's easy and instant. I draw in a sketchbook, I write in a notepad. I watch shows and movies on a TV, I play video games on their designated console. I used to listen to music on an iPod. When I was a NEET my mom would be confused how I wasn't able to watch shows or movies but could be on my computer for hours, it's literally because it's "low energy" and I can change what I look at any moment. I actually tried to look into getting a refurbished iPad or a portable tablet to do digital art on without distraction, but they're too expensive. We have "less clutter" but at what cost? Having no energy but to doomscroll and not be able to handle watching anything longer than a Tiktok?
If you think sounds boomer, you should hear my rants about pharma. Teehee! (My boomer dad is addicted to Tiktok now...)
vacation ending
11/18/2023
I go back to work tomorrow, but I'm still waiting on a response for what my schedule next week is. I'm mostly hoping someone got hired to the replace the guy that quit this week so I can do stock again, but they're not high hopes. Never mind lol... When I got up this morning, I started with the rework of my links page but I just got... bored doing it. I've been sad today. Not because of my vacation ending, but my family worked today so I was home alone loafing. I hesitated to take a vacation for so long because I wouldn't have anything to do but sit at home, which is why I put so much money aside to go out some days. (I actually only spent half of it, since not being a consoomer helps and on Thursday I got Christmas gifts and some clothes for myself at a different location of my job. Good thing too, since I'll probably have to Uber this week!)
I ended up not cleaning up room (I sweeped under my bed this morning though lol) or setting up my consoles. I kind of hesitated because... I guess I've been less tolerant of being lonely, especially in the last 5 years. Talking to people to a screen is a cheap imitation of connection, but after dropping out it was really all I had after losing my IRL friends + my friend who lived across the state and went to college way back. Among other things... I was in a social group when I was 17 but I fell out of it too. Playing games more again is probably better than doing nothing online, but... Maybe I should. I used to sit in front of the TV as a child because it felt like simulated company. (TVs are better than phones, at least...) The way the presence of a computer in a room has fucked up my attention span for the last 20 years really needs to have something done about it. I'll probably hook up my PS2 since I know damn well I lost that USB with all my games and mods on it.
I have no idea if or when this household will get a second car. But I really think I should get my license next year. My dad attempted to teach me when I was 16 (the boomer method, on some abandoned road with some other cars passing by) and I was pretty decent at it. But that [redacted] years ago. I feel like not learning how to drive back then was something I wish I could beat my past self's ass over, because it's the major thing that tied my down for most of my life. After I "became celibate" last year (quotes because it's not like I had any options lol) I realized that I only sought potential relationships as a way to potentially move in with someone, but I just felt like damaged goods and a sociopathic freak for not being capable of/too hypersexual for a typical romantic relationship. Most people in my age range are looking more towards settling down than lifelong friends to shoot the shit with. But it's not like I can drive out to find these avenues if I don't have a license and the shared car is being used for work every day.
My dad actually said something about giving me his old truck months ago, but he was piss drunk so who knows if he remembers or meant it. I'm almost tempted to bring it up again. You raised me wrong, at least give me a fucking car.
idk
11/15/2023
A forum I was on as a teenager is still online. It's 99% abandoned, but I left a message in a bottle for any potential people still there. I didn't look at the full scope of my old posts, but just looking at 2010-2011 I saw some shit that was verrrrry regrettable... But I really don't think I should have things I said when I was a a fucking teenager used against me when I didn't commit any actual harm to someone. But at the same time... I'm gonna cry. I burnt a lot of bridges when I was 18 and even if I was an immature person and found people I wish I never met on "the old web", a part of me feels both excited and conflicted over the idea of meeting people from that long ago again. Especially since I...don't have any real contact again. I deleted Facebook. My Twitter is locked, logged out of, and I don't know if I'll ever use it again (or frequently if I do). I have a lot of complex, mostly negative feelings about Tumblr I want to unpack here one day.
How old am I? Well, that's something I don't outright state here and leave several hints to instead, because I want people to comb through my site like a schizo and compile details about me to figure it out. But honestly, not very old in the grand scheme of things. That's normally what I think, but I thought "how old am I? again when I was skimming Sexypedia yesterday. I looked at the character suggestions, and saw Quakerjack from Darkwing Duck proposed with the disclaimer "hear me out"... Ex-fucking-cuse me! This made me feel so old and young at the same time! I didn't even grow up with Darkwing Duck (I watched reruns as a teenager a decade after it aired), but it was such a mindfuck seeing Quackerjack proposed as a "weird" character for someone to like, when it was so easy to search on DeviantART and see so many fans who wanted to fuck him...
Is this not something people do anymore? Has Google become really that busted that you can't dig through things posted 20 years ago? On one hand, a part of me is relieved. I tried to see if stuff from a username I had online when I was 11 years old was still online, and it wasn't. It felt like a rebirth in a way. But on the other, maybe for other people who had that happen to them, they lost some really important stuff. On the other hand, I was confronted a few hours ago that other forum is still online and those whiny, offensive, just plain dumb old posts were staring at me in the face. Even if certain online staples that went downhill for political reasons (Livejournal, DeviantART, etc.) are a ghost town, even back then looking at stuff on there was my hobby. Even when I was 10 I would look at Neopets on archive.org...
A part of me longs to reconnect with a lot of people from the past, but a part of me is terrified who I am now wouldn't be compatible with them now (even if I'm not all that different). But it doesn't hurt to know or try.
mall
11/13/2023
I went to the mall today! The last time I went earlier this year was uneventful, but I had a lot more fun this time. Mostly because my Hot Topic finally had some capybara stuff besides the stupid buttons. I got a capybara bag!!! That's right, I'm basically a celebrity. I'm just so cute that I get to see my face plastered everywhere. (Joking...)
I was worried I would spend too much, but honestly I'm a lot more frugal than I thought... I don't buy clothes at the mall, I just think about how much cheaper the occasional gem at work is! It's also so easy to not buy things when you're not a consoomer or don't...buy frivolous stuff in general... I see stuff online saying, "Cancel your subscription to X! Don't buy things from Y, they support this!" when it's like... girl, maybe you should, but I ain't subscribed to any of that or have time to buy fancy Starbucks... I don't even use Amazon... If I do buy stupid shit it's off Etsy or people's Shopify stores.
It's so weird how out of touch I am with media in general. It's always been like that, but it's even more obvious to me now that being "nerdy" is "cool"... I'm either not interested in, not familiar with, or only passively like the things I see merch of anywhere. Fuck Disney and Marvel, when I leeched off of a family's Disney+ subscription I just watched the 80s-90s stuff and tried to get into the Ducktales reboot (I'm sure if I actually watched it, it would be my third favorite cartoon...but alas). I stopped caring about anime 18 years ago so I don't know about any of that. Getting me to watch a recent anime is like twisting my arm, except you'll probably end up with a new arm. The last new anime I watched that wasn't something silly like Molcar was Devilman Crybaby, and that was only because I was already familiar with Devilman by chance. Anyway, same applies to most video games. (I literally still only own a Wii and PS2...) Don't care about Pokemon anymore. I passively like Kirby and Sonic, but do I really need/want some random merch of it? Nope...
So I didn't spend too much, but the purse, some buttons, and lunch was enough for me. I also forgot how much energy I have despite being capybara-shaped, I literally was not exhausted walking around all three floors of the mall. Sometimes I randomly sprint at work and people notice. Capybaras can run as fast as horses, you know. I'm ashamed of how I haven't been to the gym in so long but at least it's easy to catch up. I don't plan on spending any money again except for when I go out on Friday. What will I do the rest of the week? I was going to rewatch Friendship is Magic when I came home but I sat on Discord instead. Le sigh... Well, there's always tomorrow. I woke up surprisingly early despite going to bed past midnight (at 7AM). It feels like the middle of the night but it's only past 6:30PM. That's the power of literally training yourself to go to bed earlier for a year. Even if you don't have to work, there's the benefit of having your day last longer.
vacation soon
11/11/2023
My vacation starts tomorrow!!! Despite being employed for three years I never took a vacation. I have some ideas for what I want to do that isn't going out next week; Off the top of my head, I have to clean my room (lol), rewatch Friendship is Magic (the last time I did was during the pandemic!!!), I also finally took out my consoles and might hook them up at some point. Maybe I should stop by those stupid retro stores to see if they have something that isn't overpriced or a scam? That one weird mall outside work has one of those stores, I notice a lot of it was overpriced but some older games are somewhat in my price range. (I am not paying anything near the price of a new game for something published 20+ years ago. Fuck off. Also I started avoiding that store because the owner got mad I took a photo of the merchandise... it's not like I'm shoplifting with my eyes.) I really need to hit the gym again too... I haven't been able to for weeks because of work and it shows. (Ew!) I miss doing stock because it was doing a mini work-out early in the morning. I hope a replacement for the guy I had to cover for is hired on my vacation so I can go back to doing that.
Before I went to bed last night, I looked at my stats on site traffic and I was kind of shocked by what I saw. I've been getting way more unique visits than I thought! I tend to assume 50 different people see my shit, but it's actually... Very much not that few people... I hope most of these visitors got a laugh from what I've shared! It's so funny how I dreamed of making a website as a teenager, but I too ~anxious~ to acknowledge that people will actually look at it or try to respond to me. (That's why I didn't do well on dA as a teenager, looking at my comments could trigger some stupid anxiety attack...) Why couldn't I have just toughed it out? Maybe it was the surveillance paranoia I've grown up with, since I know one site I made sometime in the 00s my mother found and yelled at me for what it had. lol... I get so angry I missed out on the "internet fun" I "should've" had as a teenager but it was hard when I had paranoia issues and family breathing down my neck.
I will say something that's on my mind that I suspect some visitors are thinking. On the Engage page, I make a joke implying people mad about certain changes by Treehouse must be you-know-whats. (A shrine I'm reworking but has been sitting for weeks because I worked constantly outright said similar things.) But then this summer, I say the patch edits in Skullgirls that remove a lot of legacy content is bad thing. FYI, I have a revision of the former page that fully explains my opinion that will be published when I finish my replay. (Or maybe I can just publish when I'm done coding some sections? I know what happens anyway lol) I used to be constantly criticized for having a mean-spirited sense of humor growing up, I think people have become too terminally offended in the last decade. But that was something I do think landed badly and comes off as hypocritical. Even though the former was a mean joke and the latter was an actual opinion peppered with jokes... Whatever, I thought we were supposed to be going back to the old days, not doing Tumblr-tier "accountability".
What are some other site things on my mind besides what I posted yesterday? I've wanted to try to utilize Lightbox. It's so funny how I initially wanted an art gallery because DeviantART has become cancer but I don't even finish things enough to post (not to get political but it's...sounds like some kind of sick satire that the site known for Sonic recolor OC feet and inflation for over a decade was bought out by a company that supports genocide but it's...true...). I REALLY NEED to make those OC pages for my other major OCs besides Sparkler (also, draw them). I also have some interesting concepts to write, but they all involve re-watching things, so I'm not going to say what they're about. (I do want to make "Was X really that bad?" a series, since that's what my MLP G3 page is about.) Also, I want to utilize the layout I made myself that I've only used twice.
My shift today is a night shift, which is why I was allowed to sleep in til 9:30AM and am sitting on my ass writing this shit. My least favorite manager opened yesterday, but she wasn't as bad as she usually is. Hopefully she won't be closing tonight.
coding issues and leaving therapy
11/10/2023
I don't know why, but I keep thinking about the ways I kind of fucked up with coding this site. I was thinking about how I want to have an offline mirror of this site and/or something that could be easily transferred to another host (no plans to do this, but just in case) for easier coding (I still upload images before I use them even though I'm sure I can do that via the server Visual Studio Code uses) but... Damn. I really didn't plan ahead with a lot of this shit last year, lol. It took me until this summer to code offline, but the backups I made of this site last time are from April. My site is too big to download on Neocities. In my defense, I'm really dumb about a lot of this because my previous experience with websites was literally on Geocities, so of course when I found Neocities I blew off the complaints about the file manager or not being able to run more complex things like PHP.
One of my future plans is I want to buy a domain when I pay off my credit card debt. I don't plan on canceling my Neocities subscription, so I've considered...making a "test" website for what I'm "supposed to do" with coding? The issue is what it would even be for, since I hate compartmentalizing myself and want to use this as my landing board for everything. But the "way" I did things is just... I don't know. I don't think I'm making any sense here. But off the top of my head, it bugs me how I don't have separate .css files for everything (in my defense it makes live editing easier and I do different things on every page), links within the site is the full url (which is the biggest roadbump for coding offline and/or theoretically switching hosts)... Sigh. I have so many pages on this site too.
Lately I've been in the mood to write, but not code. On my last day off I tried to redo my links page, but I just... didn't feel like it. I still chipped at my WIPs though. Well, starting Sunday my vacation begins. 7 days to myself and while I plan on going out (working those 8hr shifts paid off - literally) I do want some days aside to watch G3, finish my Engage replay, and other stuff. (The G3 page was ideally going to be done by Halloween but while I have the "get the fuck off social media" part of attention span regulation done, I don't have the "please just sit and watch something instead of being on Discord" part yet...)
This was going to be yesterday's entry, but I didn't finish it. But it's been 2 years since I left therapy for good. Thinking about this is really fucking painful for me. Because leaving therapy and deciding to be never medicated again was the best choice I ever made, but it was such a hard one. Being reliant on therapy as my only form of support IRL really made me realize how alone I am. I told my last therapist I was going to kill myself by now, but I didn't. My life outside of work revolved around therapy, it felt like some kind of stockholm syndrome when my last therapist was an active enabler and all the other ones I saw or consulted with didn't know "what to do" with me. I was seeing two therapists at once that year, but I dropped one pretty quickly for being liberal homophobic to me on the first session and later victim blaming me (so much for being "trauma and LGBT informed").
This event wasn't marked on a calendar so I have no idea if this was before or after I left therapy, but one painful event was when I was so close to giving up and went back to the low-end clinic I had my life ruined at for a decade. I had a booked appointment to see a different psychiatrist to medicate me again because I gave up, but right before I was let in I was told the price for it and it was out of my range (I think I already used my paycheck up). Appointments were free when I was unemployed, but the thing is they didn't even tell me the cost over the phone like they used to. This was sprung up on me and I just walked out. I had a breakdown at home, almost did something really fucked up to myself, and self-isolated for half a year after this. I was dealing with a really toxic circle online that I implied before. This shit fucked me up mentally, since between online shit and therapy I didn't have anything else.
The reason why I'm so fucking loud and annoying about this is because I don't want anyone in the same place I was to feel alone. I am so sick of how leftoids treat therapy and medication the same infallible way religious conservatives treat "God" and church. The condescending "I'll pray for you" in the 2000s turned into "go to therapy" in the 2010/2020s. Saying that if therapy/religion didn't work for you, you need to just didn't "work hard enough"/"didn't believe enough" and just go to a different Church/see a different therapist and try a different medication. One of the worst things about ~trauma therapy~ was when I was asked if I had any safe people in my life. No, I didn't. I'm a figurative teenager because every traumatic life-ruining situation I've been through from age 5 was completely alone, and "just talking about it" and "coping skills" doesn't do shit for the damage it caused. My family was not helpful or supportive when I was going through traumatic medical issues and flashbacks from 2019-2021, which was why I clung onto therapy as the answer even though it did nothing but hurt me even when I was forced into it as a teenager. It was the only space I could speak openly, a cheap imitation of the support I wish I could get since I never had a real community. Even an anti-psychiatry support group I was in told me to go back to therapy!!!
At one point I found out I wasn't completely alone in this. The modern internet is so politically homogenous and full of different extremes, but I found this fantastic post by a detransitioner that repeated all the same criticisms I had about therapy even though the situation was completely different from mine. The sentence "Therapy is political reprogramming" hit me so fucking hard. After I self isolated for half a year, I had to unpack everything I believed. Who was I and what did I really think outside of the fear of "punishment" from the herd mentality that online groups are so prone to? Late-2018 I ended up going on a personal "quest" to deprogram myself from the shit I was brainwashed into from age 18 onward, but it led to being reprogrammed. And I realized therapy played a part of that. I did a lot of things I regret in the last 5 years.
Sometimes I'm kind of nostalgic about parts of this self-isolation spiel? I did art again and tried to work on OCs, but that was during my "ugly phase" with art and little of it was presentable. (It's all lost on that HD, anyway...) It was kind of the precursor to the runes; Before I dropped out of high school, I was actually good at essays...when it was something I cared about. I used to write essays/articles/reviews/etc. in private that are now lost on my old HDs, but I did write a lot of political essays in private and among some now-deleted Discord servers. Last year had a lot of ups-and-downs (I developed a PCP-approved eating disorder and gave up on seeking anyone in December...), but I let myself enjoy things again after 4 years of torment. Now I'm back to making rude jokes about video games and cartoons like I was always meant to...
something sitting in my head
11/5/2023
Sexual topic / possible TMI...
I haven't drawn in weeks. I've been too bummed out to finish anything and I get strung up over technique. But one thing I noticed is my art was finally halfway getting to where I want it be because for a few years I basically practiced and let myself have an ugly stage (the worst part)!!! But one thing I've been thinking about is why do I hate drawing horny shit? Earlier this year I thought it would be funny if I was one of those hornycoded artists that never drew anything explicit, but even then that's something I don't like doing. Even now when my art is starting to get actually good?
Well, let's see:
- The climate around NSFW art in general is too commodified, parasocial, and disgusts me (it's gotten worse since there's no major active art site anymore besides arguably FA, so you have to "make a brand" on social media). I've been strongly critical of porn/sexual commodification for over a decade but I always considered 99% of fiction a non-issue. But it's sad to see the same industry-like mechanisms for IRL porn be replicated with art.
- It was something I felt pressured to do the moment I turned 18 and pushing myself to draw things I wasn't ready for turned me off it completely (especially since I forced myself to draw men lol)
- I have never had a safe/comfortable outlet with sexuality and I always saw it as an opening to be sexually harassed even more (since...that's happened even when posting SFW art...)
- It just feels revealing in a bad way. I'm okay with talking about it. But not really showing it.
But the thing is I'm not even a prude. My hypersexuality came back last year and it's kind of a nightmare to cope with (especially when I gave up on finding someone compatible with me nearby and dislike porn lol...). Half of the artists I follow post things like that. It doesn't bother me. It doesn't offend me (when I do see something "offensive" I'm more concerned about the artist's IRL views than a gross piece of art). I just...don't care. Last year I basically spent a month memeing over shipping and I how I barely care about it as much anymore as I used to (both for "growing up" and "my views on relationships and what I wish I had IRL radically changing" reasons). I still do have a handful I still care about, but I don't seek content because they're rarepairs or on the less popular side anyway... It's probably also I've had bad experiences in shipping fandom as a teenager too, but I just don't care about fictional sex nearly as much anymore.
On an old now-deleted page of hot takes I wrote last year that 90% of shipping puts a bad taste in my mouth because it reminded me of how much of an unhealthy coping mechanism it was for loneliness, and it led to meeting some people I wish I never did (starts with g and ends with roomer but this person got a woke baptism and is a righteous keyboard warrior now). Anyway, it's in a similar vein that it reminds me of how some of the worst people I've known weren't just "coomers" or "weird shipping fanatics" but people who are so dissociated from their IRL sexuality that they're exclusively interested in fictional sex and think their lack of interest in real people disqualifies them of predatory behavior. (Many such cases!) Well that's an interesting can of worms to talk about, isn't it? It's almost as if I developed an interesting collection of un-PC pattern recognitions/personal red flags in the last 15 years.
It's similar to how I wasted my 20s, obviously factors out of my control led up to it but a part of it was my own fault. Being so obsessed with ships and NSFW artwork etc really was something I did because I was terrified of my own sexuality and was self-aware that not having in-person avenues to figure things out organically was too much for me to handle, so I just saw myself as sexless and unloaded that on unrealistic scenarios between canon characters or even OCs. That's not even a bad thing in itself, it's normal. But when it "is" or "becomes" your whole sexuality I can't see that as anything more than denial. I don't even consider it a form of lack of sexuality either - libido, arousal, sexual behavior, attraction, etc. are all present, it's just in a non-"normative" way. Why the fuck does every dysfunction have to be treated as an unquestionable identity/state of being?! My whole life I've had literal severe trauma responses and symptoms of being heavily medicated just explained away with a "maybe you're just ace/[microlabel]" (even from my family and therapists). Seriously?
I never felt attracted to a real person until I was 28; Mostly because I didn't let myself look at women or have female friends after facing some traumatic homophobia as a teenager, which is why diagnosing me with a label was worthless. I didn't learn about my own body and what makes me tick until last year, continued onto this year. I think I finally realized this year who and what I really want, and while there's a disappointment that it's not feasible currently, it's also... so much different than what I fantasized about involving characters or liked looking at in art/reading about in stories. Because I get the appeal of taking yourself out of the equation and letting the possibilities go wild, but there was such a weird fear and self-hatred in seeing sexuality as something other people can have, but not me. Because my experiences otherwise was just violence. Being handed an "XYZ-sexual" microlabel just masked all that. I hate that so much.
My feelings on this might change. But if it does it'll be organically. My other reason for just not enjoying drawing sexually explicit things is I've never been good at it. (And you have to draw something often in the first place to get good, but if I don't like doing it period, then... lol) I considered if I should make a separate NSFW site, but I rarely share things like that in public enough or even make things like that to warrant it.
Tired
11/3/2023
It's funny how many times I've snapped in the last 5 years but have still managed to have some shreds of hope in me that I cling onto. (I may or may not had a decent day but got triggered at work right before clocking out...)
As much as I don't like capitalism it's kind of terrifying how one too many people are convinced the only way things will "get better" if we just Kill All The Bad People and forcibly re-educate everyone else. I'm serious. I've lost so much hope in politics and have walked out of a lot of these conversations in private because people act the same but with different labels/motives behind it. So many people are all talk and have no realistic, feasible options that the average person can do. I saw an archived website talk about "internalized capitalism", okay, but what about "internalized religion". Basically everyone has that. Everyone is so culturally Christian even if they claim to be secular or consider themselves Pagan or have "converting to Judaism" in their bio online. (That's another can of worms...) I remember growing up in the 2000s I would know so many otherwise intelligent people shut their brains off when "God" came into the picture and I still see that in the 2010s-2020s (so far) but with something else.
"The revolution" really feels like progressive's version of "the rapture". So many "secular" communities and people still believe in things equivalent to sin and redemption. That thoughts automatically lead to actions or that you can be "tainted" by solely looking at something "bad" or outside of your worldview (there's a lot to unpack there...). Or that things outside of your bubble are filled with subliminal messages to brainwash you. Anyone who has talked to me in private in the last several years has heard me go off about the "suffering is a virtue" mindset. We will probably never escape it. Anyone who talks about how irrational religion is but think how much you suffer is a mark of a good person (which is why so many people will pull out "marginalized" categories to put themselves into) is the same to me.
whatever (again)
11/2/23
When I have multiple days off in a row, I tend to shut my phone off entirely. I wish I could have it turned off more often, but work might call me, I use it for alarms, I listen to music on it, etc. When I have my phone turned off I also attempt to rebuild my music library - I don't use that streaming shit, since I was 15 I just had a folder of mp3s I put on my device! Well, like I mentioned last time, I lost 2 HDs and recently I lost my entire phone SD card with 15 years worth of music. Luckily I have my ways to find things, but not everything...
I tend to resort to Deemix for mainstream music, and when I dig for music I listened to in the 2000s-early 2010s, I get... depressed. It's so wild to me how teenagers and young adults have some longing for the 2000s (probably just wish they had an internet that wasn't doomscrolling) when it was probably the worst time of my life. (I'm sorry but it was SUPER fucking homophobic!) But at the same time, I miss it. It was bad but it really feels like things have gotten worse. It really feels like my circumstances never let me "live" each decade people thought were so great to the fullest. Each age that ended in 8 had some cultural shift that I never got to really experience what life was before. I completely wasted the last decade, but that's because everything that happened before that traumatized me so badly.
But part of it was my own fault. "There's no such thing as wasting your 20s!" - Yes there fucking is! I really wasted so many years dissociating, having "mentally ill" as my identity (to be fair, being diagnosed as a child led to that learned helplessness), and not doing anything besides hoping that taking medication and that I'll "find a good therapist that has the answers", and being too scared to talk to anyone (yes, even online), leave the house, or speak out against how so many people I knew just became NPCs... I see a lot of people now repeat these same mistakes I did a decade ago now... What can you do... It didn't take until I lost my autonomy and had my health ruined by my last negligent psychiatrist and the pandemic to break me out of it. Every day I regret not doing this sooner.
"I was a victim of circumstance / failed by the system" (dropping out was a matter of the adults around me not giving a fuck - no, "therapy and medication" was not the fucking fix to that) and "I ruined my own life past 21" can both be true. Some of the former ties into or led to the latter, but the things I could've control I really not regret taking charge of. And the worst part is... I didn't spend most of those years challenging myself with art or other creative pursuits... I can't get those wasted years back, but I'm finally going to be the person I should've been all along. I do think Web 3.0 plays a part in it with how it affected politics, it's seeped into my real life too. My mother is almost 60 and she doomscrolls Twitter too. It feels like making computers/internet a necessity instead of an acessory was step one to all of this.