Out of Practice (But also. Fuck Capitalism.)

I can tell that I’ve gotten really out of practice at this, because I fucking posted my last blog post without realizing that I’d fucking forgotten a title.

Ooops?

Ah well.

Apparently it was high enough quality to draw the attention of whatever hellacious spambot runs an account called “PROFITZONEGLOBAL” which decided to follow me yesterday.

I’m just.

Sort of so disgusted by it.

Obviously, apologies if it’s a real person, I guess? But like. Also kind of not, because like. What a disgusting, capitalist title, to be honest. And like, if it *is* a real person, whatever. Their priorities are super clear with a name like that.

I’m so fucking tired of capitalism.

I know it’s been a while, so like, LOL, oops if you missed it!

FUCK CAPITALISM, BRO.

It’s so frustrating, because I’ve been broke long enough to have my idea of value get totally fucked up, and then on top of that, I’ve spent years of my life (and will hopefully spend all future years continuing to) train myself into respecting that other people have different values, and they don’t need to justify or explain those to me.

Now – sometimes I get judgey, because I’m a human being, and we do that sometimes, but like. That’s why it’s a process, and why it’s something that I refuse to give up on.

I just. Singularly can’t sell things to people. Why should a person have to be convinced how to spend their fucking *precious* resources?

So yeah. Sales has never been my strong suit.

But.

I want to go places.

I decided that staying in my home town wasn’t going to help me get to where I wanted to go. (I still hold to this. I have amazing friends there, and a great support network, but like. It’s so bad for me to be there.)

(As has honestly been discussed at length on this blog at this point, though, so I digress.)

So I decided, fuck it. I’m just gonna go where I want to be, and see if I can make it work.

(It’s. going. But at this point, I’ve mentioned like, 8 things that need to be their own fucking separate posts.)

The point is.

Fuck “Globalprofitzone” and every single thing that they stand for, and every single thing that they are.

I don’t know how you found my blog, but you can kindly fuck off.

Good day.

Back At It Again

Since the last time I posted, there have been 8 countries, a broken foot and a cat gave birth on my lap.

So.

Life has been a bit intense, and I’ve been meaning to update the blog for most of it.

There was a month-long, involuntary internet detox in Spain, and I’m going to blame that for eating momentum.

I am currently in Turkey, on a Sea Turtle Beach, and there’s a lizard that likes to hang out in my room by the window.

It’s how I know this is the kind of place where I want to live FOREVER.

Alas, if only it were that easy, and one could simply live wherever they wanted to because they chose it. (I really am going to have to sit down someday soon and write a really long post about like. My own experience as someone who has always wanted to live in a different country and how that’s affected my life, and like, how fucked shit is right now, etc., but. LOL, that’s a different post.)

There are many many posts that I’ve almost written over the past few months, and I reckon there will be a little bit of me trying to get on top of that, and maybe some awkward not-back-dating, but whatever.

I think this is maybe one of the reasons the empty spots in my blog are so big.

In my head, I would know what I wanted to say, but I wasn’t making time to actually write the thing, so instead of just starting at now I would feel like I need to start with what happened at the beginning of my list.

I still have a document on my phone that is titles for 60 fucking blog posts from my time in Arizona.

Maybe sometime I’ll post that list.

It’s got some good fuckin’ stories in there.

In the meantime… I’m just spending the afternoon sorting through my life a little bit, trying to tie up some of the threads that feel like things I need to do.

Because, if I’ve done all of the niggling little things that pile up, and just take time – if I can just cross a bunch of those off the list, maybe it’ll be easier to actually focus on the bigger things.

I won’t be able to fill my life with small things as an excuse for not getting shit done. Because it’s terribly easy to fill time if one just looks at enough details.

Why no, I haven’t actually cleaned the light-switches with a toothbrush yet, how kind to point that out.

But. I don’t need to be cleaning light switches. It’s not a good use of my time. I am in one of the most beautiful places I have ever been in, and I’m meeting incredible people, and I know that I can be taking the steps I want to be taking to move forward with my life.

So, today is the day of metaphorically checking my pockets for everything that matters (keys, phone, wallet, headphones, hair tie, non-melt-able snack) and tomorrow is the day for forging ahead!

(Which, as I type that out, I think that’s probably what many people say in order to not actually get to the “forging ahead” bit, but. I don’t know. At least, for today, my procrastination will be productive.)

Practice Run

It’s been a long fucking time since I spent … any amount of time, really, at all, hanging out with like…. straight people.

It’s not really a very large proportion of my peer group.

I’ve spent the past few years living with heaps of people that are all widely varied and equally delightful flavours of queer.

This weekend, I’m going to go spend time with a truly dear friend, and due to her circumstances, she really can’t be out at home.

My water bottle has some excellent stickers on it.

Yes, those do say “Ambiguously Gay Vampire” and “Not GAY as in HAPPY but QUEER as in FUCK YOU!”

I am not subtle.

It’s not like shitty things didn’t happen being super fucking gay where I lived. But. I had very very limited interactions with people outside my direct peer group.

This going to be very different, and honestly – I think I’m really out of practice. It’s been a long time since I had to do that whole “passing” thing, especially when there was genuinely someone’s long-term safety on the line.

So.

It’s good practice. I’m going to be travelling places where shit’s not great for queer people. This is a good practice run. I get to brush off my skills that I haven’t been using for a while.

I’m…. really not sure how I’m feeling about it.
.

Justifying Joy

I’ve been having trouble lately, where I keep feeling like I need to justify my enjoyment of things. It’s… really really hard for me.

I also… fundamentally don’t understand.

I try so, so much, for my response to be encouragement when people are excited about things I don’t understand. I try so hard for my response to be something along the lines of “I’m happy you’re happy” or “I love your enthusiasm” or “I don’t get it, but I don’t need to, and you seemed stoked, so – *AWESOME!!!*”

It’s… really hard for me to know how to respond when someone just seems… utterly uninterested in supporting someone’s excitement.

If you go see a movie, and someone is like THAT’S SO GOOD, I CAN’T WAIT TO SEE IT AGAIN, and then they get a response of “Why? So you can just… see it again?”

…
Yes???

Because I love this stuff?? and I would happily experience this thing again? Because it’s made me incredibly happy and improved my life?

I… don’t understand that impulse. To… question when someone expresses a desire to appreciate something.

For the first response to be “Why?” like… because… I love this thing? It brings my joy?

I  … don’t want to need reasons other than that.

Love is so important. It’s so fucking special and precious.

Joy… is it’s own reason.

I can’ imagine anything worse than deciding that it’s not enough of a cause, or expecting that from other people.

It’s… really hard. And it’s really hard and very frustrating to hear, especially from people that I care about or hang out with a lot.

It’s. Shitty.

.

Focused Like a Laser (on a Disco Ball)

I am doing such a bad job of pushing through things right now, and I know it’s because I’m scared, and I’m really freaking frustrated with it, and SO. FUCKING. DONE.

So fucking done.

I’ve always been impressed with my ability to procrastinate – because my style of procrastination is generally doing other important shit I haven’t gotten to. So I won’t do the thing that is causing me to stress out, but I will burn through 14 kinds of paperwork and fucking clean the entire house and rearrange the freezer.

Which, of course, doesn’t *sort* the issue, so while I’m suddenly FAR more organized than I was, I’m still in the same place as I was before.

I. WILL. GET THIS SHIT. FUCKING. DONE.

No matter how much I sort of don’t want to – because really I desperately want to be done with it. Somehow it’s the actual fucking *doing* that gets in the way.

So.

Here’s to 2019.

The year of Doing The Thing.

I’m gonna go do the thing.

ONE THOUSAND POSTS!!!

This is the 1000th post I’ve made for this blog.

That’s… pretty fucking awesome, to be honest.

I started this blog April 26th, of 2013.

There are some bald spots on the posting calendar, for sure. But.

One thousand posts. Six years.

It’s… a lot of stories. A lot of thoughts. A lot of random, well-researched posts about soft-sugar mints. (Okay, well maybe just one, but that’s still one more than most blogs, so.)

I started this blog when I was nominally living out of my car, staying with my cousin in Austin Texas.

Since then, there’s been… more addresses than I can remember. More jobs than I will ever put on a resume. Enough countries that I have to list them all out or I’ll lose track.

There are also a lot of stories that haven’t made it onto this blog – the ones from when I wasn’t able to maintain a blog along with my life.

I have lists of topics that I’ll probably never write about – keywords and titles, reminders of stories from times when I thought I would be able to return to this blog, but in the end it turned out to not be the right time.

It’s interesting because… I kind of have a really shitty memory for weird things?  – Song lyrics I can remember forever, but sometimes I read stories from this blog, and I don’t fucking remember them at all, and it’s kind of hilarious, and also a huge part of why I started writing this blog in the first place.

I think I’m also back at the point where I can get back to the original point of this blog as well, which… was an early attempt from me at trying to successfully surf with brain chemistry.

I had hit a point where I was keeping protein bars by my bed because it was that hard for me to get up. I decided I wanted to create a challenge for myself – every day, I had to make sure I did *something* that would end up as a story worth telling.

I think I’m back to being in a place where that’s a good challenge.

It’s… really really good.

I am back to having adventures, and that’s exactly how I want my life to be.

so.

Happy 1000th post, y’all!

Here’s to 1000 more!

A Reasonably Major Detour

I am now stunningly free of my previous occupation, which is, to be honest, a little bit beautiful in pretty much every way imaginable.

My original plan (because we all know how much I love plans) was to go off and be a truck driver for a while.

(That plan is absolutely still in motion. That is definitely a thing that I am pursuing. I have the fucking 500 page permit study guide now, and sweet fuck is that ever intimidating, but, I digress.)

The plan to become a truck driver has been tabled until further notice, in light of several health issues popping up in family members still living in my hometown. As I am currently unemployed, I am uniquely qualified to drop all of the nothing that I have going on to head up and do my best to help out.

 

…

I fucking hate my hometown.

I hate it.

And, it has nothing at all to do with the town, or the people there. I just. – It’s a fucking wonderful town. There are so many opportunities there, for so many things, it’s a great place, a lot of people are just really, really happy there.

I still have people who live there, who mean so freaking much to me. (Driftpartner and Tawanda, for starters, but also just. So many people that I care about.)

But I fucking hate that town.

It’s a classic ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ moment.

It has nothing to do with the place or the people and entirely to do with my own history.

Part one of it, is honestly just that I was so deeply unhappy there, for so many years.

Part two of it, that’s harder for me to explain is the part that I know is entirely in my head.

I grew up in this town, I know…virtually everyone there. Everyone knows everyone. I can run into my school teachers at the grocery store. – And that’s all fine.

It’s just that, for some reason, for as long as I can remember, I’ve always had this feeling that success in my hometown…isn’t real.

–  Because even if I managed to be the most successful person ever to be in that town, I just have this feeling that I’ve not actually learned to be successful in life.

No matter what I accomplish there, none of it feels *true*.

Because I haven’t learned how to be successful in life, I’ve learned how to be successful in this one, teeny, out-of-the-way town, where as much as it might be my own merit getting me somewhere, it’s just as much that people remember me being on the swim team with their child Back In The Day.

It’s like. Inescapable nepotism, almost?

I go back, and I feel like it doesn’t matter who I am now, because everything that changed happened where these people didn’t see it.

So suddenly I’m the exact same as I was when I was fucking growing up.

I hate it.

It’s fucking suffocating.

-Which is, of course, only compounded by the part where I feel like…anything I try to do there is useless. Everything gained is inherently negated simply by the setting in which it happens.

Because none of it is a reflection of my actual ability.

It’s all just…cashing in on nostalgia.

Getting somewhere because I know the people to call, because I’ve always known the people to call, because it’s a teeny fucking town.

Someone says ‘I know I can give you this job, because I know you’re reliable’, but really I feel like it means ‘I’m going to give you this job, because I’ve known you since before you were able to talk’.

Which has… absolutely nothing at all to do with my character now, and who I am, and what I can do.

It also has to do with patterns of interaction?

Because I don’t want to be the person that I used to be, I was so fucking  miserable. It’s just so easy to get caught up in the same habits.

I feel like going back there is just… going *back*.

…which is absolutely overwrought and over-dramatic and what-the-fuck-ever.

 

I’m just so fucking tired of feeling like my life is stalling, and it feels practically impossible to move forward when I’m just… going back to my hometown.

Back into stasis.

Back to the same places I’ve always gone, and the same fucking things I’ve always done.

Which…is of course. It’s entirely up to me. I can make different decisions and do different things, and keep trying to move forward. That’s always going to be entirely on me.

It just seems so much easier to keep moving when there are no ruts to get stuck in.

Stay Afraid, But Do It Anyway

It’s a quote from Carrie Fisher.

“Stay afraid, but do it anyway.”

Last night I put in my two-weeks notice at my place of work.

I have plans – I *always* have plans – endless options, nebulous clouds of possibilities of things that I could do. Whether or not I actually manage to make any of them happen is always the issue though.

It’s not like I’ve ever been known for being particularly decisive in my life.

I remember a conversation that I had with my Driftpartner, when I first got back from Australia. I kept talking about things that I wanted to do, but I was using language like I didn’t think I could actually do it. I don’t remember what I said, but I remember that he looked at me and he asked ‘What happened? You used to be so foolhardy.’

I think perhaps it’s the nature of regret to be wistful.

It’s a pre-emptive decision to stop trying. It’s letting go of of hopes before ever attempting to bring them to fruition.

I think that I’ve spent a lot of time trying to reclaim something, and I think I’m learning to start looking forward more.

I can’t ever be what I was. Nothing can ever not change. That isn’t how the world works.

I think… for me it’s a matter of framing. It’s not about trying to be who I used to be, but it’s taking the things that I like about who I’ve been, it’s about figuring out what things have brought me to the places I want to go. It’s seeing those facets of my life, and bringing those forward.

Things will look different – as they should, because the only other option is pretending to be able to stay stagnant in a changing world – but it’s about remembering. I already have these tools. They might be a bit rusted or buried under layers of junk. It might take me a bit to remember how to use them properly.

That’s all okay.

The thing about “Stay afraid”… is that there are some things that don’t go away. Fear is one of them.

I have already lost things to fear.

I’m sure I will lose more.

That isn’t what matters. What matters is to do it anyway.

 

After all, there is no try.

Of the Wolf

The other day I was walking to the bus stop to catch the bus to work.

– I live in a very small town. I’m not hardly going to say that I know who *everyone* is, because that would be absurd.

I do walk a lot though, and at this point, I kind of recognize most of the other people who walk a lot?

So I was walking to the bust stop, and I passed this guy, and y’know. I’m from a fucking small town, and I do the stupid ‘smile and wave’ thing every time I pass someone. Or like – kind of give a nod of acknowledgement whenever you cross in front of a car? like ‘Hey, thanks. I know I might technically have right-of-way, but like. If you hit me I would still totally die, so thanks for letting me walk here, friend.’

I got to the bus stop and the guy walks up to me.

I had, of course never seen this guy before in my life, and he was slurring his words so badly I could barely even understand him, and – I’ll be honest, like. Dude was probably totally off his face on *something*.

Still, I was like. Trying to be friendly or whatever, kind of doing the whole ‘Smile and Nod’ thing.

He took my hand, and like, grabbed the back of my neck – (at which point, I definitely started freaking out a little bit because DUDE I DON’T KNOW IS TOUCHING ME AND HOW DO I GET OUT OF THIS.) – and he starts talking about auras. – Which, to be fair, there is a significant amount of conversations about auras that happen in this town. There’s a very strong subculture for things like that.

And he was holding my hand, and started telling me that I have the aura of a wolf.

He paused for a moment to contemplate that maybe I was a little bit fox, but then shook his head, and decided that, no, I was most definitely a wolf. Because wolves, as he said, “They look out for the pack, but they know, they have to look out for themselves first. You care for the pack, but you have to come first.”

… and then the bus showed up, and I most definitely sort of ran away.

But the thing is…

I like that.

And maybe this is going to be my year of the wolf.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been doing for the past year. Maybe that’s the path that I’m on.

I spent so long thinking that my worth was what I could give to other people. That there was some kind of glory in sacrifice and martyrdom.

Those thought-forms…run really, really deep in me. I honestly think that there will be no point in my life where I won’t have those ideas lingering in my brain at some level.

But I have never in my life met a happy martyr.

I’m fairly certain I’ve written it here before, but the advice that first broke through all of that in my brain: “Don’t do anything for anybody else that you wouldn’t be willing to do for yourself.”

If you’re willing to drop everything and fly across the country for your friend, be willing to do the same for yourself.

How in the world can I support the people I love when I’m not supporting *myself*.

 

So here it is, I guess.

I raise my glass to Creepy Bus Station Guy, and here’s to having the Aura of a Wolf.

 

Reflections and Nostalgia

I wasn’t really intending to start this post in this way, but I logged in (after being gone from this blog for a very long time) and I realized…

The last fucking thing that I posted was George Micheal.

I guess that it’s just that things change? – or maybe. It’s not so much that *things* change as that the perspective with which we view things changes.

Or I’m just being incredibly soppy and cliched at the moment. (But with a title like ‘Reflections and Nostalgia, I feel like everyone knows what they’re getting into, at the very least.)

This year has been… Well. Certainly not always the most enjoyable, but I think, also, a very necessary step for me to move forward with my life.

This time last year, I was in New Zealand. I was working at Steampunk Art Gallery, and I was doing every single thing I’ve ever wanted to do in my life, and I don’t know if I have ever been so desperately unhappy.

And this year… The holidays have come, (and I will forever and always HATE every single ANYTHING that has even the SLIGHTEST BIT OF A HINT of being about Christmas*) but… it feels like victory.

The people I have in my life now aren’t asking for things I can’t give.

I am doing better at not asking for more than people can give.

Part of being in a support network – I always imagine it as a spiderweb. It’s strongest when woven together, but every strand of it still has to be able to support itself.

I think…that’s where I’m at right now.

Balance has never particularly been a strength of mine, but I also don’t really think it was a *goal* of mine, either.

I think that it is now, and I think that – as with many things, “balance” is a nebulous, ever-changing goal. People aren’t static, what we want, who we are – it all changes, and so “balance” will change with that.

I think maybe that’s kind of beautiful.

I think that maybe I like the kinds of things – maybe “goals” is the wrong word.

Perhaps it would qualify more aptly under the heading of ‘More Guidelines Than Actual Rules’.

Which is good, because I have significant issues with authority and have never really been particularly good at following rules anyway.

 

All this is really to say:

Hi! I know it’s been a while, but I’m back, and I am so fucking happy to be here.

Happy fucking new year.

Fuck 2016.