Shutting This Down

Oct. 22nd, 2017 – 4:08pm

So, I recently started a Style Savvy blog, and given the nature of my 'Overly Personal Blog' and the way my life is going currently, I think it might be in my best interest to actually shut this whole thing down and just use it to bounce people to my Style Savvy blog and reviews blog. (Or maybe not the reviews blog, since it needs a serious overhaul.)

I've been sick all year, like some kind of joke, so all of my projects have gone completely out the window. Everything. The one and only thing I've really been able to do is play a stupid fashion game (well... actually a great game, but... hard not to dis it when I feel this way) and make posts about it on one of North America's most time-consuming online social communities. (Seriously, it takes between four and seven minutes for me to slog through Miiverse to upload photos and make posts, assuming I can write the post in less than a minute. Logging on sometimes takes over a minute. Since I can't upload multiple photos at once...)

I used to be extremely keen on 'just being myself'... but the overlap here with a game played by children and an internet populated mainly by people who I find, frankly, terrifying...

It isn't a time for 'being myself' or for taking risks anymore. I'd hoped to actually kind of 'come to life' or develop some excuse for a social life, but certain circumstances beyond my control keep denying me this, no matter how hard I work on them, or what way I work on them using.

Personally, I look at my own posts and feel that I like that person. (For me, that's an unbelievable accomplishment. However, I won't waste time here explaining why.) Whoever wrote that, I like that. Why change it? But then you bring in other people. Then you bring in the reality that I have no social network and no community and can't have one – my beliefs, feelings, my body, and my basic existence don't mesh with the LGBT community, the right wing and/or the left wing (which are part and parcel of the same system – two halves of the same body), the millennials, or pretty much anything else other than old hippies 25 to 40 years older than I am... (An age group I have seriously considered limiting myself to dating within.)

Damn, can I do anything else but rant? I've seen some evidence that I can, but I'm never healthy enough for long enough at a stretch to be able to turn that shit into anything.

So now I'm left wondering whether I should revert all of my posts to drafts to empty the blog or just put up a notice ushering people on to my less scummy, somewhat more legitimate (but still mostly empty and fundamentally worthless) blogs.

Finished Oct. 22nd, 2017 – 4:23pm

Shutting Down Silently

2016 Nov. 9th

So...
I've been trying to keep this blog, or the idea of it, alive for a while, and I've been working on various things to post on it that aren't just more stupid dime-a-dozen rants... but it's not working out for me.

So I think I'll be withdrawing from it and kind of shutting it down, given the new political climate. There's no point in continuing this. I might try to keep working on the reviews blog, but everything personal is just totally out of the window now.

Well, just another one-of-a-few-million useless attempts at a blog, right?

I think I had something more to say here, but I'm chickening out. I'd actually been working on actual articles to write for this thing, but I don't see any point to it now. Chicken I may be, but it's often the chickeniest chicken that gets to live to run away another day, know what I mean?

Another Worthless Update

 2016 Oct. 10th

Well, my health has taken a severe turn for the worse... It feels almost like some kind of divine retribution, brought on by daring to try to make myself into something like a respectable human being over the course of the summer.

My sense of self-worth at this point is even worse off than my physical health... It looks like it's been completely obliterated. I no longer do anything around the house, I'm not studying, I barely read, I exercise only every few days, and overall I'm actively avoiding doing anything. This isn't like me, and I can't really handle it. Pushing myself only makes it worse.

I don't feel like it's any use getting into it right now, especially not given that this blog is functionally a sort of semi-public echo chamber...

It took me a while to realize that one of the reasons why I was having trouble making understandable lists of symptoms or expressing how I feel is that I'm actually somewhat delirious and I've kind of dissociated from everything. Losing my awareness of my actual condition, and what I'm really able to do, is terrifying. (And leads to a lot of accidents when I try to do anything, some more hazardous than others.) This falls into TMI territory, but the other day (October 6th), rather than bowel movements, my body was producing gobs of mucus into the toilet. Medical intervention (or rather, begging the medical industry to pay attention to some part of this that can't be 'cured' with antidepressants, Pepto-Bismol, and codeine) has proven to be something so much worse than utterly pointless that it becomes a joke, unjokes itself, and then rejokes itself. I'm really tired of this kind of shit... (No pun intended?? Oh well. Too late.)

Sushi and Sea Slugs Surprise?

2016 Aug. 13th

It's not as interesting as it sounds.

Well, two surprising or interesting things for me today...

Today I made vegetarian sushi... My first time making sushi. I'd been thinking about it for a long time. Somehow, I finally managed it today.
I made two rolls, but the good-looking second one... no pictures survive of it. It left no traces, ha ha... It was devoured quickly. I have a picture of the bad-looking first roll:

Hideous Sushi

Now, if only I had stopped to take a picture of the one that didn't look like it might have come out of either end of a dog... It was gorgeous... but the proof of that is, unfortunately, that it doesn't exist anymore.

I used black rice with plain rice vinegar, Koyo nori sheets, gomashio, dulse flakes, cucumber, local carrots and radishes (from this morning), and mashed hard boiled egg (from days ago). Somehow, it came out of this tasting like flowers. (Even the ugly roll.) I rolled it using a dish towel and some plastic wrap, which seems to have worked pretty well the second time. The first time, well... It served to improve the second one. I guess.

I feel like I accomplished a lot at home today. I woke up in a pit of despair this morning, but for some reason going to the farmer's market somehow refreshed my spirit, and I ended up able to do things. I didn't have any real stamina to do things, but managed to get them done anyway with some tricks. (I am way too used to living this way.)

So... in between things... I watched the latest episodes of Thunderbolt Fantasy and Cute High! Earth Defense Club Love! Love!... and to my surprise, CHEDCLL crossed some kind of a line this episode. I keep thinking they're going to hit some kind of a wall, where they won't go any further.
Today's episode was all about hermaphroditism and poo. And friendship. Or frenemiship. (Or maybe just shipping, depending on who the audience is.)

Blaaaaaank...

This interesting non-sequitur pretty much opens the episode.

Need more be said? Well, it's said anyway:

Words cannot capture my facial expression.

It's then followed by this.

PANDA POO BOMB

...Which somehow tops all of the "monsters" in all previous episodes. So simple. So... elegant. This even has "Orifice Tornado" or whatever it was called beat. And that monster of chest-hair-envy consisting of a pec toupee with nipples for eyes (in a show where no one has nipples). And the guy who just needed someone to receive his balls... and the guy who turned into a ball. (?!)

Anyway, I was lead through a series of mental in-jokes after watching the first few minutes there...
Sea slugs >> Left Hand of Darkness >> Left Hand of Slugness >> comic series about wrestling somehow involving gastropods >> Bette Midler's "Boxing's Been Good To Me"

Image not related.

I love this show. Whether I like it or not.

So... well... I was entertained. I accomplished some things, and I was entertained.
It felt like a good day. Unfortunately it's now "tomorrow" as it's almost 2:30am as I write this.
I guess I'll end with this screenshot of Thunderbolt Fantasy that kind of made my day sometime last week, for no particular reason.

I've been waiting years for a character in this sort of genre to say something like this...

I can't even bother being ashamed of watching this... stuff.
No, one last thing:

A Deep Pit, part 3

Part 1, Part 2
2016 Jul. 15th, posted 2016 Jul. 31st

Bringing this back around to the original thing, the Facebook group I thought of creating would have been called "Whole Gender - Embracing the Innate Androgyny in Everyone".

The idea being for it to be experimental... I don't know anyone, so just make a name, a description, and then let the 'Peanut Gallery' run wild in it and see what happens.

I don't have the energy to run or manage a group. It seems utterly doomed to fail.
So... should I bash my head on this, just to prove that I tried? Just to be able to say "THERE, I tried. There's the proof. (Now shut the fuck up about it.)"

On the 14th, I had some kind of a breakdown. (31st - However, as of posting this on the 31st, I have no idea where I was going with that statement... or what it was going to lead into. So I figure I'll just leave it and post this and deal with that later, since whatever it is hasn't really gone away. It's just continued on for all of this time, or 'non-time'.)

A Deep Pit, part 2

continuation of this post
2016 Jul. 12th-14th

I feel like an animal in a deep pit, wasting the last of my energy scrabbling at the walls, just making them steeper as I struggle. I don't know how to meet people... compatible people. I don't have the energy to just subject myself to thousands of people and pull off looking energetic and problem-free, hoping that I can still recognize some that are tolerable and some that 'click' in the midst of that infinitely distracting, burning cacophony. I'm not cut out for this.

I desperately want some kind of human contact - quiet, gentle, and honest. I'm not interested in 'playing the game', which I've heard so often brutally pushed as 'the only way to do things', or somehow inescapable - somehow necessary. It isn't. "Bullshit" isn't the only way to handle existence... and it's certainly no way to make true, lasting friends or acquaintances. 

I can feel time bleeding away from me... As time goes on, even just on a daily basis, I can see me and my family getting more and more isolated, and less and less able to reach out, and less and less able to deal with people, or even form bonds, as this goes on.

I'm surrounded by a culture which is basically made out of endless, towering layers of bullshit. Bullshit that feeds on itself, endlessly, as if it had a life of its own. The internet feeds this, gives it a habitat to expand almost infinitely.

A total bullshit culture... loud and assaulting... impenetrable. "Their mouths are open and their ears are closed." A massive world within a world, made of rhetoric, feeding on itself like an ouroboros. (And apparently, feeding on everything else, also.) A world where the myth of the myth is more important than the truth, which must, at all costs, never be mentioned. Even so much as moving in such a way that may possibly hint to others, sideways, that there is in fact an unmentioned elephant perched on the living room coffee table will result in a quick assault and threat of expulsion from 'legitimate' social circles. This is madness. No... THIS   IS   SPARTAAAAAA.....

In this state of vulnerability and deep need, I'm the perfect prey for people who like to “GIVE ADVICE” (usually new agey victim-blaming shit – just a way to puff up or stroke their own egos... gives them someone to stand on)... among others... So many others...

How can I possibly connect with others? All the roads seem closed. I'm used to going the 'back way', the underground way. Moving quietly while other people shout and/or party. But at this point...

A Deep Pit

2016 Jul. 12th
(about 9-10pm)

Well, I had an interesting day today, in a very subtle, suffocating sort of a way. ("In space, no one can hear you scream.") And the whole thing brought me to a really, really stupid idea. An idea with painfully predictable results.

I thought of starting a Facebook group, knowing that Facebook is not for that. The people who 'succeed' at Facebook are the people who already have at least some kind of real-life, in-person social network to build from.

I had looked at groups to join on Facebook before, but... as I might have already said somewhere around here... I hate Facebook. I only use it begrudgingly, and only signed up for it because it was the only way to get information on a meetup event in the area. One that I had already already missed at the time I signed up for it.

It's stupid, but I'm still torn about what to do about my identity... or maybe, 'non-identity'. I know so few people, it's fundamentally irrelevant. And really, I'm not here to look like a thing. I'm not here to put on some kind of drag act and present some kind of 'gender face'... I just exist. It's always been that way. Why bother people? I'm annoying enough already. I don't want to bother people.

And the thing is, if I start connecting this shit on Facebook with me... It will be out there and public and inescapable. I already can't escape it, but that's just me. What about everyone else? Does it even matter? It does. Can I ride with that? All the way? It will mean part of my identity being hijacked into someone else's 'movement' - being 'fitted' into their rigid, ever-in-flux definitions of gender, their labels, their 'fight'. Not mine. Mine is a distinct thing - as with so many other people. People who just kind of... disappear... because we're not running around wearing a rainbow flag, shouting about shit in people's faces.

I think a stronger form of the fight for the right to exist here, really, is to exist quietly, without disappearing. This is what struck me after the Florida shootings. The key here is not to have huge loud protests, or violent protests, or harass "cis" people... but to continue to exist in an everyday way, quietly, without disappearing. But where's the line between flaunting yourself and just existing? For a 'freak of nature' like me, or an intersex person, or a trans person, simply existing and being visible is enough to offend people outrageously. In a lot of places in North America, it simply being even vaguely hinted at that one is "GAY" is enough to mark a person as intrusive in the lives of others, and invite proactive attack. Attack that, as 'actually normal people', we can't really do much of anything about in return.

Okay, so... it comes down to 'just live your life, as yourself, as best you can'... Without being loud or demanding. Gather your friends, be close with real people, and make that your mark on the world (instead of, for instance, shouting rhetoric at people while dressed in a rainbow thong and saying it's your absolute right to do so).
Okay... so... where does this really leave me?

I struggled earlier today with trying to write a blog post, due to being moved by a bunch of things that kind of 'collided' today... I wrote something relatively clear in my personal journal, but found that I couldn't manage translating it out into something that worked on this blog. It lost all context, and I couldn't weave the contexts and references together to make it work. And in the end, it still left me with this same thing I'm talking about.

I feel hopeless, currently... which is dangerous for me. The reality of suicidal depression doesn't come from the things people most popularly hold it to... It comes from an existential feeling of a total loss of other options. As animals, we naturally gravitate to other options... until we feel we've lost them all. Whether it's just that we can't see them, or they really are gone... it differs with each person and situation and incident.

I desperately, desperately want some way to be able to be with other people, some path that leads to real human connections... and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do to push myself any further in that direction.

For me, 'going out' consists of 'targeted strikes'. I don't have the energy to waste on the frantic frenzy in the social wildwaters that almost everyone else with a public face seems to. Besides, I'm damaged goods. Naturally this brought me to the 'other side of reality'... where the broken people go. What about support groups? I've been over that again and again. I've watched relatives fail at it. I hate "therapy". I've seen what it's like and what it is, and where would I even fit? Also, I feel it's unhealthy. It's just a little club for people with the same illness or addictions to kind of feed on each other, at its most basic... and it depends on labels and medications to make those 'clubs' work. I don't want any of that. I'm not interested in that.
Really, literally, flatly, the only thing I am interested in when it comes to anything social is real human connection. Good or "bad"... However, even "being honestly hated" isn't enough. It wears on a person, it isn't really nourishing. It can be kind of replenishing, but only like getting a bucket of icewater in the face. We all need something 'good', in some way. Something that doesn't come along with torture or punishment as a payment, or, in fact, any kind of payment. (For instance, to have anything to do with artist communities in a productive way, you have to pay for friends... by making interesting art along with them, and then hope you wander into the right communities... and have the energy to keep trying.)

What's the use of writing all of this?
Where should I even be putting my energy?? There's so little of it to work with.

I had more to say on this, but I might continue it later... (unlikely.)