Darren Endymion's Blog, page 7

Updates and Ramblings

Today I pretty much have nothing but fun little updates.

— I’m still waiting on the apartment stuff to go through as the window it will take to move grows shorter. When/if it is approved, I will have to put in my two weeks’ notice that day (or the day after if the news comes later in the day).  I will have to pack everything, call the moving company, tell all my friends, buy a plane ticket, and be ready to move within two weeks. Talk about hitting the ground running.

— I have not yet been sucked into Pokémon Go, though I have chosen my starter and been preemptively summoned to team blue, or Team Mystic. It’s what I would have chosen anyway, were I willing to get sucked in. What’s hilarious is all these grown ass men and women at work talking about catching Ghastly and Charmander and Pikachu and the evolution of various levels and stuff. It’s funny that all that playing we all did when we were younger comes back in a moment.

— My supervisor at work just handed me his entire job except for the HR stuff. I’m supposed to do that along with my normal duties, which are too much for one person anyway. And we are going to be moved to another location within the building within another few weeks. What none of them know is that, as discussed above, the moment I get approval for the apartment (gods willing), I will be packing my shit for another reason.

— I’ve started to read The Howling and within the first three pages I realized that, unless that bitch died within another page or so, the setting was totally different. I mean, the ONLY resemblance so far is the main character’s name and that they go away on a vacation for her mental health. It’s good so far, just different. This is on the cusp of me re-reading Stephen King’s Cell and hearing that the movie blew old goat testicles. So, I think I will re-read Burnt Offerings and then watch the movies, which only fleshes out the ending. “Why change the books so much, damn it all?” – the Eternal Cry of the Jaded Geek.

And so here we are.

Catching Up

Several things are being worked out at the moment, and I’m here to tie up those loose threads.

— The ex has weaseled his way back into the place I live, courtesy of my roommate, in what I expect is some one-sided, gay Harold and Maude vibe that I can’t deal with for much longer. My ex is vacillating between being friendly, checking me out when he thinks I’m not looking, and being an outright jerk. No matter what, I’m not sure how anyone would think I’d want to live with my ex. But “it’s only for a month.” My little ass. I need outta here, which leads me to…

— The apartment complex my best friend and I are trying to get into (in another state) appears to have lost our paperwork. What the hell?! They don’t know if it was in transit to the application place, or someone in the office, or what. Photocopy that shit, people! They have been in contact with us, apologetic and accommodating, and we mutually figured that the best way to get over it was to resend all the paperwork. Our potential move in date will be adjusted accordingly. However, in this last bout, I was so focused on sending all the right paperwork that I forgot the check for the application. Called them today, they are fine with it, and we should hear back, at the latest, a week from today. However, they seem pretty sure that we will get in and they are holding the apartment for us.

— I’m still e-mailing my old editor (who is still willing to be my current and future editor). I explained to her some of the things going on, and she gave me all sorts of tips and help. They understand some of the changes I’m looking to make at the moment and told me to just write away and let them know when I’m close. Life intrudes, but if things go well, I’ll be good to write with pretty much NO distractions within about 2-3 weeks. Well, save for the Olympics…

— Which I am obsessed with. I always am. Not normally a sports person, I go insane and record everything. I took gymnastics briefly in college and I was okay. Too much fear. The irony is that I could do a lot of the harder things, but the simple ones I sucked at. However, despite the fact that one of my future husbands, Danell Leyva, didn’t make the men’s team, I am happy with the teams. I tend to watch the women’s gymnastics more, and am happy that Aly and Gabby are back, though I have switched my allegiances to Laurie. She’s adorable! And Simone…well, nobody can touch her. If the move happens in time, I may be watching the Olympics in my new apartment.

— Another thing I may be doing in the new apartment is celebrating what would be my six-thousandth anniversary at my job…without it. My original hire date was early August, and instead of dreading the day and taking it off so I don’t have to deal with the well-intended congratulations, I may be unpacking and watching the Olympics in my new apartment in a new city in a different state. Full circle.

So, I’m waiting on the precipice of change and a new stage of life. I want it over with, or at least to go on a decent, smooth pace. Change is hard enough, thank you. Wish me luck.

Waiting: the Devil’s Jabbing

All week I was looking forward to today’s entry, thinking that I would have good news to impart, that I would be able to talk about how I got a call from my (hopefully) future apartment complex which I will be sharing with my friend, and what my move in date would be. Instead, I have nothing to report.

The application process should have taken 3-5 business days. With the 4th of July holiday, that meant that Tuesday the 5th should have been the last day of their possible processing time. When that day passed, full of nerves and horror and stomach acid, we thought that maybe with the holiday they were behind a day. Wednesday came and at around 4 we still hadn’t received a call. So, I called them.

Essentially, nothing had happened. There was no word from the background place at all. The woman I spoke to was very nice and said that she would send off an e-mail and hopefully get back to us this week. It has only been a day, but we did not hear anything back today.

This is no trivial manner. Things are getting worse and worse for both me and my friend at our respective home places. I could write a five-part series of entries on that subject alone, but I just don’t have the strength. My friend Merrot is in a situation of spiraling lunacy, and another dear friend of mine (with whom Merrot is living) seems to be becoming unhinged from all the pressures, not the least of which is her lunatic, manipulative, domineering boyfriend…of four months. As for me, I have an explosively tempered older roommate who happens to be in love with my ex (who I met my roommate through). After I finally put my foot down about my ex living here (who the fuck wants to live with their druggie ex?) and the ensuing explosion, my ex has been here every single day, only to leave right when I get here or just before. The place itself leaves a great deal to be desired, and it’s just a volatile, ugly situation that only gets worse and worse. And it is never going to change.

So, this lack of news is not only personally irritating, it’s devastating, detrimental, and prolonging some horrible situations that should have come to an end months ago (if not years, in my case). It’s progressively getting worse, and both of us are finally in situations — emotionally, physically, and financially — where we can get out.

As if the Universe is telling us not to relent and to only despair with our current situations, things only get worse. We are exhausted, mentally wiped, emotionally stretched thin, and ready to GTFO.

The waiting is agony. It’s like that scene from 28 Days Later when they are in the tunnel and the rage-infected zombieish creatures are sprinting through the tunnel toward them. I’ll tell you what it’s like: Imagine the tension is there, doom and death are literally running at them, they are trying to change the tire to get out of there, they see the danger coming at them, hear the unnatural screams of the infected…and suddenly someone has to stop to take a call or tie their shoe or rotate the tire. Something that seems frivolous but that you can’t stop or alter. You just have to wait for that tire to be replaced, to get in the car, and to hope and pray that you can reach the end of that tunnel, that you can run away before shit gets real.

I feel like that — the rage-infected are closer, I can almost smell them, I’m ready to go, but the tire isn’t on totally yet. And we have to wait. And watch the rage-infected close in. And hope to get out in time.

So, we hope. And wait.

Freedom Weekend

Today is the 4th of July, and the plentiful, usually illegal fireworks continue to go off (and, if experience is any guide, will continue to do so until about 1-2am). It’s Independence Day, the original Brexit, and I’m making it about me.

There are all sorts of freedom, and in this life and this place, it means more than I think we realize. Freedom should be something that everyone has and many think it’s a human right, but there are so many who do not have it in a sense. I can’t speak for those war-torn cities where terror is a constant bedfellow. By comparison, most of the problems we face here are laughably insignificant and I get that.

However, what I can speak to is a lack of freedom in other ways. I’m talking more about the shackles we put ourselves in, how we deny ourselves happiness because we feel trapped by the lives we have built for ourselves. I have a dear friend who is so insecure and desperate for love, despairing of ever finding someone else, that she is staying in a terrible situation with a manipulative, dangerous lunatic because he pays her attention and tells her the things she wants to hear. I have another friend who is in a gay, sexless, affectionless, denying relationship of five years or more. Under the supposition that it’s better than nothing, he has proposed to his boyfriend…who turned him down more than once. The reason? The boyfriend’s wealthy parents don’t approve, so my friend is a “roommate”, a “friend” which has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Until what time? The boyfriend is shackling himself to the death of his parents, too cowardly to do anything else. My friend has shackled himself to this situation even though he wants marriage and passion and affection that can and do and should last into a long term relationship. It changes, but it shouldn’t die.

Myself? I’ve had a talk with myself for some time, asking if I was happy. When that answer came up a resounding, “Hell no!” I had to think about when I was happy. What makes me unhappy? What is in the way of my happiness? And why was I staying in these situations if I was so unhappy?

I’ve mentioned a quote from Wolves of Midwinter by the fantastic Anne Rice. A father is talking to his son, saying, “Why don’t people do what they really want to? Why do we settle for what makes us profoundly unhappy? Why do we accept that happiness just isn’t possible?”

I don’t know how many times I’ve come back to that. Why do we accept unhappiness as though there is no other option, as though we cannot change our lives, no matter what our ages? It’s hard, it usually is, but with some thought and consideration and planning, any change is acceptable. Some people are nomads. They can pick up and change their lives, as fickle and changeable as the wind. Some of us are earthen and require great effort to uproot ourselves, but once we start, we are earthquakes. The tension builds and builds and we take it and take it until we let loose and move the earth. Some are fire and just burn ahead, destroying anything that will get in the way. Some are water and just go through and around obstacles. But we can all do it. We can change our lives for the better.

That is freedom. It’s a freedom we do not celebrate very often because, I think, we take that freedom for granted. When we realize our own power, we can move our entire worlds. Wish me luck.

Writing Junk

I don’t think there’s a very similar feeling to that of making friends with people in your publishing company. I have been inactive writing for some time and the rights to my novel are due to return to me within a month or so. I don’t like it, have no one to blame but myself, lather, rinse, repeat.

Unfortunately, there was a crisis of sorts with the heads of the publisher, or rather a conglomeration of crises, and people were freaking out. While I understand where they were coming from 100%, it was all very presumptive. In fact, it ended up being nothing, but I tried to be a voice of reason to calm everyone down. I did it with my typical rather sick humor and, for some at least, it did the trick. I had several people tell me thanks and that my humor sort of slapped the panic out of them.

From that, relationships grew, and they are ones I really appreciate and am ultimately thankful for.

This prompted me to contact my editor, the wonderful woman who edited the last anthology I was part of (someone who, in the space of 30 pages, taught me more than I have learned since I ever published so much as a sentence). She has been amazing and I wanted to tell her thank you again, and let her know that some of her advice on choosing covers was heeded and infinitely useful in the meantime.

We struck up another conversation in which she told me about a billion things I didn’t know, not the least of which is a possibility of renegotiating a term or two when my novel comes up for contract renewal or discarding. I had no idea I could even DO that. I’m nobody. I’m not hugely popular. Who the hell do I think I am to consider that I might ever be able to negotiate anything other than pleading, “Pleeeeeease keep selling my book! I promise I’ll be a better writer. Please!”? But to renegotiate a new cover with a cohesive theme that can be taken across all four projected books? And a possible re-editing with my editing hero? Really?!?!

And, since I’m apparently a lucky bastard, this lovely woman still agreed to edit my second novel, which is the second in a series. This means more work for her, considering that she was not with the publisher at the time of the original book’s publication, and I therefore did not have the opportunity of working with her on the novel. She will have to do one of two things: agree to re-edit my first novel (should people deem it necessary, plausible, and possible), or read it on her own time so that she can be prepared to work with the ongoing story lines and threads of plot I’m sprinkling throughout. I offered to write a detailed synopsis so that she wouldn’t have to go through all that, but she preferred to read it herself.(?!?!?!)

Is that standard? Do editors DO that? Especially in small publishing houses? I really don’t know, but it left me more grateful for her than I was before and adoring her more than before — a feat I did not think was possible. I’m lucky as hell and I know it.

Since a great deal of my energy is focused on some huge life changes I plan to make within a month or so, I don’t know how much I can do in that time, which I told her. She is still willing to do it. And then she gave me more unsolicited advice and tips and bits of information. She’s also freelance and asked me to spread the word about her, so this is part of it. Feel free to contact me or her at http://www.vampbard.com for details. I will do it again later. And again. And again.

It has been a tumultuous time and will continue like that, but in the end I think I have a good place for now with some damned good people. Sometimes wonderful things can come out of a crisis.

Shark Week 2016!!!

Shark Week should be a national holiday, and I think everyone should be required to learn more about these powerful, beautiful animals.

Plus, there’s always my Shark Week crush, Joe Romeiro. He’s smart, adventurous, and ridiculously sexy. Of all the people I check out on Shark Week and whose dedication, bravery, and informed commentary I enjoy, Joe is my favorite. If he’s not gay or wouldn’t be interested in me, can we clone him until we get a copy who meets both criteria. Scientists? Anyone? I’ll assume someone is getting on that and I will hear back later.

Of course, some of Joe’s stuff pales compared to the sheer nerve and cojones of Paul de Gelder (who is, himself, so attractive that I think his face and body are actually outlawed in several countries). He lost part of his right arm (including the hand) and leg to the attack of a bull shark. Yet this man  routinely jumps back in the water and has taken to being a shark activist and studying them. This is a man who I would rather not be on a boat with. Why? Because the sheer weight of his balls of steel might capsize the largest of seaworthy vessels, and I suspect that without the proper support, they may at any moment drop to the deck and sink the entire boat. He’s brave, smart, courageous, and all other good things. However, he has a body about a thousand times better than my own. A man with those…I wouldn’t even call them disabilities at this point…challenges doesn’t let a damned thing stop him, and I have immense respect for him.

Then there are the others whose bravery cannot be doubted and whose personalities are amazing. Andy Casagrande (of course); the rather gorgeous woman who was attacked when she was 18 0r 19 and still gets in the water with the sharks; and then the paragon of unrelenting bravery or relentless stupidity, Dickie Chivell. And Eli Roth is back as the host again this year. I can’t not love him (smart, funny, and cute, too? Jerkface.). All these people are the bookends to the real stars of Shark Week.

Some of the shows are sensational dreck. No, I’m not even talking about the Megalodon specials, because anyone who thought that hammy acting was real deserved to be fooled, though the specials admittedly added little to the week. There are others that legitimately try to promote the science and learning behind the sharks. Most all of the Shark Week specials end with some obligatory blurb about how humans kill well over 100 million sharks a year and how this is essentially killing both us and our oceans. Wrap your mind around that. 100,000,000 sharks a year are killed by humans, and the true number can be as many as 273 million. A year. Even if you take the tragedy of the USS Indianapolis, you would have to multiply those killed (not necessarily by sharks, but just in general) by over one hundred thousand to approach the tame estimates of what we kill a year.

And why? For shark fin soup? Eat a bowl of Campbell’s clam chowder and shut the fuck up. If shark fin soup isn’t one of the most arrogant, reprehensible, irresponsible, cruel “luxuries” in the world, I don’t know of the others. The sharks are captured, their fins are cut off, and the shark is then thrown back into the water, completely paralyzed. They drown because they can’t get water and oxygen over their gills, bleed to death, or are eaten alive by some other predator. Imagine that happening to you. You’re walking to grab some lunch when someone snags you, puts you in the back of a windowless Danger Rape Van, cuts off your feet and hands to use in soup (just to make the soup thicker), and then throws you in the jungle, hundreds of miles away from anything or anyone. Enjoy!

In any case, Shark Week walks a line between education and sensationalist entertainment. I look forward to it every year. This year I hope they air the special Blood in the Water, about the 1916 Jersey Shore shark attacks that inspired Jaws. July 1st will be the 100th anniversary of these attacks. So, yeah, that perpetuates the ongoing wrongheaded stereotype of sharks as indiscriminate eating monsters, but it’s interesting to see how little they knew about sharks back then (another good resource is Michael Capuzzo’s book Close to Shore. A LOT of time is spent on the history of the day, but it’s interesting at the same time.)

Enough of my babbling. I have to go watch some more Shark Week. Enjoy!

Writing Motivation Questions

I think my writing output is an attestation to one thing: I do not understand discipline. A procrastinator by habit, I find deadlines to be motivators, but when you’re floating around ambiguous dates and no contract with a small publisher, there really is no deadline, so there’s no motivator. Right? No motivation? None at ALL? Well, let’s agree to say “not enough” then.

I could go through a litany of excuses, each more dire than the last, and every one of them true. It has been a very difficult time that only became more and more difficult as time passes. The good news is that things are getting better and better, and there is a HUGE opportunity on the horizon. That horizon is shooting at me with unnatural speed, and I have to break away often to attend to it as I have this week (oodles of pre-moving work, making last-second doctor appointments before I change jobs, looking for a new job, etc.). If things go well, I will have to pack up everything for the movers, and I’m not a good packer. I hate it, I have no help, and I was never any good at Tetris.

However, that’s life. Mine is at a very chaotic stage and is set to become more so. Like the Scarecrow said, “I think it will get darker before it gets lighter.” Through it all I have managed to analyze my abysmal writing habits and ask the hard questions:

“Do you really want to do this writing thing?” There was a great deal of soul searching to make sure I hadn’t just trained myself to want it, if you know what I mean. I did come away with an affirmative answer, and it was emphatic. I thought about all the little stories in my head and how, on the very rare occasion that I journal or talk about them, I’m filled with excitement and happiness at the thought of them.

“Well, why aren’t you doing it, then?” That answer was depressing, but I got several, and I know that they are right. There isn’t enough space here to go into it, but it comes down to what is filling the time that I’m not writing. Is that time well spent? Is it fulfilling? Are you running away from something and not running into the arms of a good book (yours or another person’s)? Or are you hanging out, watching TV, daydreaming about what you would be writing about anyway (actually not a bad plotting trick, but it is bad when that’s ALL you do), and giving yourself weird, ancillary tasks to do that don’t forward your life in any meaningful way? The answers were embarrassing. Part of the problem is that when everything around you ranges from annoying to misery, you spend a lot of your time doing little things to alleviate the bad or delay its inevitability.

“Your methods suck. What are you going to do to improve?” That’s a long one, but let’s say that it’s rotten from the ground up. To be a good writer, you need to read a lot and write a lot. If audio books count, then I’m finishing about 50 a year. I listen while I cook, every time I go into the kitchen to get a snack, when I walk, all that. I also listen at 1.5x speed, because otherwise I feel like I’m being read to by someone underwater eating massive amounts of cold, sticky honey (like Winnie the Pooh amounts), after just having suffered a massive stroke. However, there’s an intimacy with the written work that is lacking with audio books, and so I try to read more. That has been unsuccessful until very recently. I have come up with a plan, almost a schedule, and it’s easy. As for writing, I do that all the time, but it’s usually in the form of journals and such. I’m stepping up the journaling, making a day for it, and then creating space for other, more productive things. Most importantly, I’m giving myself deadlines. They are lax at the moment, but I’m hoping to cling to writing as a raft of sanity, rather than one more chore to be avoided and pushed aside.

If all goes well, soon time will be short as I’ll be packing, moving, closing accounts, etc. After that, I will have a staggering amount of time to get settled in, find a better job, get benefits set up, get out, and explore my new home. I hope to be able to keep up my writing at the same time. I’m not doing terribly, but not going as fast as I want. And since I’m trying to remove all sorts of blocks to my life and examining the processes I use for writing…why not do it all at once?

And so it Begins

I should have known. Circumstances being what they are (and my dear friend Merrot being who she is), things have catapulted forward at a ridiculous pace.

I had plans, I really did. I was going to do this fast (for me) but I was giving myself until the end of summer (keep in mind that in Southern California, it’s summer until about mid-October, usually. September is not autumn; it’s the hottest month of the year for us). Now it seems as though I won’t even see August here…if things work out as we are planning and hoping. I mean, if things go well, I might be at my goal in about a month.

That should make me elated and happy and rolling around in my own emissions from joy. Instead, I’m torn. I am thrilled, anxious, happy, miserable, nervous, and sad all at once. Too many emotions. I may actually, physically explode. Of course, I hear Hermione in my head, “…just because YOU have the emotional range of a teaspoon…” No, Hermione, relax. It’s that this is a big deal.

However, I read something Jennifer Lawrence once said that I find remarkably apt at the moment. She said, “But when you get a promotion at your job, you don’t go, ‘That was too fast. Can I stay in the mailroom a while longer?’ You take it.” Yeah, pretty much. This is something I’ve wanted for years, and it’s finally happening. The Tower is crumbling, I’ve got someone to go with me (which I had never hoped for before), and I can drop everything and just go because of how frugal and smart with money I have been.

Long ago, I sat and thought about why I’m miserable and imagined a life without those elements. I came up with three things: work, home life, and the wretched, incessant, 7 months of summer we get in Southern California. (For those new here, I loathe the heat with a burning passion that makes Satan’s testes look like pendulous ice cubes.) Fixing just about any one of them would make my life incalculably better. But why aim low? If you have the stars in your reach, why not grab them? Why settle for a low-flying pigeon when you can grasp the galaxy?

What if…bear with me here…what if I changed ALL THREE THINGS? What if I changed all the things making me miserable? When I imagined that, mentally put myself in that place, my head exploded (figuratively speaking. Obviously.) No more toxic work environment, fighting for everything? No more drug addled, unpredictable ex hanging around? No kind but explosively tempered, enabling roommate? Not being embarrassed to bring friends or *ahem* other people around? Being able to afford apartment rent and still eat? (To those in Southern California, I hear that’s called “good cost of living”. I can’t explain it. You’ll have to look it up. Have the people in New York help you; they have no idea, either.) And finally…to experience real seasons? To have only three months of summer, and mild ones at that? To be in a green place of nature and trees and water and socially minded folk? To have a real autumn — like where it’s chilly and windy and the leaves actually change colors?

I know that there is bullshit everywhere. No work is perfect. No roommate situation is without strife. No social interaction is without the potential of people being assholes. Constant cold and real rain might wear on me after a few yea…centuries. You never know. But those are the things I can change to make myself happy.

So it begins. And I’m not putting the breaks on. Wish me well.

 

The Crumbling Tower

This week has been exhausting. In my personal life, there has been a great deal of strife, turmoil, and tension which has led to a moment of absolute clarity.

I won’t spend too much time here, but in a tarot deck The Tower is widely seen as one of the worst cards you can get. It’s all metaphorical, of course, but the card means the utter destruction of something, and is often compared to the Tower of Babel. It’s something whose construction was ill advised, but you built it anyway. It can be relationships, a job, your whole life, but something wasn’t right, you knew it, but you kept going. That makes me think of people in bad relationships who say, “Well, we’ve been together so long and I don’t want to have wasted all that time…” Well, how much MORE time are you going to waste by staying in the situation? How much misery would you save yourself by just getting out? Eventually, the Tower is going to crumble anyway, and you won’t have learned the lesson you should have by getting out when you knew you should.

My life is the Tower — work, home life, housing situation, health issues, it all sucks right now. In the story of the tarot, the card after the Tower is the Star, which means hope and happiness and renewal. You wish on a star, right? I wouldn’t or couldn’t leave the Tower to find the Star.

Until this weekend. This weekend, the Tower tottered…and I kicked it down. I thought to myself, “How long am I going to let myself be miserable?”

Work is as okay as it can be right now, and it’s not enough. I’m over it. There’s little growth, the people are okay but are wind-up dolls armed with knives. They have run down for now, but it would take very little to wind them up and restart their stabby ways. I joined FlexJobs, set up my profile, and am taking assessments before I start applying. Like Spongebob says, “I’m ready!”  

My roommate is friends with my ex — it’s how I got to move in there in the first place. Unfortunately, my ex is a drug addict leech, who has been imposing on my roommate’s generosity and finances. My ex has been hanging out and he and my roommate have begun leaving me out of everything. I don’t care about the social business (the age difference between them would make even Harold and Maude cringe), but the household stuff is kind of necessary. The fridge broke and they didn’t tell me anything. I told them that this was something I deserved to know, and told them we need to talk.

It blew up. My roommate, a retired teacher, acted like I had no right to question him or to argue with my ex, who was being a pompous ass. I eventually told him that I am neither his son nor one of his students — I am a tenant and a friend, though I don’t have to be either. Now, my roommate is a kind, generous, wonderful, giving, intelligent man 97.3% of the time. That 2.7%, however, is completely unacceptable. I won’t go into it, but let’s say that his reaction was something one would have expected from a 3 year old. Said furniture-throwing 3 year old would then have been swatted lightly on his butt and put in the corner until he was 20, but that’s not the point. I do NOT deal with that shit.

There’s a point in the third season of Absolutely Fabulous where the fastidious daughter loses her shit on her mother’s leeching, drug addict best friend. I essentially said the same to my ex. “Cesspit from hell! Stinking bag of bones who haunts this house every day like a moldering cadaver, leeching the life blood out of anything it can get its filthy suckers onto. Well, I’m fed up with being suckered. I will not take this anymore; this is not how it is going to be!”

At the end of it, I had reduced them both to varying degrees of tears. Not because I’m a bad ass, I suspect, but because there is a great deal of affection underlying all the tension. We agreed that my ex would leave, and things would go on as they were.

Except they won’t. For any of us.

That temper tantrum and my absolute refusal to be the intimidated victim they clearly wanted me to be changed everything. It’s clear that none of this will ever end…because my roommate is most likely in one-sided love with my ex. It’s sad, because my ex takes advantage of that. I also refuse to live in a place where there’s a threat of a tantrum like that.

So, I am taking control of my own actions. Come hell or high water, I’m leaving here at the end of August, and I’m taking my friend with me. That includes my job, that house I live in, and the whole state. That Star outside my Tower can only be reached by letting the Tower fall. This isn’t anger speaking. I’m not frothing at the mouth with rage. This is that breaking point where I consciously decide I’ve had enough. And I’m not looking back.

The Tower has finally crumbled. And it’s time to find that Star.

 

Drained, Confused, and Fed Up

What the fuck was this weekend? I mean…seriously?!

I tend to avoid current events here, and won’t linger overlong, but…we have this repressed gay douchebag shooting at a gay club and killing 49 people. Now it turns out that he was on gay dating apps and had frequented the club for years. He could have been casing it out all that time (though the length of time he frequented the club frame sort of kicks that theory in the teeth), but the time frames given by the FBI suggests otherwise (presumably since before his marriage to a woman and in the days of MySpace, it would seem). It doesn’t fucking matter why, really. The point is that 49 innocent people are dead because of one person’s hatred — for something within himself or at some outward blooming of irrational loathing. It doesn’t matter.

I try to stay away from stuff like this in my blog, not through selfishness, but because I come here to write and expiate my inner demons and be calm. Also, what can I say, really? I’m beside myself after every horrible incident like this, and I don’t know how much I can really contribute to the discussion. My love and heart goes out to all those affected, directly or indirectly.

My personal life has been a maelstrom this weekend, and I’m just too tired and fed up and mentally exhausted, and personally ripped up over this Orlando incident to do anything significant here. Then all I can think about is that I at least have a life to complain about. Wouldn’t I be better off making that life better? Not even a real question, that.

So…until next time, stay safe and stay happy.