mobiusstripper | Recent Entries

Is there an interesting story behind your username? Not really! I just needed a punny name, and this was the first one that came to mind. I think it fits me well because I'm a math nerd, I love things that are complex and weird and layered and contradictory, and I have an irreverent sense of humor.

Location and language(s): I am currently located in Los Angeles, and my first language is English. I am also semi-fluent in German and know a little bit of Spanish, Mandarin, and Yiddish.

Age range (e.g 20s, 30s, etc.): 30s

Hot button/deal breaker issues that will likely lead to unfriending: Any kind of cruelty, mean-spiritedness, and/or bullying. Make no mistake, I'm not one to worry about making sure everyone feels nice and comfy all the time. There are times when discomfort and confrontation are good and necessary. My problem comes in when I get the sense that someone is getting off on it. Getting their jollies from shoving someone else's face in the dirt. Nothing makes me madder than a small, petty motherfucker on a power trip.

Do you have an "About Me" post new friends can read to get a sense of who you are, the people you talk about regularly, etc.? My most detailed existing "About Me" is from my DeviantArt, where I describe myself as a "Digital & occasionally traditional illustrator specializing in horror of the psychological, body, scifi, feminist, psychedelic, surreal, and existential varieties. Lover of filth and all things morbid." That should be enough to decide if you're intrigued or if we're not gonna click. If you're still reading, I will expand on that by saying I am also a writer (fanfic, short stories, poetry, and plays). I'm specifically interested in connecting with other fan artists and writers on this site, particularly older folks (30+) in smaller and more obscure fandoms. I have a background in academic philosophy and do a lot of philosophy-posting as well as fandom meta that draws on philosophy. I'm a SFF nerd, with a strong bias toward the scifi end of the spectrum. My favorite scifi subgenres are anything psychological that deals with identity (I'm very partial to all manner of robots, androids, AI, replicants, clones, computer-based minds, and the like) and spacetime fuckery. Most of my more fantasy-geared interests are related to D&D. I am ALWAYS down to play D&D, if any of you run oneshots or campaigns over Discord! I also love Brazilian jiu-jitsu and train five or six times a week, so you will probably hear me talk about that a lot! I don't really pay attention to it at the professional level, though, so you won't hear me talk much about that - just my own training.

Is your profile up-to-date or at all useful? Yup

List a few things you think it's important new friends know about you right away: I am neurodivergent (shocker, on this site!?), specifically ADHD inattentive type with some pretty serious executive dysfunction issues that I work really hard on. Sometimes that can make me come off flaky or unreliable, but I am absolutely not. I can be flighty as an acquaintance, but once we are officially FRIENDS, I am absolutely ride-or-die. I struggle with mood stability and go through up periods and down periods. When I'm depressed, I can be quite whiny and wallowing, but I have developed a lot of skills for avoiding and getting out of those pits, and I'm continuing to work on it. I'm generally in a good place these days, but occasionally things can throw me off balance for a minute. I definitely don't make my negativity anyone else's problem during these times, but sometimes I will vent on my blog about feeling crappy and be kind of useless for a few days until I straighten myself out.

You mostly write about: Existential stuff. Sad stuff. Difficult stuff. Bittersweet stuff. Fucked up stuff. How to go on existing in a world that's full of horrors. People dealing with (or not dealing with) the darkness inside themselves. People who become better. People who become worse. People who find connection with each other. People who try and fail. People who fall into dark pits and climb back out of them, and people who fall in and never get out. Understanding them. Understanding the world we live in. Bearing witness. Appreciating beauty. Coming to terms. Finding peace. Making a path for oneself.

You never or very rarely write about: Domestic bliss, uncomplicated romance, alternate universe

Is your journal mostly public, locked, or a mix of public and locked? A mix. I usually lock stuff that is more personal just because I figure people who aren't following already won't be particularly interested in the picayune of my inner life.

Do you use filters for certain types of posts (e.g. fandom-related posts, or posts about sex, or mental health issues, etc.)? No

Your posting frequency (e.g. daily, every few days, weekly, etc.): Not sure. If I make some real friendships on here, I will probably be around more regularly than if I'm just occasionally going back and forth with friendly acquaintances. Probably 1-2 times a week currently, but that could change up in the future.

Does your journal frequently include any of the following: memes, linkspams, gifs, photos, videos, etc? No. Maybe the occasional photo, but it's mostly text so far.

What do you enjoy most about journaling? The possibility that there might be people who are interested in my life and things I have to say.

How often do you read your friends list (e.g. daily, every other day, once a week, etc.)? Basically never.

You really enjoy reading about: Certain types of fandom meta (I'm a sucker for a deep analysis, especially character analysis, ESPECIALLY underappreciated character analysis), philosophy, ideas in general, humor, psychology, theory, just overall humanities nerd shit as well as some STEM nerd shit.

You have very little interest in reading about: Shipping

Your thoughts on journals that regularly include any of the following: memes, linkspams, gifs, photos, videos, etc? I haven't been around here long enough to really appreciate what any of that means. I'll have to figure it out as I go. I don't know what "linkspam" is but I don't like the word "spam" being in there. And if you post a video, I probably won't watch it unless you really hook me with your lead-in (unless I've gotten to know you well enough to know you always post gold).

When it comes to comments on your posts, what matters more -- quality or quantity? Quality

Do you unfriend people who don't comment much, even if you know they are reading you regularly? No

What is your approach when it comes to commenting on other journals? If I have something to say, I say it.

When you friend someone, but things don't really click, do you unfriend them without warning, or do you send them a note first? How do you prefer to be unfriended in similar circumstances? It depends. If things just never took off with us and we've had zero interactions for months, I'll probably do a quiet unfriend.

AND LASTLY

Friending memes often ask people to list their favourite TV shows, movies, books, etc., but more often than not, those aren't things people actually write about in their journal. Do you have any favourite TV shows, movies, books, etc., that you DO often write about -- not necessarily in a fandom sort of way, just in general? The things listed under my interests are the things you can probably expect me to talk about at some point or other. List is subject to change, but currently includes: Alien, Blade Runner, Claire North, C.J. Cherryh, David Cronenberg, Dark, Dimension 20, The Expanse, Gillian Flynn, Junji Ito, Naoki Urasawa's Monster, Ted Chiang, and The OA. I will probably talk about lots of books, movies, and shows as I read/watch them.

Any final thoughts you'd like to share with potential new friends? My favorite quote from my favorite book, The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir:

"Morality resides in the painfulness of an indefinite questioning...what distinguishes the tyrant from the man of good will is that the first rests in the certainty of his aims, whereas the second keeps asking himself, 'Am I really working for the liberation of all men? Isn't this end contested by the sacrifices through which I aim at it?'"

friending meme.|one of a different sort|

THIS WAY

Current Mood: friendly

This is just a big list of the shit I'm into for interested parties. These aren't necessarily my fandoms. Just stuff I like for folks with common interests to identify a fellow traveler.

( Read more... )

So I started watching Yellowjackets, and I can't believe it took me so long to get on that. This show was fucking made for me. I will probably be posting a lot of meta in the coming weeks as I work my way through it. As of right now, here are my takes:

1) Misty is the best. I love her insane ass. 10/10. The first person I'd call if I needed to hide a body.

2) Misty and Ben is the only version of "teenage girl aggressively sexually pursues older man and she is 100% the problem" that I will accept in fiction. I love the way Ben's presence as a character shows how being in the wilderness has completely changed the rules of the game. Welcome to the Churn. Society's usual power dynamics have been rendered completely obsolete. Ben is the only adult in the room, but he is completely at the mercy of these children (including Baby Annie Wilkes over here). And that's terrifying.

Current Music: no return no return no reeeeason

So I'm pretty amped about this current fanfiction project I'm working on. I've been wanting to write an Expanse novella (or several, but one to start) ever since I finished reading the series and the authors said they didn't plan to write any more in that universe. The Expanse fandom really isn't a great hub of creative fanwork, especially the book fandom. I'm one of the only people I'm aware of that has done fanart for the final three books, which never got adapted for television. It kind of drives me crazy that there is so much free real estate that nobody is using.

For those unfamiliar with the books, there are nine main books, which are all sprawling multi-POV epics, and then there are ten novellas. You don't have to read the novellas to enjoy the main series, but each one provides some insight into characters, places, and events that are mentioned in the main books but never get their day in the limelight. The authors also do a thing where they like to use each book and novella to dabble in different genres, even if they are all first and foremost scifi/space opera. So for example, Leviathan Falls is a detective story, Caliban's War is a spy thriller, the novella Strange Dogs is more horror with inspiration taken from Pet Sematary. But they all take place in the same universe and share the same major thematic throughlines, just exploring them from different angles.

So there is a shit ton of opportunity to create original flavor fan novellas that explore a million different things from a trillion different angles, but nobody is fucking doing it! So I decided I would do it. Well, I said I would over a year ago when I first finished the series, but until recently, all I had was a bunch of manic handwritten brainstorming scrawls on my iPad and a list of things I wanted to see novellas about that I posted on Tumblr (I'm still mad that my girl Elsa Singh never got to star in her own novella - hopefully I'll get to that one next. I bet she grows up to be a pistol.)

So recently, I decided to revisit some of my old scrawlings and started roughly developing one of the ideas. I had a title, I had a fuck ton of groundwork laid for character backstory and motivations, and I had a number of scenes completely outlined. But it wasn't coming together. Even when I found my thematic linchpin, it still felt like it was in danger of being more of a loosely related series of vignettes than a story with a proper arc (I have problems with plot. We've talked about this).

And then, like getting hit by a bolt of lightning from the muses, a whole new idea popped into my head. Initially, it was going to be a companion piece to the one I was already working on. But then I started thinking that it would make more sense to take the most important bits of the old story and integrate them into the new one. So the new story grew to encompass the heart of the old one. At first, I thought the new story would be a cinch. "It came to me fully formed," I said. "I can probably write it in one sitting," I said.

Well, friends. That did not last long. The story was originally conceptualized as a relatively contemplative-albeit-melancholy psychological drama that mostly consisted of characters discussing metaphysics and existentialism while working through some ambiguously spec-fic psychological phenomena. This was more or less in the same vein as my original short story Metanoia With a Dead Star, which also served as the basis for a play I wrote called Open Sky. So I was like, "Okay, I've written variations on this same story before, but not in this fandom, so it's fine." Then I started developing the story more, and psychological drama quickly evolved into psychological thriller. Then, it grew some real teeth, and now it's full-blown psychological horror. So I guess that's the genre I'm dabbling in here. Really picking up that thread from Leviathan Falls and running straight to Hell with it.

So what originally started as something I thought I would be able to potentially write in one sitting, which would max out around 10k words, has undergone a complete transformation into a very thematically ambitious, very technically challenging piece that is probably looking down the barrel of 40k words at this point if the outline is anything to go by. One particular section also going to require me to engage in some hardcore typesetting fuckery in the vein of House of Leaves, so I also not only have to figure out exactly what I'm going to do there to get it just right for conveying what I need it to, but I will also have to figure out how to translate that over to sites like AO3 that don't support the full range of formatting I need. I may have to rely on using a vector graphic for that entire scene instead of text, which means also figuring out how to do it in a way that doesn't totally break the flow (although that is kind of the point of the scene so maybe that's okay). Update: it looks like I will probably be using a custom AO3 workskin with an obnoxious amount of CSS.

Regardless, I am actually super amped about this story. I think, if I can pull it off, it will probably be the best thing I've ever written. It has an actual fucking plot, for starters. Like a full arc. It fits the five-step story structure to a tee and the climactic scene I've arrived at is already partially written and has honestly been an absolute ball to write so far. I'm also doing both my favorite fanfic shticks, which are (1) taking a very minor character and giving them a whole story, and (2) taking a more prominent character that people don't fucking appreciate enough and using the story as vehicle for my manifesto about why they should be more fucking appreciated. A few of the people I've talked to IRL about this story have said that I should try reworking it into an original story instead, both because there is not much of an audience for fanfiction in this particular fandom and because it has a lot of thematic potential to stand on its own. However, it is extremely in dialogue with the source material in a way that I am neither sure I can extricate from it nor particularly want to. I can always come back at a later date and adapt it into something original, but honestly I just enjoy the act of writing something that is in conversation with something else, especially when the themes resonate with me so hard. At this stage, I am very much writing for me. I'm hoping a few fandom folks who match my freak will be here for it, but first and foremost, I'm just enjoying the feeling of having such a clear creative vision after not writing much of anything for two years, and I just want to follow where the muse is leading m and take simple joy in the act of creation and telling the story I have to tell, without worrying about whether or not anyone is going to read it. My main focus is making sure that my vision comes across the way I want it to for anyone who does read it.

I also had a chuckle looking back at my pinned post where I answered the question what I write about with "Existential stuff. Sad stuff. Difficult stuff. Bittersweet stuff. Fucked up stuff. How to go on existing in a world that's full of horrors. People dealing with (or not dealing with) the darkness inside themselves. People who become better. People who become worse. People who find connection with each other. People who try and fail. People who fall into dark pits and climb back out of them, and people who fall in and never get out. Understanding them. Understanding the world we live in. Bearing witness. Appreciating beauty. Coming to terms. Finding peace. Making a path for oneself." Because I think this story might hit every single one of those, and I wrote that list long before this idea was a twinkle in my eye. Ha. There's also a shit ton of stuff about Jungian psychology, which is precisely my brand of bullshit. I like that I am writing something that is really trying to approximate original flavor and is still so quintessentially mine that nobody else would write it if I didn't, not even the original authors.

I also did the thing I always do when I'm writing something, which is make a playlist to help me set my atmosphere. I keep a collection of all my story playlists. The playlist I made when I wrote my fucked up Hojo fanfic Possession was probably my old favorite, but this one might be my new favorite because some of these songs work so well it's not even funny. Even if you're not in the fandom and have no interest in my story, feel free to take a peek if you are a fan of industrial, darkwave, grunge, and/or dark acoustic folk. If this is your jam, then hey, maybe you'll also be into what I'm cooking up over here, even if you are going in fandom-blind. I was annoyed I couldn't find the original Taylor Holmes recording of Boots on Spotify, but I did find this fucked up remix that is apparently from the 28 Years Later soundtrack, so that's actually pretty cool. (Update: I did find the original recording, plus I found like four more remixes, so I just put them all in order of increasing disturbingness.)

Current Mood: creative
Current Location: vibing it out with my homies in Utah
Current Music: see playlist

I haven't been here in a while. Not much new. I am vaping too much and obsessed with Red Rising. I blew off jiu jitsu for a week because I have the yips (yes, I should push through it, but sometimes taking a break hits the reset button) plus one of my coaches hurt my feelings and I'm being a baby about it. I'm going to visit my bestie in Minnesota next week and go to CONvergence, then visit my other friend in Utah after. So I'm amped about that! Plus I've been HELLA writing. Like crazy writing. Like writing to a degree I haven't written maybe ever. Like I've been writing on my PHONE, which I HATE, because sometimes I just have so much shit to get on the page that I can't wait to get home to my computer.

Current Music: PHILDEL

Doing my best to try to find ways to push back against steamrolling fascism. Fun times. So far, I'm trying to freeze my consumerism as much as possible. No more Amazon. Getting groceries only from Costco and Aldi. Cancelled my Spotify Premium. Moving myself towards a no-luxury bare bones rice-and-beans lifestyle. All pretty weak stuff, but it is better than nothing.

Also looking to get some (refurbished) high-capacity hard drives so I can start helping the data hoarder community with seeding data archived from all the government web pages they are destroying.

And strongly-worded calls to my representatives about what the fuck they are doing about Elon Musk. Not that it will probably change anything, but again, it's something. At least those are the things I am going to talk about on my blog. Remember that just because people aren't talking about what they're doing doesn't mean they aren't doing anything. Outside of stuff like boycotts and calling representatives, it's often safer not to talk about your activism publicly. Loose lips sink ships, and just because you aren't hearing about it doesn't mean people aren't doing on it, or that there isn't something in the works.

But yeah, consider joining me in those things. Give up all your little treats and luxuries (at least the ones that cost money). Even if it doesn't end up impacting their bottom line, it will help you start preparing for lean times, which are coming for all of us, whether you are in the US or not. And it will make you less complicit. Mindless consumer culture is the thing (well, one of the things, and a big one) that got us here, and it's time to start adding your tiny cuts to the millions it will take to eventually murder it. (Obviously, I'm not talking about necessities, so don't @ me. If you NEED it, buy it. Do ask yourself if you REALLY need it, but if the answer is "Yes," then ffs of course fucking buy it.)

Also, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, do not sign up for that General Strike US thing that is asking people for their NAMES AND ADDRESSES. On the slim chances that it's not a honeypot, it's fucking amateur hour. General strike? Yes, good. Adding your name to a master list of troublemakers and dissidents? Bad, stupid.

Do not cooperate in any way, shape, or form. Do not obey in advance. Do disobey in advance. "No" is a complete sentence, and "No, fuck you, make me" is an even better one. Just because someone tells you to do something (or stop doing something) doesn't mean you have to do it. They can make all the rules they want, but they still have to enforce them if you don't volunteer yourself. If you obey in advance, you are complicit. I don't care if you are afraid. We are all afraid. The machine needs cogs to function. Do not be one. Obstruct. Sabotage. Subvert. Delay. Be as annoying, unhelpful, and incompetent as you possibly can when it comes to the things they demand from you.

A lot of people are saying stuff like, "This is the dumbest timeline," or "I'm tired of living in historically significant times." Please understand that we have lived the past several decades in a period of unprecedented prosperity, comfort, and ease. Every single person who has ever lived has lived through historically significant times. Most elderly people who died just before this lived through World War II (and some of them also lived through WWI and the Great Depression). Most of human experience throughout history has been an endless parade of struggle and wretchedness and iron-fisted oppression. And a lot of the people doing that oppression were absurdly, comically stupid and ridiculous. You have lived through some of the BEST times in all of history, and now we're back to our regular programming. Stop whining and start adapting. Get fucking angry. Start gearing up for a fight. Or don't. I'm not the boss of you.

Current Mood: angry
Current Music: Tenacious D - The Government Totally Sucks

As some of you may recall, I am based in Los Angeles, so things have gotten a bit crazy lately, and I have left the city for the time being. The area where I live has not yet been ordered to evacuate, but we are adjacent to one Level 3 (mandatory evacuation) zone, and another adjacent zone was recently updated to Level 2 (be ready to go). I was without power for two days, the air quality is terrible, and all business as usual was cancelled (several of my clients had to evacuate), so I ended up packing up my cat and going to stay with a friend in Las Vegas.

As of right now, my home is still unaffected and only categorized as red flag, but I'm still glad to be out of L.A. and far away from all the catastrophe. It's been wonderful to see my friend, whom I have been trying to find time to visit anyway. She is my main movie-watching friend over Discord. We actually met on Discord, although we have hung out in person before and both visited one another in the past. But we still do watch parties on Discord together a couple times a month because we have similar tastes in media. So yesterday, we had a big movie day. We went to the theater to see Nosferatu (my second time seeing it - I loved it, almost a perfect movie, will probably post meta about it in the coming weeks), then went back to her place, watched the original 1922 Nosferatu, and then watched The Substance, which both of us have been wanting to see. I heard mixed things about The Substance, but I really liked it and actually disagree with some of the criticisms I heard about its themes that made me expect going in to enjoy it less than I did. Probably meta coming in the future about that one, too. It had some of the most outrageously laugh-out-loud funny black comedy body horror I've ever seen; I had a blast. I'm hoping while I'm here, I can show my friend Videodrome and eXistenZ.

My cat has already taken over her home and asserted dominance over her cats. I have no idea how long I will be here, since I have no idea how long L.A. will be on fire. Or whether my place will burn down. Well, it is what it is. Again, glad to be out of there. I'm looking for a place to train BJJ here in the meantime. Ideally one that will let me borrow a gi, since they are too bulky to have fit one in my go-bag. I'm also trying to figure out how I'm gonna make income while all my shit is on hiatus. I will probably have to do some online short-term tutoring like I did during COVID. I guess I will also use some of the down time to focus on building my business website, which has been a project on my to-do list for a while. I can finish learning CSS and PHP. I've also been learning PyGame to do with one of my local programming students, so I can work on that and be ready when we (hopefully) get back. I wasted a lot of time the last few days playing FruitMerge on my phone and listening to podcasts about Ong's Hat, but I think it's time to get back to productivity now that I'm safe and settled.

I have tried to make this past year about building good habits and improving my life in small ways that ripple out. Today, I deleted my Twitter account, and I have no intention of going back. Should I have done this years ago? Probably, since using Twitter has always been like swimming in a public pool full of pee. But now it's also full of poo and algae and assorted pathogens, so I've officially put my foot down and called it quits. And all I was doing on there at this point was shitposting and getting into fights with people who might not even be real. So, fuck it, I'm officially done over there. I do have a BlueSky, but I'm probably going to focus more on cultivating healthy internet relationships in more intimate, old-fashioned spaces like this one. Tumblr is still raging like a neverending underground party most people thought ended years ago, and I also plan to stick around there until they manually unplug the servers.

Current Mood: mellow
Current Music: Skating Polly

I finally tested negative for COVID on Sunday night and was able to go back to jiu jitsu the past few days, so I'm feeling much more myself again. I took it at 75% energy level just in case, but I don't seem to have any lingering effects in terms of fatigue or brain fog thankfully. Not that my stamina has ever been especially amazing, but I am more or less back to baseline. The gym will be closed for Thanksgiving weekend, so I will only have three days to train this week anyway. And I haven't heard about anybody else there having COVID recently, so that's probably not where I picked it up. Still probably going to avoid the evening classes whenever possible going forward and stick to morning classes where the mats are freshly cleaned, there are usually fewer than 10 people, and the gym isn't a fucking hotbox of sweat from probably 50 adults and 100 kids who have been there over the course of the day. Also, I finally got to see my mom in person for the first time in months, and she keeps telling me how toned I look since the last time she saw me, so that's good motivation to keep at it.

In writing news, I have been gripped by the sudden drive to do a full rewrite of my very first fanfic - one that will probably also end up being a vast expansion of the story. I'm not sure where the urge came from because the fandom it's in is both pretty dead and not exactly a hub of seriousness in terms of both the original content and the transformative work that largely came out of it, but I think what happened is mostly just that I became caught up in my own web of headcanons and storytelling back in the day, and now I'm still just riffing with that. There's probably real potential for a lot of what I'm doing at this point to be reworked into an original story, so I'm just gonna roll with it and see where it goes. The timing seems fitting as well because I am coming up on 10 years since I wrote the original (published January 2015). At the time, I was several years younger than the characters I was writing, and now I am several years older. My perspective is very different, and my writing has matured a lot (it's also taken a sharp turn away from the maudlin and into the...well, grotesque, I suppose). Fanfiction has always been my main vehicle for writing prose, and that story was one of my first forays into longer-form creative writing, so it will be cool to have a side-by-side of how my writing has changed over a decade. Especially if I can take something novella-length that is very character-focused and spin it out into something novel-length with a whole, like, plot. I'm really shit at writing plot, so I think trying to write something that piggybacks off an existing story but still has its own full arc could be a valuable exercise for me to eventually segue into writing more robust original stories.

Current Mood: energetic
Current Music: Blind Mountain Holler

My motto in life at this point is "The world needs more Byronic women, dammit." So I made this playlist to try to catch the vibes of what I mean. It's a surprisingly subtle thing with these characters that I am always excited when I stumble upon, that I try to write in my own work, and that sometimes I will try to retrofit an underdeveloped existing character into in my fanworks. Not a victim, not a vamp -- has shades of both maybe, but is so much more. Mad, bad, and dangerous to know. A swaggering bitch. Proud, moody, and cynical with defiance on her brow and vengeance in her heart. Tempestuous and independent, hard to love and even harder to know. I just think women in fiction should be allowed to be selfish and arrogant and fractious and just all-around shithouse human beings, but in a way that is complex and sympathetic and darkly alluring and evocative of the human condition as a whole.

In other news, I've been writing.

Current Mood: contemplative

Well, I am feeling better already one dose into Paxlovid. I decided to cheer myself up a bit by watching Aniara (2018).

Well, it looks like I have Covid. This is my first go-round with it. I got a prescription for Paxlovid sent to my pharmacy, and I guess it's just gonna be warm liquids until it goes away. I feel like ass, but also I'm lying in bed and drinking cocoa and reading, so there are worse things. So far, the symptoms feel like the flu or a bad cold that has lasted longer than colds usually do. I am really hoping it won't get any worse.

Current Mood: sick

I'm still sick today. But also...I have Her.

Absolutely sick as a dog today with what feels like a cold. Woke up with a slightly sore throat, and it only got worse over the course of the day. Now I have sniffles, a headache, and full body muscle aches. I thought I could use the day to get some peaceful reading done (currently reading: The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson), but I ended up mostly sleeping and rolling around uncomfortably in my bed. And forget about making any art or writing progress. My friend brought me a banh mi from Lee's sandwiches, though, so that was nice.

I really hope this is a 24-hour thing that will be gone (or mostly gone) by tomorrow. I have an online meeting in the morning that I should be able to do from my laptop in bed even if I still feel like hammered shit, but I really wanted to go to open mat either today or tomorrow, and that's probably not going to happen. Even if I feel better tomorrow, I shouldn't because I don't want to get anyone sick. Maybe tomorrow can be an art day.

Current Mood: sick
Current Music: Saint Mesa

Remembering that there is still Expanse fandom stuff happening here so maybe I should try to hang around more. I've been hanging around other corners of the fandom (Reddit mostly) and find them a little frustrating (I got DOWNVOTED for suggesting that book fans who wanted to see additional novellas try their hand at fanfiction), maybe things are better over here.

Also lol I forgot my last post was about missing BJJ. I'm happy to announce to anyone still following that I'm BACK. Six days a week, baby. Bruised as hell. Loving every minute of it. Let's GO!

Also my mental health is out of the toilet so while there will still be a lot of navel-gazing from me, at least it won't be as ungodly WHINY as whatever I had going on in 2022.

Current Mood: creative
Current Music: Kelli Schaefer - Black Dog

I'm around

When I was a senior in undergrad, I told one of my philosophy professors that I was considering taking a year or two off and then applying to graduate school for philosophy. I asked her if it was a path that she would recommend, and her reply was, "Only if you can't imagine yourself doing literally anything else." This was not an uncommon response. Many people I've known who went into academic philosophy, including my own academic advisors, tended to recommend against it. It's thankless. It's competitive. It's elitist. It's culturally obnoxious. It's "male-dominated." It's hard to get a job. You'll have to go through 5-10 more years of people who think they're hilarious asking you if you plan to open a philosophy store.

But, fuck me, it's been eight years since I graduated, and I've tried a lot of other things. And I think maybe I can't imagine myself doing anything else. I think it's time for me to get money (or at least course credit and a "Doctor" before my name) for overthinking and reading abstruse texts when all this time I've been doing it for free. Yes, it's competitive, but so am I.

Current Music: Angelfish

Changing meds this week and I am for real the messiest bitch right now. No energy, crying over everything and nothing, watching a lot of TV and lying on my bed listening to my noisiest music with headphones like a teenager. My brain feels like a rotten fruit that got dropped on the floor.

Fortunately, I have been able to avoid completely neglecting work and art, though my productivity is down. I also found a new covid-safe rage-channeling activity, which is going to the batting cages. Took a baseball to the tit yesterday, but I was really brave about it.

Current Music: The Gits

After 11 rejections, I got three poems published!

What's funny is how many people have said things to me like, "Oh, wow! 11 rejections! I'm so sorry. That's terrible. Are you okay?" Yes, I am okay! I am actually amazed that it only took 12 tries to get an acceptance. People who have never tried to get published don't realize how normal it is to get rejected. It's the norm. It's the outcome you should expect going in.

Expecting rejection is why I didn't get demoralized, and it is why I won't get demoralized in the future. It's what made it even better when I saw that email in my inbox and said, "Oh, look, another rejection," but then, when I opened it up, it wasn't. There's no disappointment. Only pleasant surprise.

What's also funny is that out of the five poems I submitted to that particular site, they took the three I liked the least. Which I guess is just a reminder that I am the least worthy judge of my own work.

Current Music: AJJ

My art has gotten stagnant and I'm unhappy about it, so I'm doing that thing that everyone tells you to do but no self-taught artist ever wants to do and learning my fundamentals. I'm doing Drawabox. I've started it several times before, but this is the first time I've ever stuck to it. The fact that I have a desk now and didn't in the past certainly helps. I actually enjoy it. It doesn't feel like grinding. It's meditative.

Ghosted planes

Current Music: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3CbVMEZSUtTthr1ZdRKQSc?si=50450a1a6b6e4fca

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Wintermute

July 2025

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Page generated Jan. 29th, 2026 01:33 am

You want it darker?

Hineni, hineni

Recent Entries

Sticky: I filled out this questionnaire for the Finding Friends group and they want me to share their gif

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