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 |   My 2nd blog. My spot for sharing my life, music, and writing with my friends. |
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Hello, Hello. Fancy seeing you here. I'll work on making this nice and pretty later. *  I also have a poetry blog, for those who dig poetry:
AND I have a mental health group with a monthly challenge:
[Embed For Use By Upgraded+] Lay my hands on Heaven and the sun and the moon and the stars While the devil wants to fuck me in the back of his car ♡ * I will never make this pretty. |
Artist: Lorde Song: Buzzcut Season [Embed For Use By Upgraded+] If you're unsure what this entry is going to be about, check the title. Okay, now check it 17 more times. We're off to a good start. Well, I've not been around, pretty much at all lately. I hope everyone is doing well. I'm not sure what's going on around WDC or what challenges everyone is doing. It is summer, so people might not even be here a lot right now. I'll tell you what I've been up to though. I've been getting diagnosed with and starting treatment for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which honestly, is something I never thought I would say. I mean, when I think of OCD, I think of all those people who are like, "I have to have all my books in order by size. I'm so OCD right now. LOL." I'm a fairly tidy person, but I don't really give a fuck about symmetry or organizing things perfectly. Therefore, I thought I would never get diagnosed with something like OCD. Even after realizing that I had created a million rules that started controlling my life, I still never thought OCD. Even after displaying increasingly erratic and irrational compulsions, even after having horribly intrusive thoughts-- it just never crossed my mind. I don't care if picture frames are crooked. I don't arrange my shirts by color. I can't possibly have OCD. Let's rewind a bit though. I've always had terrible health anxiety. When I took my first health class at 8 years old, I was convinced I had cancer just from reading about it in my health book. Every time I get a weird pain or any kind of discomfort, I'm off to get reassurance from my doctors that I'm not terminally ill. In my later teens and early 20s, I 'fixed' this issue by entirely numbing myself through self-medicating. Not just numbing my health anxiety, but numbing every single negative thing in my life. In all honesty, it was quite an empty time, and when you have constant racing thoughts, panic attacks, et cetera... emptiness is a welcome reprieve. Almost as soon as I cleaned up, all of that negativity came rushing back in, especially my health anxiety. What had I done during those years of self-medicating? What long-term consequences would I face? What short-term damage had I done? Had I killed a lot of brain cells? Was I mentally impaired now? Was I slow? What sorts of horrifying illnesses were forming while I was ignoring the fact that I was a living, breathing person? Because this anxiety was so strong, I started developing 'rules' that would 'protect' me. These rules snuck up in such a quiet, slow way that I didn't even realize it was happening. It started with small things, like I stopped eating foods that seemed 'dirty' to me. These were foods I either ate around the time I legitimately got physically sick or companies/restaurants that had recalls on their food. Glass in your food? Never eating your brand again. Seems reasonable, right? I developed many rules like this over time that seemed fairly reasonable, just a bit picky. Then I started developing rules that made no sense. I won't eat after 9p.m. because I don't want to have a panic attack. I won't go to shows anymore because the lights might give me epilepsy. I won't talk about anything negative happening in the news so that it won't happen to me. (Seriously). I got to the point where someone would talk about a famous person having a stroke and I'd literally have to leave the room lest I begin experiencing stroke-like symptoms. Even when I was trying to chill and read a book, I would have horribly violent images or 'trigger' words that would force their way into my head. Words like cancer, seizure, stroke, botulism, etc.. Really any word that was dirty to me would intrusively attack me. In addition to that, if I heard about someone drowning, being killed, etc... I would constantly see it play out in my head and think about what it would be like to have that happen to me. And, yes, that means that I would become afraid I might drown while sitting on the couch. At this point, let me remind you once again, that I was extremely quietly dealing with/doing these things. I didn't mention them to anyone because I thought that either it was very strange or it was something that was socially unacceptable to speak about because I never really heard anyone else talking about it. I heard people talk about anxiety, depression, etc... I did not hear them talk about being afraid of developing a terminal illness from touching a doorknob. In this year alone, I've developed more and more compulsions to avoid the anxiety that my obsessions cause. I started having to check expiration dates on anything I ate/drank multiple times. As in, 15-20 times before I would eat or drink it. I would even get up AFTER starting to eat and re-check the expiration dates multiple times because I was convinced that the food was spoilt or contaminated in some way. I would throw away food that was perfectly good because my brain decided that it was 'bad' food. I also started washing my hands not only repeatedly, but in a ritualistic way. I would wash my hands and then feel like I missed a spot. It became very regular or normalized for me to wash my hands 10 or 15 times in a row. When I was out in public, I would have to sanitize my hands every time I touched something new. I stopped touching doorknobs without using either gloves or a shirt sleeve as a barrier, and even then, I would have to repeatedly wash my hands after. So, you might be wondering, why am I writing all of this? I guess I'm just letting you all know, in case you've been wondering where I've been or why I've been terrible at participating in life lately-- it's because I've been washing my hands until they bleed. I remember when your head caught flame It kissed your scalp and caressed your brain |
Prompt: Last day of the month! Assess your work this month...tell us what you think, and what you've learned- both about yourself and your fellow participants. via "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  My formal assessment is that I, like, legit fucking suck, dude. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ |
Artist: Defiance, Ohio Song: Calling Old Friends [Embed For Use By Upgraded+] Prompt: On this day in 1847, William Clayton invented the odometer. How do you measure your speed or distance? via
Well, I mean, there are drug scales if you wanna measure your speed...  Really though, I'm one of the unfortunate people that measures life out in terms of things I have to do. I know a lot of people live their lives on a Monday to Friday scale. Like, "Five more days to the weekend!" I do the same thing except my timeline is a bit longer. Mine is more like, "Damn, 4 more weeks until this class ends!" "Ten days until I get paid!" I hate wishing time away like that. It seems like a very unappreciative thing to do, but I think we all do it sometimes. I do it especially if I really hate the class I'm in. I'll even do it on a longer time span. Like, right after I start the class I'll be saying, "Only 15 more weeks until this class is over." Of course, the first thing I thought of when I saw this prompt was that line from T.S. Eliot... "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."  I think people measure their time whether they intend to or not. As you can tell, I'm equating distance to time in this entry because it just makes sense to me. Someone might be thinking that it's the 12th of May, so we're almost halfway through this month of 30DBC! That's also a form of measuring time/distance. We've gone 12 days, we have 18 more! Especially if you're into numbers, you'll measure everything ever whether you want to or not. Sitting in a doctor's office waiting room? It's guaranteed you're going to find out how many tiles are on the ceiling. Sitting in traffic? It's guaranteed that you're going to count all the white cars and figure out the probability that a car chosen at random will be white (given your sample). Personally, I don't think my mind ever stops collecting and analyzing data in my environment. Of course, not everyone takes it to that level, but I do think we're all measuring time in our own ways.  Distance is just numbers on a dashboard |
Artist: Foo Fighters Song: Big Me [Embed For Use By Upgraded+] Prompt: It's often said that writers need to write every day to become better at it...do you think that's true? Have you ever taken a significant amount of time off from your writing pursuits? What was your experience like in getting back into a habit or pattern of writing more consistently? And if you've yet to experience this sort of vacation from writing, please do tell us how you plan on picking up exactly where you left off, as if you never stopped  .via
Hello, everyone. How goes? Another day of class over here.  I am very much so on the fence with this prompt. On one hand, I think the only way to improve your writing is to read and write. On the other hand, I've taken long breaks between writing and really loved what I came back with after the hiatus, so I guess it just depends. This also seems related to this entry "Invalid Entry" where I talked about how I don't particularly like the writing I do when I don't really want to do it.I've taken major breaks from writing creatively. All through my late teens and the beginning of my twenties, the only writing I did was in my personal journal. There are definitely things in those journals that could easily be turned into poems, vignettes that are basically already poems, and that sort of thing. But I never actually sat down and wrote a fiction story or a poem during those years. There was way too much going on in real life at that point to even think about lives that didn't exist. There are two frames of thought on that as well. Some people use fiction writing as escapism from the things they have going on in their own life. For me, I was like, I can't deal with fictional character dilemmas when I have all this shit going on. So, just two totally different coping mechanisms there. Opposite ends of the spectrum type of thing, I think. I only got back into writing a few years ago when I signed up to WDC. I had just gotten out of rehab, and while there, I'd written my first poem in years: "Night Dancing" The process of writing it was therapeutic, but I decided that I needed to do something more with it. I needed to share some of my story and I needed feedback. It wasn't easy getting back into poetry writing though. Instead, I ended up doing the first Soundtrackers challenge a couple weeks after I joined the site, and that's where I started sharing my vignettes and sort of got my footing back with writing, so to speak.I do think that consistency is key. I really adore some of the poems I wrote during Give It 100 last year. It's like if you write 100 poems in 100 days, you're bound to like some of them. At the end, Cinn  and I had a day where I wrote like 12 poems and she wrote a ton too. Those are some of my favorite poems of mine because they came very naturally, quickly, smoothly. They weren't a struggle, and so often writing is a struggle for me.My general rule of thumb now is to let myself do my natural thing with writing, but to not miss opportunities to write something. For example, if I become entranced by some random object (Hello, stair railing: "Invalid Entry" ), I take the time to sit down and write about it. If I'm upset about a situation, I go through the cathartic process of writing about it instead of keeping it bottled up. Other than that, the nature of writing has free rein over me. I go with the flow.I write when it feels right. Big me to talk about it |
Artist: Star Fucking Hipsters Song: Two Cups of Tea [Embed For Use By Upgraded+] Prompt: Most families have sent a relative to fight in their country's wars. Indicate the relationship you had with a family member who went to war and what his/her going or returning meant to you as a child or as an adult, depending on the relationship. via
Yikes, this is really bad, but I don't know anyone who has gone to war. I can imagine it would be horribly stressful for the months they were deployed. My family is very anti-war. I don't think any of my family members would have willingly gone to war at any point in their life. Obviously we need to have a military, but with the way the U.S. fights wars constantly, we're much more offensive than defensive in that regard. I really can't imagine anyone I know being in war, given that my brother's a lawyer and my ma has an MBA. It's hard to explain, but I can't imagine Mikey being a soldier instead of an attorney, if that makes sense. It's almost like the lifestyles are cut from a different cloth. On top of that, everyone I know votes democratic or independent in every election. Like, I literally don't know a single person in real life that votes republican ever. I have talked to people at my school who voted republican in the last presidential election, but I don't know them. They were just random people in my classes during the fall semester last year. I guess I do sort of live in a bubble where the people I associate myself with are fairly pacifistic and they tend to shy away from things like war. Like, they see a time and place for it, but they think we do too much of it. They support the troops, but most of them would never voluntarily agree to be in a war. That's just not the style of the people I hang with for the most part. I am interested in reading the rest of the responses to this prompt though, because I can't imagine how tough it must be to have a loved one in the middle of violence like that, never knowing if they're okay or not. If it was up to me, I would restart history Ignite the flame & burn the centuries of blame The bloodstained centuries, these bloody centuries |
Artist: The Shins Song: Sleeping Lessons [Embed For Use By Upgraded+] Prompt: Rather than the tired, boring "which famous person would you like to have dinner with" prompt, let's change it around a little...Which famous (but also non-chef and non-domestically focused individual) would you most like to prepare you a meal? Why that person, and what would you make them cook you? They will not be eating with you, but you will have to tell them what you think of the food. via
My only goal today is to get this entry done before I go to class. Oh, and also to go to class today. Two goals. Really what I should do with daily goal-setting is add very easy tasks to the list that I know I'm going to do so that it dilutes the percentage of the ones I don't do. So, I have five goals today: Finish this entry before class, go to class, read everyone else's response to this prompt, have dinner, and go to bed. So now if I fail one of those things, today is still an 80% success rate kinda day, and I can dig that. On to the prompt, this is a good twist on an old classic, Fivesixer  ! My first thought when I read this question was Bukowski. Why Bukowski? Well, I feel like a "Bukowski" meal would consist of a couple cigarettes and a cup of coffee (or something stronger). And I think that's just fine. I'm not a huge food eater. Like, I don't get excited about eating and nothing ever sounds appetizing to me. Well, I take that back, sometimes someone will describe food in words and I'm like, "Fuck, that sounds good." But it's like the way something sounds is better than the way it actually is, if that makes sense. Someone could describe some quadruple layer death by chocolate cake to me and I'd think I might kill a dude for that. But if I actually got it, I'd take one bite and it would be so rich that I'd never touch it again.  And just because, I'll leave you with a Bukowski excerpt from his poem Raw With Love: I will remember your small room the feel of you the light in the window your records your books our morning coffee our noons our nights our bodies spilled together sleeping the tiny flowing currents immediate and forever your leg my leg your arm my arm your smile and the warmth of you who made me laugh again. A thousand different versions of yourself |
Artist: Pat Benatar Song: Hit Me With Your Best Shot [Embed For Use By Upgraded+] Prompt: The late comedian Don Rickles, born on this day back in 1926, once said "You throw your best punch; otherwise, don't do it." How do you get through writing something on the days when your best punches aren't working for you? via
Hello, hello. What's up? Motivational Mondays are so necessary after 'good news' Sundays. I actually really like this quote a lot. Although I prefer the Pat Benatar version featured in this entry. "Hit me with your best shot; otherwise, don't hit me." Wait, that doesn't work.I've long said that I don't write when I don't want to write. I don't like the things that I write when I'm forcing it. I have this thing in real life, and it translates to my writing, where my heart is on my sleeve (or in my words) all the time. It's very obvious when I'm not interested in writing something. Looking back at various things in my port, I can easily tell the things that I wrote without my heart in it. Those are usually things that get the lowest ratings too, for obvious reasons. That's why I keep with my Type of Writer quote in my bio here: "I write when it feels right." I also consider myself to be a casual writer. It isn't something I'd do professionally. Writing is just something I've always needed to do. There's some part of me that needs to get things out sometimes and that's why I write. But I don't always have to be writing. I can go months without writing something new and I'm perfectly cool with that. You can't force your release, or I can't anyway. It has to come about naturally. I will admit though, Cinn kicked my ass into gear during "Give It 100!" last year where we wrote 100 poems in 100 days. That was wild and something that I totally wouldn't expect myself to be able to do. I got really far behind at times and some of the poems are total trash, but I did do it, most likely because Ky was too stubborn to let me give up when I wanted to. When I'm in the middle of a challenge and don't feel like writing, as in, I committed myself to this and I'm going to do it, I mostly fake it 'til I make it. What else can you do? There are times when I see a prompt and I'm like, ah man, I can't do this. It's not the prompt-writers fault either. Different people do well with different prompts. Something that inspires me to sigh might inspire another person to write a killer poem/story/entry. If it's something I've committed myself to doing, I'm definitely going to do it. It might come out sounding forced or uninspired, but I'm definitely not going to half-ass it. That's one thing I don't believe in doing, whether it's writing or something else. You're never going to see a one line entry, review, etc... from me. If I'm at that point, I just won't do it. Well you're a real tough cookie with a long history Of breaking little hearts like the one in me |
Artist: Bad Suns Song: Dancing on Quicksand [Embed For Use By Upgraded+] Prompt: The Sunday News! What's going on in your neck of the woods? Share a link of some good news coming out of your city, state, region, or part of the country, and tell us what you think about it (this is also because I can't find a decent non-political news story and I keep getting sidetracked by Facebook when I'm scrolling for news links  ).via
Wow, I haven't looked at the local news much in a long time and it's super difficult to get away from political stories. It's pretty much all politics or crime-related news stories. The biggest story from my area this week was when Rahm Emanuel posted the EPA's climate page that had been taken down by the Trump Administration. So, again, politics. They're hard to escape. Lemme dig a bit more. This a huge city, surely something non-criminal and non-political has happened recently. Holy shit. It really is all crime and politics. WTF... This one wasn't so bad: "Coding in kindergarten? Young minds get jump start on future through computer science education" I've mentioned a couple times throughout my blog that my education growing up was absolutely terrible, most recently in "Invalid Entry" . The curriculum in my school was far behind that of other schools in bigger cities. This isn't something I consciously knew growing up. I thought I was getting a normal education. It wasn't until I moved to the city that I realized there were a lot of things that my school didn't even offer. The first time I thought about it was when I was 16 and met someone who was also 16 and taking a criminology class in high school. I was like, wait, what? Criminology in high school?  Our curriculum was extremely limited. Once I got to college, it got even worse. I've been in classes with people who took highly specified courses in high school that prepared them for their major. We had no tech classes, no politics classes, no business classes. It was straight up math, history, english, science, arts. That's it. I think it's such a good idea to get kids prepared for the technological world we live in now. Coding at age 5 or 6? Can you even imagine? Even being introduced to tech things at that age gives them a HUGE advantage over people who live in the middle of nowhere and only have one computers class available once they eventually get to high school. These kids who take stats, economics, marketing, etc.. in high school have such a leg up on the kids who won't ever be introduced to that until college.Anyway, this was the most positive recent news story I could find. I hide to sift through tons of horrifying news story to get to this one, so fuck me.  I'll lose myself in a moment Can't find my way out for days |
Artist: Glass Animals Song: Toes [Embed For Use By Upgraded+] Prompt: Create at least an 8 line poem - any form, or free verse - inspired by some of your fellow challengers' entries this week. via
I will now perform a demonstration of why I don't write rhyming poetry. Let's do it!30DBC Catchphrases Poeticized "Oh, come on, Silly!" she sighed & turned with a shrug, in search of something "Awww-worthy" to hug. A kitten, a pup, a cool-ass new pet, an inspirational, "We'll deal with it" you get what you get. A Dutch, some Brits, a Valleygirl accent, you ought to step roight in, 'cause we're totally excellent. & amongst it all, a general air like, "For fuck's sake, dude- I legit don't care."  Let's see, we have: "Oh, come on" from SandraLynn Team Florent!  "Silly" from Elycia Lee ☮  "Awww" from all the 'aww' people Kit of House Lannister  , Dragon is hiding  "Cool" from Apondia  "We'll deal with it" from Prosperous Snow celebrating  "Ought to" from WakeUpAndLive️~🚬🚭2024  "Roight" from Sally  "Valleygirl" and "totally" from Hanna ~ Be Kind 💕 "Excellent" from Alexi  "For fuck's sake" from Andy~hating university and Sally and finally "Dude, like, legit" from me Uh, I think that's all of the ones I was able to work in. I'm gonna go be lazy for the rest of the day now. And all I ever want Is just a little love I said in purrs under the palms |
Artist: Modest Mouse Song: Dramamine [Embed For Use By Upgraded+] Prompt: On this day in 1834, the first mainland railway line opened in Belgium. Have you ever taken a train trip? Not like a subway ride, but an actual passenger train? Tell us about it! If you haven't, would you? Where would you like to go? via
Oh no, I'm gonna be so boring today. I've not been on an actual passenger train before. The thing is, I get extremely bad motion sickness. As in, if I'm in the backseat of a moving car for more than ten minutes, I start vomiting everywhere. I take meds for it when I'm traveling, but the meds make me totally space out to the point where I might as well be asleep. If I'm in the passenger seat or driving, I'm usually okay, so I can travel with Kira. I would never last on a train or boat though. I don't know if that sort of thing is hereditary or not, but my mother and grandmother were always the same way. The three of us had trouble doing things together because all of us needed to be in the front of the car. It's for real probably the least fun thing about me. You don't want to be the bummer who's saying, "Uh, yeah, so, I can't go on any of these amusement park rides and I also can't even sit in the car to go there unless I get shotgun." On the other hand, I always get shotgun. Traveling swallowing Dramamine Feeling spaced breathing out Listerine |
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I'm still so confused. How did they get to senior-level finance with so little know-how. I don't get it. 
People definitely tend to jump straight to the worst conclusion when any problem arises, which is why you so frequently hear, "My computer is broken!" when there's really a simple fix. 
Just why. It's so gross. We need to get you some personal finance help! This is only tangentially related and not a statement on you, but one of the nonprofits I work with consists of me making budget plans for people who were recently homeless and have just gotten back on their feet. A lot of the people I work with have only been at their job for less than a month or been in an apartment for a week or two. My role is to gather all of their financial information and then consult with them on their bills, disposable income, purchases, and stuff like that. It's shocking to see the financial decisions people make after just being homeless. I'm like, dude, you were just homeless 2 weeks ago. 
I have seen so much of the disasters it has caused with some people. I have in the past been unconsciously roped into financial situations that were most unpleasant and having to make sensible plans to unravel them.
