Y'all I just wanna say that, I know I'm livejournal trash from way back, and I want to thank you for sticking with me here if you've read this site. I've really needed some place to just write longer-form things, and some of it has been from the depths of my depression. I've been seeing a new counselor, doing more good-health things that help, and am seeing a psychiatrist for the first time in a couple weeks about maybe trying medicine since I've just been unable to escape some of my recent mental troughs. I've been unable to work without descending into immediate anxiety and distress for a lot of the last couple of months, which sure hasn't helped! But I'm doing everything I can, with help from good friends, to navigate my way to longer-term improved mental health.

This is still gonna be a place where I post whatever I feel like, because it helps me to have a place to write without judgment, and the hope that it might help SOMEBODY to see it, even if that's just me. I'm also gonna try to not be in the place where I want to write from my depths as much. I have a couple of new short fiction things that I'm almost ready to share, and hope to talk more about the other creative work I've been doing but haven't shared much.

So. Thanks for hanging with me. Talk if you need to talk. Let people know if you need help. We're in this thing, but luckily we're in here together.

Bout to get this cleaned up. I think it’s the longest my hair’s ever gotten! It tends to look better if it’s several inches shorter, so the ends can curl up and there’s not as much weight pulling down on the top.

Somebody asked me this week if I thought I would get a short haircut again, and the answer is not anytime soon! I hated the way my hair looked with almost every short haircut I had from my teens to my late 20s. Some of them were fine, I guess. But as messy as long hair can get sometimes, I’ve felt more natural and at-ease with at least that part of myself since I grew it out a few years ago.

There are some people who only know me with long hair. That’s weird to think about!

warning for extremely hot pop music

i haven't been able to have a lot of strong feelings lately, but this music makes me want to want

welcome to my now, now fan site

buy this album please

I've listened to this album hundreds of times this year. I can't get enough of this vibe. The bass-heavy insistence is perfect. I want to make a song that feels like this.

Periodically I make collage cards, after my dear friend Noam Assayag. Here's one I did today when I couldn't concentrate on anything else.

A lot of which I still can't share because the project isn't out yet, or it died, or there's no context for it, or I fucked up, or I've lost the images. Not all of it is good. But jesus fuck I've made so many different kinds of things. For some reason everything is sorting strangely in my screenshots folder, so I'm seeing things from over the last 6 or 7 years all jumbled together. WELL HERE'S SOME OF THOSE SCREENSHOTS

just a bunch of scraps, not the best stuff because the best stuff still might theoretically come to pass some day

What do we have here?

;]

Warren Ellis, in his newsletter this week, quoted Benjamin Percy (without providing a source):

It's always a shit-stain of a moment when I first hear no. I usually end up listening to John Coltrane in the dark while sucking down a bottle of bourbon and feeling sorry for myself. But then something happens. I somehow go from fuck me to fuck you in my attitude. I've never been the most talented guy in the room, but I'm usually the most stubborn. And that's what's helped me recognize the turn.

Whenever you encounter wreckage, think about the turn. It's waiting up ahead, even if you don't recognize it yet.

— Benjamin Percy

I remember the "no wait, fuck you!" feeling, but I haven't felt it in a long time. I've had a bad habit of internalizing failures or setbacks passively. "Well, fuck me I guess!" In my better moments lately, I've been able to conjure some of that fight. It's not necessarily best to position yourself oppositionally, or at least that's what I've told myself for a long time. I can remember times that having an internal enemy — or a counterexample, someone doing the opposite of what I wanted — was able to ground my approach.

At the very least, so long as you're sure you aren't the villain in a given situation, it's no use directing your negativity toward yourself. I've been watching kaizo Mario speedrunners lately, and GrandPOOBear explained in this video with Tim Rogers that you blame the controller, you blame the kaizo blocks, you blame the game. You don't blame yourself for fucking up. You might know you fucked up, but giving in to that self-demolishing mode isn't going to help you overcome the challenge. Make the failure your enemy, not yourself.

Who is my counterexample now? Well, ha ha, the first person who comes to mind is me. Or at least the me I've been feeding and permitting to take center stage. But that's not all there is to me. This passive, beaten-down, waiting-for-doomsday sadsack isn't all there is to me.

Let's look for the turn.

Or, as KISS says, in their way:

You got to treat yourself like number one
Do you need to be reminded (need to be reminded)
It doesn't matter what you do or say
Just forget the things that you've been told
We can't do it any other way
Everybody's got to rock n roll, yay

If you don't feel good every way you could
Don't sit there broken hearted (sit there broken hearted)
Call all your friends in the neighborhood
And get the party started (get the party started)