Tag: writing

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It has been a rough two years, and for me the world didn’t even shut down.


It moved on, and me with it.


While others were able to stay home and bake bread, or walk their dogs, or just slow down to enjoy time with their families– I was (am) an essential worker. Not quite as essential as retail, restaurant, or banks. But since my company provided product for those industries, I was essential enough.


For a time, my hours were cut. Others were laid off, and in retrospect I was not so lucky.


Eventually regular hours resumed– then increased– but with a pay cut. So we had to work more for less, and the work never slowed down. 10-hour days. Weekends. Overwhelming. Everyone exhausted.


And when the pandemic was declared “over” in all but name, not much changed, except the meetings resumed. Good news for them: profits were down but manageable, because cuts. Next meeting, better news: more clients, and our original pay was restored. And then, several meetings later, the dreaded two words:


“record profits”


as they wheeled in little freezers to fill with ice cream for employee appreciation, and said again when we were given $20 gift cards and candy and an extra holiday off. They were quick to mouth more appreciation during more meetings where we ate popsicles for two hours, trying our hardest not to fall asleep to their PowerPoint presentations.


For a lot of people, the writing was on the wall and it echoed the circulating articles. As the work didn’t slow but cost of living rose, the discontentment only grew. Burnout was high, and so was the toxicity. People began to leave.


I left, and from what I hear people are still leaving.


I hate to admit why I stayed as long as I did. I’m a creature of habit, and nearing 5 years of employment in that place, I did feel a little special. Wanted, even. Everyone came to me to solve issues with a system I knew like the back of my hand– and if something stumped me, I knew how to find the answer. I knew all the little things that other people stumbled over. I could find any box size, and almost any obscure item. I knew how to fix the temperamental computers with a few clicks. It was comfortable. And in tough times there is nothing more comforting than routine.


But comforting routine isn’t enough.


Not when a the grocery bill of a household of 3 humans (and 2 cats!) ballooned to $200 a week. Not when I over-utilized my credit cards because I simply didn’t make enough per hour. Not when the gas money budget doubled overnight due to oil corporate greed. Not when we want to remain in our expensive rental house, which is now considered a bargain under the current market. Not when I dreaded going into work to the point where I swore I made myself sick. Not when the work never ended, my help ultimately thankless, and my peace disturbed by the toxic gossip and despair bringing everyone down.


2.5% simply was not enough. But that was all they could give, because of their “budget.”


That realization was the final push I needed to be brave.


I type this up now, with a new job and calmer mindset.

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My grandmother was dying when I penned this post.

There is a lot of what my mother bitterly calls it, drama, concerning the surrounding circumstances. But most of it is not important; what matters at this moment is how she does not want any of this drama when the time comes for her to require elderly care, and when she passes away.

"Please, put me in a home." I know. Unlike her sister, I will do the responsible thing and recognize that I can be no caregiver. "And I do not want a viewing." Give me flowers while I am living. We agree on that. She does not want the "song and dance" of the whole funeral thing and knowing her family, "song and dance" would be the understatement of the decade. She doesn’t even want a gravestone. "Cremate me. Or donate my body to science. I’m already an organ donor." She even suggests, if she ever succumbed to dementia like her mother, to pump her full of LSD and, hm, let her go. "If I’m going out, I want to have a good time."

Jokes aside, no one likes to think about their mother dying.

So the topic turned to other things– in hindsight– a segue. Mom had recently visited the attic to retrieve the vinyl collection. As an avid user of Spotify and iTunes, she no longer felt the need to keep them around and was going to donate them. And the packrat that I am (my VHS collection can attest to this), I snatched them up.

We went through the entire stack. Some I’ve never seen before (growing up, I was more interested in the growing technology that was the Compact Disc; the vinyls were safe from my pillaging), but some I recognized as the art the covered the living room wall. From Talking Heads to Prince, Michael Jackson and ZZ Top and AC/DC and… albums about… drag racing? That one took me by surprise.

Some are certainly damaged. Others scratched. Others still, missing covers in the dusty stack. Covers missing records.

While I did joke about selling The Beatles’ White Album, I knew they weren’t going anywhere. Especially with mom’s words in my ears, about leaving nostalgic tokens of love behind.

There was a story for most of them: going to the record store after watching The Wall, her singing a few bars of Lovin’ You, some albums she had while growing up, and some I remember fondly as cool stuff on the walls.

These stacks of albums tell a story of what my parents experienced and loved. It is another thing I can hold, memories of weight I can feel and thumb through.

When the time comes I will let her go, but I’ll hang onto Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk album for a while longer.

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Two weeks ago, I had to leave an online space.


It was an oasis-in-a-desert type of online space. If you’re in a marginalized group, you know exactly the space I am talking about: the kind where it’s a safe haven, a group to contrast the harshness of the rest of the platform. No microaggressions (hopefully), calling in (as opposed to calling out) where it’s warranted (and the concerns actually heard), but most importantly: you get to be yourself.


In this instance, I was able to be Black without worrying about the white gaze; I could be unfiltered without creative code words to talk about my experiences.


Then the cishets ruined my chill. As usual.



As tempted as I am to relay in excruciating detail, I’ll hold my tongue on the specifics. Because honestly, I’ve done this song and dance too many times to not collapse it into one narrative. But one thing stood out to me about all this, is that this space tried.


They specifically noted in their guidelines that anti-queer sentiment was not tolerated. And yet, a post by a trans woman turned ugly real fast when a cisgender heterosexual man commented the usual transphobic notion that trans women might try to trick him into sleeping with them.


And the only people calling him out (and in my case, cussing him out) were other transgender people. The mods stepped in late into the game after the heavy lifting was already done. And after we used the dedicated venting space to, well, vent about this incident, the mods suggested we become mods ourselves.


Months later and that suggestion still bothers me. Because, holy shit, instead of taking out the fucking trash you gotta make your minority in a minority do your dirty work? You couldn’t do your own due diligence, as a mod and self-proclaimed ally, to clean up the mess your peers have made?



Listen.


I’m all for education. I’m all for people getting called out or in. I’m all for spaces that allow growth from being told bluntly or sweetly that you’re wrong, and this is why, and you should stop doing that.


But it’d be nice to let the rest of us know about it, first.


Because if I knew my membership dues were tolerating willful ignorance and sealioning under the guise of Educating Them, I would not have bothered joining.


Because if I knew this space was just going to be a sea of unchecked bigotry that I would have to wade through constantly because the moderators don’t care about the safety and well-being of all of their members, I would have scrolled past.


Because (and this has to be in threes), if you’re so committed to not throwing anyone out of the group, even if they have repeatedly spouted harmful rhetoric, even if they have repeatedly made the space unsafe for some members, then I would have told you to fuck off.



I am a fierce defender of the spaces I call mine.


While I do agree with spaces that are a little forgiving for people that don’t know better (or simply didn’t know), my tolerance tends to be lower than most for two reasons. Both have me occasionally clash with how some spaces are ran:


  • I’ve dealt with too much damn trolling to tolerate that bullshit I’m more aware of common bad faith arguments and derailment techniques… and therefore have no patience for them, and
  • I’m a subscriber to Good is Not Nice. My interpretation is this: I won’t sugar coat my language, and I will certainly cuss your ass out if I get mad enough.


And for my spaces, I run them differently: there is room to grow but the safety of my members is paramount. And if a member is constantly making others unsafe or otherwise jeopardizes their well-being, well. They’ll just have to learn elsewhere.


It crystalizes into my first rule: No one’s safety is worth anyone else’s lessons.


And if a space appears to not adhere to this, I just leave. I fight too many battles as it is. Some, alone, and I don’t want to add another where the tide may be against me.



The last comment I replied to was somesuch bullshit about trans women. At this point he was a broken record of willful ignorance. I’ve lost track of my comments, and how many people have tried talking to him. And there were more like him that wouldn’t be thrown off the island, so to speak.


So I said, simply, “shut up.”


And I left the group.

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And before you knew it, two seven months have passed by. I had no drafts or throwbacks to throw into the queue, so the silence lingered.

A bit has happened since then: we’ve moved to a bigger and better house, I received my vaccination (edit: and booster!), I saw folks I haven’t seen in the past year, saw my LDR girlfriend for the first time in about five years (long story, so that’ll be a separate post), I also reconnected with someone special (again, perhaps, a separate post), caught up with a dear old friend at a tiny birthday party… and the job has been the same, despite the promotion and raise that came with it.

I’ve been finally catching up on IDW’s Sonic the Hedgehog, and I can say– as someone that lived and breathed Archie Sonic (and SatAM, and Jaleel White’s VA career, and the games for someone who never owned a SEGA system) I’ve missed Sonic comics.

Sonic popping out of a manhole, saying Hedgehog. Noun. A burrowing animal.
Also, come on. I love hedgehogs.

Ah, yes, and this wasn’t just any move: I wasn’t moving out of my parent’s house thrice (so I had practice), nor was I moving alone and only had me to worry about.

It was a lot of frustrating moving parts. Packing all the fragile things. Figuring out which perishables to take. Attempting to organize, only for it to fall into chaos in the garage. Misplaced boxes. Packing the mugs. Wrestling the cats. Losing power cords. Dropping a heavy box of board games on your foot.

But, again, we did it. And we hired movers for the big stuff this time.

My initial response is to say that said move was the most exciting thing to happen to me so far this year.

And here is where I re-calibrate my definition of “excitement,” because, sure, moving and painting are always exciting, but it takes a backseat to how I feel about some important people in my life. Moving and painting just made me tired. What got my heart beating was how we had all interacted– sharing podcasts, listening to Daft Punk, accidentally coming across A Wonk and getting bopped upside the head for it (figuratively).

Granted, this was Stuff I Already Knew after living with them for two years prior. But in the context of expanding into a new space it was exciting nonetheless.

I am happy at home.

But I am also tired.

As I brushed upon earlier, work has been… the same. But also, the strain of working in a pandemic for almost two years has been felt for quite some time now. The workload has been punishing, the pay is ridiculous, and many have been moving on to other pastures.

And I hope to be one of them, soon.

Because despite my aforementioned promotion, things have been largely the same and I have stagnated. Which could possibly be overlooked if I liked my job more… and if the pay was better… and if that one coworker would stop pissing all of us off… if the environment wasn’t so toxic… if there was actual upward mobility…

And the fatigue of being in this pandemic, as well. The misinformation, the tempers, the Trumpers, the just existing, the covid scares, all of it. I’m too tired to even elaborate on this but IYKYK. And all I know is there’s a therapist appointment in my immediate future.

Because of that, mostly, I haven’t been writing. Or doing much else. There’s been quite a bit of Youtube and Blanket Nesting.

At least Animal Crossing: New Horizons finally has some new content. I’ll go chew on that.

Animal Crossing characters on a ship. The captain is in mid song, saying "cause when ya chew on yer ship swabbies say you're kinda strange"
I’ll say it again: chew on people.

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I was on vacation last week.

Before, I made plans: to fix things around the house we’ve been putting off, to play video games, to talk to people, and to write.

Before and during, I also focused on making my space feel more like "me." That included reorganizing, decluttering, and adding more art and figurines to my walls. And making my bed even softer. And finally obtaining a soundbar for my subpar television audio output. And– most importantly– making actual space on my brand new desk for longhand writing.

My vacation was spent fixing the back door and replacing and toilet seat and upgrading our showerhead and  making spacemakers for our countertops and stocking up on dinner food and figuring out how to jump in Spyro Reignited and having a blast with Goat Simulator and reaching level 125 in Ring Fit Adventure and

my writing area remained blank.

I also rested. I had the energy to cook dinner, so I did. I enjoyed movies like Coming 2 America until the late hours of the night.

My bullet journal was open, but remained blank.

I bought a Wacom Tablet and purchased the Affinity suite of photo editing software, because I missed doing that sort of thing. And it was high time I learned software other than Adobe. When I remembered to, I logged onto Discord and hopped around Twitch.

Three days into my vacation I realized I didn’t write anything at all for the 750Word challenge this month. I’m still on the Wall of Shame from my last attempt.

I also read the loveliest book, Honey Girl. It was so vibrant and poetic. "Are you there?" I’m  reminded of monsters, the magic of other lonely creatures, and the challenges of a world determined to crush said magic. (That much I should say, without spoilers.)

I had a magic moment of my own, but perhaps I’ll dream of it again.

I was very productive, and I made sure to have plenty of rest. Except for the matter of my blank canvas.

But, this was what I expected.

As my hours became filled with work, and house errands, and exhaustion from the former, I had less time and energy for the things I loved to do. That included writing.

And I’ve lost my knack on sliding in words into what little slivers of time I have. I dream of writing. I dream of good ideas. But I need to return to the habit of at least writing them down.

So.

I opened up 750words and mused, "suppose I’ll start here. I’ll write about my not-so-magical-but-productive vacation."

Little steps. 456 words out of 750, but it is a start.

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Throwback Thursday: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 15:00:55 on the VerboseTerse instance, yadda yadda yadda. Notable that this was for the write31days challenge for that year; I decided to write about my non-binary gender experience. This is from the third day, about my doubts before coming out.


So far, this is the hardest entry I have to write.


I am going to be 30 years old relatively soon. And only two years ago I’ve come to terms with not being a binary gender. Late to the party– better late than never– but I still feel some type of way about it.


Fuck High School


My initial, knee-jerk response to “What the hell took you so long?!” is to cite the lack of information and representation I was able to get my hands on. I keep saying that… but I have a print out of this page still and it is largely unchanged. So I can only use that excuse for so long.


5% was bigoted asshattery.


My high school was a tiny dangerously-close-to-fern thing in the middle of central Not Progressive Ha Ha. We ran out the only decent Spanish teacher because he was a city slicker. Out of the grand total of two gay young men we managed to run off one of them within a month. And of course, kids being kids with slurs in their mouth.


You do the math.


85% was just pure denial.


Some of it can be attributed to my poor grasp of gender, even with the info laid out to me. The gist was I was still working off the binary system with the faintest understanding of transgender (and that’s being kind). Furthermore, I was still under the illusion that bi/pansexuality was merely a phase and I was going to grow out of it eventually. Nevermind that to this day I associate a Sugarcult song with my First Serious Crush on A Girl. And my favorite movie wa, and still is, But I’m A Cheerleader.


clea duvall holding a train of paper girls
FORESHADOWING THAT WAS 1/2 OR 2/3’D RIGHT


10% was fear.


Like any teen, I wanted to fit in. Just a smidge. Just enough. I also didn’t want (what I felt was at the time) the eventual heartbreak and isolation if I pursued these thoughts. So I forced contentment of something I was much more familiar with- unrequited love and alienation on my terms (and the first term was “that weird kid that walked in the rain and kicked trees”- conveniently not too alienating, just weird as fuck).


This fear was also borne of not letting down my parents. They were cool with me through my Wiccan phase and was alright with me taking my best friend to the prom, but the possibility that I was probably trans squicked my father, at least.


Moral of this story is being a teen sucked and trust no one that says otherwise.



No Longer a Teenage Dirtbag


But enough about that. Fast forward to a) finally dealing with my pansexuality and came out in college b) just ended a relationship that was another failed statistic in the mono/poly configuration, 1.5 years post college (I was the poly). So, in one of my brooding moments, I got to sitting around thinking about my gender.


Like, really think about it. In a space where I wouldn’t get shit for not shaving my sideburns and not be called somethin’ gendered every 10 minutes, even in jest. And in a place where I’m certainly more knowledgeable about Stuff. And Things. And learnin’ all the time.


I had so many doubts. Two of my entries from a particular meltdown were titled “I may not be trans enough.” And I was just a worrywart.


  • Was this just borne of frustration of being feminine-read/patriarchy?

  • Do I need hormones? / Am I still validated without needing surgery?

  • Was this because of my parents?

  • Am I trans? If I am cis, do I still get to be genderqueer?

  • Can I be genderqueer? Am I trendergrender or something?

  • Am I ready?

  • Am I sure?


The majority of these questions was when there were so many different variations of the definition of cis floating around. Not to mention the truscum gatekeepers got me fucked up- I assure you, I’ll talk about them later.


And I was finally, finally shedding the last of the fear and truly Stopped Giving Much Less of a Fuck.


So.


Yea.


I’m pretty fucking sure.


After a solid year of second guessing, and a life of little cascaded moments.

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I blame my depression/anxiety on top of current events, but lately I’ve had the urge to reread something-punk dystopian hellscapes. The Windup Girl, specifically.


When I first picked up the novel years ago, it took me some determination to get through the (what I thought was at the time) dense writing. I did not have much trouble, this time. It probably helped that I was familiar with the book.


(There’s going to be spoilers ahead.)


Continue reading →

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2015-02-27 (It was also posted to StoriesPortal, ne’e TaleVault, but as of this posting I’ve been unable to bring up the site.)

“What the hell did I just watch!?”

I shut off the television in disgust. That was it? Is that what this… Disney… had to offer me? Awful, just awful.

At least that Danish Andersen fellow had the sense to make the sea witch not give a fuck. You want the thing? Here’s the price. Steep, but fair– the price fitting for the intent. That’s how we roll.

But this?

They made her outright evil. A vindictive thing that wanted power. She was gorgeous but she outright conned those merfolk, stacking the cards against them. And for what? Shits and giggles. What a fucking shyster.

And the fact that Ursula was fat AND a bad guy was not lost on me. They ain’t even subtle.

No wonder I couldn’t get much business anymore. This drivel was dripping from the land and into my undercurrents. It pisses me off. If these landlubbers were eating this stuff up, you know the merfolk are too. The superficial stuff like looks, not so much, but my last customer was terrified I’d turn her into coral or something.

I’ve wondered why, and now I know.

Also the obligatory , but damn.

Which is why I’m sitting in my seaside condo seriously considering cursing my neighbor. “Oh, you’ll like this movie!” Damn ho don’t know me at all. Because not only did they tarnish the reputation of sea witches, but there was a happy ending.

I hate contrived happy endings like this. Someone should have suffered a little more. The prince should have been struck blind, like in that other fairy tale with the thorns.

Okay, Yung. Deep breath. She only meant well.

At least the musical numbers were on point, though. Ursula had some pipes on her.

I sighed, and pop in the sequel… or prequel, whatever. Disney made a ton of these things. Another evil sea witch (sister?), probably more songs.

Business is slow, so I might as well trudge along with watching these.

BONUS: Poetry. That’s What You Get (For Walking On Land) / To Ariel

2015-02-01, which inspired the above story. If you haven’t noticed, I’m a big fan of The Little Mermaid and its fanfiction- esp. when messing with the Disney version.

Chalk it up to mere vindictiveness,
A nastiness,
Jealousy–
And every stereotype a sea witch can offer
While being impossible to scrub clean with
Disneyification
(nudity and oral sex and rough words and hedonism and technicalities,
just the sort fanfiction writers love to write about)
But:

I’m still stewing over the fact that you got away–
That, while my precious girl was happy for a while–
Her homage got a happily ever after.
For fuck’s sake,
I cursed Dumbo instead because you are out of reach.
So let me try this the old-fashioned way with illwishing
(and limericks, I guess).

It doesn’t sound too bad– if you’re naive.
You don’t know how crushing yearning can be
Unless you’ve been there,
Honey.
And we’ve all been there, haven’t we?

Yet I can’t bring myself to be too harsh.
But, this is just the flavor
Of curses
That I like.
So I hope you hear this:

I hope not that each step’ll be full of knives,
But each time someone looks at you
In longing
Your knees’ll crumble and you’ll be unable
To walk
For days.

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And still, I dream.
She told me of the man
Haunted by floating steps and
Math, lights down for one year.
How he exclaimed her to be
A Victim
But her age knew better;
You’ve heard this before.
We jotted down the spell and
Cast
Into depths, turned shallow.
Tweak your methods-
There’s no tradition, there.
And as I dream
I remember
The broken pencils,
Traded for ink and gossip.

Jan. 28th

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I did this instead of sleeping.

Disclaimer: may not actually be funny.

[Theater curtains pull back to reveal a tiny apartment. BF (boyfriend) and ME (me) are hanging out on the couch or something. I ignore the roaches.]

BF: Hey guess what! You should totally see other girls because you’re bisexual, right?
Me: that is dumb reasoning i can totally be monogamous and im totally not ignoring any earlier hints in my life of the contrary
NARRATOR (who sounds suspiciously like Joey Lauren Adams and will never show up again): They did not stay monogamous.

[Time skip, a month. At some gaming thing or whatever I trip over a MTG card. Not enough Os in smooth. My crush was watching and the thought of asking her out would not leave my mind.]

ME: ok bet

[I run home to tell BF my intentions.]

BF: OK, cool!
BF: …can you not see other men, tho?
ME: Fine. One of y’all is enough. But we will revisit this in the future because men are occasionally hot.
BF: No penises.
ME: That’s fucked but I lack to vocab to explain why. I will fix that.

[I get on OKCupid, and start doing a lot of reading and Googling Words. Fastforward like, a month or something. Time is a farce. I’m back on the couch, on my laptop, and I have ACQUIRED VOCABULARY. And I never did ask her out. I’m a weenie.]

ME: Hey, whadayya know? I’ve done my research and reading and turns out, I’m actually polyamorous! I’m not broken! This is AWESOME! DOWN WITH ANGST!
BF: Cool.
ME: We’re a mono/poly relationship. That’s neat. It’s gonna be hard work.
BF: OK?
ME: Yeah, because we’re in an One Penis Policy and I don’t like it. You’re gonna have to get over this fear of other dicks.
BF: I–
ME: And your exact wording was pretty transphobic. I know that word, now. You thought I forgot, didn’t you? Check that shit, too.

[BF begins angrily scrubbing the floors.]

ME: dude just use a damn mop
ME: …I missed my cue to make a joke linking "hard work" and "other dicks."

[To make myself feel better about my shitty comedic timing, I print out the shiny POLYAMOROUS label and stick it next to my other ones. Somewhere in the world, one of those Labels-Are-Meaningless types gets a chill down their spine. I cackle in glee, knowing someone out there fucking hates my collage of labels. I hope they open the wrong can and it’s actually canned asparagus.]

ME: Who put that giant question mark next to my gender? Eh, I’ll figure that out later.

[Another fast forward, let’s say a year. I’m no longer guilty of my crushes and feelings, in love with this other person, been burned a few times, screwed up and learned from my mistakes, and I may have taken a flamethrower to the apartment because of aforementioned roaches. But I digress.]

BF: So I’m scared you’ll leave me for a woman.
ME: Not because you’re a casual sexist racist macho dorkward who can’t clean a dish?
BF: What?
ME: What?

[At some point, we get distracted. Three guesses how and what.]

BF: On a totally unrelated note, can we close the relationship back in the future?
ME: You can’t put Robin Williams back in the bottle, man.
BF: …what?
ME: I SAID WHAT I SAID

[We’re gonna skip the rather quiet breakup and I just jump through the trap door and disappear in a puff of smoke. I leave my clothes, but I quote a line from Aladdin first. Scene.]

NARRATOR (who sounds suspiciously like Joey Lauren Adams and I was wrong about this): I should warn you that the next time you meet, it’s gonna be awkward. You will also regret re-friending him on Facebook.
ME: Same as it ever was. Play me out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2-NaMALbm0

P.S.

ME: …wait. You used "they" earlier.

[NARRATOR (who I am convinced is Joey Lauren Adams at this point), just hands me a printout about from KnowYourMeme about Egg Mode.]