we'll all float on

Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.

Deal with The Strangers in my house. I mean, seriously. This movie is pretty much my worst nightmare. I would suck at fending off creepy psychopaths who want to murder me for no particular reason.

Zombies, though. Those I could probably take.

Day 03 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.

My childhood. I'm pretty harsh on my kid self. I was that weird kid would hang out with the teacher during field trips because I had no friends. I was super-shy and didn't have anything in common with anyone. I sucked at school, I sucked at sports, I failed to understand the basics of social interaction. I was just kind of lonely and slow and didn't feel talented or cool at all.

I think the reason I give my younger self such a hard time is because I find all of that stuff really easy now. Well, okay, not sports. Sports and I are just not destined to be together. But I always have to wonder if I was some kind of a late bloomer into intelligent thought, or if I just warped my experiences into being worse than they really are. Either way, I was just a kid. No one should be expected to be amazing as a kid. It's definitely something I'm still working on cutting myself some slack for.

Full list of days is here!

Man, hearing that Kingdom Hearts is almost a decade old kind of makes my heart hurt. That was the game that started everything for me. My first video game, my first fandom, my introduction to the internet, my meeting my best friend... there is a ton tied to that game for me. It's ridiculous. Happy upcoming birthday, you bizarre mutated franchise, you.

Also, in the attempt to get into the habit of blogging more, I'm gonna try one of them thirty-day blogging challenges. Full list in the cut down belooooow.

Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself.

Wow, that's. A harsh one. To start out with.

I guess if I hate anything about myself, it's my acne. It's not really all that bad, I just have super-dry skin and get whiteheads all the time and my skin gets all flaky and it's not sexy at all. There are days I wish I could just steamroller my face to get all the gunk out of it, it really bothers me.

And, well, combined with how I touch my face a lot and have a habit of picking at things... It doesn't matter what. Scabs, bumps, flaky bits of skin--if it's on my face, I'll compulsively try to get it off, usually without even realizing I'm doing it until I'm picking something out from under my fingernails. Gross, right? I keep my nails short so that I do it less, and I'm doing more these days to keep myself hydrated and my face clean.

On a side-note, I used to hate my teeth because they are all kinds of crowded and crooked, but then I spent half a decade training myself not to hate my teeth and give open smiles more. Now I don't mind my teeth at all. Ironically, a few months ago my mom suggested that I should go get braces while I'm still on her insurance, and when I told my friends about how I really don't want to get them, most of them said that I'd gain so much more confidence and feel better afterwards when my teeth are all straight. Which kind of. Yeah, no, I finally like my teeth, and now I'm basically being told I shouldn't. That's no one's fault, just weird timing and social constructs. Harumph.

( the full list of themes. )

I put off journaling for a week and suddenly I feel like a social landslide.

Last Saturday I got to hang out with my fellow, blatantly socially awkward friend from my old work. We just sort of wandered around the neighborhood, checked out lizards in a pet store, poked around some vintage clothing stores and lamented our tiny paychecks, momentarily existed as the only girls in a comic book store packed with TCG tournament dudes, and drank delicious alcoholic beverages. I ¢ belt that reminded me of Slytherin (even though I am more Ravenclaw, what up¢ Batman coloring book. Best purchase or best purchase?

Last Sunday was the first day of my new Changeling game. I'm really raising my nerd status here, but I really missed playing in table-top games. I'm really loving my group, too. Full of people who are excited to be there and actually know how to play a character. My Sluagh has already helped take down a frost giant, found a friend she can dupe into doing pretty much anything she asks him to do, and there's a ghost around that has a crush on her. High school is hard for the fae, man.

The Monday after that, I got to see John Green (one of my favorite authors) and his super-talented brother, Hank (known together as the Vlogbrothers, who are made of pure awesome) at the Fault In Our Stars book signing. There were sock puppets and songs about particle physics and so many people just being happy and nerdy and having a great time. My book got signed with John's J-squiggle signature and a Hanklerfish. The best part is... that on my way to the restroom, there was some time error or I went the wrong way or something, and I accidentally... almost... ran right into both John and Hank. As soon as I realized it was them, I could only find it in myself to sound confused and go, "Am I... supposed to be back here...?" John Green says, "No. But you're trying to use the restroom, so that's a legitimate excuse." I think I apologized and hurried off from there, but everything after that was a blur of "OH MY GOD I BREATHED THE SAME AIR AS JOHN GREEN". It made my week, man.

This last week has been pretty chill aside from that. I went and watched the movie Chronicle, which really deserves it's own post. I'll tell you up-front that it was really good. The second half of the movie made me feel emotionally unwell, but in that good kind of way that made me think about morals and character and perspective and things like that. Signs of an effective narrative, I think. Also, it took place in my city, so it gets extra points for busting up buildings that I recognize.

I also finally started playing Arkham City! Though some of the gameplay and characterization choices have me a little concernicus and I've found myself thinking, "Really? They're doing this...?" more than once, but that doesn't change the fact that this game has been devouring my life. I'm on some kind of a crazy Batman binge right now. It's so hard to play for just an hour. This is being combined with the fact that my friend convinced me to log back into my ancient Neopets account from six years ago just... because... of how silly the whole thing was, and then... she got me to start playing... and... now I've got my dumb bug habitarium open in another tab to help me accumulate NP so that I can buy a faerie themed background for my Shoyru. It's so shameful but so addictive. I can't even.

So that's... the latest news from my I Have Too Much Time On My Hands life. I think I've been having a lot of dreams lately, but I can't seem to remember any of them. So that's a bummer.

Yo, Skyrim. I'm really happy for you and I'mma let you finish, but Arkham Asylum is basically the best video game of all time. Of all time. Gah, I'm supposed to be playing through Silent Hill 3, but I'm having trouble getting over my hatred of the controls. I picked up Arkham Asylum again on a whim. Aside from repetitive boss battles and making me push a button to run? There's nothing I don't love about that game. Plus, it's the one game my brother will actually admit I play better than he does. It's sucking my life back up, and I'll probably have to finally play Arkham City once I'm done. Sorry, Heather... I've got Gotham City to save.

I also made another silly comic about why I can't have nice things. It is more of a true story than I am sometimes willing to admit.

Last night was full of poor choices. Let me give them to you in bullet points.

• Friend and I went to check out a bar; turns out it was reeeally skeezy. Could  not suck down my drink fast enough to get out of there.
• Went to our better, cozy bar and I had perhaps more to drink than was a good idea. Mixed vodka drinks, my weakness.
• Showed up for 20 minutes of a Harry Potter marathon... basically watched the end the fifth movie, which was my least favorite. ):
• Ate at Denny's. The food is still terrible.
• Got out to the parking lot and the car's battery was dead. Had to call roadside service at 3:30am. Took them an hour to get there.
• Got home at 5am, freezing and tired and pretty much just collapsed.

And here I am, up and nursing a slight hangover on five hours of sleep. Let my tale be a cautionary one. I think I'm going to let my poor liver have a rest after this little adventure... and my wallet, jeez. Drinks are expensive. I have to go put myself together enough to fool the outside world into thinking I'm functional, so I'll just go suck down some more water and take a shower and mrrrhhrmm today's going to be weird.

I've done a few smaller art bits since the last time I mentioned anything. [1] a derpy fishbowl saying, [2] the human and fae portraits for my Changeling: The Lost character (three guesses which Kith she is, the creep), [3] another swirly bookmark; these things are a one-way ticket to carpal tunnel, and [4] the start of a very large picture full of very tiny details. Honorable mention goes to the little five-color palette doodle [5!] that I only sort of like because drawing male anatomy is really hard for some reason. They're full of all these angles and muscles and stuff. What's up with that.

My job has really been bothering me lately. I work in a marketing agency. A couple months ago, we were super-busy and I could count on working twenty-five hours a week, easy. I started at 10am, got off around 3pm, had plenty of time for art projects and made pretty good money for working part-time. The backlog of projects has really declined, though, and our biggest source of projects has formed their own internal marketing team and even snagged our super-productive workaholic to do it. Now I'm only working two days (ten hours) a week, and it's pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel. I like having time every once in a while to just do whatever I want, but having this much free time has led me to feel stagnant. I'm starting to worry about bills I have to pay off and whether or not my job is actually going to last at the rate it's been declining. I want to stay optimistic and hope things pick up, but... I'd be lying if I said I wasn't starting to consider my options, here.

Priority #1 is quickly becoming me getting an Etsy store up or something where I can sell prints and t-shirts and things like that. I'm just not sure how to do that without paying an arm and a leg to get them made in the first place. I will have to do some research. Priority #2 is saving money whenever I can, since I'm working with half my budget now. Priority #3... Debate quitting everything and becoming a backup dancer for Lady Gaga or 2NE1 or something, because that is a completely rational and achievable goal and I JUST REALLY LIKE DANCING AND LOOKING CUTE, OKAY.

On that note, here's some music I've been digging lately (alternately titled, "Stick has questionable taste in music, but does what she wants"):

• 2NE1 - I Am The Best. Contains spiky bras and good god, the choreography.
• Flo Rida - Good Feeling. No, I mean, I actually like this song unironically and stuff.
• CTFO - Bluesummers Death. A mashup, the best creepy thing I've found in a while.

Welp, I spent the last four days on a writing retreat. I was basically packed in a house on an island in the middle of nowhere with eight other women, all of them nerds. We spent half of the time writing (or trying to write, at least), and the other half was spent chatting or playing word games. Playing Scrabble with a bunch of professional writers is about as intense as you could imagine, but Quiddler and Once Upon A Time are also excellent.

I am not at all a professional writer. I sure didn't go to school for writing. I don't have anything published or even practice writing in any capacity besides "every once in a while". But I do enjoy it when I do it, so I got a few little things done. My big project was trying to tackle my Skeleton City script, which is basically this year's NaNo leftovers that I intend to turn into a webcomic. I started the trip with way too many ideas and a plot that only barely made sense... mostly because I was trying to string together a LOTR-style novel and cram the whole damn world in there. It took a frustrated walk on the beach to get me to realize that doing that was dumb because I didn't want to devote half my life to the thing, and what I really wanted to do was a series of short stories. They don't have to have a cohesive, overarching plot, they don't need a big bad villain, and I don't have to explain every little thing about the world. I can just sort of dabble in the bits that I think are really interesting. So that's a super exciting thing. It feels like my story isn't such an impossibly monolith of a challenge anymore.

( in other news, an icon meme! )

I painted my nails this morning, which is only worth noting because it's one of those things I do maybe once or twice a year, and only after a spike in estrogen and about a hour's worth of Korean girl band videos on YouTube. I painted them this color, which is pretty... but too dark for me, I think. Next time I'll go for silver or shiny, light pink. Lesson learned.

Went out to dinner today with my mom and younger brother. We talked about my brother going off to boot camp to train for the Marines, and about stuff we want to do in the new year. At some point my brother started planning out how to ask out the cute waitress. My mother was half applying sound logic, and half making it worse. On the other side of the table, I busied myself with a mimosa and tried not to look as horrified as I felt.



But then I got tipsy, came home, and ate Pez out of a Legolas Pez dispenser. The experience was both hilarious and subtly terrifying. My friend gave me the whole set as a late Christmas present. Probably both one of the best and weirdest things I have ever gotten.

So today, after realizing I'd misplaced my bus card (that was fun), I got to work only to be greeted with an empty office building and all the lights off. It was quiet, except when a door would mysteriously slam shut in some other part of the building. There was also a dead pigeon right outside the front door. Now, I eventually figured out that it was because today was a holiday, but I've seen too many movies to not be suspicious and theorize that it might be a trap.

Like I told Plurk, it'd be the big movie of 2012--the girl is stuck in an office building, all the exits are blocked, and something has eaten all of her co-workers. And now it's trying to eat her. I could be played by Noomi Rapace, Cillian Murphy could be the love interest, and the villain could take the form of Christopher Walken.

And then I went home and RP'd a sad thread and now here I am, uneaten and kind of still bummed that I lost another bus card. ):

Here is a collection of some of the stuff I wrote up over NaNo that I actually like. This is completely unedited, so there.

( fly me to the moon where we can gaze among the stars... )