Escape Act

The nice thing about my new job is that it pays more than my old one.

The not so nice thing about my new job is that it’s far away, so I won’t get to hold on to a lot of that money because Lyft costs. Another, smaller and more temporary downside is that I won’t start getting paychecks until next week.

With that in mind, and also in mind the increasing tension in my home life (because someone can’t let a fucking light go which is funny considering she’s not paying the fucking electricity bill) I’m considering booking an extended stay at a m/hotel.

I would be closer to my work, which would hopefully cut costs. I would get to experience a taste of living on my own, since the amenities make it basically an apartment. I might experience a little less stress because of home life.

The main problem is, however, still money. Though the only extended stay m/hotel is closer, it would still be an hour’s walk. Everywhere is an hour’s walk from my new job so yes this m/hotel is my best option. Since walking is not ideal, considering the chances of rain, 5am shifts, and various assailants, I’d have to take Lyft anyway, which would only be slightly cheaper per week. And since, as I stated, I’m not actually getting paid (or many hours) yet, I don’t have a solid income to rely on for now. Also I guess I have to eat or whatever so I don’t die, so there’s that to think about too.

Factoring in all that, I think I could just manage a week, but then I’d be stuck.

I’ll keep thinking. I have to make this work. I don’t want to stay here any longer, especially not after the ultimatum I’ve been given.

Ties Tightly Binding

I’m sure it’s incredibly cruel and selfish and a host of other things, but… it’s gotten to the point where I really don’t like hanging out with my family. At least, not all the time. Rather, I’ve been hanging out with my family and nobody else for my entire life. Whenever I go to movies or to the mall, it’s with family. Whenever I go clubbing, it’s with family. Whenever I text someone or add someone on social media, 9 times out of 10 it’s family.

And I’m sick of it. I do love my family, but I know for a fact that I’m at the age where it’d be better for our relationship if I wasn’t with them all the time. This is one of the main reasons I want so badly to move out; I need to start my own life. After 20 years of never doing anything without close adult supervision, I desperately need to start doing things on my own, or at least with people my age. I remember actually getting nervous during my first month at college because we had gone to a restaurant without adult supervision. This is crippling me.

And it seems that for all their encouragement that I grow up, my parents are content to keep me that way. The reason I’m writing this is because Dad came up with the brilliant idea to do a group cosplay next year with me and my siblings. And him and Grandma. Dad seems to come up with lots of ‘brilliant’ ideas like this. Like the clubbing thing I mentioned earlier, that I went to with my parents. Or the hookah bar, that I went to with my parents. While I am happy to spend time with him, I’m painfully aware that being in primarily adult spaces with him makes me look that much more like a child.

But they don’t care. Whenever I hint at it, they sort of just laugh it off. My parents have already made it very clear that they don’t care what people think. And that’s great for them, but I do care. I appreciate that they’re trying to share my interests and help me explore new things, but… Look, realistically, that should’ve been done when I was 16 and it wasn’t. It’s too late for that now. If I’m going to explore new things, I need to do it without them. I can’t spend my entire life relying on them for every little thing.

I know from experience that if I mention it seriously, it’ll just hurt their feelings. Especially my dad. My dad is insistent that we ‘won’t be like other parent-child relationships’- you know, the one where the teen hides everything from her dad and the dad distrusts and spies on his daughter. And while for the most part I’m glad for trust and openness, this relationship involves no secrets, no filter, no privacy whatsoever. Or it would’ve, if I hadn’t talked him down a little- and considering how melodramatic he got from that, I’m extremely hesitant to try again.

I’m not bothering to google anything like ‘how to get family to leave you alone’ because I’m sure it’ll all say the same thing. “You may feel like this now, but one day when you’re older, you’ll be grateful for your family and miss them uwu” I’M ALREADY GRATEFUL FOR MY FAMILY. At least, the ones that didn’t fuck me up beyond repair. I just want some space from them. Is that so much to ask?

But yet again. I suppose it doesn’t help that I have no one else to hang out with.

On Dreams and Goals

Back from Momocon, and I’ve had an epiphany.

This epiphany was brought on by A) my counselor pointing out all the work and financial security it will take to get a city apartment, especially in so short a time, B) the fact that I’ve finally cracked the learning block and I can now mostly (if primitively) read kana, and C) the fact that I just went to Momocon and the final panel I went to was a very informative one on Japanese culture.

For about as long as I can remember, my dream has been to visit Japan. It’s to the point where I don’t even remember what started it. Probably because of my weeby preteen years. Rumor has it my aunt promised it over my cradle. Either way, it’s something I’ve wanted my entire life.

So… instead of making my year-end goal ‘get a city apartment’, maybe it should be ‘visit Japan’.

Or rather, since end of the year would be winter and Japan seems to have very defined seasons, ‘achieve enough funds and language proficiency to make visiting Japan possible’, and then pick a time to go next year as a reward.

It’s still a change of pace, after all, which is what I need. This might actually be better for me than just moving to the city. Part of the reason I’m doing THAT is so I can finally meet people, and in the city I’d basically just be surrounded by more of the same. And plus actually accomplishing this would do wonders for me. While moving to the city is still something I feel needs to happen… visiting Japan is something I want desperately. And have wanted for a long time.

And now that I can actually read, I don’t have an excuse to put it off anymore.
Obviously self studies will still be difficult once I start this job next week (or whenever I start this job). But again, this is something I really want to do. Something that will help me.

I’m not giving up on my city goal. I’m just… pushing it back to make room for a new one. I still fully intend on moving out. Just not now. I said I wanted adventure in the great wide somewhere, so why play it safe?

I’m moving. Sort of.

I’ve done a lot of research, and apparently WordPress.com is not the site I want to be on if I want to start blogging for money. Which is in fact something that I really want to do. So I’m moving to WordPress.org, which requires me to set up a website of my own. Sort of. It was actually a lot easier than I expected. Still don’t have a domain though, so the site’s not live yet.

I’ll probably maybe keep this blog up as my ultra random personal blog or something. Again, since the new site isn’t live I can’t officially make the move anyway. And I need somewhere to write until then.

But all that’s not what’s bothering me, so much as…

Goddammit. Writing about my life is gonna start digging up a lot of painful memories, isn’t it?

Then again, I don’t know what else I expected. Between <REDACTED> and Her and all the other shit I’ve had to deal with in my short lifetime… I haven’t even started writing yet, and I’m already wondering if doing this will make me better or worse.

But… either way, I said I’d do it. If anything, all that angst and turmoil make for good entertainment. Which will, in turn, make for good cash hopefully. Maybe. We shall see.
Honestly I don’t have anything else to write. I’ll just upload this.

Insomnia

Hahahaaa

I’ve been awake since 8am. I’ve been in a car for 7 hours total today. I’ve been entertaining my siblings for 5 hours. I was near exhausted on the ride home.

And now, that I’m at home and in my bed, I can’t sleep?

This isn’t a new thing by far. Some nights it can reach 2am and I’m genuinely just not sleepy at all. Most of the times it happens when I have something important to do in the morning, like an exam (when I was online schooled) or a doctor’s visit. It’s not that I’m nervous or anything- at least, I don’t think so. Maybe my body knows I’m nervous but my brain doesn’t somehow. During those times I typically just stay up the whole night, do the thing while jittery as hell, then go straight home and sleep.

Other times… I don’t know. Sleep just doesn’t come to me for some reason. I’m never fully sure why, it just… happens. Thankfully those are (usually) on days when I don’t have anything important to do, so I just devote the following day to resetting my body clock. Force myself to stay up all night and day, then go to bed at maybe 9pm. Sometimes it works. Sometimes I bypass sleepiness and go right back to being wired, and I have to spend ANOTHER day trying to reset myself. Usually once it’s gotten past two days I just give up and sleep whenever I crash, which unfortunately is around 2pm.

Recently my lack of sleepiness does make sense. I’ve had nothing to do with my life, so I wouldn’t have expended enough energy to be tired. But like I just said, I’ve been up and active all day today. I was even falling asleep on the drive home. So why now..?

I guess… it could be because of what I started planning on said drive home. That might have excited me. That, and the fact that I was looking up a ton of Nightvale just before trying to sleep, so that also stimulated my brain.

I’m not in the mood to reset myself, and I don’t want to stay up until 4 either. Maybe subconsciously that’s why I decided to write- because I know this is something that will wind me down. I’ve started yawning, so hopefully I’m wound down enough.

Let’s try this again.

This blog title is way more apt than I expected

I should be in the habit of writing everyday- that’s what almost every accomplished author claims. Write all the time, write when you don’t have inspiration, write to improve, write write write

But it’s just hard. It’s hard to write when I’m constantly hungry and battling depression and my brain is just fighting me all the time. It’s hard to write when I genuinely have nothing to write about. And I can never tell if it’s because I just don’t have anything, or because I keep limiting myself like this. The last attempt I created, I restricted myself to completely original stories (which didn’t quite work because half of them were fanfiction with the names omitted) and now… fuck, I don’t even know what I’ve been planning to write here. It’s become a diary without me meaning it to be. And it becoming a diary is dangerous, because I never do anything. I have nothing going on in my life right now. That’s why I’m writing. That’s why I escape. I have all these nice clothes in my closet that might never be worn; I have makeup that I rarely apply. I’m just sitting here in my room day after day, completely isolated from friends or family. And no, this feeling of isolation has been going on since way before I quit my job. The only difference was that I got to leave the house and get harassed for some odd hours a week.

A little about my daily life. My dad is at work during the day and doesn’t really come home in time to do anything else. My mom is either asleep or out somewhere, or in her room rewatching the same 30 seconds of TV over and over and slowly driving me insane. And look- I don’t mind that my parents aren’t knocking down my door insisting that I hang out with them. I don’t mind being left to my own devices.

What I do mind is being alone. Constantly. Having days that bleed into each other, a bedroom window blocked out so I’m left unaware of time’s passing. Not wanting to use my Lyft funds to go out anywhere because who knows, a job might call me back and I need to be able to get there for interviews (and besides, I’d still be going alone anyway) My only friend being 30 minutes away, too far to come visit.

At least in the city there’d be a plethora of interesting places to go, new people to meet. I could go to museums, art galleries, coffee shops. There’s a huge ferris wheel in the middle for crying out loud. Here, in suburbia, there’s nothing. I just looked it up and in this area, all the points of interest are parks. Parks and movie theaters.

I’m a bit worried about the possibility that I’m hyping up the city so much in my head but, when I actually get there, it’ll just be more of the same. I’ll just stay in my apartment, even more alone than before, especially if I keep up this dream of working from home. I won’t actually go out and meet people, or make new friends, or do anything different than I already am.

…but I don’t want to think that. I want to have hope. I want to believe that there’s a better future waiting for me there. This plan is something that finally makes sense to me. Something that I really want to do.

I just don’t know how to get there.

A peek into my brain

And now the real trial begins- writing when I don’t have anything to write about. Nothing worth mentioning has happened today, and no story ideas are coming to mind. Let’s pick something from my list of ideas.

Not in the mood for an anecdote, not in the mood for a letter, not in the mood for self-diagnosis- goddamn why are these all such heavy topics right off the bat? Ughh no we can’t fall off the wagon after only three days come on dammit write write something.
Okay fine. We’ll write about not having any ideas.

It doesn’t surprise me that I’m drawing a blank. My brain has a severe tendency to not do what I want it to do. Especially when the thing that I want to do is important. Or involves actually writing down my creative ideas. Which kinda sucks because most of the things I will have to do in my life will include either important things or writing.

If the writing thing is confusing, the issue is that I come up with great ideas in my head and even have amazing wording for it, writing out the story on a mental typewriter so to speak- but when I actually get to a keyboard, everything seems to go… flat. I can get down the general idea, and even most of the dialogue if I’m lucky. But it’s been churning in my head so long that it’s sort of lost its flavor, like a burger de-greased after cooking in a George Foreman grill. The only difference is that those burgers still tended to taste delicious. (where is my George Foreman grill?)

Sometimes I wonder if I should just keep those ideas in my head so they don’t lose their shine. After all, maybe I don’t have to record EVERYTHING. But then my brain says ‘haha yes you do write it down’ so I do. And it comes out awful.

Funnily enough, the plotlines that haven’t been thought out in my brain turn out fine. If I come up with a general idea and then expand on it in writing, those turn out way better. I guess because if I go ahead and write out the story in my head, by the time I can write it down I’ve forgotten a lot of the great wording and phrasing that I used.

You may be thinking ‘then just save the story for the page’ but I CAN’T. Because typically when I make up stories like that, it’s a coping mechanism to deal with the shittiness I’m currently going through. Like school or work or an uncomfortable family reunion. So I don’t want to save it for the page, I want to distract myself. Thankfully at this point I’m pretty good at autopilot, so nobody can really tell that my mind is somewhere else unless they try to talk to me.

But it is frustrating though. I hate not having records of things I create. I also hate losing records of things I create. Even though I’ve mostly gone digital, I’ve never once considered tossing any of my old notebooks away. I like looking through them and seeing how far I’ve come. I also really like reading my own writing because it’s exactly the style I like and I’m a narcissist sorta kinda.

Whenever I write down the lackluster versions of my great ideas, I always tell myself that someday I’ll go back and rewrite some of the shine into them. I very rarely do. That’s kind of sad, honestly. Maybe I’ll start doing that. I’ll have a lot of time, seeing as I still haven’t heard back from a single job application.

I think that’s enough for today. I’m satisfied with this, and I genuinely can’t think of anything else to add.

Trying something new

It’s cold. It’s a cold, rainy day. And because it’s a cold, rainy day, I woke up late for my counselor’s appointment that I forgot I had. I’ve actually been waking up at fairly decent times, considering that I now have nothing to wake up for. But I took a celebratory shot with my family last night to celebrate me quitting my awful, awful job. And then I stayed up watching Youtube videos that I definitely could’ve watched today. And then it was a cold, rainy day. So I slept in.

Not only did I wake up late for the counselor’s appointment that I forgot I had, I also was out of Lyft money to get a ride there and back. After all, because I now have no job, I no longer have a source of income. Now I check, I actually got my final paycheck (a measly $80) yesterday morning, but because I was panicking about being late for my appointment I completely forgot about that. So I ended up texting Dad in a panic to ask for money. He provided $30.

The interesting thing about that is that both Lyft rides only cost $9 each. I’d expected them to cost $11 or more, which is why I asked for so much money. It’s alright, though- both rides made up for the low prices by taking a stupidly long time to get to me. These waits were not made better by the fact that today is a cold, rainy day. As my WTForecast app puts it, “looks like all of the clouds are trying to ratfuck your day.” I have no idea what that means, but yes. They certainly were.

When I got to the counselor, we talked for a while. Well obviously we talked for a while, that’s what I come here to do. We talked about several subjects: me quitting my job, and my plans to move to the city, and <REDACTED>, and how hard I tend to be on myself. She’s the one who re-motivated me to start writing daily again. Even if I don’t have anything to write about. Especially if I don’t have anything to write about.

She also suggested that I try reaching out to my friends again. The older ones. I am making slight efforts for the very distant ones, mostly by way of wishing them Happy Birthday on Facebook. Maybe I’ll reach out to S again. The last thing we did was go on a date with her and her boyfriend. (I still maintain that she, as a fellow bisexual, should have known better than to try making me her unicorn, but I digress.) I don’t know what I’d say though. I’m never good at reaching out to people, especially after long periods of time. And it never really feels like she’s that interested in talking to me.

I wrote a very long… thing while I was sitting in the iHop, waiting for my second Lyft to make its way over. I’ll type it up and maybe post it too. Also I don’t think that’s how I’m supposed to type iHop; it’s an acronym, not an Apple product. IHOP. There we are.

I’m now sitting in my room, typing this. I haven’t changed out of my clothes, because it’s such a cold, rainy day. I did take off my socks, but now I regret that, because I have to tuck my feet under my legs in order to keep them warm. I’m also wearing a blanket, the pretty leopard-print glacier colored blanket that S bought me maybe… two, three Christmases ago. Maybe I’ll also put on my thick Little Mermaid socks, the ones that D bought me… last Christmas.

Aah. Toasty.

I should’ve set a timer, because now I have no idea how long I’ve been writing. I can’t even remember what time I got home. That’s normal for me though, I guess. I’ve never had the best grasp on time. I’ve never had the best grasp on anything.

Either way, I’ve written a lot today- plenty to make up for tomorrow, when I probably won’t have anything to say- so I’ll go ahead and sign off here.

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I’m guessing a bit of explanation is in order.

Like the title says, I’m trying something new. I’m going to (try to) write something random every day, and if I like it well enough, I’ll post it here. We’ll see how well this works, won’t we..?

Yay personal financial bs

You know what’s not fun? Being broke.

I don’t regret quitting my job. People treated me as subhuman garbage, management was incompetent at best, my paycheck kept shrinking… It was a sinking ship that I’m glad I jumped.

But I do regret not having a paycheck anymore. Sure, I still live with my parents, but financially they’re really more like my landlords- complete with requiring rent. I pay for my own groceries, shopping trips, fast food, Lyft rides… And now that I’m out of a job, my dad will slowly start having to loan me money for those again.

I don’t like that. He’s already struggling enough without also having to support me. I don’t want to go back to being a leech again. I have been applying to jobs left and right, but so far I’ve only heard back from two, and they both turned out to be failures. (not on my part, mind you)

I did get a good chunk of money recently as my first tax refund. I could easily use it to tide me over until whenever an employer decides to give me a chance, but… I don’t know. I just had my heart set on using that money to go on vacation. Walking the rustic streets of Savannah, warming my skin on the Tybee Island beaches… Even without my actual Vitamin D deficiency, I feel like it’s something that I seriously need.

At this rate, I might end up having to dip into my savings. Maybe that’ll be what I use to tide me over. It’s not like I was really saving for anything in particular anyway…

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Hmm, this is a depressing post. What else can I talk about? What things do I divert myself with?

MomoCon is coming soon. I don’t know if I’ll be able to finish my new cosplay in time; not because I’m too busy (obviously, ha) but because altering the jacket is a little trickier than I thought. But I like to have at least one new cosplay each year… Maybe I can come up with something new quickly.

Positive, positive I do like getting to photograph all the creative cosplays that other people come up with though. And I have that portable charger this year, so I won’t run out of battery in the middle of a photoshoot like I did last year… That was sad. Oh, and Mystic Messenger came out this year, so hopefully I’ll run into some cosplayers from that game!

…although the last two years I’ve gone to MomoCon, I’ve run into guys who decided for me that they’re worth my time. And they were really impolite about it too. Not flatout rude, like pushing me around or catcalling or whatever. But inconsiderate things like cornering me and trying to chat me up when I’m clearly busy. The issue is that I’m a ridiculously nice person, so if you’re not outright rude to me, I can’t make myself do anything potentially rude back. So I end up just being really passive and eventually running away.

Okay that turned negative, what else… SHINee, the only KPop band that I actively listen to(because I don’t have enough mental energy for more than one what is wrong with you people that stan more than 5) They were in North America a month or so ago for a watered down version of their concert. While I obviously couldn’t go, I listened to every stream, so it kinda felt like I was there in spirit. Apparently they’re going to have another concert soon, which seems like overkill to me, but I guess as long as they’re okay. I think Onew is getting drafted next year, so their management might be hurrying to get as much of them together as they can.

Jonghyun, love of my life, came out with a new album recently. It’s a lot of sensual, acoustic-y songs, which is one of my favorite genres- and one of his best genres, in my opinion. I feel connected to Jonghyun, at least in mindset. As far as I can tell, we’re both sensitive, deepthinking introverts who are having trouble being happy. And are also a little weird. Maybe if he ends up doing okay, I’ll do okay too. After all, we’re both still young, aren’t we? We have time.

That’s a more hopeful note than this started on, so I’ll end here.

Dreams of Youtube Past

I have no concept of time so I just come write when I feel like it’s been a week and it could’ve been either 4 days or 14 

At least it’s not like my cosplay blog which I’m really procrastinating on mainly because it involves actual photos of me

What can we talk about today? I need to get my mind off something. Hm.

I wanted to be a Youtuber once. Well, I say once, but really it was only about 2 years ago. The channel is still up and everything, along with my grand total of *drumroll* 0 subscribers and 8 views.

To be fair, I didn’t stick with it very long, maybe a month or so while I was bored during my gap year. So I didn’t give the channel time to grow, and when I eventually gave up on it I didn’t feel much of a loss. Particularly because (similar to blogging, ironically) I wasn’t really sure what I wanted my niche to be.

At first I considered becoming a gamer. Yes, go on and roll your eyes. But I liked playing videogames well enough. At least, certain genres of videogames. I definitely wouldn’t have been a horror gamer; I prefer stylish games with emotion and story, like Telltale games. My plan was to sort of base my style off the Youtuber Cryaotic, including never showing my face or (hopefully) revealing my name. The problem I quickly ran into was, well… though I had a vast collection of games, they were all console games. And since I wasn’t 100% sure that this was what I wanted to do, I was extremely hesitant to invest in re-buying everything on Steam. I did make a brief foray onto Twitch with some Aura Kingdom, but that idea quickly fell by the wayside.

My second idea was to become a speed-artist. If you’re unfamiliar with that, basically it’s an artist who records the (hours long) process of creating an artpiece, then speeds it up to a maybe 5-10 minute video. I think I actually uploaded a couple videos of that, including creating my own thumbnail for one of my Let’s Plays. That idea honestly wasn’t so bad, and I actually wouldn’t mind returning to it again… However, I’d been making my trial Youtube videos on the desktop computer in my house. Drawing was something I was more used to doing on my laptop, but the capture software didn’t work as well due to the laptop’s more limited capabilities. I tried drawing on the desktop computer, but it just… felt weird. I don’t know how to describe it.

My last idea was to become a vlogger. But as I mentioned earlier, I still didn’t want to show my face, or give out any incriminating details. So the vlogs typically involved just my voice over a black background with the video title in center. Riveting, I know, but I couldn’t think of anything entertaining (and free) to show instead. animations i should’ve done really simple animations like the odd1sout i’m an idiot GAH This wasn’t such a bad idea either, and it was one I sort of really got into. I still have a OneNotes page of all the video ideas I never got to do. Actually, it might be possible to just edit/expand those for blog format and post them here.

But the reason I ended up abandoning that idea too? Well, honestly… for the longest time I’ve been insecure about the way I speak. I’m not exactly Marilyn Monroe: my voice tends toward low and sort of husky, especially when I’m relaxed or around family. Plus if I haven’t planned out what I’m going to say, I tend to stumble over my words and just sound really awkward.

That’s why I like writing so much, whether it’s blogging, fiction writing, or just chatting online. I don’t have to worry about whether I look okay, or what I sound like. I can reinvent myself through these words on a screen. I am whatever I wish to be.

But don’t worry… I plan to be a little more honest on this blog than I am on the rest of the internet.