lavendertowerarchives

[lavendertowerarchives]

I'm a Computer Science major. I'm working on my Master's program. Almost everything in my life is digitized, though very rarely is anything automated. I have good reasons not trust The Computers, but that's not exactly relevant.

Because of my rampant digitization, I do not have a "suicide note." I have a suicide email. It's addressed to everyone who meets the conditions of "I have their email" and "do I care to explain anything." It's been ready to fire off for more than a year now, scheduled one week in the future juuuust in case I fail and come out alive. I trust myself not to back out. I don't trust myself to put together a competent rube-goldberg scheme to eventually erase my consciousness.

The shorthand for the two above criteria is "are they my friend." Since its inception, the list of recipients was clear. It was everyone I was in classes with, both now and in the past. Whether or not we had talked recently, I still put them on the list.

Now I don't know exactly who I'd send it to. I have like four people I'd definitely send it to (my partner, JH, AH, AK) but I don't know who else would care. I figure people would probably hear about it just from information osmosis (I'm not that forgotten) and maybe some would even end up here. No one's reading 200+ posts of my whiny, horny, lonely garbage. That's not a judgement on my friends or the quality of my posts, it's an observation about their quantity and content. It's just a lot of work. I have trouble dealing with all of me (thats why I have a suicide email in the first place), I won't expect someone else to deal with even a sliver of me.

The only new people I've met since my friends all fucking graduated have been online, and they've been wonderful. Unfortunately, I'm forced to assume I fucked up somehow because I haven't heard anything in a month. It's always the same pattern of just... I respond, and they don't. My school friends, my hobby friends, my online friends, my long-term friends... The last message sent is always from me (the only exceptions have been one-word reactions or that one (1) high school friend I ghosted because I panicked). It's been like this since middle school.

Of course, it's rude to everyone who's moved on to accuse them of finding me uninteresting or weird or whatever. Shit happens. They stop being online, some tragedy happens, they get in a relationship, they move away... All these external factors can apply to their intermission of contact. I understand that. I've gone dark for weeks with no warning, and I can't expect any special consideration just because "oh I have autism and don't know if they like me" or "oh I have social anxiety and reaching out is almost impossible." We all have lives to live and we can't broadcast everything all the time, even if we wanted to. The reason I maintain my observation that everyone's quietly severed contact is that they don't come back. Most people don't come back. The few that do make hollow offers to meet up and just... Never schedule anything with me, with my input or without it.

Severing contact is something I've never had to do. It's never been done to me. No one tells me what I did wrong, suboptimally, or strangely. Taking a broader look, they tend not to explain whatever happened in their own lives to cause whatever intermission I'm tearing up my skin over (it happened just once, I can't thank you enough, dude).

Despite all this, my "note" is just icing on the cake. I may never send out my whiny explanation of my death's circumstances. I might not have the chance. If I see a chance for a quick, guaranteed death, I'm taking it without hesitation. I honestly don't care what happens after I die. By definition, I will not care, I will not exist. Regardless of it all, everyone here on tumblr will probably be the first to know.

[lavendertowerarchives]

talk to meeeeheeeheeeeee

i dunno why people keep leaving me but i need more dataaaa

im finally feeling better but at the cost of literally every friendship i had (or at least thought i had, i have no way to tell)

[lavendertowerarchives]

It's like playing "red light, green light" where all the signals echo seconds or even hours after they're said. Hearing "red light" means you should have stopped some time ago, hearing "green light" implies that you were given leeway for something good, but you don't know when or what it was.

To add more rules for no more reward, they've somehow never told you which direction to start walking. When they catch you for running the red light (which you still can't see or hear in realtime), they expect to watch you walk back to where you started while still yelling out their signals.

It's even worse when there aren't any signals to hear. Are they playing this game? Do they know you're trying to play with them? Are they lost, too, or are they hearing signals you didn't send?

I haven't found a way to win. I don't understand it, if I haven't made that obvious enough. I can recognize that patterns exist, I just can't see them.

I don't have any strategy except "not lose." I just do the social equivalent of shouting "green light" as loud and as often as possible in an attempt to show friendliness and eagerness to engage. I assume I just come off as desperate, clingy, and loud. My disdain for the game itself is clear in my complete disregard for the challenge it's supposed to present.

All I can do is stand still and try to get people to come to me. It's not like that works very well either, but at least I'm not losing.

Rules of effective conversation with people that I've learned over time:

Don't speak while someone is speaking, you'll interrupt them

Don't stay silent when someone is sharing something, but interact with them, be an active listener

Don't look around or avert your gaze while someone is talking to you, you're being inattentive

Don't look at the speaker too intently, you seem like staring and that's rude

Don't speak slowly, everyone does off

Don't speak fast, no-one understands you

Speak at just the right pace, there's a common ground

Everyone has their own pace of understanding, adjust accordingly

Don't talk a lot, it's annoying and can be intruding

Speak more often, you need to develop communication skills

Speak clearly and audibly

Dont be loud

Don't be shy of being open about your feelings

Don't overshare, people are not interested in your lament

You should be quick witted and crack your own jokes

Adding humour to conversation is not the solution

[lavendertowerarchives]

hey woah go look at this shit

I spent a fair bit of time on this. I've been working on it for over six months, but I've only put in around thirty hours of actual writing. It's just an issue of energy, motivation, and stress. I'll be releasing my next works chapter-by-chapter so I can stop hating myself for having nothing to show for my work. I have like six more stories half-written or just started and two that haven't even been written down yet that have been in my head for too long (one of which, this is a prequel to. It has been in my head for over a year. I wrote this to focus on two minor characters in it that I liked the dynamic of. If I live long enough to finish it, keep an eye out for two tattooed elders of some village).

Copper, Leather, Sand

Finally finished. The past six months have been rather full of writing, but this is one of only two works I've completed.

Two soldiers have been stranded in the desert. Neither of them are keen on letting the other live, but they're more concerned with their own lack of options to care whether the other lives or dies. It's definitely not enemies-to-lovers, and not really enemies-to-friends, either. They're just less hostile.

Let me know what tags I should add. I have no idea what to tag it or even where else to host it.

(cw su1c1dal ideation, gore)

Copper, Leather, Sand

[lavendertowerarchives]

Today was my birthday. I had no party, no celebration, no cake, no gifts, no fanfare, no messages from any of my friends. It's a step in the right direction, it's just a larger step than I anticipated.

I usually dislike all the celebration that comes with becoming a year older. I didn't become a year older, I became a day older, this day just somehow holds an arbitrary amount of importance to others. I understand people's fixation on certain dates as "important," but that doesn't mean I share the fixation.

I've usually used people's fascination as a means to gather them in one place. Yeah, I throw birthday parties, and I have for almost every year since starting high school.

I dislike gifts in general, so I have to let everyone know to please not give me anything when I see them. It doesn't stop some, but it works for most.

I like cake. I just like cake. I can buy a cake whenever I want. There's no need for an occasion.

I dislike being the center of attention if it's for something I didn't do. In this case, I didn't make it another year. That shit's hard. I made it another day. Three hundred and sixty five decisions, almost every day, maybe more than once per day. I never said "no" to the question of "should I wake up tomorrow?" I keep saying "hold on, not yet, gimme a minute" and then get distracted. I'm not gonna lie, it's almost every day that I'm faced with the decision.

This year, I got zero gifts. I honestly expected one from my partner since they have done an Art for me every year, but this year in particular they've had absolutely zero energy to do anything. I know that's a phrase that's thrown around a lot, but I do mean that the little energy they do have is spent making/buying food, then they get exhausted and go back to sleep. The fact that they only sort of acknowledged my birthday is the best gift I could receive.

I did not have a celebration. I do not have anyone to celebrate with, and I did not have the motivation to make people care.

I got only five birthday wishes: My mother (ugh), my dad, my brother (eugh), my partner (yay), and my partner's roommate (appreciated but irrelevant, she was likely notified by my partner). All but my partner's were over text.

The social aspect (or lack thereof) is bumming me out, but it was unrealistic to expect people to remember my birthday. If they did remember and made a conscious choice to not message me, that's indistinguishable and honestly I'm too tired of wondering which people are really my friends. Everything else is honestly great. I spent the day watching youtube and twitch as well as finishing up my "latest" barrel of fiction. Hopefully I'll finish tonight. I'm almost done.

Tomorrow is the start of spring quarter. Let's see if I make it.

[lavendertowerarchives]

I am in the unique position to observe myself under the conditions I normally blank out on. My anxiety is spiking harder than a volleyball player and all I can do is just... Sit.

I'm at my local game store to play MTG for the first time in months. I'm sitting at a table, alone, waiting for people to come to me because I'm absolutely paralyzed. People have sat down, but not at my table. Some other ginger has sat at the table across from me. They probably don't care. They may be doing the same thing as me. Instead of focusing on myself, I am instead fucking concentrating on everyone around me.

I'm doing my best to reign in my overanalysis. As of writing this, a high school friend has taken the last seat at the aforementioned table and I have said nothing. My excuse is that the table seats got filled within sixty seconds, but honestly, if I cared that much about it, I should have joined the table before it became a crisis.

I'm sick of this. My disgust is normal, my panic is not. I've spent the first half of the day talking to my family (eugh) so I should have been sufficiently ramped up for social contact, but evidently that is not the case.

I just want to play some MTG. More than that, I want to talk to people. My own ineptitude has prevented both of these things. Hopefully, its only temporary.

I would like to blame many things for my lack of prowess and composure. Chief among those is my decision to write this whiny shit instead of sitting down at the damn table just across from me. What matters more is my position, I can take apart my circumstances later (if at all). Fuck me, I guess. I haven't even succeeded in turning this into an opportunity to observe.

[lavendertowerarchives]

Has there ever been a scenario where you noticed someone's been liking your posts and then you decided to dm them about it? Like I really hope to be proven wrong, but this is a trap I fall into a lottt where I think "I'll let them notice me first," forgetting that I am half the equation and have already noticed them.

It keeps happening. I routinely manufacture scenarios in my head which make sense only because I'm eager to imagine the successful path. When I flip the positions as a sanity check, I'm forced to realize "what? No. Why would I do that? That's never crossed my mind."

Also, just to be sure in case I'm wrong, I want to give you a conditionless "go for it." If they were going to message you eventually, you can move the process along faster. If they weren't, now they might.

Help an indecisive rock out

Should I dm the person who I followed, or should I wait for them to notice that I am liking a decent amount of their posts and dm me?

[lavendertowerarchives]

Have you had anyone say you were like a fictional character? And if not, what is one fictional character you'd like to be compared to if the situation arrives?

Naw, I can't say I remember anyone ever doing that. On the rare occasion someone talks to me, the topic is usually never "media we consume" because our tastes are always different. It's not like I have niche interests, I just don't consume much besides youtube and a couple manga series.

I thought for a damned while about who I'd like to be compared to, and again, I'm comin up empty. It's not like I aspire to be like any certain character. They're usually caricatures of aspects the author's bestowed upon them or they're in circumstances I'd never be in. The character I find most relatable is Denji from Chainsaw Man, and he's... Not the best.

I figure that that's why I like to write so much. I can make characters that aren't meant to be liked. There is no redemption for them, not because they're irredeemable, but because I don't care about them "looking good." Their good qualities aren't important because everyone's too busy dealing with their bad ones.

I know people struggle to not have self-insert characters, and I do too. I just committed hard and made every character a self-insert character. Almost all of them has some part of me in them. The ones who don't are usually inspired by other people I know.

"This one's autistic, this one's lovesick, this one is scared people will leave so he never stops being funny, this one pushed himself too hard in school, this one is only vulgar to get people to listen..." There's a lot of shit I dislike about myself. Surpriiiiise. If I isolate little bits and surround them in a different context, maybe I'll be able to ignore them.

So, yeah. I make my own fictional characters to be compared to. If some noticed a similarity between me and one of them, I'd be pretty happy. If I can't be "admirable," I'll settle for "interesting."

[lavendertowerarchives]

Some unnecessary tech jargon as context:

For my quarter-long group project, I had to do various things all up and down our tech stack. I was assigned to do frontend work, which I hate. I don't like frontend. I had to remodel my teammate's strange attempt at a webpage and server to serve that page (among other periphery). I had to re-learn javascript, and learn HTML for the first time.

I, somehow, enjoyed writing in HTML. It gave visual feedback the moment I reloaded the page. I was able to shift things around, googling what I needed and just... Having the answer be so simple was nice.

Now that the project is done (well, we didn't finish, but we turned it in), I've learned HTML and CSS on my own time. Over the past two days, I have constructed a website and hosted it on github (as well as my shitty private server I contact with localhost:). It's barely a skeleton. It has nothing on it. It will get bigger, but the fact that I'm proud of it now confuses me.

Now that I know the basics of web dev (like, the very very basics), I can use Inspect Element to peek at how other pages work. It's been fun, learning techniques from other, more developed sites.

It's broken the fourth wall, though. The pages no longer look just like pages to me. I see the elements behind the text, the containers, the styles, sometimes the .js responsible for the fanciness, and I lose my sense of wonder. It's been made very clear to me that these pages are not connected to anything happening outside my computer. Sure, I contacted the DNS and it sent the page back, just how everyone gets their webpages. But once it's sent to me, it's dead. Not many websites I'm on have dynamic content in the page, communicating back to some server. The ones that do usually use it for texting and shit.

It's unreasonable to see these pages as dead. I can't unsee it. I hate it. I feel more cut off than ever from everyone else. I don't regret learning but I do wish I could keep my analyses to my own projects.

Maybe it'll pass.

[lavendertowerarchives]

I feel more human. I don't know how "human" I felt three weeks ago, nor do I know how to describe "feeling human" without listing things that aren't going wrong.

I no longer have assignments to do. That's the main part of it. I'm no longer stressed out about all the shit I have to do because there's so much less of it. They don't take up all of my mental energy by sitting directly in front of my attention.

I no longer feel so alienated from my hands (or the rest of my body but I never really feel too attached anyways) and fingers. I can instantly recognize that those are my hands grabbing those things in front of me.

I finally feel more comfortable letting myself think. I don't panic whenever my headphones aren't blaring just because I'm worried the Bullshit (tm) will pop back in and send me spiraling or even just plummeting. I've entertained entire ideas for games, posts, scripts. I have inspiration again, finally.

I don't keep searching for a way out. I won't be finding them as often. I have many "ways out" of things, and yet I always default to taking a bath with a toaster. Well, things aren't as dire anymore. I still want out, don't get me wrong, I just don't want to Leave as badly.

People will start hearing from me again. I don't want to let this spring break go to waste.

[lavendertowerarchives]

Anonymity? On the internet? No fucken way! Who would have thought it possible?

As I love to do, I'm gonna slam down a massive disclaimer first to explain an important shortcut I use.

I have nobody to impress. I have nobody to show off to. I don't have any reason to pose or sanitize or shape myself to look "better" in any way. That said, I'm about to claim I've done a lot of things that make me look good. I'm just some stranger on the internet, if anyone ever ends up reading this. There is every chance that I can just... lie. I might be lying. I might be enhancing the truth. I might be omitting some stuff. I have no collateral and no evidence to prove anything. If someone's gonna start doubting my honesty, they better start at the beginning of my 200+ posts. This account is nothing more than a crash log of my eventual death and an outlet to talk to similarly plagued individuals who I hope call me a friend. Any clout I gain is irrelevant. I hope you can trust me, dear reader. I understand if you don't.

Recently, I've been submitting anonymous asks to people. An innocuous task. I try to help them. A noble goal. I succeed.

Something veeery relevant to this concept is the realization of (what I'm calling) my savior complex, which I unraveled not long ago. I see someone in a dire situation and I sometimes get an idea of how to get them out of it. I only construct such a solution in such a short time because I've probably been in their position or something resembling it. I detail it, add my disclaimers, and submit it anonymously. Whoosh. Off it goes.

The bewildering thing I've discovered is my success rate. One hundred percent. I'm not kidding. I've shot off like six or seven of these at least. That sort of rate will give a guy confidence, which I need to dismantle quickly. I'm amazed that my help is appreciated, after my base self-confidence prohibits me from understanding that people like being talked to for the thirty minutes it takes to write. I'm simultaneously not surprised, since I spent so long on like just twenty lines of text. I put everything I have into that shit. I refuse to half-ass my attempts at assistance. I know what that feels like.

As for the anonymity part, the fact that "no one will know it was me" is always as exploitable as ever. In other circumstances, anonymous asks are easy routes to harass someone without facing consequences. It would prevent an attacker from being identified. It protects them from the victim. In my case, it protects me from myself by establishing a contract: no one will praise me to my face. Ever.

This restriction is mandatory. I will never forget my fucking failure of a reassurance I had when I did reveal myself. Once. It happened once. (I'm not counting these in my successes, don't worry) I submitted something. The user said they wanted to give me a hug. I submit again. They thank me. I message them directly, we keep talking about the issue, and I fuck up. I got praised. That went to my ego. I assumed too much, gave a bad comparison, and made them feel worse. I haven't messaged them since. I don't think they want me to.

The purpose of the restriction is to prevent any clout from ever being gained. I can't risk texting while I'm drunk on approval. That's the only reason I use anonymity as my fragile bravado. If they don't know who I am, then they can't try to praise me. I desperately want to be praised for my help, or anything really. I know how desperate I am. That's exactly why I can't subject someone to the aftermath.

As a small disclaimer once more, I understand how easy it is to shed failure when I'm anonymous. If my advice doesn't help someone, it's all too simple to just... not take responsibility. When that happens, when that day comes where my help is not appreciated, I accept it. I won't come out and say "hey, it's me, I'm sorry," since I don't want to do that to a success, but I will add it to my tally. Again, there is no reason to trust me on this.

I've been praised as "cutthroat," (yes, he clarified it was a positive remark) and that made me realize my style of "help" differs from normal reassurances. I am not gentle. I am still fearful that I will tip someone over the edge, I'm still paranoid about making someone's day worse, I'm still frightened that I might trigger someone. However, I understand that I, some rando, will probably not outweigh the positive influences in their life. I can afford to be pessimistic. I can and will fight you.

I know as well as everyone else does that if someone offers you pure happiness, promises nothing but bonuses, or ignores downsides, they are naive as fuck and will not be helpful. They've likely never hurt themselves on purpose or booked their own funeral. I will gladly tell you that things are shit, they will be shit, and they will keep being shit for a while. The key difference is that I know how to make that shit smell less awful. I know how to plug my nose. I know how to find the hideaways where the concentration of shit is lesser. I want to convince people that it is not their fault for being in a shit-stained world.

TL;DR there is no summary. I said a lot of stuff that kinda doesn't connect. This is word-vomit. I just needed to get all these ideas out of my head so they stopped fucking annoying me.

[lavendertowerarchives]

I forgot how fun it is to fuck with powerpoint

Sorry, I still ain't back yet Sorry, still isolating, consciously or not Sorry, I still don't know what the fuck is going on No, I still can't fucking draw hands Yes, I'll respond as soon as I feel human

[lavendertowerarchives]

It feels shitty to need help and not know anything else. My problem-solving skills are depricated because I've been making too many problems and not finding solutions.

I know that a lot of the time I whine and moan on this account. Usually it's about some issue I've overanalyzed and inflated and worried about endlessly. I never make it clear when I get better because when I do I either don't notice it or don't post at all. This is different. I'm making a fucking stance that this... Episode is markedly worse than normal.

I cannot think straight. I don't trust myself to talk to anyone because I don't think I can form normal conversations. No, this isn't some sort of mental disconnect where I'm all like "aw naw I can't ask people for help, then I'll be burdening them with my problems and they won't want to talk to me." I currently understand people's willingness to help. I just don't think I'm able to recieve it, and it would take too long to become "okay" again and either thank them or apologize or explain.

My brain fog is thick. It's much, much thicker than normal. The music in my head is even fucking louder than it was yesterday, I can't hold two problems in my head at once, and I can't even begin to try to solve my sudden onset of physical weakness (bizzarre but still shitty).

When I try to solve one problem, another pops into my brain and asserts that it is more important. Upon trying to figure out a plan for this new problem, a third, a fourth, a fifth will enter and all try to establish dominance. It doesn't matter which one wins because the first one will just jump right back in and distract me with artificial urgency.

I have emotions that remain, yes, but the stress drowns them out. I'm furious at my ineptitude. I'm saddened at my isolation, half self-induced, half forced. I'm depressed because my mind dredges up the worst shit I've done over the years and taunts me with it, forcing me to either slip deeper into a su1c1dal mood (I'm already desperate) or distract myself (which takes a lotttt of media blasting into my eyes).

My vision seems like I'm looking at my life through a screen. Everything, and I do mean everything, looks flattened. Not even squeezing my partner's thighs drags me back; it looks like someone else's hands are wrapped around them. I still have depth perception, but my visual focus is not in the center of my vision. I can't recenter it. If I aim my eyes directly at the fan in front of me, my mind ignores it, instead showing me scenes from my mind, taking up the comprehensive bandwidth I have. I may as well have my eyes closed. This body of mine moves and it takes me a second to realize that yeah... That's me.

I'm panicked, dude. I want to ask my partner for help... But I have work to do. I want to tell them I'm not doing well, but I don't even know what would help. I want to use the resources of dubious availability that I don't know if I have, but again I don't know how or what would help.

If my tasks were simply "do the homework, write the programs, fill out the forms" then it would be easier. Still not manageable, but easier. Instead, I have group projects to take part in. I'm an absolute deadweight and I think I will remain as one. This is not something I can easily explain to either group I'm in. I'm just a poor teammate, and any justification I have doesn't make any of the work go away. I'm already gonna turn in empty projects for this quarter's individual work. I can't keep doing this.

Unfortunately, the quarter isn't over yet. I don't want to fail my classes. If I do, the only justification I have is "I wasn't doing well. I couldn't do it." I don't even understand the main impediment blocking me. All I know is that my mind cannot handle planning or executing any task it's given unless it's muscle memory.

I want to talk to people. I want to write code. I want to write prose. I want to make tasty food. I want to fucking go to sleep. I can't do these things. I've barely fed myself this month. Something as simple as "write a text, send it, there, you responded" is magnitudes more complicated than "go to the burger store and buy a burger." I short circuit when trying to plan the latter, how can I ever complete the former? Even this post took an hour and a half. I have to keep reminding myself to analyze how I am because I keep forgetting where I was or what I was trying to say. There are people waiting for my response and I honestly don't know when I can communicate more than "sorry."

Shit, man.

[lavendertowerarchives]

When I first try to obtain a skill, or otherwise begin a task I am not experienced in, I'm usually given an advanced toolkit full of excess shit I don't know how to use. The person or thing that gave me the "resource" can teach me how to use it, but until I start actually doing things with it, I will internalize nothing. I would never understand why all these silly little menus keep popping up, or why I'd need six different shades of blue, or why I need more than one mixing bowl.

Once I've tried to do things using these tools, I can notice that some of the weird little menus have an actual purpose. I can notice that yeah, sometimes I do actually need a dark blue pen, a light blue, and a blue in between them. There are various reasons I've learned why at least three mixing bowls are necessary. I will find my way around the tools, just like anyone else.

I don't think this is a good idea. At all. With all the advanced tools I've been given, I still prefer to start with the barest UI available, drawing in grayscale, and mixing in one bowl with one spoon. Once I understand the shortcomings, I can understand why the advanced features were made, and when to use them. I do not need to be told that "this button does this but you only need to worry about that when this happens." I will learn that the "transparency mask" button makes a transparency mask without someone telling me how it works before teaching me how to pick colors for my digital pencil.

I started programming in Visual Studio 2016 (or some version close to it). It was a nightmare. I understood nothing about it besides the silly little programs I wrote in the single window I typed in. Why did f5 do something different than shift+f5? I didn't know, and no one knew how to explain to poor old twelve year old me without giving me a lecture on debugging. When I was introduced to the lightweight Visual Studio Code in my early college classes, I adored its simplicity. Once I began to have trouble with file management, build exclusion, and runtime debugging, I had to shift my focus to the old IDE of VS22 (I updated teehee). I finally understood why breakpoints and memory watch were so important.

When I first started drawing stupid shit, all I needed were different colors and a canvas. MSpaint suited me perfectly. I used it for over a decade for all my doodles. I downloaded GIMP (it stands for Gnu Image Manipulation Program, you silly fucks) less than a year ago and never went back. Over ten years of wanting to edit in layers, select based on color, even just basic transparency... They all formed a proper foundation for the actual illustration I do now. I know what I want, I know how I was limited, and I know how to fix those limitations.

When I first started doing slaps\grafitti\tags\whatever, I was stuck with just two markers and a sheet of stickers. The quality was absolute ass. I knew this. I still kept going. The chisel tip was awkward, the sticker roll was awkward and bendy, the lavender marker is barely lavender (I'm colorblind, fuck me I guess) and wipes off easily... I didn't know what would make it easier. I caved. I ordered a printer sticker sheet for higher quality (barely), started doing my shit on a computer... Now I want to go back to normal sticker writing because I can't fathom drawing without the control a chisel tip offers me. I didn't know what I had. It's so... Versatile. I love chisel tips.

I need to remember to start with the shitty versions of things. I don't pick up many new hobbies anymore, but I have been editing videos lately, and OpenShot seems to be just shoddy enough to let me do a session and forget about it. Powerpoint's recording was terrible, but now I know how to improve.

If I don't understand why something's useful, I will not use it. That's not voluntary. If I need a service, I can find it. Otherwise, I will genuinely not understand how, why, when, or where to use the tool.

[lavendertowerarchives]

Hey I just wanted to say I like your blog and I hope you have/ are having a nice day :))

I am not. I will not have a nice tomorrow, either, but I don't exactly have a choice in whether or not I live through it.

However, your hope is appreciated. I hope you have a nicer day than me, a nicer day than yesterday, but not a nicer day than tomorrow. I hope it's only up from here for both of us.

[lavendertowerarchives]

I made a youtube video recently (like twenty four hours ago). I'm not a stranger to "trying to start a youtube empire" (I uploaded my first video nine years ago and promptly took it down), but I need to get people to engage with me without having to initiate first. I found a topic I was passionate about, worked on a script, made a .pptx, recorded, and... I guess it's done.

The sound quality is terrible, the video quality is that of a presentation, but the actual content is something I'm rather proud of. I could spend paragraphs maligning the end product, but honestly I'm tired of hearing it from myself already. I'm just glad it's done. Now, when someone seems to have misconceptions about the topic, I can point them to the video and say "here. This is all you need." I did my best to make my explanations exhaustive without being exhausting.

What I actually want to talk about is the paltry engagement I've received in the past twenty four hours. I expected it to get one view and one like exactly, both from my partner. Instead, I have sixteen views, one like, and two comments. The first of which is from my partner, the second of which is from a rando. None of this is to brag or some shit like that. I know that none of the expectations I could ever have will be accurate, so instead, I want to concentrate on the single metric I have.

This second comment irked me. This rando seemed to have obtained information I did not give them, formed an opinion, and slapped it onto my video like a fish onto a cake. I thought I'd be grateful for every piece of engagement I could beg for. I was wrong. I didn't account for the illiteracy of the masses. I instantly understood why every youtuber I watched was so... touchy about their viewers' opinions.

It was grounding to watch myself react to this otherwise inconspicuous occurrence. Yeah, it's a big deal to me, I've overinflated the importance of this video so much that I've been actively staying away from the analytics just to keep myself "normal" about it. Unfortunately, I'd overreacted. I'm glad I didn't respond to them.

The actual content of the comment was just... ignorant. I don't know how else to describe it without getting into what the video was actually about. The whole idea of the vid was to provide a taxonomy for a class of things, and this person decided to drag irrelevant criteria into the system of categorization. I do sincerely mean "irrelevant." I do genuinely mean "ignorant." Unfortunately, this was my target audience, and I seem to have missed the mark.

I'm tired of being invested in my works. Every time I post to this damned account, I watch the unincreasing note tally like a hawk. When I post to AO3, I can't put down my phone, constantly refreshing, waiting for kudos that never arrive, vindicated in my disappointment in my works. Hell, it even went the same way when I posted regularly on instagram, or even on my normal (non-depressing) tumblr account. These are the few times where I'm not just talking to myself. Now that I've posted a fucking video on the internet, the same shit is happening where I overanalyze ever ounce of engagement I get. I just want to be okay with whatever happens but I'm not. I'm just not. I'm just sat here, looking at my "average watchtime: three minutes, forty five seconds" and drawing blood from my arms like that'll make a fucking difference in my mood.

That said, I want to make more videos, regardless of how many people see them. I have this account with less than twenty followers, it's not that much different.

[lavendertowerarchives]

I've got a phenomenon that I pieced together last night. It's not groundbreaking or anything. It just lined up nicely with how life is shit.

I remember watching a documentary in my high school chemistry class about getting a substance to zero degrees kelvin. Absolute zero ain't easy to get to, so this pack of scientists had to do some wacky shit to get this small substance (no I don't remember what the substance was) to the theoretical limit of coldness. They ended up discovering that atoms really don't fucking like it when they're cold, so they do weird shit (something something bose-einstein condensate). That's not the important part.

One method they used to cool this small bucket of atoms was that of a forced runoff: the excess energy was coalesced into a smaller collection of atoms, which (due to the difference in total kinetic energy) split off from the main group, therefore bringing down the total average energy, therefore bringing the substance closer to absolute zero. Keep that method in mind.

On the polar opposite side of the intelligence spectrum, cops in america are fucking awful. This is not news. I grew up in the ACAB era and I'm glad to see it hasn't died down much, but I'm still disappointed that these ridiculous issues still havent been solved. Crime is only increased when cops show up on the scene, except it's legally not crime since someone decided it would be a good idea to give these uneducated fucksticks immunity.

Cultural movements aside, something that irked me at the start of the publicity it got is this: when a member of the force felt ashamed for their teammates' actions, they quit. The people responsible for shooting literal bystanders and committing a hate crime per day did not feel shame, so they didn't quit. That left only the terrible people still working the job. The others quitting helped nothing. As before, the excess runoff distilled the average "shittiness" into a harsher substance.

I realized that this is a phenomenon that happens when people die, as well. Most notably, on purpose. We see how life is shit. We suffer the consequences. Ideally, we know what would make it "better" but usually there's just a massive mire of induvidual issues that stack up. Either that or it's just a literal impulse, bereft of any actual logic, eating away at our mind until we cave. When someone voluntarily Leaves, they bring with them solutions for others struggling to stay alive. The total shittiness of the world, the average coldness, is heightened simply because the solution was too disgusted to keep going.

This isn't meant to put any shame on those who Leave, want to do so, or already have. I'll never support that, as hypocritical as I am. The whole reason I got on this train of thought is from noticing someone else turn down the opportunity to die. Someone I've never met, never talked to, only started following like a week ago... Still, the announcement of "nope. 'killing myself' is cancelled." Lit up my fucking day. By all measures, @jiraiema is a fucken stranger to me, but I'm still damned happy. The world has kept a single solution.