#but like. even still i am bogged down by the weight of the dollar

[audliminal]

I really do love farming sims but also they're all so fucking capitalism-brained.... Like don't get me wrong they're so fun and I get that capitalism leans itself to a very comprehensible form of progression so it's like. Whatever.

But wouldn't it be cool to have a farming sim where the goal doesn't rely entirely on making a fuckton of money?

[tomatoluvr69]

Tagged by @goatmilkoatmilk to order dinner off this 1915 dinner menu!!!!!! I LOVE this game so much!!! This is such a good idea @frogeye-pierce and turning it into a tag game is awesome!!!!!!!

I��m gonna go with one from each category pretending I as a 1915 maiden have been put on a reducing diet of lettuce and cold broth because of my horrifically unladylike height and weight but a couple of newfangled and forward-thinking, young, bohemian, and extravagantly rich friends have smuggled me from my boardinghouse to go out to dinner and I’m so famished that it is feasible for me to order this much (and not because it’s just fun LOL)

First as what I presume is an appetizer, I will have the Lobster Cocktail. 🦞 that sounds so fun and I bet they have all types of random defunct silverware to serve it with. Although Jones’s choice of the royans is also incredibly intriguing…..

Soup: She also made a good point about selecting for things that aren’t around so much anymore, and while I was initially inclined to go with Mock Turtle Soup here, I then saw actual Green Turtle Soup 🐢🍲 and figured what the fuck, why not go all the way into decadence/extravagance/full on affront. I’m pretending this is ethically sourced, AKA gotten straight out of a replicator Star Trek style, which— oh my GOD honestly we may see rudimentary versions of those by the time we’re elderly though they’ll probably be called 3D food printers BUT what if our distant descendants actually have parties like these where they all dress in the style of an era and order all these foods!!!! That would be sooooo cool like oh my god the downright ancient cuisine recipes are endless………any culture with a written language basically left cookbooks behind right???? Right???? Anyways I digress. Yes, Turtle Soup for me. I will never be eating that in my lifetime, but why not in 1915.

Fish: I was tempted to get the fried frog’s legs (which, sure, bitch I guess that’s a fish ?) just on the basis of having never had them, but unlike turtle soup, those are theoretically attainable, but I guess the turtle soup is too. But it just…doesn’t appeal…. Not when there’s actual fish. I had to look up most of these dishes, as my rudimentary French didn’t help. I know ‘Meunier’ just means ‘mill worker’ but that gives me nothing whatsoever and honestly these all looked so good. I’ve eaten planked whitefish, the most expensive option available at $1, so I think I’ll go for the Sole Veronique. 🐟

Entree/Roast/Broiled: I am absolutely desperate to know why an option on here is four dollars. By comparison, that is luridly expensive. So I’m getting the Roast Capon. Now I know it’s because you’re presumably ordering one for the table, instead of one portion, as indicated by the star, but still. Four dollars….Jesus.

Vegetables: intrigued as to why several pasta names are listed here. Maybe these are just meatless dishes?? But I think I will get Hearts of Palm because it’s new to me or ask the waiter what the difference is between all those asparagussies.

Salads: lobstah. I know In my heart and from slogging through The Bell Jar that alligator pear has got to just be avocado. I’m not even gonna bother looking that up. Gross. Yucky. Bad texture. Sorry. Lobster all the way. 🦞🦞🦞

Cheeses: 🧀 as I said in the comments of Jones’s post, I’m intrigued by Neufchâtel which I know only as a diet alternative to bagel cream cheese, so I’m ordering that. I’ve tried to find Edam before for a recipe and couldn’t so I’m ordering that too. And Liederkranz because I’ve never heard of it. Honestly, I guess cream cheese used to just be a cheese and not a bagel topping/casserole ingredient but I don’t really…. I am just not too sure about that…. So I’m on the fence over whether or not to order it.

Fruits: bananas being available here is for some reason hilarious to me. I won’t bog down this post even further with my unnecessary knowledge of the history of banana shipping in the US, but obviously it was more luxurious back then. (You should look up the way we do it now tho it’s kinda wild. Banana ripening warehouses across the US). BUT IT JUST OCCURRED TO ME THESE MUST THE EXCLUSIVE GROS MICHEL BANANAS!! Jones, who, I’m assuming, is my sole audience for this post, likely knows that all modern regularly available bananas here are Cavendish after a disease killed all the cloned and monocropped Gros Michel trees* and while there are a few Gros Michel trees alive in like university greenhouses you would have to go on a real damn pilgrimage to get your hands on one but here is my chance!! Yes!! I am ordering BANANA!!! 🍌🍌🍌And figs too because fresh ones are such a rarity for me I only tried them for the first time like eight months ago. And cherries too bc they are awesome.

Dessert: Blancmange. I’ve always wanted to try it. Gooseberry tartlet and cherries jubilee are close seconds.

Ice: baked Alaska, obviously. crème de menthe sorbet is a close second. Hoping it’s alcoholic. Also, I’m ordering a Turkish coffee.

That’s an absurd amount of food but there you go. That’s my order. And the best part is that even though I’m not adding it up I guarantee the total is far less than literally any restaurant meal today.

Jones and B this was SUCH a good idea and if literally anyone else cared to read this and wants to do their own, PLEASE tag both her and me in it :-) I’d loooove to read :-) but anyone I can think of to tag has already been tagged by Jones. Okay Goodnight :-)

*actually wait is this common knowledge?? I feel like it is but it might not be.

[kaibacorpintern]

For the prompt thing: kaiba + yuugi + professionalism!

this was fun!! thanks to @dxmichelle for the retail stories. kaiba as a retail worker is like me when I was a retail worker because when i worked at a barnes and noble, i spent a LOT of time perfectly squaring the books. anyway all the kaibacorp adventure park castmembers get some fat fucking pay raise/benefit boosts after this

***

This was all Jounouchi’s fucking fault and Seto was never agreeing to any stupid fucking bets again. When did he become a good duelist, instead of just a lucky one? And he knew it, too, announcing his plans to win the Domino City Invitational with the kind of brash, easy confidence that was a front for nothing, a Roman wall around nothing, with nothing he needed to defend on the other side. As hard to read as a coloring book. Asshole. 

“The gods have struck men down for less hubris than this,” Seto snapped, over a game of poker at Yuugi’s weekly game night. Mokuba had badgered him into attending after their return from the yearly strategic planning retreat with the board. You need to be around normal people! No more sharks in people suits! 

“So what? You don’t believe in higher powers, Rich Boy.”

 “In my experience, a god and a higher power are two separate things."

“Oh, okay, Neeshee. Maybe you don’t believe in me, but you do believe in games,” Jounouchi said.

“Devastating insight,” Seto said. “And it’s Nietzsche.”

“Bless you. Don't be rude and sneeze into a tissue next time. Let’s make a bet. When I win the Invitational, you… pick up all my shifts at the Kame Game Shop for a week. I take home all the paychecks, but you do all the work. You know, bog-standard capitalism.”

Seto rolled his eyes. “When you lose, you give the jet a good wash and wax. Then you throw your deck and your Duel Disk into the river, and never duel again.”

“Deal. And I tell you what, Kaiba. One day we’re gonna meet across the field, and you’re going to lose, but it won’t even bother you, because you had just so much fun,” Jounouchi said, extending his hand across the table, with a savage grin. 

“Don’t fucking threaten me,” Seto said, shaking his hand.

Asshole! Jounouchi stomped the competition with an ease Seto hadn’t seen since he was fourteen and unceremoniously sacking Inspector Haga at the Pan Pacific Final. 

At least Yuugi gave him his own nametag, instead of making him wear Jounouchi’s: a plastic, turtle-shaped badge with a white space for his name. There was a line below it that said MY FAVORITE GAME IS... chess, Seto wrote in moodily, with the marker. Then he affixed it to his dark-green apron, neatly and precisely, just over his heart.

Yuugi nudged the curtain into the stock room aside, wearing a matching apron and smiling like he was trying very hard not to laugh.

“Ready to clock in - oh, no. This is the Kame Game Shop,” he said, reaching up to fix Seto’s name tag, tweaking it to sit slightly at an angle. “Perfect right angles are for squares.”

“A KaibaCorp Adventure Park castmember wouldn’t be caught dead with their nametag this sloppy,” Seto snapped.

“It’s not sloppy. It’s jaunty and playful,” Yuugi corrected. “Now, let’s review. You’re an engineering prodigy, so I’m sure you can handle the register. What do we do when a customer walks in?”

Seto sighed, hands bracing on his hips as his eyes rolled towards the ceiling. That asshole picked up five full days of double shifts. 

“Welcome them when they walk in,” he said, as Yuugi nodded along. “Ask if they need any help. If they’re just browsing, leave them alone. Provide recommendations if they ask.”

“And?” Yuugi prompted, raising his eyebrows.

“Wrap and bag their purchases and thank them for wasting my fucking time.”

Yuugi reached up, pressing the tips of his index fingers into Seto’s cheeks. “No! Smile!” 

Seto bared his teeth.

“Can’t believe people call you a bad sport,” Yuugi said. “Maybe just smize instead. Go! Clock in! Upsell your own Duel Disk!”

Seto let out a final dramatic huff, took the clipboard off its hook on the wall, and added his billion-dollar contract signature to the timesheet, below several rows of Jounouchi’s scrawl. 

***

After four hours, Seto took his lunch break, an all-too-brief thirty minutes in the alley behind the Game Shop, leaning back with one foot propped against the wall, answering emails on his phone with all the speed and fury his thumbs could muster. It was high summer. Vines spilled over the wall on the other side of the alleyway, limp and vibrating with heat. Even the shade under the wall was warm. 

The side door opened. He turned his head, preparing a choice little bon mot for Yuugi, and paused, his breath hitching in his chest with a wild regret, birdlike, startled suddenly out of hiding. 

He stared at Sugoroku, privately cursing Jounouchi for the nth time for making the fucking bet, winning the fucking Invitational, and putting him here in this fucking alleyway, staring at Sugoroku. It was too late to go back inside. Sugoroku stared back, hoary-haired, stooped under the weight of his years. Even wizened, with skin like old, pale leather, the family resemblances were clear: the same big, warm eyes, the same bright smile, no less weakened for age. 

He shuffled out the door, dragging a small garbage bag of recycling beside him.

“Open that up and drop this in, will you please? My back’s not what it used to be.”

“Yes,” Seto said, rapidly stooping to take the bag. Should he add sir? Yes, sir? He hadn’t said 'sir' to anyone in ten years. What was he supposed to say? Sorry. I was not myself. I was myself, but the worst version. It was the beta release of me and we have removed the bugs (the murder bugs) in advance of stable release. All remaining bugs are acceptable. We have added accurate legal and medical disclaimers to all our SolidVision and Virtual World products about how the sensory intensity of KaibaCorp proprietary holographic technology may exacerbate existing heart conditions. I am taking good care of her and I love her and she loves me. Who? Her. The dragon. 

He dropped the bag into the recycling bin several steps away and turned around to face Sugoroku, summoning his resolve with an inhale, exhale, firm and deep. 

“How’s your first day?” Sugoroku said.

“My company isn’t going down in flames without me,” Seto said. “Color me surprised.”

“How’s your first day here?”

“Enthralling. The adrenaline high of consumer retail is really just something else - ”

“Speak up, I can’t hear you over all that racket you’re making,” Sugoroku said. Seto paused, bewildered, mouth half-open - and shut it, color flaring across his face.

“Uh - fine,” he muttered. “It’s fine. I helped an eight-year-old pick out a board game.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. She came in with all the allowance she’d saved up and she wanted something she could play with her sister. I sold her on mancala."

"That's a classic. Not a board game, but a classic. And hard to sell to children."

Seto scoffed. "I hate the crap they pass off as board games these days, with all the… fiddly, little plastic pieces and the arcane rules. Children get drawn in by the colors, but they don't have patience for the rules, so it ends up forgotten at the bottom of a bookshelf somewhere with half the pieces sucked up in the vacuum cleaner. Mancala is simple. You can play it with a patch of dirt and a handful of gravel. But if you want to win, you need to play with skill and wit. It's timeless. It’s elegant."

"Well, you've sold me. I haven’t played mancala in years. Shall we play tomorrow? During your lunch break?"

Seto said nothing, resisting the urge to bite his lip, a bad habit and a sign of nervousness.

“Yuugi speaks very highly of you, you know,” Sugoroku said. “I’d love to know why.”

He chuckled and shuffled back inside, leaving Seto fuming with an odd, stomach-clenching embarrassment. 

He checked his phone. Three more minutes left of his lunch break, and his feet were aching. He should’ve worn different shoes, not the Chelsea boots. Tomorrow. Mancala? Damn Jounouchi to hell. Better shoes.

***

“Excuse me,” the woman said. “Do you have Legendary Heroes II?”

Seto abandoned his task of aligning board game boxes at perfect right angles. Fuck jaunty and playful.

“No. That’s not out until December,” he said. The production issues on Legendary Heroes II were a fucking nightmare, and the thought of making his game developers crunch - making them miserable, overworked, and more likely to quit and get snapped up by Schroeder Corp - gave him hives. So he’d pushed release back to December, allowing the small hit to his stock under the rationale that the holiday retail season would make up for it. But she didn’t need to know that. 

“But - it’s my son’s birthday next Saturday, and Legendary Heroes is his favorite game,” she said, hands clenching loosely by her stomach, a gesture of pleading.

“I’m delighted to hear it. It does not change the fact that the game literally does not exist,” Seto said. 

“Can you just check in the back? He’s been asking about this for months now,” she said, and Seto clicked his teeth, face slipping into a snarl - from the corner of his eye, he saw Yuugi, watching him.

Smile, he mouthed, and pressed his fingers into his own cheeks, putting on a manic, plastic grin. 

“Of course. I’ll be right back,” Seto said, smiling, and stormed away. As expected, he did not find Legendary Heroes II in the stock room. He dawdled, checking his email, firing off a few replies, advising Mokuba on the right way to handle the zesty temperament of their general counsel - this’ll be fun, Mokuba said, I get to run KaibaCorp without you, like, dying or something - WHAT? - and stashed his phone back into his apron pocket.

“My apologies,” he said, returning to the woman. “We don’t have it in stock. If you’d like to pre-order it, it’ll be available just in time for Christmas. Just log on to the KaibaCorp website and enter the Kame Game Shop as your pick-up location. If you’re still looking for a birthday gift, I strongly suggest the new Duel Disk. The design is much better for children than the old one - lighter and more streamlined, with less intense haptics. If he already has a Duel Disk, he can bring that in for a trade-in.”

“Oh, perfect!” she said. “We'll do that. Thank you. You’ve been so helpful.”

“You’re welcome. Have a fantastic day,” Seto said, still smiling. He watched her leave and returned to his board game boxes, feeling hideously, fabulously smug. A customer walked in, carrying a bare Duel Disk under his arm, and Seto shot him a cheerful welcome. The man ignored him, heading straight to Yuugi at the counter.

***

Yuugi swallowed, squared his shoulders, and lifted his chin.

"I'm sorry. We cannot accept a Duel Disk return without a box or a receipt," he said. Clearly stolen. 

"But I bought it here two weeks ago. And the stupid piece of shit is defective," the man said. "I want my money back!"

Loud enough that Seto, re-stocking towards the front of the store, turned towards them, with open curiosity.

"What's the nature of the defect?" Yuugi said.

"It just doesn't fucking work. I don't know what else to tell you," the guy said. "Are you gonna do the return or not?!"

His least favorite type of customer: smashing reason apart with the baseball bat of belligerence. Yuugi steeled himself for the inevitable slew of insults. 

"Sir. I can't do the return without a receipt - "

A hand came down on his shoulder, pulling him with polite insistence out of the way. Seto, with a canny, feline smile, the kind that foretold bloodshed on the dueling field.

"Oh no, Yuugi," he said. "Let me handle this."

[thefederalistfreestyle]

Interview: Alex Lacamoire (Keyboard Magazine):

Hamilton has won 11 Tony Awards, a Grammy, and a Pulitzer Prize. Its soundtrack went to Number One on the Billboard Rap chart, and the newly released collection of covers and remixes of the show’s songs just debuted at Number One on the Billboard 200 chart. Hamilton is a phenomenon, and Alex Lacamoire is its musical director and orchestrator.

But before his name became synonymous with that “ten-dollar Founding Father without a father,” Lacamoire had already built a reputation as a musical wunderkind, with an ESP-like ability to accompany, arrange, and wrestle a musical idea into shape. From his humble beginnings as the rehearsal pianist for The Lion King to storied successes with shows like Wicked and In the Heights, Lacamoire continues to be one of the most sought after musicians on the planet.

Backstage before yet another sold-out performance of Hamilton, Lacamoire talked to me about his unquenchable quest for musical excellence.

[. . .]

I read a quote by you about your work with Lin-Manuel Miranda in the show In the Heights where you said, “We had a Latin-American artist writing Latin-American music, as opposed to someone else trying to write in that style and pay homage to it…” As someone who grew-up in Latin family, did working on the music for that show feel familiar, or did it feel strangely foreign to you?

It was both. It felt natural in the sense that I recognized the music. I felt it in my bones from having grown-up listening to Salsa music. It wasn’t something that I ever put-on - I just listened to it because I was exposed to it. When I was in a car, my parents would be listening to it. Or when I was at a Christmas party, somebody would be blasting music to dance to for four hours. So you can’t help but just hear that hypnotic, trance-like tumbao. That became part of my DNA.

But in terms of the mechanics of writing it down and trying to notate it? I absolutely studied books. I read Rebeca Mauleón’s book [The Salsa Guidebook] about writing for Latin music—what it looks like and the terminology, like “Oh, this is what the bongos do,” and, “This is called the martillo,” etc. So I absolutely had to explore and listen, and it was very foreign to me, in terms of expressing to someone how to do it. Because that’s my job as an orchestrator: to notate it. It’s precision work, being specific about what something needs to be so that it can be consistent from night to night, and that it delivers what the story needs to deliver for the people on the stage and for the audience watching. You don’t leave a lot up to chance.

That brings us to the phenomenon of Hamilton. There’s a great video online of you delving into the title song, showing how you dance around a melody and lyric. How do you develop and prod it without ever stepping on it?

Well, in theater, what the actor is singing and speaking about is king. That’s where the focus needs to be, so you can’t step on that. I’m in a service industry; you know what I mean? I’m writing charts for a producer who needs me to write them, and I’m doing arrangements for a composer who needs me to do them for him. I’m doing something for somebody else, so it’s not really about me saying, “Look at me!” My job is really to help a story be told. Leave a hole, get out of the way of the melody, make sure the lyrics are being heard—that’s why I do what I do.

It seems like the collaboration must be a thrill for you.

Yes, because I feel like you make better music when you have someone giving you encouragement, or a critique to make something better for whatever reason. I think you come up with better things that way. I don’t think it’s as fun to be in a vacuum. I think that’s why the theater aspect of music felt so fun to me. The solitary aspect of being in a practice room and practicing your scales and modes gets to be very lonely! I’d much rather be with people, and also, I know what I’m good at, and that’s enhancing something. I’m much better at working with something than creating something out of nothing.

Can you talk a little about the way you and Lin collaborated on Hamilton?

Lin leaves that space for me because he doesn’t get bogged-down in the details so much of the actual writing down of the music or the sounds. He’s more like a “big picture” guy, as in, “Here’s the melody, here’s the lyrics, here’s the chords, here’s the structure. He does that in a demo, and then he hands it off to me.

Are his demos on piano?

He uses a keyboard and he works in [Apple] Logic. He finds the sounds, he finds the drum loops, he plays the bass lines, he plays the hooks. But then it’s up to me to actually have other people do that for us. Lin knows that he can give me the keys to the car. He would send me his Logic demos so I could then go in and solo all of the different parts and see exactly what sounds he used. In terms of gear, I use an 88-key, weighted Yamaha keyboard along with Logic. I also use [Apple] Mainstage and I like sounds from Massive and Kontakt. I’ve also dabbled with sounds from EastWest. I orchestrate in Finale, and I can poke around in Pro Tools, but Logic is my main software.

Why do you use Logic over Pro Tools?

Well, I think Logic is more for songwriting. I think Pro Tools is great for recording, but I don’t think their MIDI capability is nearly as expansive and intuitive as Logic. In Logic, I’m able to find a bunch of loops easily. I don’t know how to do that easily in Pro Tools. I find it’s a pain in the butt just to call up a piano sound. You have to open-up two different windows in Pro Tools! I just like the palette in Logic, and I find it to be user-friendly.

Does Lin give you a finished enough demo that you know what’s going on?

Absolutely. And his demos are so clear that you know what things are supposed to sound like. Even if there aren’t complete vocal harmonies, I’ll be like, “Oh, that’s where harmonies can go.” And even if it’s a very spare demo with just a bass line and a piano playing one note, I can tell what the chords in-between need to be so I can discern what the guitar should be playing, or what strings should be playing in that middle register. So if he’s done the extremes of the bass and the treble, I can do the midrange.

We don’t always do a lot of “side by side” work. He lets me do my thing, and then he hears it when it’s pretty much done, like when the band is finished rehearsing it, or after I’ve taught the vocals to the ensemble or the cast. Then he’ll hear it and either give his approval, or he’ll say, “I liked this but I didn’t like that,” or, “That was great, but let’s try this instead.” It’s a collaborative process.

Hip-hop has found its way into just about every conceivable musical scenario, including Hamilton, where you marry programmed beats with live performance. Is that the happy medium for you—the intermingling of both disciplines?

It’s interesting because I think that’s where music is heading. I like the human element; I’m old-school in that respect: I still like that human connection that you get from playing. But obviously, the world is moving in a digital direction, so finding ways to harness that [musically] is fantastic, because it sounds modern. It sounds hip and it sounds current.

Do you play other instruments besides keyboards?

Yes. You’re not going to hire me to play a gig on guitar, although at one point, I did have enough guitar chops to sub on the show Rent. On that show, the way it’s orchestrated is that the second keyboard player has to play keyboards, acoustic guitar, and electric guitar. So I can get around enough on guitar to be able to write out specific voicings, and play things out and have them be guitar-istic. I can do the same thing on bass and drums too. I can figure out what it is that I’m looking for because I’m always listening.

It seems like all of the musical investigation you have done, even early on, prepared you for what you do now.

Yes. One thousand percent, because what I do isn’t just about playing piano – it’s about theory and harmony, and colors, and listening and playing – the totality of everything that I’ve learned. All of that trial and error led me to where I am. Being a music director is so much more than just sitting down at a piano.

I think the best way to describe it for me is that I know when something feels right. Someone may listen to a chart that I consider half-done and think, “Oh, that’s done!” But there’s something in me that is uneasy and won’t rest until it’s right. It’s about asking myself, “What can I do to make this better or sound fuller?” I feel like a musician knows when they’re done and when a piece feels complete.

HAMILTON CREATOR LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA ON ALEX LACAMOIRE

“If Alex Lacamoire didn’t exist, I’d have to invent him. He came along in my life at a time when I was looking for a musical director as conversant in Latin styles as hip-hop, R&B, and the musical theater of my youth. And in walks Lacamoire, spoon-raised on Miami-Cuban rhythms, with his heart in the far out prog rock of Steely Dan and Rush. We just sort of started working together and never stopped.

“Musical sensibilities aside, Alex’s meticulousness both as an arranger and orchestrator is always invaluable. He has the same patience when staffing musicians as he does filling out a four-part vocal harmony in a chord. He is beloved by actors and musicians alike because he loves them, and brings out their best. “What else? He’s just the f—king best there is. And I’m so lucky to be on his team.” – Lin-Manuel Miranda

read the rest of the interview to learn how he got his start in the industry!

[swonkimn]

Feelings

Let’s just get it out. 

I’m feeling more and more dissatisfied with my life, which feels like a regular emotion for me. Isn’t it so familiar, typing in this online blog with its familiar navy background about dissatisfaction and unhappiness with myself. Wow. But I am feeling unhappy, and it feels progressive. I don’t think that I have a shopping problem, i think that I have an unhealthy fixation on the past and how seemingly “perfect” it was. I was at a thinner weight, with less responsibilities, more prospects, and surrounded by people who were mine--my blood family. But these days I feel bogged down, heavier, from my literal weight gain, my marriage that comes with obligations, a career that I worked to obtain for more than 6 years...and now semi-dread. I feel so heavy, and it makes me want to reach back to some familiarity and control...which manifests with a fixation on my weight. I feel like if I’m able to control my weight and go back to a lighter (literally) state of being, then I’ll also find the energy, gumption, and desire to revert back to the person I used to be. Who was happier, simpler, more positive.

The sad thing is that when I was dating Charlston, things didn’t feel happier--they felt more significant. (I felt important doing important things and striving after lofty goals and integritous pathways.) And I guess that’s true even now; my life isn’t happier, it’s more significant. I’m weighed down with caring for terminal patients, people whose lives are literally straddling the line between life and death; I’m weighted down with terminal MILs and with husbands who carry baggage that I can’t even begin to attempt to heal or touch or even mention. I’m paying for my mom’s new car and giving thousands of dollars to them to settle their debt because they can’t on their own. I’m filled to the brim busy taking care of other people’s lives. And now Charlston wants to start a family which will just be another life to add to that list--a life that will outlast even mine in length. Motherhood is significant, it’s “worth its while” as they say. (But really, stopping now to think is all of this truly the right way to think? Does this mean that my life gained “direction” and “value” and “worth” and “significance”? A life spent doing sacrificial and selfless deeds--is that more significant than a life squandered and selfish and gluttonous? Isn’t life just life? Starting this thought with the juxtaposition between happiness and significance made sense, but the deeper I probe, the more I just feel like I was becoming some kind of twisted self-importance. An arbitrary value system that I put on myself to figure out what I’m working towards).

So it’s just a whole bundle of repressed emotions that I don’t even know how to work out. It’s not that I regret my life, but I’m overwhelmed at how much my life has changed since my girlhood. It’s not that I wish for a luxurious life, like what Charlston says to me. I’m just internally reeling at the responsibility and significance of my life. I am filling my life with jobs and responsibilities that are significant but I’m none the more important to the people in my life. I am a grunt whose life has been filled with important tasks, but they can only exist as far as  insomuch I refuse to exert the opposing force that I, too, am deserving of rest, service, time, and attention. Because it’s almost like people and things and jobs and responsibilities have become more prominent, but I myself am becoming edged out of my own life. When I’m alone at home, I don’t have a clue on how I want to spend the available hours anymore. It’s a much easier question to answer if I ask myself about the chores that need to be done. Being completely alone this weekend, I don’t know how to answer the question of how exactly I want to spend this day. Do I want to read? Disappear into a busy city? Lounge by the pool? Be with people? No I don’t want to be with people because they only expect from you and get disappointed if you don’t do something or say something that benefits them. And even if they don’t, they eventually will--because people by nature keep count. Maybe this is even me keeping count. 

I think it’s important how I feel like I don’t matter in my own life. Even taking a break isn’t much of a break because there is the underlying messages that exist: there are so many things that just keep moving even when I want to take a break. I wish that a break could just mean that--that all things and involved parties and sicknesses and relationships could halt alongside me. But obviously life doesn’t work that way; when I am not present during a responsibility, someone else has to step in. My life is a shift, just like in retail or service work or hospitality. When I call out of work, there is another nurse/group of nurses who feel that absence. When I want to “call out” of my life and its obligations, the responsibility lands heavily on someone who has to put the additional work on their shoulders. 

I know that these things must sound like obvious truths, but maybe what it is is that I’ve always had a very self-centered attitude. It’s been me thinking about me, but also not expecting others to think about me either. It’s not like my parents really were present during my adolescence or developing years. Or did they, and I am actually more selfish that I perceive myself right now? Did I take from others and also then deceive myself to be a self-sufficient person..? 

I guess simply put, I used to give myself each day for my own enjoyment. My presence or absence never really mattered, except perhaps to my sister and parents. Even my friends realized that I go off on my own and find difficulty in staying connected with others when the interactions are not in person. But now I struggle with the reality that my life is maturing into ongoing connection--the people who are sick in the hospital continue to be sick even when I have a two day break, and they are often still there when I come back. I don’t know why I struggle so much with this concept, the idea of presence and absence being part of the same fabric. That absence from something means that I am present in something else, and vice versa. I think it bothers me because I then have to take into consideration what my absence will mean to these people/responsibilities that have grown to include me. The natural consequence, I think, for the avoidant person that I type myself to be, would be disengage from as many things as possible in order to not have any causal effect on anything. But...is that even possible? Such a life of no consequence? And is that really what I want? 

I just feel like Charlston places a lot of his expectations on me which are unhealthy consequences of him dealing with his mother. Rather than seeing the situation for what it is, I feel like the entire family is romanticizing something that is actually unhealthy. Prolonging death is unhealthy to me. It’s not understandable to me. Death is death. It’s not noble when teachers sacrifice their lives and wages for their students within a broken down system; it’s not admirable when nurses all have to take stimulants and antidepressants to shoulder the burden of caring for so many patients; and it’s not right to praise a man who refuses to let his wife pass away. But Charlston and my siblings in law all do, and my FIL doesn’t know what he can and cannot control. Nobody is having that talk with him. It’s nobody’s place; it’s God’s place to tell us how life is meant to be lived, but as long as we’re including God in this picture...I feel like I’m not exactly listening to Him either. Either life is celebrated so that each and every doldrum moment is special and radiant and to be savored, or else nothing matters and nothing is of consequence. I may be thinking in extremes here, but I can’t stop landing at this conclusion each and every time my mind travels down this road. 

I don’t know if this is a cynical part of me, but I’m starting to devalue life. Rather than life being something to fight for, death is more something that’s inevitable and looming and ever advancing. Rather than waking up each day as something to fight for, death is something that I grow to not wanting to fight anymore. Not that I am suicidal in any way--there’s no point unnecessarily killing a life when it’s healthy--but when a life has started to go down hill, I just don’t see the point in resisting it. For what and for whom? Does it glorify God when we resist death when God Himself created us as mortal beings? Why push back something that is part of our identity? When trees die and animals die and structures break and rivers dry up? It’s finite, this world and us. Life can’t just be trying extending our days can it? 

Oh God, so what is life then? And can it be that I’m just having an existential crisis dressed up? Really? I’ve heard my dad say so many times that he’s just waiting to die, and sometimes I feel that way too now. Again, not in a way where I’m eagerly looking forward to death, but more like a mental posturing like death is the only exit and those who are trying to escape it for even one more day are just being delusional. So then health doesn’t matter, relationships feel like obligations and just people being disappointed in you when you don’t give them what they want; each day doesn’t matter, this body that we are encased in doesn’t even matter. Pleasure doesn��t exist because it’s often at the expense of other people’s time, energy, and suffering. To have something means that others are denied. What is this black hole of thinking that I just can’t seem disappearing into these days?