#its worse than those tiktok poems ?????????????

[bedforddanes75]

is anybody free for at least a minute of me ranting about how that fucking "brat poem" is the worst piece of literature to grace planet earth Or

[cuubism]

I was watching a video on Youtube of someone criticizing the anti-aging advices shorts on Tiktok and my mind went to Hob, the immortal 30-something, being horrified at people being afraid of growing old with a hint of jealousy as he knows that aging is something that he will never experience.

I went down SUCH a mental rabbit whole of "what even is aging, actually?" while trying to answer this. Like, is aging one's relationship with time? Because Hob definitely gets older numerically as time passes, even if his body doesn't change. Is aging about one's relationship with death, and its nearness? Or is aging about one's relationship to their body? Or is it all of the above?

Because if you are mortal, like... all real people, time does leave a mark on the body. But to say that aging is the body's decay is too simplistic because physical disability also changes your body's functioning without being solely associated with aging (though some disabilities do get worse with age so it's not separate either). Aging-related cosmetic content online is focused on not "looking old" but going from a child to a young adult is also aging, and makes you look older but not "aged" so to speak. When it comes to death, aging does bring you closer to death, but death can also come at any time, whether you're "old" or not.

So I thought about it a lot (too much) and I thought about Sandman as a story about stories, and how the story of a life has a natural arc to it, a rise and fall, and how that is what Hob doesn't experience. He lived through the rising arc of his life but there is never a proper falling arc, a conclusion. There are ups and downs, minor climaxes. But it always returns to this plateau that keeps going straight rather than ultimately falling to an ending.

And... I am trying to see whether I think Hob would be jealous of this or not. Curious, for sure, because he's curious about pretty much every experience. And I think there is some melancholy whenever he loves someone and they age past him, some thought of it would be nice if we could stay on the same life path, at least for a while. And I'm sure he's cared for elderly people at various points in his life too, and seen people age, and die of old age, and held their hands and been through that moment with them. And... I do think he would feel for these very young people becoming so concerned over appearance in the sense that it can take away from actually living life. Hob is all about experiencing life, not, you know, avoiding laughing so you won't get wrinkles. In that respect, I think he would want those young people to really live and appreciate those years instead of spending them fearing what's to come.

The only feeling I can associate with Hob when it comes to aging is gratitude, actually. Not even in relation to physical appearance. But gratitude that he gets to continue on and avoid the downward arc of the conclusion of a life. Although I think that very situation is disturbing to Dream, who's in kind of the same boat, I think Hob might say "well why should a story have an ending anyway?"

There's really only one thing that lingers, and it's the question -- what happens after? It's the one subject of curiosity Hob absolutely cannot sate without giving up all the rest. Do I think it haunts him? No, not really. Tickles the back of his mind sometimes, though, probably.

I think of this poem Aging by Rosmarie Waldrop:

Distant galaxies are moving away from us. Friends, lovers, family. Even the sky shifts toward red. Where every clearness is only. A more welcoming slope of the night. And I don't remember why I opened the door.

Pretty much every door in life is open to Hob if he's willing to commit enough time and effort to it. Except for maybe the most major one. And everybody else lives with this inevitability. Except Hob. Which... well, rejecting inevitability is kind of how he got himself into that situation in the first place. So it tracks. And it's what makes Hob's story so interesting because what is a life without inevitability like? Or, you know, a story without an ending?

[troglobite]

apologies to op but this is the 500th time i've seen this today and i'm taking this as the opportunity to correct the record bc i dislike it when partial and incorrect info spreads.

direct quote from the rolling stones interview:

"My visit to Roan’s house took place a day after an embarrassing press conference hosted by then-presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Roan and I commiserate over how horrifying both the presser and his recent debate with Trump had been. At the time, Roan’s views echoed those of a lot of young voters, especially in the face of multiple wars, drag bans, and diminished health-care access for both trans people and those seeking abortions. “I’m pretty, ‘Fuck the government, and fuck everything that’s going on right now,’ ” she says, middle fingers in the air. “I don’t have a side because I hate both sides, and I’m so embarrassed about everything going on right now.” Later in July, of course, Biden would drop out of the race, and Kamala Harris would become the Democratic nominee. Even after Roan turned down the White House invite, she would become a part of the campaign: Kamala HQ’s official TikTok would use “Femininomenon” in a video edit. “Harris-Walz” camo hats bore a striking resemblance to Roan’s “Midwest Princess” camo-hat merch, down to the orange font; she would repost a side-by-side of the hats on X with the caption “is this real.” During the Democratic National Convention, “Good Luck, Babe!” soundtracked the Missouri delegation’s roll call.  “Right now, it’s more important than ever to use your vote, and I will do whatever it takes to protect people’s civil rights, especially the LGBTQ+ community,” she tells me in August. “My ethics and values will always align with that, and that hasn’t changed with a different nominee. I feel lucky to be alive during an incredibly historical time period when a woman of color is a presidential nominee.”"

i have no interest in discussing/arguing the ethics of voting or not voting or any of that, and i'm not an obsessed stan of chappell.

HOWEVER.

the quote circulating is inaccurate and incomplete. there was an update/addendum to the issue. the original was from before biden dropped out. the above is everything that was said and done on the issue since then. and in case anyone has forgotten, before biden dropped out, even moderates weren't too hot on voting. and plenty of ppl who don't care abt chappell at all are STILL not keen on voting. separate issues.

i'm also gonna go out on a limb and say that chappell wouldn't have enough influence on enough voters for it to fully matter whether she endorses kamala harris or not. she's become an overnight sensation, but she's still not tswift. and she also literally encouraged her fans to vote.

additionally, here's the three paragraphs before the above section

At Gov Ball, Roan revealed to the audience that she had turned down an invite to the White House’s Pride Celebration. Before singing “My Kink Is Karma,” she dedicated the song to the Biden administration, protesting its involvement in the destruction of Gaza and death of civilian Palestinians. “We want liberty, justice, and freedom for all. When you do that, that’s when I’ll come,” she said. At her house, Roan tells me she had something “way worse” planned. She was originally going to say yes, show up, and then refuse to perform; instead, she would protest with some poetry. “I had picked out some poems from Palestinian women,” she says. “I was trying to do it as tastefully as I could because all I wanted to do was yell. I had to find something that’s tasteful and to the point and meaningful, and not make it about me and how I feel. I don’t know if I’ll ever get that close in direct sight of the president ever in my life. This is my shot.” She talked it through with her publicist, who was supportive but made a point: “You fuck with the president and the government, your security is not the same, and neither is your family’s.” Roan opted to turn down the invite, though there were some who misread what she felt was a pretty clear message. “I saw a couple of TikToks where they were like, ‘So she’s pro Trump?’ ” Roan’s face contorts into disgust. “It is not so black and white that you hate one and you like the other. No matter how you say it, people are still going to be pissed for fucking some reason. I’m not going to go to the White House because I am not going to be a monkey for Pride. And thank God I didn’t go because they just made a huge statement about trans kids a couple weeks ago,” she says, referring to the Biden administration stating its opposition to gender-affirming surgery for transgender minors in June. (The administration would walk back those comments a month later.)

POINT BEING if you still disagree w her and want to criticize her, absolutely your prerogative! adding the full quote bc like i said, this is the 500th time today i've seen a partial misquote without context or info and it's frustrating.

and in case anyone thinks i'm doing this bc it's chappell roan--i have spent weeks trying to dispell misinfo that was spreading on here abt solar energy and power companies, among other things.

chappell being a "problems on both sides" girlie was not on my 2024 bingo like i knew she had refused to go to the white house over Palestine/Israel and I totally understood that but when you're talking about who to vote for please please think before you speak, like. "Problems on both sides?" Girl one of these candidates is telling people schools are giving sex change operations to children and women are killing babies after they're born and the other is literally calling for a ceasefire, supports roe v. wade being codified, and performed some of the first gay marriages in the nation. now is not the time for "problems on both sides".

[twistedyapping]

when did we lose empathy

i just saw a tiktok of someone letting a jumping spider go free outside their house into one of their plants with that little spider poem thingy on it yknow-

the "im sorry for scaring you, i didnt know it would cost me my life" one- and i love those videos so much they almost make me cry man-

i scroll thru the comments and i saw ppl saying stuff like "the spider is NOT thinking that" or "spiders dont have a consciousness bro 💀" And im like. heartbroken.

it reminds me of that cant help myself art piece with the robot constantly having to clean up after itself but it just gets worse and worse until it literally cant help itself and it just stops working-

i saw so many people just not getting that and instead mocking it and the people that did actually feel something from it to the point where it became one of tiktok's many regurgitated comments- "it looks so tired".

the point of both of those things, the poem and the art piece, is to help us understand that all life is precious- it's to make you Feel something.

i genuinely have a hard time believing that people can look at a spider and think nothing other than "enemy" or "disgusting" and kill it with no remorse.

what's worse is i didnt use to be like this- i used to be scared of spiders or thought they were gross like everyone else did- but then sometimes there would be one spider in the corner of a room that was just chilling, he wasn't hurting anybody and he was killing off other pests- they would get a name and i usually wouldnt be bothered by them.

that was when my exceptions started- and then some spiritual awakenings later and i found out they were my spirit animal, and ever since then i just keep working on it and trying to become less and less scared of them and now it's at the point where i might be a Little unnerved, but i could probably hold a tarantula in a controlled environment.

and even now like ofc i understand looking at a bug of some kind and thinking it's gross, i have my enemies of the bug world, but spiders are not one of them.

"the spider was NOT thinking that" ya but he was probably hoping he didn't die. every critter on the planet has a basic "i hope i dont die" instinct, even if it's not an actual word for word thought. it can be a feeling, or just a motivation to do something to get out of harm's way.

And for the cant help myself thing, that shit made me cry a while ago dude genuinely- "its programmed to do that" Ok and??? why do we need standards for empathy??? more importantly, why does an art piece that is Supposed to evoke emotion, not make you feel anything?

you're not fucking cool or different for being like "it's just a Thing, it's just a robot, it cant actually feel anything 😂", you're not macho or tough for not being able to see the depth in metaphors. you're fucking miserable.

and i will say that i am fully aware that this is most likely a more sensitive topic for me because i was around people who lacked even basic Cognitive empathy for a LONG time and that shit fucking changes you. that shit makes you feel like you shouldnt have emotions or empathy because it's "being weak" or stupid, emotionally immature, pathetic, etc.

so you start acting like someone scooped out your amygdala and you have never felt a single emotion in your life. you start lacking empathy and being bitchy towards people who dont deserve it, and then you come back like 3 years later after you've relearned the process of emotion just to apologize for how you treated those people because now you're fully aware that they never did anything to you (true story unfortunately.)

these fucking people will rip out any sense of importance or emotional significance out of your life because you're vulnerable and you want nothing more than to find people to fit in with.

But if you wanna fit in, you're gonna have to be fucking insufferable.

i was there for Most of my life, until i couldn't take the misery anymore and cut ties with every single one of those people over a long and arduous process because i was still developing a sense of self along the way.

after i did that, i basically had to put myself in a little rehab center inside my head and give myself almost constant therapy on how to actually let myself feel emotions and how they're completely normal- i had to relearn empathy from my mom- she had no active part in it, she just displayed it way more than i did at the time so i managed to pick up on it and make it an active process in my life once more.

i still, to this day, struggle with understanding that experiencing things like sadness isn't weakness. it's vulnerability, yes, and i cannot bring myself to believe that it's a display of strength yet, but i believe that not letting people trample you and kick you down into that state of depression is the strength itself, even if your voice has to crack while you tell them to go fuck themselves.

All this lore to say that i dont know when or where it started being cool to say shit like "animals dont have a consciousness" or SOMETHING like that in public. it was always a shitty friend group thing for me, ive never truly seen it in public especially en masse like this.

and it pisses me off. you dont have to be crying every 2 seconds to be cool, but you dont have to be a fucking dipshit loser that has no empathy to be cool either.

what gets me the most is these people just subscribe to what's "cool", they don't find who THEY really are- im not saying that if you follow trends, you should be in a psych ward. im saying that if ALL YOU DO is follow in other people's footsteps, you should probably do some soul searching.

and i could ofc be fighting invisible demons here, this could be a much smaller problem compared to what ive seen, but it's still a problem.

my bad this shit just pisses me off because i see people clearly being trapped in the hole that i managed to climb out of a while ago, and i wanna help them out but i know i cant for several reasons, so it's like. Fuck.

anyway ya that's abt it i just needed to yap for a second. see ya.

- 🌙 -

[solaceharbor]

Diane Ackerman said "As a society we are embarrassed by love" and "Love is the most important thing in our lives, a passion for which we could fight or die, and yet we're reluctant to linger over its names." While bell hooks said "I stand before this reminder that we yearn for love- that we seek it- even when we lack hope that it really can be found."

I spend a lot of time thinking about female sadness. I don't think it is as welcomed and encouraged as some would like to believe. Yes there are the indie girl sad songs, the sad girl monologues, the poems, and TikToks, and memes but still I see women cry and feel ashamed, I see women cry and be shamed. Our tears are portrayed as a little more dramatic, a little more pathetic. There is just so much shame surrounding female sadness. And still, I think there is more shame surrounding female loneliness.

To not just be sad but also unwanted. I can confess on my private Instagram story that I've cried this morning, written and scaled down to the smallest size, like a confession, almost begging the reader not to see it but desperate for them to care. I can make that admission. But I wouldn't dare confess that the cause of those tears was the loneliness I have been feeling for the past 2-going-on-3 years. You can be sad for lots of reasons: a bad grade, a hurtful joke, a break up, a movie, hormones, but to confess to my loneliness is the admission of only one thing: to admit to being unloved and unwanted. What could be worse than saying 'no one wants me. no one notices if i am present or not. no one has missed me all this time'? It's like a stain.

No one wants to draws attention to stains, soiling an otherwise okay dress. You try to scrub it away, bleach splashed against its surface, angle it away in pictures, cover it with your hands, or you don't put the dress on at all, don't bother buying it from the store. If I say I am lonely I am saying that no one wants me. Who wants what no one else wants? Isn't that proof of the defection?

But I am lonely. Devastatingly lonely. I don't know what to do with it. I don't know what to make of my hands.

The cultural landscape of social media chastises individualism while telling me I need to learn how to be by myself. That I must not only be by myself but I must also love it and cherish it. bell hooks says “But many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.” I'm desperate for love, it's true, or maybe, more honestly, I'm desperate for care and attention. I suspect if I wasn't so lacking in self confidence and so repressed I would be accepting it from people and in places that I shouldn't. I question sometimes if I miss the friends I used to have or if I'm just tired of being alone. Are all those friendships substitutable? I don't disagree that we should all be able to withstand being alone and enjoy temporary solitude but sometimes I feel like it's working in the wrong direction. I am not choosing to be alone. I am not choosing to be lonely. I don't want my solitude to be me making the best of a bad situation. As someone who finds themselves drained by social interaction being by myself is not something I am scared of. I would just like a choice in the matter. People aren't a means of escape, yes, but if we need others the way we need food, if hunger is when we should eat, is loneliness not a good motivator for seeking companionship? Why do I have to be self-fulfilled to find community? How do I be self-fulfilled without having community? How can social creatures be self-fulfilled? I want to have a fulfilling relationship with myself and I want to have a fulfilling relationship with others but it feels like I need one for the other and there's no way out.

A poet on Instagram by the username forvagabondsfromclown said 'I would like to have something of my own. A person, a song, a book, anything that would just be mine. I am not possessive, it's just that I never had anything of my own. I have been hungry for far too long and I don't want it to devour me and I don't want to eat just about anything. I think it's all a metaphor for I want something that touches back and wants to be there.' And it's true, I don't want to eat everything and anything that is offered to me and I don't want to starve but I haven't come to any conclusion other than that.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #337

“if i showed you my soul, would you cover your eyes?”

What's your favorite brand of chips? I like Lays best. Are you a good painter? My Painting teacher when I was in college last said I did wonderfully, but I definitely beg to differ. Before buying a car, do you usually test drive it? N/A Have you ever written a poem and then read it aloud? No, but a teacher has. It was so fucking awkward; it was very pacifist, the topic being about war, and it had some depressing tones of death; there was just silence at the end of it, and I still don't know if it was shock or "what the fuck, she's messed up." There was this one guy that went, "Nobody is going to clap at that?", though, which I thought was pretty nice and reassuring. Do you like pineapple? Yeah, I do. Have you ever met your favorite author? I don't have a favorite author. Have you and your best friend ever liked the same person? No. Do you have any freckles? Not on my face (though oddly enough, I did as a kid?), but on random parts of my body. How many different languages can you say goodbye in? English, German, and then Spanish. Do you like or hate the smell of fish? I hate it. Have you ever been to Sea World? As a child, yes. I'd never go as an adult. Do you know someone who suffers from short-term memory loss? I don't know how this is actually diagnosed, but my memory is absolutely fucking nightmarish, almost exclusively in short-term situations. I can remember the most obscure events from my childhood, but not what I said to you five seconds prior. I'm rather sure my medications have made it worse over time. Have you ever read any of John Green's books? I got like, one chapter or less into The Fault in Our Stars before the book got replaced with the Wings of Fire series, so I never finished it. Are you a protective person? I'm an immensely protective person over those that matter to me. Have you ever experienced an earthquake? No, thankfully. I'm terrified of earthquakes. What's one thing that makes everything in life worthwhile? The fact that to our proven knowledge, this is the only one we'll ever experience. What type of waffles do you like? (Plain, blueberry etc..) I prefer plain, but I can eat chocolate chip ones as well as blueberry and strawberry. Have you ever seen the show Wife Swap? Yeah, I actually quite like it. Do you like chicken or beef better? Or do you not eat meat? Chicken, I think. I eat meat, but wish I didn't. What brand of dish soap do you use? Dawn, usually. Do any of your neighbors have dogs? Yes, and they never shut up. Do you believe in fortune tellers? They're money-driver bullshitters. Have you ever been to one? No, and judging by the fervor in the above question, I hope you can tell I never would do so and thus monetarily support them. Do you like regular or chocolate milk better? Chocolate, of course. But I love normal milk, too. Once again, wish I didn't, though. Forcing a cow to constantly reproduce to lactate is pretty fucking cruel. Growing up, did you listen to country music? I actually did. Do you normally wash your hands in warm or cold water? If it's just a quick wash, it's usually cold because our water takes quite a few moments to warm up. However, if I'm looking to thoroughly wash my hands, it's gotta be relatively hot. Do you believe in mediums? I see them in a worse light than I do fortune tellers, so... Like sure, manipulate grieving people for profit, sounds great. Have you ever been to one? Obviously not. Have you ever dated someone on the football team? No. Do you have a gazebo at your house? No. Do you like tomatoes? Solely when straight from a garden and on a bacon and mayonnaise sandwich. Otherwise I am noooot a fan. Are you a competitive person? Not very, but there's a tiny spark in me, really when it just comes to photography. I hate it. Google or Bing? Does literally anyone use Bing? What's your favorite brand of bottled water? Essentia. Do you have any ceramic animals in your house or outside? Ummm I don't think so. Have you ever given someone flowers? Yes. What is something you might eat with a hamburger? Fries or mac and cheese. What is a sport that you’ve always wanted to play, but never got a chance to. None. What is a fruit that you might eat in the morning? A banana. Who might you send a selfie to? I don't send selfies to anyone. About how many pages is the longest book you’ve ever read? I THINK it surpassed 1,000? At least in the high hundreds. Who would you call first after getting engaged to tell them the news? Probably Mom. Around what time do you start feeling tired enough to go to sleep? Truth be told, it's usually arouund 7-8. I rarely make it to 9:00 nowadays. What trends do you refuse to give in to? I don't even know what's trendy right now. What subjects in history interest you most? As dark as it is, I find the Holocaust interesting to learn about. Are you superstitious in any way? No. How do you get rid of anxiety? What a relevant question, being in a partial hospitalization program right now. Coping skills that help me are doing deep breathing, mindfulness exercises, and a little jerk back to reality is splashing freezing cold water on my face. It also helps to talk it out with somebody, just get my feelings into words. Then if it's a true anxiety or panic attack, I have my "emergency" anxiety prescription. Are there any items of jewelry you never/rarely take off? My lip and tragus piercings never do, and I always wear two rings. Do you find yourself correcting people’s grammar often? Not really, no. It just seems rude and snobby to me, honestly, if it's not in an educational setting, like helping someone with an essay. Correcting someone in your average conversation is just... unnecessary, imo. Now if you're talking like in surveys and stuff, I definitely do in questions and such, but I don't point it out. Gummi worms: Yay or nay? Yay, love 'em. What do you do when you have ‘me time’? I only ever have "me" time, so what I always do... Do you lack common sense sometimes? I have a horrible lack of common sense, shit's embarrassing. Have you ever poured glue on your hand just to peel it off for fun? No. How do babies make you feel? "Nervous. They’re so damn breakable." <<<< Mood. Would you/Have you milked a cow? No, and I'm not interested. What really gives you the creeps? #!: seeing a baby move inside its mother's stomach. It will actually make me scream and/or cry because it just grosses me the fuck out. Whale sharks' mouths also creep me out big time. Do you ever eat leftover pizza cold? Yeah, I love cold pizza. When you're wanting a midnight snack, what do you normally get? We normally have cashew bars that I like if I'm really hungry. Which cartoon character would you want to keep as a pet? Obviously Pikachu. My niece loves Pikachu anyway, so she'd be ecstatic to see a real one. Or well, maybe I'd go for an Eevee. Not as dangerous with electricity and all but just as cute and small. Do you like marshmallows? Yeah. If you had the opportunity to live forever, would you take it? No. It would ruin so many factors of the temporary nature of life. Things would lose meaning, get old and boring, it'd be much easier to take advantage of things... There are many reasons why I have no desire to live forever. Hell, I even wonder if I want an afterlife for those same reasons. Did you ever really believe in Santa Claus? As a little kid, yeah. Do you like quesadillas? I like cheese, chicken, and shrimp ones. What's the greatest/most influential song you've ever heard? Ozzy's "Life Won't Wait." Do you prefer to pull off band-aids slowly or quickly? I tend to do it slowly. What was the last thing someone told you that had you at a loss for words? Uhhh I feel like Sara said something, but I don't remember what. What was the last health scare you had? Ugh... I'm kind of living in one now. As my legs have been worsening, I'm becoming increasingly concerned I'm eventually going to need a wheelchair for "walking" longer distances. And mind you, "long" for me is probably short for the average person. My knees do nothing but crack incessantly and burn when I use them, and they frequently feel like they're going to give way, and in a few rare instances, have. It's my own fucking fault for not sucking it up and exercising with my mom in the room, so I'd like to move on. What is your favorite filling for a piece of chocolate? Caramel. Do you enjoy the sound of birds chirping? I do. If applicable, what’s your favorite drug, and why? I don't do drugs, so. What was the last TV show you binge-watched? Avatar: The Last Airbender with Sara. Would you rather eat burgers or tacos? Definitely burgers. I don't like tacos. Did your mother change her maiden name when/if she got marred? Yes. What was the last job you applied for? Did you get the job? Deli worker, and yes. Do you use TikTok? No. What decorations do you have in your bathroom? None. Our bathroom is pretty small. Well, the one we use, anyway. The one attached to the master's bedroom isn't cleaned up yet, but we'll use it in case of emergency. What year was your favourite band formed? (Before people think I'm smart, no, I looked the dates up, haha.) Well Ozzy was Black Sabbath's vocalist, and the band formed in 1968, but Ozzy became a solo artist in 1979. What's your favourite fruit? Strawberries. Have you ever had an out-of-body experience? No. Do you prefer gory horror films or the psychological ones? I prefer psychological. Are you easily paranoid? Yeah. Do you have a favorite obsession? Meerkats and Mark are kinda tied, haha. Are you a workaholic? No. Have you ever given a tattoo before and would you like to? No and no; that would be an awful idea, given I have bad tremors in my hands. Have you ever seen the movie Labyrinth? I actually have not. Would you rather be called pretty or hot? Pretty. Have you ever gotten a serious injury at school? What happened? No. Have you ever performed in front of my large group of people? Yes; I was a dancer for many years. Have you ever fundraised? If so, what for? You know how Facebook recommends making fundraisers for a charity of your choice for your birthday? I've done that for the Trevor Project and two charities for ovarian and pancreatic cancers. Are you wearing earrings right now? Ugh, no, even though I want to be. The first holes in my ears are just too stretched for normal earrings because I wore heavy ones too often, and I just don't have nice earrings. I still want to get very small gauges to put in the stretched holes. Name a singer whose voice makes you swoon? Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stump can do that, holy shit. "America's Suitehearts" does it for me, man. Y'know, when his voice goes all deep. Do your pets follow you when you walk around the house? My cat Roman is quite literally my shadow. Where I go, he goes. What do you do online? I seem to only exist online, really, so I've got a lot on my plate to choose from, yet I'm still bored half the time, haha. I'm essentially always watching or listening to YouTube, I play World of Warcraft for varying amounts of time depending on the day, I scroll through deviantART, check KM periodically, do surveys obviously, "work" at the wikis I contribute to, wander around on Facebook... idk, that's all I really do at least semi-regularly online. Haha oh, wait, I also check Craigslist like... every day for tarantula and hognoses even though I can't currently get either. Let me dream. Do you have any scars on your face? I have a couple on my chin from when I fainted and busted it open. What countries were your grandparents born in? In the US. What was the most damaging relationship (romantic or not) that you’ve ever been a part of? Ultimately, with Jason, because of how it ended. The relationship itself wasn't at all damaging to me, but the breakup shook my entire fucking world. When in your life was your self-esteem at its lowest point? Self-esteem? Now. I'm very unhappy with my weight going back up, my body is just in poor health in general, I'm not employed, not in school... I just feel like a lowlife. Who was the last person you cut out of your life? Do you regret it? I want to say my sister's mother-in-law. Sure don't, considering she revealed her disgusting support for conversion therapy. I'm civil around her in person, but I kicked that woman off my Facebook so fucking quick when I saw that shit. Who is the most attractive person you know personally? That I know personally... I would say Alon, but I haven't seen even a picture of her in forever. Summer, though, shares selfies frequently, and by god is she gorgeous. I know a lot a lot of beautiful women, asldkjf;awe. It's funny that I'm blanking on men, at least involving people I still "know"/are somehow present in my life. Would you rather look older or younger than you are? I'm fine looking my age. Have you ever dated someone who was very vastly different from your “type”? No. What is the biggest project you’re currently working on? I suppose you can count an RP plot as a "project." I'm procrastinating so bad on it because it is going to be A LOT of writing. Is there a person from your past that you wonder about frequently? Who? Take a shot in the dark for me. Who knows you best, excluding romantic partners? My mother. What are your thoughts on human creation? I believe we evolved. How many people have you had sex with? One. Have you ever had a yard sale? Yeah. Have you ever been surfing? No.

[kittenofdoom]

Last night I saw some people being really rude to someone for using Tumblr Blaze for it's intended purpose, aka blazing a post. It was a really nice poem that clearly meant a lot to the person who posted it, and all these people could focus on was how she use the "fyp" tag on her post because she is not well versed on how social media apps work. An honest mistake, not even a mistake that hurt anyone, just a minor error. She thought that was the tag you were supposed to use to get your posts seen.

I know I have criticized people in the past for doing things like that, but I only really meant to criticize terminally online and entitled people who live inside such a self isolated bubble that they can't bother and are unwilling to learn that not every website works like TikTok which has an algorithm to spoon feed you content hand tailored to suit your attention span. The types of people who want to change Tumblr into TikTok, those people are toxic to this website and its userbase.

This was not that, this was a person honest to God just trying to share their art and doing it in the way they thought they were meant to. A simple, kind, and patient explanation was all she needed, but people latched onto this small error and attacked her for it, and to add insult to injury they attacked her for the way she chose to spend her own damn money to get some eyes on her art.

Today I went to check her blog to see if people were still bullying her and she's gone. She either deactivated because of all the bullying, or one of these bullies got ass mad about her responding to them with the same energy they were using to talk to her. She was saying some kinda rude stuff to them, but it's not like they were being cordial to her. I might have missed some post where she overstepped a line but as far as I saw nothing she said was any worse than what was being said to her.

It's really fucking sad the people on this website are so vile and toxic that they drove away someone who was just trying to share her art. Imagine you posted your art on a website you weren't familiar with, and used the tags you thought you were supposed to use to get your art seen, and everyone responded by mocking you and calling you stupid for using the wrong tags on the wrong website. On top of that, imagine you paid money to get your art seen by other people, and they mock you and say "Why did you spend money to make me look at your shitty art?" (I saw someone say that almost verbatim to her.). How would you feel? I bet you would feel pretty fucking awful.

What is wrong with the people on this website? Why do they take pride in bullying innocent people off of the site? This is why art is dying on Tumblr.

[emilydocument]

I was sick for like all of October. I didn’t write a word during that time and barely read. TikTok got its claws in me again and I spent most of my sick time on there. Literally tick tock as the days slip by.

I’m pretty much healed now, but have a lingering cough that won’t leave me alone. I’ve started doing things outside again, with old friends, but that seems to have re-aggravated the cold. I’ve never had a virus this persistent. For the record it’s not COVID but some other cold-weather-mystery-plague. Very underground and cool.

I’m trying to write a little bit anyway, even if I can’t really concentrate and trust that it’ll be worth anything. The conditions to make stuff will never be perfect, so you and your sicknesses have to keep going together, even if it’s harder than it was a month ago. These past two years have taught me that you can never trust things will go back to what they were. And maybe this is the lesson of aging too, at least aging into adulthood. Things break, elasticity slackens, you can never snap back to that moment in space-time where things swerved.

In all the brain fog I started trying to make little songs on my phone. I’m not a musician by any means, though I did play the clarinet in my school’s band (never practiced, faked the fingering). I’ve always liked music and listened to random albums on various cool labels as they came out. I used to be a melody person, listening for ear worms. This year, I love lyrics the most, the way poetry can come to life with a little accompaniment, and how it’s easier to meditate on words when you can also dance to them.

In a manic episode last Saturday I texted all my friends that I was making an album and to watch out! Music era is coming! I’m already far less motivated to make something as coherent as an album, but what made that day nice was that I finally felt in my soul that I was allowed to make art that wasn’t good, but earnest. I let myself sit in my apartment, intuit a melody on GarageBand, and sing over it. A younger Emily would never embarrass herself like that, not even in private, and she was far worse for it.

I hope I get better soon. I miss feeling genuinely able to do the social hunt.

I’ve also been working for all of October. I enjoy my job, as much as you can enjoy a non-creative job. Every day I start to dream about the future, where I might have a day or two during the week to sit and write. I think about this prose poem by Mary Ruefle, which addresses the dream to off-load maintenance tasks, and the writer’s dream to take on the intellectual and creative labor in, if not an economic exchange, a personal one.

I’ve been meeting other people who work for the start-ups in the workspace I work at and they’re all nice and smart and ambitious, but I’m left with this ghostly feeling that we don’t want the same things from our lives. What do I mean by this? I guess that I don’t truly want “tech money”, or to build something within the margins of capitalism. I want to live in a tiny apartment with the chance to regularly write and sing and read and enjoy my friends and give to my community and grow the range of things I can help with. Maybe they want those things too. I don’t know.

Oftentimes, I catch myself wanting to tear past this part of my life, but I’m trying to be patient. Something something the present is all there is?

I don’t feel like I’m in any state to intelligently analyze what’s going on right now in my life, and can only note that time is passing by and things are better materially, but I feel further away from my creative ideals. I know that I am lonely and trying to navigate that as a shy and anxious and self-conscious (and now sickly) person. I’m not unhappy. This month, I intend to find a way to make more things and enjoy the crunchy leaves and stinging air and hoodie weather and soup and New York in fall and the petering out of 2021. These small things are good, I know. But I want to REALLY know.

Like knowing as in a solidity inside you all of the time that says: I’m alive. I’m BREATHING and HERE and even a sick day alive is another day of glorious life. Do I realize how important that is? That there is nothing else? That today deserves to be an end in itself? This feels like a richer way to move along, rather than in some illusory fugue state, dreaming of a four-day work week.

Every time I write something like that I feel the need to defend it and say something like I support widespread and systematic work reduction or something and we should be thinking about political change instead of glossing over the imagination of a better world. But this blog really isn’t political, and is interested in the personal realms that transcend the political. Right? Clearly, I don’t yet know how to think about separation of personal and political in my life and the degree of self-involvement I can accept in myself. Working on it.

Anyway. Here’s the things I came across this month that felt aligned with the vibe: