#ukoblog

[ukoid]

[2/21/18] :)!

According to my managers, I’ve been smiling more.

A couple weeks ago, and I’ve been dancing this idea around for a while but never really thought about implementing it, I resolved to start sleeping right after work instead of right before work. I’ve discovered that Consistently, I’ve gone into work in a better mood, and I’m less lazy, and I’m always on time if I’m awake a few hours in advance of my shift, and I’ve gotten my rest out of the way.

I’m coming up on a year since having started this job and the more I think about it the happier it makes me. I finally beat Ronnie in tips on a Saturday night, something I’ve never managed to do before. I was even able to keep my cool with A: no host and B: two fewer servers on the floor!!! I’m really proud of myself, and I really think this job is gonna continue to be something good for me. I’m just paranoid that this is just a really big luck streak, haha.

I think I’m ready to tell my mom to up my rent. The more pressure I can put on myself to keep my financials managed, and the more I can feel like I’m actually on top of things, the better I’ll feel. She already upped it from $450 to $500 per month, but I wanna tell her after March to up it to $600. Before the end of the year if I’m not out of the house still, I’ll probably bump it to $750. Because I already have that, plus gas, my car note, and literally almost $200 in twitch subs that I’m paying, lmao.

For right now I wanna keep it as is, because I’m working on saving for a new computer as a side project (and it’s going very well! I’m keeping a few benjamins at home so I don’t spend them, adding as many as possible at my own pace and comfort level). I want a more powerful machine that can stream with more power and maybe upgrade to 60 fps??? o: Lol

The beef between myself and a few members of the EarthBound community and the twitch speedrunning community in general hasn’t really diminished. I finally had a private conversation with someone who very clearly hates me because of the way they misinterpret the way I act, and I feel like even after we “sorted everything out” (i use that phrase very loosely) his attitude about me still hasn’t changed, which really bums me out. It’s just kinda awkward to coexist with him and a couple others, especially when I moderate and watch the same streams he does.

I’m not a dramatic person, I don’t feed off of starting shit with others. It’s the last thing I ever want, I’m a people pleaser I just want everyone to be happy and love each other. It takes a whole lot to genuinely piss me off because I’m used to taking a lot of shit from people. But I guess people just love to find whatever way they can to push my buttons?? Regardless of whether it’s intentional and even after we talk about it. Saddens me when I’m just trying to live my best life and be happy with my friends.

My new friend Riley makes me happier than she probably knows, I just don’t wanna say it to her face because that’s gay. It’s just that I keep thinking about it and even just being able to do something once in a while with her, or Denny, or anyone else that we can just go out and talk. It’s just nice!!! I’m not used to the feeling about being able to do that with someone without any qualms. I last had best friends back in like my freshman year, and of course back then I wasn’t working and couldn’t drive, so it was all on my parents whenever we wanted to hang out. My ex is different, because she and I became best friends my senior year and like a week later everything went romantic, and I can’t really do anything with her now without there being stigma. SO it’s really nice just having a friend. I dunno. I feel like things are just good. But different things are also bad. I really hate how often I think about my pathetic love life. But I guess that’s just the way it goes

I’m thinking of combining this blog with my instagram, kind of a mesh of the idea behind angela’s and riley’s things that they have going. It’s too late for me to start with the new year, or even with the beginning of the blog, but I can post each of my entries since there’s so few. I’ll use my personal insta though since literally I feel like it’s not popular enough for my fucking BLOG to be isolated from it :P 

YouTube’s been paying me a lot more lately, despite me not really taking any action. It’s all just from Red revenue on my older grump comps. I’m thinking of making the push for 10k subs and seeing what kind of money I can generate. I can’t do the poll thing on my channel though because I don’t have 10k!!! So I have to unlazy and make a video just to address the fact that I want user input on what to make since I’m pretty indecisive and relate heavily to that whole “executive dysfunction” idea that I’m seeing.

I’m telling myself that I’ll start to catch up on all these projects I know I’ve been wanting to do for like two years once I get my new computer, god I hope I can trust future me to uphold their end of the deal. I keep fucking over my friend ahbeef by telling him I’ll do stuff for him and then putting it off for like months at a time. I still haven’t done him the mario paint commission that I promised for him buying me my webcam (which I’m thinking of replacing at some point!!! fuck!!! lol) I’m just a terrible human being I guess.

Point is, for now, I’m moving forward. I’m just the type of person who needs to take the babiest of baby steps at a time, but results are showing from what I’ve done so far. It might take all year for me to get where I wanna be if not longer, but I have faith.

Here’s my spotify playlist of what I’m listening to on repeat :: https://open.spotify.com/user/1286043202/playlist/5A7hTZ8tVj3HhguThGfA4L?si=DmD7x541QKShQMA1A1Z2lw

[ukoid]

[3/13/18] one year at ihop :: a retrospective

My hire date was March 10th. Here’s a pastebin with all my fuckining thoughts.

https://pastebin.com/9K3MS6MQ

[ukoid]

[1/23/18] more of a rant than a blog post

i have no idea what i’m doing wrong man, lol. people continue to remind me why i have such severe trust issues. people never come to me genuinely they always seem to have some kind of underlying motive.

i try my hardest to be a hard working genuine loving person but no one ever does the same shit back for me and that’s just how it’s been this past year. i really really hate people sometimes. i know who my people are and i have to make sure i don’t forget.

i’m trying new things with new people and having fun with it but almost every interaction has lead to failure so far. there’s one open door left but it feels like i’m stepping over egg shells and i really want it to work out. i want to be happy with someone. i’m not even asking for romance, lmao. i just need a friend who won’t bail.

i have a lot to catch this blog up on but the fact of the matter is too much has happened lately and i don’t have enough time to type up a long explanation. i can, however, copy and paste a couple pastebins

from before the disney cruise

from the disney cruise

When I do ctrl+A on wordpad it keeps reverting it back to calibri 11 so FINE i'll just stick with it. not like it'll stay on this same font anyway if/when i publish this.

So it's Monday the 8th, 11:43 EST. I've majorly enjoyed the cruise so far, I think the only sucky parts is that A) it's so short and B) i'm 19. this severely limits my options, as the events and stuff to do are majorly geared toward either kids, or teenagers below 17, or adults 21 and over who can drink and stuff. (And it's funny because apparently I should have prepared! The legal age to drink is 18 in Mexico, so I was totally legal to visit and revisit the open bar while we were on the beach. Which is interesting. I've never been interested in drinking or anything like that but it really doesn't help when, yknow, everyone else around you is doing it and you wish you could at least get buzzed since you're bored and your options are limited. I tried a pina colada, but fuck since my mom's been drinking since she was like 15 or whatever she prefers really strong stuff. I couldn't handle.)

I bought myself a couple really cheap coffee mugs because that was the kinda souvenir I was in line for, but I also found a couple really cool lighters, but I accidentally got caught by my mom trying to buy one. I still don't know if she knows I smoke weed. Either I'm doing a really good job hiding it or she's doing a really good job hiding the fact that she knows. But oh well, I'm not really worried about it, I just hate that apparently her first thought is that I was buying the lighter for my ex. Which. No. It's for me. I didn't tell her, though.

It's really nice having relative freedom. At the very least I still get the executive privelege of ice cream and pizza almost whenever I want it. The only problem was the fact that I got seasick last night because when we took off from Cozumel it was stormy enough to shake the ship, so it was rocking back and forth a lot. I almost threw up, but thankfully I was able to down a motion sickness pill and head straight to sleep. Only thing was I woke up incredibly hungry at 2:30 AM, and of course all the food places were closed. Why me. But I feel better now, it's just that literally all of us feel the same way about today... the final sea day, the day where we all wait for it to be tommorow and we can go home. Lol. Except for me, I'm flying straight to GDQ when I get off the ship!!! Which is what I've been really looking forward to for this vacation. 

I probably won't be able to finish mario odyssey (which I've been using my spare time to play in our room) by the time we dock, but I WILL be able to play it on the plane so maybe I'll get enough headway there. I do wanna be able to learn any% after having at least gotten the normal ending. I can 100% it or whatever later, it should be okay.

Either my headphones are breaking or my laptop just doesn't pump out very much sound because this music isn't playing very loud in my ears, lol. I just wanna turn it up some more!!!

In the vein of electronic devices and gadgets and such I really didn't prepare much. Or at least, I thought I did, but apparently didn't. Wifi and cellular data are RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE. Like I thought i'd be able to pay a similar $8 a day thing like they have at the airports, but it's more like $8 per megabyte of data. MEGABYTE. Like I can't even listen to spotify on my phone because I didn't have any of my songs downloaded in advance. And it's not even like I'm trying to stay cut off from the ship itself and all its attractions either, I just wanted to be able to check into twitter or snapchat or twitch every so often during my down time. I've just been turning off airplane mode every 8 hours or so and reading the notifications or whatever, because at least past me had the genius idea of turning on tweet notifs for the gdq account so at least I know what's happening. But i'll be reconnected tomorrow, no biggie. For now I'm just throwing away some time while the room service dudes do their thing, and in a couple hours I'll honestly just go watch a couple movies. Coco and Star Wars 8 are playing so I'll try to catch both, play some odyssey, get dinner, and we'll roll from there. Thankfully I had spotify open from when I was packing for the cruise itself (since I haven't used my laptop at all since we left the house), so at least I can listen to the playlist I was already on while I write.

I just wanna know asap how much money I still have, lol. It feels a little scary spending and spending, not knowing how much I'll still have after the cruise is over. And I know it'll be fine, because all I have to do is work another week and I'll have another $400 to deposit, it's just like aaa. And the whole point of going on vacation is to NOT worry about my real life, and my finances, and my job, but I've been having stress dreams. I was lucky to be woken up from one the other night, I've been sharing a bed with my brother and I was dreaming about iHop and the GM being mad at me about something while I try and work, a la Christmas night, and in the middle of a stretch my brother backhanded me in the face softly, but just hard enough to wake me up. I was gonna get mad but I was like huh. Thanks. lol.

Uh oh my spotify ran out, lmao

If I could read my prior blogs real quick I'd know what I need to catch it up on, but I guess this one'll remain cruise/vacation only and I'll do a real one when I have interwebz. I wanna wait as long as possible to try heading back to the stateroom in case the room service dudes are still there. I ran into this problem on one of the first days :P I wanted to retire to the room but the service for each room takes like an hour, and I had nowhere to go so I was just walking around, being approached by each person like "hey are you lost" and I'm like no!!! I'm fine!!!

The thing about all the employees on the ship is like. I get it they're supposed to be extra nice and all that, for the disney feel and so that more people will book more cruises in the future, but I get weirded out by niceness. It probably has an impact on my serving as well, because I try to act like who i'd wanna encounter while eating out. Not overly nice, but not overly lazy and forgetful, yknow. It hurts at times to try and break that, to fake who I am in order to "serve better" so I don't know how some people do it. Props to them.

I'm probably done venting certain thoughts. Don't wanna make it seem like I hate the cruise though, the only issue I have, which is out of anyone's control, is that it's not at all tailored to the demographic that I fall under. I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more the first time around back in 2013, when I WAS young enough to fall under the "youth activities" rung. Bad timing is all it is. Ideally next time I cruise or anything like that, it'll be when I'm much older. But I'm not the one who planned it or paid for it, and I'm making the most fun out of it I can instead of being my old sour teenager self who hates everything. :P Proud of myself for coming of age in that regard. I think my siblings have too. (Except for my youngest brother. ;p) --- 7:33 EST just came out of Last Jedi, was pretty damn dope. Just as a movie by itself i'd recommend it to anyone who likes that style of story where a bunch of different plot lines and points of view finally converge. Homestuck always comes to mind when I encounter stories like this

Didn't get to catch Coco because apparently the theater was jam-packed, like zero places left to sit down.

7:50 EST i don't like the way the boat moves. i think cruises really just aren't my thing, lmao. if i could get this same experience, but like, on land? i think i'd like that more :P like the longer i lay here knowing dinner time's coming (25 minutes) the less i want to move and the more i just want to sleep.

post-gdq

but i’m back in the groove of my job and things. i’ve talked to my manager about some stuff, other stuff i kept in, but my schedule’s “””okay””” for the time being. i’m gonna ask about my shifts starting in the 6:00 range because i really don’t like that, but for now i’m fine with it as long as it’s not the majority.

i can’t do graveyard for the time being since server priority 1 ronnie (i’m server priority 2 basically) has asked for those shifts since he’s a little bit extra in need of cash, so of course they’re gonna indulge him on that. but as soon as i can get those shifts back the happier i’ll be

i got my first car payment taken care of and set up recurring payments monthly, which i’m really excited about. next step i think is to a) keep working and saving and b) figure out my w-2 and such because this’ll be my first year doing taxes with ihop under my belt

a few things plaguing my mind lately involve my love life, a new friend that i’ve made that i really hope to grow closer with, and an old friend who i really miss. i wish wish wish i could go into further detail but whoops, ain’t got no one to tell this shit to. i’m a gay piece of shit

not sure what else to say for the moment, but i hope this sinus infection goes away soon so i feel like doing more stuff. my room is a hopeless wreck but i couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it

[ukoid]

Oh I forgot something [10/16/17]

Shoutouts to my dad and stepmom for flaring up my depression after it was already bad by surprise adopting a fucking child

Like okay cool I get it, your struggle with infertility is a blah blah blah and thank the Lord our God in heaven above for this special opportunity and blessing and blah blah blah. And also I should be an adult and get the fuck over the divorce and all that by now but. I can’t. I really can’t. Like, think about how I only have one set of parents forever, for my whole life. Think about how hard it was for a 12-13 year old kid who already doesn’t know who the fuck they are or where they’re going having their entire reality shattered like that, leaving a permanent scar. Which, okay, cool, divorce is common, and it happens, but you keep pouring salt on the wound by doing more and more weird dumb shit. It’s been a problem for years. I can’t ever see you without thinking about it. I can’t ever see your wife without thinking about it. I can’t ever think about it without completely shutting down. The thought of you and her, who constantly mistreated me at every step while I lived with and near you, raising a child, from birth to adulthood, terrifies me. Not only is he gonna be spoiled rotten, but he’s also gonna grow up fucked up. It’s just. Gonna happen. He’s gonna grow up afraid of you, with very little love in his heart for you. And this would be the same if he weren’t adopted honestly.

Maybe I’m paranoid. Maybe I’m stupid. Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. But I’m just speaking from experience here

It’s just that. fucking. every result from your actions and my mom’s actions leading to divorce led to my whole childhood being ruined. I can’t live a normal life anymore because of it. I probably have a more introverted personality because of it. I went to four different high schools because of it, moved states because of it, lost close and dear relationships because of it, and wasted months and months locked up in my room just out of sheer fear and sadness because of it. And that’s leaving out the weird dumb shit that you continued to pull after the whole ordeal settled. And apparently, as you just proved, you’re not done. Lol. I fear for the emotional safety of my siblings. I’m lucky I have a job to use as an excuse to get out of even seeing you anymore, but the fact that I have to resort to that saddens me beyond belief. I shouldn’t have to feel like this. I don’t deserve to feel like this. I wish I could love my Dad like a normal fucking son. If it weren’t for this I’d probably in my sophomore year of university right now, and I just might have graduated high school close to valedictorian or something, if not that.

I wish I could explain in more detail but I don’t wanna get any more personal on a public forum than I already have but yeah ok cool here’s a vent

[ukoid]

A List? Idk we’ll see what this becomes [10/16/17]

No danger of losing my progress this time around *knock on wood*

I’m irritated because my laptop’s keyboard is breaking and I’m afraid it’s gonna cause me trouble at some point. I’m using a spare at the moment and this is super dumb.

I wish I could personally address everyone that I want to thank, as well as everyone else as I wanna say fuck off to, but revealing names might be an awful idea. I’ll start with the ones I can list without fear

Angie (AngieYuna), thanks for being a sweetie and someone to rely on. EB races with you are always fun, you’re always great to hang out with in your streams, and running to you is pretty easy. I can’t wait to see you at AGDQ. <3

Fon, you rock, seriously. Thanks for being also a sweetie and someone *very* easy to run to. Talking to you has been wonderful and watching hxh with you has been extremely fun and idk, I just appreciate you tons. I consider you one of my best friends ever at this point and I can’t wait to meet you at RPGLB. <3

Lane, thanks for checking up on me. You were the first, and I’ll always think of you. We can finally meet soon and I couldn’t be happier knowing that. <3

The rest idk if I can risk them finding this and reading it, so. I’ll go nameless.

A and B: GOD, you’re annoying. Both of you. I’ll never tell you that but I’ll always, always think it until you somehow come around. You remind me of my stupid teenage self, and you’re both adults. And even I never did what you do now so fucking hard. Please, for god’s sake, chill. Wouldn’t mind never seeing either of you again, either

C: You’re extremely pretty and cool to talk to. Dunno how weird it would be if I revealed a friend crush, though. Sure you got plenty of those. Shrug.

D: We’re both terrible humans, you and I, for our own reasons. It’s better that we drift apart. I hope you realize that soon, too.

E, F, and G:  Thanks for being (mostly) genuine. You and I don’t mesh perfectly well personality-wise, but that hasn’t stopped us from maintaining a friendship, however weird it may be. You’ve each helped me one way or another, in a time that I’ve really needed it, maybe without realizing it. We’ll see how long I’ll stay, but in the meantime I’ll try to enjoy it.

H: You suck, lol. Idk how some people love you, you’ve been nothing but a snide dick to me

I’m sure there are plenty I’m forgetting. There are all kinds of people I wanna just tell “hey I wanna be better friends with you but anxiety says don’t talk to you all that much out of fear of looking stupid” so guess not. :P I’m used to this though. I think my personality makes it hard for people who don’t almost completely perfectly match my sense of humor and ideology to stick around very long, and that’s fine

It’s been a long month and a half, but at the same time the time’s flown by. It’s just been rough, I guess. Depression’s been flaring up lately and it’s been super uncool.

I finally went to the dentist and got my cavities filled, but I have yet to retake defensive driving for my deferred, which is due in the next 5 days. I’m so good at procrastinating. ;P I’m making progress though, taking baby steps. Slowly getting my bedroom re-cleaned, I know that after I do I’ll be in a better mental state.

I decided to take a break from PB attempts in all EarthBound categories, and instead focus on completing one full run of Glitchless without resetting as many days in a row as I can. However, I did attempt some Glitchless manip runs because for whatever reason I had the itch, and then I messed up Pond Cave by stuttering my way into three fights because I’m a champ. Idk, maybe I’ll try picking it up again soon, we’ll see

I’m a lot happier with the way I’ve been presenting myself lately though. I went ahead and bought some nice clothes as well as other things to kinda treat myself and help myself feel better about my appearance, even making changes to my work uniform. I also feel a lot better about my job, it’s just that with my preference for Sundays off, and the fact that the restaurant has either been losing business or is just having a slump, they’re keeping me on the floor for fewer hours at a time, and I’m making less. I barely cut $300 for the week this week, and that’s with me trying my complete hardest and making excellent tips... there’s just been no traffic. I’m considering looking into other lines of work, but it probably won’t get anywhere for the time being. I don’t hate my job, it’s just that this presents a danger for the future, when I have more bills to pay each month. However, when I’m not trying to rack up savings for something big it might be easier to sustain myself. It’s all a big mystery though. Hmm.

Speaking of, I should be looking into cars at some point soon! I’ve reached 3k in savings and my mom has sold the house she was renting out, so once she’s able to refinance her student loans using the profit she says she’ll cosign me for a car, which is dooope. I wanna spend so much time travelling, and just. Driving. Driving without being afraid of my monstrosity of a vehicle breaking down.

I’m really shaken because I feel stuck, in all of my hobbies. They’re less enjoyable lately, and I think it’s all because of depression. I’m just really hoping by the end of October everything that I owe to the government and all that bullshit is gonna be done with, my room’s gonna be clean, I’m gonna be able to sustain it better, and everything’s just gonna Be Better so I can tolerate living just a little bit more. I realize that I’m gonna have to continue putting work into it, which I am, it’s just been hard.

EarthBound’s been really tough to pursue for weeks at this point. Like, for whatever reason I can pull out fantastic Boogey% times which can potentially win me the entire tourney, no problem, but everything else is giving me so much trouble and I can’t pinpoint the reason why. Glitchless is really hard to push for, No reset Glitchless is just as hard because RNG is a tough motherfucker and when it goes bad it gets really discouraging, and Any% is really easy to flub and I don’t have enough experience at it. And even when I do really really want to stream and do attempts of literally anything, ALL OF A SUDDEN I’m too tired and I wanna go lay down. I just don’t get it. It’s like I’m broken.

I try to solve the problem by doing other things that I enjoy, like making music or making videos, or doing fucking anything else? And it doesn’t seem to work either. It doesn’t come naturally to me like it used to. Which is why I’m hoping by the end of October I’ll have everything sorted and have enough free time to do what I enjoy more easily again.

Also, the EarthBound community’s been rubbing me the wrong way lately. Not in a terribly bad way, and it’s not even a majority of its members who make me feel this way, it’s just that the things that people say sometimes about me and in front of me really make me feel like I’m being underestimated, like I haven’t put in any actual time or work or that I’m still just a newbie despite having the third-fastest glitchless time and the fastest Onett. I feel like my age might have to do with it??? I dunno. I don’t even know if people actually think that or if I’m just paranoid. It’s just a feeling that I’ve had since I started running the game, and at first it was fine because, yknow, I WAS young when I started (still am), and I DID suck at the speedrun and was new (just like everyone else?), but yknow. The feeling hasn’t gone away and I’ve been doing this for well over a year. And I hate thinking about it but I can’t stop. :/

Shoutouts to anxiety for being cool

I probably can’t do my full glitchless run today, because I’ll sleep too long. That’s fine, I guess, I’ll just try to make James’s race tomorrow morning instead. I need to not put that much pressure on myself, that’ll defeat the purpose.

I need to finish registering for the defensive driving course and grind through the six hours of cringey videos that I’ve already seen before so I can get this ticket waived from my record, and I also need to finish cleaning my room today. Once those two things are done things should improve around here.

This’ll sound lame but I think I’m really missing irl physical affection. It really makes me happy when my bestest online friends are there for me, but one thing that really calms me down and soothes me is physical touch, including and especially hugs. I wish I could receive more of those, and not like the shitty awkward ones I give my coworkers or family members, gosh dang it, I mean like actual ones where they last a good number of seconds and it’s just a little bit too tight but it’s all good because we both know each others’ boundaries and we can embrace it. I think that’s what I need most atm

I think that’s it for now. I might do a second one this month if I realize I forgot some stuff, but this should be good for the time being

[ukoid]

A period of transition [11/04/17]

Subject 1: Work

I talked to my manager about how uncomfortable I am the way I’m being scheduled at my job, and how stressed and sleep-deprived my job has been making me. She said she saw and understood everything, and told me she was working on it, but apparently a wrench was thrown in her plans.

She told me she was going to hire an employee from another ihop to work the 10p-6a shift (which i wanted, and she said she was going to give me), so initially I was upset, but she said she knew I wanted those hours so she was willing to alternate giving them to me and giving them to him, but last night when he was supposed to come in and train, he no-call-no-showed. Lowkey I’m completely happy about it, because that gives me a better shot at accruing all those shifts AND having two days off in a row every single week (Sunday and Monday), but that all depends on my coworker moving to day shift which I hope she still will.

I also complained to my manager about how sometimes when I get spontaneously scheduled for shifts I don’t want without my consent, they frequently stay on my schedule for following weeks and as a result that meant I only had one day off these last two weeks, with a ridiculously inconsistent schedule. This as a result made me super irritable for an entire week and I swear this job is taking years off of my life. I’m hoping that all this stuff will tell her that I’m looking for a set schedule that never changes, and if they need someone to be covered they ASK me first, not TELL me. I’m happy to accept the hours and do THEM a favor, but I need to be able to plan around it.

This is the first of a few subjects that are surrounded with ambiguity and I just have to wait it out.

Subject 2: EarthBound

My feelings are still kind of shaky about EB and the community. I feel like there’s too much tension between everybody and I’m feeling less like I belong to the “community” itself. I think a select number of members are feeling the same way, but I might be wrong. A handful of people entering our family are a little bit over the edge as far as belligerence, people trying to talk over others and that’s one of my biggest problems in general with EB fam is I feel like sometimes I can’t get my voice in.

I honestly think after thinking about it for a while that I might try just disconnecting from it. I’ve got my friends within the community who I love to death, but I shouldn’t have to make myself associate with everybody in the community if they make me uncomfortable. For the time being, I still have the EarthBound Super Series to win (which I will win, with no remorse for my opponent despite him being an underdog), and two world records to snatch, Glitchless and Any%. I will take them, I have no doubt in my mind, it’s just new manip that I’m not solid on that’s giving me trouble, in both runs. I’ll conquer everything, make my mark, and move on to something else. I love EarthBound and I’ll speedrun it forever, but I can’t keep focusing on only it. As soon as I meet these three goals, I’ll be ready to move on from it and feel like I have just a tad more freedom. There are all kinds of projects in the back of my mind that I wanna pursue, and I look forward to feeling like I have the option.

Subject 3: Car

The day is coming soon that I can finally shop for my own new car. This will be my first goal as an adult that I’ll be reaching, and I’m very excited!!! I can’t wait to figure out what kind of car I’m getting, the color, the sound system, and all that good stuff, but I’m also really curious about the payments I’ll be making on it. As soon as I have those monthly bills to pay, I’ll try to officially “budget” all my earnings, and more strictly limit my spending. If I can do that and have my schedule be consistent, I’ll feel hella secure in my adult life. I’ll also suggest to my mom that I pay my own phone bill as well, as well as anything else that I can think of, so that I can live here as cheaply as possible until I can find somewhere else to stay. Still don’t know if I wanna leave the state, but we’ll see.

[ukoid]

One more shot at blogging [8/31/17]

Subject 1: This blog

I was inspired by a fellow twitch speedrunner (and who at least I consider a good friend of mine), AngieYuna, to start writing things down again. Having run low on real life friends to legitimately vent to or be in love with leaves me with no choice, honestly. Don’t think I’m trying to beg for sympathy or pity or anything like that though, I just think that this has always helped me out in the past, but only when I needed it. The last time I journalled was in late 2015, during my senior year of high school. When I met “the love of my life,” I stopped writing. Now that I’m kinda weeding her out, having dedicated so much of my life and my time to her and only her, I’ve as a result run out of close friends. This is a mistake I’ll no longer be making.

But yeah, the time comes when it’s time to write, for me, I suppose, and this is one of those times.

Last time around I imposed a slightly lenient but still solid rule for writing; I was to do it every single day during classes when I wasn’t doing anything and had access to my google docs. And if I didn’t finish, I’d finish at home. This was great and worked well for a few months, but like I said, once I met someone and started putting time into her instead, the writing slowed to a stop. This time I’ll attempt to circumvent that by imposing a different rule; at least once a month.

This way I can summarize everything that’s been going on Lately, what I’ve been thinking, and all of that, in one big concise post full of retrospective, as opposed to trying to sustain an “as I go” approach and feeling guilty to myself when I don’t make an entry. I’ll also allow myself to skip a month, if really need be, but I feel like one month is a long enough time for me to set a few hours aside and compose something of substance. If not, that’s okay, no sweat, it’s not like I have to meet a quota, but I feel like imposing some lenience in advance for myself is a little incentive to make sure it does get done at some point. After all, I’m always looking for the means to vent to the public about what’s going on in my life, whether it’s through twitter, my streams, my music, or anything else. (On the other hand, there’s also nothing stopping me from making MORE than one post per month, if something new arises and I want to document it.)

I’ll tag each post with “ukoblog” and link to it on my links page or whatever so you can easily find it, if you wanna.

Subject 2: Hurricane Harvey

This motherfucker’s sent my mind on a trip. It really has. I’ll be touching on a lot of sub-subjects here, so forgive me.

I work at an ihop restaurant around 10 minutes from my house. I started in early March and out of the three jobs I’ve had this is by far my favorite. I love the people I work with, I love the schedule (I didn’t before, but now that I’ve made more of a name for myself there with my managers they let me work when I want to basically), and I love feeling like I make people happy when serving them.

This job has also been extremely beneficial for me, because I’ve always been a social introvert and forcing myself to get into stressful situations and figure out how to overcome them really has helped me. It’s a good exercise, and at the same time I’m also getting very good experience for my resume assuming I wanna branch out in my career at some point or whatever. The more I feel like I can talk to strangers the better I feel about my future. AND I’m making good money, I’m able to reward myself by splurging every once in a while and I’m still racking up savings!

The big ultimate goal for starters as I venture into the adult world is to save up for a car. I don’t know all the logistics of it yet, but basically my mom wants me to save at least $5k to use as a down payment, and from there to start building some credit. This excites me, since I feel like I’m a pretty decent manager of my money and it would feel awesome not only to have made a big purchase like this as a result of my own hard work, but to also be Adulty af when going about it.

The only dent that I’ve personally made in my savings since starting my job is spur-of-the-moment deciding to buy a Nintendo Switch with Splatoon 2, as well as the pro controller to play it. This totaled to about $500, and I was really nervous making the payments since being a server has really, really, REALLY taught me the value of a dollar. However, I feel totally fine now that I’ve done it, because I know that I really deserve that freedom! I’ve never been prouder of myself and who I’ve become at any other point in my life until now, and the fact that I can (ONCE, NOT MORE THAN ONCE) spend an atrocious amount of money on just Stuff for myself but still save up for what I know I need is really satisfying and empowering!!!

Haven’t even gotten to the damn hurricane yet. Oops. I accounted for there being this much exposition though, and as a reader you’re just gonna have to fucking deal with it. *finger guns with sunglasses*

I’ve lost track of time at this point, but I think I first heard about there being a hurricane coming toward where I live last Thursday. My manager, “Ms. B” as we call her, told me that night to make sure I fill up on gas before heading home, since she knew all the gas stations would be all out by the time the hurricane hit. And sure enough, I didn’t even get enough TIME to go to a gas station and fill up, there were already those little plastic bags that said “sorry, out of service” on every pump I could find by the time I was able to clock out and leave. And, conveniently enough, on the way home my gas light came on. Hurray.

Flooding was already starting, and we were getting emergency alert after emergency alert on all our phones. Luckily for me I was able to still make it to and from work for the next three nights, but I was already on a streak of having no day off since what’s now two Fridays ago. This Sunday was the final night I worked, but since I arrived that afternoon as the restaurant was completely slammed, I had already made most of the money I was destined to make about four hours into the shift, and we still had the entire restaurant to clean. I was Dead. Tired. This was my ninth day in a row of working, and my last three shifts were 12 or more hours long. After Miss Carolyn arrived the following morning (I was still there) she was thanking me so much for being up there so much these past few nights and all that. “I don’t know how you do it,” she said. “I don’t know either, Miss Carolyn,” I responded. I was fucking ready to go the fuck home, and I didn’t even care that I didn’t restock. She let me go anyway, thankfully, and I haven’t been at work since then (Three days off in a row is always nice), because they’ve been closing the restaurant at night.

I’ve shared this story plenty of times, but I see no harm in quickly reiterating.

Monday night I didn’t know our ihop was closed (finally), so I assumed I was to follow the schedule and arrive at the restaurant at 8:30 pm, so I did... on a low gas tank at that. (I figured enough time had passed to where after I got off work some gas stations would have finally restocked on fuel. I was wrong.)

I got there and saw that the lights were off and that there was a paper sign taped to the door, I didn’t even need to read it to know what it said. I let out a sigh of exasperation, picked up my phone, and called my mom. She didn’t answer.

Called again. No answer.

You might be thinking that I was afraid of something bad happening to her or whatever, but nah. I called my sister instead, and she immediately picked up.

“You better tell mom that when I call her on the phone and there’s a fucking hurricane outside that she needs to pick it up and make sure I’m not dying in floodwater!!!” I told her. She starts laughing, and hands the phone to mom. “I was charging my phone, I’m sorry!!!” Mom said. “Yeah, yeah,” I groaned.

I told her ihop was closed and asked her if there was even one gas station around me that I could make it to to fill up, or even buy a few bucks of premium. She told me there was a gas station called “raceway” on Mason Road. I just needed to go down I-10 and turn up north, and I couldn’t miss it.

Long story short, I sputtered my way through emergency traffic for a handful of miles, but never saw a “raceway.” I pulled into a nearby Shell, and my car would no longer start. Called mom. She said, “Ohhhhh, yknow what. The raceway isn’t on Mason, it’s on Westgreen. My bad.”

So now I’m sitting on my ass at a Shell gas station, 30 minutes away from home, in hurricane weather (thankfully no flooding around there at that time), with no gas, for NO REASON. Little to no surprise here. I decided I might as well indulge myself in $10 worth of gas station snacks. Got some combos for the first time in years... no regrets.

She sent James, my stepdad, to rescue me, we got some gas from the raceway, and we both drove home. “I’m alive,” I told everyone. Didn’t get any kind of celebration or fanfare, but I did get a “You should probably wash your uniform, you smell like gasoline.” I love my stupid family sometimes.

I’ve had a lot of time to myself to think since that night. Plenty of old subjects have from the period of the hurricane resurfaced, including my relationship with my ex, my gender, my future, and probably plenty of other stuff I’m forgetting. Like I’ve been saying, I’m really hoping that I figure out how to use this blog, as well as other medium, to express myself in moments where I need to. Music is fun to vent through, but I can’t come up with melodies 24/7, that shit has to happen spur-of-the-moment.

One of the things I’m sad about right now is that a lot of stuff that I want to do costs money, and especially now that I’ve already bought my switch and stuff, I’m afraid to spend anymore. I’m glad I’m afraid, because I don’t want to completely DRAIN my savings, but I’ve really wanted to branch out lately and I feel like I can’t do that, or that I have to wait until I can.

I’m going to be starting chill comfy streams with Splatoon 2. I love the fuck out of that game, I’m addicted, I’m never gonna stop, and I’ve discovered the true beauty that is !songrequest. I largely have Fon to thank for that though, he has excellent taste in music and was basically using his brand new sub powers to flood my queue with some really choice picks. However, I’m really unsatisfied with the overall quality of the stream itself... and frankly most of that comes from the fact that I’m straight up broke.

I can’t stream HD without a shit ton of artifacting and semi-frequent frame drops. I can really only hope that it doesn’t hinder viewers’ enjoyability of the stream. I’m largely certain that that comes from my not-that-powerful streaming laptop, my old-style Elgato capture card, and my mediocre at best internet connection. It sucks, because I wanna produce beautiful content while providing a homely atmosphere for my viewers, but it’s kinda fugly and probably a turnoff for anyone new. I’d love to just Buy an HDTV or Buy a new capture card or start saving up for a much better PC, but that all takes too much money that I don’t have. I have to prioritize the car, otherwise I’m not doing anything with myself or going anywhere.

Not only that, but I also feel the need to figure out how to make myself prettier. I’ve always wanted to present myself more feminine, but I’m literally THE least well-versed in feminine fashion and aesthetic and I would have no idea where to start... and even if I did, I feel like I wouldn’t have the energy or resolve to maintain it... and even if I did, how the hell am I gonna afford it? :/ The best I can do right now is kinda try and make use of what I have, but I really only have graphic t-shirts and tank tops and some okay non-form-fitting jeans. Not to mention my stupid beard-ass face that I’m starting to notice I need to shave more and more times a week. Dumb shit. My voice isn’t deep enough for a beard, and neither is my body form-fit enough. Go away, facial hair.

One more thing to do with the hurricane.

One strange man walked into ihop Sunday night, when I was literally on my last legs before passing out. He stood at the front of the restaurant, I addressed him, and he talked. My ear off. For over an hour. No exaggeration.

Like... I’ll be honest, I can’t remember most of the conversation itself, because I really felt tortured in the fact that I was basically forced to stand there and listen to his rants for that long of a time (and not take any tables) and I was really toning him out more than anything, but I do remember the really unsettling aura he rubbed off on me. Not anything creepy or anything like that, but just like. Almost ethereal, in a way.

He asked me about what my plan was for the future one second, and then the next he was ranting about Albert Einstein and the WWII era of physics. He later mentioned the second coming of Christ and told me some shit about asking Him for forgiveness and all that (a tired concept for me at this point in life). He also mentioned the hurricane, and I guess a similar hurricane that happened when he was 5-10 years old or whatever, and then he started talking about his daughter or something quitting the corporate life to become a teacher, like... he just wouldn’t shut the hell up basically. But when he finally, FINALLY, left the restaurant... he closed our conversation with this...

“Is it storming outside? Yes. Do I have food at home? Yes. Did I need to come out for a burger, in this weather? No. I’m telling you... Ryan.” He read my name tag, and shook my hand. “This is a crossing of paths. Think about it.” He starts to walk out. “Maybe I’ll see you again someday, maybe not.”

This is the kind of shit that my brain should be TRYING TO SHUT OUT AND FORGET... but I just can’t. Like, I dunno if I’m actually superstitious enough to believe that this is a sign of... something that’s coming up? And even if I do, then I have no idea what it might be referencing. He talked about so much shit. But I mean, he did say to think about it, and I guess I’m listening to him.

Basically at this point I’m sick and tired of this whole hurricane business. I hope my EB run gets into HRDQ, even though it probably won’t, but other than that I just need Houston and whatever part of Louisiana to just go back to normal already so we can all move on with ourselves. I hope everyone who was less fortunate than I am in the event of Harvey is okay.

Subject 3: Yeah, this is probably gonna take multiple posts after all

There’s more stuff I wanna put out there, but I wanna publish this post first before it gets to be too long. I also need a break... my mind can only take so much writing at a time, I guess. I wanna chill for a few hours before I have to go into work this afternoon.

Feel free to like this if you read it all, or at least skimmed it. I’d love to know if you’re listening. Love you, and have a nice day. ukotunLove