1/28/2024: "There was so much time / I spent rent-free in my mind / I was radically transparent / then i reverted to the mean / But there were changes in the hardcore scene"(you should get into CHEEKFACE) | it's been a slow couple weeks, but everything over the previous year-and-a-half came at me SO quickly. the latter half of 2024 was a speedbump. cut to 2023- i moved away from home for the first time that august- a new town, physically seperated from familiar places and faces by 6+hrs and transit expenses. it was good at first, but i severely overworked myself, to the point of experiencing constant paranoia about every single person in my life and how they wanted to mess with me or harm me or at the very least, secretly disliked me. YES, i finally got OUT of my crowded and tiny family home... into this new place where so much fun was had and beauty was witnessed. I also dove head-first into significant drama at work (where i made a friend who certainly taught me a lesson about setting emotional boundaries with people; admitted to using me in place of an actual therapist just because they could; a warm welcome to a new town, genuinely, but also constant horror stories about people they'd known in that very place)... and also, serious conflict at home (where i used to live AS WELL AS the place i'd moved into)... i just didn't cope properly, i smoked a bunch of weed, avoided people as often as possible despite how lonely i was starting to feel. after a few months of work at a job i really enjoyed, opportunities to explore the town and live a little in ways which i never have, my mind was penetrated by similtaneously the worst and best feeling: "self-fulfilment". everything simply unraveled, i felt that "i" was hardly part of it. i wasn't inactive, just unaware of my own needs, except for change, because everything happened so quickly. not alternating by day, mind you, i mean the good and bad truly overlapped. ...last july, when i moved to this current place, it was a decision made due to poor emotional health. that doesn't make it a bad decision; "this isn't easy, but i want to feel DIFFERENTLY than i do right now". i regretted it at first, but, after due time for my psyche to complete the process of unraveling, i can start to re-wind the ball of yarn that's "my history" and set myself up proper for the next earth-shattering change! ...while i do have an introverted personality, there's a major lived difference between valuing my time alone and refusing to voice my genuine thoughts unless i believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that they'd be not just palatable and easy but "helpful" or entertaining to the person hearing them. granted, i've always believed that bringing new perspectives into awareness is usually helpful in some way, so i didn't filter all too much... i just took on a lot of undue pressure. positive change is a good desire, but sometimes it's like somebody's charlettan guru dies and posesses us people. i made a point of never lying, but i also wasn't "ready" to be fully transparent with everybody i met. this is fine, not everyone can be trusted with all information, i just hid away in certain others like a turtle in its shell while neglecting the humanity therefore possible good of being just as open with some other people i knew. it's now much more difficult to communicate with many people in that old town, so being "ready to get real" now is good for nil. i want to reach out to them again. i know that they got the version of me which they needed at the time in order to set up the rest of life- the only version of me. i'm fascinated by the unwinding of my history, the wild plotlines of setup and disappointment that everyone wades through! what the hell was "set up"? well.. like i said, a plotline. a story in which i advanced neatly, without so many mistakes. my new normal came with a free dissociative haze- still mundane-yet-erratic, just with a different cast of characters. ...i know that i'm meant to be here til nature takes me out, even if there are still some things i'd rather avoid in daily life. life can be like a trip to the mall with zero dollars and a friend; in 2024 i got to try on "being a conformist", and walk the layout of often scattered goals as if my soul were red string across a corkboard. it's nice to feel how my tastes and values are "coming into alignment", as my mom would say, with who i WANT to be; no longer obscured from the franticity of totally mindfucking changes left and right... an imperfect history but one where i've lived and made many leaps for what seems right. we all have that already, yknow. anyways i just finished my lunch and i'm about to go for a walk before i start my "gentle comics habit", because when i don't go outside during daylight, my energy level drains so rapidly, and even my mood is noticeably worse until i choose to go out again. the aforementioned comics will be published to my "sketchbook" tab on this website, as well as on tumblr. byeee lol