Just wrapped up our first Halloween party in forever

It was nice. Lots of folks showed up. Much less boardgaming than anticipated, with one Mysterium and one Betrayal at House on the Hill, but it was really nice to see folks and have them be in the house. I don't think we've had any sort of large gathering since we moved in.

It also felt good to crush a seven-person game of Mysterium as the ghost and get lauded for competence by competent people. It would have been even better if I had been wearing my Halloween costume--a white sheet with holes cut out for eyes--but alas, I needed peripheral vision for my ghostly duties.

And now it is late, and I must sleep. Good night, dear hearts.

Words spill forth

j/k, I have nothing to say and I have everything to say. Banal things that add up, with time, to critical things.

And I guess that's kind of the sentiment of this missive--it's meaningless on its own but it might gain meaning later, in the aggregate.

Danielle and her PP are back in town as of yesterday afternoon. I'm glad we are familiar enough that we don't need to clean extensively for PP, but I'm nevertheless embarrassed by the state of the house. Halloween party is tomorrow, and the daybed mattress might need to go outside or something, tbh. Alas.

I'm tired but hello

Been wanting to say hi again for a while. Never came up with the right occasion. It's fine. I'm saying hi now. And now sleeptime. Good night.

Hey, you in the back, you're a sweetheart

It really is hard to find confidants.

My grieving for the friendship I'd lost was a little premature, but ultimately fitting for how things ended.

I've said before and I'll say again how much I wish I recorded my life a bit better. So much has changed in this one story about N and everything else in my life, and I can't adequately catch you up, you in the back.

I'll try to boil down how things went with N:

-We mostly recovered shortly after the post, but a small split had formed.

-We kept playing D&D. Eventually there was a hiatus and it resumed again.

-I met her and her boyfriend (our DM) at a furry convention of all places, a couple weeks before COVID lockdowns were starting.

-Always throughout, I had a hard time figuring out where I stood. Increasingly, it came to feel like I wanted her friendship more than she wanted mine.

-Something--I don't remember what--happened shortly after the COVID lockdowns that got me this close to just saying goodbye to N and the D&D group and the Discord server that housed the community we shared. But I wasn't ready.

-Ups and downs, and by the time August came I was ready. I said goodbye to her and everyone and disappeared.

The COVID times have been hard for a lot of reasons, and losing a friendship that I cherished--even though I knew it was dysfunctional--has made things all the tougher. I haven't fully recovered yet. I've gotten a lot better. I know I made the right decision. But it still hurts, and sometimes I will have moments of profound regret about this thing or that. Something I wish I'd said or something I wish I hadn't done.

I'm okay, though.

Thanks for asking, you in the back.

Oversharing

Sad, confused, exceedingly emo feels below. Seriously, it's excessive. This is something to help today's me, as embarrassing as it will be to future me. Sorry, future me.

When I find something new and novel, I often dive into it hard. I'll remain interested for a few minutes, or hours, or days, or weeks, or months. Eventually, though, it seems like I give up on a lot. The examples are seemingly innumerable, but I don't recollect most. I don't even want to try to list them cause it kind of hurts, and it's not the hurt I'm trying to explore today.

It's in that context--diving in hard--that I wonder at the true meaning of a rapidly-built friendship. How much is real, and how much is it me wanting it to be real? Yesterday, my hope would rest heavier on the former; today, I hope it's the latter. And that puts a knot in my stomach.

About six months ago, I joined a Discord channel devoted to a furry artist. I made chatroom friends, but it was kind of unfulfilling and distracting. I started trying to distance myself, with mixed success. But it was low-stakes. Not a big deal either way.

Two months or so later, a call went out from that artist, looking for players for an online D&D campaign he was DMing. Danielle gave me the green light, so I gave a fuck-it shrug and messaged the owner. We hadn't really spoken before except in the context of the chat. He was happy to hear from me, though, and inducted me in quick order.

The campaign was well-designed, well-led, and well-played. It went from being fortnightly to mostly-weekly as everyone became more devoted to the story and characters. My character was (is) a sort of first-time secret agent that was doing a fine job of balancing her lies. Following a series of emotional shocks, however, she became a bit more erratic.

About two or three months ago, two of the five party members died in quick succession, including my character's target for her mission (who was supposed to be captured). Her mind in disarray, she immediately developed a sort of crush on one of the replacement characters that the party rescued. (This event begins a series of parallels between my and my character's lives that I really hope are mostly coincidental. Might touch on that another time.)

The budding relationship between my character and the newbie was the first meaningful social contact that she'd had with anyone since she'd "stumbled on" the party; like the rescued character, she really could've used a friend. So the newb's player and I got together to do a side-RP in Discord that described how they spent some downtime. It went well, and they developed a cute and believable rapport.

It's this player--N for short--that I started to become fast friends with. We had the immediate commonality of sharing these characters that had suddenly intertwined themselves together in a dangerous world. We talked about them a lot, but we talked a lot about all kinds of things. We talked a lot. Right now I don't care to try to remember or look through our chat history to get a better sense of the timeline of our friendship--suffice it to say, we ascended through friendship tiers real quick-like. It's a lot easier to share sensitive details with someone who doesn't know your name, after all. We were vulnerable with each other, we helped each other, and we had fun roleplaying our characters together.

We got close.

I told Danielle about her several weeks or a month ago. And we spent some time talking about her a couple weeks back. I've discussed her with my therapist multiple times. I've tried to be careful and smart. Mostly I was, in my own way.

It's been more than a decade since I had someone that provided the same sort of friendship that this woman has offered. She filled an empty niche; one that could have remained empty without serious ill effect, but which also yielded a lot of satisfaction and fulfillment when it was filled. In an exceptionally short time we became--and for an even shorter time we remained--bosom buddies, or non-romantic intimates, or close confidants, whatever.

And... I've lost the energy to really finish this story. I mean, the end of the end is right above--N and I are not close confidants anymore. Now we're just friends, and both she and Danielle are unsettled. Because I wasn't transparent enough with Danielle, and then I overshared with N, and then I overshared with Danielle, and then I overshared with N again. It might have been a matter of time anyway; hard to tell at this point.

There's more to the story, obviously, but the scaffolding is right. I shed a double-digit number of self-pitying tears last night, and at this moment there's still an ache concentrated around my solar plexus. For poetic purposes, I'll say it's my heart.

It's... hard to find confidants.

Things are okay with Danielle, at least.
At least there's that.
At least there's that.

The struggle is real

Focus. Mood.

I decided to skip a newbie lunch at work today because the logistics are crap and because I'm pretty sure any commentary that I have about my work life so far would not be reflective of my normal steady-state feelings, but rather the especially sad, cranky, bitchy feelings that I have right now.

I am having a hard time actually doing my job. Been having a hard time almost every day since I started. Thankfully on that front, there isn't much job to do even though I started a month ago.

I feel a tiny bit better at this exact moment than I did a couple of hours ago, but I still feel desperately unsatisfied.

Good Focus, Good Mood, I miss you both dearly. I await your return with bated breath, and shall endeavor to hasten it if I can figure out how.

*Coughcoughbelatednewscoughcough*

Please enjoy/tolerate this lightly edited stream of consciousness:

So, I got jobbed. I work at a utility company now! Nice pay bump, nice title boost, nice people. Work is a little.... meh so far, and I am having a REALLY hard time getting back into the swing of things. I'm taking a break right now, as a matter of fact, when I am so, so close to being done with my day.

Also, I started writing--very shortly after my last post, as a matter of fact. Pretty awful timing, considering that I was unemployed for literally nine months before that with no creative output; then suddenly I had only about one month of unemployment to freely express myself.

I published six ponderous chapters of a novel elsewhere. (I will not point to it here because I have taken great pains to keep that writing and this writing separate and unconnected; even mentioning the title/characters/pen name risks undermining that. I even tried to make this blog non-searchable--with no effect in the short term, and probably no effect later. Is it important? No, probably not. But safety first!)

Sadly, I'm now planning to de-canonize everything I wrote because I don't like the way the protagonists are interacting. Most of it can be easily re-purposed, but before I do that I want to get some short stories done to flesh out the world I'm building a bit.

Also, I'm getting ready to commission my first ever art piece (not counting something a friend made for me fifteen years ago, or a silly little thing that I paid for yesterday that features other people's characters). It will be a reference sheet for an anthro-goat character that is kind of a metaphysical enigma, but mostly is just me being silly. What a surprise! If it goes well, I'm planning to commission an even more expensive reference sheet for the super special species that lives on the super special world that I invented for my super special stories.

Unfortunately, again, that part of my life is compartmentalized. Otherwise I would totes share it with the 0.5 people that probably see this each year.

More details may be forthcoming. Honestly, with me, who even knows.

Today. Today is the day I will feel no emotions.

That is, of course, a lie. And would be an undesirable state of affairs. However, I would like to feel fewer emotions than I did yesterday, especially since as the day wore on my feelings toward Nekojishi trended towards melancholy.

I have bipolar type II with rapid cycling, which means that my highs and lows aren't as extreme as the poor souls who must deal with type I, but I can experience both my highs and lows of emotion in a relatively short time period, which is very much not fun. Going from the excited (yesterday's blog) to melancholy in the same day is not a road I wish to travel. And so I arrest my emotions to a certain degree, which results in a different sort of melancholy: one that is more conscious and rational than the instinctive sort that I had yesterday. Much easier to control, but still quite unenjoyable. There are still elements of excitement within me that also are bouncing around, but they don't really counteract the melancholy; the emotions are kind of like oil and vinegar. If I could find some mustard to emulsify that shit and restore peace that would be very nice, but this simile is already weird enough. Maybe medication is the mustard? Maybe mix in some honey, garlic, and pepper to add a little flavor?

Hm.

I took a five-factor personality quiz just now, since it was on the frontpage of FiveThirtyEight. I don't like the results I got, and I think they're different from what I had when I took a similar test before. I don't entirely see myself, or perhaps I don't see the person I want to be.

Openness to experience.....92 out of 100
Agreeableness....................83 out of 100
Conscientiousness..............38 out of 100
Negative emotionality........54 out of 100
Extroversion.......................63 out of 100

I'm bothered most by that Conscientiousness score. It comprises three elements: Organization (score of 25), Productiveness (25), and Responsibility (62.5). Now, I can't entirely disagree with those subscores, especially in my current situation, but the use of "conscientiousness" doesn't really jibe with what I think the word means, or at least implies. It makes me feel a little low. Perhaps that's the subscore of 62.5 for Emotional Volatility rearing its head.

But hey, at least I'm agreeable and open to new experiences!

Danielle is spending a rare workday away from home to attend a small work gathering that will be today and tomorrow. Normally I would be elated, since I value solitude and things like being able to talk to myself without creeping her out. I think I'll perk up soon, but right now my rational melancholy just makes me feel a little empty, and my irrational excitement is running around in circles in my brain.

Man, I wish I had more mustard.

A new obsession

In April of last year, I discovered Hamilton when I saw it in Houston while visiting family. It was amazing, and I slurped up the soundtrack and animatic YouTube videos until the wee hours of the morning for many nights afterwards. The obsession was intense, and I could hardly stop gushing about Hamilton's glory to Danielle, who quickly grew to dislike the musical and my incessant praise of it.

It's hard for me to describe what happens to me after I consume art that I really like, particularly if it has complex emotional texture. Sometimes I get simultaneously intensely happy and sad when I think about it; I may become prone to tearing up when pondering over or consuming elements of it that resonate emotionally (like the song Satisfied, which still affects me quite a bit if I hear it after no exposure for a few days); I may gravitate toward reminders of it and possibly seek out additional resources or commentaries; sometimes it ensconces itself in the back of my mind while I'm doing or thinking about completely unrelated things.

All of those things happened with Hamilton, and now they're happening with, of all things, a Taiwanese romantic visual novel called Nekojishi, starring a gay human furry protagonist and three gods/spirits that manifest as very handsome "beastmen" that compete to enlist his aid for their own agendas, leaving our hero in a very uncomfortable situation. First, in case anyone is reading this: Nekojishi should be consumed by everyone who likes the romantic visual novel genre; you do not need to dig dudes or furries to enjoy this, and all content is PG-13 unless you mod the game. The English translation is very well done, and the full breadth of the story is extremely poignant (particularly once you've experienced all of the non-bad endings).

I am tearing up right now as I write this. It does not help that I have the opening theme for the game playing on repeat.

Most people wouldn't like Nekojishi as much as me. I am a bisexual furry that loves to feel conflicting emotions, so this is right up my alley. My perspective is irrevocably biased. However, I am better than most at mitigating such biases, and I'm telling you, as objectively as I can, that if you like or even might like romantic visual novels, you need to play Nekojishi. It's free!

I've brought up Nekojishi to Danielle several times, and she has been slightly less annoyed and discomfited than I'd expected, but much more than I'd hoped. She is... prejudiced against furries, and she's generally woke enough that she shouldn't be. I'm not sure how much, exactly, but it makes her uncomfortable that I identify as a furry, and it seems like she tries to deny it to herself.

I really want to sit her down and pour my heart out to her, beg her to understand that 1) most furries are a lot milder than popular culture would suggest, and 2) furries like what they like--it's not exactly like being gay, but it's close enough that you ought not spray hatorade or share your discomfort with any furry; your discomfort is your discomfort. You ought not burden the people who are already persecuted and maligned because you feel weird about it. (Things are a bit more complicated when your boyfriend, rather than some rando, is a furry, but her prejudice/discomfort extends to all furries.)

Someday, perhaps soon, we will have that conversation, and hopefully it won't rock her too hard. And one reason that Nekojishi strikes me as forcefully as it does is that it makes me think about these things too, which carry a lot of emotion in their own right. It also makes me want to rediscover a sense of community that I had with Star Trek roleplaying, with Ansteorra, and with various forums, which I haven't really had since I stopped participating in the fandom many years ago. I miss it. So much, sometimes (tearing up now, for those of you keeping track at home; I've also been experiencing a lot of chest tightness throughout--hopefully not a heart attack).

Phew, that was quite a lot. I don't know whether any of my feelings--for Hamilton or Nekojishi--were a manifestation of hypomania, but as a gentleman with bipolar disorder, you have to be careful with these sorts of things. I'm going to start distancing myself from the game for a little while. At least until my feelings settle down a bit. Writing about it helps.

To sign off, I'd like to quote the entirety one of my favorite positive reviews for Nekojishi from Steam. A lot of the reviews have a similar theme. If this doesn't make you want to play it, then... probably read the more serious reviews instead.

im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a gay furry im not a

Another post from the depths of 2005

This one is from 4/21/2005, to be exact. It's one of those random lists of questions that you answer and then forward on to some poor unwitting soul. And congrats, you're next! Hahahahaha... ah, don't you miss the Olde Internet?

As with the previous old post, I've made minor edits, but kept most of the content. Remember, this quiz was answered with me roleplaying my evil twin, who has since been done away with via questionably legal means.

---

All right. So now it's time for lighter, happier notes because sometimes apparently things can be happy! Yay!

So what am I going to do? Something terrible...

Yes, I'm sorry. I'm answering a quizzy-thing.

But! I am answering it as my evil twin! So enjoy! Because I'm waiting for laundry to finish!

WRATH

1.Who did you last get angry with? My friend Teddy.
2.What is your weapon of choice? The machete I keep buried in the backyard.
3.Would you hit a member of the opposite sex? No thanks. Not unless I could get away with it.
4.How about of the same sex? Not unless I could get away with it. Bitch.
5.Who was the last person that got really angry at you? Some female what's-her-face. She was half-naked though, so it was worth it.

SLOTH

1.What is one thing you're supposed to do daily that you haven't done in a long time? Shower.
2.What is the latest you've ever woken up? Wake up at 6:00 AM sharp every day.
3.Name a person you've been meaning to contact, but haven't: No one.
4.When was the last time you got a good workout? Last night with the landlady.
5.How many times did you hit the snooze button on your alarm clock today? Like I said. 6:00 AM sharp.

GLUTTONY

1.White meat or dark meat? I don't do meat except for occasional cannibalistic events, in which case I go dark.
2.What is the greatest amount of alcohol you've had in one sitting/outing/event? I don't even touch wine sauce.
3.Have you ever used a professional diet company? No need.
4.Do you have an issue with your weight? No, that's not redundant.
5.Do you prefer sweets, salty foods, or spicy foods? Cardboard. What happened to the future where your meals came in pill form?
6.Have you ever taken food "to go" from a buffet? I would, but I hate buffets.

LUST

1.How many people have you seen naked (not counting movies/family)? 438.
2.How many people have seen YOU naked (not counting physicians/family)? 237.
3.Have you ever caught yourself staring at the chest/crotch of a member of your gender of choice during a normal conversation? More like catch myself making eye-contact.
4.Have you wanted someone who was taken? Wanted and received.
5.What is your favorite body part on a person of your gender of choice? Tongue. Tongues work wonders.

GREED

1.How many credit cards do you own? Zero. I buy outright or I take.
2.What's your guilty pleasure? No guilt, no pleasure.
3. If you had $1 million, what would you do with it? Further spread my seed.
4.Would you rather be rich or famous? Rich. Better for seed-spreading.
5.Would you accept a boring job if it meant you would make megabucks? No. I make already make megabucks.
6.Have you ever stolen anything? I buy outright or I take.
7.How many mp3's are on your hard drive? Well, currently my hard drive is out of commission, so who knows what's on it.

PRIDE

1.What thing would you like to accomplish in your life? Something great and meaningful, I'm not sure what that is yet...I only know it has to be big.
2.Do you get annoyed by coming in second place? I don't compete for that sole reason.
3.Have you ever cheated on something to get a higher score? No.
4.What did you do today that you're proud of? I woke up.

---

So, it turns out that Envy had 35 questions associated with it, and I apparently hadn't replaced the original answers with my own. Which would be why this never got posted, I suppose. The original answers were, in fact, Danielle's. I have stricken them from the post since I don't want to put her stuff up, and I have no intention of going back in time and answering as my then-alive evil twin.

A message from a bygone era

What follows below is a post that has been living in my Drafts section for this blog since 1/22/2005. I think I left it there because I realized as I wrote it that it was terrible, and a bit out of character even for young college me. However, I've made some minor adjustments to make it (slightly) less cringey, and now will post it mostly for my personal enjoyment.

---

Hey folks. I'm really hungry, but I'm quite happy too. This whole day it seems like I've been graced by the zone, and let me tell you, I welcome it gladly. The following may be construed as a relatively bland description of the day's events, but I'm in the mood to remember today since it felt pretty nice.

The beginning started off a bit rockily with my IAFF (Introduction to International Affairs) class. It's sort of a given that Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays will start rockily because of IAFF, really, so it doesn't indicate much. The speech given by our Elliott School of International Affairs's dean was pretty boring, and I managed to temporarily lose one glove back in the classroom.

After IAFF, I was to go to my first session of Basketball Officiating, which is taught by a fellow by the name of Broska. I never really knew what Broska did, but I'd heard his name mentioned a bit around campus. As it turns out, he is (very fittingly) the sort of head referee for GW and he's in charge of intramural sports. So he's competent. He's also not a big fan of making us stay very long, which is nice. The class, you see, lasts for 110 minutes according to the schedule, but he promised us that he would rarely keep us for that long. So I was happy. Also, he mentioned job opportunities as a referee for the intramural leagues, which would be a cool way to earn pocket change to keep in mind.

Refreshed by this idea, I walked the four cold blocks back to my dorm and then went down to J Street (which is right next door for those that are unaware). When I arrived, I found that the line for Wendy's--where I'd planned to go--was pretty much the longest that I'd ever seen it. Ever. So instead, I went to the comparatively empty pizza line, where I picked up two slices of cheese pizza that were quite reminiscent of Turkish pide, which made me feel very happy inside.

After I ate lunch, I did a whole lot of nothing until about 2:30, when I ventured down to Room 601A, where my girlfriend and her friend Sameeah reside. I informed them that I would be eating dinner at something around 5:15, owing to the fact that I had callbacks for The Beauty Queen of Leeanne to attend--oh yeah, I made callbacks, by the way. (W00t! ^.^)

They were uncertain whether or not they could accompany me at so early a time, and I merely tipped my hat and skipped out of the room. When I got back to my humble abode, I heartily began reading some very exciting literature for my awesome IAFF class. Soon enough I was setting the alarm to wake me up forty minutes later. I woke up for good an hour and twenty minutes later, but it felt nice.

I then fetched Dan, my suitemate, and went down to harass the ladies of 601A. Five minutes later, it was about 5:10, so I trekked out into the cold for about thirty seconds on my way to Wendy's, where the line was considerably shorter this time around. I returned to hang out with Danielle, Sameeah, Dan, and Ashley (the Irish girl who wants my head, but bought me my goat necklace anyway). Soon enough, I finished my food and made my way down to the callbacks, arriving at approximately 5:54, with the thing starting about fifteen minutes later, giving me some time to mingle with my competition, all of whom seemed freakishly enough to know each other already.

---

(The post ends here. But I did get the part of Ray Dooley in the end! Even with my braces and my terrible Irish accent, I was able to have a lot of fun with that role, and it made me feel more integrated in college life. I would like to thank Finn for taking the chance on me.)

Why oh why do I live in New England

It is cold here, dammit. And I'm not even outside. I am sitting inside and am mildly clammy and cold because I've been unconsciously crumpling my body into as compact a shape as possible to retain warmth.

Okay, this is mostly my fault for not wearing enough clothes, but it's the principle of the matter!