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packedandstrapped · 8 months

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can u give me ideas on how to come out? i’m 22 and known i was a lesbian since i was around 14-15 and have been too scared to come out because of my parents. i value what my parents say and ik they aren’t going to accept me so when i come out to them, they’re gonna say they disown me and kick me out or some other shit, but it’s gonna make me spiral into a depression (haha). but i can’t keep living a lie man living like this is hard especially when my parents keep trying to set me up with men. when i was in highschool, i tried so hard to give them hints i didn’t like men, i never dated them, never talked about them, hell even begged my mom to wear a suit to prom, but she told me it was “un lady like” and made me wear a dress. i just love my family so much and i don’t want them to hate me but living this lie has made me hate myself. no matter what i do it’s a lose lose situation. this has caused me so many problems. i literally use to have an eating disorder because of how much anxiety of my parents finding out i was gay would give me. i’ve tried to convince my self to like men and i just can’t. i feel like something is so so wrong with me and i can’t. it makes me not wanna live anymore i wouldn’t wish this on anyone. i know this is lowkey cringy to be telling someone all this, but i just really really need advice on this because i just can’t keep living everyday a lie.

Hey friend- please feel free to DM off anon if you want to talk. I will chat with you about this stuff literally any time.

There's nothing wrong with who you are. Your message feels like something I could have written at 19-20 years old. When you said you value what your parents say, I felt that in my core. I want to be able tell you that everyone comes around and they'll totally understand and accept you. But sometimes it's not that way. And the people that claim to love us the most can only give that love when we fit into the box they've created for us. This might sound hokey, but reading The Four Agreements really helped me identify the space between my parents ideas and my own. I will send you a copy if you're interested in reading.

It's no wonder that you're experiencing so much anxiety and worry about coming out. For a lot of us, coming out as gay to our parents is the first time we truly see them disappointed in us. There's a crushing weight to our parents thinking we're actively trying to hurt them by living our lives authentically. I hope that's not the case for you.

If I could do it all over again, I would journal about it for a few days. I'd practice the important phrases I want to get out. I would focus on the simple message I wanted to send rather than trying to navigate their feelings. I would try to think about the various reactions I might get and have one or two general ideas of how I could respond neutrally. And despite all of this, I'm sad to say even though I would have felt more in control, I'd still be just as wounded coming out of it. I understand the fear you have in disappointing your parents because it's been a reality for me for almost twenty years. They've never let up on reminding me that while they're proud of my accomplishments, it's despite my otherness rather than a celebration of what a queer person can do. They refuse to use the word "wedding" or "wife" and they give us a room with two twin beds when we go to visit. The microaggressions never cease. What's changed now is how much of myself I let them see. Now it's about what makes me comfortable instead of existing around them in a box that never fit right. It's still hard- I regularly grieve the relationship I wish I had with my parents. But as I've aged, I've realized that my friends are my family. They are they ones that have been there and show up for me unconditionally. They're the ones I have turned to when I needed a place to stay, a job, or a listening ear. They get it.

I don't know how you feel most comfortable communicating with your parents, but think about what it would look like to say the words out loud or in a text. Try not to feel bad about telling them this information. You are being truthful and honest and that's what is important. You are giving them the gift of seeing you for who you really are; to celebrate you in the way you want to be seen in this world. Don't worry about doing it the wrong way because sometimes there just isn't a defined right way. I know it's scary but the sooner you get it off your chest, the sooner you can fall into the comfort of your real self.

Come back or DM me if you need anything, friend. We need you here.

#anon #coming out #I cried reading this message #wish I could give you a hug anon

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take-youraim · 4 months

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I'm not doing so well. I have so much anxiety that it’s really hard to fall asleep at night. It usually takes me a full 2 hours of laying there. I never used to have sleep problems, even though it was such a common symptom with all the other psychiatric patients I cohabitated with.

I'm struggling a lot with feelings of shame and inadequacy. I feel stupid, and lost, and just lacking in general. I feel like something is fundamentally wrong with me and it takes all of my energy to convince myself otherwise. I feel deeply sorry. I feel like life will never be as beautiful as I imagine or want it to be. I watch everyone around me take steps forward and build these big lives, and they trust themselves. I'm not that way. Every step I take is a guess and a prayer. All I want is to feel proud of myself. I want to feel vindicated of my past. I don't want the resolution of my past to be because I ran from it or distracted myself thoroughly enough from it. I want a resolution that is palatable; one marked by overcoming deep shame, and self-forgiveness.

There have been so few moments where I've felt any relief from this. Religion brought me closer to forgiveness, but that was always a passive understanding and experience of forgiveness. I was the recipient of external forgiveness, which I realize now is more or less a band-aid. I forgave myself because the Creator of the World saw me as Good. But now, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to see myself as worthy of forgiveness unattached to a greater entity. I'm not sure I'm forgivable just as I am.

I bombed my preliminary interview with Penn. That has triggered a lot of these feelings. It reminded me of my own incompetence. It made me think, “who am I to think I'm smart enough for Penn?” I feel like a fraud. I'm embarrassed. I'm lost in life with so many unknowns, and only difficult roads ahead.

I feel afraid. And deeply sad.

I want to lay in bed with my mom and hug my dad. I'm about to go the longest length of time without seeing them ever in my whole life. What if they die? I can't handle that. I simply can't. But I find myself compulsively fantasizing about their deaths. And then I contemplate if my mind, or the universe, is preparing me for an upcoming day when they really do die. And I'm terrified and disgusted that even that I'm even writing this, but the fantasies have become so frequent and vivid that I'm desperate to purge myself anyway possible, even if it means documenting the horrible corners of my mind. I also have vivid fantasies of my best friend's death, or of my own slow death to something like being trapped under a collapsed building, alone. These are things that keep me up at night, as they are now.

When will I be free of myself? I can't take it.

I think I'm developing a mild form of OCD. Or at least the associated intrusive thoughts. Working in research, from home, is bad for these thoughts and my anxiety. My studio apartment has become an echo chamber.

I hope I can do better tomorrow and have a good day. That's what I used to focus on during my stints in psych hospitals and treatment: try to have a good day. You don't have to accomplish anything. You don't have to get things right. Or make decisions. Just try to enjoy the moments. Feel the sun. Read a book. Think small, and just try to enjoy your day.

This will be my goal tomorrow.

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yourbittertarottruth · 4 months

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Hi Freya! Thank you for this game :)

I would love to receive New Years letter from my idol to me and my idols of choice are ATEEZ San, Seonghwa, Wooyoung and Yunho. I spent my Christmas chilling around my family.

Thank you and happy holidays 🎄✨

- ari ♉️

Hihi!! It's no problem at all <3 Let's get started; A New Years letter from ATEEZ!! San - *The Empress* "Hello, Ari! My year has been a rollercoaster, I've felt really accomplished! Very busy, but I enjoyed it. I wish every year could be like this year! My mom was very proud of me, praising me and our members a lot. I felt very in tune with nature and took some time to ground myself, I learned more about myself than I ever have before. My one piece of advice I would give you to take into the New Year is to find yourself again, go for a walk, spend more time outside. You'll learn more than you think! Connect with your feminine energy, whether you're a woman or not, I think your year will become amazing if you look into connecting with that aspect of you! Rooting for your year to be amazing. Fighting! - San <33" Seonghwa - *3 of Pentacles Reversed* (I can't he's adorable he fr was like "huh? my turn to talk already? Ah..." LMAOO) "Hi, Ari! Happy New Year! I hope your 2024 has been going well, mine's been... something. I suppose I should talk about 2023, with how delayed this message is. I felt like a huge lack of teamwork was going on and I was very afraid, there was a lot of group conflict and it almost felt like we were back in our trainee days when the company made us compete against one another...? It was absolute chaos! We accumulated a lot of money, but I don't feel fulfilled by it. I'm just hoping this year is better teamwork/group wise than it was in 2023. Anyways! I should stop rambling! My piece of advice for you for the rest of 2024 is; focus on working together with those around you for a special purpose/service, it's for the greater good. Look into organising aspects of your life more, so you can grow. Look into ways you can express yourself and avoid doing things just for self-benefit. I have much more to say, but I can't think of how to word it. Either way, I hope my advice helps you to have a successful and amazing year! You have great things coming your way! From, - Seonghwa." Wooyoung - I'm sorry I cannot do him rn, all I hear is screaming in my ear oh my god I want to cry. He's a menace (in a good way). If you wanna hear what he has to say, send me a private message since jeez, he's rambling more than Hwa. Too talkative and calling me a rat :/ I'm hearing from him "You look like Ratatouille if it was AI generated" I can'tttt Yunho - *Hierophant Reversed* "Ari, hey! I've been handling a lot this year, feeling more rebellious and wanting to go against the grain and try a new approach to a lot of things. I'm hoping Atiny like it and that it's paying off! I felt very restricted in the past, so I'm enjoying embracing a more chaotic side to me than ever before. Now, for advice to you; if you're feeling restricted and questioning your choices, stop RIGHT NOW!!!!!! Stop being so nice and considerate, it's okay to be selfish for once! Who cares about others expectations, societal rules, it's all a load of nonsense! Allow yourself to be free and pursue a new approach in life the same way I have! Have an awesome year!! Hoping for the best !! Update me <3 - Yunho."

#kpop #tarot #pagan witch #kpop tarot #san ateez #ateez wooyoung #ateez seonghwa #ateez san #ateez #ateez yunho #yunho #wooyoung #seonghwa #san atz #ateez tarot

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repo-net · 2 years

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Month of Nagisa - Same Blood, Different Results

Status report.

I cannot obtain the result I was expecting with my experiment. I cannot discern whether the environment or the subject himself is the problem. I shall look into the experiment conditions in more detail.

Until now, I have used solely visual observation, but I should erect cameras to watch the subject at all times and discipline the subject when resting longer than allowed.

It's embarrassing that a family name like mine has had to put up with such mediocrity for so long. If this keeps up, there is to be further reassessment of the situation and the plans for what to do moving forward from now.

I've already begun the consideration to produce a second subject for the experiment if the results prove to be below what is expected once again. I have the room space and money to be able to provide enough resources to have two experiments running at the same time. Money truly is an essential in this world.

As of writing this, even some of the higher ups in Hope's Peak Elementary is starting to chew me out for my lackluster performance as of late. I swear, this brat... ugh.

For now, I'll wait a little longer and be generous enough to give the subject another chance to finally prove his worth.

(Note to self; discuss this with the wife the next time the subject comes back with another wave of disappointing news.)

(Note to self; I should start referring to him as Subject N from now on, just to ease myself into the fact I may have to use a different subject in my reports a year or so from now.)

...

Status report.

Yet again, Subject N has shut down due to what appears to be exhaustion. It has been seven years since he was first brought onto this world, and somehow, little improvement has been made from when these tests first began four years ago. It's taking a mental toll on myself - are my methods simply not effective enough? Have I yet to find the right formula and discipline to bring out the best in him?

... No, it can't be. I've tried just about everything already from pushing him to beyond his regular hours to discipling him properly. Not to mention the growth that the subject has shown throughout the years has been minimal, and are far from the results I need as a researcher of a child's talent.

It's becoming more and more clear now. Subject N may truly be the issue here.

I've already made sure the wife will give me another subject to experiment on in the near future. Time of arrival is expected to be around eight months from when this status report was written. They will be referred to as Subject H. There's a lot of gender-neutral names in there and we've yet to figure out what the new subject's will be.

This time, for sure... on my pride as a researcher, I will not fail. My methods aren't the problem, it's him.

He's an embarrassment to not just my name, not just my work, but to anyone that's tried their best and put in the effort to reach the top. I've given him every opportunity to succeed, and he's done nothing with it. I'm tired of it. Onto the next.

...

Status report.

It has been thirteen years since Subject N was first born, and for Subject H, it's only been six.

Yet in those six years from the moment he was born, Subject H has already proven to be a massive success. Two mishaps and disputes with his physical education teacher aside, Subject H has been a hit with the researchers due to his natural born talent for any given lesson or topic, and his cold and compliant personality makes him easy to talk to.

There's little discipline or lessons needed to be taught with him, nor is there any resistance from him about any new task he is given.

He's assigned, he works, he processes, he completes it. Simple and to the point. There's minimal flaw in what Subject H has accomplished.

I was already quite sure of it about half a decade ago, but it's with 100% certainty now that I'm proud to say that Subject H has proven that the methods weren't the hiccup in my research - just the first subject; Subject N. He was unable to do what I asked of him despite the numerous years and chances I've given him.

Subject H accomplished more in less time. That's the most basic takeaway. I look forward to all the opportunities and offers the Shingetsus will be getting in the upcoming future. I'd heard that there's a recent rumor that the Izuru Kamakura project will be starting soon, and they need a subject for testing. I'll do everything I can to give Subject H such an irresistible way to improve himself to perfection.

And when I say Shingetsus, I do mean all three of us.

Subject N has proven worthless and has ran out of use.

He'll be dismissed as of tomorrow. Where he ends up after the fact is no matter to me, though I doubt with his capabilities that he'd find a place to stay in at all.

A failure has no home. Not in mine, not anywhere else.

#danganronpa #danganronpa ultra despair girls #nagisa shingetsu #shingetsu nagisa #warriors of hope

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lostinfantasyworlds · 2 years

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The boat has arrived! 🥳 For the emoji ask game, please and thank you, my love! 🙋‍♀️💖❌🎉

🥳 Ahhhh thank you so much love!!🥺🥰 😘

🙋‍♀️ Do any irl people know you write fanfic?

Yes! I'm actually pretty open about it. My husband knows the most about my stories as far as plots/specifics, and I've offered to let him read if he wants, but he's not much of a reader in general so it hasn't happened yet 😂. My mom also knows and is the most supportive person ever, so she's always encouraging me with my writing. When I first started writing UTNL, I remember her saying something like "I can't wait to read it when it's done!" (she's never even seen Inuyasha) and I was like omg you are the absolute sweetest ever but also nooo mother you will not be reading this story that is chock full of porn that I wrote, thank you very much😂 😂 😂. I think all of my closest friends also know that I write fic, I just don't share many details about it. Other than that though, I don't generally tell people I'm not super close with.

💖 What made you start writing?

I remember loving to write when I was kid. Writing prompts at school were my favorite thing ever, and I wrote a handful of super angsty emo kid short stories while I was in grade school. But once I got to high school I just...stopped? For whatever reason, as I became an adult I came to the conclusion that writing was something I was no longer capable of doing. Then after joining the Inuyasha fandom at the end of 2020, I started having ideas for stories that I would jot down in my phone with no intention of actually trying to write them. But after seeing how incredibly kind and encouraging this fandom is towards new writers/artists, I ended up saying fuck it and just decided to go for it!

❌ What's a trope you will never write?

Hmm...I guess I can't see myself ever writing something with mating and/or soulmate marks. I like the general idea behind them, but when I explore the idea of mates/soulmates in writing, I prefer to do it in a more abstract way. Like feeling that intense pull towards each other that makes them feel destined to be together, without having actual matching soulmate marks. Or finding ways for them to share a lifespan without the standard mate marking process. I have no problem at all reading stories with those tropes, and have seen them done really really well, but it's not something I'll probably ever write myself. Also, in general, I probably won't ever write a full story that's focused on any other Inuyasha ships besides InuKag, because I'm a basic bitch when it comes to shipping😂.

🎉 What leads you to consider a fic a success?

My answer is actually pretty much the same as yours! The greatest measure of success for me is my ability to reread my own work and enjoy it for years to come without feeling the constant urge to edit and/or cringe. It's honestly pretty rare because I feel that way about a lot of what I've written (even when I know I shouldn't, but my brain is an asshole and will always find something to put myself down about). But, for example, Chapter 13 of UTNL is something I can still read and mostly just feel really proud of, rather than 'oh god I can't believe I posted this publicly, MUST GO BACK AND EDIT'

I do also tend to eyeball stats on AO3 more than I'd like to admit...but the ones that mean the most to me (besides comments of course) are Bookmarks and Subscriptions. Knowing that people want to save my fic to return to later on, or actually want emails in their inbox telling them when it's updated makes me feel like I've accomplished something exciting! It depends on the fic though, because there are some that I genuinely pretty much ignore all the stats on because I wrote it completely for me and if anyone else likes it, that's just a bonus (such as The Lover's Tree and I Loved Her First).

THANK YOU SO MUCH AGAIN @anisaanisa YOU BEAUTIFUL PERSON ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

For the FanFic Ask Game (asks are always open!)

#ask #ask game #sorry for the long ass answers xD

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dzpenumbra · 2 years

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9/2/22

I can't really write much tonight. I've been going to bed after dawn again and it's messing with my days, waking up mid-afternoon just basically guarantees I don't go outside. I haven't been on a walk at the river in close to a week? Maybe longer? I used to do it every day. I miss nature quite a bit, I want to spend as much time as I can in it because I don't really know where I'm gonna end up next.

I've been oddly drawn to the ocean, like... a rocky coast, a stone beach, something like that. I'm sure all the properties on beaches got bought up in the pandemic boom, or they're airbnb's now, but that would be a cool place to end up. Start the day with a travel mug of black coffee and a satchel bag, walk up and down the beach for a bit, maybe sit with a journal and write or draw. Not a bad life. Skating might be a bit tougher, but not the end of the world, I'm sure.

I talked to my Mom a bit today, reconnected. It had quite a few misfires, me being confrontational (calling out behaviors that aren't working, trying to address problems) and it resulting in defensiveness and counter-strikes. It had some good parts though, mostly commiserating about my Dad's OCD and PTSD stuff. I think it helped her a bit to vent, and I was able to relate not just from her perspective having lived with him myself, but from a first hand experience of having lived in similar shoes with OCD/PTSD, with the bonus perspective of a shit ton of mental health education and having worked on it personally for several years.

I stubbornly wasn't for many years, but now I'm starting to get a bit concerned about being a child of two people with pretty major unresolved issues. I think it's just really hard to process how it's even possible for someone who actually has their shit together to be born of and raised by two people who are just plagued with decades of neglected inner-work. I was never too much of a proponent of nature dictating a personality, though there is a lot of shit I can't explain about myself, like why I'm intuitively just drawn to creative things and exploration. I really wasn't raised to do that. And I really shouldn't exist if I was raised by two people who don't want me to be me... So where the fuck did I even come from? How am I here? I guess, given enough time and space, I kinda raised myself.

I think I developed the ability to stay motivated and focused on being a good person, to generate that from within. I don't know, maybe I was taught it at some of the camps and stuff I went to when I was younger. How to be brave and face your demons, how to trust people and ask for help, how to be confident in your own skin and accept yourself for who you are. Stuff like that. Maybe some people never get introduced to those things outside of fiction, and maybe learning those things at a young age is important. I don't know. I'm just concerned that I may be similar to them, the way I used to be, with a lot of destructive social habits and no awareness of it. It's an actual nightmare, it's like... I would prefer a dream where I go to speak in front of an audience and then I see everyone laughing and suddenly I'm naked or something? Or I'm pissing myself or something? Because I can play that off, I can say "yes, and", I can roll with it. But becoming suddenly aware that you are just an asshole and treat people hurtfully and they just haven't told you? That shit is nightmare fuel.

I think that's just residue from having done so much shadow work. The fear that you've barely scratched the surface, because you know the work is never done. But I think it's just my empathy gone haywire a bit, and I don't give myself enough credit. I think I'd be a great dad someday. I think I handle my panic, anxiety, depression, trauma, etc. way better than I ever have, and honestly better than anyone else I know. I need to be able to give myself credit for those accomplishments, to be proud of that.

That's the funny one, right? With trauma. I don't know if I've written this before on here, but I picked up in a workshop once a simple thing that really stuck with me - "Trauma = Shame". It's pretty dead on, when you connect the dots with it. But some people react to that shame by just covering it up with an influx of its opposite - Pride. And Pride, as we know, is a big ol' sin. The worst, they say, because all others flow from it. I struggle to be confident, because I struggle to be proud. I fear Pride. I know very well how powerful it is, and what it does to people, how it corrupts. But I need Pride. It's really the only thing that will make the dream I described last night, the life I want more than anything, come true. If I truly believe that I deserve it.

I feel like others have fed their Pride with mine. It leaves me at a deficit, in a department which I'm already diminished in. I have spent decades training and nurturing my humility, in my quest to be really fuckin nice. And cool. And now, I guess I've gotta work on fluffing my ego. Otherwise, I'm just going to end up a pawn in someone else's game. Again.

Well shit, that got a bit dark. Oh well. I'm cutting it "short" and heading to sleep before the blue dawn light turns into the yellow or orange dawn light. Fingers crossed I get some nature time tomorrow!

#diary #journal #online journal #spilled thoughts #stream of thoughts

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saturdaysickness · 1 month

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4.3.24 - the liminal space called assimilation

it's been almost 2 years since my last journal entry. in those 2 years. there was a lot of personal development happening that has helped me reach some kind of stability that the me in previous journal entries struggled to find. guess you could say i "grew" in those 2 years. i've finally become a bit more "rational" (using this word loosely because i don't consider myself to be completely rational just yet).

well, i'm 24 now, which means i have technically entered the mid 20's, phasing out of the early 20's of entries from 2 years ago. i don't remember exactly what my 22-year-old self imagined my current self to be, but i'm sure glad i'm not in that space anymore!!!!!!!!! god, it was awful.

im finally finishing my undergrad this summer, which has me thinking a lot recently. themes around growing up as an immigrant, being the first in the family to go through the american higher education system and having to navigate it by myself, and a yearning to reclaim what was missing during my coming-of-age years keep circulating my thoughts. i guess the adulthood growing pains i discussed 2 years ago, the feeling of being torn between wanting to stay as a child versus having to grow up still lingers, though this time around, i feel like i am finally ready to step into full-blown adulthood while honoring/healing the child in me (using "healing the child" loosely, again, because this concept is tossed around so much that i feel like it has kind of lost its weight and became a kind of buzzword).

anyhow, i wrote this a few days ago while tossing and turning in bed, struggling to sleep on the night before my first day of class for the last term of my undergrad studies. i couldn't stop thinking about how close i am to finishing school, but at what cost. the journey has been painful, to say the least. i kept imagining in my head what i would say if someone were to ask me on the day of my graduation how i feel now that i have graduated, in which i see myself responding with: "it wasn't worth it, if it takes you more than 4 years to complete an undergrad then maybe just give up, maybe i should've given up". obviously, that's not my general outlook on higher education because as we know, navigating higher education is not a linear path nor should there be some kind of deadline that everyone must follow. rather, i am projecting. i am projecting what life would be if i didn't feel the burden to be the first in my family to hold a degree. i am projecting what life would be like if i didn't "waste" time stretching out my schooling, i could have been completing graduate school instead if i had stayed on track. i am projecting where i would potentially be now had i just gave up on school. part of me still feel that perhaps i would be more Free if i had just given up entirely and focused on something else that makes me happy rather than fulfilling my family's hopes. nonetheless, this is where i am now, i am proud of myself for returning to school and following through with it after so many struggles and failures, despite the pain that it brings me. i am proud of myself, for my resilience, not what i will be accomplishing, which is quite sad and very "first-world problems" of me because i should be very grateful that i have had the opportunity to participate in higher education. anyway, that's enough prefacing, below are my 5am thoughts.

----------

when i was young, i couldn’t wait to grow older so that i could finally wear the white áo dài that high schoolers wear, too bad i left viet nam a few years before that dream came true.

at the beginning of the pandemic, i had a lot of time to reflect on my relationship with my identity and feelings about living in diaspora, all at the ripe age of 20. i yearned for home yet struggled with feeling like that connection was far too damaged in my process of assimilation. i couldn't write in vietnamese without consulting google translate on every other word, and my reading comprehension degraded so bad that i no longer had the ability to scan texts. i felt shameful, how could someone born, lived, and partially grown up there turn out this way - it's a disgrace. so i began texting my parents in vietnamese. first without the accent marks, because i was embarrassed about making spelling errors, then finally incorporating them once i've gained enough confidence- this was the first time i had texted them in vietnamese in the 10 years that we've immigrated. i was ashamed of my immigrant identity in grade school and chose to abolish all traces connecting to that piece of me; i went as far as lying about being born in the us to internet friends, even though my voice rang with an accent whenever we skyped. but i was content with erasing that part of myself if it meant i could shield myself from scrutiny. i worked on my accent- to sound like Everyone Else; i would repeat certain words/phrases until they sounded Correct; i would practice my speech in front of the mirror to see how my words and manners would be perceived; i recorded my voice to hear what it Truly sounds like to others because i had read from somewhere that sometimes your ears deceive you of the actual sounds you are making. i would (somewhat forced myself to) read books and watch shows to further perfect this american accent and develop my vocabulary. is this why i can't bear to sit down and enjoy a fictional novel or shows/movies anymore as an adult? i didn't want to sound dumb because i believed that people think immigrants are dumb.

16: Phương Vy to Susan, legally

i no longer looked forward to wearing the white áo dài as a high schooler since that objective has now become obsolete, instead, i was counting down to the day when i naturalize because then i knew that legally, i can no longer be ostracized. i could then flex a travel picture on instagram with my blue american passport and substitute teachers could no longer mispronounce my name. i used to get extremely anxious when there would be a sub for class because that meant they would butcher my name and someone would laugh. i lived in this fear up until high school where i developed a fool-proof strategy: to tell the sub ahead of time before roll call that i go by Susan instead of Vy (pronounced: vee). i would even mispronounce my own name on purpose as vai so that they could find it on the list.

and the day came, i was 16, our family had been in the us for 6 years, and we had finally gathered enough money to afford the application process. i was lucky to not have to take the test, but my parents pored over the practice questions every night after work for months. my dad was the first to take the citizenship test - it was the same day i was getting my braces off. he called my mom and i after my appointment to let us know that he has passed. instead of feeling joy for him, i felt a selfish relief for myself. 16, now with straight pearly whites AND a us citizenship? i was as american as one could be. first order of business was to get my name changed, i was adamant that it was done quickly. my mom took out time from work going back and forth with the city court for a few months to legally change my name to Susan. i struggled to determine whether i wanted to keep Phương Vy or just Vy as my legal middle name, in which i ended up settling with just Vy because those with longer names usually find themselves having a harder time in bureaucratic processes, as i have witnessed by my own mom. her legal birth name contains 5 words, she was the last in our family to get her green card when we first arrived, and the last to naturalize because of it. she immediately changed and shortened her name upon naturalization. ridding Phương from my name felt painful, because it is an homage to my late aunt, because it is a part of my identity as Phương Vy - a vietnamese social custom to refer to someone by both their middle and individual name for identifying purposes because many people have the same individual name. my old friends called me Phương Vy, my teachers called me Phương Vy, the name tags stitched onto my school uniforms bore that name for years, and most importantly, i knew myself as Phương Vy until i was told to become Susan because it was easier for americans to pronounce. deciding to rid Phương in the legal name change felt like i was shutting away an important part of my identity, but i thought that it was a necessary step in my plan to achieve the American Identity. and so, my name was legally changed, i was no longer Lâm Phương Vy, this is a new chapter for a girl now legally named Susan Vy Lam (*notice the stylistic choice to include/not include accent marks).

i was now proudly able to post pictures of my class schedules and new school ID pictures on sinsta with my new full name blasted (!! i know a lot of people call it finsta but in my locale we referred to it as sinsta - secret insta/sin insta - love word-play). no more fear of accidentally showing my fob name! i was living the american dream! (*using fob - fresh off the boat- here as means of reclaiming the power to the word, both of its negative/pejorative connotation as well as my past rejection of the identity) and at last, i was able to do what i had always dreamt of, an instagram story of my blue american passport with a boarding ticket for Susan Lam tucked in it - destination: viet nam. funny juxtaposition.

20 to 21: đụ má

back to my identity crisis at 20. after 10 years of suppressing my fob identity, i realized that perhaps all those struggles i have gone through may have all been in vain - it has done far too much damage by now that teenage me couldn’t have foreseen. i could barely write and read in vietnamese, i could hardly say a full sentence without using an english word or stuttering while trying to find the correct term. at least my accent was still acceptable. i found my first vietnamese friend in the us at 20, and they were also born in vietnam! for the first time, the piece of me that i have locked away for so long feels seen and recognized. they understood my experiences living there and here. i was still embarrassed to speak vietnamese at the beginning of our friendship, i was barely able say đụ má correctly without sounding americanized. this is hilarious thinking back on this instance because đụ má is a curse word/phrase, yet it is so integral to vietnamese colloquial language, it's the first thing that most people would teach non-vietnamese speakers - it is an essence of the vietnamese identity. i first learned the phrase as a little kindergartener and used to secretly and quietly learn how to say it grammatically and situationally Correct in a corner with my kindergarten friends. i would use đụ má behind adults' backs in elementary school with friends and cousins, along with a plethora of other curse words and phrases to show that i was Cool and Rebellious - đụ má was never foreign to me, until it was. by 20, i haven't used the word verbally for 10 years because i couldn't curse at home nor did i have vietnamese friends. i was disgusted by the sounds i heard when i tried to say it out loud again at 20 - it was so foreign, so american, so việt kiều. similar to how i used to repeat english words until i got the mannerism and accent down, i did the same to đụ má- obsessively repeating the word to myself until i got it Right. and one day, i said it out loud around my viet friends, and i did get it Right, i was so proud of myself.

it's quite funny how much the tables have turned since the time that i left high school 6 years ago until now. now i work with vietnamese youths and adults, speaking, reading, and writing in the language regularly on both conversational and professional levels. i've mc'd 3 years in a row for community tết events wearing áo dài publically. i joke around with my students in vietnamese and correct people on mispronouncing names. i write and speak about my experiences as a vietnamese immigrant without fear. i don't think teenage me could have fathomed how this could've even come about, and neither can i. in my interview 3 years ago for my current job, even though the entirety of the interview was conducted in english, i purposely sabotaged myself and butchered my own accent in a very simple vietnamese test the interviewer has given me because i was embarrassed of sounding too fob. i have a perfectly fluent vietnamese accent yet i forced myself to sound americanized to establish myself as Vietnamese-American, not Vietnamese. because to me, Vietnamese = fob = i'm new to the country = i'm not eloquent/qualified enough for american institutions. i was 21 at the time. i don't think i was able to shred myself of this internalized xenophobia until a year into my work. it is exposure to my culture, people, and language that helped me feel comfortable embracing it again in recent years.

22 to 24: returning to college

at 22, i understood that i was not on track to complete the traditional 4-year college course. june of 2022 came, my once-projected college graduation date, my classmates from high school were graduating college while i'm sitting at home and had dropped out of school for almost a year. their photos flooded my instagram feed - i couldn't bear to look at them because of how shameful i felt. i've always been a good and diligent kid, how could i have gone so far off the path? then i started daydreaming about what i would've worn if i had graduated that june - of course, it HAS to be the white áo dài, absolutely. i HAVE to walk across that stage in a white áo dài.

so for the next 2 years, i revisited my priorities and decided to go back to school after failing classes left and right for a full year and taking another completely off from school to work and reexamine my relationship with education. i struggled to get back on track for school at the beginning, but i buckled up and got serious with it. age 23 and currently the beginning of 24 is hell, i work and go to school full time, simultaneously. if i wasn't doing in-person work, my butt is glued to the computer chair. tuesdays and thursdays i am working in person all day; monday, wednesday, and friday mornings until 5 were preserved for meetings, writing emails, obsessively checking teams messages, and work projects/assignments. down time during the work days are used for homework, but after 5 until night is strictly homework time. i often skip meals, most days barely getting enough nutrients to fuel myself, and is often highly disappointed and upset at myself for not being productive enough on school work. i hate it, i'm highly critical of my own performance, seeing my self-worth reflected only in my level of productivity and my on-trackness to graduation; i barely see the world outside aside from time spent commuting to and from work or solely for work purposes; i don't have time to see my friends, and I'm getting sick of only spending time at home that i become unreasonably agitated with my parents. i cry all the time and is always angry, frustrated, hopeless, disappointed, exhausted. i would go for a few days without showering and weeks without washing my hair because as soon as i shut off the computer, i'm too tired to take care of myself. i keep asking myself: who am i doing this for? i became resentful of my parents for immigrating and placing me into this predicament. they say i would have had no future if we had stayed in viet nam, that i am receiving world-class education because we got the opportunity to immigrate, but instructors of my so-called world-class education see my country of origin as nothing but a case study of an undeveloped country. i became resentful of my parents for not exposing me to the local vietnamese community and thwarted me into schools where vietnamese kids can be counted using ten fingers, and i am envious of my own students who have been able to participate in an immersion vietnamese dual language program since elementary school that my schools did not have. i became resentful of my parents for not being equipped with the academic language and familiarity with higher education to support me in school. i became resentful of my parents for telling my elementary school 14 years ago that i would go by the name Susan when i didn't choose that name for myself. in reality, these resentments are wrongly directed to them solely because i have no idea where i should be directing them. they did all that was within their ability to provide me a(n objectively) good/better future and protect me from persecution of american society. i often think about what life would have been like if i had stayed in viet nam, would i really have had no future? is my education really world-class when there is clearly an order of world-classness levels among universities and degrees? i resented my parents for not knowing enough about the convoluted reality of america that i, myself, barely have a grasp on it. and so i set my ill-directed resentments aside and abide by the hopes and dreams of all immigrant families: be a first-generation college graduate.

i still struggle to define where i fall in the Vietnamese-American spectrum. lately, i find myself feeling envious when i see tiktoks of vietnamese people living in viet nam, imagining them as myself, living in the sài gòn concrete jungle that i love, not in some neck of the woods in oregon. maybe that's why i love visiting nyc because its crampiness and vibrancy remind me of the home that i once knew. but the gap is too wide, i cannot be them anymore, i am too distanced from the country and the culture today, all i know about viet nam is left in 2010, anything beyond that is from the perspective of a visitor. all i could do now is come to terms with the fact that i am now a Vietnamese-American, living in diaspora and constantly searching for enclaves of my own culture for a reminder of my own identity. i fought so hard to be seen as Vietnamese-American the first 10 or so years of my life here, yet now i seem to strongly reject this identity. i am not Vietnamese enough for the people of my homeland, i am not american enough for America.

i don't have a conclusion to this giant free-write essay that i just conjured up - in fact, a conclusion is not necessary because this isn't the end. i'm not finished in this journey of self-identity and struggling to find my own self living in diaspora. maybe one day i'll have an answer, maybe one day everything will be much clearer to understand. maybe i could just turn all of these thoughts off and stop overanalyzing everything, but i can't. and so, i will continue to wrestle with these conflicting feelings, and perhaps, one day i will be Free.

-s

#entries

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tavarillasgalen · 5 months

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i literally keep crying today, and i think it's such a mix of emotions, of both the complexities of the holidays, anger at myself/my ex, and gratitude for all the ways my life has changed for the better this year.

i saw some journal prompts about writing down all the bad in a year to release it and then doing another about all the good, and i think... last year, there was so much bad. it was honestly one of the worst years of my life. but this year.... i think the good will far outweigh the bad.

but as far as bad things that happened this year:

i stayed with my ex for a whole month and a half past his dropping the bomb that he's actually NOWHERE NEAR done with his license, when he had led me to believe he almost had it and we could move this year. i stayed even though i was so bored, the relationship made me anxious, i wanted to die, etc.

my first personal trainer quit :( i really liked working with him. but he was working 2 jobs, his mental health was struggling with all the work, he was growing to hate the gym, he was worried he wasn't spending enough time with his girlfriend, he was struggling with most of his clients canceling all the time (like my current trainer does to me now lol), and he mentioned how he was getting paid a fraction of what i was paying the gym to have a trainer. so, like. i was expecting him to quit, and i'm really proud of him for doing what was best for him. but i'm just sad because he was an excellent trainer. he told me he'd let me know if he ever does training on his own again.

i just made a post about this, but my current trainer is... well. idk. when we were set up together, i thought she would be a perfect fit, even better than my last trainer. but then... she cancels so much, she treats me like i don't know things, she repeats herself so much, she does 40 minutes of training when i pay for 60, and all the other things i mentioned in the other post... it's.... i've grown to dread our sessions together.

my horse's old stable.... this was... huge. so, after last year when they were making me out to be a drama queen for telling them that it's unacceptable for them to steal my horse's toys, for them to move her stall without telling me, and all this, this year, they... fired the cowboy who was in charge of taking care of the horses. so. they didn't clean her stall. or turn her out. or even give her all of her meals. i had to go do that even though we were paying them for full care. like, the horror of when i went to go see her on the weekend only to see that her stall looked like it hadn't been cleaned all week... i was FURIOUS. we had to move her because we could no longer trust them to even feed her. i can't believe they're still in business.

loud coworkers who act like you're the problem for needing the office to be quiet in order to concentrate on your work and for not liking to hear shit-talking.

annoying coworkers stay annoying.

people in general treating me like i am stupid.

people trying to put me down and brush off what i am good at/have accomplished.

that one ballet guy who somehow knew where my little brother goes to school... he seemed perfectly nice outside of that, but that was when i was like, okay..... time to find a new ballet studio, lol.

the retinol uglies. those weren't fun. thankfully, they only lasted a month.

i somehow got an STD???? when i went to my yearly wellcheck and the test results came back and the doctor asked about if i'd had any sexual encounters recently, and i was like... only ever with my ex, and i don't even know if we had sex at all in the month and a half leading up to the breakup. so... not sure how that happened, unless he was cheating on me or something.... thankfully, it was super easy to treat, like, it was gone in 2 weeks. but just... how the fuck did i even get that.

my car got a flat tire - which kind of turned out to be a good thing because then it got new tires, and it was likely going to be due for new tires this year anyway.

general mental health struggles, lol

general struggles that come along with not being paid enough to be able to live on your own.

a fantasy photoshoot i had scheduled had to be cancelled because the photographer got covid

i was supposed to go to comic con with another person i'd met the year before, but she left me high and dry, so i had to do the thing alone while also being like... what's wrong with me, she said she'd be happy to go with me, she said she'd meet me here, she said she was on the way, and then... ghosted. so that didn't feel good.

as you can tell, i'm kind of reaching for straws a bit here, lol.

#personal

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md3artjournal · 1 year

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Recently, I've found myself strangely more concerned with jotting ideas down (through drawing), more than self-conscious about how badly I'm drawing, and it's a very freeing, nice, rewarding thing. It's made me oddly feel more satisfied with my drawing, even though I know I'm objectively still very bad at illustration.

Some part of me says it's arrogant to feel proud of myself for being able to draw these things. Because objectively, as someone who is supposed to be making a living in artist alley, I cannot stand up against the competition. My illustration skill, especially of humans, is objectively bad.

But at the same time, I recognize that I was NOT able to draw at even this level before---especially this quickly. I feel proud of myself for being able to somehow manifest ideas that would have disappeared from my mind. I've managed to capture them. Maybe not the best and maybe not even well, but those transient, intangible daydreams that made me happy, won't be doomed to completely disappear now. I can relive them, even if just as a pale shadow, hinting at a good memory. It's enough. That's always been a big part of why I love creating, whether it was writing, crafting, or illustration: capturing a happy thought, memory, or feeling, so that I can remember it. (My memory is notoriously bad, and I'm often reminded how scary it is to have all these forgetful gaps.) Maybe this love of manifesting ideas is also leftover feelings from when I used to do a lot of crafting. I really love having made something, having accomplished something, having made an intangible thing real and physical. I feel proud of myself for going beyond what I was previously capable of. I feel proud of myself for solving problems that I hadn't solved before. But I also just love having a thing that was just a thought in my head, now be in physical reality with me---regardless of it serving as proof of my growth. Though I will admit that I love the feeling of Accomplishment in general. After all those years of school, making me feel everyday that I had failed at something, every single day…A feeling of accomplishment is very valuable to me.

Still, I know that this level of drawing, though good by my standards/skill level, is objectively, comparatively not good. But I kind of don't care. Odd. Very odd. They remind me too much of the daydreams I'm having fun with. They are still at a level that is much better than I was capable of, years ago. In other words, they're effective, even if by a little bit. I've come a long way for myself. But I also don't care, because these are also emotionally evocative of those daydreams I want to remember. It's not perfect, but it's good enough to get those emotions out of me, emotions I want to remember.

I feel like I'm writing in circles. lol

Well, now's as good a time as ever to note something.

I used to be really into martial arts anime and battle anime. And it was kind of funny to me how, when I got into lurking the online art community, how many important ideas were similar to martial arts (anime version). In this case, ideas like being less concerned with comparing yourself to your peers, vs being more concerned with being stronger than the version of you from yesterday. This idea of personal progression is so strangely identical between themes in martial arts anime/manga and the online art community. I just had to note it somewhere---Before it disappears from my terrible memory! lol

Another thing to note: I once told my sister that "I don't enjoy drawing; I enjoy having had drawn". I wanted to have the finished product. Ever since then, I've been more conscious of what it feels like while I draw, and I don't think that's true anymore. Or maybe it never was, but I was too frustrated at the time, with my skill's inability to match my imagination, to focus on my enjoyment of the process. But since then, I've noticed how good it feels to draw. Just the simple physical act of it with my hands, scraping a tool against paper, is already therapeutic and cathartic, even before I have a finished product to feel proud of. It's become comparable to the enjoyment I used to get from sculpting clay or carving blockprints, or crafting in general. And I've noticed times when I simply don't feel good if I don't draw. Like now, I haven't drawn daily in more than 3 months, and I can feel this odd itch in my hand muscles that isn't satisfied by tackling my backlog of digitally tracing my analog art with vector drawings. I NEED to draw.

#rambling #please ignore my idiocy #progression

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mrfandomgage · 1 year

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Everything has been getting harder and harder to live with.

Days feel the same in some way, everything feels ok, I'm not in a lot of physical pain. So why can't I feel happy? Why can't I feel loved? Why does everything still feel so useless?

I've been having a harder and harder time writing, I would've quit playing video games if it weren't for streaming (check out my twitch, AverageGoatMan, playing Omori and Ultrakill recently, fun games), it's been hard to get up as of late, I feel like everything I liked about anything is just not worth it.

It's not like I don't want to do things but any sense of accomplishment just melts away. I was never able to really hold too much pride in myself, I mean, what do I have to be proud about? I played a video game well? I got a minimum wage job? I can draw characters decent enough to not look like absolute shit? I can feel some sense of accomplishment in these, but really it feels like everything around me wouldn't care for it. I lost a friend, not that they're dead, but they straight told everyone they knew that they're abandoning everyone they knew or became friends with... that last conversation with them broke me further down honestly. I can't tell if the things they said were to piss me off, or make me hate them, or at the very least make me distance myself from them. Nope. I feel mangled. They tried their best to make me not like them, tried their best to make me let things lie. Sucks for them, I want to know everything I can, push someone's mentality to the edge where they can't lie, dig into them so I can really understand. They made themselves my friend so I was worried for them, now it feels like another part of me died while I'm supposed to carry on. Couldn't have known em for even a year, but they did so much for me and my other friends online. The bastard... I can't tell if i should be crying, laughing or be mad.

I turned off my emotions just to actually talk it through, and to the end, I couldn't handle what I was processing, I let what I was keeping back come through, I couldn't see my screen. This was someone that hung out and made everything better. He helped me acknowledge times I fucked up, we did quite a bit together looking back on it. His final wish for me was that I would get better...

I've grown an intense fear of abandonment before this, so this announcement in general made every little thing in me rip open. Trying to forget him as he told me to when he wished for me to get better, for when he was a great friend and community member, even if he... he did a lot to help, he made his own community as well, and they were sad for him to go.

I never learned how to grieve. Family members died and I just let them pass. I nearly laughed at my mom's own funeral because I couldn't accept it, and I still can't. I still miss my mom.

I was a shy kid. Growing up I had a hard time talking to people (probably cause I only learned I'm autistic after 18 fucking years of my life, thanks mom), making friends, being around others. I got jealous of how easily my little sibling made friends with other kids, I was also scared. In Middle School, I was bullied to a point where I stopped feeling much of anything, my older brother destroyed my sense of self importance, others would argue, bicker, and fight over anything, so those I did grow attached to, I became clingy towards, they were the only people I really trusted with exposing myself emotionally to, not even family, not even my mom. I became depressed and in pain in that time, I guess my anger was also a cry for help, because I just needed any attention, from anyone. So having people that were my friends, they gave me attention and I was ok being a bit more honest with them. Yeah, that was nice, but it became a major problem with me. I was so abrasive towards others, I started trying to push them all away, and keep those I liked close enough for me to tolerate their existence. It worked... I kept who I wanted to keep while damaging a bunch of potential relationships, and even harmed those friends I had in the first place.

Later in life I noticed what I was doing and I was scared of losing them all, in fact, this fear had to kick off hard and tear me open near immediately, because not only did my mom die, not only did our beloved pets die, not only did family stop contacting us, but as well, a friend of mine (that I made up with several times now, and even hung out with again) left me in this state of disrepair and let me brake down further. At this time in my life I had been at one of my worst points. I was in such a state of disrepair that I got an artist to block me on all socials, if you guys see Kryptsune, tell her I'm sorry, and what she did was 100% justified. I only acted for myself without care of others at the time. You're a great artist and I only perpetuated that Spyro joke because I've made a nasty mental habit to hurt the people I love. I know you'll never see this message, but at least it's there, you never have to forgive or forget it. I know I won't.

In short. I just want to feel better, but I can't afford a therapist.

#again #kryptsune #sorry for bothering you #have a good day

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estradajesiemae19 · 2 years

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October 5 2022 Blogging community

1.Where do i see myself 10 year's from now? Was my learning in SPUP vital to where I'm leading to?

❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓❓

>I don't think where I picture myself 10 year's from now very much. To be honest , knowing that I will be nineteen year old in less than a decade and that my youth is coming to an end concerns me a little. One thing I know for sure is that if god allows me to live that age, I will make the most of my years and work hard to become a successful and happy person.

How certain am I that I will be where i want in 10 years? The truth is, I am truly uncertain as nothing in life is guaranteed. But, I can make every step of my way worthwhile if I make the effort to get myself where I want to be in 10 years. What is important is that at that point in my life, I have reached my goals , have help others, achieved my dreams, live freely and lived life with no regrets . Life is to short to not make every second count, so I must strive hard and make myself proud.

2.Was ABM/STEM the best choice after all?

> Not really,Taking ABM in Senior High School will focus on the fundamental principles of the many functional areas of business such as marketing, finance and accounting, information and technology, and entrepreneurship.

The ABM strand is a wonderful mix of practical abilities and application, as well as molding senior high school students to have the appropriate attitude for crisis management and problem resolution on the job and at their businesses.

Online learning for SHS students is today’s most effective way to learn, and leveraging digital technologies can only sharpen the modern student’s grasp of everyday technology.

The STEM approach to education fosters creativity and divergent thinking alongside fundamental disciplines. It motivates and inspires young people to generate new technologies and ideas. With a focus on practice and innovation, students get to learn from inquiry-based assignments.

3.What Course will you take in college why?

> Flight attendant,It has always been a dream of mine since I was a child. I want to pursue it now to better myself and finally make my lifetime dream come true I would love to be a Flight Attendant because I’d love a career where my smile and hospitality matters most.I enjoy working with people and I think it is an exciting and new experience every time you fly. The job would never get boring. I know that this job opportunity is available, it’s just up to me to go for it.I’m 5/4 and want to live a different life. I want a new start to a new lifestyle. I know that if you chose a job you love, you will never have to work a day in your life.I’ve noticed that there are many senior citizen Flight Attendants. This has been my dream my whole life.And I finally realized I can accomplish my dream now.The experience would be life fulfilling, it is the one career that is on my bucket list. I love the way flight attendants are so welcoming and warming, they have a great opportunity to uplift many people on a daily basis.i love being a flight attendant, I love being in the air.The more I am in the sky the happier I am. I feel one of the luckiest people on the earth when I’m on the aircraft!! To think that I CAN FLY is an amazing thing in itself.I need to be in the sky. I have a vision of having a job where I can offer the best customer service while I get to see the world and meet different people. I don’t want a career just to have a job, I want a job that I will love, and this is it.

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dzpenumbra · 2 years

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10/6/22

I played music with my brother today, jammed out for the first time in several years. It was really cool. Even with technical problems - my digital drum kit that I actually paid good money for kept crashing, I'm really gonna have to figure that one out... - it was still very cool to actually jam out in a heavy improv session on drums as a primary instrument.

I've been playing guitar since I was 12, wow... almost 25 years now.. It's been my primary instrument for a long time. At least... I say that... but over the past 5, it seems like drums kinda stole it's spotlight. But even though I've been playing drums for like... 15 years now... I still feel like a bit of an amateur. Because I've only really played along with music, not... practiced rudiments... or taken lessons... or played with actual people.

You only get good at what you practice. And I never practiced playing drums with people. It's really weird. It's a very dominant instrument. I - being a self-taught drummer from a metal background - find it hard to be subtle on drums. I'm working on it, but having an old electric kit doesn't really lend a lot of favors my way. It's an instrument that typically is a leader. It's the heartbeat of the jam, everyone listens for it, everyone notices if it falls out of place. So it's a good instrument to force yourself into a leadership role, or really try to work on your confidence.

Guitar, you can bend and slide wrong notes. You can switch between lead and rhythm, and find places inbetween. Drums are sorta just always there, just wavering in prominence and complexity.

So I ended up just plugging my speakers into my kit and using the default MIDI kit sounds, it sounded like garbage and was leveled pretty poorly. But the music my brother brought to the table... that shit is fuckin good. He is goddamn talented. He makes me look at guitar and just go... why am I bothering? XD Not in a bad way, I have my own style and aesthetic. But his versatility and technique are very far ahead of mine, have been for quite some time. It's pretty crazy, because he even switched over to piano for a while and came back and he's still damn good.

It makes me both very proud of his accomplishments, and deeply frustrated that he hasn't gotten the recognition he deserves. But honestly, the more I think about it with the two of us, the more it looks like we're both afraid of success... I mean, I've heard people say it to me... like ask me if I was... but I never really believed it. Now... now I'm starting to. At least the more I start to think about it, the more the doubt and anxiety starts to seep in.

I miss that summer optimism. It's already ebbed intensely, and I'm trying to generate whatever I can with what I have, considering what I have ahead of me. Now, I look at... say I start releasing videos or something. Say I do this new Session series, and it starts to get a lot of attention. I mean a lot. And I go, "okay, it's time". But I've got a move coming up. So I try to strike while the iron's hot and do like 3 hours of recording every day. Make an extra hour a day for editing. I'm afraid I'm going to overwhelm myself.

I don't even know if I believe my own words right now. This is weird. Like... now that the Fall is here in full force, it really does feel like I'm just crawling into a "take-no-risk" shell. But I signed a lease, so... it's definitely too late for that... I don't really understand fully what it is. Maybe it's the move. Maybe it's my landlords coming over in less than a week to finally see the damages to the house for the first time. Maybe it's the fact that the antibiotics I've been taking for 6 days now haven't cleared up my bacterial skin infection. I don't know what the big one is. Maybe it's all of them. Maybe it's the fact that my family is finally being nice to me like literally the week after I signed a lease moving several hours away. There's so much shit swirling around, it's so hard to see what's causing this.

I just get this impulse to get help. Assistance, company, companionship, an extra set of hands. That's all. I can feel my thoughts being very frantic right now. When I'm in a place where I'm facing major change in my life, my first instinct is to seek company and assistance. It did not used to be a habit for most of my life. It is now nearly reflexive. And there's no one really around to do that anymore. So it makes this kinda negative feedback loop thing.

I see change coming. I reach out for help. I get rejected or I am asking an empty room. Then I just lose a ton of steam and confidence and walk out towards change alone. So I'm guessing the solution being proposed to me is "just face it alone before doing the reach for help thing, then you don't get the wind taken out of your sails". It kinda feels like that might be it. And it got to the point where I went to my whiteboard and wrote something like "stop waiting for help, it's not coming".

I have a huge problem with that. Honestly. I don't think I even think about it anymore, I think it gets automatic sometimes. I'll have a project where I need like... coding knowledge... and voice acting... and animation... all kinds of shit that, of course, given 6-10 months of dedicated time and labor I could absolutely learn how to do from scratch. I can learn to code. I can voice act. I can animate. BUT. If I just get someone who already knows that shit... and is looking for a project... why the FUCK am I doing it myself?!

So lets just lead this over to a little dissonance my brother and I had over cooking. Nothing major, just a little disconnect. I was saying I'm fuckin done trying to be good at social media/promotion shit. I'm just garbage at it. I can do it, I can be on Twitter all day every day. I can go door to door trying to sell my drawings and shit. But it's just not effective. And I don't want to. I dread it. I don't enjoy it. I do not like posting on social media. ... What the fuck am I saying? I'm posting on social media right now...

I just... don't like self promoting. At all. I've covered this before, recently I bet. So I tried to connect this to getting someone to do it for me. Someone to help me promote shit. Okay, maybe I'm starting to see why he didn't understand what I was saying. Shit.

Well... here's a weird one that unveiled itself again. I still think I have friends. I still think I have people that would love to share my work on social media. I lost that a long time ago. It's like I'm lost in time or something. Like a ghost. So... PTSD thing, probably. Oh, I'll just see if this guy who fucking ended our friendship (I was his best man, by the way, and flew half a continent down to be at his wedding having never met him in person before...) because he didn't want to retweet my going-live tweets will do it. Seriously, that happened. And he was also a streamer, but a hobbyist of course... he should've known better.

So I guess it sounds weird to people when I say I'm just going to get some random person to start tweeting or whatever for me. Like that would even work, they aren't even interacting with me, why would they be interested in my shit... I don't know. I keep trying to strategize this but the number one reason my art and music, streaming and videos, never went anywhere was because no one shared them. No one bought them, no one spread them, no one recommended them to friends. Case closed. And then when I realized this and started directly asking people, they turned on me. Hard. They accused me of being spoiled, pressured me to quit, they told me "it shouldn't be expected of them", they said "it's really good but it's not my thing". Excuses. Lies. Jealousy. Which built into a defensive wall they set up against me, which pressured until it hit a breaking point. I walked away from most of them. I am proud for having done so.

It's a damn shame. You can be the best creative in the world, but you are nothing if you are not appreciated. I guess. Wasn't that the whole Van Gogh thing? Didn't he just get a shit rep. He was like some weirdo living in a church or something, obsessed with some girl so much he chopped his ear off or something? I don't remember, I tried to skim google but yeah... there are quite a few similarities between my story and his which are very relatable. And a lot of insecurities I have about being perceived the way he was. I don't want to be creepy. I don't want to be some weird hack artist. I don't want to be the crazy guy who paints weird shit and concerns people.

I'm barely even thinking straight right now, I'm really tired and this whole soul-work every night thing is kinda exhausting. I'm noticing my thoughts are pretty disconnected tonight.

Long story short. Jam was awesome. Sharing my weird delusion that I still think I have friends even though they've been gone for years is embarrassing and kinda shameful, but important to accept in order to move forward. I guess that's about it for now. I'm concerned about the move, but really, it's all a leap of faith. So I'm gonna take it. Because I signed a lease. And because, as I wrote on my whiteboard, I can't just sit here waiting anymore - no one is coming. I need to go find people.

I hope my brother either comes along and starts his creative career too, or finds a good place to do so himself. Whatever calls him the strongest. He has been through the gates of hell, I can see it. And there is much more ahead for him, for us all. But he has evolved so much, and I'm very proud of him. It shows very clearly.

#diary #journal #stream of thoughts #spilled thoughts #online journal #stream of consciousness

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