With a sigh of distance and panic

Sometimes it escapes me how people around me can miss the signs of my unhappiness, or unease, or general warnings. But then, I guess it's easy to forget that it isn't as obvious as it feels like it should be. I feel as though I'm screaming to the world pretty much all the time, but when I look at myself in the mirror it just looks like a slight slouch. Baffling.

At any rate, married life is, categorically, just about the same as life was before marriage. There are "married people things" that are now available to us, but that's really the only major difference. Life at large is harder for mostly unrelated reasons. Things just... hurt right now. Melody has far too much on her plate and is suffering badly for it, and I just don't know how to be my own person, it seems.

We'll have to just wait and see how all this plays out, but for now I'll just sign off with a sigh.

Mawwiage

"Mawwiage is what bwings us togevver... today. Mawwiage, that bwessed awwangement..."

As the context here may perhaps suggest, I am now a married man. Melody Redmond, my wife, is currently right next to me in our hotel room at Lava Hot Springs, just over a day and a half into our life (officially) together. And boy, is it ever official. Yesterday morning, I met her at the Jordan River Temple, and we were sealed for time and all eternity at approximately 10:30 AM, October 12, 2011.

Thus far, the only real change is that we are allowed to take part in more of the procreative side of things. Otherwise, everything is shockingly similar to how it's just sorta always been between us. There was no Earth-shattering change made. Just a simple sealing ceremony -- beautiful, but simple -- and then a series of parties thrown on our behalf. That really was just about it. Next week, I think it's going to start setting in just how nuts this is for me: that is, that I'm moving out of my parents' house, into my grandmother's without her even being there, with a girl that I've only known temporally for a little over two years, and all of it for the sake of a future that will never exist if my faith is somehow misplaced. And yet, for all the reason I have to be terrified of all that's coming up, all I can do is just be happy with her. She's my life, literally the missing parts of my soul, given their own form. I love her with all that I am, and I will do anything necessary to ensure her continued joy and happiness.

Everyone kept asking me, right up to moments before the ceremony, whether I was nervous or getting cold feet. All I could say was no, simply because there was no reason to be. We were already basically at that point in our relationship, and going to the temple was just to formally officialize it. So what reason had I to be nervous? It was, and is, so completely natural to be with her... I am a happy man.

One Chance

In a very short time, I am to be married for time and all eternity, according to the customs of my religion.

I've also been playing One Chance, which the creator describes as follows:

One Chance is a game about choices and dealing with them.
Scientist John Pilgrim and his team have accidently created a pathogen that is killing all living cells on Earth.
In the last 6 remaining in-game days on Earth, the player must make choices about how to spend his last moments. Will he spend time with his family, work on a cure or go nuts?

As I see it, it is in essence a game about consequences. There is an auto-save feature that uses Flash Player's automatic storage feature to make choices permanent. The player is doomed to failure, because of the nature of the choices ahead of him: save humanity from certain death, show your family that you love them, escape the horrifying trouble facing you. Any of those are acceptable courses, but in all of them you lose. Not necessarily everything, but you lose at least one important thing no matter what you choose. Save humanity, lose your family. Show your family how important they are, only to allow them to die in the end. The game is highly fatalistic, to say the least.

But at the same time... it rings true.

"You have one chance."

I stand at the edge of the greatest moment of my life. I have one chance.

I'm taking the only path that wins.

 

I am choosing to be with Melody forever. That is my chance. That is my victory, and my chosen fate.

It is nearly time for forever to begin.

Anger

I've discovered that anger -- real anger -- is a very rare emotion for me. Specifically, it's something that has only cropped up twice in my specific memory (I believe I've had a precedent for this set during the year I was on Ritalin, though I'm not certain... not fun days, those). The first was some two months ago, perhaps. I'm not sure of the exact timing, and I don't want to be. I feel anger very deeply, when it comes along... mostly I cope with difficulty via depression or sadness, but very rarely I'll feel anger as the response. This first time, I felt real anger towards my father. I felt (and I stand by this in retrospect) he maligned both me (acceptable; I already think of myself as plenty of a screwup where his expectations are concerned) and Melody (not acceptable; his claims were completely one-sided and biased against her, for no reason I could nor can discern, and essentially painted her as some kind of irresponsible vagrant who would just fail at any and every endeavor).

When I went to speak with him about an unrelated but already sensitive and emotionally raw concern, I heard him speaking with my mother about my and Melody's future together. I was already hurt and having difficulty, but hearing what he said about her was... It was too much. I trembled with pain and anger and rage and possibly even hatred (though I don't know if it's fair of me to go so far as to say that) and walked, or thudded rather, down the stairs to speak with him. I warned him as best I could with my voice barely in control that I wasn't thinking clearly, because I wasn't and I knew it, and then did my best to express my concerns and emotional injuries in a fair way. I don't think I did all that well, but at the same time I cannot imagine a situation where his response to my words was justified. He took a few moments in shock that I would stand up to him in the specific way that I did, and then wasted no time once he'd collected himself in just utterly ripping me apart. He tore into me like I've never seen nor experienced, and the very first thing he said was "Where in the h*** do you get the balls to talk to me like that?" So that gives you an idea of how bad it was. I just stood and took it as long as I could, then advised him in a decreasingly stable voice that I wouldn't listen to him speak to me that way any longer, and left.

And boy, did I leave. I stormed up the stairs and out of the door, not even sparing Melody a look, simply because I couldn't handle the possibility of my fury hurting her. I went outside, walked to the tree in our parkway, and sat down to try and avoid just leaving -- after all, if I just took off in an arbitrary direction, Melody wouldn't have known where I was and might have been hurt by the worry over my safety. Yes, I was concerned about that at the time. It took me most of the rest of the night to calm down even to the point of functioning at all, and the entire rest of the week to actually speak to my dad again. I still haven't really forgiven him for that fully, partly because on some level I don't think I really believe he's sorry for it. Mostly because there are some things I just am not yet able to forgive, no matter how little good it does me to keep it that way.

The second time I referred to, and I suppose the one I'd prefer talking about less, was tonight. And all of the past day.

This time I didn't do anything dumb and speak up about it, because this time I had the sense to realize the consequences of speaking my mind before I actually did it for once. I'm sure this is going to wind up just eating me up all the more over time if it isn't handled, but at the same time I know I couldn't have handled the situation properly if I had spoken when it really should have been said.

I guess part of the problem is that I just don't know any real ways of coping with this yet. I just keep taking it for granted that it just never happens and acting on that, because other than those two instances, it never has, to my recollection at least. The fact is, this is really scaring me, that I am capable of feeling this, and all the more because I don't know how to take the edge off it enough to deal with the problem without causing very serious harm.

This seems as though it may require some growth. How unfortunate.

Food

I've been eating poorly of late. Specifically, today I have had several Oreos (breakfast), a bowl of noodles from Noodles & Company (lunch), and one and a half shortbread cookies (dinner). And though my pre-work meals tend to be a little better, today was only mildly uncomfortable due to how accustomed I am to this kind of diet.

Any suggestions on how to fix this?

Projects and a new dream

So I dreamed a blog. Like, legitimately dreamed that I was doing professional web development, and in that dream I designed a blog for someone, who was going by some name beginning with C and alluding to monarchy. Then he handed over the website to me for doing some kind of content distribution, I think for a podcast, and I renamed it to Abdicating Monarch and changed it so it looked like this, more or less:

Mostly on the "less" side, actually. But you get the idea.

Also, in a surprisingly related turn of events, I've been working towards being able to do quite a lot of projects, of wildly varying merit and attainability. I think I'll list them in semi-chronological order, rather than the likeliness of them actually getting done.

First, a vlog. Just straight-up recording to YouTube, talking about life and maybe answering questions or doing segments or something. This seems like it's actually quite redundant, since this is updated just about as often as I think I'd get around to recording, so it's low on the priority list.

Second, a Heroscape campaign between at least five regulars. Of all of these ideas, I think this is the one I'd get most enjoyment out of, and also the one I think would be nearly the most work, second to my 52-week podcast idea. Basically this would consist of weekly-or-so Heroscape matches in conjunction with a larger-scale map across which armies move and territories trade hands. I've got a lot of the background work done on this, and from here much of the effort would be in schedule-juggling. Which bites, because I can't get anyone together when I'm free most of the time, plus I'm barely keeping up with classes right now.

Third, a podcast about trance work and altered states. This is the huge weekly one, specifically one 'cast per week for a full year. I'd release it at the beginning or end of the week, based on a queue, and it would feature script readings, discussions of concepts, potentially request or commission work if people showed interest, and a pronounced focus on the mystical -- specifically by means of tarot cards, with some assistance from other fantasy and occult systems. I'm excited for this one, guys. I really am. I've got an editor already set to work on it, and a whole backup community that I may or may not be able to enlist for conceptual help. That said, I know for a fact that about a third or more of the people I know in person would majorly, majorly object to me doing it in the first place. In my experience, normal people really knee-jerk against this sort of thing. Hard. And I'm really not looking forward to explaining to anyone that would need to ask. Still, I have high hopes.

Fourth, a podcast that had its genesis from an offhanded comment about a podcast the author of an excellent tutorial specifically  mentioned as something he would never listen to. A podcast in which I simply cough into the mic one time per week and post it. I call it The Weekly Cough. This is the one that's probably going to be easiest overall, and I think quite funny. I have plans to make an A.A. Milne reference in the first episode.

Fifth, a livestream. I'm pretty much all set up on this one. I think I want to do Minecraft on it a lot, but there are plenty of those out there already, so I also want to play through and review art games. Now, this is going to require a lot of content moderation by not-me, because I have a hard time showing art games that I've already played through and not spoiling them right off the bat. I have a huge list of games I can do, though, so I'm rather looking forward to giving it a shot. The main difficulty involved here is promotion and finding a time when I can actually stream regularly and any reasonable number of people will be able to watch.

Sixth, and to my memory last, a personal podcast, basically for me to rant and do basically the same stuff as would happen in the vlog except with only audio. I don't think I'll actually do this one either unless a lot of content magically drops into my lap.

So in summary: I want to make a trance podcast, a cough podcast, a livestream, and a Heroscape campaign. Not sure if all of those are achievable, and I'm already probably dropping the vlog and personal podcast right out of the gate. I'm most excited about the trance podcast and the Heroscape campaign, but the livestream will likely be very rewarding as well. Plus I get a huge kick out of the idea of doing something like The Weekly Cough just because someone I don't know specifically said to not do that. Not much work, really stupid, but highly, highly amusing. I also love the idea of someone just marathonning TWC in the middle of the night and giggling manically, just 'cause.

Complaints Department: YouTube and Heroscape

Heroscape has been around long enough that I would have thought there would be more YouTubers commenting on the game. And yet, when I get on The Tubes hoping to find someone's gorgeously oversized board with loads of scenery and innovative use of terrain and engaging scenarios, the best I can find is some guy who makes middling-size, but very boring maps. Yes, he's done good photography to make those boards look nice, but as a terrain designer, I'm disappointed by the sheer dullness of the look and feel of them. The next best is this pair of guys who only posted one video map, and that map is sort of interesting (since it uses a CTF and a race-style scenario), but not actually all that great. The rest are... well, disappointing. It makes me want to just scratchbuild a big map using all my parts again, do a combat report on it, post it to YouTube, and make a point of specifically saying how fail all of these other guys are. I mean, seriously, have any of them even read Heroscapers.com?

(Click below for pics of my largest map to date!)

Sadness

I'm told it's important to allow yourself to be sad once in awhile. I personally hate that concept, but I have to admit it's exceedingly true. I'm not sure what that means for me right now, since I'm not honestly certain whether this current feeling of depression and irrational emotional pain is internally or externally sourced, but frankly it makes me uncomfortable to realize that it's probably best for me to just try and experience this as deeply as I can while still functioning in the world.

My emotions are erratic, and that itself is a huge problem for me. I keep breaking down over nothing, and it's tough for me to get things done. I'm worried about this semester, because even without my feelings going haywire all the time it's going to be relatively difficult for me. I'm... well, I'm displeased with this. Things are crazy enough without having to deal with falling apart all the time. I'm getting married, for crying out loud! But I still haven't gotten this troublesome little emotional issue under control yet.

And the worst part?
The worst part is...
I can tell you right now that if this grows much further I'll doubtless return to my suicidal urges.

Still won't act on them. Too much to lose, and too many to disappoint. Whatever keeps me alive, right?

But still. They'll be there again before long, if this doesn't get a lot better in the meantime.

I wish there were an easier way to get rid of it, once and for all, but I suppose it's never that simple. It would be nice, but sadly the only ways I know to do that are far too destructive to far too much besides the problem. So I guess the thing to do now is just live with it. Maybe have some shenanigans or something to take my mind off it, though that probably will only work as a stopgap. Until next time -- and there will be a next time, don't worry -- I'll keep moving ahead on this path. I have little choice but to do my best and trust it will lead me free of this trouble.

Why boredom is dangerous: a brief treatise

Gay orcs. That is all.

...Wut. 0.o

First lucid dream ever, just now. It wasn't a great dream, but it was a huge landmark for me. It wasn't lucid in the sense that I realized "oh look, I'm dreaming, let me start doing impossible things now" so much as "either I can let this continue, or I can stop now by choosing to stop dreaming." But there was a realization nonetheless that it wasn't real.

I don't remember exactly how it started, but the first thing I remember was being with Melody. I was giving her a very particular look, and kissing her in an unusual way. Then it cut to later, when I was in more or less the same situation, only I could now do more than just kiss; thanks to some kind of "sex mods" I had installed in myself online. I think I had an understanding of this at the time, but I didn't see the actual control panel or whatever until later on. They gave me the ability to do virtually anything sexual, of any intensity or level of appropriateness. But when the time came to use the second batch of them, I realized it wasn't time yet and thought it through. I seriously thought about it, with Melody looking at me in confusion, but I confused her even more by deciding to wake up rather than disrespect her by using them early. Then I had a couple of flashes of the online control panel and briefly saw the names (one of them, I think, was called "KissMod v1.something," which is ridiculous). Then I was outside the store where I'd bought the system, and it looked really, really seedy. There was no one inside, and the inside was really dark even though it was bright outside and there were big windows. There were two buildings, apparently related, though I was only interested in one of them. They were both closed, and I guess after I looked around the outside of the one I was concerned with, I decided I was done investigating and woke up just under two minutes before my alarm went off.

Which all was awesome, because for the first time ever I actually consciously chose to end or otherwise manipulate a dream, and even though the dream was more or less all about immoral behavior, I still chose to end it.

Dream

Had an odd dream this morning. Not bad, but odd. Actually I was pretty excited when I woke up. Why, you ask, dear reader? Well, I will tell you.

I was excited because I spent the whole dream hanging out with TRiPPY, who is unequivocally one of my heroes (heroines?), and even got to explain part of Gurren Lagann to her. ...And then I think I met her again and she was jealous that I got to hang out with her earlier. Which was odd now that I've woken up, but in the dream I think she represented someone else since she had the wrong face. But then, I still can't figure out who it really was, because she was dressed as Imagni, and I kept referring to them both as the best artists in the world. Though they didn't end up meeting, they both seemed to want to. Also, while I was hanging around the first TRiPPY, it somehow came up that the reason I was doing so to begin with was that she had something to do with my wedding, which was awesome. And when I'd first arrived, she was with someone else, who I think may have been my brother. Then we somehow got onto the topic of Libera Me From Hell, and I was telling her about the lyrics, and she sounded genuinely excited, and maybe even impressed that I knew what the heck the guy is rapping in that song.

All else aside, it was a pretty awesome dream.

 

EDIT: ...I'm not sure whether I dreamed this or not, but I just remembered that (I think in the dream) Azia had written a book that someone in my family or immediate surroundings was reading and that was awesome too. Trouble is, I can't remember whether it was before or after I fell asleep.

Spirituality

So I've had an interesting day. I got a living ordinance recommend this morning, pretty much first thing, which represents a big step forward for me. Then the prophet showed up to our sacrament meeting. Wow. That was... nothing short of incredible -- and oddly hilarious. Turns out Pres. Monson has a really good sense of humor. I got to see Bengt again for the first time since he took off for his mission in Seattle, WA, and he's still just about the same as he left, which is quite different from my past experience dealing with new RMs.

After church, I picked up Melody and went to her parents' house for dinner and had a decidedly un-spiritual couple of hours before we went and saw Rose for advice on how to further our wedding plans. She was very helpful in that department, and more importantly, launched us into an excellent spiritual conversation. Several hours later we finished up there, much-enlightened (and me with the sense that Jewel could easily turn out to be that particular sort of awesome person many years down the road), and headed to Melody's current residence to let her get some sleep. There, we had another major spiritual discussion, after which I went home. And had ANOTHER spiritual and uplifting discussion with my dad that may or may not have ended with him finding his way to the path towards self-forgiveness over what happened to my brother Caleb before I was born.

So yes, it's been quite a day. A lot more specific stuff and stories were experienced and shared along the way, but if I try to write them all out, I'm pretty sure I won't get any sleep at all tonight.

Repurposing

Renovations to the blog are underway. Not that you couldn't tell, what with me actually posting here. I'm strongly considering placing an adult content warning on the page, but I think I'll hold off doing that for the moment, at least until there's adult content to be hiding. This blog, from this point forward until something causes me to decide to change it again, is to be a journal more than anything else. I'm going to be documenting more or less whatever I'm thinking about when I decide to write, and much of this will be influenced by her, who for the moment I won't be mentioning by name because I don't know how she'd feel about that.

At any rate, I'm really tired at the moment. I've been going through back entries here, just sorta remembering where I've been before I try to go someplace new, and it's done some good but mainly it's made me want to sleep very badly. Today as a whole hasn't been great, but it definitely hasn't been a bad day either. There was some frustration, some confusion, some disappointment, but there was also some humor, some (or possibly more than just "some") spirituality, some reminiscence, and certainly a lot of love. My situation at the moment is weird, as I'm now just slightly into the second of three weeks of having my parents' house entirely to myself due to a road trip that school and work prevented me from joining.

In related news, I hate washing dishes. And also my job, ughhh. Still haven't found my way out of that one just yet. But it's alright for now. I'm surviving it, though long-term I feel certain it will be the death of me if I don't get out. But as I say, I am still surviving. It's a huge pain at times, but then again what isn't, right?

I'm going to go to bed now, mainly because if I don't, I'm going to pass out right where I am, and that will likely make it rather tough to hear my alarm in the morning. Look forward to more updates in the future, though I will give you all a fair warning now that a lot of it is going to scar more-sensitive minds. I've come a long way since last time I was here.

Outside posts

With the close of this blog's original purpose far behind me, I've decided to preserve my outside posts (made on behalf of the class, but sometimes still quite relevant) as they originally appeared on my sidebar. This is mainly because I'm moving on with the blog and I don't like losing data, even if that loss is only to forgetting where I put something.

2/1 post @ Composition Mystery

2/8 post @ The Ultimate Language Barrier

3/2 post @ Flicks and Footnotes

3/2 post @ Composition Mystery

3/2 post @ Power of the Peanut Gallery

3/2 post @ Some Thoughts

3/8 post @ Soap Box Princess

3/9 post @ Some Thoughts

3/9 post @ The Ultimate Language Barrier

3/16 post @ Flicks and Footnotes

3/28 post @ Outbound Theories

4/4 post @ Some Thoughts

4/7 post @ Big Screen Snobs

4/14 post @ Flicks and Footnotes

4/14 post @ The Ultimate Language Barrier

Coming to an end

This semester has been a wild ride for me.  Not so bad as some of the past, but admittedly that's because I sort of went numb for the last half or so.

I'll be honest: I pretty much gave up.  It was not an easy decision.  But I realized that I was unhappy, and that a lot of that came from my not realizing sooner how unhappy I was becoming.

I'm going to be leaving on my mission before I'm back at school next.  At the very least, I hope the experience makes me learn to be less horrible as a student.  I've never been good at learning just because I'm told to.  I've never been good at doing anything just because I'm told to.  I am intensely bad at not asking why.  There have been many specific instances that this trait has caused trouble for me -- major trouble.  For example, and this is admittedly not a very major example, one year I got talked into going to Especially For Youth over the summer.  It's basically a youth camp put on by the LDS church in our area (I'm uncertain as to whether it's in other places as well), with the intention of increasing spirituality and such.  In practice, it's a week of social events with very little real foundation in the gospel (save for the few directly scriptural events, usually classes), and a massive focus on conformity and structured living.  This is for some people.  Many people, in fact, judging by the program's reputation.  This is not for me.

For me, Especially For Youth was a week of hell.  I have to say that for me one of the most poignant experiences of the entire event was the dance at the end of the week.  I don't dance well at all, and never have really wanted to change that.  I cannot abide the social structure of dances, nor the environment.  Really.  I can't stand them.  Now, this dance started as it was supposed to and everyone got shuffled into the cultural hall where it was being held.  I sat down just outside one of the doors in one of the chairs kept there and began quietly keeping myself entertained (I think I was writing something or other).  Over the next couple of torturous hours, I was approached at least once every five minutes or so by a counselor who insisted that I go into the dance and start dancing.  I assured them that I wasn't going to go wandering off by myself and that I just wanted to be left in peace.  They continued to insist.  I asked why I needed to be in there.  They had no answer whatsoever.  It wasn't that their reasons were weak, it was that they didn't have any at all.  And therefore I refused to go in.  Honestly I was incredibly stubborn, but that's how I get when I'm not told why.  At one point the counselors tried to gang up on me.  Three of them all surrounded me and tried very hard to convince me that I should go in and dance "just because [I] should."  All it did to tell me to do it "just because" was convince me all the more that I was right to refuse and that they were wrong to ask me -- it told me that they didn't know any better than I did why I should be in there and that they were just doing what they were doing (i.e. being there in the first place) because they couldn't be bothered to think for themselves.

I have always found something incredibly wrong about people doing things and not having reasons for it.  Even if the reason is no good, like "because I was told to" or "it seemed like a good idea at the time," I can cope as long as there is a reason.  A bad reason, sure, but at least there is a reason.  If not, then my entire sense of order in the universe tends to break down in some way or another.  In a way it's a personal failing; I cannot cope with the world if there are no reasons behind things.  Behind events, behind feelings, it doesn't really matter what.  There has to be a reason for everything, even if I cannot see it, and when people refuse to tell me without actually saying that they can't tell me, I see it as a flat-out insult and cannot abide the person at all.

Again, a personal failing in one way, but at the same time this trait of needing to ask why has led to far more personal discoveries and in some ways actually helping many more people than almost anything else I have ever done or felt.

There are at least two sides to everything.  Even my poor habits and negligent study.  Even my understanding and wisdom.  There are always two sides.

Trains

I'm fascinated by model railroading.  Plain and simple, fascinated.  My dream (or one of them, anyway) for as long as I can remember was to be able to put a layout of my own together, and I've envied anyone and everyone with the means to do so.

I came close to doing it about a year ago, but finances got the best of me.  I convinced my father to build me a table and began to make lists of needed supplies.  And then I stopped.  I don't really remember why.

But as of today, that table has been moved into my room and I've purchased a substantial amount of supplies and track.  It's not enough to finish yet, and to be honest I can't really afford it, but for very deeply personal reasons I cannot afford to not at least give this my best shot.

Among several major others, my single most far-reaching reason for wanting to make a model railroad is my grandfather.  He was the single greatest man I have ever known, and he gave me the unique opportunity to grow up (at some times literally) on a model railroad that has been in his and my grandmother's basement since shortly after I was born.  It began quite simply, as an oval on a table with no other features, and grew to fill the entirety of a room and even spilled out through a hole cut in the wall to make a freight yard.  The layout was never finished, or even given proper scenery, but it remains my eventual goal to learn what I need to finish it someday.

My own layout as it has begun is my first real step towards that goal.

Back to Minorities

I've had a bit of a departure from my core topic lately, but I feel it's time to come back and write another entry about one of my personal minority groups.

I'm a dreamer.

Now, I've heard plenty of definitions for "dreamer," and I think all of them are more or less accurate.  But the way I define it is someone who is idealistic, and who looks past the boundaries of the physical and material worlds and into the mind and heart and soul as a matter of course.  I do this.  To the point where sometimes I forget to look at the physical world at all, instead just thinking in terms of the "inside world."  I dream almost as much as I live awake, odd though that may seem.

I'll be honest, what I'm about to say is probably gonna weird some of you out.  Maybe a lot.  But it's still very important to understanding my perspective on this.

I have people, living people, inside my mind.  They are not human, certainly, and some of them are extraordinarily outlandish in appearance.  Most are fairly humanoid and easily-understood, though.  I've been told I'm a very good writer, especially by fans of my original fiction.  The reason for my skill is that I only describe what I see.  If I need to figure out how a certain character would act in a certain situation, I usually just go inside and ask them in person.  Or I'll let events play out however they will, and record my perspective on it all as it happens.  As a result my writing tends to be at least immersive, if not "realistic."

Most of these self-aware entities are separate from me, and live in their own discrete worlds -- mostly separate from each other as well.  But occasionally, one will stand out from the crowd as being able to connect to me in a more personal fashion, and these are usually the ones that end up being the series mascots, as it were, and most "alive" to me.  I draw them, I write about them, I show them off, because other people cannot see what I see -- as it is only happening in my head.  I haven't been able to track down just exactly where, but at some point in the past I remarked to someone "Of course it is happening inside your head... but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

I firmly believe in that statement.  People are constantly worrying that what they perceive is "not real," or somehow invalidated by the fact that it is non-physical.  I don't think most people are dreamers by this definition, but such individuals definitely exist.  They hold their ideals high, and they have whole internal worlds to back those ideals up.  None of us, dreamers or otherwise, will fully live up to all our ideals, because we all make mistakes and screw up, sometimes a lot.  But the dreamers hold the highest ideals of all, usually.  The dreamers know how important it is to make things the best they can be, or at least to try.

I am proud to be a dreamer, even when it comes with the very strange parts that my life now includes.  I am proud to see beyond the limits of physicality.  I am proud to be an idealist.  I am proud to dream.

Bad Customers

I work retail.  Ace Hardware, to be specific.  And I hate it.  There are a lot of reasons for that, and many of them are very specific to my own situation, though many are likewise very common to retail work anywhere and anywhen.  However, the angle I want to show you folks is one that only sometimes (as in the case of Not Always Right) gets much real attention.  Bad customers.

Now I know from long experience that the worst of the bad customers will always, always fail to realize that they are a bad customer.  This is common sense.  But what you don't realize is that there are no good customers.  Anywhere.  There are bad customers you don't like, and there are bad customers that you do, but there are no good customers.

No matter what store a person walks into, if it is a retail outlet in any form, there is a magical force field of some kind that with no warning whatsoever turns even the kindest and most courteous of human beings into the slavering horrid beast that is the customer.  I haven't yet worked out just why this is.  The force field or pixie dust or whatever it is doesn't work on employees -- they still see all the ugly and all the crazy and all the rude that customers have to offer.  I've been on both sides of this plenty of times.  One of the things that makes me dread going to work is that I know I'll be faced with an apparently-endless stream of irritating, rude, and frankly insane people to help (or at least put up with) until I'm allowed to leave.  There are all kinds of idiosyncrasies that people have that bother me -- not reading the instructions on our electronic pinpads, paying sufficiently and then searching around for exact change, leading the employees on a massive wild goose chase all over the store... and yet, for all the suffering I go through at the hands of people like that, I have caught myself doing each and every item on that list at some point or another to other unsuspecting employees in other unsuspecting stores.

In short, when I go shopping, I turn into THAT GUY.  And then, upon walking out the door with my merchandise, I turn back into the nice, caring, more-employee-like person that I am.  And so does everyone else.  Well, almost everyone.  Some people are just rude in general, and I'm sorry to say that they don't turn nice whenever they leave a store.  But still, the majority of our customers actually aren't bad people.  They're just bad people to us.  And on those occasions where I'm out shopping and see someone working that I know as a customer, I dread it a little, because I know I'm being a bad person to them, even though I'm not a bad person.

There's some idiosyncrasy that I have that drives them nuts.  I don't know what it is, because in many cases they're actually being paid to overlook those annoyances, as I am.  But it's there.  I'm a bad customer, just like everyone else.  And if you've ever been in a store, so are you.

Lessons

In his now-typical fashion, Landon Wilkins has left me another couple of questions to answer -- which I am more than happy to attempt.  Landon writes:

So here are my two questions:

1.What are the most valuable/important lessons you think everyone should learn? 

2.What are the most valuable/important lessons you've learned?

As a knee-jerk reaction, I admit I want to think that these are the same question phrased a little differently.  But then, of course, I think further and realize this is not the case.  I think I'll answer the second one first, since it's easier to talk of myself before making broader generalizations.

My personal greatest lessons, certainly over the last few years if not through my entire life, have dealt with my ability to help those I care about.  Probably the single most important of those would be that I cannot do everything for everyone.  Trust me, I've tried.  It doesn't work.  I can get close, sometimes, at the expense of everything I feel necessary in outside life, but even then some people get let down.  You have to pick your battles, lest "the bear" get you every single day, as the saying sort of goes.

The next-most important lesson that I've picked up recently may seem odd, or too obvious to even mention.  But it took me until just this past year, and many painful ordeals, to finally figure it out.  The lesson is one that I feel applies to both questions, and to all people, not just me.  That lesson is this: maintain perspective at all times, and at all costs.  Never, but never, allow yourself to forget exactly how much you have to do with what goes on around you -- and how much or how little you affect the outcome of any given situation you are invested in.  Forgetting to keep this perspective not only hurt many people, myself certainly included, but also nearly cost my life and a close friend's sanity.  For the sake of the privacy of those involved and for the sake of space, I will not recount the story (even if asked; please trust me that for now it is best that this remain hidden), but suffice to say it was a very sharp wake-up call for me and for all that I was doing and feeling at the time.

Since that lesson seems to apply so well to everyone, I suppose I may just as well move into the first question.  What do I think everyone should learn?  Well, there are a lot of things we all need to learn in life.  I think some of us are just born better-prepared for certain lessons than are the rest of us, but then each person has their own unique strengths.  It's up to all of us to capitalize on that and use it to get a leg up over our weaknesses.  Anyway.  The single most important lesson, or rather the most important challenge, is in my opinion to learn to defeat pride.

That's right, pride.  As in Seven-Deadly-Sins pride.  Wrath, envy, lust, sloth, excess, and greed are all important to avoid, but pride is in my experience the root of all of them, and far more problems besides.  One form of pride is the source of lust and enemy to love, believing that others are just objects to be used for gratification rather than companionship.  Another type believes that others are not as much entitled to their property or status and fosters greed and envy and excess alike.  One type believes that it is above working and engenders sloth.  Wrath is derived from the belief that one's feelings are more important than others' and that offense must be retributed against even if it was with good reason.

Pride is essentially at the root of all selfish or sinful or misanthropic behavior, and must -- must -- be stopped if we as human beings with souls and hearts are to function in harmony with one another.  In a comment on a previous entry here, IamtheEnder writes:

It is painful to see harm done. Why would anyone want that? It doesn't make sense to me to do anything but good.

 

I agree that it is very painful to see harm or pain inflicted on anyone else... but it is often actually a relief from pain that drives such an action.  We see something that hurts us, and we feel the need -- a prideful need (lest this seem too tangential) -- to fight back against its source.  Someone inflicts pain on us, and the natural and instinctive response is to drive pain into them tenfold, to get revenge or to serve justice on behalf of another for whom we care.  It's wrong, morally, but it's natural.  What we should do, in all cases, is to accept the action that caused us pain in the first place and try to make amends as best we can. But this is not easy.  It requires forgiveness, and it requires strength.  More so than I personally feel I have.

All I can say, in the end, is good luck to all who genuinely want to rid themselves of pride and to exchange it for perspective.

Music Sympathy

I don't know about anyone else, but when I'm in a bad mood, I can't deal with listening to happy music.  Or not much of it, anyway.  And usually, the music I do listen to is even more depressing -- it synergizes with my current bad mood and makes it worse.  I listen to music that sounds like I feel.  Good moods mean happy music and playful sounds, while bad moods mean dismal, gloomy melodies with depressing lyrics when applicable.  However, certain songs with neutral styles (most notably Duran Duran's What Happens Tomorrow and Lover Reef, a collaboration by several contributors to OC ReMix) in my experience have the baffling ability to fit with almost any mood at all and even to enhance it.

Sometimes, even I cannot quite define my musical preferences.  Some songs that fit with the outward mood grate at me and don't sound "right," while others that are totally dissonant with how I think I'm feeling just seem to click for what seems like no reason.  In some rare cases, I'll be listening to a song, even one I'm not very familiar with, and I will be able to think nothing short of "that's it: that is how I feel right now."  One such song I heard for the first time on a very, very grim day during which I was thinking over my whole life and how messed-up it was at the time.  That song, Suzumebachi's The Ballad of Sir Kibbles, resonated with me in a way songs rarely ever manage to, and to this day I feel that it is the story of my life crammed into a three-minute instrumental.

But still, all music has a distinct "color" and mood associated with it.  In fact, perhaps that very concept of "color" explains the strangeness in my choices sometimes.  Mostly I like colors of music that are close to the color of my mood, but sometimes a triadic color, to borrow the color theory term (melancholic to my angry, or orange to my red... or something like that, I suppose it's not an exact science), can resonate just as deeply.

For my readers and respondents: what are your favorite songs for certain specific moods, and how do they affect you?  What kinds of songs do you find you listen to when you're in a happy mood?  Or sad?  Or angry?