Midnight Ravings

It seems like every other time I update this thing I say "It's been forever since I've updated this thing." Sadly, it's pretty true, once again.

Or happily. /:-)

I tend to keep myself fairly busy and entertained, so I don't often have much time to devote to proper blogging, though I do sometimes still think it would be a good thing if I were to make the time.

I've been moved into my apartment for a few months, now, and I'm terribly fond of my little sanctuary. I'm still quite avidly roleplaying, at the same two haunts, and have been making good progress writing my book. About once a month I get together with a couple (occasionally all) members of the little poly-family I've become a part of. Over the summer, this has included camping at a little pagan-friendly, privately-owned nature preserve called Lothlorien, the glorious geek-fest known as GenCon, more camping, and a weekend in Ohio to visit the Renaissance Festival.

The closing of the nearest Waldenbooks gave me a nice little stack of reading material, which I'm most of the way through. (Of them, I most highly recommend The Door to Lost Pages and Mechanique.) And I've discovered an interesting Buddhist writer in Brad Warner. His books are some of the most remarkably sensible I've read in ages, and refreshingly good-humored.

Being occupied with all of this business in NYC, Boston, San Francisco and other places, the country could use a little more sensibility, I'd say. I'm glad to see people taking a stand. I'm sorry that it's become so very necessary.

Lately, I've been of the opinion that we're making our way through our own Dark Ages. Lots of fear and ignorance and exploitation of the masses by high-powered scavengers. On the bright side, that should mean we have a Renaissance and an Age of Reason coming, eventually. Even if I don't live to see it, it pleases me to know that history repeating itself includes at least some good bits.

As we approach good old 2012 I've been seeing a few more doomsday nuts about, and it always makes me sad. How much must a person hate their life, to anticipate the end of a whole world so zealously as some do? What will they do, when everything just keeps going? Will they understand that the change needs to be internal more than anywhere else? Or will they crumble? Or will they find a new apocalypse to worship?

Been a while since I updated this thing, so I thought I might as well.

*Thing 1: Woke up inexplicably in the middle of the day, so I'm more than a little drowsy at the moment, but my circadian rhythm has been off since a week-worth of flu earlier this month, so I'm kind of used to it at the moment.

*Thing 2: Aside from RP, I've been hanging out quite a bit over on Plurk. It's actually a lot of fun, and I've gotten to be good friends with a lot of the people I've been playing with all this time, through it.

*Armadillo: I inherited a lot of fairly nice antique-ish furniture from my Great Aunt who passed away a few months ago, and am on the waiting list for a new apartment that won't be far from work. It's a fairly nice complex with a pond and a park, and the rent won't be bad at all. It should be ready for me by May (which is later than I thought I'd have it, but still, not too bad).

*Pomegranate: The marvelous Sally will be coming to hang out with me for part of the summer, first staying with my friend Chaze, and then staying with me, once I've got my place. I'm really looking forward to it.

*Oblong: I am so, so happy the weather's finally starting to get warmer. I detest the cold. X-|

*Pumpernickel:I ordered myself a movie for my birthday. It's stop-motion animation, entirely done by hand, and it reminds me of the sorts of things I used to watch on PBS when I was a kid. :-3



*Spatula: Finally started working on the novel that's been gestating in my head for the past few years. I think it'll be good. Even if I never publish it, I want to finish it.

Annnd very late, but I've had the plague, these past few days so...

*Day 06 – Your hobbies

Well, as I've mentioned, my hobbies primarily include:

RP/writing
Jewelry-making
Japanese
Hiking
Sculpting
and Reading

Reading would be the oldest. I've been at that more or less since I could. The first full-length novel I ever read was The Hobbit, in... I think it was fifth grade? Something like that. That kicked off a life-long love of the written word. There are a few writers I follow just about religiously, such as Clive Barker and Niel Gaiman. (There are probably one or two things by them I haven't read, but I'll hunt it all down eventually.^_^) I used to be really big on traditional fantasy, but I prefer urban/dark/Victorian/steampunk stuff lately, when I bother with fiction. I've also started to become interested in historical things, and have found a handful of Manga I enjoy following (Pandora Hearts, Deadman Wonderland, and Dogs:Bullets and Carnage in particular).

This, of course, led to writing, which I'm decent at, though I'm terrible about finishing what I start--Which is, I think, why I haven't started the novel in my head, yet... I want to have enough built up to know that I will finish it. All this business with gargleblasted and pandoraheartsdr is the most I've written since high school, which is very definitely a start. It makes me wonder if what I need is a partner. I dunno, though; I worry that I'd be too controlling, when it came to a world and characters that actually and fully originated from me... I've met one or two people I'd like to co-write something with, though, since I got into this play-by-post schtick.

Hiking is my favorite way to relax, when it isn't bloody freezing out, and it's generally something I prefer to do solo, these days. If I go hiking with you, be flattered. ;-) I like going out and seeing what kinds of things I can find, and what kinds of things I can catch sight of. Usually it's to the wildlife preserve practically next door, which is surprisingly active for being such a small place. There have been days when I've encountered lakes full of hundreds of swans, there, and once a deer almost walked right up to me, until the wind changed and it realized I was a person. It was rather put-out about that. :-|

Jewelry-making and sculpting, I was pretty heavily into, before I got into RP. There's something intensely satisfying about making a beautiful thing, and I won't deny that the extra money that can sometimes come of it is also gratifying. I've always found working with my hands to be therapeutic. I've also tried sewing and painting, for these reasons. I'd like to take up any one of them again. I just need to find the time.

Japanese...

Litha, for shame, you should still be studying this hardcore. Seriously, folks, I love this language; it's just so very pretty to me. Just hearing it makes me happy, and I find that I actually seem to think better, in the headspace that listening to/studying/thinking in it puts me into. On top of that, Japanese culture and history is interesting, and I will confess to loving me some Anime. I used to spend hours, every day, happily immersing myself in learning this language. I got to a vocabulary of over a thousand words, then I plateaued when I got to Kanji, and I'm genuinely pissed at myself over this. Where the hell did my discipline go? No, really, where? I need to start doing this again...

*reaches for book*

*reaches for My Japanese Coach*

*fucking does this*

I did start this on the appropriate day; it just didn't get finished in time. :-/ Ugh, why must my sleep schedule be so screwed up? X-| Beware of rantish tangents.

*Day 02 – Your first love

Given that I strongly agree with the saying that you can't love anyone if you don't love yourself, logically it would follow that I am my first love. We're all born loving ourselves, then our parents/society/whathaveyou proceeds to try to ingrain in us a belief that loving ourselves is bad, sinful and selfish, that love is somehow more noble if you feel you are ultimately unworthy of it.

Folks: fuck a whole bunch of that.

It's just another symptom of the mental illness that is so prevalent in our species. Just because it's common doesn't mean it's correct, any more than beliefs that the world was flat or that flowers could drive away plague were ever right, despite their pervasiveness. It's just that it's not as easily proven, being as you can't sail a ship around it or look at it through a microscope.

Mind you, it should be easy enough to realize it's wrong simply because doing it their way leads inevitably to pain. The natural purpose of pain is to serve as a warning system, letting us know that injury is imminent. It lets us know that what we're doing might not be a good idea. It's always been to my way of thinking that emotional pain isn't so different from physical pain that this shouldn't still hold true.

And yet the myth persists. So many people stubbornly believe that someone else must value them in order for them to have value at all. It's intensely frustrating. I can't help but look at society and wonder why the hell this is allowed to continue. Why is it encouraged? Why are we so frequently taught to invert and subvert and repress our natures?

Don't they know their goddamn Jung? What happens when we repress something?

Folks, we are a species profoundly out of harmony with ourselves...

... And I am tired and about to get off of work. And this is probably nothing like the cuddly puppy-loves story the OP of this meme wanted me to relate, but I think about this sort of thing a whole lot more than I reminisce.

Signing off for now, and I'll probably do two, next entry, since I'm pretty sure I already covered the next topic in the previous 30 days meme I failed at. :-P

Oyasumi nasai.

So, remember the great aunt who died a couple months ago? Her sister passed on a couple days ago, and her funeral's today.

*sighs*

What next?

It is legitimately creepy how much I identify with the visuals of this video.

The song's rather pretty too.

Translation, courtesy of spharaoh:

Where is the sea?
I don't know why I was just looking for the sea,
But the only thing I found was a desert,
A desert around me

What can I see?
You close my eyes, when I just need to go and see.
If you want me to be blind, I will stay here,
With this desert around me.
The world I can see
Is a nowhere land.
Without you I'm a nowhere girl.
In the desert, in the desert
With you.

(repeat first)

Where is the sea?
I am alone, dreaming of the sea,
That you are not here next to me.
The world I can see is a nowhere land.
In the desert,
In the desert,
With you.

...fin

Finally the third article has been approved, and due to the quality of my writing, they've raised the limit of articles I can claim at one time to TEN! :-D *wiggles* No clue if that's the standard for newbies there or not, but, still it makes me feel special. ^_^


My first article's even up! Lookie!

Next article will be on the significance of jade in Vietnamese culture. ^_^ *pleased*

EDIT: Oh! Also, a meme!

Comment and I'll:

1. Tell you why I friended you.
2. Associate you with something - a fandom, a song, a color, a photo, a word, etc.
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
6. Tell you my favorite userpic of yours.
7. In return, you must post this in your LJ. Yeah whatever.

(Replies might be slow, though. Need to work on the new article.

My scrambled eggs are pink and delicious.

Also, since I'm still waiting on the revisions for the second and third articles to be approved by the writing site, (I got my first approval--an article giving tips on the best travel clothes for women) and I can't choose more until they are approved, I don't seem to have any choice but to make this a relaxation day.

I wish they'd hurry, tough! :-/ I want to be able to really get started on this. Y'know, the whole... earning for writing thing. I'm ever so keen on it. :-| Earning in general.

Mmm, pink eggs. ^_^

*fret fret fret*

Okay, so...

I got approved for that freelance writing gig, and I suddenly feel vaguely terrified. o_0

At any rate, I'd like to link to these articles on a different site, which are by the friend who pointed me toward the site. If you read them, he gets a little bit of money. They cover a variety of things from gaming to sex to paganism, so I figure you guys would be interested anyway. But yeah. Give him a bit of your attention as a thank you from me? /:-)

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I think similarity in age is less important than similarity in maturity-level. The hitch, there, of course, is that most of us are not as mature as we think we are.

( somewhat-related ravings, on a somewhat personal somewhat philosophical note )