out of atuan

wrote some actual words! it feels good making a meaningful update to the ol webbed site.

i bought sidewalk chalk and need to go use it somewhere

brain is slowly starting to thaw out again.

i went back to alloy of law and i'm glad i did. i definitely needed time to emotionally heal from hero of ages but i'm so glad i didn't let that put me off. i'm halfway through shadows of self now and some of the namedrops and their implications have shrieking out loud.

may try to submit to a local art show? i have a few months to contemplate and try and put something together. deadlines and i are kind of hit or miss.

which has not happened in a really long time. i used put all my thoughts on the internet with such abandon but now i struggle to put a sentence together - asked the husband recently to read a couple paragraphs on this site somewhere and halfway through asking him, "does it, like, make any sense at all?" i realized i was really asking, "do my thoughts have any value whatsoever?" and had to sit with that for a while.

anyway writing maybe. we'll see.

the sun is beautiful and my loved ones are beloved, and a bit of demure and mindful daydrinking with the girlies solves most problems. things are feeling better.

it's just been a long week y'all. bad dreams, processing shit i haven't thought about in years, plus this year has absolutely escalated to 2020 levels of dread.

but!

we have small good things. sissy went on a whole adventure i haven't even gotten to hear about yet. new family is patient and kind. husband sat on the couch with me helping me get started with Oblivion - he got it patched and modded to work with his fancy PlayStation controller for me because he's a sweetheart. and then he watched my first (of what i can only assume will be many) runthroughs of the Oblivion opening. he was there for my first Skyrim run (also 2020, in fact). hundreds of hours later i would give many things to be able to experience Whiterun for the first time again, so appreciating that first Oblivion dungeon in the moment was quite lovely.

despite having a new game to play i think my hyperfixations are swinging back around to things like this site, so i'm hoping to put together some new stuff. i'm proud of myself for keeping up with my daylog. i don't push a site update every day but i've been good about taking a minute to put down some highlights every night. documenting things is becoming more important to me and i already have some ideas for next year's version.

(almost) everything outside of my little bubble of home is scary and uncertain.

the alloy of law audiobook experience has been paused because i need more time to process the first trilogy so i can appreciate this one without just thinking about Sazed and Vin all the time, you know?

brain is gross so nothing creative is happening, we're just playing Skyrim. my character is named Death's Arrow and she will slaughter an entire bandit camp before anyone notices what's up.

a couple years ago i modded Skyrim so hard i broke it and put it down for a couple years. finally fixed it last week. turns out i really do turn to Skyrim whenever i'm experiencing job-related anxiety.

i want to do a proper mage run at some point and started one, but eventually caved in favor of the supremely satisfying stealth archer setup. i'm trying to level pickpocketing so i'm financing my real estate empire by taking people's pocket change. dear lord i love this game so much.

still not sure how real i wanna get about my day job on here, but suffice it to say that i stood up for myself and am thriving, though i would like to go a full year without having to record a conversation between me and a man in charge of me.

how did i sleep on Dance Fever for so long???

alloy of law proceeds - haven't quite started caring about these new characters yet but i'm sure i'll get there. it's extra hard when they mention my beloved, tragic friends from the first era. :(

officially finished the first Mistborn trilogy. made my library page serviceable to distract from the emotional pain.

this year already feels draining and oppressive in the exact same way 2012 did.

there's some new half-finished stuff around here - writing is hard :P i'll try to get them cleaned up and filled out this weekend.

i think a trekkie page is coming soon. just watched "Yesterday's Enterprise" and didn't expect them to wallop me to tears in the last five seconds, holy shit.

weeks ago i dreamed about a bunch of little white mice sleeping on a cozy leaf, their tails wrapped around the stem, and yesterday for some reason i decided i had to do something about that:

haven't picked up the pastels in a while so this felt nice - kitchen table, Glass Animals on the speaker, flow state, all that good stuff.

i intend to finish shotgunning Well of Ascension tonight - thoughts tomorrow probably. i am having many feelings about this series and may find a way to put them on the ol webbed site somewhere.

three blessed days off in a row after my shift tomorrow, which means i can maybe finish some sitely things that have been kicking around half-done.

not bored, just boring. a little antisocial lately - hopefully i'll feel better when the sun starts coming back out.

observations from recent media:

• if people explained things to me the way Geordi explains things to Data, i think i would almost feel like a normal person
• "The Price" is a singularly rancid episode of TNG
• if you're reading Mistborn and have a death wish, take a shot every time Vin frowns
• i don't think i would be this invested in Brando Sando if i didn't go the audiobook route tbh
• (that said, i did in fact suffer through the first dozen or so Dresden Files books before they got good, so maybe i'm a glutton for punishment)

finished the audiobook late last night. the writing is so clunky but the bastard pulled me in anyway and had my jaw dropped throughout the last five chapters. (un?)fortunately this means i now have to finish the series - wish me luck.

there's a food pantry on my block and people have started leaving their unwanted and damaged books. i think even the public library is putting some of their old old books out there. i leave anything that seems enjoyable to somebody - kids' books, romance novels - but i've been bringing home the old stats textbooks and hardcover volumes of war stories and other such unwanteds.

in other news, cyberpunk: edgerunners hurt my feelings deeply and i have yet to recover.

listening to If Books Could Kill and doing offline things mostly. my back is messed up (?!) and i'm trying to go easy on it.

working on a couple sitely things behind the scenes, stay tuned.

brain is having a quiet period so we're doing repetitive work and learning things instead of creating for a little while and that's okay.

i did boot up Curse of Blackmoor Manor and realized with delight that i remember very little of it. if we get the snow day i'm hoping for later this week i'll try to sit down and work on that one for a while.

oh, and i've been enjoying Narrative Art History lately. good stuff.

oof ouch owie my free time.

i am buckled in!

did some end-of-year archival - ready for this place to fill up again. :)