23 feb 2024
hey guys =] what's going on? it's been a little bit, i'm sorry. right now it feels like my life is just so chaotic, but also like it's dragging by. but it's not really in a bad way? i don't know, it's hard to explain. i had an entry written up a few days ago but i deleted it all without even thinking, just closed out the tab and realized that i never actually posted it. now i don't even remember what i wrote about, so we'll just start over from scratch =]
well, spring is on its way. slowly but surely things are starting to warm up... i've been enjoying it, even if it is a little bit too early for that just yet. the mornings are still chilly and the mountains are often still covered in frost on my way to work, but by the time afternoon rolls around things warm up nicely. yesterday i was working a little tabling event and i was right in the sun, it felt so amazing. told my friend that it felt like i could feel myself slowly starting to come back to life. the spring equniox is in a few weeks too, slowly but surely the sun is returning. the song olson by boards of canada always makes me think of the sun, specifically that bright early morning sun that's always in my eyes on the way to work that feels especially strong during transitional seasons.
well, i'm sitting here trying to write this while both cats crawl all over my desk. i had a sandwich earlier and they're convinced that there's more of it and that ill give it to them. this week it feels like i've actually been drawing a little more than usual, im trying to keep a sketchbook that i draw in while i'm in class but it's so hard for me to figure out what to actually draw. isn't that kind of sad? i look back at the massive stack of sketchbooks i kept while growing up and how easy it was for me to sit down wherever and have just an endless slough of ideas come pouring out of me. but now i sit down and i think wait... what am i doing? what if someone looks over my shoulder? what if someone were to peek through this? those are only some of the things that hold me back, but also trying to find organic inspiration is still kind of hard for me. my hope is the more i practice it, the easier it'll come to me.
more and more seeds are starting to sprout in the greenhouse. we currently have coreopsis, cherry tomatoes, butterfly milkweed, and wild blue indigo starting to sprout! it's so exciting coming into the greenhouse to water tha plants and realizing that there are new ones starting to peek through the soil and vermiculite. it's also got me inspired to think about what i want to grow on my own outside of work this year once things warm up a little outside... so many choices =] once i actually have a house of my own i have all sorts of really awesome plans for gardening that i can't wait to share with you guys here. it's my goal to capture the entire process from planning and designing to laying everything out, sowing the seeds, etc.
well, i'm gonna head off for now. i'm kind of out of things to write about and i'm itching to go do something else like draw or read but i might try to play around with some html. i offered to help my friend out with making a neocities and there's some stuff i'd like to try out, so i'm gonna make a little html template for him to play with =] i'll share his site here once it rolls out. so for now, i'll see you guys later, enjoy the weekend!!
i cant remember what that seedling is, but one of many we have growing in. plus some onions that we rescued from the compost and have been planting
it feels like everything is holding its breath right now waiting for spring...
15 feb 2024
hi hello happy belated valentines day to you all! valentines is slowly starting to become annoying to me... and not really for the reasons you may think right off the bat. i really noticed the last few years that people just go above and beyond to have the most bombastic reaction tehy possibly can to valentines day. whether it's sitting in class announcing "if you have a partner for valentines day then fuck you" or going on long tirades about how you're too much of an adult to care about valentines day and that youre too emotionally mature to have just one measley day to celebrate love. it's just annoying on either end... like i get it. there's so much pressure to be in a romantic relationship and society makes it seem like it's the end all be all goal, so people make it their end all be all goal. to the point where people become so desperate they'll just settle for the first person they find because they want someone to depend on be it financially, emotionally, or both or soomething else.
it's frustrating... i was in a very long abusive relationship from the time i was a young teenager until my early 20s. the relationship ended in 2020 and i spent a long time kind of acting out and going onto any dating app or reddit hookup pages i could find convincing myself that i would find a partner. it was unpleasant being alone. it was unpleasant working 12 hours a day for 6 days a week sometimes just to come home to a dark empty apartment and have nobody to talk to. i tried everything and everywhere but nothing ever got past the texting stage, no meetups ever happened and eventually after being ghosted i finally decided that i would just give up and live my life and enjoy the freedom that comes with being alone. whether you lack romantic partners or friends or both, it's important to seek out connections while simultaneously learn to enjoy your own company and use that phase of your life to explore deep within yourself to figure out what it is that you truly want.
just a few months after i had made that decision, i met slater. we had been mutuals for a while, maybe like a year up til that point but we started talking every now and then on discord and it became more and more frequent. eventually slater asked me out and i was a little hesitant- i liked the freedom that came with being single but i also really liked slater and wanted to get into a relationship with it. i was also really scared of getting into something romantic again after my previous relationship left me with extreme trust issues and awful self esteem.
but in the end, it all worked out. it's important to follow your heart as cheesy as that sounds... while it's very important to take into consideration the technical detaisl like your shared values, your goals together and as individuals, etc... it's also important to pursue it because you love them. now adays especially with how high rent is and how damaged everyone is, it seems like everyone is seeking someone to take care of them. and with the way everything is, who can blame them? and who doesn't want to be loved? but so many times i've seen people get into relationships ebcause they want someone to split the bills with, they want someone so they can finally shed their 'single' status and show off. are these things necessarily bad? not on their own, but they can pose some really serious problems when someone becomes dependent on another person financially or emotionally but they realize that it's not what they wanted, or not what they expected, etc.
dunno, there's just such a weird attitude around valentines day now it seems. sorry for getting so deep right out of the gate! slater and i didn't really get to do anything because i had work and school and while we would normally make a big steak and have a romantic lovey dovey evening together, slater just got its tongue pierced and it's been swollen and making it difficult for it to eat. so we'll postpone the valentines celebration for now until it starts feeling 100% again.
this week has been a little crazy, but overall pretty good. i'm just glad it went by so quickly. we've been so busy planting seed trays getting ready for spring to start, it's been awesome watching them slowly begin to grow. i also got to make some lavender and rosemary cuttings in hopes that they'll root but it's not looking super promising right now. but fingers crossed!! i'll keep you guys posted on the little lavenders as they hopefully take root and grow. there's something so magical about propagation... how you can take cuttings of a plant and grow a whole other plant just from that, or how you can save the seeds from a plant and start whole new ones. when i was a kid the idea of gardening being fun was so beyond me, but now as an adult i truly understand and appreciate it all now. i'm glad i got a second chance to learn just how wonderful it is to be able to assist something in growing up, watching it start as a baby seed and become something.
it felt amazing today, it was so clear and the cold of the morning went away after lunch time. i stayed home from school this morning because we had some maintenance stuff going on here at the apartment but i'm glad i got to spend the rest of my day outside in the warm sunshine. days like this definitely make me feel like spring is just around the corner... there's so much pressure in late winter. everything is poised and ready to burst to life. now that i live somewhere where there are actual seasons and transitions between those seasons, i feel it even more intensely. in eastern NC things would be in full green splendor by mid-march, but here in the mountains it can take until april or may. just those extra few weeks make such a huge difference, everything looks so barren and grey but the feeling itself feels like everything is swollen and ready to explode.
can't help but think about this time last year and how confused and lost i felt. now i feel so much more grounded, even though i don't necessarily have a concrete direction or anything i'm comfortable and happy to just live life one day or one week at a time. well, this is turning into a really long post so i guess i'll head off now and play some video games before i get too sleepy tired. hope you guys have had a good week and happy valentines day, know that i luv you <3
lots of late winter flowers are popping up everywhere. i love how the snowdrops look.
and here's one of the photograms i developed the other day! i'll share the others soon.
and last but not least my valentine ^_^ this picture is from last fall when we were out on black balsam knob early in the morning. i just love this pic so much, everything i love in one image... the sleepy balds of WNC, my boo thang and some oranges.
09 feb 2024
hello everyone, it's beena little warmer this week. it's finally starting to feel a little like spring... only it's not supposed to do that until maybe late march? it's hard not to enjoy the feeling of a nice 65 degree sunny afternoon though. with warmer weather also means it's time to start growing things! i'm holding off on starting my mushrooms until the apartment starts feeling a little warmer- i miss how hot it got up in the little loft at my old apartment, things grew so quickly there. i also got a good amount of seeds from an event i volunteered at where we got to prep seeds for a seed library =] lots and lots of seeds this week- we've started sowing ours at work in preparation for planting. none of our germination tests had worked out, but this morning my coworker announced that one of our wild blue indigo seeds had taken off! so that's a great sign, it's a little daunting planting 100 seed trays and not knowing if they'll actually sprout or not.
we have a schedule rotating out who waters when, and i keep thinking i've forgotten to water the plants... but i haven't yet. there's just so much to keep track of. homework, class, work, after-work hours work that needs to be taken care of. it feels like tehre's so little time to live life in between it all. at the same time, i think about how this will only last for as long as my college-going will last, so i'm trying to savor the experiences while i still can.
called the doctor today and left a message about getting that arthroscopy done. it's not something that i really /want/ to do, but it seems like that's the only way i can get a diagnosis for what's going on. if anything, i've definitely noticed a difference from the steroid injections. i think i mentioned here how a week or two ago i thought they were wearing off, but i think i might've just been sore since i'm back to feeling pretty good. let's hope it holds out for a few years like they said it would.
so far so good, i just need to get that figured out and i'm a little nervous since it looks like kind of a somewhat intense ordeal.
spring break is coming up soon, it's really weird to think about how far into the semester we already are. time really flies by, i'm starting to be able to visualize how much time i actually have left at school before i graduate and move on to the next big thing- but what IS the next big thing? there doesn't really have to be one, but i feel like i've spent pretty much all of my adult life forging ahead from one thing to another. there's always been some looming goal or difficult accomplish that i was breaking my back over. tbh, it might be nice to take a few years to just relax and exist. i don't want to just vegetate though, i'd want to be doing something- but not necessarily working myself to death. if everything falls into place, this might actually work out... there's lots of jobs that i would enjoy having. real estate photography is one that i for some reason am really gravitating towards right now. i've been talking about this for a while, and i actually got my dad in on it. recently he picked up a part time job doing real estate photos for a company! so far he really likes it, i just thought it was funny how i'd been thinking about it.
but ultimately i'd like to just make a living creating things. maybe not in the way that we tend to envision the modern day artist slaving away taking millions of commissions to try to make ends meet. i don't know, i'm still trying to figure it all out. and more importantly i feel really lucky that i'm actually in a spot where i can actually take that time to figure things out. this was something i was thinking about after getting out of my therapy appointment today. to be honest i spend a lot of time thinking about how i should've done something different with my early 20s and how i'd be left with a lot less issues than i have now.
yet when i think about it, because i went through those things i now am in a position where i'm taken care of. it's still hard, and i don't like being disabled. chronic conditions suck, mental illness sucks, there's a lot of stuff about it that sucks. but i'm actively trying to see the silver lining in it all, day by day. everything happens for a reason, and i'm trying my best to see the reason in it all. i guess my point is that there's good to be found in everything, even when it all seems unbearable or like youv'e completely ruined your life by taking the path you took.
well, sorry for getting all mushy gushy there =P i went and ran a few errands with slater and now we're about to eat some dinner. i picked us up a bottle of wine today but i don't think we'll crack it open since we got dunkin on our way home lmfao... the last 2 times i've bought alcohol i haven't been carded and it's making me feel like i've made it to hag city. i haven't bought alchohol since maybe 2021? it's expensive and i don't really like to drink, but every now and then i like a little something. we got some seagrams as a little celebration when we moved in and i got us some wine today moslty for valentines day, which is coming up soon.
i finally got my altar set up, it's definitely missing something i think but i'll just rearrange things until it feels right. it feels really good to have it all set up though, i need to run by the occult store to get some things for valentines... but honestly i think i have everything i might need. need to update my inventory list. but for now, i'm gonna head off and relax for the rest of the evening. hope you're doing good wherever you are!
something about this color palette that makes me feel so alive and nostalgic. that yellow-green color of the pines mixed with dead grass and the rich blue of the sky during transition seasons... i don't care for late winter, but this color combo is something i'd see in texas in late summer after the sun's killed off everything. like i said, don't know what it is but it makes me feel so nostalgic =]
04 feb 2024
we're already 4 days into february, time is flying right by us. last night i had a dream that it was already midterms and i woke up thinking yes! halfway through! it seems like its so far away now, but spring break is the first week of march so tbh it's really just around the corner. this week has been really, really tough. mostly becauise of how exhausted moving has left me. this weekend, one of my classes had something going on all day saturday and today so that means i'm now running off of 2 straight weeks and i'll have to go through all of next week before i can stop and catch my breath. well, thankfully i have today to take a breather but that wasn't intentional at all and i feel pretty bad for not being able to help out my classmates on the last day of this thing that we're doing for class..
yesterday i woke up and there was a weird pressure in my head, kind of like how you get when you're sick but i wasn't congested or feeling sick at all. i kept waiting for my ears to pop but they never did, i was just kind of deaf in my left ear all day and it just kept getting worse and worse. my bf wondered if my ear was clogged, but it didn't hurt and there wasn't any physical sensation of something being stuck in there. i was feeling a little dizzy/overwhelmed by everything so i went to bed early. this morning i woke up and the room was spinning, my ear feels much more clear now/i can hear, but omg the dizziness!!!! woke up around 6-7 am to simon destroying the apartment and i almost fell out of bed trying to get him to stop. i figured it was because i was half awake, but even after going back to bed and waking up a few hours later, still feeling the same.
looked online and saw that the best way to take care of this type of thing is to get up and move around, but that made me feel like i was going to be sick... so after a quick shower i sat back down in bed to try and regain my balance/get the room to stop spinning. that was maybe an hour or two ago, i'm feeling a little bit better now but not by much. so yeah, took the day off because i'm not about to drive to class feeling like this. but i do feel really bad for having to bail on the last day of the group project!!! especially because i had some really funny ideas for what we were working on and despite it taking up my weekend, it was fun working on this little mini-project.
but, there'll be plenty of opportunity for me to help out throughout the semester. one group project that has nothing to do with my grade isn't worth risking driving all the way to school when i can barely walk through my apartment without having to hold onto something. hopefully it's just some gunk in my ear or something that'll work itself out, i don't really ever get sick like this or i guess have random problems like this so it's kind of scary when things just kind of come out of nowhere. and then there's still homework looming over me, waiting to get finished... thankfully, it's not a still life this time. my professor had us pull words/phrases from a bowl and we glued them down to paper to make sentence prompts and we have to draw something based off of that.
my prompt ended up being something right up my alley, but i don't know if i should hold back since it Is a college art class and not my platform to just go all the way and do what i would normally do. either way, it's due tuesday so.. i should probably get on that. hard to draw when it feels like you're on tumble dry. it does feel nice to just chill at the computer for once and not have to be stressing out over anything in particular. guess i'm gonna head off for now, just gonna play some SSO and maybe start organizing the rest of our stuff if i start feeling better. i'll see ya later =]
