Hello! I’m Still Here… I Swear…

As has become rather customary on my blog, I’ve been very silent… at least until I uploaded that blog on horseradish a few days ago. You’d think, what with all this extra time on my hands, that I’d be blogging up a storm. And it’s not like there’s no shortage of topics to talk about. There’s COVID-19. There’s the fact that cops haven’t stopped murdering black people in cold blood in our streets (FTR… justice for George Floyd. Black Lives Matter. Fuck the police. ACAB). More trans men and woman are dying this year. Trump is still president, and an absurdly high number of Leftists still think he’s better than a Democrat, despite four years of evidence that he’s the worst thing to happen to this country since at least Bush Jr, and is absolutely the worst president of my (now 33-year) lifetime.

I genuinely didn’t think things could get worse than 2016. Holy shit was I wrong.

So. Fucking. Wrong.

And yet, despite all this, I stay silent. I’m not here talking about the pandemic, or the protests, or Trump.

Why is that?

Because I just don’t want to.

[Read more…]

Quick Blog and Personal Update (That Ableism Post I Promised)

I can’t remember exactly how long ago it was, only that it feels like it was in 2016, when I promised a blog post about ableism and words like “stupid”. Of course, that never materialized, but I kept posting here about how it would be “soon”.

In one blog post I put up a tiny bit more recently (back in August of 2017), I talked about how I actually had a private deadline. No one will believe it, but that deadline is actually approaching. It’s Monday.

Yeah, I did honestly give myself that long.

Why?

[Read more…]

I Saw a Stranger in the Mirror…

I mentioned in my last post that something a bit scary happened to me. No one was hurt, no one else was involved, but it was scary nonetheless. It was all mental, and disturbing, because it dragged up memories and feelings I haven’t had in over 15 years. And I’m not really sure what to do with that because I am as far away from how I felt about life and myself 15 years ago as it’s possible to be.

So anyways…

Content Warning for mention of suicide, for discussion of anxiety, stress, and depression, and talk of (I think) dissociation(?).

[Read more…]

In Memory of Grandpa

Grandpa Sal as a Young Man in ROTC

Grandpa Sal as a Young Man in ROTC

On the morning of Friday, December 1st, I had dropped my parents off at the airport. They were heading to Atlanta for a conference. Later in the day, I drove over to work to get my schedule for the coming week. While I was heading there, Dad had rented yellow Mustang convertible for their week, and had texted me a picture of it. So I got to work, got my schedule, and hung out for a bit.

Then I got a phone call from my mom, who was crying. At first, she could barely talk, and two horrible thoughts went through my head. First, I thought she and Dad had gotten into a bad accident. Then I thought my brother, and best friend, Aaron, had gotten into an accident.

What she finally told me did not make me feel better.

At all.

Her dad, my grandpa, in Connecticut, had had a heart attack. He was in the hospital on life support.

Not long after, Dad called me. Grandma was taking him off life support, so he wouldn’t suffer.

I picked up my parents and my brother at the airport the next morning, and we went straight to Connecticut.

That side of my family is Catholic. The wake was Wednesday. The funeral was Thursday. And we came back home on Thursday night.

[Read more…]

Quick Life Update

I apologize for the massively decreased posting here. I’m not leaving. A lot of things are in the way right now. So there’s a few reasons for my seeming silence here…

The first is the fact that the publicize feature is broken. In the past, when I published a post, it automatically got sent out to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, and even LinkedIn. Now I have to do all that manually. I don’t have a problem with this for APotW and GGS, but for more in-depth posts I want people to dig into, the extra step of manually putting these out on my social networks is kinda annoying.

The second is that things in my life have taken an… interesting… turn. I work at Teavana, and Starbucks has announced that it will be closing all Teavana’s by Spring 2018. Unless I’m working at Starbucks by that time (they will have to hire me as whatever their equivalent of a team lead is, or as an assistant manager, and at a higher hourly wage than what I’m making now, which is $10), I’ll post my thoughts on all of this, on Teavana, and stuff like that. I’d call it a “tell all”, but it’s just going to be my opinion, others will disagree, and, well…

Teavana is, perhaps, not the most popular place in the tea community, and there are good reasons for that. But there’s a lot of good at Teavana, as well, not the least of which is that it has actually served as a reliable stepping stone for people interested in giving up soda and coffee and the like and want to move beyond the bagged stuff… so it won’t all be bad.

As for the third thing…

[Read more…]

Reminder: GGS, AP of the W, and Self Care in General All Open for Submissions

I just want to remind readers that Self Care in general, as well as Great Guitar Solos and Astronomy Picture of the Week are open for submissions. I’m eventually going to run out of stuff to post in these series, and would love to know what space pictures/videos/ideas you find interesting, what guitar solos you love, and what videos, pictures, recipes, etc you just enjoy and make you feel good, so I can post them here.

Don’t be shy! I’m genuinely curious, and I’d be happy to share it!

I’m Heading Back to New York

My flight back to New York is scheduled  for 3:30pm. Assuming it isn’t delayed, I’m probably boarding now. And that’s it…

The end of my awesome vacation with my brother in Georgia.

Back to…

New York, Teavana, parents… life…

I think maybe I should move back to Georgia…

Vacation Note: I’m On My Way to Georgia

For those who don’t know, I live in New York. But at the moment, I’m boarding a flight to Georgia. I’ll be there until April 25th. I’m very excited.

I’ve got a lot planned. I’m going to be rooming with my awesome brother. We’re going to a festival, cooking food, and hanging out. I’m also going to be checking out the Anthropology graduate programs at a school or two down there.

I’ll have Self Care posts scheduled, and I will attempt to post a few other things, but I can’t make any promises beyond the Self Care posts. I’m continuing the checking out. I want to enjoy this time and not be stressed.

 

I’m trying my best to avoid things that stress me this week. I need less stress in my life, even if it’s temporary.

I should say… when I say that I have “a lot planned”, a very large part of that plan is just relaxing and enjoying myself, not stressing about anything. That’s the biggest thing, actually. I don’t set up itineraries for a vacation. To me, that seems to defeat the purpose. I don’t want to be on any more of time crunch then I have to be. One day, I might have enough money to take an open-ended vacation… maybe. That day is not today. But 7 days… I can enjoy that.

This is definitely self care for me.

See y’all in a week!