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reading The Eltingville Club. it's kinda hard to read. i'm surprised i haven't read much like it before. it's nails on chalkboard. but very accurate to what it's portraying
getting over the dog thing. a very psychicly startling incident
just got really really mad. third time in my life iāve ever been that mad. but this guyās dog just bit my dog. beck is okay (i think), but augh. i feel bad for getting that mad. but nobody bites my dog. anyway i said fuck you, this guy said say that to my face, i ran at him and he ran away. ok now i have to calm down hahaaa :(
i feel like alexander mcqueen shows up on the wikipedia did you knows like once a month. dude has disproportionate wikipedia front page presence
j-fest over
E made me a cocktail it was so good. they are so cool
j-fest tomorrow boiz
brag moment: someone i know brought my zines to brazil and read my poetry at a poetry circle and now i have brazilian followers. entering my "come to brazil" era
my opinion on the netflix one piece live action show: it is bad. i do like the guy who plays luffy's take on luffy. everything else is unfortunately poorly done netflix house style crud. which sucks cuz i wanted to like it :(
the comedic timing/dramatic pacing of the show is particularly effed up and i think that's one of those things that matters most to me. also it's so mud gray and dark wtf!!!
been feeling a very weird but also warm kind of melancholy the last couple days. i think i might want to leave st louis next year. which is weird to feel after spending hours organizing my cute lil house lol. but maybe itās time. dunno, weāll see
finally getting my music stuff set up again. might try to crank out some tunes for the first time im a while
i made a drastic decision just now. i'm going to cut the burger king impossible burger out of my life.
anyone else on flounder nerdy enough to be kind of excited for the live action one piece show to come out tomorrow? :P
i feel like i forgot how to write again. i need someone to come pee on my floor or spit on me so i remember
organizing all day. tired but my house is more in order than it ever has been
finished i claudius, would recommend. derek jacobi is a great actor as showcased in the wonderful cadfael
it is my natural rhythm to post here every two days.
went on a float trip yesterday with some friends. it was fun and we also toured meramec caverns. i'm a big cave fan and it made me kinda sad how concreted over that particular cave is. it's definitely leaning hard toward tourist attraction less toward "check out this cool cave". it was a super fun day tho. also every time i think about caves i think about ted's caving page
i've been watching "i, claudius" and really enjoying it. it's basically the distillation of absolute power corrupting absolutely. just a buncha rich romans murdering each other. but in the subtlest ways, like every single murder is a poisoning made to look like an accident
finally deleted like 5000 random photos from my phone so i have storage space now
playing super mario world and ddr, organizing my house. big chillin
watched the cabinet of dr caligari last night with C. would recommend to all you Filmheads out there
just realized i'm gonna have like 4 days off in a row this weekend. so cool
one thing i really respect about the mario romhack community is that it feels like a true diy space. there is no money involved. no one is trying to earn money, and no one is obsessed with spending money (like in magic the gathering / dnd / etc communities). everyone is making art because they want to make art. and some of them are damn good at it.
the lack of monetary constraint on art allows for almost complete creative expression. there is true anarchy in the mario romhack community. and some really great forum discussions about the nature of art in general. i love it. i think i realize now how much this affected me/my values as a kid
flounder at work (the front desk)
exp open mic was really good, so many good exp open mic performers. there was even a diy electronics demo. it was cool. no open mic compares. or even comes close. next time i wanna do something real expiremental
E's dog rolled in something really stinky, it was the stinkiest thing i've ever smelled a dog roll in. i wish them the best in unstinking that lovely sweet dog
i've been feeling like a bit of a shutin lately. i think i have been underestimating the power of just one afternoon/morning off. i had some good chill time before the open mic and it was rejuvenating. gotta balance that shit
nothing, not even a night of drinking, can stop me from my incredible goal of organizing my basement
https://twitter.com/unicouniuni3
^^this is the cutest cat on twitter
the comments on youtube jar jar binks compilations are so heartwarming. everyone just commenting on how much they love jar jar and how underrated he is
in other online news, the ddr community online is insane. they're all running around with soldering tools reconfiguring their ddr pads rewiring and like cutting metal and telling you if you really wanna play ddr you have to "get familiar with a multimeter". this is what 20 years on the internet does to a fan of anything
bugleague it truly is monday. was just thinking about this
listening to thomas dolby
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf-8agXPdFU
i think im gonna limit myself to 2 beers a night out unless iām somewhere where i will be dancing or at a big big party. this is called ārowenās two beers limit with two giant exceptionsā
anyway tonite kinda rocked i read poetry at our zine release then E and i went to friendlyās played foosball and the basketball game (1 dollar there gets you 10 tries on the basketball hoop game???) then we played guitar hero world tour (the one i had as a kid). literally what could make that sequence of events better????????
ive begun to use the :P face dangerously and without caution
got bit by one million mosquitos
just did my first song on expert on ddrš¤
now that's what i'm talking about
kinda sad that wikipedia only lists six hoards in their list of hoards in north america. america needs more hoards
flounder at work
a return to form for "a weekend where rowen does a bunch of stuff and hangs out with friends and it's fulfilling as hell". went to a pool friday night (K's aunt's pool) and it was chill as hell. and K made vegan sausage and potstickers at the end of the night and jesus christ it was good.
saturday, saw my little brother. felt bad cuz i was real tired, but we had a good time. my dad's cancer has not spread past his bladder and seems to be under control, so that's real cool. he is still having a tough time tho. he's not great and managing fear and anxiety and this is clearly really hard on him. trying to be there as much as i can
that night, went to a demolition derby for the first time. it was cooler than i expected it to be. i didn't even really know what a demolition derby was. turns out it's just cars running into each other until the only one that can still move is declared the winner. also rode a nauseating carnival ride. felt nostalgic
later that night, went to handlebar and rehab with E and N, two bars i had never been to but that hold fast in the hearts and minds of many in stl. it was also the aftermath hours of the naked bike ride. there were so many people. it was a lot of fun. at the end of the night we went into the garden to look at the corpse flower blooming. it was after everyone else had left, was chill and good
this morning, dedicated/staked my soul on finishing the moment zine before our meeting at 3:30. nearly made it, had to push it back to 4. was a nice rush of forced productivity and i think the zine came out good. excited because next sunday we're releasing it and the sunday after that i'm bringing my other zine to the experimental open mic. i love zines
all this to say i have done things and enjoyed them
now i'm at work
watched "bee movie" for the first time last night. i thought it was pretty good
i think i accidentally went too far into "rowen's hole" (that revered metaphor for my introversion) ... excited to hang out with me friends this weekend
also: i finished my zine yay. now i must finish the other one before we assemble on sunday
6ish months on zoloft. i give it the thumbs up
had a real good night last night
i'm pretty bad at word games. i'm also pretty bad at jeopardy. i'll admit it: i wish i was better at both of these. i want to be a jeopardy god. i really do.
the world isnāt ready for my moderately improved ddr skills
yall elon musk gets me so ticked. usually i can compartmentalize my hatred of rich people. but jesus christ
trying to up my GPH (grunts per hour)
what have i done lately. L had her bday it was fun. working on my zine. need to work on the other zine because that one has a real deadline for when it has to be done. watched megamind. saw the corpse flower. ac got fixed today. feels good. feels alive. had a funny dream this morning. i was kind of like... a performance art political pundit in the dumbest way. it was interesting. need to stop eating so much of the free shit offered at job. no more. listening to altin gun. listening to chill videogame youtube playlists.
excited to see my dog again. he has been vacationing away from the heat at my aunt's. picking him up tonight. miss that fella
my AC is out ugh
they canāt fix it till monday ugh
on mj lenderman^^
catchup post:
nelsonville music festival was really fun. good camping good music good people and i really felt the vibes. it was real midwest, out in a wooded field, the tunes were country good. danced a lot, slept like a rock, still waking up from it
found out monday my dad has bladder cancer. putting how i feel about that on hold while he finds out more about it. trying to be as supportive as i can to him and the fam especially my little brother. my gut says he will be okay. my mom beat cancer and i believe my dad will too. goddamn coldwater creek
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coldwater_Creek_(Missouri_river_tributary)
painted a shelf with E, did nothing last night except blink and exist. been watching old mario romhack videos. the mario romhack community is great. the mario romhack community is a very queer space and also radicalized me as a little middle schooler. very cool people
the wildest thing about scatman john is that his lyrics show an extreme depth of knowledge about his emotional state. itās beautiful and thatās a fact
driving to the nelsonville music festival with K
saw the barbie movie with E last night, goodfilm i.m.o.
reading stephen king short stories is funny because 10% of them are about evil trucks
saw shady bug last night they rocked
my new thing is playing ddr and sweating my ass off
yesterday i played an hour of DDR so i wouldn't be nervous for my one-act. then we put it on and i think it went real well!
there was a noise performance where a guy read a poem about a couch, and i thought that was real cool. i like how much art there is in the world, people just keep making it it's crazy
the day before that E and i played guitar hero which i havent done in ~15 years. they kicked my ass. we also watched an episode of ghost whisperer which i also haven't done in ~15 years. i kinda forgot it was a show. it seems to have been lost to time more than a lot of shows from that era
i've got a pretty clear idea of what my next zine is going to be. i have to do art. gotta find time to do art. my head is a jumble, i've been so busy. and this next weekend i'm going to the nelsonville music festival. and between then and now i'm going to two shows and maybe a third. you can really pack life full of stuff if you're feeling up to it
dizzy and here,
~~IDI BLASKS~~
people really forgot about the pirate bay dot org. you still dont have to pay to watch stuff!! they charge nothing!!
sitting in my car outside the sophia m sachs butterfly house because i got here too early for my meeting. i never want to go to a meeting again. my job should just be a droning sludge of impossible database conundrum like it is 85% of the time
wow jeffrey lewis is coming to the sinkhole next tuesday. thatās cool!!!!!
more on twitter. unfortunately i canāt leave twitter because about once a month i think of something funny to tweet. am i to just abandon that?
just watched moonrise kingdom, still a good movie. E and i figured out fallout boyās Dance, Dance is (we believe) on both DDR and Guitar Hero. unfortunately that song is fuckin hard on ddr. will they be at the same bpm? only time will tell
i know it's an old and cold take at this point, but:
the fact that you can't look at tweet replies without stepping over the gross dead detritus of the blue check people? that is legit fucked up. it makes me sad. it makes me feel pain. it gives me pain. i wish it didn't. i wish i didn't care about twitter. but he really fucked that website up. take it or leave it, it is actually fucked up. he fucked it up.
floundering at work
E and i have been joking about playing ddr and guitar hero at the same time. but also, can it be done. could we do it. what would be the best way to do it. how could we pull it off. how much practice would it take. would we become gods if we pulled it off. would we ascend. would we finally be cleansed and holy in the eyes of god
what have i done lately. been sick. there's a show tomorrow i might go to. or i might not. cleaned my house today. swam on the 4th with my friends, a certified good time
went on some good dog walks lately. there's nothing more spiritually fulfilling than a dog walk. i am grateful to have those
sick and playing pikmin for the first time
just started pikmin 2. i like how it's like, a capitalist satire? like there's a line that's literally: "Good morning, workers! Ready for another day of toiling for the profit of your company?" kinda wild for pikmin the game about the cute pikmin
listening to playlists of "silly" songs on youtube. this is a new discovery for me. i like these playlists of "silly" songs
theres a big rainbow outside
i'm terrible at the nyt spelling bee but i get a lot of delight from the words my brain makes that aren't words
im like the guy from The Bear except instead of working 24/7 at a restaurant i write a poem every couple weeks
this is the first day iāve completely stayed home for like 2 months. i feel insane!!!
im sick and i dontt wanna be!!! its not that bad tho
remembering when i used to be active in the mario fan game community and made a mario level once that was controversial because it was "too abstract" for a mario level but took 2nd place in a mario level competition. there were pages of forum debate! those were the good old days. i was like 14
i have a hard time talking to my family members these days (besides R). i don't know what exactly it is. i think with my dad i just am tired of being his therapist. every time we talk he brings up the same 5 problems in his life and i'm just like "yup. that's up to you, friend!" it's tiring when he refuses to take the steps to change stuff but then complains about that stuff. right? right? i do love my family tho
went to a show monday night that was really fun. i love dancing. i wish stl would dance more. my mission is to get stl to dance more. just a little more.
E lent me a book about cute little dragons that grow leaves on their heads that make tea, it was good. also i am still reading short stories by stephen king and i recommend "mrs todd's shortcut"
when i worked at pizza hut one of the cooks used to put on system of a down - thatās where i heard āold school hollywoodā which is such a funny song. honestly itās great. just a pop metal band guy singing about when he played in a real weird baseball game. one of a kind
just had a rehearsal for my lil one act play and it made me really excited about it!!!! love love love that my friends are down to Act in my Play
bout to diy mod my ddr pads like a FREAK
the wes anderson new film about an asteroid was good
drinking a diet dr pepper, almost cried listening to the ballad of peter pumpkinhead
some Works i've consumed lately:
1. saw tegan and sara on wednesday. didn't know them before. they were good! they're both really good singers and they've been around for quite some time and have a lot of cool songs
2. watched 'when harry met sally' with some friends. it was like watching an older well-made romcom, which is what it was. both the leads were pretty dang good in it
3. ok but i wanna talk about vangers. vangers is crazy. everything about vangers tickles me. the aesthetic is incredible. the story is desolate and scary and goofy and incomprehensible and filled with that sort of very personal existential ennui only those kinds of incomprehensible stories can be filled with. the ideas are disparate and barely functional. the concept of humanity evolving into a bunch of bug guys who get cut off from earth (and our universe) and live in these little pocket tunnels from nowhere, holding festivals for past nuclear wars and spitting jargon at each other, but actually the whole game is about driving a car/carapace around a creepy crawly landscape while out-of-tune midi banjos go pluck pluck plink. i'm not a huge fan of dividing art by country, but there is definitely some Russian connection to the Roadside Picnic sort of tale: something so alien we'll never understand it and that's what makes the story so human. exploring the edge of imagination and creativity to celebrate imagination and creativity. it's the most intriguing game i will never actually play because at the end of the day it looks really annoying to drive the little car around ha ha ha
slacking in updating my journal, which i'm sure will be a lodestone for posterity's policy-making, and so i must correct that
yesterday i called in sick from work and went to six flags with R C and J. it was really fun. J had water bottle earrings, cool as hell. the boss is still my favorite. rode mr freeze which was wild but not as wild as i remember
then i drove to south county mall and bought two DDR games from v stock. i used to play DDR frequently (probably about 5 years ago) and i forgot how fun it is. it is so fun. i played for like an hour and sweated every possible sweat out of me.
on my walk with beck i listened to one of the worst spotify discover weekly playlists i have ever been handed. made me worried about my music taste
thinking about working on my website again. i also need to upload the newest moment zine and my zine to the internet. also i need to mail my zine to P who asked for it like 2 months ago. i have so many little tasks
tonite going to see a band i have never listened to and have decided not to listen to at all until i go see them
just remembered i'm on ratemyprofessor
https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/professor/2438172
imagine being a baby and learning what a dog is
i think i figured out some of the roiling brain, i am back to turning slowly like a lighthouse
so so so so so tired
frankly, i love everyone very much
my life is swirling and roiling i have no idea what im doing but my thought is i just keep doing things and existing. mostly it's really good
just got caught in the rain walking dog like 2 miles from my house
vangers is cool as hell and the soundtrack rules
the work softball team won our first game of the year yesterday
had a long extensive dream last night where i was reading a david foster wallace-esque book (i have never read a david foster wallace book and maybe never will). it mostly concerned this middle-age father navigating needlessly complex business/high society relationships. then at the end there was a rapidfire series of short chapters from the perspective of each of his family members, revealing them one by one to be cruel and insane. the first of these was from the perspective of his young son, who secretly loved guns and had killed many people. as the dream went on it sort of "zoomed out" to where by the end it was mostly about me reading the book and i realized i had accidentally skipped a bunch of chapters and i was like "jesus christ this book is too long"
remembered: the book was printed on shitty glossy paper and was 8.5x11, the font was a sort of "intro to literature" anthology font, it was a nice font tho. thin, sans serif and rounded, especially the chapter headings
this is the second night in the last few days i've had a real vivid dream. the last one was about a giant feast my brother and i attended, it was at a location kinda like my childhood home in iowa. we woke up the next day and there was still tons of food outside, mostly pastries, just tons of them, you could walk around and see stacks and stacks. i ate a lot of chocolate. every so often i have one of these "feast" dreams, which is a funny recurring dream to have
what i have been reading in real life: read another bolano short story collection, last evenings on earth, which i very much enjoyed. now reading more stephen king short stories, skeleton crew. have made my way into 2 novels, but it is hard to real whole book
saw the film Gleaming The Cube last night. would highly recommend. great film with great skateboarding
i finally guessed the magic grow capsule correctly at work yesterday
and i just won again today. here we go. this is what my life has been building towards
had a great weekend, saw two good shows on saturday with friends, two shows of very different vibes, one in the stone basement of the coolest building in st louis, one at the improv shop
sunday i played my final session of dnd with my dnd pals before one of them moves to chicago. it made me happy and sad. i was playing as a humpty dumpty-esque egg with arms and legs and he got to hatch into a dragon at the end. when i inevitably journey to chicago (hopefully many times) to see bugleague i will try and see amie too
and i had a great jam and convo with a very good friend of mine at the end o the night!
this week is going to be extremely emotionally weird for me, i can already tell. i feel like i'm already completely fragmented and it's monday morning. i can only hope to stay the course. like paddling a little rowboat
i emailed tex crick and told him to come to st louis next time heās in the US and he said he would
listening to the books
tired today. bit of a head haze, turning my head is making me kinda dizzy
won't be going to the sorority house show but i'm pre-regretting not seeing harrison play
being judgeable and listening to Jamiroquai and Citizen King
went to a good show last night. couldn't sleep afterwards, got like 4 hours. i feel alright though
my work softball team is playing two games tonight, back to back. this doesn't seem like it should be allowed, nonetheless i will play. last time we played they put me at second base which was exciting and terrifying. i got one person out by throwing to first and fumbled a couple other balls. all in all not bad for a creature who often barely feels like a physical form
vitamins
discovering tex crick. i'm a fan of this guy!
listening to this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN8M2irJVJA
i am going to the show at the sinkhole tonight. writing it here so i make myself do it
listening to lhasa de sela
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIJhrzAuWcw
did too much this weekend. it was fun but boy am i tired
back in the office after five days out of the office. the mild obsession with our new magic capsule gambling ring (wherein everyone bets on which animal will come out of a magic grow capsule randomly selected each day) seems to have only grown in my time off
listening to soul coughing
i think over the year(s) i have pared down my addictions to the ones i am okay with having. unfortunately one of those is spending too much money. i have been spending too much money and i should probably stop.
time of change for rowen conry. like a lighthouse rotating
https://uproxx.com/entertainment/heathcliff-interview-peter-gallagher/
^^ a fun interview with the guy who does heathcliff (peter gallagher). i love how in every interview they're like "how do you come up with this wacky shit?" and he's like "well actually i am trying to do comedy and be funny. i make the comic to be funny." the secret to absurdism is even middle-aged newspaper cartoonists can be good at it
i have today off and also the next four
got the rest of my cavities filled yesterday. turns out i had three more, i thought i had two more. so that is a total of seven cavities
i'm trying to draw in a bit of a different style for my next zine. last night i figured out somewhat what that's gonna be
might not make it to the exp open mic. feeling rather "rowen's hole". some folks i like invited me to go to bar k too, but i've been running around a lot, i feel like i have stuff i wanna work on
i've been reading random sections of Cindy Crabb's The Encyclopedia of Doris. i found it in a bookstore a long while ago (while m and i were visiting alex in sf!). i think cindy crabb is really cool. she seems to be a person whose intense love of the world and people has helped her but also hurt her, but she doesn't let that stop her and she figures out the real things that matter in life. she's a real cool writer.
going to start saying yesh all the time like they do in mutts
working the front desk is like dancing. it's exhausting but it can be fun
everyone makes too much good art, is too funny, is too cool, does too many cool things. when does it end???
i'm trying to think of something electronic i can do at the experimental open mic tuesday but i can't really think of anything At This Current Time
bugleague's grandma recommended the poet Kahlil Gibran to me. i have now read one poem by Kahlil Gibran. it's this one:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58703/ambition-56d23d523f2e8
i would say my first impression of the poem is: huh
she also said i looked like lord tennyson
im too much of a stan but im going to say it: heathcliff has been really good lately
OH! and i ran into an old friend at the garden who is a middle school teacher, she told me she showed her 8th graders my heathcliff essay and now some of them are into heathcliff. that: made me happy :)
listening to rupa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2avGFXiueo
half day at work
had a real good time at the wednesday show
walking my dog listening to the inimitable halcali, the weather is perfect :)
listening to geggy tah
big fan of people
lately i have gone camping (fun) read poem (fun) listened to the glover soundtrack (good)
evilswampmonster told me about scrunching up every muscle in your body as a stress relief technique i will be using this in the future
the folks i work with are good, hearing isobel and cameron bicker every day can sometimes be annoying but it can also be deeply comforting
had a tough visit from my mom and stepdad it was so awkward, sometimes we just don't connect. and they are so weird to service workin folks it makes me uncomfortable
people are so good at making art
wallpaper
the wallpaper is giving me strength
the wallpaper is making me powerful
the wallpaper is empowering me
building character
the wallpaper is the one true metaphor for life
the wallpaper is the godkey
the wallpaper is the static that confuses the discomfort mesh
future scientists awaken and key archaic runes into unknowable computers and the answer is always wallpaper
i think a lot about (SOPRANOS SPOILER!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
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that time tony soprano took peyote
one more wall
waiting at the dentist to get my cavities filled. i have too many cavities to fill in one appointment, this is the first of two.
back on wallpaper grind, got another roll up this morning. have to work an event tonight, not looking forward to it!
friends, sometimes i wonder just what the heck i'm doing. whirling around whirling whirling. i think today i have reached a sort of "0 state", where everything i've done for the past 3-4 months has concluded, and now i go into starting some new things.
inspired by bugleague to think about goals. here are some goals i have right now:
-finish putting up wallpaper
-get all my books out of the basement
-learn more about my camera. i want to learn how to do shots on a timer and also learn how to make focus adjustments myself instead of auto
-use my lil screen printer. this would involve me coming up with something to screen print
-i want to get more light into my living room via a mirror
having a fair day today. last night i recovered from the weekend and watched the vsauce guy talk words and played super mario world. that was the first game i ever owned, on a gameboy sp i bought at an antique fair. still using the same cartridge. it's been fifteen years. now that's gaming!
a big weekend. went to L + Iās party on friday and it was a lot of fun. good times good people, drinking beer. got some good photos. power of camera. memory power
saturday: sleepy morning, putzing around. hungover, woke up early, fell back asleep. love my dog. played tennis with R at tower grove park. we are both out of practice (we were never in practice). hung out with L and K watching L play twilight princess beating up ice wolves and lizard guys. made a pact with K, a competitive pact. trying to draw, change up how im drawing
sunday: wildtimes. R and i went to six flags. the boss made me die and live again. heard a teen say āthis is like robloxā. took a hard nap after. had some good thoughts. very interested right now in looking at shadows. looked at a lot of good shadows on my last walk with beck
now: sitting in my backyard. distant frogs. nice breeze. something is moving and beck is looking around trying to see what it is
-idi
listening to the creatures
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tqub_fpffDA
i think that fact that babies smile bodes well for the world
did some midnight wallpapering last night. i'm worried i won't have enough to do the whole room. i'm 3 rolls in i have 6 more rolls. i've covered about 1.25 walls. but also, two of the walls have windows and that'll save some paper
some guy i barely knew from when i was working the census messaged me last night and told me he works in the natural gas wells of the northeastern US, like fracking i guess, and said it was good money but tough work if i was looking for a job. i told him thanks for the info but i have a job, he said cool and that he "knows it's evil"
listening to the brawsh album. i think josh writes the best angst lyrics in stl
played minecraft online with my little brother last night. he is really into farting right now. i think that's the most little kid thing he's ever been into and i really respect it
still struggling to figure out where i'm headed next as far as "making art" goes now that i finished my zine, but i think i've just gotta accept it for now and let it happen as it happens. isabel is doing a thing where every day you draw/paint a head to get better at drawing heads, and i might join her in that
spent some of last night organizing and it really helped my mood. i'm gonna do more of that tonight
listening to the beatles like a FREAK
the experimental open mic was a lot of fun. props to mere for creating so many good opportunities for people to do art in stl
yesterday went on a hike at cliff cave with friends, very fun. then saw R do improv for the first time in a while. it was really funny. met Rās friend T who is really cool
today i have been taking it very easy, playing twilight princess and putting up my new wallpaper. i put up a whole roll before the earthshattering realization that the rabbits on the wallpaper were upside down. thought: can i have the rabbits be upside down is that funny does that have enough irony, decided no, took the roll down and now i am summoning the strength to start all over again
ā
update 2 rolls up
sleepy. boutta go hear people do experimental things into an open mic. ready to chill out this weekend
listened to a lot of nav katze today
look i have no real opinions on garfield, seems like a fine cat comic, he hates mondays that's funny (more a heathcliff guy myself), but i will say Arbuckle is a great last name. it conveys banality perfectly.
woke up at dawn this morning for no reason
--
thinking more about newspaper comics. Cathy is definitely underrated. she's due for a resurgence.
mary worth and mark trail were small obsessions of mine a few years ago. mary worth's stalker aldo kelrast is one of the craziest characters to be thought of and placed within the context he was placed.
https://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/10/18/eye.ent.worth/
when i was a kid, i read a lot of calvin and hobbes, foxtrot, baby blues, pearls before swine, zits, and get fuzzy. we would get the paper and i'd try to read all the comics. my dad didn't like mutts, but i thought it was cute.
annoying joyposting below:
usually when i feel happy my mind is immediately like "this is wrong, something is wrong, you better do your best to figure out what is wrong and obsess over that do it now go go go." for the first time(?) in my life, i feel like i'm just having a good old time. i mean every day still has its stresses and weirdness and stuff is always going to be weird and strange and idi blasks is always going to wander through life looking at things and blinking and doing front flips in their head, but: i really like my life. i like my friends, who are really funny and nice, and i like my dog, who is very sweet and kind. i like my backyard, where i can sit at night when it's warm, and i like cornelius's album 69/96, which i have been listening to nonstop for the last week. i like the weather and i like being so close to the park. i like that i'm forced by my good friend beck to go out and walk around three times a day. i like the acquaintances i know and their art and the surrounding little community i get to live in. i like my coworkers and what i know about their lives. i like hanging out. everything feels okay. i think that's cool.
got my ears pierced
myst is such a cool game and artpiece. i remember playing it as a kid and solving 0 of the puzzles and having so much fun just being weirded out by the whole thing. i love getting weirded out.
my house is a mess, i've been busy. tomorrow i have the day off and i'm gonna clean. working the festival sucked, but i got to talk to my coworkers a lot and they're all a really good bunch of folks.
sitting here eating some spectacular grapes
yet another cool and good show at the splash pad. pleasants made me cry a lil. then 4 hrs of sleep for idi blasks before the big work festival. i wore my inspector gadget coat. now i sleep
had a dream my friends met on a grassy hill and we danced. pretty good dream
hitting a creative wall. not sure what to do next. playing a video game for the first time in a long while (twilight princess, on mothbaby's suggestion)
rapidly fluctuating emotion week
ā
later: caught up with A. found out my intel was wrong, he is not moving thank god. my kindred spirit
saw this picture at the art museum yesterday by 3rd grader abigail b. big fan, i feel like this is kinda what i want to try to do with my color art
google maps scares me. there's so many houses!
good day in kville, back home with dog on lap. saw 3 more people i knew than i estimated i would
getting back into reading the left hand of darkness, near the end now. i like this plodding story of weird love and ice
grateful for the people in my life who give me a lot of joy, a hearty heart hands to you all
ā-IDI BLASKS
saw dehd they were great, saw fellow flounderer funkengine and her friend great to see them both, saw N and L and their cute baby, saw C who now is a bouncer at a bar, saw les mis with mothbaby, treeprophet, G, & S, saw N who i forgot is a wild individual with a wild energy and soul, heās learning roundabout on the guitar. and i sung karaoke !
rose bud thorn time
rose: les mis is good yall, and itās funny to me how stuck it is in so many peoples minds
bud: tomorrow in kirksville and also getting back to see my dog
thorn: someone i very vaguely know is texting me hardcore forwardly and itās making me very uncomfortable!!!!!
bout to go to my college town to see a band i last saw like the day before covid became a thing
been having a lot of dreams where my dad is disappointed in me. please stop dad
saw a good show and had good conversations there (wednesday). then (thursday) i played on the mbg softball team against the st louis city council. they won. i want to get better at softball.
the weather is making me very happy
ālaterā
havenāt been out of the city in a while. almost forgot about patches of wood followed by patches of field followed by patches of wood. listening to talking heads which i associate with walking around kirksville at night. remembering tripping with E and A, leaving, driving realizing i was still pretty dang high, walking beck thinking a man standing outside the wooden nickel in silhouette was some kind of god figure, going home and staring at beck (who used to like sleeping across the room in the closet), drawing much comfort from the fact that he was with me, and going to sleep.
flounder #flounder
fantastic weekend i especially loved any time i was outside especially at the park with my friends. got a camera inspired by the excellent picture taking of princess-jesus. i have already taken 1000 photos of beck (see below). my goal is to take a picture of a cryptid.
saw my grandpa and he told me his grandpa used to tell him stories about bears in the woods, then take him out in the woods and carve a squash (???) into a thing that made a terrifying noise when blown into. then he would blow into it.
my grandpa is a wild person who truly emerged from the annals of the earth and spent his childhood walking around being weird and running bookie money for the mob. then he became an alcoholic and gave my dad the shittiest childhood. then he stopped drinking and became an asshole but an asshole who cared and always stocked vess soda in his fridge and was a weirdly early adopter of the internet. then, slowly, with age, he lost the "caring" part and became just an asshole. but he can still be fun to talk to.
my family is full of weirdos. all weirdo family, and i do love them
talking on the phone to a bunch of old people makes me jealous of the amount of time these retired folks have
i love dogs
in a daze. feeling a lot of interesting, strange, somewhat new, good and bad emotions about a number of people in my life (vague!). isabel told me to go on a hike by myself this weekend. i think i'm gonna do it because i need that.
the other isobel told me to watch a youtube documentary about an internet celebrity i've never heard of. the two isoabels stand at each corner of my life, heralds of the various possible paths one can take.
finished roberto bolano's the return. here are my favorite stories from the book:
1. the return
2. clara (influenced by the fact that there's a great audiobook version of this on youtube)
3. detectives
4. snow
but really they're all pretty good and flow together into a little dream. i'm going to read more of him
the mood: like i could do fifteen consecutive forward rolls, then do fifteen more
the dungeons and dragons movie
i saw the dungeons and dragon movie with the movie stars in it
in other news, my dnd group is talking about "wrapping it up" because folks are moving out of stl. so many people are moving out of stl soon. change is hard and weird
speaking of weird, i've had a real weird feeling the last couple days. i oftentimes feel like i'm hanging from a ladder. my whole life is hanging from this ladder. sometimes i can climb up the ladder at the rate of like 1 rung every 3-4 months. sometimes i can only hang on. the real bad thing is to go down the ladder, haven't done that in a while
semi-related, in grad school i decided i had made it to "phase 2" of my life. i don't really know what that means. but sometimes i ask myself "is phase 2 over, is this phase 3" but no, definitely not. maybe when i'm like 40, that'll be phase 3
i live very slowly. this might be because there is still a large part of me that believes in immortality. that i will live forever. thus, nothing must be done with any haste. everything that has happened will happen again, if it doesn't happen this time i'll catch it the next time. there are no regrets in infinity
this kind of feeling, it's bittersweet
stuff:
1. went to the zine open mic last night for "a moment zine" which i loved. people are out in the world being amazing poets all the time it's incredible. and in such diff ways! sad poems sweet poems funny poems nature poems, all of em i love. glad duke nightboy had the privilege of reading the arch submission too :)
2. big fan of a particular dog walking route i scouted out a week or so ago. you get to walk by this weird donkey statue that looks like a creepy dog at night. but also it feels very "nestled in" to my little neighborhood that i have come to really like a lot
3. been thinking about:
-calling all liquids "lickys"
-a guy who's "so creative" he can't train his dog cuz he keeps putting innovative new spins on the commands and the dog gets confused
-u.f."you" instead of u.f.o. -- is this anything. maybe this is inspirational
tire
s
browsing the st louis tab on bandcamp in classic moldgold fashion. found a guy who does "office blues" music and it's kinda great
https://homeandoffice.bandcamp.com/album/sports-leisure
made pancakes for some pals yesterday, then hung out with some other pals at the park. the cool thing about pals is they're great. tonight is the night of the zine open mic - i'm a little nervous but i'm hoping practicing reading my poems beforehand will make me less nervous. i've picked out the order i'm gonna read em in
tomorrow i go see dungeons and dragons the film with my dnd group which i think is really funny
yesterday i had a real good jam with my friends. there was barking and coughing, spitting sneezing and throwbacks to some classic songs of old. a certified good time. big fan of my friends.
then i had /another/ good jam today with a different friend, wow what are the chances! had fun hanging too. we played a song they wrote about oranges, the lyrics were amazing and i believe i appreciate the orange more now.
then my dog met bugleague's dog. it was one of those dog meetings where they were like "oh huh" and went about their little dog businesses. i love both of those lovely dogs. i learned a bit about goblin and the ways of goblin's world
now: i am going to go food shopping before night comes
it is truly spring. i sit on a folding chair in my little backyard surveying my lot in life. my dog is eating grass. there is a sound sounding like the loudest bee ever but i canāt find it. dogs are barking, people are yelling over the sounds of lawnmowers. clanking and clunking drifting in from the fabrication plant across the street
oftentimes i feel like a jester prince slowly plotting, sitting and doing my thinking. my dog is my familiar. i write curses and praises and these have little magical effects elsewhere far away. other times i feel like a little beetle ambling along climbing over things with much care.
here i am in the little worldā¦.
location update!! i've moved locations. i'm sitting in a fancier chair on the seventh floor of the powell symphony hall backrooms. i'm here for a meeting about database systems. bela fleck is playing tonight. i can see the arch directly out the window if i look up.
floundering at a work event like it's 2022. it's weird to be working an event especially since i've been slacking off at work so much. i think 4 million percent less about work than i used to. still kinda fun to put on my pretend professional persona for a couple hours
i feel myself slowly descending into hermit mode, so i'm fighting to still go out and do things. "rowen's hole" as it's so eloquently been described ha ha, is real and can be helpful but also (shock!) dangerous!
on flounder again at the office of idi blasks
i'm going to start reading nana, which i've always been interested in reading
i've been remembering a lot more dreams lately because my sleep is different i think because of "the medication". the other night i had a dream about this enormous soccer player with square hands who was super famous and i waited in line to talk to him with my friend A who could go in and out of paper at will. the whole thing took place in a mansion-castle sort of location. the soccer player was the brother of the person who previously lived in my house. dreams!
update: nana is interesting. enjoying it. so much drama in nana! i hope the two nanas end up happy but i doubt it's gonna happen
NIGHT!
worked on my zine almost the whole night, i am very excited for when it is done. been thinking a lot tonite about shoemaker-levy 9. i put a collage about it in the zine. one of those things that feels very emotionally profound to me but i don't really know why. it was like astral ballet, hopeful and tragic and strange? something about jupiter being involved, who knows
i'm beginning to worry that my poetry isn't as direct as i want it to be. something to think about
in other news, don cherry is a very good and cool musician.
i feel incredibly whole right now, like i'm doing everything i would want to be doing. it's a good feeling!
saw the sandlot for the first time last night.
finished stephen king's night shift and pivoting focus to bliss montage. my favorite stories were:
i know what you need
sometimes they come back
children of the corn
trucks
enjoying bliss montage so far. tempted to pick up her book severance. i'm going to the bookstore today, if i see it i'll get it
going to guitar center feels like being pranked. fictional location
feeling a lot better today.
enchanted by this exchange from this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeonS_gjVEI
wow, i had the worst nightmare iāve had in a long time. willing today to be good.
day 8 of my medically induced anxiety attack. hanging on hard to the words of every brave internet user who says it gets better after like 3 weeks
one interesting thing about my current state of mind tho: it makes me realize i really have made progress climbing out of anxiety. i used to feel like this all the time. it took me like 10 years but i managed to think my way out of feeling shitty all the time ha
lazy day. been reading "ted's caving page" off and on. i remember reading it long ago but not too much else about it. definitely one of those things that stuck in my mind tho
zoloft making me real real tired. and in other news, my dog is real cute
two days ago i went to a Reading of Poetry
one days ago i went to a cool music show at my friends' house
no days ago i am tired, still i helped someone move some stuff and worked on a moment zine
will probably go to bed early tonite
oh, and i've been shopping around the stand up comedy bit about st. louis seen in the below entry. my friend A said i should draw it out real long and we decided much of it would be dedicated to exalting the beauty of vess soda. personally, i drank vess soda for much of my childhood, did not realize that was a st louis thing. i have new respect for this city even though it was nighttime when i got off the plane
ADIEU
imagining a "office stand up guy" that goes: "i got an email the other day that my pc password's going to expire in 2 days. guess it's time to find a new job!" then everyone laughs
speaking of stand up (something i never watch but have been thinking about a lot lately?) here's an idea for a joke that i legit can't tell if it's funny. here goes: "st louis, st louis huh, yeah beautiful city beautiful place. lovely. i just flew in last night, actually. great town. but hey, except one thing. my flight got in pretty late. when i stepped out of the airport, it was night out i could barely see anything!"
well, that's all from me
update: just performed this office standup bit to my coworkers to WEAK laughter
here's what i know about zoloft. 1) i took it this morning. 2)my coworker tried it and it didn't work. she recommends lexapro. 3)my other coworker is on it and said it took her 3 months to get used to it. 4) ween made a song about it
hashtag march is meds month #marchismedsmonth
my attempt to read a bunch of short stories has quickly morphed into an attempt to read a bunch of short horror stories. recently i've enjoyed:
marghanita laski's "the tower"
poe's "the facts in the case of m. valdemar"
that guy stephen king's "i know what you need"
now i'm reading an "internet-based horror fiction piece" called "the left right game". it's like a horror story, but they put it onto the internet! you read it on the internet. i found about about it from a top 20 list on oprah's website. this is the power of web
living in the city is realizing literally everybody everywhere is an insanely good artist. which for me, a little critter who likes cool art and is desperately trying to hold on to the cliffside of Making Art with a curled and quaking finger, is both exhilarating and intimidating. the zine i work on, we get so many fantastic poets writing wonderful things, and on flounder itself youāve got great great poemwriters writing very good stuff (i read most to all of it and i enjoy it very much :) !). this is (surely) a cool world, at times.
right now i am reading two short story collections, ling maās bliss montage and stephen kingās night shift. i picked them because they seemed like they were coming at making a similar thing from different directions. iāve never read much stephen king and hold no particular love in my heart for him, but i thought it would be interesting to try.
also found some cool zines the other day called āoptical prevaricationā by someone named matthew koerber who takes a picture and then writes a story based on the picture. the writing is so fun and improvisational, and also devoid of a certain type of irony in a really refreshing way, i wish i could show them to you here on flounder dot online.
as for my own little art: i am having a lot of fun drawing for my upcoming zine themed around puking. i am also having a lot of fun writing poems, but what i really want is a couple good stories to put in there. i think iām getting close. i wrote what i think is a pretty good one about a toxic throuple who get off on re-enacting moments when they lost it at their customer service jobs, but itās missing something so iām shelving it.
had a great time this weekend! :)
tuesday i meet with a doctor to talk about antidepressants. i think this might be good for me, tho i am worried about it. i dont even know if itll work at all! the world of the unknown is scary
a lot of unknowns in the future. determined to have maximum fun with my fun little life, this is the goal to strive toward
hi mere!
i find it a little odd that while my dog will try to eat anything from the ground i have /no/ desire to do that. surely there should be some innate instinct telling me food is food and i should eat whatever, not a huge instinct or anything but yknow, something i have to resist a lil
had a real good talk with my brother R (not my littlest brother but my second littlest brother of 23 years Age) last night. excited to go see his improv shows when those start happening. i will never not love seeing improv, it is always funny to me
realized one of the flipper's guitar folks is cornelius. both great
wildweek, had good friend times,
had a serious talk with a friend that i think went well, but it'll probably be a little awkward for a while
danced a real nice time (friday),
ate a real good cake (saturday), went to a dive bar (someone should write an essay about how touchtunes has changed dive bars), saw a guy get kicked out for being a creep, a guy bought me a drink cuz it was my birthday
still quite enjoying dnd (sunday), been like 6 months since we started playing which is wild
misread a "who rescued who" bumper sticker as "who recycled who" and that's really stickin in my head
in a very "stand up comedy" mode. humor's most liminal space
also in my head:
-my friend's concept of "it takes two to laugh", which i believe and respect
-the era where no one knew what was going on on the surface of mars and they thought there was canals and aliens up there. take me back
-miranda and steve of sex and the city
-but seriously who recycled who
cried listening to jethro tull's jack-in-the-green, really says it all
part 2 of not my birthday, the part that's still not my birthday. the big finale
i am 27 years old
part 1 of not my birthday!
this is the last year my younger brother is younger than me. he'll have 7 birthdays before i do
this is a real good poem:
https://www.newnewsinews.com/issue6/griffin
things done lately:
-put "peel and stick" wallpaper up on a wall, happy about how it turned out
-went to a local comedy show in the style of late night tv. my friend played guitar and it was real good! the format reminded me of when i was 14 and for some reason cared about late night tv, watched craig ferguson every night and got annoyed when leno came back and kicked conan out
-played catch with my son i mean fetch with my dog
-pancakes at stl legendary location gooseberries cannot be beat good pan cake
things thought lately:
-about a were-planet that turns into a big ball of fur at full moon?
-about squirrels who live an a mountain slope never knowing flatness and one day find flat land and are real freaked out by it?
-boy claires?
-the vase illusion still
the vase illusion is by far the best illusion
chilling out at work on "president day" (??)
thinking a lot about the following objects:
1) trash cans. i've had to be on the hunt for them lately because i'm walking my dog in a new part of the city. old neighborhood was full of 'em, new neighborhood, you're gonna find 'em at bars and that's about it. planning my dogwalk routes around accessible trash cans
2) phones. first of all i hate mine and want to never look at it again, but then i keep looking at it. classic. but answering the phone at work is a whole different animal, which i hate too but it's also really funny. you can adopt a fun little sense of professionalism, hold a big old receiver in your hand, slam it down in a fun way when you're done, act like you're a sex and the city banal workaholic side character - do it all.
stl and my new place has got me in object mode. house mode. extreme home makeover mode. i strive to be both the property brothers at once, the yin and the yang.
somehow i have managed to work out like 10 days in a row, happy about that
made an appointment with A Doctor to talk about getting on some kind of anti depressant
one of my twitter mutuals is doing a "gex week". got me thinking about gex and how he has remained a cult favorite for what i feel are shallow reasons (the absurdity of his one-liners, his magazine ads). there is more to gex. like he is kind of poised to become the symbol/metaphor for both "reference as humor" and "90s pop culture as a whole". i think his popularity will continue to grow. (personally? i could take or leave him)
probably going to call in sick from work tomorrow for mostly fake reasons
current goal: go to a coffee shop this weekend and write. the fact that i've never really done this while living in stl is ludricous
--
today is saturday ā thursday i went on a hike with my dad, then friday i went on another hike with my dad. very beautiful hikes in different biomes.
definitely ready to leave. i love my family, but i could not live with them for longer than a week and a half. there is so much fear and anxiety involved in their lives in really weird ways. and it makes me see the fear and anxiety in myself. every risk is mitigated, catastrophe is around every corner. itās reiterated to me that i have to work hard to leave that behind and do creative stuff and not stagnate.
excited to go back to stl. worried about the future, and excited. deeply appreciative of the people i have met over the course of my life. end of journal for now :)
dropped J off this morning at the bus stop. went out to the university and went to a museum and some thrift stores. picked J up from school in the afternoon, met his kindergarten teacher who seems very nice. my stepmom does volunteer work at the school, setting up a monthly art lesson and helping J's teacher out.
J and i played outside for a long time -- we invented a new form of hopscotch that allows you to increase or decrease the difficulty at will via a series of optional shortcuts and/or difficult jumps.
i think it took me until today, but i have re-perfected the kind of humor the tiny youth find funny. the last time i had honed this skill was when i taught summer camp 4 years ago. my hopscotch-related humor was on point today and i'm proud of that. mostly just saying "oh hopscotch? oh yeah, i know hopscotch. i hopscotch all the time, let's do it" and then doing hopscotch wrong in increasingly abstract ways
haven't been sleeping well :(
slow day. ended up staying in reading/doing art/napping. dropped J off at is morning bus the last two days, gonna do that all week and pick him up tomorrow.
also tomorrow, going to go look at the fancy university library building for kicks and walk around a bunch.
had a really great conversation with my stepmom, and later my stepmom and my dad. i love them both very much :)
before that i went out on "the town"
seattle vs st louis: coming from a place of pure favoritism, st louis in a heartbeat. i am a creature of the midwest. seattle is a polite, well-dressed, very cool city that cares above all else about money.
i went to two museums, and then i took a great long winding walk to a coffee shop where i got veggie toast and coffee. there was a guy outside the window working really hard on sudoku.
the amount of paul simon i have heard while in seattle is astounding. seattle loves paul simon. not even just the hits, they're serving up whole albums of paul simon.
walking to a coffee shop makes me remember i can do that back home, too. i don't do that enough. days are so long when you make time to do things in them. i spend too much of every day not doing things. it took until my senior year of college to realize i enjoyed doing things -- my life since has been spent peeling off layers of plastic wrap one at a time learning how to do things. i will continue that process.
idi blasks will continue to approach life real clumsy-like until they figure it out. paul simon sounds like vampire weekend because they both crib world music
1. my little brother J's plan today was to play minecraft for 10 hours. there would be a snack break every hour and bathroom breaks whenever if you needed to go. we played for about 1.5 hours, then i showed him a "how it's made" video on how they make legos. then we went out in the rain and played basketball, soccer, frisbee, and threw a toy plane that would do a loop-de-loop. it was fun.
2. i feel better about myself today than i did yesterday. talked to my stepmom about her recent breast cancer scare and how up-in-the-air that can make your life feel. talked on the phone to my /other/ brother R about his move to a new apartment in april. i've been feeling lightheaded lately, so i'm going to start taking iron and b12 regularly as much as i can make myself. and i think i'm going to start eating protein bars once a day. sometimes i feel very grounded into the world (like when i eat a mushroom) and other times i feel like i'm looking at what my eyes can see from very far away. this is a time in my life where i'm considering getting medicated.
anyway tomorrow J will be at school and my dad will be at work, so i'm going to go flipping and flopping all over downtown i think.
1. got into seattle last night. i love my dad, but i can feel myself getting annoyed by him. he still watches all the same videos about tiny houses and rvs and vacations without going out there and doing those things. but weāre all kinda like that sometimes ā it takes a lot to take action. i feel like something needs to happen in his life that would shock him out of the rut heās in.
he asked me about everything going on in my life, and heās afraid someoneās going to break into my house while iām gone. fear based in something you literally canāt control at all. there are more security devices/cams around the house than the last time i visited 1.5 years ago. folks losing trust in community.
2. things i think are cool about my dad:
a. he writes poetry now
b. he reads philosophy and is emotionally honest about his fear of death
c. he successfully quit twitter, something i have never been able to do
d. he is, in general, a great person
3. my little brother, J, is a six-year-old certified Gamer who loves minecraft, industrial electronic music, and math. we took him to gamestop for the first time in his six-year old life. gamestop nowadays is a slackers/hot topic hybrid with the aesthetics of Boy Claireās. we then played minecraft for several hours.
4. still not really sure who i am or what life should be like going forward
writing this on an airplane to Seattle to transfer to flounder later.
1. i always forget how much i enjoy reading until i start reading again. right now i am reading The Left Hand of Darkness and enjoying it.
2. i had the longest talk i've ever had with my reserved, almost silent uncle. he rode with me to the airport so he could drive my car back when i left -- something i'm very grateful for.
a. we puzzled over why my cousin (his son) likes guns so much, an obsession that developed at an early age seemingly out of nowhere and steered my cousin toward libertarianism
b. he talked about his simultaneous reticence/desire to be in a band. the last time he was in a band was almost 30 years ago. they were a hard rock/metal group and my uncle had told them the genre was dying and that he wanted to move on. they kicked him out of the band.
c. my uncle was worried because he sees his musical taste as varied and intricate, but spotify always knows what he wants to listen to. 'people don't get me, but machines have already figured me out.' i responded that maybe this just means there's a lot of like-minded folks out there feeding the algorithm with their like-minded tastes, and he could take solace in that. dunno if true.
3. my boss at my old Truman job told me back then that the core tenant of her life was Grace. i think about that frequently and i think for now, the core tenant of my life is Gratitude. i am grateful for my life and the people in it, past and present, who are all trying very hard to live their lives in their own way. i'm grateful to keep learning things and i want to express this gratitude to myself and others. i need to learn more ways to do this.
