Haiku #1

Post thoughts on a screen
    Return again and again
       Is it OCD?

Indecision

In a little of a funk, so mind your head; the light's dim in here today.

I may not be writing a blog for tomorrow; Marco will be off for the first Sunday in a very long time. He usually works open to close on Sunday, so it'll be awesome to have him home for a change.

So today I've been thinking about how hanging in limbo, waiting for life to start, is just no fun. Not really feeling sorry for myself, as I'm not too depressed about it, since I am at least trying. It's just been rather difficult for me to figure out what I want to do with my life, since I have to be here anyways and all. I'm trying to figure out what is most important to me; what do I really want to achieve? There's just too many options for me to comprehend sometimes. It gets frustrating when there are so many things to do but only so many that I actually enjoy and even fewer that I enjoy AND could make a life of doing.

WTF?! Friday

I've decided to start a new "feature piece" on my blog --  the last Friday of every month shall henceforth be known in JennoLand as WTF?! Friday featuring all those things that leave me going, "What in the f**k is that?!"

So without further ado, today's topic is plastic surgery. Now, I have had thoughts about how my nose is too bulbous or my under-chin is too big... or how I would like to have just ever-so-slightly poutier lips. I've never seriously considering going under the needle or knife for it, though.

What I don't understand is just how some folks can continually butcher their already-good looks to become unrecognizable, even to their family. I also don't understand quantum physics or how the whole "speed of light and sound" thing works... but I don't think there really is any justification for continually modifying one's appearance just because it's not perfect. The thing about perfection, especially when it comes to appearances, is that (and this is just my experience; your mileage may vary) the harder you try to perfect it, the farther away from perfection you will get.

I present to you Exhibits A through E, after the jump.

Just Fight Me

Here's a song/poem I wrote when in a particularly deep funk. I won't do double posting days very often but when I do, the second will likely be something similar to this -- artistic, whether visual, written, or in some other way in nature.

Front Page News

It had been a long day at work for me -- I came in at 7:30 to open. By the time Marco came to get me at four, right after he went on his lunch break, I was sore, tired, but still in a really good mood. We were going to go home and eat lunch together before he got back to work, and I was going to spend my evening cleaning the apartment up, although I didn't tell him as much. He was already planning on giving me some good lovin's - he mentioned it a few times in the space it took for me to get in the car with him - but I thought it might be nice for him to come home to clean, uncluttered living quarters for once (this was well before the days of the Job Jar, obviously).

As we were going down Hart Street, more or less one of two "main drags" in town, there was a large amount of smoke hanging in the sky all the way on the other end of town. Hell, it looked like it may have even been across the river, in Illinois... but as we came closer to the end of Hart Street and made our turn onto Third Street, you could see the intersection of Hart and Second Street - our street - blocked off by police cars. We usually turned on Seminary which is the next one up from Hart, but Marco went a block further to the next turn. As we passed Seminary, I looked in the direction of our apartment building through the trees, just barely able to make it out beyond the intersection. My mind exploded when I could not unsee what I had just glimpsed.

The Big, Bad Bully

One topic that is somewhat difficult yet therapeutic for me to discuss is bullying. Nearly 30% of America's youth is either a target for bullies, bullying others, or both at one point or another. Of that 30%, in a survey among 6th to 10th grade students, 13% did the bullying, 11% were the target, and another 6% were involved with both bullying and being bullied. (via SafeYouth.org) I myself, unsurprisingly to most, was a target for bullying while I was growing up. Its effects on me were both profound and long-lasting -- it is also the alleged cause of my onset of Borderline Personality Disorder, or at least one of the triggers. I still struggle, to this day, to effectively manage my negative self-talk and keep it in check. Occasionally, I even have "flash backs" to the worst moments I've endured.

Art Pictorial

Today seems like as good a day as any to share some of my digital art. A couple years ago I bought a digital pen tablet from Ebay after many years of fighting with my mouse for control. At the time, I was in a guild on the Shards of Dalaya EverQuest free server. For those who don't know, EverQuest is an insanely popular Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game, and a guild is like an in-game family of sorts. Anyway, my guild leader and her husband are both insanely talented digital artists. As far as I know, they both use their talents commercially. My guild leader helped me learn some basics of PhotoShop and Flash drawing and illustrating and was always very supportive in helping me improve. She was the one who told me about pen tablets -- if I hadn't met her, I'd likely still be wondering how some people can draw so darn well with just a mouse!

So a little less than a story today, but rather a pictorial of some of my adventures in visual art after the jump. Hope you enjoy it.

This is my only job....

Well, tonight I was supposed to be getting together with a friend for an evening of drunken Scrabble but it turns out that he had to stay at work for more overtime. I suppose it's just as well since I didn't get enough sleep last night and woke up crabby, sore, and already wanting to go back to bed. If only there had been a screw it button next to my bed; I surely would've pressed it today.

Then again, had I done that, I would've been skipping out on pretty much every responsibility entrusted to me, and I can't have that. It's not like life is really asking all that much of me right now anyway. I get up early, drive the neighbor (who's moving across town by the first of October *sniffles*) to work, sometimes catch a nap, help get her kids off the bus and then cart her back across town. After that, I do my chores and the rest of the evening is all mine. So yeah... life's really not asking too much right now.

Rainy days are here again...

I absolutely love rainy days. They take me back to a special little happy place. Today's a nice, dreary, gloomy, drizzly day here. This summer's been fairly dry; a lot of the corn was lost last year due to floods - this year the problem was not enough rain. We haven't had a great deal of thunderstorms this year, either. The few that we have had were fairly weak, with one or two exceptions. Another of my favorite pass-times is watching the weather, both online (The Weather Channel, NOAA on the web, Weather Underground) and outside either on the porch or giving chase in the car. While I do love the excitement that seeing severe weather can bring, I'm kind of glad at the same time that we haven't had too much of it. The first time I heard the tornado sirens here was kind of crazy.