Month: May 2021

Are You Lonely In The Dark…?

The Miitopia me…

Thanks to Billy Squire for today’s title… Funny, I don’t think I realized how much I relate to the lyrics of his song “In The Dark” until now. I’m not sure that’s a good thing…

Yesterday I was playing the latest game I got for my Nintendo Switch, Miitopia. It’s a weird game… You’re a traveler who goes on a quest to defeat The Dark Lord who is stealing people’s faces and putting them on monsters (so the monsters obey him). You get to pick a job and get special powers from “divine intervention” and gain more traveling companions to help you defeat the monsters and give the people of Miitopia their faces back, eventually having to find and defeat The Dark Lord. Yeah, it’s weird… but it’s fun. Anyway, when I was playing yesterday, the lights went out and my poor Mii was left in the dark, not knowing what direction to turn in. Well, if that didn’t sum up my life right now… I’m not going to lie, it freaked me out a bit that a fucking video game knew me… There my little mage Mii was, asking where everyone went, looking back and forth all alone and confused… I got to chose the direction she wandered in and chose the wrong direction, smacking into one of the other Miis in the dark (he was pretty mad I did).

I know that sounds sad that a weird video game got me thinking, but it really did…

This is exactly how I’ve been feeling lately. I’ve been feeling like I’m in a dark place: lost, confused and, worst of all, alone and directionless… So now what? Like my little mage Mii, here, I suppose I’ll have to choose a direction to turn in. But… what if I chose poorly? That’s a good possibility since I couldn’t even choose the right direction for my Mii to turn in and she smacked into another Mii who got pissed at her. Seriously, he yelled at my Mii to watch where she was going. To which I snapped at my game, “Fuck you, Tamahome! Like I knew you were there!” You know you’re in trouble when you’re talking to Miis you made up to look like anime characters… But back to the subject… I’ve been here in this dark place with all these feelings of doubt and confusion, feeling completely alone, without direction. And I need to choose a direction… What if I choose poorly? How do I know what’s right for me?!

Poor little mage Jackie Mii…

I’ve actually been trying to stay away from decision making lately. Seriously, I have zero decision making skills at the moment… Do you know how long I left my Mii looking back and forth?! I had two choices, look to the left or look to the right. How hard a decision is that to make, anyway?! It’s not, really… It’s not like I had an overabundance of choices, I had fucking two… And I swear it took me several minutes to make a choice and it turned out to be the wrong one. That really drove home the fact that I probably shouldn’t make any decisions right now. Mainly because I’m having difficulty in doing it.

Unfortunately, I can’t avoid making decisions forever…

Eventually, I have to figure out what I’m going to do with my Facebook… In my irrational, impulsive state, I deleted all my pictures except for a few of my pets, some stupid quiz results, a photo of one of my violets (my current profile picture) and a photo of a Mars landscape (my current banner picture). Oh, I could put back all the pictures I deleted… But the thing is, I’m not sure I want to…

Why put my art back up when no one seems to like it? It’s just asking for more disappointment and discouragement. I think I have enough of that already without my fake friends. Like every other person who is artistically inclined, I am my own worst critic. I watched a video on YouTube (made by an artist) telling you what you’re doing wrong with your art. And you know what all of us are doing wrong? We’re listening to that stupid little voice in our own heads that’s telling us we’re not good enough. On top of that, we’re listening to assholes who tell us our work sucks (though there aren’t a lot of them, really) and we’re trying to measure up to other artists or are trying to emulate them. They’re all great points, honestly. The problem with this is that it’s not so easy to put this advice into practice. You can’t help but compare yourself to those more successful than yourself and you can’t help but listen to anything or anyone telling you you’re not good enough.

Aww, my Mii and the Mii of my one character having lunch…

And then there are the pictures of myself, all of which I deleted…

Not only did I delete the self portraits I made, but I deleted photos of myself as well. Every… single… fucking… one.

It wasn’t without reason… Honestly, I’ve been in such a dark place that I’ve literally grown to hate myself more than I ever have before. I feel like I have no worth at all. I mean nothing to no one. I could disappear off the face of the planet right now and no one would miss me. So in my irrational, impulsive state, I decided that I was pretty much going to erase myself, at least in that aspect…

Honestly, if I could, I would erase myself, to a point…

If I could, I would go somewhere that people don’t know me and have never heard of me. I’d start my life over as a new person, maybe the type that people actually like to be around and find to be good company. Maybe I could be a bit more popular and not just a weird, crazy bitch everyone tries to avoid at all cost. But, even if I moved far away and started over fresh, it wouldn’t work. No matter what, I’m still me… That’s something I can’t run away from by changing my name, moving far away to a new place… You might be able to change what you project to people but, deep down, you’re still the same you…

Baby you’re a firework… Yeah right…

However, when I’ve gone through issues with my identity, I’ve done things to sort of “reinvent” myself…

Mind you, these were never big things I’ve done. Once, when I was in that identity funk, I went out and got my ears pierced a third time. Ooh, how daring… Actually, it kind of was because my one ear got infected from that shit they give you to clean your piercing. It’s happened three times in the same ear. Weird…

Most of the time when I feel the need to “reinvent” myself, I’ll get my hair colored. I don’t do bold cuts because I have naturally curly, frizzy hair, so most styles don’t work for me. But color? Yeah, I can change that. I’ve been purple for a few years, now, and I like it, so I’m sticking with it. Sometimes I change my wardrobe, the style of clothes I wear. Both can get costly, but it’s a nice way to “reinvent” myself without running off to places unknown.

Sometimes I try to change aspects of my personality that I don’t like. Once I tried to be more cheerful and upbeat, be happy. That didn’t last long… I hated being that happy. I wanted to smack the shit out of myself because it was annoying…

“World Without Words” (c) me

In the meantime, I’ll have to satisfy myself with some minor changes…

If you’re on my blog page reading this, you’ll notice I changed the background and header images. I’m not sure I’m happy with them, but they’ll do. For now… Give me a few weeks of looking at them and I’m sure I’ll grow dissatisfied and say “fuck it”. I’ll change it to something else that, inevitably, I won’t like either. That’s just how it seems to be for me lately. I’m not satisfied with anything.

So, until I figure out what the fuck I want to do, which direction I want to turn, I’ll just be stuck here, all alone, in the dark…

This isn’t a really good place to be…

By George, I Think I’ve Got It!

Ah, the nostalgia…

So I’ve been struggling with this identity crisis for some months now, being terrified because I don’t know who the fuck I am anymore. This morning, I think I finally figured it out…

I’m Kim Carnes!

Hahahaa… I’m kidding. Well, sort of…

Yesterday I had a lot to do and spent my day running here, there, every fucking where. And when I walked out to my car, I immediately knew this was not going to end well… My car was still red, but the roof was this sickly yellow-green color. Literally, the pollen was so thick on top of my car that you couldn’t tell it was red if that was the only part you looked at. That’s an aggressive amount of pollen! I swear I used the entire reservoir of windshield wiper fluid trying to get the damn thing clean and, when I finally had, it looked like someone pissed down the sides of it because of the now watered down pollen. I knew this wasn’t going to bode well…

And I was right… After being out all day and being exposed to a metric shit ton of pollen, I woke up this morning and found my voice was all raspy and squeaky. This was more evident when I tried to sing this morning, as I sometimes do to relieve some anxiety. Oh, it was bad… Then I thought, “Let’s try something…” I started singing that song “Bette Davis Eyes” and I sounded just like the raspy Kim Carnes. This morning, that’s who I am, haha! But I’m not too worried… I took allergy pills and I’m drinking hot coffee. I should sound normal soon.

An older self portrait when I knew who I was…

But back to the subject… I’ve really been struggling lately. I thought I had it all figured out and suddenly realized I didn’t know shit about who I was anymore. And the longer this drug on, the worse I felt.

Then I ended up having a chat with someone a bit younger than me who told me I would always be who I was, that I would always be (insert horrible given name here). It must be nice to be young and never having experienced an identity crisis… I’ve been having the off and on forever, but this one is by far the worst. It’s difficult to explain to those who have never experienced one exactly how terrifying that can be. We all feel comfortable with ourselves when we know who we are. Take that away, and we tend to freak the hell out. It’s something you just can’t out into words, really… And it’s a bit naive of this person to think that we just stay the same people year after year, though I can’t judge them harshly for it. That’s what a lot of young people think. But wait… it could be coming for you… And, when it does, you’ll feel just as lost and alone. You’ll be screaming, but no one will hear you because they just don’t fucking get it. Isn’t that a fun thought for today…?

Yes… yes they are…

I was so upset and down on myself after my last entry that I did something rather drastic…

As I mentioned last time, I worked so hard on a drawing of a character from a story I’m writing. I put so much love and care into him (because I had that particular affection for him) and I think it’s the best work I ever did. And then only 3 people liked it, one of which was not my “encouraging” friend, Greta. I really began to see that I really didn’t have many friends and that some of the ones I thought were good friends I could turn to really weren’t. I was livid! And hurt… So I did something drastic…

I went onto my Facepuke page and literally deleted 90% of my stuff. I wish I could say I was kidding… I removed entire albums, starting with the one that contained my artwork. I deleted a few others as well because I saw no point in going through the slow process of weeding out the pictures I didn’t want or because they were of no real value anyway. I even deleted pictures of myself and any stupid quiz I took that had my self portraits in them. It was like I literally erased myself. Then I made a post that I was looking to sell all my art supplies, message me if interested. My one friend did message me to ask if I was okay. I told her not really, no, but I wasn’t ready to talk about it, I needed to get shit in my head straight first. She said exactly the right thing. She told me she would be there when I was ready. I also got a text from Greta’s husband asking why and telling me I was so good… Really, fucker? I guess that’s why you don’t ever like the drawings I put up, either! Thanks for making it worse. Morticia called twice, but I didn’t answer… I just didn’t want to get into a discussion that would lead to my being brow-beaten. I don’t need that shit.

My latest self portrait in blue…

So yesterday, I’m driving down to an appointment, listening to the tunes from my phone that I had hooked up to the stereo and that old song “Jackie Blue” happened to come on. I think it was the universe trying to tell me something…

Any of you who have been following me a while may recall the story of the guy who was interested in me and, when he found out it wasn’t requited, he literally yelled at me, “You know what? You are ‘Jackie Blue’!” I wasn’t insulted… I knew, even back then, that I was like this fictitious girl. But, over the years, I had thought little of it because I thought I wasn’t like that girl anymore. But, when it poured out of my car speakers, I realized… I have been and always will be Jackie Blue. The stupid thing is, I’m not exaggerating. Everything they say about that girl in the song speaks volumes when it comes to my personality and it always has. So I guess I’ve always known who I was. I just lose sight of her from time to time.. All I know is that, after hearing that song yesterday, it was like I had an epiphany and saw things so much clearer. For the moment, anyway… I hope it stays that way.

And what a decade it was for music….

Off topic (sort of), I had made a Starbucks run yesterday to get another one of their strawberry funnel cake Frappucinos. If you haven’t had one, go get one, like yesterday! It’s like heaven!

Anyway… While I was in Starbucks, I heard this familiar song come on the radio there. I immediately recognized it and also recognized it was a remake. I hate remakes 99% of the time and this one made the top of the “this song SUCKS” list. The song was a remake of “Strawberry Letter 23” by The Brother’s Johnson. It was awful! And, with me being so loud and opinionated when it comes to music, I couldn’t help but say aloud, “Oh my god, this is the worst version of ‘Strawberry Letter 23 I’ve ever heard!” Seriously, it was… It was like this frou-frou pop shit! Where was the early 1970s funk sound that made that song…?! Nowhere! And, of course, I got this weird look from the 20-somethings that were also there waiting for coffee. Hey, unless you’ve actually heard the original, keep your dirty looks to yourselves and go listen to real music. Bunch of assholes…

Well… it kinda helps hide the ugly, right?

In any case… To help with my identity crisis, I’ve been working on a few home improvements, even if they’re just band-aids, to help lift my spirits the past few weeks.

Like this, for instance… I literally have the worst deck in probably the entire neighborhood. Because I have a creek in the backyard, the deck is perpetually getting coated in a slimy green moss and the wood is starting to rot. I’m sure it doesn’t help that it’s probably the original deck they put on when the house was built in 1983… Unfortunately, I don’t have the means to rebuild it at the moment. Right now, the price of lumber is sky high. I’d be better off going out and chopping down trees and processing them myself. So I did the next best thing. I bought a deck rug (and incorporated some help to lay it down) to help hide the ugly and the rot. I also bought new tiles to replace the broken ones in the table top. I bought hanging flower baskets and the little toad succulent planter on the tablet help liven things up a bit. I also cleaned the table and chairs as best I could without a power washer or at least a hose… I think it looks fairly nice. And, with the lights I strung up last year, I have a really nice place to spend warm evenings. It made me feel rather accomplished. Yesterday, I decided to try and organize my dining room as best I could. It looks so much better and made me feel a little better than I’ve been feeling. It’s amazing what shit like that can do for your outlook.

My current enemies…

But, for today, I’m just going to flop my ass in front of the TV and watch Dr. fucking Phil all day… I feel miserable after being out yesterday.

They say pollen counts are at an all time high. I’d believe it! From being stuck in our homes in lockdown for so long, the Earth has had time to heal somewhat. And, while I’m glad for that, I’m not thrilled about there being a metric shit ton of pollens all over the fucking place. And I’m allergic to every one of them. So between running all over the place and the pollens yesterday, I’m feeling washed out and miserable. Today needs to be a vegetable day, I think…

On the bright side, after this weekend, I should be able to go most places mask free! Yay! As of yesterday, I’m officially fully vaccinated (it was two weeks since my second shot)! Granted, I’m sill not exactly sure that I trust the vaccine and I have no idea what long term effects it may have on me (fingers crossed it won’t have any), but the ability to walk around and go places without a mask sounds so amazing!

I’m done with the mask shit, honestly… Ever since we had to start wearing them, my asthma has been worse and so have my poor sinuses. They don’t filter out shit anyway, especially pollens. So they get trapped in the mask and I’m breathing them in all the time. No wonder a lot of us are feeling like ass lately! But have faith, dear readers… I think our mask wearing days may soon come to an end! Woo-hoo!

There’s Not Enough Calgon And Xanax In The World…

If only it were that easy…

I have a feeling there are some of you who read this title and asked yourselves, “What the fuck does that mean?!” And, unless you’re on the older side like me, it’s no wonder…

Back in the 70s and 80s (yikes), there were these commercials for Calgon bath products. You’d see some seriously stressed out woman, usually a mom with several rowdy kids, who would lose her marbles and call out, “Calgon, take me away!” Next thing you know, she’s whisked away into a nice hot bubble bath full of relaxing Calgon. That was their gimmick… Calgon was so relaxing that you’d be spirited away to this huge, beautiful bathroom where all your stresses would melt away in a tub full of their bath products.

I can’t tell you how many times, when I was really stressed, that I myself have said, “Calgon, take me away!” Guess what… Yeah, you know what… I had to draw my own bubble bath in my standard size tub in my small bathroom. I’m guessing the almighty Calgon gods were asleep on the job every time I’ve said that… And, over the years, whenever I’ve been more than a little stressed out, I eventually started saying, “There’s not enough Calgon and Xanax in the world to take me far the fuck enough away.” That’s how I’ve been feeling lately. I’ve been under a lot of stress, losing my shit completely. It would take a whole bottle of Calgon and a whole bottle of Xanax and I’d still be wound tighter than a spring at the moment. It’s just been a rough couple of months…

Think about it…

What’s worse is that, when I’m really stressed out, the creativity center of my brain just shuts the fuck down…

And when I say it shuts the fuck down, I mean I don’t even have enough creativity to figure out what I want to eat for dinner let alone try to draw, paint or write anything. Hell, it’s been so bad, I haven’t had enough creativity to make a blog entry and have scrapped probably a half dozen over the last several weeks. This is more than a dry spell. This is a fucking disaster…

Which brings me back to my identity crisis… Here I am, probably more than halfway through my life (none of us knows how long we’re going to live after all) and I literally have nothing to show for it. What have I done with my life?! Worked a ton of shitty, low paying, dead end jobs? Made a few drawings and paintings, written a few shitty short stories that mean nothing to anyone?! Yeah, that’s what I’ve done… And now I feel too old to do anything special with my life. I don’t know why that’s so important to me. There are a lot of people who are content to live their lives working the same, meaningless job the majority of their lives. They may get married and have a family… And that’s enough for them. They’re perfectly happy if that’s all they ever did with their lives and have no regrets. But I’m not one of those people… I need to feel like I’ve made something of myself and that just hasn’t happened. And I highly doubt that it ever will, unfortunately…

Don’t piss on my parade and call it rain…

I’ve been so down, my mother has been very encouraging lately (it only took her nearly half a century to do so) and my one friend, we’ll call her Greta, has been trying to act like my own personal cheerleader, pointing out that I should get off my duff and do something with my work, that it’s never too late. In fact, Greta was incredibly supportive. It’s as if she knew exactly what I needed to hear. No matter what it is I want to do, fucking do it! If I want to paint, then paint! If I want to play my piano, then play! Just get off my fucking duff, motivate and do it! Sounds easy in theory, doesn’t it? It’s really not…

Still… whatever she said much have gotten through. Several days later, I was suddenly inspired to draw. I’m not sure what kicked me in the head and brought the idea to mind, but something sure in the fuck did. So I sat down with my laptop and my Wacom tablet and I sketched out the concept. I was happy with the sketch, so I decided to start coloring and shading. Sometimes, when I reach that point, things start going downhill and I realize that it doesn’t look as good in color as it did in the sketch, so I either try to make the best of it or scrap it. But not this time… This time, for some reason, it was turning out so good it was scaring me. I don’t think I’ve ever put so much love and detail into a drawing as I did this one. I had no idea that I could do shading that good! I was so proud of the finished product, I couldn’t wait to post it to my Facepuke. That’s when things went bad… Do you know how many people liked it? All of 3… It’s not surprising; I usually get very few likes on my work. But this time it was quite devastating. I was so proud of the work I did. Not now… So I guess I’ll have to thank them for pissing on my parade…

Fleeting proud moment…

So here it is, my once shining moment…

He’s a character from a “novel” I’m working on currently. I actually started working on this story when I was in my early 20s (when I still had hopes, dreams and ambitions) and this is how I’ve always envisioned him. Hey, that was well over 20 years ago, guys still had long hair… Anyway… I actually stole some of his looks from someone famous and melded those features in my mind into this. I think he’s pretty nice looking, if I do say so myself. And I have a certain… affection… for this character, so I wanted to make it look like an old photo. I put so much love and care into creating this, which is why I did shading I didn’t know I could do and amazed myself. I literally felt giddy when I was done. Then Facepuke happened… 3 likes (Greta wasn’t even one of them) and that was it. I’m so downhearted that I don’t know that I’ll ever create again. What’s the point? Obviously no one likes my work, so it’s not going to get me anywhere in life. I fucking give up…

I ask myself that a lot…

So I suppose that’s it, right…?

I’ve just been kidding myself all these years… I’m no artist, no writer. Hell, I’m not even a musician. Sure, I can play the piano and I’m learning the guitar, but I just don’t seem to have the dexterity to do play like others do and probably never will. I’ve been so down on myself that I actually canceled last week’s guitar lesson because I just couldn’t face the day. And I obviously only have fair weather friends, if that. That’s fucking pathetic.

I just don’t know who and where I am in life right now… Every time this happens, I try to reinvent myself into the person I’d like to be, but that’s kind of difficult to do when you’re still living in the same town in bumble-fuck. Sure, I can change my hair, my style, my attitude… I’ve even decided to change my name. Jackie isn’t my real name because I’ve always hated my real name and it never seemed to suit me. Jackie seems more like me… But changing your name legally where I live is a pain in the ass. Besides, if I can’t get anyone to use that name, what’s the fucking point? I’ll still be referred to as the person I’ve always been. That’s depressing…

Namaste… in bed all fucking day…

So that’s where I’m at…

I’m confused as to who I am, severely depressed and feeling very much like a failure. And I don’t seem to have any real friends, not even the ones that I thought were my real friends. I can’t even change myself because people don’t want to accept the fact that I don’t want to be this person anymore. I want this unsatisfying life to end and start over again in a new place as a new person, as Jackie.

But that won’t work… I need to face facts. I can change my hair, my style… I can change my name, move to another place… It doesn’t matter. I’ll still be me. I can run as much as I want to, but I’ll still keep running into myself.

I should really get in the habit of meditating again… It does help, but when I get in these moods, I just forget or just don’t have the fucking energy or motivation to bother. But I need help… And it’s not the kind of help you can find by crawling inside a bottle of pills, either. That’s not a solution; it’s a band-aid, really. All those problems, all those ill feelings I have about myself and my life… they’re all still there. My meds aren’t magic pills that change everything. They’re like a bath full of Calgon… They’re alright to a point. They may even help you escape and relax for a little while. But, in the end, the issues are still there and you are still you with all your issues.

Oh, to feel this happy and free…

They say happiness comes from within… Well, if it does, mine is either defective or literally missing in action…

I’m not sure what the fuck I’m going to do… At this point, I feel like selling my piano, my guitar, the yarn I use for knitting… even all my art supplies. I want to delete all the art programs I have on my laptop, all the drawings I’ve done, all the stories I’ve written… throw all the canvases I’ve ever painted out in the trash. I feel like deleting everything of this life, my art sites, my Facepuke, my Instagram… Just everything…

I feel like deleting the person I am, changing my name and starting life somewhere new. But that’s something for the young, not for people who are so old that they remember the 70s fondly and can tell you where they were and what they were doing the first time they heard “Afternoon Delight” by the Starland Vocal Band and recalls a time when the only channels the television had were from 2 to 13 and what it was like to talk on a rotary phone that was hardwired into the kitchen wall. I’m just too fucking old to start over…

Man, am I feeling depressed… I’m seriously considering canceling today’s guitar lesson again. I know I should go because it usually makes me feel better, but I just can’t bring myself to face anything today, including a happy thing. I think I’ve officially hit rock fucking bottom… I hope I can figure out how to pull myself back to the top again eventually…