I think it's gonna be a busy weekend... Tomorrow I'm working at a glass pumpkin thing for like... six hours? And then I might hang out with my friend in the evening... though he said after 7 PM would be better, so I guess I'll have a little time in the afternoon to do whatever.

Sunday, I'm going to APE (Alternative Press Expo) with a few people! I've been wanting to go for a few years now, but never got the chance. I'm hoping it will be as cool as I've imagined.

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I need a gif between

and

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"I Like You" by Morrissey.

No one I ever knew
Or have spoken to resembles you
This is good or bad
All depending on my general mood
Why do you think I let you get away
With all the things you say to me?

I had a very pleasant Skype call with a friend tonight. We had nice things to say to each other, and I made him blush. It felt short, but I guess it was actually an hour long? A little longer than an hour. Maybe it just seems short relative to how long we tend to talk. I was in a good mood, which was very possibly related to the fact that I had my birthday can of Tag First Move in my hand and I kept smelling it. It smells ridiculously good. I'm not sure if I can even smell it without smiling, actually. I imagine this is what it's like to smoke weed.

Happenings today: I got a certificate for being volunteer of the month at the crisis line! I've been putting around fifty hours a month in there, so it's nice to be appreciated for my time.

I also had my first visit with a patient as a hospice volunteer... The patient was sleeping though, so I only stayed about ten minutes before leaving. Hopefully next time I'll be able to have some actual interaction. One of the staff told me that the patient yells a lot when awake, which makes it a bit scary. Alzheimer's will do that to you, I guess.

Oh also, I think maybe I've been iron deficient for awhile? Could also be period-related... but I've been feeling very tired, and today I didn't, but I think it could be because I took some iron supplements and had molasses yesterday. Today my mom and I went to Whole Foods and picked up some different iron-rich foods, including black strap molasses and a lot of dark chocolate. Pumpkin seeds seem to have a lot too, but they only had the shelled ones, and I actually like the shell on pumpkin seeds. Roasted pumpkin seeds are one of the nicest things about this season...

I know it's kinda dumb, but I like getting Chocolove bars and reading the love poems on the wrappers. Not all the poems are that great, but it's a nice little bonus to the chocolate. I need more art in my life...

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Maybe I will try to start making things again.

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I had a dream that my friend and I were sitting on his couch on a little desert island, and the water was slowly rising around us. I watched it lap at the feet of the couch while he told a story about a cliff overhanging darkness.

I'm not sure whether it was day or night in the dream, because I seem to have two memories, one in which it was day and one in which it was night. But maybe it was just both at the same time. I also remember being on both sides of the couch, so I'm really not sure exactly how this was set up in my mind.

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Trevor challenged me to draw baby Krampus in GIMP...

I think this is the first thing I've really drawn in GIMP in quite awhile. Forgot how much it sucks to draw with a mouse. Trevor thought it was good, though. I wish I had the drive to draw as much as I used to.

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On IRC I was talking to a guy about a CBT thing I linked him to.

Him: Yeah. I think all it's going to tell me is that I show high signs of anxiety and depression and need to recognize my negative thoughts and think positive instead.
Me: Well, that's possible I guess.
Me: Though usually these things try to tell you how you can do that rather than just telling you to do it.
Him: Ha, that would be nice.
Me: It helps take it from abstract to concrete.
Him: Explain?
Me: Well, I think the issue with a lot of broad advice (e.g. "you just need to be aware of negative thoughts") is that it's too abstract to be useful.
Me: For instance, with environmental issues
Me: It's easy for us to say "we should clean up the ocean so it's not polluted anymore"
Me: But how the hell do we do that?
Me: So the little concrete steps are important
Me: Using dish soap to scrub sea birds and coming up with things to filter the water, stuff like that.

Talking about this made me think of other things that are too distant or abstract for people to take seriously. You can tell someone the same thing a hundred times and they might never get it, but if you offer specific concrete steps they can take, it makes a big difference... Or, well, it can. Sometimes it's hard to put things into concrete terms though, or even if you can, you might not want to... Maybe a good analogy would be trying to get someone to solve a math problem, and you don't want to tell them every step they need to take to do it, because then they won't learn how to do problems on their own... Better to just give them the basic tools they need and let them figure it out from there.

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On Sunday night I talked to my friend about the romantic... daydreams? Fantasies? that I have. They're pretty realistic, as far as I'm concerned. I don't want much. Just someone I can be alone with. I imagine quietly reading separate books in a room together and occasionally commenting on something to each other. Or sitting near the kitchen while the other person is somewhere else in the house, and when they walk over to open the fridge to see if anything appealing has magically appeared in it, mentioning some amusing little thing to them, and they smile a bit and then go back to whatever they were doing. My parents have this kind of relationship, and it seems nice to me. It's also nice to have long engaging conversations, but sometimes you just want something more relaxed.

Maybe my desire for this kind of relationship is just a compromise between a need for alone time and a need for companionship. I want a lot of contact with people, but not necessarily at an intensive level all the time... Like, I might spend hours IMing someone on my computer, but it's harder to spend the same amount of time with them in person. I mean, it's not like that with everyone every time I hang out with people, but sometimes I just want to like, take a nap or something, and I can't really do that without ending the hangout. Or being weird, I guess.

Man, I wonder if I'm anemic or something. I feel tired so much. Could also be a bad sleep schedule (most likely) or dying (less likely). If I start sleeping twenty hours a day and it's slowly increasing though, I'm probably dying. I had a hospice meeting tonight and the volunteer services manager told us that the patients we work with tend to sleep more and more as they get closer to death.

I've been thinking a lot about death lately. I guess it's never really that far from my mind, though. It's just that the thoughts are a bit different when I'm feeling good. More "I'm glad I'm not dead!" type stuff.

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Screenshots from The Age of Deliverance.



Why am I so exhausted right now? :(

---Edit---

So I finished the game, and it was actually a lot heavier than I expected. There was one bit where a character just asked me "What do you live for?" and prompted me to type an answer. I stared at the screen for a long time, trying to figure out what to type. There was only space for maybe twenty characters, and I'm not sure how satisfied I am with what my answer was. I don't know what impact my answer had on the game, if any, but it certainly impacted me. I just downloaded this game on a whim, I didn't think it would end up meaning anything.

My energy levels seemed to go up after I ate some food earlier. It's sort of strange, because I felt like I had eaten a lot, more than I'd been eating in the past few days, really. I had apples and cheese and some chips and hummus and a ~200 calorie fig bar this morning. I guess I could be overestimating the calories, but... well, I did eat. I've had days where I ate less but felt like I had more energy. Could be sleep... but I felt exhausted after taking a nap... so I don't know...

After finishing the game tonight, I thought about how there are people creating beautiful meaningful things, and I wondered why I'm not doing anything like that. At least part of it is that I don't feel like I have the skills to do anything great, but I wonder what I could make that would have some sort of impact on someone? I've had no real desire to write anything for awhile. Making a game seems like it could be pretty cool. But... I don't want to do that alone. Maybe I'll ask around and see if anybody wants to work with me on something...

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