Cinderlite

I haven't posted in a long time. In like six months, which is like... woof! That's a long time to be absent. Yikes!

I don't even have a good excuse, if I'm being honest. I just didn't have the spoons/energy to catch up on DW, so I avoided the site until I finally did have them, which is now. I'm going to try and be more consistent about posting, if only because journaling is a healthy habit and a great way for me to look back on the years and remember what I was doing. I really need to do that!! 

SO, I'M BACK!! 

I'm afraid to check and see if all my old friends on here have unfriended me or not. I wouldn't blame them if they had. I was inactive for a very long time! I suppose, if they have, I can just try and make new friends. That would be good as well! 

As a head's up, there's probably going to be a small flurry of posts to update everyone about what's going on in my life right now. So keep an eye out for that, and if I do still have some friend's out there who are reading this, then... don't feel obligated to respond to every post I make! That's a good way to lose spoons, and put yourself in the doghouse.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

Yesterday, my partner and I went through a half the boxes piled up in the bedroom. For context, most of my belongings (and I don't have much) are in boxes in my bedroom. They're mainly books, DVDs, and games... but mostly books. I was planning to move a few years ago, but ended up moving my partner in instead in July 2021. We've been living in a super cramped apartment ever since. It's very small, only meant for one person, but we make it work. Soon, we'll begin saving up for a new apartment complex, and hopefully we'll move sometime next year.

Right! The boxes! They were piled nearly up to the ceiling in the bedroom. Originally, the heaviest things were at the bottom (and most of them still were because of the books + DVDs + games), but they've been shifted around as I've taken some things out of them. It was anxiety-inducing to see them on my partner's side of the room (the only place there was space!), and hanging out so precariously. So, yesterday, we went through them to see if everything in them was really necessary or not. It was mostly old clothing, stuff that didn't fit or was super threadbare.

Two days ago, my partner suggested that I get rid of the clothes I didn't use or weren't in good condition. I was reluctant, because I have so few viable clothing in general. As a bigger person, finding clothes that fits and is also affordable is pretty difficult. I cycle through the same handful of clothes and one bra regularly, mostly because it's all I can afford. Places like Torrid or Catherine's or Fashion Bug have clothes that fit my size, but they're all either extremely ugly, or heinously expensive and bad quality. But two days ago, I hit the jackpot at Walmart and bought about $200 in clothes (on my credit card) that actually fit me. Now, mind you, they weren't all pretty, but they were functional and there were a few pieces that I enjoyed and fit me well. So it's worth the purchase, even if it was expensive.

With the new clothes in mind, I decided that purging my threadbare and holey clothes was a good option. Especially the ones ripping at the seams with 10+ holes that I've kept for over a decade. -sheepish- So I got rid of a lot of them... and then we went through the boxes, and bagged clothes that were 1x or 2x or even 3x that didn't fit me anymore. I kept a few pieces in the hopes that I'll lose weight and fit them again, but for now, they're just taking up space that we really could use. There were also a lot of boxes that barely had anything in them and some that did, but were unnecessary because my partner had better quality versions of those items (like kitchen supplies or plastic plates).

In the end, we got rid of about half the boxes in the bedroom. It really opens the room up and makes it far more spacious. My partner has also helped me to better organize my wardrobe and taught me the best way to fold my clothes to maximize the drawer I use. I'm really pleased with our progress. Though, I realized today that there is one more heap of old clothing (sheets + ruined hoodies + jeans) that we didn't get to. So I plan to make work of that later today! It was crazy how much crap I had. I literally had an entire box packed to brimming of just old socks. I only use socks during the winter when I can no longer use my sandals. Truly batshit!

In other news, I've been awake since about 3am. My sleeping schedule is getting back on track, but it's still not there yet. I shouldn't have gone to bed so early yesterday, but alas... at least I had a good amount of time to myself to work on my coding. That's nice!

I've been awake since 2:30am due to a shitty nightmare I had. I can't remember it, and I'm grateful for that because they've been haunting me lately. It really sucks because I only got a few hours of sleep after falling asleep around 11pm. I'm really getting sick of the constant nightmares my psychiatric medicine withdrawal is causing me. Never in my life have I had so many of them clustered together throughout each night, every night. I dread having to go to sleep now, and my exhaustion from subsisting off a few hours of sleep when I'm used to hypersomnia is super sucky.

Homestuck:

On the plus side, I immediately took a shower after I woke up. I also wrote my rp response for the (Homestuck!) Dirk/Dovesprite roleplay my partner and I have going. It's an intriguing premise, basically taking place post-game. Everyone spawns back onto their planets, including the guardians, and luckily Dirk / Roxy do as well. Dirk, though, is entirely disconnected with his friends and family. He views his peers as looking down on him, and even infantilizing him, even though they're not. He's just struggling with going from extreme isolation for the majority of his life to having people around him all the time. Anyway! He uses his narrative destroying powers to rip open a portal back to the Medium and steps through it. The goal is not unlike Ultimate Dirk -- restarting the Sburb game.

Dirk was most at home during the game, despite all the strife, stress, and danger. He wants, more than anything, to feel needed again. He wants to be regarded as important, instead of feeling pushed to the side as all of his friends make lives for themselves post-game. To be frank, he needs therapy, lol. Not that he'd agree to that or even think kindly of therapists. What Dirk doesn't realize is that once the game has ended, it's literally not possible to restart it, no matter how much you alter the code. Not to mention, Dovesprite is there (as she slowly figures out her gender identity), having settled into becoming a kind of Denizen due to Dirk's presence there. She's the equivalent to anti-piracy software, always banishing Dirk back to his own reality after a sort of internal timer goes off.

In an effort to manipulate Dovesprite, Dirk makes an offer to use his heart powers to rip her soul from her sprite body and put her in a robot/android body instead so she can join everyone else in the new reality. He wants her out of the way, and this seems like the best way to go about it. What he doesn't realize is that once Dove is gone from the second prototyping, it'll just be Crowsprite. Crowspite is pure code, and finds Dirk much more quickly than Dove does. He has to pop up from the opposite side of the universe every time he shows up, just to get enough time to fuck around before he finds out. He'll keep at this for 10 years before he comes to the realization that it's literally impossible to do what he wants. That'll force him to come to terms with his life, and his new place in Dove's life (romantic, though she struggles with seeing Bro constantly in Dirk) as well as all the friends he's been ignoring.

So yeah, that's the premise of our roleplay. It's our second time making an attempt at it. The first one was decidedly more dramatic, and I was uncomfortable with my portrayal of Dirk. It's been a year since then and I feel like I have a stronger grasp of who he is. I'm also learning that in-character fictional conflict isn't a bad thing or something to be afraid of. All of this to say that my writing is progressing and getting better every day! I'm thrilled. Though I wish I had some friends on DW that liked Homestuck too. I've looked around, but it doesn't seem like the Homestucks have moved / transitioned here despite the inevitable collapse of Twitter (especially now that Musk is apparently going to charge everyone for using it.)

I hope everyone is having a good day today! It's my birthday!

I don't have that much planned for today, mostly just to spend time with my partner and to eat cake at some point or another. Still, that'll be a far better birthday than most of mine have been in the past. So I'm excited to spend it with them and all of you!

I don't have a lot to say (I rarely do, haha. I'm not that good at the journaling thing. Not much happens to me that is exciting to write about.), but I'm happy to be here on DW with all of my new friends. I'm really enjoying getting to know all of you, and I think it's important to keep a written log of events going on in my life that I can look back on. I struggle with my memory a lot, so often times in years gone by, I have no idea what I've been doing, lol. I feel like this is a good way to keep up with myself.

I did get a few spoils for my birthday earlier in the month. You've seen some of them already -- the charms for my red Persona 5 ita bag. Other than that, I got a Deadpool titty mousepad, a coloring book (I don't know the series, but I like the art), a Meg from Hercules doll, and two dolls from Rainbow High. They're gorgeous, and a new thing for me. I've never collected dolls before, but they're girlfriends, and I love them. ♥ You can see the images below!


( Check out my birthday gifts! )

Glasses:

I went to the eye doctor today for a new prescription for my glasses. I found out that on top of one eye being far-sided and the other near-sided, I also have deviating pupils, lol. There's a fix for that and my astigmatism, though, so I'm going to get that when I buy my new glasses from Zenni soon. I have decided on these two frames for my regular and sun glasses. They're going to be awesome, and I really can't wait to see how they look on me. I'm hoping to get them in time for my birthday next month!

While I was at the eye doctor, I met one of the workers there, and she was incredibly nice. We had a lot in common, surprisingly? We both loved games, including Mass Effect, and Arcane as well. She even knew about Homestuck! She complimented my Ita Bag and my charms after recognizing them. ♥ We ended up exchanging phone numbers before I left, and I look forward to hearing from her in the future and potentially even hanging out. I don't have a lot of IRL friends, so this could be great for me!


Books:

I've been reading a lot of books in the last month and a half. That's to say I read about 8 of them in that time frame. There were some superb ones like the For the Wolf duology, which I loved. I'm such a sucker for new takes on fairy tales and anything to do with deities. The For the Wolf duology also included my favorite romance trope: enemies to lovers. I was so sucked into the second book. I couldn't tear myself away from the pages. I also really enjoyed Legends and Lattes. It was a good palate cleanser of a book that focused on a (minor) sapphic relationship between an orc and a tiefling opening a coffee shop. I can't wait for the next book in the series to come out this December.

The books I've spent the most time reading recently are from the ACOTAR series. I snubbed it for a long time because while I love romance, I usually don't like the tropes in published work. That remains to be true, but I didn't mind it overly much in A Court of Thorns and Roses. It had some stuff I didn't appreciate, but it easily suckered me into the series. I'm on the last book in the series, now, and it's good, even if it makes me roll my eyes sometimes. The writer has a tendency to use the work "barking" incorrectly, and it always gets a laugh out of me, even though it wasn't meant to. All I've got to do is finish A Court of Silver Flames, and then I can tick off two of the goals in my reading journal.

It's been a long time since I last joined a site like Livejournal or Dreamwidth. I have another account hooked up to my old Livejournal, but I'd rather start fresh and just... exist.

My partner says there are kink memes still available on Dreamwidth. On top of that, there are also fandom challenges and events that I'm interested in keeping in touch with. So I've joined in order to do all of the above, as well as make friends and see what happens. Chances are that I'll just abandon this account like I do every other journal because I suck at it.... but who knows! We'll see!

 I want to write more. I want to write fic and participate in fandom and just... have fun! I miss fandom.... I want to become prolific. I want to spend most of my time writing, improving. So that's what I'll aim to do.

Welcome back to fandom, me. Here's to hoping it's everything I've been looking for!

P.S. Were the icons always so blurry? I don't remember it being that way, but I've been known to have a faulty memory, lol.