Greetings all remaining Xanga creatures. If you can see me, please notify me by whatever means seems desirable to you.

I started that other wordpress blog…http://reesertshadow.wordpress.com/ just in case Xanga 100% kicked the bucket…but now I’m trying to figure out how best to ensure that all the individuals who desire to keep up with me can even find where I’m posting…so…just need to know who is seeing me here.

rts

Mm. A little, selfish place inside me wishes I had known about the anxiety beforehand. But then I think that would not have deterred me if I had known. So. It does not matter. (It matters.)

I got my glasses today. The last time I wore glasses, I was maybe eleven or twelve. It is disorienting. I am going to have to wear them a little at a time before I can make them a regular addition to my face. My brain cannot handle the distortion of its usual efforts to see clearly.

Gah.

Just. No. Not even working right now.

Listening to the Portal song, then reading. Then bed.

Ah. It’s nice to have an excuse to not catch fire and listen to a voice like crackling flames chant something like, “KILL KILL KILL…”

And also an excuse to krazy glue my keys to my hand. I didn’t mean to, but I am not yet an expert at the knots I learned for this project. They didn’t seem secure enough, so I coated the first item’s knots in glue and set it carefully aside…then I thought maybe I should glue the one I made for me, too…and I did. But I wasn’t very careful and accidentally let the first knot rest against my skin while I glued the second one and BAM–instant bond.

I’m an idiot.

I could even say that twice, when I look back at the initial reason I was messing about with arts and crafts at 4am. But it’s not worth saying, since this kind of idiocy is not something I can be cured of. I’m just sitting back and anticipating the point at which it really starts to solidify. You know. Where I start telling convoluted stories again. Which I already foresee happening, since fall will soon be upon us and I have gone to the trouble of setting aside days for the purpose of examining this potential source of idiocy and wordvomit stories.

Aaand. Now I am hallucinating that giant black things with many legs are crawling across my desk.
Nothing there.

Time to sleep.

Well.

Oh well.

Things did not end up how I had hoped in my last post. But that’s not to say most things aren’t still looking hopeful. They are. They’re fine. Except for, you know, our shared unease that we’ll be disciplined for interacting socially. I don’t think I’ve ever said anything about it, despite my paranoia, but she mentions it pretty regularly…we are hyperaware of each other at work now, specifically because we are trying to convey indifference. It’s all perfectly ludicrous. Except I must acknowledge that we are more the same than I initially thought. If we weren’t, we’d have had to have a conversation about what to do to deflect notice. No discussions necessary.

I am not even sure how they would go about disciplining someone for being friends. The idea of it makes me feel ill.
On the other hand, the idea that I have also become the sort of person who can only have friends in secret is sort of fitting. My life seems to encompass situations ever-increasing in their nonsensicality.

Like the other day. I felt like I had achieved a new low.
For the life of me, I don’t remember what I said…but I was joking with my mom and said something rude…and she got this look on her face. The look moms get when you’ve made them really mad…and I started backpedaling and trying to apologise because I really hadn’t meant to offend her and I really do feel bad when people get offended by me when I don’t mean it…
And it was alright. Except that later she tried to explain to me what made her think I’d meant what I said, and we came again to the whole issue of my inexpressiveness.

Nothing makes you feel like a failed human being quite as much as your own mother telling you she can’t read you. I mean, nobody else has spent as much time observing me. Nobody. And if she can’t get me, how can I ever have any hope that other people will?

Too depressing to think about.

This is why I sit in graveyards now and paint pictures with someone whom I’m not allowed to be friends with and, through some miracle of telepathy, I also don’t always need to look at or even speak with to establish understanding. Not that we sit in silence or that I’m imagining that this is happening…it’s real in a way that is hard to explain.

I have gotten so used to describing my relationships in stories or metaphors–having to, really, to convey my perception of my interactions–that to have something occur so naturally is beyond me to describe.

I’ll take it.

It appears I am unable to cope without a certain amount of panic and mental disorder.

I mean, overall, everything is great: my Jester’s job situation seems hopeful, my own financial situation is stable, the people who trouble me most at work are going to be leaving us soon enough, and in the mean time they are doing highly useful things for me…all in addition to my recent exceptional productiveness…my family appears to be doing well…I’ve made headway against my unsociable nature…

Best. Books. Ever.
Ever.

I can read them again and again and again and keep understanding new and somewhat terrifying things and still love every bit of it. I am attempting to interest likely people in reading stories from this author, so we’ll see how that turns out. But yes…overall, things are brilliant.

My Wolf? He is quiet. I feel almost none of the agitation (positive or negative) that makes up most of that characterization.
Almost none.

It’s this awful socialization. And my relentless capacity for paranoia. (Well, mostly the latter.)
Something about it is too…perfect. That makes me terribly nervous. This should not be allowed. And probably isn’t. And in those small moments where I do sense that bit of myself stirring, it’s the smallest tickle of fur against my ear, and the quietest whisper to take care and not get used to this state of things, lest something dreadful happen…

This, of course, is one of my many significant flaws…the ability to ruin all good things by contemplating the worst possible outcomes, even though nothing has happened.

I have arrived at a point in my life where I am assuring people that there will be no more of this crying nonsense, partly because it distresses me to know people are crying, and mostly because of my long-held opinion that it is more desirable to feel nothing than to cry (try not to judge me too harshly–opinions like that are hard to shake), and in a sincere effort to cheer them up, we go to a graveyard that I had made a mental note to take her to once when I had to take an alternate route to the theatre…except that today there was work being done at the EXACT part of the road where one would wish to turn into the graveyard, and I not only stave off my natural impulse to ragequit life (metaphorically, understand), but for once I actually had a successful backup plan.

…I may have thought about this enough that I actually saved a web site in my phone that locates cemeteries and graveyards near me based on gps information. Maybe.
So we looked at things and talked about names and interesting headstones, and she said she was doing an art project, so we picked up bits of false flowers that had been shredded by the lawn mowers. And to top that, I found a Dairy Queen on the way back that I swear had not been there on the way out.

I admit I have always been in danger of becoming the sort of person who does these things, but it is fascinating to see one’s life beginning to match up in new ways with what one always suspected one was like.

The disparity between my various selves is rarely so glaringly offensive to me as it was today. Although it does give me a perfect opportunity to compare myself to a gemstone: one single object having so many facets with the smallest degree of difference in the way they reflect the same light…

Also, I have never observed other individuals projecting themselves in a way similar to how I suspect I project myself–not that we are projecting the same self, but that we are aware of having multiple selves and use similar selves in similar situations.

It is the same as everyone else in that everyone has a self they show their coworkers that is different from the self they show their friends and different from the self they show their family, but I am not referring to those natural transitions. The ones I mean are more…self-conscious? There is something different. Staged. But not in the way everyone has a staged self they use when dealing with strangers in stores or in other business transactions, or whom they, as an employee, must interact with at work, or in whatever setting you prefer to imagine. No; I am thinking of a consciously-staged projection used in a situation where a natural one is what most people would use.

I think we have not arrived at a place where we can interact naturally. We had it, and then it went away. That was my doing, I think, because I got curious enough to overcome my natural disinclination…I did not think we were alike enough that she would react the way she did. But we will figure it out.

Now I stop writing before I manage to say something frightfully stupid.

well this is annoying

i keep not writing because i want to be sure i understand where my blog is and what its doing and so far everything looks and works the same and my blog is right here where it always is (except at some point xanga’s text box for posts got AUTOCORRECT installed and it keeps trying to force me to use capital letters and i don’t want to)

so anyway
how do you deal with someone sending you a message in which they are claiming to be mentally unstable
i don’t know how to react to this revelation

not that   you know   in my internet travels this hasn’t happened before   but usually i know something beforehand about a person’s tendencies toward actual mental instability   or at least claims of it   and it isn’t something that just comes at you unexpectedly

for the life of me i can’t even think of why i was told
it was for none of the usual reasons
   – i am telling you because i am going to leave the internet and never talk to you again
   – i am telling you because i trust you and want to talk about it
   – i am telling you because we are joking about something (that isn’t really funny, but of course we joke about what makes us uncomfortable)

no
it was for none of those reasons
but it was in conjunction with something moderately serious so i can’t discount it as a joke

i responded in such a way as to maybe find out whether it is more aligned with the first or second reason but to be honest i feel apprehensive about either

i’m so much less confident in my ability to help people than i used to be
but of course i’d rather have that than have it turn out to be like the first reason since that could make things extremely uncomfortable

we’ll see i guess
just like with xanga

we’ll see what happens

As my friend Toni would say, “You know when suddenly there’s a thing and it’s all like BLEGGHrrrgh?”

That’s how I feel about the fact that I visited the relaunch tracking page and…Xanga is still alive. I pledged. Not gonna lie. I enjoy so few things as well as I enjoy my blogging like a “schizophrenic sociopath”, a description fondly employed by my dearest soulless ginger fiancé…

But, I am 10000% in agreement with this particular post (don’t judge me…I almost always laughed at her MS Paint illustrated stories. Like. Real laughs.), and think that WordPress is AWFUL. I used to have an account at BlogSpot, and am seriously considering–if I were forced to move–going there instead of continuing to use either a sucky WordPress account, or a (potentially) sucky Xanga 2.0. But I already paid for that, so I may as well try it out.

In the mean time, I’ll sit back and watch things progress. There’s not much else I can do, after all.

Except finally write my email to K. I have at least one particularly exciting thing to tell her, so yay.

So. Quick update.

Today was very productive. I kidnapped a girl whose ride never showed up to get her from work, and then we spent the next four hours in a graveyard where we were joined by her friend and discovered that we are actually one person occupying three bodies, and if we are together (and not at work), this is all kinds of entertaining and culminated in leaving a note for some Dairy Queen employees regarding things we picked up while eavesdropping on them, and some graffiti about a portal in the women’s restroom.

The whole experience was a little less good after I got violently sick and annoyed Jester (separate items, though semi-related), since those are two of my least favourite things to do…but I’ll try and look on the bright side.

I think I have people I could be friends with. For reals.
I haven’t had that easy of a time hanging out with anyone in years.

Also, I know I let anyone who responded to my message know about my separate WordPress blog, but since Xanga extended the donation timeframe, I am still up in the air as to whether or not I’ll be using it. I don’t want to start on it if Xanga lives, but I also didn’t want to leave everyone hanging if Xanga died…so…we’ll see what happens.