Disguised.Me

Mirror, mirror.. tell me who you see? Am I you or me? I can never remember.

Creativity .. strikes?!

I’ve been really disenchanted with everything lately, and that’s really been taking its toll on an already stifling bout of depression. However, here recently, I find joy in creating small-scale graphics for use over on Afterlife and it’s been a very welcome change. I haven’t really used Photoshop in more than a year, so this is actually quite a big deal for me.

However, all other aspects of my life that usually bring entertainment (or inspiration) are severely suffering. Games, reading, writing.. all of it is kind of going to the wayside. So I’m going to hold onto this miniscule creative streak while it’s here and milk it for every little bit that it’s worth.

Maybe, just maybe, it’ll be the dim guiding light that pulls me through this funky fog I’m trapped in.

Open the Flood Gates

Now that the testing has been completed and I can stop stressing about that, I feel a bit of relief. I’ve got a plan to make sure that her weaker skills are getting some practice and that her stronger skills don’t get most of the attention (as they do currently.. which is why they’re stronger). Plus she’s got the start of a routine for her ‘asynchronous’ school work between live lessons, so I’m hoping that helps some, too.

On top of that bit of relief, I’ve completed a rather big task for work and I’m hoping the results of that come back soon so that I can potentially move forward with the next pieces of it, but as I’m being held up by someone else’s task, I’ve just got to wait it out. Completing that was a relief however, so that’s another stressor that’s lessened (but not totally gone yet).

And finally, today was launch day over on Afterlife for the previously mentioned Hoarders event, and though it has had some hiccups, overall it’s going fairly well. People are having fun building their collections and being more active (which is not-so secretly the goal), so I’m really excited about that. Here’s hoping that continues on.

All-in-all, it’s really an alright kind of day. But it can’t last, because we have an ice storm coming in, so I’ve gotta take my victories where I can while they’re hot for the taking. I only hope that it doesn’t knock out the power tonight.

Anticipation

The strange thing about anticipation, is that it can be either good or bad. You can be anticipating something amazing happening, or something truly, fucking dreadful. And then, sometimes you can be anticipating the unknown, which is rarely fun for those of us who have anxiety and an overactive imagination. Tonight, I’m a mixture of many variants of anticipation.

Professionally, I’m anticipating something that could be good news, or could just mean more work for me depending on the feedback I get.

Personally, I’m anticipating a few things. Tomorrow morning, bright and early, the kid has her Q2 benchmark testing. This is to find out if she knows her shit or not, which is not where my concern lies. I know she knows her shit. But I also know that when you put her on the spot, on a video call, she suddenly does not know her shit and she has a tendency to lose her train of thought and get the giggles.

Also tomorrow, our Hoarders collecting event kicks off on Afterlife, which means excitement but also disappointment. I’m somehow notoriously unlucky when it comes to collecting full sets of our decks and I am notoriously uninterested in many of the decks that get voted into rotation. I don’t have very many common interests with the community at large, and this is where it ends up crippling me. I’ll have fun either way, but I really do hope that it brings a surge of life into the board, so that we can continue to build on the community that we’ve got so far.

And of course, the future. Buying a house, moving if/when we manage to buy a house, furnishing a house, cleaning up the place we’re in, change. I’m nervous, but I know that it’s what we need. It sucks here. We generally don’t like it. It doesn’t have anything we really need as far as space and storage. The scary change is needed, but it’s scary. It has so many ways it can go right, but so many ways it can go wrong. I just hope that hoping is going to tip the balance in the favor of good.

All in all, I’m a bundle of mixed feelings of anticipation. Good, bad, and goodbad (is that a thing?) but at least I’m feeling and I’m invested. I definitely went through a phase this past year where feeling was a bit of a challenge.

Here’s hoping that 2021 continues bringing me back to the state of being a functional human being.