Today I have had a poem running around my head. A new one, not an old one.
I used to do a lot of poetry in school – I won competitions, and I think I was even published at one point. Of course, that was in primary school, so I’m not going to say they were brilliant by any standards. Did less in secondary school, and even less since. But occasionally the poet’s grace touches me and I compose something. I don’t usually do anything with it, but sometimes it’s for a purpose, and I put it to use.
The poem that had been forming itself in my head today got written down and emailed to the person it was for, and they appreciated it which was in itself the goal. I’ve previously written poetry to express my depression, or just to get something out of my head in an ordered fashion – using the structure of a poem to unravel my thoughts.
My early poetry, along with my propensity for reading is probably why I had a larger than average vocabulary for a kid in my area (though not higher than average for my year as I’d say most of the kids in my year were also in the smart kid crowd even if they also fit in the popular crowd where I didn’t).
But still, prose has its purpose, and I do like to write poetry occasionally – putting effort into a single piece and rearranging it until it works. Of course, since I do that with just about anything I put in the public eye, I’m not sure how much extra effort I can claim to put into the more poetic pieces.
So I’m kind of reblogging a reblog while I wait for my hair dye to activate. I originally wrote this in 2010, reblogged it in 2013.
Since then, I’ve had a varied “love life” with a few people passing through my life in various ways. Some I’ve screwed up, some just haven’t worked out (I’m pretty sold on the idea that I’m straight, but playing with gay guys can be fun too).
The reason I’m thinking about this right now is that I was talking to someone and realised that they didn’t know these stories – didn’t know the things I’d been through – and I couldn’t quite decide if I should tell them or not. But I made these things public for a reason – hiding it isn’t going to change things – and I know that they will read this, and can choose whether or not to follow the links above for themselves.
I was in a different place when I wrote both the original post and the comments on the reblog, but this still affects me. Today was the first time I’d thought about it in a long time, and I can now say that I’ve conquered a lot of the issues that came of it – but that doesn’t mean that they’ve gone away, or that they don’t linger – the moments that define who you are don’t just go away, they make you who you are; losing them would be losing part of who you are and I’m pretty happy with where I am at the moment.
Left my phone on the bus this morning, and now I’m counting the minutes until I can get out of here and get it back. I can’t do chat programs or Google+ in the office, and not knowing if people are trying to get in touch with me that might need me for some reason is getting to me a bit.
I could probably use the occasional internet deprivation stint, really. The honest truth is I feel like something’s missing – and I only felt this way since I noticed I didn’t have my phone around midday. Even subconsciously knowing it’s there is an ease on my mind even if I don’t know exactly where it is. There was palpable relief when I finally tracked it down to the Longstone depot and got in contact with Lost Property.
Why are we so addicted to our tech? I was getting positively twitchy as I tried to track my phone down – and not just because it isn’t insured. It’s an interesting question, and I don’t really have an answer – I’m just waiting for the moment I can go and get my precious back…
The last two days I’ve worked ten hour days. I’m currently 6 hours into what could be another. As far as I know, I’m not getting compensated for the extra time, and I’m certainly not being thanked for it by the people bitching at me about every slight “problem” they find. I rebuilt their website to work on a new data source in two hours and they’re complaining at me either because it’s doing what it did before and they expected it to somehow change or because the data is different and they haven’t cottoned on to the fact that it’s their data that’s wrong and they have to fix it before it will display right.
I am stressed, tense, and sick of dealing with this crap. I’ve had two different companies whining at me over trivial bullshit this week, and even though this week has only been three days long for me, it’s been a longer harder week than most five-day-weeks. I have come very close to taking my balls and going home the last couple of days- just walking out of the office.
It’s easy to tell when things are really getting to me – my noise tolerance goes down. When I need to plug in and blast music in my ears just to override what I’m hearing and cope, then I’m having a bad day. When I lash out at someone for touching my shoulder to try and get my attention while I’m doing this, I’m having a terrible fucking day and I recommend you leave me the fuck alone. Especially when all my attention was wanted for was to show me something I already knew about, had dug up the means to access the data I needed to verify testing and was working on fixing it. When I say “I know about that, I’ve got it on my screen and I’m working on it right now” I don’t mean “show me more of this because I haven’t seen it”.
This week is especially hard because I’m still rubbing myself raw over something that happened at the weekend. The one sour point of my weekend left me feeling physically ill for hours from my reaction to it, and I’m still considering how to address it. One of the problems is that I can’t openly discuss it, and it is affecting my moods in general, as well as potentially my continued attendance at and enjoyment of PD events. I’ve been contemplating how to put it in words, and the answer so far is that I don’t know how to, but it may be something I need to bring to PD’s attention.
Anyway, back to work. I have some side projects to work on, and music to distract me.
This weekend I’m off to Empire. First Empire event of 2015, first of the Winter events I’ll have been to. It’s also my first field LARP event as a player this year.
Currently I’m fretting a little over the things I don’t have. I can’t find my scaled brow prosthetic, so I might be reduced back to just make-up, which I’d really prefer not to do. I can’t find my rune bag – but that’s an accessory I can live without. I don’t have as much in the way of Demijohn liqueurs as I normally do as I’m a little skint right now. I also don’t have the final piece of my mage armour[1], so I’ll be throwing something together in a hurry – possibly just by wearing my big coat on the battlefield.
The idea of using some of Jeremy’s cast-off skin for my Naga scales has just occurred to me, but I think that might not work as well as the idea suggested. Might be worth an experiment though – I can see if it’ll take make-up to colour it. My worry is that it would tear easily, but Naga probably shed scales as well, so I can find an IC reason for it.
I’m not as revved up for the event as I’d like to be. My keen is low, and I’m not sure what I’ll be doing on the field as Sólsetur. I have a letter to deliver, some people to see, and some rituals to do, but I don’t really know what I’m doing as a whole. I may angle towards taking over as Thane for something to do besides sit around and occasionally do a ritual.
I don’t know. Playing events can be odd for me – I feel more comfortable in a ref/crew role in the main, and while I can write my own characters and play them, finding goals and things for them to do can be tricky for me. I don’t know why I find it easier to do that for an NPC I write than for my own characters, but I do.
Tonight we’re packing the car, and tomorrow morning we’re off to the new Empire site. Hopefully without getting mired in traffic. We’ll see.
This morning I started thinking about faith, and what that means to me. I’ll get into how I started thinking about later on, but I figured I’d start with some clarifications.
I don’t have faith in gods, or religion, and I find it somewhat farcical that people do. As an atheist, I just find the idea of trusting in some higher power to come to your aid to be ridiculous – even the worst holy texts usually have some message of “God helps those who help themselves” and religion is supposed to supply a willpower and drive to help one attain their goals, not be a wish-fulfilment strategy.
I work with religious colleagues (which has had its own interesting tales) and what I usually see is that their religion is a background thing, something that supports them without being their drive. I can respect that, and they respect my lack of it, and it works quite well.
But that isn’t what I meant to talk about. What I meant to talk about was that while I don’t have faith in the traditional sense[1], I still hold faith – I have faith in people.
Now, that shouldn’t be taken in a “I have faith in humanity” sense or a “I have faith that people will usually do the right thing” sense because both those statements are to one degree or another, bollocks. It’s very difficult to have faith in someone you don’t know, and that is part of the problem with faith – it’s a “complete trust or confidence” and giving that without knowing someone is difficult.
Particular examples of people I have faith in are some of my friends who are having some trouble right now. One of them is facing various difficulties and is worrying about whether they’ll be able to attain their goals given all of the obstacles that keep coming up along the way. I have faith that they will achieve those goals, and that they’ll be stronger for it (and I’m doing my best to help clear away some of the obstacles); I have faith that they’ll pull through despite the odds and get everything they wanted. The second person is having their own troubles – facing off against difficult health issues that it’s difficult to go through alone, and harder to ask for help with. I have faith that they will get through it, that they’ll overcome the hardships, and that they trust me to help where I can. It’s much more difficult to help in this case, but I have to have faith that they know that they have my support and that they will tell me when they want me to be involved (or I’d go crazy).
And that’s why I wanted to make this post: not to espouse on my religious views (or lack of them), and not to make a statement, but to let them know that I have faith in them and I will continue to support them as best as I can. I have faith in my friends, and sometimes you have to remind them of that.
While American dictionaries seem to list the religious definition first, I hold to the Oxford Dictionary definition which lists “Complete trust or confidence in someone or something” as the primary meaning of faith
There’s something magical about watching a snake eat something several times larger than his own head. It seems to defy all logic, and while you’re watching there are several moments when you wonder if he’ll manage it, or if he’s going to have to give up. And then, slowly and magically, with no seeming transition, even more of the food has gotten in and you’re still not sure how that happened because you were watching the entire time. It’s hypnotic.
To explain, I gave Jeremy his first adult mouse yesterday. It is quite a bit larger than the rat pups he’s been on, and he gobbled those up no trouble at all, but they weren’t much bigger in diameter than he was. This mouse was a good third, maybe half again his base diameter and at least double the diameter of his head. I wasn’t sure he was going to be able to eat it. It took him several goes as well. He started chewing on the ear because he was trying to find the best place to start and hadn’t quite grasped where to go – especially given he couldn’t fit much in his mouth at once. He ended up unhinging his jaw and stretching to such an extent I was half-worried it was hurting him. I was completely unconvinced that he was going to get the mouse’s hips in – they just seemed so much wider than even him at his most stretched, but he managed to squeeze them back together and drag them in.
Jeremy has firmly latched onto the mouse after a little help and is starting to try and swallow it
After swallowing the mouse, there’s quite a difference in size before and after represented by the large bulge in his throat.
Absolutely fascinating to watch. And of course, upon posting the pictures to Google+, I’ve had two people go “can you not share that with me?” My answer is no. My answer will always be no. I do not make posts based on what my audience (such as it is) wants to see, I make them based on what I want to post. What that means is that the privacy level I use (be that circles on Google+, or friends groups on Facebook, or something else) is based on what I perceive the sensitivity of the post to be. If I don’t want to share something with everyone who might want to see it, I won’t. If I’m raising a potentially controversial issue, I’ll usually reduce the numbers. If I’m posting about my mental health, I’m usually quite careful about my audience. But that’s the thing, I choose my audience based on the limits I want to impose on the content, not what other people think those limits should be.
Many people I know create circles on Google+ purely to share content of a particular flavour. I can understand that viewpoint from one perspective, but I utterly don’t from another. Having a “roleplaying” circle that you make roleplaying posts to is great, as long as you know that everyone who might want to see them is on there. But what if you make a new friend who might want to see it but you haven’t asked yet? What if a friend of a friend might have a good point to make, but will never get to see it because they’re not in your group.
I use circles primarily to sort content into categories that make sense of how I know the person, and that I can use to break down who I want to read. My phone shows me the latests posts from my “Friends” circle on my homescreen rather than showing me all posts. This means that I don’t see the communities and the other people I’ve got circled – just the people who I want to read more often. The secondary use is to share sensitive content as I said above, and that’s a much rarer thing for me.
But then, I see things differently. I’m a glutton for information – I want to see it all, to have access to it all, and to freely be able to access it. I don’t like the closed off worlds that my friends create, even as I understand that they don’t share my views on the matter. C’est la vie.
So last August, I decided that by the end of the year I was going to decide on a tattoo and get it done.
And I didn’t.
I’m still wavering on a design, but I have – I think – set on a premise. A bionic spine bolted to my back, engraved with symbols new and old including the rune Dagaz.
I’ve been thinking about getting a tattoo since I was about 12, I reckon. I didn’t particularly see an appeal in getting an earring, but tattoos were cool.
I’m turning 28 this year, and I still don’t have a tattoo. This is in part because I haven’t confirmed for myself what I want to get, but I have some ideas. More on that later.
What I have done though is started getting piercings. In April this year, I got my first piercings – a left helix CBR and a barbell in my left nipple; I like the asymmetry.
I still don’t like the idea of a regular ear piercing though my lobe (maybe it’s a bit too “mundane” for me), but I’ve started thinking about the idea of getting a flesh tunnel in my lobe.
Last Monday I got my third piercing – an RPA. I don’t think I’d really considered a PA or an RPA as something I’d go for until earlier this year, and then I just decided I was going to get one. For those not familiar with acronyms, an RPA is a Reverse Prince Albert – which is to say that currently I have a ring going down my uretha, through my glans and back to the urethra again. Feel free to Google if you want to know what this sort of piercing looks like.
Getting it didn’t hurt because we took the wise decision to use anaesthetic. My nipple and ear hurt more, so that’s a good sign on how good the anaesthetic works. It didn’t bleed much at first, but I did go out and buy some panty liners when I realised that the inside of my boxers were covered in blood after wandering Edinburgh for the early afternoon.
There’s been some pain – mostly discomfort from the ring shifting around, but the bleeding has stopped, and it’s getting better. I’m no longer waking up three times a night because the ring moved in my sleep.
So, back to tattoos. Nearly. I’ve gotten three piercings this year, and that’s probably all the ones I will be getting this year – maybe ever. I’m not sure I want any more after all. But I’m still thinking about tattoos; more than ever now actually.
I have a few ideas for ink. After a discussion about Futhark runes with a friend, I remembered the associations I’ve long had with the Dagaz rune. The problem with that particular idea is placement and style. I don’t want it to be mistaken for an hourglass, which means that it should be somewhere where orientation will be clear; this kind of nixes the idea I had of having in on my upper forearm. I could have it at the top of my spine, but I’m less convinced by that every time I think about it. I’m not sure how prominent I want it, so having it on the upper arm seems wrong. Maybe somewhere on my upper torso? I don’t know.
I like this idea
don’t want this
Another idea I’ve been considering goes back a decade to when I was part of Warbird Wing. It was a time where I got a start on things I’m doing now, and where I could boast knowing and talking to people on five our of seven continents. Sadly I’m not in touch with many of them, but I’m still proud to declare myself a Warbird. What I’m thinking for this is probably a hawk emblazoned over the Imperial symbol with an outer ring that says “174th Warbird Wing – Hawk Squadron” in Aurebesh. In case you hadn’t got it, there are some Star Wars links here. So the idea with this would be a unit patch-style tattoo on my upper right arm, I think. I want to talk to some of the other Warbirds about it, but I’m feeling pretty happy about the idea.
I think my main thing is that currently my skin is a blank canvas. Like with any blank canvas the trick is knowing where to start. I want the first tattoo to feel right, and I think that’ll free up a lot of the hesitance about getting more because the first one was right. This is part of the reason a small tat like the Dagaz rune appeals – it’s not a big thing, and it breaks the ice as it were.
But this is me thinking out loud now. My goal, I think, is to decide on a tattoo and get it done by the end of the year. That seems reasonable, and a good goal.
Demon: the Descent – Heirs to Hell. Having backed the Demon Kickstarter, I thought I’d also pick up a copy of Heirs to Hell – and it was rather cheap on DriveThruRPG.
Well, that was rather short and sweet.
I think Demon: the Descent might be the most recent system I’ve picked up as well, rather than just a supplement… Nope! I lie. The most recent RPG I’ve “purchased” is Timewatch, a game about time travel with intelligent time-travelling velociraptors.
I say “purchased” because as with many things these days, I acquire them through Kickstarter.
