Everyday is Another Chance [April 2015]

UPDATE 6/16/2025

 

I HAVE BEEN SURVIVING UNDER DURESS IN MY LOW INCOME STUDIO SINCE 2020. I FEEL TERRORIZED. I AM NOW DISABLED. IT SEEMS THE NEIGHBORS HAVE BEEN PLAYING GAMES - POSSIBLY FOR YEARS. THESE PHOTOS WERE AVAILABLE VIA GOOGLE MAPS BUT I CAN'T FIND THEM NOW. THEY SEEM TO SHOW MY NEIGHBOR USING THE SAME BLANKET IN HER WINDOW AS IF TO MAKE MY APARTMENT LOOK BIGGER - NO CLUE WHY SHE WOULD DO THAT. THERE IS ALSO A PHOTO OF SOMEONE ON THE BALCONY NEXT DOOR. I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT IS HAPPENING AROUND ME AND IT IS KILLING ME WITH STRESS. 

 

IT SEEMS LIKE THE BUILDING HAS BEEN ABANDONED AND THEN "NEW MANAGEMENT" COMES IN THREE TIMES SINCE 2020. THERE HAS BEEN SO MUCH GOING ON - USING THE PROTESTS, IT SEEMS, AS COVER, WHILE CLEARLY HAVING NOTHING TO DO WITH HUMAN RIGHTS - I REFUSE TO BE USED AND I WILL NOT GIVE UP MY HOME TO BULLIES. SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED IN THE PAST FIVE YEARS IT IS TOO MUCH TO WRITE ALL AT ONCE. THEY KEEP FUCKING WITH ME. I AM UNDER DURESS. 
 

 

ORIGINAL POST 4/30/15 

 

Music at the top, 'cause I love it.

***

April 2015
(pictures taken that day)

1 - WED - {Work 11-4}

Rainy - Dante's to the left...

...and Gospel Mission across the street.

Dinner: Lemon Pepper Chicken ($4.04 + .99 + .50) + Crackers ($1.99) + Jalapeno Business Cheese ($1.99)

Orion!

for a robot friend

2 - THU - {Work 11-4}  First Thursday

3 - FRI - {OFF} !PAYDAY!
86 hours with 3 hours overtime = 830 + 45 = 875
- 180 = Taxes [695]
- 170 = Prorated Rent [525]
- 186 = 2/3rd Deposit [339]
- 100 = Boss (50 tab/50 Adv) [239]
- 45 = License Renewal [194]
- 30 = Kitchen Supplies [164]
- 50 = Credit Card Payment [114]
- 15 = Cat [99]
- 60 = Food [39]

iz helping!

so helpful

4 - SAT - {Work 11-9}

la vie en bleu

speaks for itself

5 - SUN - {Work 11-7} Mad Men @ Eastburn

Made the playlist at the top

dinner - steak: $4.04...potatoes: $1...bacon: $5.69...green beans:$1.29...corn biscuits: .50 (real cornbread is so much better)

6 - MON - {OFF} ]NOPE[ Switched - Work 11-4 8:30 Free Comedy @ Eastburn

the run in my nylons looks like a tiny guitar

feeling it for Mad Men

7 - TUE - {Work 11-9}

Thoughts: I need to settle down here. Not forever and ever for the rest of my life, but I need to emotionally accept that this is where I am going to be for a while. In Portland. In the smoke shop. Here.

Sometimes I can still hear M*'s voice telling me that if I stay here I have some kind of Stockholm Syndrome. That I needed to find a new place and a new job and get a new life. Two out of three...?

And I wonder too whether I'm missing out. If I made the wrong choices. If there's something else I should be doing or somewhere else I should be.

But what other city? No small town pulls me. Whole countries seem to pop into my mind - France, Ireland, Sweden, India, Australia, Uruguay, Japan, the Caribbean - but I'd want to visit - I have no idea if I'd want to live there. So the question is: where could I be doing better? Doing more? Is there somewhere else I belong? And knowing myself, I know there's no where I belong so much as there is good and bad everywhere. Portland is for the weirdos and the wrecks and the artists and the addicts. I don't know if I'm becoming more like where I am, or if this really was a good option for me all along.

But regardless, I'm going to stay here - at least another year. I am going to work in this shop and come July I am going to participate in a transition into a new world where all the things they used to tell you were bad are actually okay. Where that knowledge isn't just for the rebellious and brave, but for the general masses. Is it really for our best interests, in every area of life? Are the masses taking back control of their individual lives? Or is this another illusion of freedom? The idea that something you could have gone to prison for is now a cure for the pains that come with being alive in our modern world is, frankly, a wonder. And furthermore, I'm going to write about it. About legalization, and sexuality, and science, and what it means to be angry.

I've placated myself these past couple days by going home to my apartment and my cat and taking baths in my absinthe mint water and jotting down the thoughts that feel important, that feel like something worth saying. While I do feel a momentum building up behind me, I still have doubt. I still feel afraid that I've wasted my life here. That as a human being, I was some experiment that didn't work out. I worry that I've been left behind, and I will be forgotten for beauties and happinesses I could never know.

And sometimes I feel like everything is aligning and there's no option but absolute, stunning victory.

Better to have hope enough to try than be paralyzed by doubt - succeed or fail, you'll never get anything you want if you don't at least try to reach for it.

8 - WED - {Work 11-4}]switched[{OFF!}

great fix

got some catbutt action here (thanks to my boss for this camera, btw)

9 - THU - {Work 11-4} Free Play at Ground Kontrol ($5)

colors

the battle station

Do you still get 7 years bad luck if you tried to fix it?

10 - FRI - {Work 11-9} .... ]OFF[ !EBT Renewal

*Day Off Switch
(decided not to switch because of my co-worker and I doubt he appreciates it at all)

laundry day face

yummy - avocados, lemon, and salt

11 - SAT - {OFF}]nope[{11-9}

12 - SUN - {Work 11-7} Mad Men @ Eastburn

I had breakfast this morning with an old friend from high school and her son - today is his first birthday. After breakfast, we were going to spend a little time together, maybe get some Voodoo Donuts, but we discovered she didn't have her keys and they probably got locked in the trunk.

It was nice to see her though and I wish I had walked away feeling like she had enjoyed seeing me just as much. It was really difficult to find something to talk about that didn't make me sound like a shady, no-good, nobody. She asked me what else I did besides work and I told her "I take a lot of baths."

The past year has been 90% hell and I can't figure out how much of that pain was deserved. Do I deserve to be left alone by the people I considered friends? I've been ditched and stood up by five different guys in the past month alone. One of the same guys tells me I'm not a disappointment and I'm awesome, but seriously, that's hard to believe when we don't talk for more than five minutes at a time and it feels so strained. Or when he says he doesn't have money to do something with me and then does something else another night. Why bother fucking with my head except that life is boring and I guess it's fun to toy with someone if you can... and yet I'll still keep talking to him, wanting everything he's said to be true...

Do I deserve to be haunted by M* and the fantasy of who I should have been for him? Stabbing myself in the heart for everything I didn't do but should have done. Always wondering what was real with him. Now I watch through Facebook as the girl he "thinks he could have loved" travels the world and moves so far beyond the incident with us that it might as well've never happened at all - just a blip in someone else's lovely life. Why couldn't they both just be honest and stop pretending like I wasn't just a joke to them? Admit they both looked down on me... if they respected me at all, were thinking of me at all, they wouldn't have been flirting to begin with, right? Oh right, I'm supposed to just think of it as something that happened naturally and in that way almost be happy they had any kind of connection at all...

Do I deserve to be struggling financially? Don't I work hard? Don't I do more than is asked of me? Don't I try to make the best of things? Don't I think my experiences here will at least be story-worthy? Or am I totally wasting every good thing about me by rotting in this shop?

Has every choice I've made really been a bad one? Or did bad things just happen and that would have happened anyway, one way or another?

Can I point to some system bigger than myself and say hey, look, I'm trapped because of this or that oppression or is that all kind of bullshit? I'm a young, white, female in the 21st century. I'm poor, but I had MHS to help me and I got to go to college. Do I get to cry myself to sleep or am I too privileged for that?

I've gotten trapped in some in-between space where I am numb and robotic but able to handle anything on one side and I'm vulnerable, sensitive, and in pain on the other. Every interaction leaves me feeling rejected and undesirable and used. There seems to be a handful of people who care about me but they're scattered across the globe and I wonder if they'd still care as much were they forced to engage with me more often. For the most part, it seems like the people in my daily life are interacting with me out of a mixture of convenience and guilt. Some are just looking for a scapegoat - they want to laugh at me to feel better about themselves. Maybe I made them feel bad or rejected at some point and now they get to be happy seeing me struggle. Sometimes lifting me up just to tear me down. Or they're trying to control me in some way. My own sister is the worst of this. I can't talk to her anymore.

I know I should just meet new people but honestly I don't want to make new friends. I don't want to just play the same games over again. I don't want to go through the trouble of caring just to have them turn their backs on me in a year or two. Or as soon as I don't make them feel good anymore... If I don't make anyone's life better, then I should just stay away from everyone.

And if I have to lead a lonely life, how do I get over it? What's the point of going out and exploring the world if I can't talk to anybody in it? Or if I can only function as a single serving friend - then I get to be the asshole who hurts everyone as I go because we have one great conversation and then poof it's like it never happened... it's that or never talk to anyone and have them all believe I hate them. I mean, that's if they even care enough to notice, which maybe they don't.

Let's break it down... in this world, what is there even to do?
Fulfill basic functions: eat something, sleep somewhere, shower, and so on.
You could put on funny clothes and make yourself look interesting.
You could decorate your living space in a way that feels right and inspires you.
You could cook things that are tasty to eat. You could take bubble baths.
You could create - music, writing, drawing.
You could build a bookcase.
You could invent a new gadget.
You could put it all online.
But what about when you leave the house?
You go out.
You enjoy the music, and art, and clothes, and inventions of other people.
You eat food at restaurants cooked by other people.
You shop in stores cleaned and stocked by other people.
You read books in libraries written by other people.
You see movies in theaters starring other people.
You have a drink in a bar surrounded by other people.
You sit on a bench and watch all the other people pass you by.

Is that all there is - unless you also talk to those people?
And what happens if it turns out that none of those other people like you very much, especially once they really get to know you - which will hurt the most because those were the people you let get closest...

My friend who I had breakfast with today has a lot of awesome tattoos. One on her ankle is a noose and it says "what difference will it make?".

I had wanted to live a good life as a good person making a positive impact on the world.
But at least death is a lot easier to accept when you're looking forward to it.
Being alone was easier when I didn't know what being loved really felt like.
Everything is contrast...

*

Meanwhile, Hilary Clinton has announced that she's running for president and I don't care because when you strip off their arbitrary masks, the politicians who have been in the spotlight throughout my lifetime are all corrupt as fuck (so obviously) and the entire matter is miles outside of my personal control. So go ahead and pretend that filling these seats as a symbolic gesture of equality will make the world a better place when really what we need is a leader who is not only willing to make huge changes but actually can...no matter what the fuck they look like or what genitalia they possess.

*

Took these while walking home from work Sunday night:

Sandy Blvd.

Sandy Blvd.

Almost home - Burnside Bridge

City to the left...

...city to the right...

...and right...

...and right...lol...I always see the convention center towers as two huge middle fingers flipping off the west side

Hello Portland

I live literally two street away from this sign.

Met these guys while waiting in Pioneer Courthouse Square - and they knew someone else I know! Portland is a small town.

Glitter on a tree. Seemed worthy. Made me smile, anyways.

13 - MON - {OFF}  8:30 Free Comedy @ Eastburn

I told my Dad that I was feeling suicidal. He responded by telling me his doctor was going to give him a different medication and that he needed encouragement because the one he's on now will be hard to wean off of. I asked him if he understood that I just told him I wanted to stop being alive. He said that he feels the same way and doesn't know what to do about it. Then he brought up this Billy Joel song - Allentown - and said there was a line that went something like "I got good grades and did everything like I should" and he felt he'd done just that - did everything he was supposed to do - and he couldn't figure out why his life was the way it was. I realized then what we're both missing - what my Mom and Sister too are missing - and it's guts. To have some fight left inside you. To get off your ass and change your life. We bitch and moan and cry and it's always the same. I told him then that he should move out here. Fuck washing dishes, fuck Hershey, fuck being totally alone and poor - might as well come here and be near family and live somewhere where you'll see something new and even beautiful or funny everyday just by walking outside. He immediately started on the excuses - he needs to give his landlord 60 days notice. He needs to have a job first. It needs to be Section 8 housing. And I said, this is it - this is why your life sucks. You don't make things happen, you just let things happen to you. It's my problem too.

14 - TUE - {Work 11-9}

Thought of the day: I don't think I like being alive. I'm not good at it. Any comfort is chemical and temporary. I drain, bore, and hurt everyone I care about. I am vulnerable to lies, corruption, and abuse. Everything just hurts and all I see ahead of me is debt, regret, and loneliness.

My boss is telling me that I need to get my finances in order. He doesn't want to give me any more advances, but I never have anything left the week before my paycheck. He says I should be able to live comfortably being single and working full time.

I have $3 right now until the 18th. I should be okay though thanks to - surprisingly - my mom. She's been sending me $30 a week for about a month, and it takes a few days to clear, but it should deposit tomorrow and I'll be okay. She's already said she needs to stop doing it, but it helped a lot while I was in transition. I had to get a loan from my boss to pay for my Driver's License, and technically I should just turn around and give the money to him, but it's what will take me through until payday. And yes, I will get some kind of small thing - hopefully only $10 - when I see Tiger's Jaw on Saturday - because money spent remembering things and celebrating what you love in life is always worth it.

Fuck, what a mess...

I just don't understand why, overall, I have had such a hard time. I budget. I don't go out and blow it all on fun or clothes or even things I need. Everything I've gotten for the apartment so far has been from the Dollar Tree. And I've significantly cut down on my weed use. I only smoke a joint at night now, unwinding from the day and trying to get into a mentally productive mindset. But my life is spent between work and home - the only thing I buy regularly is food.

I buy food from Grocery Outlet which I make and eat for dinner at home. I spend $4 at McDonald's for breakfast/lunch/dinner on my long days. Everywhere I go it seems like everything is just fucking expensive unless you only eat different forms of bread. I'm not above pasta but I try not to get locked into that - I buy chicken, some veggies, fruit cups, pre-made coffee (until I can afford a coffee maker and then I'll just chill my own). I get something I can bake in the oven - like rolls - because it's cheap and smells nice and makes me feel a touch of accomplishment.

I try to spend $30 a week, but it's probably more like 50 or 60. Still, I asked my friends and they spend $100 a week on food. I don't have what I need to make meals yet (mainly a saucepan and storage containers) but I hope things will level out once my deposit is all paid for and moving expenses are over with - still though - where is my money going? Maybe $20 a paycheck on cat food and litter. I see maybe one show a month. That's no more than $20 usually. I really like to buy a shirt when I go, so there's another $20. I spend $40 for a quarter that lasts for two weeks. I really need to emphasize that I'm not having the time of my life - which I feel like I should be having for being so broke. I should at least have some crazy stories to show for it...and all my crazy stories lately have had a touch of fear in them and are generally because of where I work and live.

I realize I fucked up really bad in college. I spent all the extra money I had on food and blew up to 233 pounds without anyone even blinking an eye. I should have never sold Ursula, my car. She was worth the feeling of independence and competence alone. It just got more careless the closer I got to graduation. I just wanted to feel free and to experience things. I could have saved even half of it and my whole life would be radically different.

But we must not be so vulgar as to harp on money - even though it controls every aspect of our quality of life...

15 - WED - {Work 11-4}

So, last night: I came home to a note posted on my door about smoking weed/smoking in the building. I really hope everyone got this notice, and it wasn't just me, since I had fully disclosed my weed use to my new building manager and he'd seemed supportive and kind about it. Even said I could cook edibles and all that really mattered was that the neighbors never complained. The note pushed me to go out and try to find somewhere outside to have my nightly J.

Walking, cold, I learned a lot of things about what's nearby my home.
This is also a lesson in classism...

The streets are lined with homeless folks, but I knew that just from looking out my windows. What I didn't know was that there's also a very heavy police presence. What with witnessing people fighting with skateboards as if they were swords and a man having his face punched into the sidewalk and the constant music from 10 until 3 and the shrieks of drunk people, I had felt that maybe there weren't many patrolling officers in the area.

There's a MAX station a street away and then the waterfront right beyond that. I thought I'd smoke at the "Bill of Rights" monument - felt appropriate - but within moments a cop had pulled up along the road, irked back in reverse, then with lights on went screeching under the bridge. People were running and I just kept walking in the opposite direction, trying to avoid dark huddled groups of people who polka-dotted the walkway by the black river.

I got the crazy thought that I should go to the park bench where I had sat a year ago with W* and that maybe he'd even be there - but my delusion was momentary. I decided I was hungry and tired and I should just go back home. It'd been a long day, a 10 hour shift at work, and it wasn't lost on me that I spend so much time selling paraphernalia to help other people get high - help my boss make a fortune - and I don't have anywhere safe to go.

So I was coming back around toward my apartment and as soon as I cross the street, a slew of cops descended exactly where I'd just been walking. Two guys start bolting with backpacks. Lights and sirens and shouts to stop. If I'd just been walking a little slower, had been dallying just a few seconds more, I'd have been right in the middle of that shit. I went home. I watched Mad Men, which I'd been able to download to my external hard drive at work. Music was blaring and I didn't fall asleep until well after 1am.

I'm well-versed with the new marijuana law. People ask about it at work every single fucking day. I know that they've publicly said - it was in both the newspapers - that they're not prosecuting anyone between now and July 1st when it takes effect. I know we'll legally be allowed to grow up to four plants. I know they've said you can't smoke in public, and that most people feel (or hope) that part won't be enforced. It felt practically legal before as it was...

So if you don't have your own home, if you live in low income housing for example, what the fuck are you supposed to do? It costs more to make edibles and they have a different effect. You could vaporize, but as it stands the letter posted to my door specifically said "usage of any kind".

I want my boss to open a smoking lounge that also sells Kratom and maybe vapes and pipes. No bubble pipes, no roses, no brillo. And I want him to make me the manager. I could design it, decorate it, keep it clean and open and take in guests like you would at a B&B. Here, have a seat and enjoy yourself! Maybe it could even turn into some kind of night club with music and art on the walls. A relaxed and whimsical kind of place.

Someplace safe for the people with no where else to go and exercise their legal right to feel okay.

12:57 PM
Just now:  I have a customer, G*, who has been a favorite of mine for a while now. He's smart and talkative and from the East Coast. A lawyer. Very interesting man. Today he came in and said, Hey! How long have you had a nose ring? Why did you do that? ahahaha I explained how I got a fake one and liked it and that I never really liked my nose and how friends had once said I should pierce it and I thought they were crazy but this big ring I have in is what they pierced it with and I should be able to get one I like more soon and I think it's cute....

Anyway, with noses in mind, he told me the story of when he met the "white Gs"... By an insane twist of fate, he'd gone to the same college, had the same profession, and indeed, the same structure of nose where the tip is close to the upper lip - a Scottish nose, he said - as a man from a family of people who had in fact - as he put it - had an "involuntary work relationship" with his ancestors - traced to his great grandfather's father. All the way outside of Memphis, Tennessee. He'd become great friends with this "white G" and the man's father. G*'s daughter - who has recently retired from the Army as a decorated hero - actually hit it off so well with the "white G's" father that they'd left everyone at a party to go off by themselves and discuss Russo.

It's an american experience, a human experience, that proves how very little skin pigmentation should be taken into account when thinking about a person's character - and how because this was such a huge factor in the past, there are ideas and constructs built up around one's race which appear to indicate something about what to expect from them - but it's really all bullshit. A person is a culmination of their personal experiences, which yes, might had been influenced because of their race, but that's other people being cruel or stupid - it's not really about who they actually are. Are they good at this sport? Is their hair beautiful? Are they capable of becoming lawyers? Are we all part of one big family if you trace it back far enough? Yes, yes, yes.

He wishes he had the money to trace back before Tennessee. To know where in Africa his ancestors were from, what tribe they belonged to. It's already amazing he can trace things back as far as he has - that he's met and befriended people sprung from the same souls who years and years ago enslaved the souls from which he himself sprung.

I myself wish I could have known my grandparents - a dream to learn about great-grandparents or distant ancestors. I'd love to know the truth, to know the stories, but that information is probably too corrupt or lost by now...

His friend, the "white G", died last year. He wants his story to be told, because otherwise it would die with him too. This is far from the whole story, it's just bits of what he told me in the store today, and it's just here for now but I hope I could maybe help him out with that effort.

I look forward to the day when people walk around knowing every genetic aspect of themselves, which will be parts and pieces of every race that has ever existed, without letting history dictate their futures. When they are able to differentiate between culture and personality, and they can be knowledgeable and proud of their ancestry without hating on somebody else's story or allowing it to box them into something they think they should be.

*
2:26pm
Just now: R* - one of the people I was living with at A's - came in. He says they have to be out of the house in two months. The electricity has been shut off. Everything is chaos.

My initial reaction was relief, but I truly am devastated for them. I just got out by the skin of my teeth. The place I'm living now is beautiful inside but still isn't a great situation - how can I complain though because at least I've got electricity and hot water and I'm not on the brink of being homeless. I'm also not lost in my own head to the point A is - or maybe I am in some ways, but I don't have nearly the same influence he does. He controls a small part of a lot of people's lives, and a large part of the lives of those living with him. I'm so sorry all these terrible things are happening, but I wish he could get to a clear place in his own mind where he could see how so much of it was caused by mismanagement.

At least when these things are going wrong in my life I know how much of it really is my own damn fault and not other people or PTSD or money or the social whatever.

I feel for A*. I think he was trying to do a good thing and went about it the wrong way. And I think he has the wrong expectations of people and situations, but he's not a terrible person.

I am also aware of how close I've been getting to total destruction, and how few people have been there for me when I needed them most.

*
2:59pm
One more thought: What's with junkies having these eyes that just get right into the heart of your soul and make you want to kiss them? Seriously. What the fuck. I bet if someone studied heroin and love they'd find a chemical connection between the properties of that drug and literally the feeling of a connection with someone. So maybe when, totally sober or not, you find yourself drawn into another person, whatever is firing off in your head has a similar make-up to H. That, or for some reason junkies have a special manipulative power. Or I am weirdly attracted to junkies.

Yay, hypotheses.

*

A man got hit by a car and the cops gave him a ticket.

***
6 - THU - {Work 11-4}

What would make me happy? (I think...)

Freedom: To do as I please so long as it doesn't hurt anybody, regardless of how much money I make. Which would look something like smoking when I felt like it so long as I was still functional and competent when I needed to be. Eating whatever I was hungry for. Wearing whatever I loved and made me feel best. Going where ever I was struck to visit. To get a Ph.D. To surround myself with what inspires me. To go and see and do and learn about - everything. To have mobility, independence, and access.

Creativity: To get up enough energy and focus to start and complete artistic projects. Not just writing, but music, drawings, photography - to manifest all the ideas in my head. It's not about it being "good" - it's about it being expressed, and expressed in a form that follows function.

People: To feel loved. Like my friends had my back and my best interests in mind. To cultivate a network of interesting people who all share a similar ability and desire to send ripples, however big or small, serious or silly, traditional or alternative, through the many different layers of society.

Impact: To die feeling like the world was somehow, someway, a better place for having me in it. That a future generation might live a little differently, with a little more insight, because I existed. That I might show how we all have the same potential to change the world, locally or globally or universally, in this way...just look how much we influence without even trying - imagine if we were acting on purpose, with purpose...

little baby strawberries!

mmmm peppermint

Orion!

Walking home after work:

beauty behind a fence

secret swing

love you dad (his CB handle when I was little...)

Yeah!

now that's a planter

so beautiful even the traffic is gorgeous

seriously

can't get up

can't get in

this guy was so stoked to photobomb my picture :)

I love you Waterfront Park!

17 - FRI - {Work 11-9}

a rarity

taken from the MAX - another beautiful day!

18 - SAT - {OFF} Ticket bought! Tiger's Jaw 7PM @ Alhambra Theatre

So I talked to my Dad today: I'd gone into a new shop called Citizen's Photo and fell in love and missed him. I got into photography in high school because it was his thing when he was young. I asked just how he had felt about my mother. He said that he'd been seeing a woman named Gale for 3 or 4 years but he had stronger feelings for her than she had for him and she had gone away. He "was on the rebound" when he met my mom, and it turned out to be the same problem in the opposite way. Mom was so into him and that was nice - it just "went too far". He said he was trying to be a friend to my mom the way Gale had been a friend to him, but he never had feelings for her. I asked him if he would ever interact with her if it weren't for me, and he said "well if you had never been born, I would have never moved to Hershey, so I probably would still be in Pittsfield and she's part of the same old crew."

He said he thought it was unfair of me to draw comparisons between what happened with him and my mom and what happened with me and M*, but how couldn't you see the way life just repeats itself in different combinations?

Saturday's Market:

because fuck you, Harrisburg, that's why (so bitter)

 On the way to see Tiger's Jaw @ Alhambra

Sunsets

little scene in someone's yard

openers

Tiger's Jaw

on Hawthorn

!PAYDAY!
Projected: 81 hours = 810
- 160 = Taxes [650]
- 186 = 3/3rd Deposit [464]
- 50 = Boss Tab [414]
- 35 = Phone [379]
- 50 = Credit Card Payment [329]
- 15 = Cat [314]
- 60 = Food [254]
- 10 = Ithaca Payment [244]
- ? = Partial Rent Saved for May

19 - SUN - {Work 11-7} Mad Men @ Eastburn

I haven't smoked for two days. I'm just realizing that tomorrow is 4/20 and I have the day off, but I kinda don't give a shit. I honestly probably would if I had friends to spend it with, but I don't.

Whomp fucking whomp.

I still want to try to get my OMMP card. I'm just broke and now I have medical bills to pay ($162) and I don't see myself having any extra cash anytime soon.

My world is lonely, but I'm not out there deliberately trying to make new friends either. I'm not interested in simple conversations about - I don't even know. It's hard to say exactly what it is that bores the shit out of me. It's just that later I can't remember what we talked about at all and I don't feel like I learned anything from the encounter.

I want to psychologically dissect TV show characters. I want to imagine and invent with someone. I want to talk about the potential outcomes of weed legalization. I want to exchange stories and observations of what it means to be human. Learning more about different schools of thought sounds interesting. I pretty much want friends who are teachers, one way or another, or who I suppose are lifelong student-types - people who not only see the interconnectedness of things but can express their insights and are open to discussion and even friendly debate.

I'm a bummer to the average person just trying to have a good time, so making new friends doesn't feel like an option right now. All people can see are my troubles because that's what's weighing on my mind, and they don't respect me. I've learned from experience that any friendship based on "mutual therapy" stops working eventually, and is often super co-dependent. I've also learned that I am extremely easy to lie to - and I think people might even enjoy tricking me because I've hurt their egos somehow or I've come off like a know-it-all so they lie to me to feel better.

No matter how shitty you feel, there's something inside you that just keeps ticking. Just keeps going. You're going to wake up tomorrow. You're going to go to work and you're going to have to eat something and you're going to have to shower and take out the cat litter and tidy up. It's just going to happen. So I'll probably have to put my head down for a couple months and just let things run on auto-pilot. Stop paying for shows. Even though I got my new licence, I can't really afford to go out and drink - and I never liked how I felt the next day anyway.

I should try to just pay off debts. I don't think I'll even be able to actually save money. This year I have to pay my boss back ($50 a paycheck) and my credit card ($50 a paycheck) and health insurance ($162 to keep it going and $54 a paycheck) and Ithaca College ($10 a month). Next year comes the $200 a month for student loans - and still $10 a month to IC without the hope of going to grad school in the meantime.

Maybe I should work on doing push-ups or something so I can stop hating all the loose parts of my body. At least I could make some progress in one area of my life. It's hard to shake the feeling that I'm missing out on opportunities just because I don't know about them.

I also hate the feeling that I'm leading my Dad's life. I hate that everything seems to circle around my job. I am tempted to say that people who would look down on me for that are just better off and not scared of losing everything the way I am. Maybe they really are stronger than me, or maybe they're privileged as fuck, or maybe those are the same thing. And even still, it's still my fault I'm where I am and who I am, isn't it?

I haven't really been enjoying life much, even when I go out, I just go home and cry at the end of the night. I like when I feel free, but when I have the day off to explore I often just see a lot of things I can't have. People holding hands. Cute overpriced crap. I know now that everything is being sold for way, way more than what it took to make it and it paralyzes me. I don't enjoy shopping anymore because I know if I just had the right connections, I could have gotten it for less or I could have even made it myself.

Anyway, it's a pretty day. I need to just tune out now before I start crying at work again.

1:45pm
Fuck everything I just said: A friend from the old days of MP5 contacted me about selling her camera - a Rebel XTi - with multiple lenses and memory cards - for $150. This is all I want. I'll have to pay all of my rent out of one check and I don't even care. This will change my life. I could even start potentially making money doing photography for other people. I can start helping Kimchee at ADD Radio. Happiness is within me.

Oh how quickly things can change, for better or worse. In this case, so much better.

that's

the

story

of

my

stupid fucking life

dinner (grocery outlet)

20 - MON - {OFF} 8:30 Free Comedy @ Eastburn

view from the laundry room

"if it weren't for dollar tree, where would I be?"

just wanna dye

21 - TUE - {Work 11-9}

so.... you can buy a bucket of donuts....

22 - WED - {Work 11-4}

and give them out at work!

simple, but I designed these and am pretty happy with the result :)

A customer - R*'s birthday is today! And she said once I get my camera she'd like to offer me work photographing her leatherwork - she makes these beautiful purses that look like giant leaves and stitched leather "beads". I feel like good things happen to me whenever she's around and I'm so excited to get that Canon Rebel XTi soon!

23 - THU - {Work 11-4}

24 - FRI - {Work 4-9} Free Day at the Art Museum 5-8pm

ROSES.
I got my OMMP card. The official plastic should come in a couple weeks.
I've been given permission to vape in my apartment by the people who manage my building.
They're also going to help me get utility assistance and extra help with food.
And they're letting me pay the last third of my deposit ($187) May 18th.
Vape-wise, my boss is considering giving me a discount on one from our shop
- will find out tomorrow.

I got my new driver's license.
My food stamps were renewed ($16 - but still - it helps)
I paid my health insurance and will get a full check-up soon.
I'm selling my PS Vita to Mike so I can buy that camera from Tiffany, and he's letting me finish Little Big Planet first (which he bought me for my birthday a couple years back).
(being happy reminds me of him)
Once I have the camera I can start working for Kim and Robin.
And I got a new septum ring.

I love my cat.
I love my apartment.
I love baths.
I love being 25, working in a smoke shop, and witnessing a changing world.
I love music and video games and skateboards and art and dyed hair and customized lifestyles.
I love feeling in control as much as is naturally possible.
I loving feeling free to be me - and in my own time.
I love what possibilities the future may bring.

This is the first time I think I've ever felt that I've built a life for myself.

horray!

25 - SAT - {Work 11-9}

26 - SUN - {Work 11-7} Mad Men @ Eastburn

So far I've spent:
$54 a month for health insurance
$165 for the ommp clinic approval visit
$60 discounted SNAP rate to the state of Oregon
$10.41 for certified postage
and enough to have bought a new car, but let's not dwell on that just now
but all that to feel safe and free and the way I want to be
oh and my boss is letting me get the new PAX 2 (I picked the blue green).
($250 - actually cheaper than if I bought direct - so that's nice)
Only adds another $17 to my pay plan per month. why the fuck not - so happy with it

Had a customer come in today asking if I have any "minerals, crystals, or rocks" gtfo

Marathoning the new season of Community on Yahoo
(while making kratom labels, new packages of samples, customers, the usual)

S6E1: Ladders

Frankie: I gave you a list. 
Abed: Yeah, the list felt pretty similar visually. I can't picture a montage cutting from me verifying Diane's invoice to me emailing confirmation to Diane. 
Frankie: Right. But a montage is what, Abed? 
Abed: It's a movie apologizing for reality. 
Frankie: And we are where? 
Abed: Reality. 
Frankie: And what do people do here? 
Abed: They email Diane? 

*

Frankie: How's everything going?
Abed: I have concerns.
Frankie: I'd like to hear them.
Abed: I'm worried you're not distinct enough for Manny both in terms of physicality and purpose. Frankie: Okay.
Abed: I can't determine if you have any specific flaw, quirk, or point of view that makes you a creative addition to the group.
Frankie: I don't know what that means, but I'm writing it down.
Abed: My umbrella concern is that you, as a character, represent the end of what I used to call our show, which was once an unlikely family of misfit students, and is now a pretty loose knit group of students and teachers. None of whom are taking a class together in a school which, as of your arrival, is becoming increasingly grounded, asking questions like, how do any of us get our money? When will we get our degrees, and what happened to that girl I was dating? As opposed to questions I consider more important like, what is real? What is sanity? Is there a god? Where's that Pierce hologram? Jeff said last year he saw a Pierce hologram. None of the rest of us have ever seen it. So, if there's a Pierce ghost on campus, I'd like to get a head start on busting it.
Frankie: All right. This is the first I've heard that I'm a character on a show. I'm excited to be one, but I agree, I'll be a boring one. Quirks are not my strong suit, results are. I love quirky people. I come from a big family of people who are literally insane. I moved down here to take care of one of them. But I myself am exceptionally boring, and I am quite proud to be that way, because it allows me to help the less boring people turn quirks into results.
Abed: That's the most interesting take on not being interesting that I've ever heard.
Frankie: As far as what I represent about your show, I wouldn't give me or anyone else that kind of power. Good shows change, I assume. Personally, I don't own a TV.
Abed: You're the first person to say that that I didn't immediately delete from my brain.
Frankie: Thank you.

S6E2: Lawnmower Maintenance and Postnatal Care

Abed: You're being dramatic. 
Britta: That's what people say when they take your soul, and they rip it out of your chest and then shove it in your mouth. 

S6E3: Basic Crisis Room Decorum

Jeff: You guys go find that truth you love so much. If it's the kind we can use, bring it back. If not, you know, stuff gets lost.
Annie: No. No. Bad! We are better than City College.

*

Annie: Hm, so I know you agree with me that we need to find the truth, but. Do you agree that the truth won't be horrible?
Frankie: I'm not psychic Annie, that's an illusion caused by extreme preparedness.
Annie: But, what do you hope is true?
Frankie: Oh God no, I never hope. Hope is pouting in advance. Hope is faith's richer, bitchier sister. Hope is the deformed addict bound incest monster offspring of entitlement and fear. My life results tripled the year I gave up hope and every game on my phone that had anything to do with farming. What's true will be true, Annie. Our job is to deal with that truth.
Annie: You sound a little like Jeff.
Frankie: Jeff said I sound like Abed. I wonder if Britta thinks I sound like Chang. I assume Change thinks I sound like distant explosions and crying babies, you know, he's unstable, right?
Annie: Yep.

*

Annie: If being better than City College means letting them destroy us then what is the point? If surviving means being like them, what's the point? Why not let one school die, and enroll at the one where my grades matter.

Annie: Have fun with your lying, cheating, dog smearing, truth blurring, trouser swapping school.

*

Kid: The Dean? Hellos? 
Dean: Are you in trouble? Is everything okay? 
Kid: Is life hard everywhere? Is everyone alone? 
Dean: All the time. Are you at home Jeffrey? Should I come over? 
Kid: You cannot come to me. I must confession you... I am not Jeffrey. 
Dean: I understand. I rarely know who I am. 
Kid: No, I mean I am not Jeffrey. 
Dean: Let it out. I am Takashi. 
Kid: I am teenage boy in Tokyo. 
Dean: I think we all are sometimes.
Kid: I am sorry for making fun before, but now I need a friend. 
Dean: Why don't I bring you some olives tomorrow, Jeffrey? 
Kid: I am not Jeffrey! 
Dean: I am not the Dean!
Kid: I often think about that night. Such a small event, but ultimately... the moment that would lead me to becoming Ioban. Highest the leader of the Yakuza.

S6E4: Queer Studies & Advanced Waxing

Abed: The mother won't come back.
Elroy: Kid, animals have been murdering each other for 3 billion years. Birds have had their 15 million in the spotlight. The same as lizards and plants and they all just use it to murder, eat, screw and not invent Wi-Fi. Now we may end up saving this one, or blowing it to hell or making a new one. But we can't do any of it while scheduling our evolution around the needs of the least lucky birds. ]
Abed: What are you, a demon? Did Clive Barker write you?
Elroy: Anyone who finds that nest, will come to the same decision. And you don't have to get mean.
Abed: Mean? You just did a baby bird murder monologue. Maybe they're close to leaving the nest, until then can't you just stall by doing what real IT people do?

*

Annie: We got the parts!
Jeffery: Parts plural?
Chang: Well yeah, Annie got my part and I got the Asian part.
Annie: Ping... Stop! We were cast as Mr. Miagi and the Karate Kid, because we're a good team! Chang: We're a team, because one of us is so talented she got cast outside her gender and the other one, got cast because of eye shape.
Annie: I am not letting you sabotage yourself like this. Let's say you're right. And like Sidney Poitier or Meg Ryan before you, you were cast for race. It's what the actor does with the role they get, that matters. All right?
Chang:You're right.
Britta: *shakes her head*

*

Frankie: Are you gonna take the job?
Dean: I don't know, there's a catch. Jeffery, Frankie, could I see you in my office please?
Frankie: They want you to be a token homosexual?
Jeff: It's a form of progress, 30 years ago, the most power an openly gay could achieve was a center square.
Dean: But I'm not just gay.
Jeff: What does that mean?
Dean: If coming out is a magic show, and gayness is the rabbit out of the hat, I'm one of those, never in any handkerchiefs.
Jeff: Is that truth, Craig? Anything other than straight, is plenty gay for a school board.
Frankie: The most important point is, are you prepared to make your sexuality, which is nobody's business, an aspect of your role in society? I know I'm not, so I don't.
Dean: No?
Frankie: When a person becomes symbolic they gain symbolic power, at the price of independent power.
Jeff: Yep. That's an excellent point. It could be good for Greendale, for one of our own to be on the school board. I mean the fact that you'd be leaving a few items off your list of your turn-ons, I mean, the goal in politics, isn't transparency, it's winning. That's why the politicians always win.
Dean: They do always win, don't they? But now I get a chance to win. I could change the system from the inside out. And all I have to do is pare down my sexuality to simple gayness, which is heavily in the mix. There you go. Get ready, America. Dean Pelton is coming out as approximately two-sevenths of what he is. Come on. Don't leave me hanging. There we go.
Jeff: I am so curious.
Dean: Oh?
Jeff: Intellectually.

*

Director: So reabsorb that disgusting droplet of salt and bad choices back into your doughy body. And then call your mother to see if you can be reabsorbed back into her doughy body or so help me God, I will take that tear, I will freeze it, and I will stab you in the eye with it, you waste of a soul-shaped hole forgotten by God.

*

Annie: I was kind of born to act, Brita. When I do it, I can feel it pleasing the universe.
Britta: That's dramatic.
Annie: See?

*

Annie: I am at a total loss about what lesson to learn from any of this.
Elroy: Maybe that's the lesson.
Abed: Hm. I lost a button.
Elroy: Maybe we all lost a button.

S6E5: Laws of Robotics & Party Rights

Elroy: Did someone use the word black and now you want me to give you the all-clear? Please tell me that won't be my role in this group. I have a brain the size of Jupiter. I'm nobody's fourth Ghostbuster.

*
Jeff: Not every bad guy ends up in prison, and not every prisoner is a bad guy.

*

Jeff: Trust me. I know the main difference between us is an orange jumpsuit. You have an iPad. Willy: Yeah, and I'm a murderer. Now, now, don't worry. I ain't proud of it. Just don't hide it. You know, once you take another man's life, the least you can do is carry it with you. Are you carrying any murders, Mr. Winger?
Jeff: I am not. I hear you have to have strong feelings for someone you kill. I try to reserve that stuff for myself.

*

Abed: Hey, Annie. I'd like to make this moment worth popping back to from some point in the future.
Annie: I don't know what that means.
Abed: There. Don't worry. It will pay off.
Annie: Hey, Troy.
Abed: I'm glad I kicked that habit it was getting a little joyless.
Britta: What I'm saying is by Annie's logic...
Abed: You're saying I was first in the apartment, so I could overrule Annie and let you have a party, but I don't get anything out of parties. They're like conventions for every subject too boring to have their own convention. And instead of Joss Whedon the police show up.

*

Britta: Parties are just booze, low lights, and loud music, so people can feel more, see less, and not have to listen to each other or themselves.

*

Abed: Eradicate


27 - MON - {OFF} 8:30 Free Comedy @ Eastburn

Slept all fucking day.

28 - TUE - {Work 11-9}

Goddess of Glass, Mistress of Trash

and Kratom...and labels...

29 - WED - {Work 11-4} Free Play at Ground Kontrol ($5)

Some more Community while packaging Kratom

S6E6: Basic Email Security

Britta: Please tell me you guys aren't sitting there reading the lunch lady's leaked e-mails.
Jeff: No one here could ever do that, not even in shifts, it's decades of data. I'm reading the Greendale Gazette's highlights of the lunch lady's e-mails.
Abed: I found a torrent of all the highlights if you don't want to wait for the ads to load.
Frankie: Abed, that's stealing. Those ads are there so the Gazette can pay people to through the lunch lady's email.
Annie: Not to get too liberal, but once they're online, does anyone really own the lunch lady's emails?
Elroy: That's why the future of the internet is branded content. WazzleDazzle.com has got five Bacardi cocktails inspired by the lunch lady's most embarrassing secrets.
Britta: You guys are violating her privacy.
Chang: I'm pretty sure the media's doing that, Britta. We're just reading the news.

*

Britta: I can't believe I'm the one saying this. For God sakes, we're freaking Americans. We're talking about freedom of speech, it's the amendment so important it's literally the first one they remembered to add.
Elroy: For white people.
Frankie: With penises.
Jeff: We prefer to be called people without color or vaginas.
Britta: Look, I know some things have gotten too simple and other things have gotten too complicated, but we still have a legacy and a job in this country. We're the colony so high maintenance the British gave up. We're so obnoxious the French sent us a statue. Nobody tells us to shut up. And yes, I know that our wealth is no longer distributed, and yes, our democracy has been hijacked and turned into a puppet show about two fake parties that are controlled by a cartel of monopolies, and yes, if our votes had any real power they'd be illegal.
Annie: Britta! Freedom of speech acknowledged.

*

Britta: The performance by Goopta Goopty Goopta will go on as scheduled tomorrow night, and we encourage anyone who believes in freedom to attend Mr.Goopta's performance. Although, as a woman, and someone with many Jewish and black friends, I will be deeply offended. I'm petitioning to have Mr. Gupta banned from all campuses across America. But, one thing at a time.
First, freedom of speech does not just apply to speech you want to hear.
Jeff: Case in point, am I right? Definitely get my good side, right here.
Britta: *pushing* Mm.
Jeff: Oh, I'm being censored! I'm being censored!

*

Britta: You guys hear that sound? That is the sound of the hackers winning.
Our school's out there right now, pawing through our dirty laundry, laughing at us, waiting to see what we're gonna do, waiting to see who wins in the battle between terror and cool.
We got to be cool, man.
We got to be cool.

*

Britta: It doesn't matter what we read in the leaks or what we said to each other tonight.
What matters is that right now here on this campus, the people are in charge.
Not the hackers.
Not the media, not the cops, the people.
...
Shhhh.
You hear that? My God! It's the people coming to stop the show.
We have to stop the people.
Their freedom of speech depends on it.

S6E7: Advanced Safety Features

"level seven susceptible."

*

Elroy: Julie, you messed me up.
You came after me because I wasn't interested.
You got me interested, and I fell hard.
Then you got bored and destroyed me.
And I've been afraid to love anybody for 20 years since, but not anymore.
I still love you, but I'm not gonna keep on hurting others, just because you hurt me.
Julie: Fine.
Elroy: Fine. That's you. That's my impression of you, you jaded hipster a-hole.
I still love your music. Have a great gig.

S6E8: Intro to Recycled Cinema

"Ben Chang is on a rocket ship to eternal validation."

*

"We invested so much in him when no one else would.
Because we all assumed he was so insane he would die if we kicked him out.
This whole time it turns out we were holding him back."

*

Orion the Mini Masseur 

30 - THU - {Work 11-4} Last Thursday - Alberta

It's the very last day of the month. I'm trying to live a "better" life, and to me that means keeping track - taking stock - being aware and expressive - of what I'm experiencing rather than floating through life like a zombified animal, numb to everything and letting myself avoid and forget until I wake up one day without anything to show for whoever I can't remember I've been.

Reading:
I will have to find something very short to read tonight in order to keep this one-book-a-month thing going. It's kind of lame of me, but still better than giving up without a fight. I should pick something earlier for May, though. I meant to finish Ten Thousand Saints long ago...

Writing:
I need to move past the note taking stage. It's the equivalent of spare scribbling or whistling out a tune. I need to move up to a whole sketch, a committed chorus, a rough draft. Something more solid. I keep having new ideas for new mini-projects - and it's more distracting than anything. I get excited for each new thing and lose interest in the bigger, more difficult, picture. I also hate every word coming out of my finger tips and wish I would shut up - which doesn't help.

Motion Stories:
Mad Men
Game of Thrones
Community
Orange is the New Black (june!)
Girls (2016)

Music:
Can't really afford to go to anything this month, especially if I want to go to the Cannabis Cup.
However, when I get my camera, I should be set to start working for Kim at ADD Radio, so maybe I'll be able to get my music fix that way.

Photography:
I'm on the last level of Little Big Planet, and I'm debating about whether to try and finish Assassin's Creed as well. T* hasn't gotten back to me yet about the camera. I think M* is willing to wait. Once I have the camera I can start working for Kim, like I said, but also for Robin. This could be a way to help myself.

Budgets:
Things look tight for May. I need to use almost my entire paycheck for rent, plus I'm giving my boss about $70 a paycheck now. Then in my second check of the month, I need to pay my deposit. Health insurance and electric too. I'll figure it out.

The List:
- Professional Camera ($150)
- Noise Cancelling Headphones ($50)
- FM Transmitter (for work) ($?)

- Rice Maker ($20)
- Coffee Maker ($30)
- Standing Vac (cat hair) (?)
- Litter Mat ($15)
- Bath/Shower Mat ($10)

- Internet ($10/month through discount programs)
- Computer (Free Geek)
-?My own printing set-up
- REDe ($60 a month)

- R4 Card ($15)

- Microphone ($20?)
- ?Voice lessons

- Bike/Vespa/Skateboard (?)

- New Clothes/Bras/Nylons/Shoes/Jacket (?)
(Would like to have softer, more bohemian style stuff)

- One of those bubble/dome/clear/see-through/compact umbrellas (fishes? stars?) ($20)

-Nose Ring (a fancy one - blue stone?)($20)
-Tattoo (Portland Tattoo - Roses and Three-Eyed Bees) ($200?)

Friends/Family/People/Connections:
I think it's an unexpected lesson, but I'm learning that I'm better off alone. Or alone by comparison, anyway. I text a couple people, old friends, and our conversations have been interesting, but I realize it works because they don't have to interact with me constantly and because texting gives me unpressured time to think.

I need to think. I need to go a little crazy - talking to myself. Day dreaming. Getting silly. And there's something about that which has to do with control. If I'm like that around people, then I'm trying to control them, and that's no good. It's better then, for everyone, that I come up with this stuff by myself rather than focus my energies on them only to be disappointed when life isn't as exciting or well-spoken or ironic or deeply meaningful as it is in my head. But that can be put to good use in fiction or any kind of story telling - it has a place there.

I want to be totally independent and making it on my own, too. It might be a simple kind of success, it might be lonely, but I need to make peace with myself before I can make peace with anyone else anyway.

I've had a few guys come back into my life over the past week and it's weird. I don't feel a romantic compulsion towards any of them. I miss M*, but even there, there is a sadness. I wish he'd just show up at my door and kiss me, but then what? I'm sick of feeling boring or depressing or wrong. I want to fall in love, but I don't want to imagine I feel some type of way just because I want to feel that way. I want to feel it because it's true. I'm also being careful not to fall into that with others who seem to just marginally like me and are intrigued at best - but don't really care for me to the extent I imagine is necessary for it to work. For what to work though, I don't know, because I never held much stock with marriage and the older I get the more it feels like a domesticated state for human beings and I don't want that. On the opposite end, however, I don't see the point or the gratification of popping in and out of relationships. I want something real. I want something that feels right. I want something whole. If I'm going to want to fuck them, I'm going to want to feel that way. This much I know.

As for the guys, I wish they actually liked me enough to just be friends - maybe if they did then there wouldn't be a problem in the first place...

By the way, an earthquake hit Nepal and over 2,000 people died yesterday. Many historical sites were lost. People were afraid to sleep in their homes in case of aftershocks. Why should weather and geography determine a person's potential for survival? Because that's life. And you have to go a little crazy with the hope that we all live on or again somehow, because what a terrible and short way to live and die if it weren't true that all those people will have another chance in some other universe. The contrast between lives on Earth is just too much. What if efforts were focused on preparing structures in case of disaster or feeding the hungry instead of climbing ladders toward financial illusions - just the time involved - couldn't we all save each other? (I say as I'm typing this from thousands of miles away, sitting in an office chair selling people Kratom while the sun shines down on me through the skylight. I used to curse those who would say "well I'm only one person and I can't save the world on my own." and I used to support the power of one - and it's still true in some contexts - but no, I don't think there's anything I can do - or you can do - but acknowledge that it happened.)

Space Cadet, Signing Off

***

May 3rd - SUN - !PAYDAY!
Projected: 81 hours = 810
- 160 = Taxes [650]
- 460 = Rent [190]
- 50 = Boss Tab [140]
- 50 = Credit Card Payment [90]
- 15 = Cat [75]
- 60 = Food [15]

*
Disclaimer:

This blog is not my life. I write things here when my thoughts seem publicly digestible and I have the time or energy or wherewithal to write it out. It's random, really, what ends up on here. The past few months, I've written when I've been scared of something happening and there being no record of it. It depends so much on my mood, timing, and most of all, whether or not I have internet (which right now, at home, I do not).

For the past year, and parts of time before then, I have been completely shut down compared to whoever it was I used to be. 90% of my time has been spent either at home or at work with maybe one show a month just so I can feel like I'm being a good, alive, human being. Otherwise, everyday, instead of staying up and writing I've smoked weed until the world turned black. I've let myself forget. I thought that might make me happier, and in moderation with friends it'd be fine, but I'm so alone and broke and I just feel stupid. I don't blame the weed, or old friends, or even money - there's something wrong with me.

My point is, everything here is just a glimpse. A hole in the wall of my world, my mind, my experiences. Even though I want to be able to talk about everything, I have deliberately not posted about some things for fear of getting into trouble or out of pure shame or because I was sick of being so fucking pathetic and that was all I could talk about. I also tend not to write about the truly good times and I don't know why. Like I said, something's not right with me. I've tried to stay true and speak honestly when I write - and I think that's important so we can have a better understanding about life and what's normal and what's just in our own heads - but I've still censored myself quite a bit.

If I were to actually post every thought in my head and every moment of my day - every single time I missed someone and how I felt and why - well I don't because I can't even deal with my own bullshit. It's fucking overwhelming. If I'm a drain on you, imagine how I feel.

I just thought it was really important for anyone who actually looks at this to know that.
*

 Goals for April:
- Continue Reading (one book per month)

• January : The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
• February: The First Bad Man by Miranda July
• March: Selected Poems by e. e. cummings (ps. the thing about his name is a myth)

- Renew license = $45
- EBT Renewal (due by the 10th)
- Ithaca College Health Center (paperwork for OMMP card)
- Electricity Bill - Name (?Building has to deal with it?)
- Figure out what to do about my health insurance
- Companion Animal Approval (second verification)
- Open a Bank of America Account (for Linda)
- Would like to learn how to ride a skateboard, or at least attend a yoga class

Creative Goals:
- The three piece drawing w/ venues (Need: tracing paper)
- AIIWAM
- Magnets (Need: Magnet backing and beads/trinkets/misc)
- AG (of course, always)
- Keeping Record Initiative)(IF YOU THINK IT, WRITE IT DOWN)(WRITE IT, DAMN YOU)
- Holistic Artistry (sing, draw, make - even if it's not your forte, be creative in multiple ways)

This looks fun:
See If You Can Make It Out In 1 Hour w/ Escapism Portland! (hahaha but it's $60)
WATCH THE LAST SEASON OF MAD MEN!  Sundays @ Eastburn
Breakfast at Kelly's Olympian
OMSI
Hollywood Theater
Oregon Zoo
Saturday's Market
Art Museum
The Japanese Garden
Lan Su Chinese Garden
First Thursday
Last Thursday - Alberta
Free Comedy @ Eastburn
Ground Kontrol
Free Geek

Debts:
- Boss (200 [tab] + 250 [advances] + 335 [helped pay deposit] - 50 [paid] = $735)
- Credit Card =  $1,030.11
- Ithaca College =  $8,314,88 [once paid, I can apply to grad school]
- Student Loans =  $20,000 + small amount of interest (currently deferred)

Regular Expenses:
- Rent = $460 (until June)
- Electric = ~$30
- Phone = $35
- Netflix = $8
- Renter's Insurance = $13
- Health Insurance = $54 (but I'm two months behind...)
- Ithaca College = $10
- Boss = $50 per check/$100 per month
- Bus Pass = FREE! Thank you, Boss!
- Human Food = $30 per week/$60 per check/$120 per month
- Cat Food/Supplies = $15 per check/$30 per month

Want:
- ! Professional (but inexpensive) camera so I can start helping Kimchee at ADDradio!
- Noise Cancelling Headphones (worth the investment - my home is surrounded by night clubs)
- FM Transmitter (for work)
- Supplies for weekly meals (kitchen stuff, crockpot, tupperware, utensils, coffee maker)
- Swiffer Mop (NEED. Damn your sweet fluffy hair everywhere, Orion...)
- House supplies (trash cans, recycle bin, bath mat, bubble bath, cleaning stuff)
- Republic Wireless Moto X (with $10 a month plan)
- Butter Maker (Yes, for edibles!)(Even my building manager said it was okay!)
- Vaporizer (wait until something special/new/less expensive comes out)
- Rain proof shoes/boots
- New bike (for June)
- A pass to The Cannabis Cup coming to Portland in July