A Safe Space for Moogles

Having another one of those 'feeling like a waste of carbon' nights. No trigger, just. Old friend self-loathing, come for a visit. You know it's time to up your meds when the only reason you can think of for continuing to exist is so you don't stick your parents with your student loans.

I spent a good portion of my afternoon shift drawing Hot Rod with tentacles. No, I don't know why. I'll post it tomorrow assuming my scanner decides to work. You're welcome.

Screw you, real life. I have fandom.

...which, I suppose, is a good thing. There seems to be a lot of hate directed toward April Fool's these days. At least on my flist.

The bug guy sprayed the hell out of our house, but a year and a half of the Recurring Bedbug Nightmare has made my parents even more neurotic than me. Along with washing everything in hot water (I hope my blankets get done soon, or I am going to be one cold moogle), Mom has gotten me new bedding, which is nice, and informed me that I have to bag up all my yarn and store it in the garage indefinitely, which sucks. My plans for an Etsy store are officially on hold, and (lj)ravynfyre's Magnus plushies are going to experience a Significant Delay. Mom says she's willing to buy me more yarn, but that's still a lot of projects - plans - hopes going Away for me. I'm kind of really bummed out by this.

She was very apologetic and told me over and over that I wasn't being punished, which of course only made me had to work harder not to start crying in front of her. Though the fact that I've been forgetting to take my meds probably accounts for some of that. Sleeping in the basement messes with my routine.

And just to add icing on the cake, oh my god, they're making the Anita Blake books into a TV series. I don't usually bitch about this, but Anita Blake broke my heart years ago and it's never quite healed. I dread to think what a bunch of executives will do to it. They're apparently aiming for a core audience of men 18-34, which is never a good sign, because most TV execs seem to think that 18-34-year-old men are a bunch of vacuous, self-absorbed fatheads.* About the only people they have a lower opinion of are women 18-34.

*Whether or not this is accurate is probably beside the point.

So there was this one guy at that job fair I went to last week (thank you guys for cheering me up afterwards, by the way) who actually seemed interested when I told him I was a graphic designer. He was the editor for an advertising magazine, and made noises about doing layout and page design. I didn't say anything about it because I didn't want to get anyone's hopes up - least of all mine - but he emailed me a couple days later asking to set up a phone interview. "Tuesday?" says he. "Great, anytime after 7:30," says I.

...you all know where this is going, don't you?

Well, the appointed time has come and gone and here I sit, no better and no worse off than before, if rather disappointed. I'll probably call Editor Dude tomorrow just to make the rejection official if I can dredge up the courage; otherwise, it's back to plugging away at the job sites and dreaming vague dreams of supporting myself with porn.

I'm starting to think my mood is connected to my monthlies. I've been down since last week, and my euphemism just started today. I wonder if there's a birth control pill designed to address that. ...I wonder if any birth control pills don't play well with my happy drugs. o_O

Either way, I know that I should probably get back to seeing a therapist. It's just that, I don't want to start developing a relationship with a shrink only to have to find another one if/when I move. It's almost easier to wait until after my living conditions change. ...Of course, I applied the same logic to making friends in elementary school, and I wound up with social anxiety. I can't win. -_-

Mom made little rice balls for her second-grade class for Chinese New Year (a week late, but whatevs) and now I find myself searching desperately for onigiri recipes. One of Mom's friends in Japan showed us how to make onigiri filling with pork and ginger and bean paste, and it was soooo good but I can't remember the specifics anymore and I can't find a recipe online (and I can't find bean paste, either). Lots of stuff about furikake and flaked fish and pickled plums though. And one recipe with Spam, oddly enough. Apparently it's the invention of Japanese expatriates in Hawaii. Rock on with your bad selves, guys.

Okay, look - nobody's gonna hire me. Every time I open a newspaper it's 'global recession' this and 'hiring freeze' that. Having a degree is no guarantee anymore, and I was always at a disadvantage in that department. Hell, experience isn't even that much of a guarantee, and I sure as hell don't have that (though I might if it wasn't for fscking Kramer's little bitchfit - thanks a lot, you tosser). If I keep trying to get into the corporate design world, I'm just banging my head against a wall.

My only other choices are give up and get another part-time gig somewhere - which is only a temporary fix anyway - or go into business for myself. Draw something, write something, and try to sell it. And the thing is? That's what I want to do anyway, but as it is right now I don't know if anything I produce is going to be anywhere near good enough. I feel like I need to level-grind some more. But it's either jump into the boss battle ten levels below where I should be, or go stark raving mad. Which, uh, it's getting close to "too late to stop that train now".

I don't have any clue where to start. I keep going in circles like this - gods all, no freaking wonder I can't get any sleep.

I now know why I can't stand reality TV. Not because of some enlightened sense of taste and desire for quality entertainment, as I thought - but because there's always a winner and a loser, and I always identify with the loser.

Why am I crying over a failure on Project Runway? Don't I have enough of my own?

EDIT: I feel better now. Strawberries and whipped cream fixes a lot of things.

I swear this last couple of weeks I've become a misanthrope.

( Just bleeding out some aggression before I explode. )

Basically, aside from a certain group of people (all of whom are on my flist), all who approach the moogledragon are at risk of getting torched. *grumbles* *huffs smoke* *retreats to cave and curls up in a scalyglowering moogledragonheap*

I just want this to be over, dammit. I don't mind the work, I just hate everything that goes with it. Why can't I just stay in my cave and make pretty things without having to deal with people?

In ascending order of "things that actually, y'know, affect other people."

Item 1: My professor pulled me aside today and essentially told me that my projects were crap and I'd have to redo them both. In retrospect, it shouldn't have been as big of a shock as it was. I'm grateful that I even have the chance to redo them, even if it means staying after class. Still, not a happy thing to be told. - She asked me if doing two majors was putting an unfair amount of pressure on me. I told her that it's a lot, that doesn't mean it's unfair. This is what I've decided to do. Even if it kills me.

Item 2: Our new masters, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to do away with the option to create Basic accounts. They call this "streamlining the setup process for new users." LJ users call it bullshit. I call it "really, really glad I followed dragovianknight to IJ, and wanting to tempt all my LJ friends over there with me." IJ does not have near enough Transformers fans, y'all. This needs to be fixed. Also, I should probably look into roleplay communities on IJ. ...Not that I'm giving up on LJ yet. They just own the servers; the real stuff - the content - that's ours.

Item 3: Oklahoma representative Sally Kern goes on an anti-gay tirade of epic proportions. Guys, when you listen to this, keep in mind between projectile-vomiting sessions that this is what they actually believe. And she's not just some crank bitching over the Internet - she's in a leadership position, speaking as a leader.

On the upside, today my new psychiatrist doubled my dosage of happy pills.

This must be the "in like a lion" thing I've heard about - a March snowstorm in Ohio, promising over a foot of accumulation in places. Even if I wasn't firmly in "so over this winter shit" mode since early February, I'd be worried - there's no big friendly fat flakes like you see on television, only a near-solid wall of the kind of mean little flakes that sting your skin like a thousand needles. I've been sitting by the window watching it for about three hours now and it hasn't stopped. The cars in the parking lot look like they've been abandoned by the side of the road; even moving cars aren't enough to break the illusion of loneliness and abandonment; the earth and sky are the same dull white, trying to swallow everything between them.

I don't want to drive home through all that, but I might as well. I'm not going to get anything done in the mood I'm in.

When I experience actual failure* rather than just the fear of it, my depression takes a turn for the wild and destructive. I drive too fast, flirt with red lights, curse at people for going the speed limit. I'd probably be off flinging myself off cliffs if I could find one. When I don't have a half-ton of metal around me I have to resort to stomping around and writing angsty posts. Cursing, of course, is wonderfully portable.

I caught a reflection of myself in my black coat today and thought I looked like a Nobody. I was almost envious for a moment - sometimes I think I would surrender my heart for a measure of peace. Except the Nobodies in the game don't really seem much at peace at all, so no help there.

Hugging me would probably be a bad idea right now. I'm all over blade-edges and sharp moogle tusks.

*Not that it was much of a failure as these things go, but my brain can be remarkably Boolean at times. It's either perfect or it's utter crap, that sort of thing.

"The Death of Optimus Prime" by They Might Be Giants never fails to make me cry. And get ridiculous images of Autobots singing sadly around a bonfire. And then I cry some more, because dammit they all miss him that much.

Winamp insists on playing that song for me every single day for two weeks straight. This is not conducive to my mental state.

ESPECIALLY WHEN I AM TRYING TO WRITE PORN.

Zen player update: still dead. Am still an idiot. Sending off my DS tomorrow to be repaired. Am still an idiot. Wasn't feeling well today, so stayed home from the shelter; will go a couple times during the upcoming break to make up for it. Feeling the lack of fuzzies right now. Am still a fucking idiot.

First, re: newsletter thing from yesterday. It was part guilt and part stubbornness that got me writing in the end, but I managed to bang out a short thing for my part of the newsletter. It helped, of course, that I could get away with less than four hundred words (at least seventy percent of which was pure, unrestrained snark). Whether all this is a good sign regarding my mood as of late, I leave to you to decide, dear reader.

Speaking of my stressed-out mood, Potential Boss hasn't gotten back to me yet about Teh Job, and I'm... kinda relieved. To be honest, I don't think I'll get it - the lady seemed about as stressed-out as I feel, and generally didn't sound ready to babysit me while I learned the trade. And on my end, I've been so worn out and edgy about school lately, I just don't see how I could handle a job on top of that. I almost miss my frame shop job - sure, the pay was crap, but it was better than nothing, and there wasn't much to do besides sit in the back and crochet. God, I wish I'd never even heard of Kramer Graphics. So, I guess it comes down to a choice. Which do I value more right now: monies or sanity?

Bah, enough of that depressing talk! I have been reading Books, which makes everything better. Pithy reviews behind the cuts, general spoiler warning:

( White Night, by Jim Butcher )

( Dark Moon Defender, by Sharon Shinn )

( The Virtu, by Sarah Monette )

Last thing: FreeRice.com, a flash vocab game that donates ten grains of rice to starving communities through the UN for every word you get right. Perfect for bookish types who are a) socially conscious, and b) lazy. Though I have to wonder how much rice they'd get if they had used, say, Tetris. Ten grains per line? Good lord, the Internet would solve the world hunger problem in a heartbeat. XD