a blog post after the new years

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right, so, as youve noticed, no music review for the month. partially because i havent listened to music (somehow, ill give you the one song ive listened to new this month dont worry) and partially because, well. just havent felt up to it.

so this is gonna be kind of a different blog post, i guess. no fancy topic or well thought out paragraphs. welcome to the new years, i know its been kind of a shitshow here in the USA this month and... well. i hope the rest of everyones year goes better than january!

this time of year is kind of hard for me, typically. i dont like talking this publically usually about my mental health and all but i guess i feel like maybe i should, this year, because as a very good video game once told me, at the end of everything hold on to anything. so, lets talk, i guess. lets learn about your webmaster and talk about the new years. theres certain times of the year without fail that my depression kicks into overdrive; the start of the year is one of those times.

i really vividly remember the first time in my life i felt suicidal. i was twelve. i honestly dont know if i can say ive gotten better or worse since then, at 24 years old nearing 25, because it feels like i get a few good years where everything is giving me a chance to claw out of the pit of lions and then all of my progress towards "living" gets undone in one swift kick and im back to being the boy wondering how to make a program that will forwards a copy of my will and last words to a few people on discord when i die. the thing that im noticing now as a "functioning" adult is that my impulse control is way, way fucking worse than when i was a teenager, and its probably because all of my old coping mechanisms stopped working forever ago so ive just been doing the same dumb punk shit every other suicidal punk does in an attempt to stay alive.

there was like, a time where i recalled being suuuper straight edge with a hint of pride like it made me "better than" other folks and im so like genuinely embarrassed at my past self as my present self is like i think vaping is probably going to keep me off the ledge for a year or two. teenage dv, you are a dumbass, just a reminder. thank god ive had the fortune to meet a bunch of other similarly trying to claw out of rock bottom repeatedly with only fingernails and a lighter and smokes in the past year. punk and community has been the other thing keeping my head above water; i started my first battle vest mid last year and working on it, and making patches with my husband, and trading band tips and safety tips with other friends has given me a sense of grounding sometimes that i dont take for granted. last year, i went to the pride jersey mariners game with so many wonderful queer friends and friends of friends and hanging out at the bus stop, it was said that queer people pass the same $50 around in a cup to get by. ive never felt more happy and genuinely hopeful, ironically enough, than passing around that same $50 to get by with other broke queer friends and folks.

im hoping this doesnt sound like an euology, this is more of a... i dont know. lets talk, you and i, person reading this blog post behind a screen, reading words transcribed to pixels reconstructed back to words. im writing this on a day where i debated too much catching a bus (they fixed the bus line in my area) into town and walking onto the i5, too much to probably be comfortable with, and im trying very hard to keep climbing. if i wrote an euology for myself it would certainly not be a blog post on my website where i talk about a bunch of tangentally related things from the past year it would be pretty and nice so that if someone tried to put a picture to my corpse it would be as similarly artsy and broken as i feel. this is me trying to articulate in a way that i am still here, even if i am failing at a basic task (making a blog post) and its not that deep.

something ive learned this month is that the old economy of online mmos that were like, social-based are kind of all gone now. its kind of weird, isnt it? you look at old websites and theyre the graveyards that geocities were, abandoned profiles that show game stats that tell so much about the love poured into it while it was active. theres only like, 5 mmorpgs that are popular now and i would argue to some degree that none of them prioritize guilds and social life like the old, weird ones i used to frequent. maybe thats not a bad thing? but it feels like something is lost, lost for the shut ins who desperately live through these small virtual worlds, lost for those coming in from the outside world seeking to disconnect for a while. i dont know, it made me really weirdly melancholy.

how have you all been? do you make new years resolutions? i have 1 tradition every new years without fail and its to blast this year by the mountain goats as loud as i physically can at midnight on new years. i am gonna make it through this year, if it kills me. i have been living by those words for such a long time. id say i wonder if john darnielle knows what he did for the mid-twenties who didnt think theyd live this long, but he does know and he has talked about it and im grateful constantly for his music. speaking of music, i promised the 1 rec so here it is: confessions of a rotten girl by SAWTOWNE ft hatsune miku (eng) is really fucking good. perfect time capsule of 2013s fujo culture. im very excited to see the next sawtowne release for sure.

the switch 2 being announced this year surprises me a little. i was expecting it to come out next year. if theres no pokemon bundle or like, a REALLY good launch title ill just wait probably. its so expensive... and im not looking forwards to seeing if nintendo games are joining the AAAsphere in going to $70. sigh.

if you read this long, thanks! i hope you got something out of all of this. im not doing too well (and honestly it feels like the times i am doing well are getting rarer and rarer), but im trying. despite everything, im still trying. i want to see DELTARUNE chapters 3/4 this year, and i want to see the OFF remake, and theres another party in april i want to go to and watch stupid movies at, and i recently got an orca LIFT card so i can take the link rail to more baseball games. im fighting and i might be losing, im not a very good JRPG protagonist, but id like to get to a point where the about page on this site gets to say im based out of seattle, washington or BC, canada. in the meantime, ill keep trying to make blog posts, i guess. silly music thoughts and more aggregates of odd video game merchandise, thoughts about video games nobody else has thought this hard about, microblogging posts on the front page with recipes or whatever else is going through my head.

in regards to the state of affairs in the US right now, find your community out there, the one in your real life not just the one in your virtual life. pass the hat around. go to weird underground music venues and split an energy drink with someone, dance until you make yourself motion sick, stand outside in the cold night air and feel something. even if youre not punk, this is the best advice i have in the world right now. not every one of us is strong enough to be the front lines punching nazis. the back lines taking care of each other, passing around change you scrounge up, giving someone a lift because they have no gas, supporting local artists even if youve never heard a lick of their genre in your life, bringing someone lunch at work, these are all just as important.

i am not very strong, even though everyone tells me i am. there is a difference between feeling like atlas, forced to carry the weight of the sky for eternity, and being able to shrug that off and i cant shrug it off. but i think thats okay, because im the analytic type and even as i am buckling under the strain i will as a better man with a guitar once said, make it through this year if it kills me. one inconsequencial blog post at a time, i guess!

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