Hello. This is my first painting of 2024. Wild to think the lunar new year, valentines, all that's already in the rear view. Gonna take a minute & ramble about how things have been over here. Yeah so it's gonna be a trauma dump but I got lots of thoughts in my head to let out somewhere. Feel free to just appreciate the art & not read the wall of text.

On the whole things have been well. Not too much changed except I found my favorite video game ever. I don't really chase Hot New Thing, so having something to look forward to & find out it resonates with me bigly was like the coolest surprise. It was wild to see how much it had consumed me. I wasn't even looking for escapism it just sort of happened that all my time got poured into it. Yeah I'm talking about Palworld. I got kinda burned by a lot of my friends being super judgmental & mean to me about something that was just so pleasant & nice for me. So I have been reluctant to talk too much about it like anywhere. It's a pressure that I think did make me dive into it harder, since I had plenty of friends who could play it with me & appreciate it as it is instead of all the noise that exists outside.

Man, that's what it's been huh? Noise on the outside. Someone else's opinions or takes or vitriol flinging in every direction. I know for sure I've become less inclined to share my thoughts as time goes on. Even lip service. Seems like no matter what you do or say someone's gonna come in & make it their mission to harm you with no recourse. Even on things as innocuous as finally being able to afford a new pair of pants, or getting a controller on my first ebay experience, or hell even making food. Made chicken parm for the first time not too long back & gonna be my turn to put some spin on it soon. That kinda apprehension, locking your heart away? That's how you stop anything good from coming in. I know that. It sure is becoming harder to muster up the hutzpah to do or exist anywhere, with anyone- & I gotta be honest that's how it's feeling. To admit to it & observe the feeling before my meddlesome optimism jumps in before I can even breathe with an 'inconvenient feeling' to think about it. I think that's important. To just get to talk about how it is before you jump right to troubleshooting it.

Start of the year I got some good things going for me. Insurance & a bit of cash in for help but nothing long term. It's at least put the worry away for a few months. Haven't done anything with the insurance yet. Might be too late in the year. Asked for help with getting to the doctor's by the one & only friend around only to get exploded to. I mean it wasn't even toward me directly but I can really only catch so many shots about how inconvenient or unsafe I make someone feel before it starts getting to me. Nevermind the behaviors I have with them personally. Man it's a long story, just this friend has basically said that I give them anxiety-- & not even because of anything I've done to them or with them. They heard about my life growing up or what I've done with OTHER friends who have different comfort zones & so they start projecting anxiety on me. Like I'm gonna force any of our plans into some wild party animal territory? Which isn't fair or even close to the truth??? I act like I'm in a library or going to church with this fellow, I'm talking full blown formality hours. But he hears about how I had a group of half a dozen friends over & we had to be a bit hasty at a minigolf course so we didnt keep people waiting behind us & he goes on to say "I'm uninvited from any minigolf with him" like!! What the hell that's so uncalled for! No amount of emotional labour's done anything to assauge these worries. Honestly it just feels like he doesn't like my face. & as of today I haven't got a single other friend in the world I can see in the meatspace.

I had originally planned to be making my trips to whatever hospitals & such myself on foot. An incident of make plan, bail, make plan, bail, make plan, bail built up to some huge implosion on me & my roommate that really just put the whole mess out of my mind. It hurt a lot more than I think they even want to hear but, he's going through a hard time himself right so we gotta give him grace or something... Anyway we're moving in a few months because we need more friends. More opportunities. We moved here to be around this friend who said he'd help us out but I've seen friends I made 5+ hours away more times since I've lived here than I've even seen him, whose like 20-30 minutes away ...? Maaan. You know what's whack? I don't even think I've talked to any of my friends abroad about this. I just took it on the chin & tried to keep my spirits up somewhere else which is just so greedy. Thinking I can handle it all myself. Though not for no reason...

Lot of such friends abroad going through their own things. It's always something, isn't it? Like a lifelong friend moving into their neighborhood & instantly trashing their place in phenomenal ways. The extent of neglect so potent & prolific we're talking about the house being unsafe to live in before even the first month. No effort to step up & take responsibility for it being theirs putting themselves & their partners in real danger. Only to have that person creating drama & deflections all over my friends who were doing real, tangible things to help them move in & even close on the house in the first place. I feel for them, all of them. The sympathies are no real excuse for the kind of neglect & squalor they brought with them. It sucks! Hoping for & trying to be supportive for friends through this kinda thing. Having connections broken cos struggling to not enable it just got my friends snapped at & taken total advantage of. It stinks.

I'd broken out of my hyperfixation thanks to such a friend intervening for me. Slapped some sense into me when I completely lost track of myself or time. I mean at the same time we were having repairs done to our appartment too that made shaving & showering go from a 'refreshing, pleasant experience' to get it done fast as possible when possible & a few nights needing to sponge bath instead which just isn't the same. Oh yeah but that's all done now, & the bathroom put back together as of this past week. Feels great to get to actually take my time to carefully shave, soak, & lotion up in the ritual I do to keep myself feeling great & healthy. Yeah this friend though shook me out of my fixation & we got to spend some time together. It was feeling normal again. Only, they've been having a lot of bad luck themselves, yknow? Losing work, losing friends, losing health, feeling hard done themselves. They're a dear friend but not the kind just some kind words can make right issues for. They need to feel actions- & I get that, absolutely. Found out that they're out there now starting shit with people we used to be friends with- which is what spurred on this picture. Soon as I got the news this was going on, I tried to engage with them on how they were feeling instead of the gossip/rumor kinda energy they've been packing lately. I was left on read, which I took to mean yeah this isn't the time. The emotional, compassionate talks are for later, it's time for coping now. Which is fine, I mean I can't make them chill- I can only be around for when they want it from me.

A week of coming out of fantastic, baller time- with a lot of my friends I should say. Cos I was getting heck from that friend that I "vanished to the world." Naw, man. You bullied me about the thing I'm enjoying & never bothered to find out how many of my other friends were doing it with me. I got to see so many friends, including friends I'd known for over a decade-- this was our first game to play together ever! It was so dope. Anyway yeah I do appreciate the troubled friend wedging in the way cos I was absolutely in dysfunction territory, but to climb out of my fox hole of escapism only to find there's new messes being flung in every direction & I got nothing I can do or say about any of it really has just had me feeling low. No luck in snagging the work I've been hunting for. My art's all a mess but I'm doing what I can to keep the wheel turning. A fox in motion stays in motion, right?

I was just listening to music, doing my first warm ups digitally of the year that felt like they were getting anywhere & Still Woozy's - "Goodie Bag" came on. Something about it just got the vibes I got right. Cos it's not like I'm hopeless or giving up or joyless but it sure does feel like everything's just so sour, so bitter, so out of my control so the best thing I can do is kinda keep myself in good spirits & share some of it with the precious people around me- as it feels like everyone's going through something lately. The final three verses of the song really, really resonated with how I'm feeling these days.

"You know I wanna be
Above everything
But I'm just not there yet"

Anybutts thanks if you caught all that rambling. All's going fine here. Better by the day. Just gotta make what efforts I can to prepare for the move & all. Do what ya can & try not to harm anyone. That's the tempo I'm on. How you been?