Hey guys.

So yeah... hey folks. Long time no speaky.

 The last post I wrote was a little over five months ago. I mentioned things got busy and I was coping.

 Well, things kept busy and I'm... not doing so well with the coping. It feels like my default response for the last few months has been, "Doing alright. been so busy! Here's hoping being busy dies down soon." But it has not. And what with the holidays coming up, it might not until next year, which is disconcerting and terrifying to think about.

I've shut down even sharing/taking pictures, which I used to love to do. I haven't put up my Chicago Comic Con pictures on Facebook from August, and my visit to family in Michigan (some of whom I haven't seen in 15 years) resulted in not one picture taken by me. At all. I brought my camera, but just couldn't bring myself to take any pictures. I'm burnt out on busy. I'm not coping. I'm anti-social, I need alone time to function properly, and being in social situations so often for so many months is wearing me down. Has worn me down. In the downtime I do get, I find myself feeling like it's more of an unsettling limbo until things happen again, and I'm having trouble using that downtime to do things I enjoy. I'm not even using the downtime to sleep. I feel like a zombie. A zombie with regular panic attacks. I feel like I'm going to need a whole week of just me in a cold, dark, empty room in order to start feeling normal again.

As a kid, I never had imaginary friends, my whole imagination was my friend. Being anti-social in the real world meant I had a lot of time to myself. Time to imagine scenarios, alternate realities, that I could escape to whenever I needed it. I would remain in that alternate reality for days, weeks even, (not continuously, mind you, just a few minutes here and there, at least once a day, especially just before sleep. But the scenarios of that reality would continue as if I'd merely pressed pause until it was time to imagine again.) until my imagination got bored with it and thought up a new one. This was almost akin to meditating for me. The peace it gave me to imagine something in to existence. Sometimes it was the only thing that could make me happy.

I will say now that this exercise never left me as an adult. It was still a way I could escape if I needed to. Continuously imagining new worlds and realities. Constantly using that part of my imagination. The childhood happiness I used to feel at imagining in to existence would still cause my heart to jump with joy as an adult.

It's gone now. The world of the busy has taken over, and I find myself unable to jump in to that corner of my mind to escape. I can't even get the door to open. While I can say my imagination is still working, the alternate realities division has shut down. And I don't know what to do. It's frightening to think that door may never reopen.

My father suggested the other day that I get back in to writing. He firmly believes that I might be able to find a niche there, in both writing short stories, as well as possibly a web comic. He brings this up every couple years or so, 8 years ago having read a previous story of mine that involved a mystical rooster, crime fighting cows, evil hamsters, and banana pudding. I used to dismiss his suggestions, as well as other friends who've suggested writing as well, because, for some reason or another, writing stopped being enjoyable for me. Now I wonder if I'd even be able to start writing again.


I shall now stop ranting. I came to the blog today to write a bit, and then as usual, a tangent found me. Ha. We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.


So, basically, like every year on this blog, I post fairly regularly for a while and then POOF. Nothing. Guess that's a thing here, on this blog.

However, although I have been busy, I'm also still thinking of this blog in the back of my mind. I've got pictures of my nails I'd like to share, along with projects, and what not, and mayhaps even some posts with just me typing. Things I'd like to do and things I need to catch up on. Projects that were put on hold do to time. So on and so forth.

Hopefully I'll be able to share all of that with you, blog. I have not forgotten you this year yet. I may even attempt to try and put aside time just to write you. We shall see, blog. We shall see.

C2E2... finally. And the Vlogging Iggles.

Hello lovelies! HiLARious that I mentioned in my last post that I "wasn't burnt out" in writing blog posts... and then cut to over two weeks of silence.

It's sooo not because I'm burnt out though! Promise! Actually, I've been quite busy. Which... is odd, for me. And it's causing me to freak out a bit. But I'm coping, and hopefully things will slow down soon.

Today is actually just a fairly quick post to share some videos I've posted since last sharing a video I posted. lol.


Firstly, I've posted three more videos on the Vlogging Iggles since my first introduction post.

The second week was Harry Potter:

Last day of BEDA!

Last day of BEDA! And I'm not burnt out. Crazyness. CRAZYNESS. I still have some posts I want to get done still. So woot. But for today, just a quick one.




First up, as I mentioned yesterday, one of the friendship bracelets went to a lovely lady who was sending me a cake pin. While I was sending out the bracelet I found out that she is actually a part of the vlogging iggles. She's Monday. I thought I'd share the cake pin, I got it Thursday.

 Isn't that cute? Pink bubble wrap! Hehe!

OMG so cute. I wore it to the IGGPPC meetup on Saturday. :)

Friendship bracelets

So a few of the IGGPPC Nerdfighter folks are having a friendship bracelet exchange. I was excited to participate, because I've only ever made bracelets less than a handful of times. I can actually only think of two. Ha. About ten years ago, I made five, one for me and four of my friends. But the bracelets were really bulky and I think I chose some ugly colors, so I don't think anyone really liked them. Before that was probably closer to fifteen years ago. Back then, friendship bracelets were all the rage, and of course, my parents wouldn't take me to a store to get me any embroidery floss to participate. So the only bracelet I ever made I paid fifty cents (from my milk money) for the floss to make one bracelet. I could have bought floss to make a dozen bracelets for that fifty cents, but I couldn't go to the store to get any myself. Those were my two experiences with making friendship bracelets.

So I was excited to try these thingers again. My original thought was to crochet a simple thread three times in white, then braid those three together and intermix them with rose gold links. I wanted something simple looking, with the white, yet somewhat elegant, with the rose gold. So I grabbed these supplies:

I quickly figured out that this plan was not going to work. The crocheting didn't make the thread thick enough, and the intertwined links looked awful. I tried many ways to hook them together, but in the end I junked the idea.

 I just threw a clasp on either end and left it that way.

I kind of like how messy this bracelet looks, but in the end, it's just not for me. Does anyone want it? Free bracelet. lol.



So I went back out and grabbed some more thread, adding mint and pink to the white. Then I used this technique to make some bracelets.

When I first used the internet....

I thought for today this post could be a quick one. Just a writey one and not many pictures. One where I might ramble off on tangents. lol. Seeing as how a lot of my life is spent on the internet, I wanted to share a quick story on my first experience on the web.



I must have been 11 or 12. My then best friend lived in a different city than I did, because I'd moved away. Every couple of months though, our moms would take turns hosting the other's kid for a weekend sleepover so we could still see each other. (That lasted until around freshman or sophomore year of high school.)

Anyhoo, on a weekend where I was to visit her, I learned she got a computer with the internet on it. We spent most of that weekend playing with her Petz, which was a computer game that let you care for dogz and catz. It was also one of the first computer games I purchased when our family got a computer, and led to my first "successful" website. If I remember correctly, it was a Petz adoption site called Happy Benny's Petz Kennel... it took me nearly an hour to remember that... but I did. I spent most of that hour googling random keywords that might bring memories back - like I was doing a web search in my brain. Benny was a black giant chihuahua - which was achieved by breeding a female labrador with a male chihuahua. I spent a LOT of time trying to breed more giant chihuahuas. lol.

ANYHOO... She probably showed me some websites, but I honestly can't remember any she showed me. Then she got hungry and offered me her seat at the computer. I was now sitting at a computer with an internet connection. I potentially had the whole world at my fingertips. The first website I typed in to the address bar?



http://www.stupid.com



I do not remember if I was trying to be clever (I was 12) and see if something stupid would show up, or if I was just bored of it. lol. But I was highly entertained by the stupid things for sale on that site. I put that on my list of sites to go back to someday when I have money.  Since then I have purchased a Gumby patriotic pin (about seven years ago, it is no longer available on the site.) and two boxes of flavored grasshoppers. (probably about four years ago, got them in salt & vinegar, and sour cream & onion. Lost that second box though. Ah well. I don't believe those are available anymore either, but they were there for a loooong time. I know that because if I log on to my AOL Instant Messenger name, my "info" was copied from the description of the grasshoppers and pasted with a link to them. And AIM was a loooooong time ago for me.)

Checking out the site now, I see they have a giant inflatable TARDIS I'm interested in. Maybe someday.

But yeah... so that was my first experience playing on the internet for the first time. Fun stuff. Fun. Stuff.