Tell someone I'm going to bed, then go turn on my blog...
Big long week, big long month. March is booked up and banked out, so as long as I keep my arms inside the ride everything will be fine. Oh, nothing, just careening through the scream sports that is life. Did you guys know you can get physical therapy on your fingertips? And that your brain takes fingertip nerves very seriously? No wonder torture scenes on TV are such a big deal, yanking out fingernails and driving nails into fingers and chopping tips of pinkies off and stuff. May spend March wearing heated gloves around my house, like tiny little heating pads for my fingers.
The rest of this is just observation. I've been so distracted that I failed to notice something important 3 months ago. I was casually glancing down the forum page and did one of those face flops all over my keyboard when I saw this number. How in the world did I miss that?
So I dug around on twitter researching the possibility of linking that day and whadayaknow. By the way, this next snip will click to everything I've ever tweeted out with the word 'syfydesigns' in it.
K, guys, just demo'd what tweet linking can do for you if you do it right. And that's not all. This is what you can achieve if you play around crossing hashtag streams in your tweets.
I feel like the Don Pardo of social media engagement strategies.
Oh, yeah, there was this other thing. I sorta tweeted out this thing
Not saying it's connected or meaningful or anything, but you know, since I've only unfollowed about 1200 people over the last month, just kinda shows up in a coincidentally timed way. Because stuff like this just happens all the time, right? It's twitter.
I really do need some sleep, though.
I know, it was probably a #Snarkalecs thing. But a Lexx fan can dream.
I started this post Saturday the 27th before sunrise. I've been jumping in and out of it all weekend.
One of the bigger changes I've noticed this month is how more relaxed I am around my house. I used to fight with bacon on weekends, trying to turn it so it all stays flat and stuff. You know what? Who cares? I let it curl up and do it's thing, and it all got cooked just the same. I've noticed a lot of my chores have been like that, less drudge and more like quick efficient jaunts in between doing much cooler and funner stuffs, and amazingly, I'm actually getting more done faster. So yeah, chillin with my bacon.
Remember my bridge I was working on? I'm going to show you guys why I love cobblestone fences. This first bit is on the private realm we're constructing, which started out with me getting the hang of stuff in creative mode and lately switching to survival mode because creative actually gets a little boring if you never really have to work for what you use. So this bridge is my first real construction in that realm in true survival mode, and I was definitely thinking survival. First shot here you can see I wanted an elevated bridge above the water, poor chicken fell in and got caught.
Note how the unjumpable cobblestone fences along the ramp offs stop the water flow completely and divert it downward so nothing near the ramps can access the bridge, whether in the water or out. Pretty sure you could make a dam with these things.
Back in the MoCreatures multiplayer. Another really awesome thing about cobblestone fences is they stop creatures from getting to me in my mining cave. I can set up perimeters and move them at will. Check out this badass glaring at me and there's nothing he can do about it.
This is sunset on the beach at the beach house. I'm downstairs in a walkout basement above my mining cave, pausing to look out the window as I run through. I would love to be here in real life. I've never lived anywhere near a real beach.
We've also got this huge rugged house in a flower biome, really gorgeous and very dangerous, keep killing scorpions and spiders and all kinds of other monsters right at our doors. But I love this fireplace. The pink screen was especially for Pinky. I feel loved.
I don't log on as often or as long as my crew, so I come back to surprises. Lookit us stylin in new armor. The checkered stuff is chain mail. Kai's armor is enchanted for fire, I think. Mine is for scorpions. I love going after scorpions. They're huge, like the spiders, only when you kill them a bunch of babies jump off and start attacking.
Us irl, lol.
~later~ Guess what. I got vids. I'm going to size the display up a little, so apologies if they spill over on your phones.
This first one is a run through of at least 3 biomes on the MoCreatures server, and I'm not going to stop and caption, but I'll note a few timestamps for stuff you'll see in the vid just below.
:20 yes, that is a cricket, and it really sounds like a cricket
:48 an unfinished abandoned house that admin allowed us to claim, so I laid fence around it
:58 this is how you easily get over an unjumpable fence without having to stop and open a gate
1:20 I installed all that glass, but it was already framed, nice work
2:03 check out the tigers on our right
2:10 that was a mole
2:12 that's a rat, they bite
2:25 I have minor lag issues with my wireless router, but the columns coming up are real
3:15 this whole area makes me think of the Hobbit and LOTR movies
12:43 that's lag, found out @bonenado was downloading a TV show to watch later
3:58 loving the realism, because I really do feel high up
4:25 checking coordinates, biome is 'Extreme Hills'
4:48 hafta be careful going down, I've died falling
5:46 see story below video lol
6:24 that's an Ent out there in the water
6:31 zombies down there, alive during the day, forest shade sometimes protects from daylight
6:36 our cool lava pit
7:00 that's a constructed waterspout out in the sea
7:30 oopsie, was wondering where sand fell in from while I was mining below
7:50 temp capping the holes so we don't fall in
8:50 coming up on our original landing point when we first came to MoCreatures
8:57 yes, that's another Ent, they walk all over everything
9:21 our snake, Coral Grimes
9:44 I see we've added a 'coffee tree' lol, gonna go get me some beans
10:15 oopsie, Thumper got out
10:54 the glorious java tree
11:15 teleporting to the house in the flower biome, keep mouse away from hover to see the command
11:50 my awesome bedroom
12:00 that's a Sherlock poster on the wall
12:15 my own personal deck, put a grill out there lol
12:23 once saw a naked man in that pond, turned out it had been a werewolf all night
12:35 note- giant scorpions can crawl up houses and perch on deck railings #4realz
Ok, the 5:46 note. That highway bridge was a challenge to build, and as I was widening it, I kept working in the dark thinking nothing would bother me. I didn't expect a giant spider to find the wider bridge so fast and it snuck up behind me and attacked (never mute your game, kids), which pushed me into the water, and it jumped in after me and I'm flailing around and it's still attacking and whadayaknow here comes a stupid floating skeleton and between the two I totally died and LOST ALL MY EQUIPMENT IN THE WATER. Usually you can just /back and go get your stuff, and I was so pissed, I went /back so fast I actually picked up a piece of cobblestone fence before it sank and I furiously whaled on that skeleton with that piece of cobblestone fence over and over and over and over while I was swimming, and as we both scrambled up onto a shore we drifted into, I got the advantaged and finally just beat the crap outa that stupid thing until it gave up its bone and died. Still really pissed about losing all my stuff in the deep water, but I learned just how vicious I could be and have ever since brutally murdered every monster imaginable popping up in front of me, even in groups, with only a stone sword. I'll actually run at skeletons while they're shooting arrows right into me and just savage the hell out of them. I think I've found a safe way to displace my tension...
On to another vid. This is Kai's pet. We've since then found out you can't lead or amulet your own pet on someone else's property, so don't go flying around landing wherever, ok?
I've noticed I'm going through the same light nausea I went through last fall when we first started arm work in physical therapy, pain level kinda overwhelming I guess. Between that and last week being hard in general, I've been very thankful to have problem solving in minecraft to focus on. This is underneath the beach house, digging it all out for room to do other things, and I'm temp tagging walls and floors from rooms above so we don't break through (again). A chicken fell through a couple days ago, and I wasn't going to go chasing it around a cave, so I shot it and ate it. And you saw what happened with those sand holes on the beach that I patched over in that vid.
I wore my hair in a long braid for 3 straight days and when I took it down last night to get a shower (don't judge), it suddenly went all zzzt like super fuzz, like it was storing static or something. So I'm thinking how cool it would be if I could find a way to use the static my braid evidently collects and carries around and point it at people like a scorpion tail and zap 'em. My hair is almost alive this month from all the wind gust stuff (50+ mph yesterday) (and we're not even in March yet), so maybe one day I'll go all Medusa and scare people and stuff. Speaking of scorpions, Kai keeps a pet scorpion around whaaaa. This whole pet thing is gonna kill me... They tell me named pets won't attack, but I'm pretty sure it won't stop Coral Grimes from coming after me.
My monthly twitter impressions have dropped from 123K to 93K since Christmas, but I think that has a lot to do with compulsive tagging problems falling off. Hey, here's some fun twitter math for you- rank=exp(21-1.1*log(#yourfollowers)), but again, I ask, what does it mean? Depends on what else you're looking at, I guess. Numbers alone actually mean very little until we see them in action and context.
I'm subbed to Stone City Blog, and one of the first things I see on my phone every morning is an emailed post written by someone in prison. This morning's was a great rap style poem called Raise The Bar. (This is NOT the same as the Raise the Bar Cypher or Tamar Braxton's thing. Way better.) This one was written by Jonathan Gordon, and he's also got a blog called From the Bottom of the Fish Bowl. Much respect.
I'm in occupational therapy now. The only difference is I'm now seeing specialists in arms/hands, and they ASTYM down to fingertips. What I am doing right now will determine if next move absolutely has to be surgeries. I guess they're finding out with people jumping into nerve compression surgeries too quickly that the compression cause isn't always addressed, so the surgeries wind up not helping that much. Right now we still don't know if my neck is partially causative, and still waiting on neurologist to talk to me about my MRI. I was told yesterday I'm one of the more complicated cases.
One question I was asked several times yesterday both on paper and directly was whether my pain was preventing me from sleeping well. Duh, right? But ~*yeah*~. So after a bunch of assessing, we barely had time for a light ASTYM from elbows to fingertips, and by light I mean I'm used to much more rigorous tooling, and was very surprised how easily I could drive and carry groceries afterward. And then last night? I. SLEPT. Less than ten little bitty minutes assessing and shredding the fascia in my hands and around my wrists and elbows, and I slept like a boss. Very much looking forward to what other improvements I may see up to the end of March.
This week being so hard in several ways, and once again, Minecraft being a godsend... Totally fumbled this bit but that opening scene is pretty cool.
Ok, this is the road I've been working on in multiplayer, eventually it's going to go across the water, too. I love cobblestone, lol.
As my friends (3 of us are claiming territories and created a boundaried town so visitors can't plunder us) were noticing I seem to have this *cough*LITTLE*cough* obsession with organizing all our chests, so they've dug out a basement, filled it with chests, and my passion is now being directly utilized. Any time I feel the need to super focus and bury myself for a few minutes in something useless but actually useful, I can go down in the basement and sort stuff to my heart's content. Several years as a lead in retail and a year executive cheffing in food, not to mention the glorious summer I had overnight run of a 4 story hospital as the only stat available in housekeeping, oh, and 2 years of hotel desking (I really am a natural born workaholic, I loooooove organizing), you can imagine me disentangling incoming raw materials, cooking and smelting into refined goods, and repack for shipping off to other areas. I love minecraft. And then if I need a breath of fresh air, I can run around the mountains looking for sheep to shear and go on a few wild n crazy blitz hunts while I'm at it. I've also got this whole mining thing going in a couple of caves, and I'm paving a road from a mountain top out to the ocean bit by bit, so there is plenty to turn to when my day is plummeting.
In the meantime, jokes flying around my family about all the things I could have said on the webs. Scott agrees one response in particular would have been awesome, but yeah, it's a good thing I don't put snark first any more.
Anyway, you get the idea- aspie obsession needs a direction and application. Finding a safe place with safe people to do that is such a huge tension reliever, and so far I've not only been able to stay on track with the rest of my real life doing chores and making meals and keeping my bills and scheduling straight, but finding a new surge of energy and joy doing it. I seem to be doing more stuff in a 24 hour period than I was a month ago, which is a really good sign with depression.
I know it's been a drag watching me angst about being public and balancing real people on social medias (those have actually been my highest ranking posts). I can also tell some of you are a little miffed with my new static front page that forces you to actually click again before you can glance over what's new in my content. (Email subs and feed readers don't have this problem.) I know you guys like feeling anonymous, and I've apparently taught you well, because about 80% of you regulars now barely even show up on trackers (being logged into google hides you, didn't I say it? You're welcome), but the bot traffic still shows up just fine and only accounts for way less than 10% of incoming, so I know you're still out there. I don't know if the static 'about me' page will be a permanent thing, I'm not really liking it sitting in the way like a closed door. I may switch it on the top bar menu next week so it doesn't come up right away but shows up as available to click.
Still finishing out a very hard week. It doesn't matter how many years pass, the pain never fades when you lose a child in the family. Life goes on, of course, but even after 12 years we all went into a hush this week on cue, very automatic, and then sweetly came together and cried again, all alone in our houses, but together on the webs in a little private spot. There are just some things that can't be properly shared out loud. By direct association, I am part of a worldwide CF family and always will be. Every person whose life has been touched like this, whether it's CF or cancer or any other long term terminal situation- I know.
We are here to watch each other die. We are here to learn how to die well. We are here to learn the love that walks in the dark with others who can't escape it, and to lead the way for others who follow behind.
And that is my focus. #amwriting
This parody rewrite is pretty wrenching if you see it from the POV of a person going through medical stuff, and especially growing up with a terminal dx.
This is why I don't write anything Lexx for other sites. This is a link from an update email after I created a minecraft profile on MoCreatures wiki, which I had to do to be able to chat with admin about a glitch in the MoCreatures matrix. Wikia Community Central- How to Deal With a Bad Bureaucrat I've been offered several times to move my entire fan blog over to other hosts, and I just can't see putting the content I work hard over and pay for on someone else's turf ownership, you know?
Sorry, was checking emails first thing, that was on top. My sister also alerted me to other me totally rebranding. She's trying so hard. Here I am cutting back down on twitter and she's still having such a hard time getting more followers. And she's jumped from mommy blogger/ toddler store to youtuber/ beauty consultant. Anyway, she's the real deal, here is her about.me, go check her out. Aaaand I see she still hasn't updated her twitter info at about.me. Bless her heart. Points for working so hard, though.
Meanwhile, I learned how to craft a clipper and I'm really big on shearing sheep now, getting lots of wool. Kai is learning how to breed different colored sheep and getting interesting crosses, lately a light blue. I switched back to the original realm for awhile where the really cool stuff is going on to work on fortifying a bridge to a cave entrance with this cool unjumpable stone fence lining the sides of the ramping on and off and wound up running through a field chasing rabbits (I am getting really good with my bow) because I desperately needed food, it got dark and next thing you know I'm plowing through several little groups of skeletons, creepers, and zombies all standing around talking like bored coworkers, and dang if I didn't outrun at least 8 of them all at once, zigzagging up and down little rises and in and out of ditches like a rabbit myself. And then, of course, I ran into a creeper and we blew up, lost ALL my cool stuff, went back to look for it and never got any of it back because all the bored coworkers converged on the loot like it was Christmas. It's a really dangerous realm in a cool biome, really love it there.
Anyway, here's the bridge. You can make cobblestone walls that nothing can jump over to line the rampways where the bridge touches land, plus the walls (and steps will do this too) create water flow that diverts anything in the water away from getting onto the bridge. My only fear now is arrows whizzing in from skeletons peeking over. I've not yet had a monster successfully make it to the narrow entrance threshold and simply step in.
Yeah, you can tell I've retailed. I love organizing chests and I'm big on signage, lol. I'm apparently not alone, saw one person in multiplayer bragging about having 120 chests stocked up. I'm still under 10 on any given world, so I guess we'll know when I go down that rabbit hole if my chests start multiplying.
This was her song. She was terrified to sleep the last year, so we spent many hours through the night playing games and talking. She's the reason I walk in the dark to reach out to so many people.
And another CF friend has been in and out of hospital with some big stuff this month. A long time ago on xanga another sweet young lady shared (privately with friends) her journey. I loved her strength and attitude, and learned so much from her. Her favorite poem was The Waking.
The Waking
By Theodore Roethka
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
THANK YOU, *cough*Flash science writing and props team*cough* for actually showing a scientist doing something besides vaguely throwing some quick random circles up during a slam session on particle or quantum physics, yo.
But twitter going crazy over the shark factoid...
Guys, hearing one factoid doesn't mean you're "learning science" any more than hearing one bible verse means you're "getting religion". #epicfacepalm
pic clicks to an old review
And then twitter analytics ground to a halt in the middle of it all after a major downrightnow event earlier in the day.
Which means I couldn't see how this tweet I did was doing at all.
When a mofo has no fucks to give about ripping someone's pic and then getting only one retweet on it from the person they ripped the pic from HAHAHAHAHA.
It's all good, we've been following each other a long time. But that just cracks me up.
Anyway, now analytics is back up and I see my tweet went nuts. I'm used to seeing impressions because it shows up in a hashtag feed, but I'm not used to that many engagements. Maybe more than one mofo stole my pic, lolz. The media engagements are ppl popping that pic out, presumably to download. If you see this pic show up in a review somewhere, I took it. You're welcome.
Yeah, no, I don't do Flash reviews. Sorry. I just rant here and there.
I haven't been in minecraft that much lately because real life stuff, but I did spend an action packed hour yesterday in battle with a snake (wound up with 2 snake eggs for potions), a bear, a lion (earned a claw), snuck around a tree and nailed a skeleton before he could bolt me to death with his crossbow, OH and a skeleton horse. Those things are pretty nasty to tangle with, those hooves all up in your face alla sudden because they can run so fast, gotta really stay focused. And a boar. Actually shot that one on the run. Yes, we were both running when I shot my arrow. Skillz. Also a bunny. I'm wanting to make rabbit stew. The little stew bowls are so cute, and very nourishing.
What really freaked me out was while I was fishing in this beautiful lake Kai built a new house next to, I looked up across the water and caught an Enderman's eyes, threw my pole and just started running. I am NOT ready to take on a creepy dude from the netherworld who'll steal all my stuff. I didn't even look where I was running, splashing through water around a jagged beach and suddenly I was trapped at the base of the Cliffs of Insanity. For realz. Now we need a pirate ship... Anyway, I was carrying a stack of ladders and it never once dawned on me to use them. #superfacepalm
I'm just gonna say it. The retweet about no one ever asking the strong how they are doing- I still have a couple years of private convos asking if you were ok when no one else did. The retweet about some people with brains do an awful lot of talking- yeah, but some of us actually SAY something. The retweet about dementia that disappeared- way below the belt after total public confessions about my cognitive disability bcuz autism spectrum and memory problems and depression. The retweet of a nearly naked woman with her butt up over a chair- you totally woulda reamed D for tweeting that.
If I can be passive-aggressively spoken to on twitter, I can speak passive-aggressively back on my blog. This is the fallout of a very public wildly unbalanced friendship. This is what happens when you court someone with autism with the words 'I love you' for 3 years and then don't follow up with being honest and genuine to someone who is easily used and manipulated.
I have so many positive and proactive links and graphics peppered through all my stuff that STILL promote you and the people you write for. I have put more quality public and private time into YOU than any other person I've ever known on the internet. I've agonized over and privately expressed genuine concern and hurt over you, and instead of actually working on the friendship or addressing what was really bothering me or even just saying goodbye, it's just over and I was part of the trash you took out and walked away from.
You had access to my mission statement, my hopes and dreams, practically became family in my household. We all know your name. If you knew how extremely rare this is in my life and how many people around the globe lurked around every single interaction I had with you, you. would. faint. There are people out there who would give their arms to have that kind of access to me.
I don't do head games. I cried over you. It really did hurt when I realized you didn't are about my stuff at ALL, and that you were just using me to get attention and fill a space in your life, and it really did scare me when you said you didn't care if you died, and that you were going to drink yourself to death.
If you don't want real friends, don't say things like that to them in private.
As for the rest, may all your dreams come true and I wish you joy and happiness. And fame. You seem to crave fame. I wish you lots and lots of fame.
Pinky blog comes up in international searches for hamster drag racing. Okaaay... Well, to be honest, the person searching was probably looking for a genetic defect in hamsters and it crossed streams into me because Star Trek acronym and my hamster tag in a couple of posts. But hamster drag racing, lol. Didn't even know that was a thing.
And I keep getting urgent emails from Sumall that all free accounts are going to be dumped in 7 days unless we upgrade. I'm busy making new armor. Finally found an iron ore vein, thank goodness. Getting chased by a tiger yesterday in my cute little dress was pretty terrifying. I'm not sure what's up with my armor getting stolen, I've been killed so many times now, not even sure who or what took it. OH, and Kai hatched another coral snake last night and named it Coral Grimes, so I can't kill it because it's against the law to kill named pets. >=l It better not come after me. This is my little bunker under the house. I'm so ready for the zombie apocalypse.
Kid tested by a real kid. She didn't let go of it all the way home. We got ours at a local TJ Maxx but the original manufacturer/retailer is Mary Meyer Bestever Baby Mats, and there's a much bigger variety there, although I'm not seeing a dog like this one.
Got a snow warning coming up, so today is phone calls and moving appointments. I'm just not going to drive in weather at all this winter if I can help it. Been really lucky so far. We've been known to get major spontaneous ice storms clear into April, so we've technically got 6 more weeks of 'winter' to go. Never plant your maters until you're clear, guys. I've seen way too much weeping over massive baby mater loss because premature spring feels. I've got a good ice pic from April one year somewhere in all my stuff, guess today's not the day to find it. We never got yet this year what we've had in years past.
January 2007
February 2008 (ice)
January 2009
January 2010
February 2011
And a chicken pic for kicks from May 2007.
Hope you guys are having a good week. February kinda feels like trying to walk through water in minecraft, goessss sssooooo sssllllooooowwwwww....
Gots to pull my head together and get some cool stuff done. Got my Spirky feels going. I'm actually in a good place. Ok, as long as she doesn't throw any snakes at me, but she does love some good sport, so I won't be surprised, and this time I'll be ready.
I dreamed last night that way in the future, a really old library in St. Louis had the last remaining section on twitter, and it was devoted to Star Wars tweets. They were divided into 3 sections- parody accounts/tweets, movie quote tweets, and fan gifs, which were randomly playing around the library aisles like full adult sized holograms. I blame this dream on a few twinges of possible (but not really) regret during my recent mass unfollowing of useless Star Wars accounts and an article I ran into last week about how the Library of Congress actually attempted to document twitter and gave up after a year saying that our millions of thoughts would need far too much work and storage space and could never be properly reassembled into archives outside of twitter itself.
I also dreamed about living in a really old building that was rotting out, and a giant tree limb had grown into one room over a dining table and was covered in a big web with millions of spiders and other bugs. It bothered me very badly that as bad a shape as this place was, it still commanded a high price as living space. I sort of blame this dream on a combo of playing minecraft and watching both Divergent and Insurgent within a 24 hour time span.
And then I dreamed both these things were all actually one big place over time, and I got to see how it became demolished bit by bit and renovated into futuristic new materials and hallways and furniture and people, and I'm going to blame it on this cool tweet I saw come through last night, because I have always loved anything timey wimey since I was a little girl. It's up to you how far you want to take the emotional metaphors in my dreams, since I am spending my month redirecting out of a rut and creating a new work plan for this year. You can check out the book on Amazon and click this snip to get to his account on twitter.
And then he tweeted this. Yes, it clicks back.
One direction I'm definitely staying away from is not being truthful about who I am, especially on networking sites. It's one thing for people to make parody accounts, which I find entertaining, it's another for people to actually list specs and credentials about themselves that are erroneous. I've openly stated I use a pen name registered with a publisher, and at one time paid to use it as a business name. However, I don't appoint titles or descriptions to myself (so many entrepreneurial CEOs of startups out there), and I don't say I'm somewhere I'm not (it's cool if people want to identify with 'the biz' in Hollywood or the UK or whatevs, but allowing others to believe you're actually there physically when you're not is called 'conning'). I am a real person in a real place dealing with real stuff and trying to do real things, and I'm still just discovering how much my own reputation has been dented by connecting so deeply with a few others that don't seem to understand the value of social media cred beyond being popular for talking a lot.
Before some need to protest, I know all about juggling a public social media presence with a dangerous past, so yes, I don't think people should publicly share physical addresses unless they are real business locations. That being said, there was a person once about a year or so ago that suddenly blurted something on twitter that I had to ask be removed, and that person knows better. So I find it interesting that person still lists erroneous info as legitimate business cred.
Part of my problem lately with this big flip into a new direction is the anger I've bitten back for a long time about not being taken seriously. I finally just had to spell it out- I felt duped. I felt baited and reeled in like a total noob, and then my sense of naive aspie loyalty was played until I was so confused that I got stuck in philosophical self questioning. So while some of you are wondering what in the world is going on with me suddenly diverting into minecraft and seeming to be going nowhere, I'm wrestling with some very emotional depression over the winter and being guided into calming down between a psychologist and a good friend who knows how to redirect and keep my mind on something in lieu of self destructing. That's important.
Part of the big change is friendships. I am totally on board with social media saving lives. Sharing and touching base are pretty awesome when you need them the most. However, becoming dependent on social media as opposed to getting real help (supervision, meds, actual real people looking at your actual real face and smiling actual real smiles at you and actually listening to you actually talk) can be like spiraling out of control down a black hole. Twitter is not a cure for depression, guys. It's a crutch. Yes, it's a very good crutch when we need it, and some of you saw me tweeting around the clock for months at a time there for awhile, but it's still a crutch.
It takes a few guts to step out of your real actual door and find real actual help. I totally understand that. I have lived through unimaginable anxiety and PTSD. It has gotten so bad in the past that I'd pull out of traffic on major highways just to get out of my car, or drive in freezing sleety weather with my windows down because my claustrophobia would be so bad. It's gotten so bad at home many times that I'll suddenly drop everything I'm doing at home and drive into town (that first 15 minutes on a highway is horrible) just so someone will see me die if I drop dead, and I won't be all alone (because depression lies, especially in the middle of having a nasty anxiety attack), and sometimes it's so bad that it's all I can do to lightly touch my steering wheel with my fingertips over and over while I chant or something because I'm so terrified of my car.
Depression and PTSD are horribly very real. I've lived for decades with stuff that people still don't know the half of, and I've made it this far. There comes a time when a person finally just has to admit that some people don't help make this better. People that hide behind masks and smooth things over and tell me in private what I can or can't say don't help make this better. And finally realizing it's like the blind leading the blind, the severely depressed coaching other severely depressed on how to HIDE being severely depressed...
Guys, that's dangerous.
All the big thing on social media now is talking about how hiding our depressions behind smiles is what is killing us. Believing other people telling us we have to smile is what's killing us. Letting other people tell us how we have to play head games with them is dangerous.
I've had one of my best winters in at least 12 years. Best Christmas in ages, best health in forever, and what you guys didn't see me grappling with nearly every single day was pop up suicidal thoughts. I don't want to die. But I have PTSD and severe depression, and several people on social media were triggering me over and over and over, and after weeks and even months of asking them to stop, I finally just lost my temper on 3 different people, 2 of those were pretty public.
I don't want to die. Neither do other people who are hiding severe depression. Not everyone is as brave as me asking 'friends' to back off. It takes a lot of guts to stand up to people who are used to tagging you a lot. My anxiety was going out of control again, especially on major highways. I was once thrown from a violently flipping vehicle. You guys have no idea the trauma I'm still working through from my dad pulling me out of an ER and taking me home with internal bleeding without a single x-ray. I had absolutely no mental, physical, or emotional support from my own parent through a car accident that should have killed me. I've had to deal with aging parents and my stupid childhood flashing back while I'm trying to write a very honest book, and through all of this, I have yet to hear one word of comfort about finally dealing with the loss of my friend to a murder or watching my mom die very slowly from a person who claimed to have read everything I blogged. Is it any wonder I blew up on Christmas Eve after being PM'd about someone's one of two moms taking some Christmas presents away. I wanted to say grow up, but I realized I was the one sticking around for that drama. Maybe it's time for me to grow up.
Friendship is about balance. I am trying to find my balance and keep working. I'm dealing with cognitive disability doing it. My last attempt at honesty was returned with being unfollowed on other accounts and no closure. You know what? I would be stupid to take that bait and pursue answers. There are no answers except that I was gullible again. If I'm the one making the same mistake over and over believing people when they say they love me, then I'm the one who needs to take at look at why that is happening. I'm easy. I make a good pet. At first...
And then I start digging holes all over the yard and leaving half eaten mice in shoes and taking off through windows and fences, and the head games pivot around who will last the longest in another unbalanced relationship before the explosion happens. And it did happen.
My job on this earth is to put stuff into words. That is my natural inclination, to wrestle with how to say the stuff that's hard to say, how to make it easy for other people to understand another point of view, how to share ideas that are difficult to talk about. I believe I was born deficit especially for this calling. I've had to work so hard to get to this point, and I know what I have to share is important. It's worth the work and all the time and effort, and everything I go through and learn about myself adds depth to what makes what I need to say so important.
Depression is not a game. You don't ice it over like a cake. You don't tell people they have to keep their masks on. That's conditional love. A lot of people don't seem to understand the concept of conditional love. Don't even call it love, ok? Stop baiting each other with the word 'love'.
True love is doing everything in your power to break down the walls that are hiding what is killing people.
It's late, my brain is blurry, but I wanted to get my photobucket upgraded before I forget later this week. I haven't looked at stats in forever. 9300 views on 740 captures, most of them in LexxPix, a handful more in pbLexxPix. In the old days when photobucket kept stats on everything, including private folders that hosted off-site content (listing the web addresses they linked to, even more impressive than what you get on youtube nowadays, which isn't too shabby {I remember when youtube did the same thing, though, actually, anyone used to be able to see everywhere vids were linked right there under the vid, now it's just a private thing if you know where to look}), my views were in the ten thousands. Can only wonder what it would be nowadays, probably over a million easily. If I'd never dumped my old blogs and some of the pic folders... except now the only visible public stats they show is actual photobucket views if people click over. I'm actually too wiped out to feel a twinge of regret right now. I really should be in bed.
I'm not sure but I think this is the result of being bitten by a werewolf. Fortunately, no one else saw me like this, probably because in multiplayer no one would have any idea who I was and I'd immediately be killed for it.
No worries, though, got my Galaxie Gurl back on when I logged out and back in. Don't laugh, I know the lumberjack song just hit your head. I had to put on what leather gear I had left after I lost my armor in another fight.
But it didn't take long until I got air bombed by one of those flaming pegasuses again and ran into the house on fire, and as I died engulfed in flames, all the cobblestone I was carrying melded into a column that glued itself next to the door, and even after I respawned I could no longer use my button-1 'attack' to do so much as chop wood or go mining, much less defend myself at all or even eat. The most I could do, besides opening and closing doors, was play at my crafting table. I tried everything, talked to the admin, sounds like I might hafta uninstall and then reinstall. I've really gotta get a fire proof potion going and get some diamond armor made as soon as possible if I can ever become functional again. There was a notable lag problem for several hours today, so I'm crossing my fingers just walking away for a bit is my cure, since time passing (about 45 minutes or so, I think) suddenly resolved my cobblestone problem. In the meantime, I have learned to make TNT and craft minecarts into mobile carriers and explosives. Oh, and shear sheep. I made the cutest little sheep shears, and now all the sheep roaming around are my friends and come trotting right up to me. Also found out you never step on a bee. Raced a bee swarm back to the house, getting stung over and over zapping my life out as badly as arrows from skeletons, and I even had armor on. Like, the killer bees from hell or something. They were so cute until I walked over one.
I've gotta go to bed, I can barely even type any more.
I imagine this must be more boring than Sheldon Cooper's Fun With Flags series, unless you're a stats enthusiast, but I'm weird, so here it is. I've been doing these reverse experiments with twitter, have unfollowed over 1000 accounts in the last couple of weeks, and I naturally assumed that would have a more devastating impact on my twitter analytics. I was wrong.
One of the biggies in analytics is engagement.
What is a Good Engagement Rate? "Often, people wonder if they are using platforms like Facebook and Twitter correctly because they have what they would consider to be low engagement rates. As it turns out, most people average around 0.5-1.0% engagement rates on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, as well as many others. Because of Facebook’s News Feed algorithm and other live stream-style feeds, reaching your audience, let alone getting them to interact with you can be a challenge. Just know that a 1% engagement rate is no failure."
"One of the lessons I like to stress upon my clients is the concept of active users... everyone on Twitter, all of us, has a very limited number of our followers reading our tweets at any one time... 10 per cent of 10 per cent is 1 per cent. So, if you have 1,000 followers,... at most, 10 of them are reading that tweet you just published."
This is my engagement over the last 28 days, which includes my higher following number from the beginning of the month.
This is my engagement over the last 7 days following far fewer accounts and my unfollowed followers reciprocating by unfollowing me. On average, my engagement has held pretty steady. Clearing out useless accounts hasn't affected my engagements at all. This includes a mutually blocked account that used to tag me up to 100 times a day through the week.
And even slowing down, I still earn about 3000 tweet impressions a day.
This is over the last 28 days.
This is over the last 7 days.
You guys know how I feel about impressions. All that means is the potential for your tweet being seen, not actually seen. Impressions is how many feeds your tweets wind up in. Having a friend or two with higher follower numbers or being retweeted by a celebrity is fine (and fun!) when it spikes your impressions once in awhile, but if you're serious about your timeline, you really need to depend on yourself and learn how to socially engage on twitter. What you want is clicks. You could get 700 impressions on something and only 5 clicks on your link. What does that tell you about impressions? A whole lotta eyes were closed or pointed in different directions when your tweet rolled through their feeds.
If you want to tighten up any percentage, get rid of everything that gets lumped into it but doesn't contribute to it. My engagement, while once helped along a little by a few accounts that no longer support #TeamJanika, continues to hold steady in spite of that loss of support because I've carefully removed a whole bunch of other dead weight. The importance of this is how it impacts all those ranking algorithms out there judging your websites and blogs, how 'real' you look compared to how spammy you look. Big numbers can backfire in weird ways. More doesn't always equal better. I'm all for a really good parody account (some promote actual merch, usually books or podcasts), but if you're not reading their tweets, why should they read yours? If they aren't retweeting or even liking a single thing you tweet, and you're not reading their tweets, why are you still following them? Don't let the myth of big follower numbers make you forget how to do seventh grade math, ok?
There are so many useless accounts on twitter. I keep saying having a big follower number is meaningless, right? (Unless you are Wil Wheaton or William Shatner or something.) There are spam accounts telling us how to buy followers, so big deal. "CEOs" and "keynote award winning" people likely purchase a starter kit. (I've had a convo about this with Ellen Dubin, who chose not to use an agent to buy followers, much respect for that, so follow her.) Also, so many of them are spambots full of junk that the only usefulness they seem to have for regular people is adding another follower number to our tallies. I'm showing you guys that is dumb, and that having higher follower numbers doesn't contribute to social media power. If you want to be taken seriously, you need to take your own structure seriously, including how it looks to others if your 'power base' is constructed on spam and porn followers. I feel even more stringently about who latches on because they want fallout from what I'm doing. I can't tell you how many legitimate entertainment business accounts I have unfollowed with anywhere from 50K to 2M followers, just because 1- they absolutely bore or perturb me and 2- they never did a thing back for me. (Liking a Lexx tweet one time in 6 months doesn't save anyone. I have nonfollowers who do more than that.)
On the other hand, even if a number of accounts don't follow me publicly, they keep me on mobile alert around the world because of Lexx, and a few because of the whole aspienado/fandom thing. No one has to follow me to see what I'm doing. That is the goal. That has always been the goal.
Well, except no one can see what I'm actually doing, haha. Yesterday a really long coral snake was crawling around, thought I'd go whack at it with an iron sword, and I was wearing iron armor, but the more I whacked, the more vicious that thing got biting me, and that snake chased me up the mountain all the way back into the house. No idea how to beat it. May hafta make an enchanted diamond sword and wear diamond armor or something, because I'm pretty sure I'll run into it again sooner or later. And before that, all I did was step out of the house in broad daylight, and no sooner was one foot out the door than a blazing pegasus from hell was all over me, and Kai heard the commotion and came to my rescue. Thought I'd do a little run-through this morning and share what we've built so far in Dr. Zhark's Mo Creatures multiplayer server and a rat totally surprised me, and then you get to see me die because something else pounced on me and stole my sword and part of my armor, and you can see why I'm paving a little road up the mountainside if I need to run away fast when I go out and chop wood. The coolest surprise was whacking through a tangle of leaves from a giant tree along a steeper side of the mountain and accidentally blowing up a creeper that had gotten stuck and caught in it and was so buried in leaves I couldn't even tell what it was. Neat way to get some flint. I have no idea if all those leaves cushioned the blow, probably should've killed me because I was right next to it when it blew up, fireworks going off everywhere, running like mad... I might turn the video on more often, see if I can catch more stuff like that, but for now, the first tour.
just discovered there really is a steampunk realm
click to go
Slept about 3 hours. Kept waking up so I finally just got back up. Waking up a lot doesn't bother me because I get to remember the super cool dreams I was in the middle of, and tonight's was the coolest awesomest steampunk 3D minecraft, AND the blocks had jigsaw puzzle faces to boot. The blocks I was working around were antiquish sepia and steel colored, and about waist high (like really being in the game), and I could take smaller pieces off the surface faces that fit back together like jigsaw puzzles, instead of them chipping down into tiny square chunks while I mined. The wooden blocks were wood grained and looked like real wood. Those didn't have jigsaw puzzles on all their surfaces. I remember digging around in one of my chests for some sox to put on my character. The cute little leather/armor boots were multicolored sox I could switch out. I popped awake right about there and instantly wondered if anyone's ever done a Sherlock minecraft. Why yes they have. And minecraft Sherlock crossed over into Lego minecraft Sherlock, and from there it was an easy step to cross stitch minecraft Sherlock, and of course pixel art miming as minecraft, and on and on and on... If I weren't already busy with other things, I'd live happily ever after figuring out how to bead minecraft Sherlock earrings and stuff. Except beading sux bcuz carpal tunnel probs.
Met the surgeon for arm/hand nerve stuffs yesterday. Even though she totally confirmed two other doctors (one a neurologist) and physical therapy all recommending these three (at least) surgeries, she is sending me back to physical therapy first (woot!!!), and insisted I at least try cortisone shots first if it flares up as badly again as it did last fall. I told her I'm saving cortisone shots for my neck and left knee just in case (you can get only so many cortisone shots per year because risks). I can live with my arm feeling like it needs to be chopped off, but the neck thing erupting or my knee giving out could be a very different story, right? Kinda have an overwhelming set of probabilities here. In the meantime, her assessment took me down and my arms still hurt like heck, and that's why I couldn't sleep last night. I can take just about anything else dished out, but apparently all anyone has to do to make me kneel weeping before them is bend my wrists and press on my hands a certain way, and the nerves going clear up my arms do the rest and betray me like the big baby traitors they are. Beware, all ye who go up against nerve specialists. Pretty sure this chick could take down Batman without blinking an eye. Here, click this.
I have temporarily paused my unfollowing twitter descent right at 1900, just a little over a thousand less than I was following a month ago. I've cleared out so much bracken that incoming is getting really easy again (I still use a couple of private lists, as well), and I may eventually start following back again, but as I do, I may just put newbs on mute. Mute wasn't working before due to excessive tagging (by excessive I mean as many as 100 tags a day from a single person, and I had more than one person doing that) (other notifications are easy to scroll past), but it's working great now. This entire time my klout score seems to be unaffected and my impressions have improved. Not bad. I've just proved you don't need big following/follower numbers to maintain a positive interactive web presence. I still hover in the top 5% of influencers, according to klout. Sumall and favstar beg to disagree, but I'm neither a corporate marketer nor a tweet jockey, so I really don't care. In the meantime, I've been cautious about stirring up account suspension attention over mass unfollow, as per this convo thread.
We do not have an explicit upper bound on follow/unfollow actions permitted by our Platform Policies; however, we do disallow bulk, automated, and aggressive follow/unfollow behavior. While there is no limit on number, there is a limit on behavior. To comply with our Policies for follows/unfollows please ensure that all follows/unfollows are performed manually, are not en-queued or performed in bulk, and follow the behavior expected when following accounts on Twitter.com.
Good to know. But I'm sure celebs & other super popular accounts have ways of getting special dispensation, people to pay off or something. Pay for advertising and such...
Meanwhile.
click
Got on multiplayer yesterday and was almost immediately slaughtered by a wolf (probably a werewolf) in broad daylight at the back door. Totally panicked, threw bread at it, fell backwards off the porch, by the time I remembered WEAPONS or RUNNING I was massacred, and just as I was finally pulling out my sword, I was whisked away by minecraft angels announcing my demise to the entire realm. Kind of embarrassing since I'd been on a whole minute before I got killed. But I logged back in, ran around until I found my portal (totally got lost and some turkeys chased me) (Dr. Zhark's Mo Creatures realm) (glad it wasn't alligators), homed to the house, then spent the rest of the day inside crafting because massive thunderstorms, but next time I go back I'll definitely hafta venture out of the house again for wood and food.
In real life I'll be wasted on extra xanax for an MRI in about 3 hours (checking for arthritis in neck bcuz weird numb stuffs before I get ok'd to go back to physical therapy for neck probs), pretty much getting my spring scheduling lined out for ongoing fibro tune up and maintenance. If you guys aren't taking advantage of your physical therapy yearly allowances on insurance and medicare, you should be. That's like not using a data plan that you have available, and your bodies will thank you. Takes a bit of commitment, but oh so worth it.
Wo. Minecroft is a thing. O_O You know, minecraft + Mycroft from Sherlock.
Ok, ok, now I'm stalling. Here, have a Khan skin. (STID) Just click it.
Click for more minecraft style movie posters.
No vid today, wanna beat @bonenado to the shower. Ciao.
