In the 40s today, brrr. I'm losing October too fast, I need to slow it down a bit. I was driving home on a beautifully rustic out of the way farm road Wednesday when I realized I've barely paid attention to autumn this year. I live for autumn, all my life. I think dealing with so much stuff back to back to back during the Sept/Oct transition kind of closed me off again, and I don't want to miss autumn this year, so I'm making a conscious effort to pay attention. Since looking back helps me reorient to now, here we go- what was going on through the years in the middle of October?
2007- A lengthy obsession with bees. I'll save you from most of it.
Don't know if you've seen wild bees. The indigenous bees around here don't live in colonies, they're more roguish like wasps. One species is solid black, very chic. Except it's not so chic when they bore holes in your house to raise their kids in. We run into tiny piles of sawdust and look up, there's a hole. Then we have bright yellow bees with no stripes, very fuzzy, but not big like bumble bees. I've seen some pretty weird bees, even white ones, very pretty.
2008- Hmm, a detailed documentation of how someone else's meth addiction meltdown impacted my marriage, don't think it's wise to share that one. I mean, I could, just black out names and dump the dirty truth here, but I'm not sure the real life people involved would appreciate that.
2009- Laughing my head off, can't share those, either, because I documented every detail of what happened with the texting that went on before, during, and after my mom's memorial service.
2010- I'm noticing there must be a cosmic pox on the middle of October in my life, I can't share most of this one, either. All the stuff I can't share is other people, you know that, right? I guess this line from that year says it all. I have weirdly lost my Halloween mood.
2011- The year everything started turning around and I lost 50 pounds and started clawing my way out of my fibro-autoimmune-diabetic hellhole.
What a weird day. I floated on super spaz all morning, it was great. Decided to stop at Walmart after chiro and get some jeans, it's ridiculous that I'm so frugal that I tolerate this only pair I have sagging off me, so now I know I'm officially in an 18W. The pair I still have on is 20W, but I bought it months ago.
I was having a ridiculously super kewl awesome dream this morning when I woke up. It was like an anti-high school musical, and near the end, the evil woman principal was singing about how she was about to blow up the athletic super water slide with a shark pool and deboned seals (!!!), something about exploding the array, and the good guys, a good looking high IQ nerd and a hunky jock working together to foil her, sang back about throwing her in disarray (and it so neatly rhymed), because they had secretly moved her bomb to right behind her. Very 3D, was thinking after I woke up how cool brains are, because that made top of the line flat screen tv's look silly, even though we think they look so good.
Disclaimer: I've never seen High School Musical, and I'm never gonna. I don't know how in the world I wound up with this dream or why, but it was ~fantastico~.
2012- This was in the middle of a private discussion with a family member about how our idea of strict confidence might be someone else's idea of a private facebook with over 200 friends. The planning that has gone into handling being a public person was very real, given how much content I've never shared publicly and how often I'd seen facebook and family holidays blow up. I could become a nasty catalyst for humilations galore because I'm so detail-oriented, and I really don't want that to happen.
I've been watching how celebrities and others handle public life, especially on blogs and twitter and facebook and stuff, and I think I'm getting the hang of it. (Some of them really suck at it, but some are brilliant and very good role models.) Remember when I used to struggle with how to segregate or integrate different aspects of my life? It's getting easier all the time. Now I see other people making mistakes once in awhile, like there is this one woman in (country) who created a really *nice* ---- fan site. For the most part it's just really lovely work, very slick and professional. But this last week she suddenly tweeted 20 times to ---- that she has a message for them, which is very excessive, twice would have been plenty, more than that is annoying to everyone who follows her tweets. I followed her link to a blogger post about how much ---- and especially ---- has meant to her, and then I got to thinking back about some of her odd tweets here or there about how "beautiful" ---- is, etc, and after all that excessive tweeting and reading that 'message', I realized she's mental. (Disclaimer- this from a private convo, I have the utmost respect for her.) Took me awhile, but I can see now why other fans and website owners seem to steer clear of her for the most part. Everyone loves her website, it's awesome, she's obviously put years into sculpting one of the most perfect fan sites I've ever seen, but *wow*, her obsession is so pressing that she has to get a message out to the people who really know ----... Talk about an elaborate effort over a long period of time to obtain contact with him, which apparently *isn't* working. There is nothing online about who she really is or her real life, and I got to noticing ALL the fan sites are like that. It's not just ---- and ---- and all the secret identities on message boards, this is across all fandoms that I'm running into. It's rare to find fan site creators who actually blog about their real lives. ---- is one of those, and she got married and had kids and her life is public for all the world to see. It's fantastic, she comes across as very normal and sane, even though she's so obsessed with ---- that she named her kids after ---- fanfiction characters that she made up. And now I'm going public for all the world to see, and I'm starting to realize what a huge thing this really is, that *no one* in fandom does this because they are mental and obsessive and terrified someone will out them as a sexual psychotic or something. Which most of them probably are, they seem to have little to no lives at all, and they also seem content to spend more than a decade cycling through the same old stuff over and over, mostly as sexually oriented fantasies in one way or another.
Which is leading up to this- those fan site owners can get a million visitors and it *doesn't matter*. Even with a cool identity, if all they do is devote their lives to an actor or show and a message board without getting real about being human, all they are is a billboard for other people to look at. They are still nobodies. People cling to nobodies for the billboard, not because they really care about the person. I broke through a few years ago with a real blog, ----, and ---- had a heyday with it, and I went underground, BUT people KNEW me, and I HAD FANS. I never could figure out what the attraction was, but I'm finally getting it. I'm REAL. I'm not just another hidden face behind a billboard pretending to be cool in a mask. And you know what that's getting me? Kevin Smith followed me on myspace. (Alas, that is over now.) TheBloggess followed me on twitter. And just in the last 24 hours I got a notice that Jessica Gottlieb is following me on twitter, too. According to wikipedia, Forbes listed her as one of the most influential women on twitter, and she's one of the leading mommy bloggers, sets the standard so to speak. She guests on Dr. Phil every little bit, was involved with big ebay money making when it started out, is married to a tv exec... I'm sure she didn't personally seek me out. If anything, she may have just gone down Bloggess's twitter follower list and added from there. Or, she might actually be a ---- fan, noticed I actually BLOG, and my blog is cool, and she followed me. Or any wide variation in between those two actions. Maybe she simply searched the word 'blog' on twitter and checked out people who tweeted about their blogs, which I had just done before she followed me in an attempt to get me to follow her back, a trick everyone uses across social media. At any rate, fan site owners don't get REAL people following them on twitter or facebook or whatever. I have actual, real, influential people FOLLOWING ME, and dang, I only have 25 followers...
(Yeah, chew on that one for a little bit.) It's all I can do not to fall over just thinking about that. Only 3 months into my plan, and I've already broken through enough ice to look pretty impressive for a blogger just getting started.So whatever goes on with family stuff online, I'm still staying out of it, not getting dragged into anything, just ignoring. I can't even imagine how I'd feel about Wil Wheaton on facebook if he had a family member or two constantly leaving an off the wall comment, sniping private jokes, or arguing politics with him for the crowd. My old facebook got so carried away with other people jumping on and thinking they were cute and funny or full of dire information that HAD to get spread, and that was only, what, 15 people at the most? And I don't mean followers that comment, because he has hundreds of followers, I mean people who actually know me. The last thing I need or want is a public fandom getting to see my family business because they don't know how to be discreet. They *think* they do, and they *think* they're private, but to me it all looks like dirty laundry, or depression problems, or whining, or getting weird about religion and politics. If Wil Wheaton's sibs and cousins and whoever all jumped in, it wouldn't be a Wil Wheaton facebook, it would be a Wil's family facebook, and I wouldn't care to follow that. Since I've spent several years agonizing over and studying how to be public vs. private, I just know I can't let my guard down and assume it's all good, or that I owe my family seats on a public forum.
Note- I'm disappointed that a couple of other actors created private friends-only facebooks just so they wouldn't have to deal with the onslaught of religious and political turmoil they like to stir up. Kinda wimpy to private club your fans into believe my way or hit the highway.
2013- One of my very last private posts before I switched to public, and my first 'real' post after the Xanga server migration. My stress level was exploding.
Where to even begin. I already know how badly I hate this text editor because I've been using it on my wordpress Yablo. I apparently can't add videos unless I change format to 'video', but I tried doing that when I was fixing some fortuna posts and lost videos ANYWAY and it wouldn't let me put them back in. My stress over this whole Xanga move has been monumental and ongoing, and the only reason I'm not tearing my hair out and gnashing my teeth while I weep is because I have truly learned to be so easily distracted.
I have 92 pages of post titles in the archives here. =) haha
I see my Xanga pix made the move. No idea if they made it back into the correct posts or if they just turned into html. Noticed that some of the posts are just html in the reader, so if I ever want to see what they actually looked like, I have to go back in and reset the html correctly. Anything with tags probably got mangled.
Enough of that. So much to yap about. We are on the blackest list ever with ---- now, who even cares why, she's a b****. I bet ---- that she'd tell ---- she wished she'd have let him die before Christmas gets here (he nearly died in the driveway last week, {stuffstuff}, {more stuff}, 10 more minutes and he'd have been gone, guys in the ambulance kept him from coding completely), anyway, ---- said he bet she'd say it before Halloween. This is the truth- he wasn't home an HOUR this weekend and she yelled at him that she wished she'd let him die. She's the hatefulest ---- I think I've ever met. (Of all the things I didn't share earlier from my past, this is just one of many examples why the discussion about going public went into think tank level discussion. I'm not out here to air my grievances, but neither am I going to pretend I have this great life on a fun blog.)
Stuff like that keeps interrupting my life. I had a meltdown all over Scott last night for the first time in MONTHS. We wound up laughing, no harm done, but dang.
It's probably noteworthy that since I've gone public, I rarely get internal disruption any more. Should've gone public years ago.
2014- Totally public at this point. I skipped posting on the 17th, but the post before that was sometimes you just take it with a giant grain of alien salt and the post after it was birthday week instrospection- am I grown up yet?
2015- Not one single post looking back reoriented me to feel more autumny, so now I'm asking myself if this whole illusion of loving autumn all these years was a safety mattress (totally click that for Mac being a badass, embedding disabled). Regarding my opening paragraph, I'm concluding that I very aggressively escaped into autumn for many years while I swam through big emotional stuff going on all around me, and that the reason I haven't 'noticed' autumn this year is because I finally reached an emotional landing point. I'm not swimming in stuff any more. I'm dealing with it head on. I no longer need the escape. Autumn is still pretty awesome, yes, but apparently it was a compulsion that I've let drop now.
For years I thought I love October, and I assumed that because I'm an autumn baby born in October, and this is the cool month that starts the big holidays. The more I look back through old posts, though, the more I see that I clearly don't love October. This is the month that I shut down and start losing control through the rest of the holidays. (You guys didn't see @bonenado totally interrupt this post freaking out about my fantasy team again...) This is the month of tension over social obligations piling up, lots of death memories, another reminder that I can't enjoy birthday cake any more between being diabetic and having nightmare food crossover allergies, the month where I'm selfish if I spend money on myself even though it's my birthday because there is so much other stuff coming up, the month where seasonal allergies (ragweed and leaf mold- I live in the woods) and cold weather overlap and every day feels hard, the month where I curl up inside myself and sing in my head while I let stuff roll over me because I just can't handle so much. And then I miss real life while I look at fantasy autumn pix on the computer or drive around by myself watching leaves fall. Maybe the only reason I love autumn is because it's a fantasy world.
Is 2015 the year that changes? Because this is the first time I've said this, that autumn is an illusion for me. I'm realizing I've lost Halloween. It used to be my fave holiday, now I can't eat ANY of the treats and I'm usually feeling too rough by the end of the month to stay perky for trick-or-treaters. Last few years we've been so relieved when it dies down enough to turn off the deck light and lock the door. That doesn't mean I'm not glad to see the festivities happening around me, it just means I have a really hard time being part of it anymore. I can see why some people sit back and just watch.
I still love autumn. I do have good memories of autumn, but I'm realizing my fondest memories don't really have other people in them (besides my own kids), and not because I don't love other people, but because so many bad memories are tied up with other people. What a sad commentary.
I think I want to change that. It needs to become more personal again and not about other people's Halloween and autumn leaves pix floating around social media. Pinky is wanting to start a Pinkyween countdown. Aspienado isn't sure yet where that is going, but I can already feel the fight coming.
Pinky and aspienado irl.
Maybe it's time to put the flashbacks behind me. The transition is complete and the need for assessment is starting to step aside. Popcorn balls aren't going to power me into the future. They were fun while they lasted, but the metaphorical 'celebration' of the season of death no longer has a grip on me. That psychological bag of candy that is Halloween on pinterest holds no power over me. I may have to do some more thinking about this while I work on some kind of soup or something. Maybe it's time to turn all the nightmares into the fabled brew and see just how far Pinky can run with this aspienado thing. I can't tell you how good it's feeling to wake up in the mornings nowadays.
But don't despair, I actually picked up an outfit to wear for Halloween. It can double as pajamas, yay! I can go Halloween all winter.
