Bringing it all back home

Today is a cloudy, cold, and damp day. I know that I'll dread these days in the coming 6 months but the solstice, all change, is always beautiful. This summer was awesome... it might've been my favourite ever. I don't blame my younger self for staying inside marathoning Civ V diety runs back to back, but I can't be doing that anymore. Being an adult isn't so bad.

Like everyone else, I have to do groceries as a weekly. Well, most of my friends have been getting theirs delivered but I enjoy my walk. Even in the dead of winter I go on this trek. There's always something personal I figure out about myself; if Kierkegaard can walk away from his bad thoughts I can too. Also, I'm simply cheap and they have really good prices. Recently I've noticed the lines have been getting really fucking long? Probably due to the many, many recession indicators, but I'm going to blame the minimum wage workers doing Instacart.

To carry my groceries home, I like to bring a mountaineering backpack I accidentally bought five years ago. Uhm, but on this day I was resupplying after not going for 3 weeks, and I bought a LOT of cans. I opened my backpack, and I realized I didn't bring any extra tote bags. I looked back to the line stretching to the meat aisle, and seriously considered if I could sneak a bag and if anyone would care. I've seen people leave pasta and other random stuff by accident behind, and I can never take it. Sighing, I filled up my arms and prepared to look stupid.

Almost immediately stepping out of the store, I felt a rush of giddiness? I walked down the street and got odd looks, and it spurred me on to giggle. I love looking like a moron to make my friends laugh, but I hadn't really been a public baffoon before except doing shit in school like walking home doing silly walks I saw on Monty Python. I started to think how I'd incite this confused reaction from strangers more often! Maybe I'd make it as a hobo, and then I tripped on the curb and almost crashed into a car. Thankfully I didn't drop any groceries! I got approval from an old lady on my quick footwork. I've actually had this happen 6 months before where I almost fell on ice but caught myself after doing 3 Mario Hops, and my elderly retired artist friend from Chess nights at the library happened to be nearby. He shook my hand after that stunt lol.

I knew I could bring these home, but the dramatic thing would be to try to solve the problem! So I decided I'd take a detour to a card game shop where I could buy a card pack and then get a bag. I thought, hey if the Gods of Chaos are blessing me, maybe I'll get a Starlight Rare or something crazy. Or it'd be funny if it was trash; just a nice memento from the story. As I daydreamed this and went to open the door, someone stepped out of the building next to it. My guitarist-bard friend from the house party I mentioned in the last Doodle and Daydream!!! Turns out, he's a barber and was stepping out of his shop. He took an interest in my predicament and said he had a spare bag upstairs in his barber shop and said he could go grab it, and so I joined him because now it was even more interesting than my own attempt at dramatization.

I had never really even considered this building. It's a historical 4 or 5 story brick and mortar, and as we went up I noticed his barber shop looked suspiciously like a 200 sq foot apartment. The roof was also inexplicably 15 feet high, with a single chair in it and an extremely antique cracked mirror. I noticed he had a piano in his open bathroom, and he was having trouble finding a bag in the pile of mattress/curtains/other things?? so I sat down at the old piano. I've been really interested in those videos on YouTube of Deltarune songs played on old out of tune pianos, but I haven't gotten around to learning Third Sanctuary. I belted out the first half of Omori - By Your Side, and started to improvise from there. He got excited and grabbed his guitar via a ladder, and started to try to play along. I'd never be able to recreate what I improvised; it reminded me of how my dad used to play the guitar when I was a toddler and taking a bath. Or really anytime there was a spare moment. I don't think he ever thought of himself as training, and I don't think he knows any songs. After trying to find new chords I liked and failing, I suggested we swap. I started to play some Dragon Age Origins songs I know on guitar, fingerstyle. I don't like strumming all that much. He matched with dramatic Tom-Waits style melancholic chord progressions on the piano and I was amazed at his improv ability. He liked to give advice on learning the scales and finding progressions that you like, but he realized he was late for a gig. He quickly found the box, and we went downstairs to laugh about the absurdity of the encounter. I smiled the whole way home.

I don't like telling stories. I've been thinking about the above a lot, because I'm still struggling with what to do with the experience. I've mentioned this moment to others, but no one has really grasped at the core of what I don't get.

Because, there's more. I actually ran into him two weeks later, and he wanted to hang out again and do music. But, I couldn't! I don't think it was a wouldn't, I think I literally could not. I'm not sure if it was retreading old ground: when I bring a new game to my friend groups, they'll often play the fuck out of it repeatedly. We did Gamedle (Wordle but with games), and we all had a great time learning about tech like going first with Duke Nukem Forever, and showing off my encyclopedic knowledge of DOS Adventure Games and learning my friends' special interests. But after the first night, I didn't accept an invite to do it again! They were doing it for like two weeks. I don't like doing the same thing twice.

Yet, I love traditions. One of the most extreme ways I can get bummed out is if a movie night or a FFXIV raid night doesn't happen. I ration out my alone time so that I'm really excitable to talk to people when the planned hangout is happening. Almost desperate to be with people again. So, when it gets cancelled last minute I go kinda nuts. My friends got bored of Minecraft + movie nights, but I was still building my sheep kingdom for like a year after they stopped joining the server. I really miss doing that. D&D getting cancelled is also a major bummer.

I don't like to cancel on people, even if it's for something I'd like to do wayyyyyy more. The only time I did so in recent memory was to go to the mall with a friend of mine to look for rave outfits. I had a great time, and I knew it would be great, but in the moment I felt sad and nostalgic even though I was still there. I knew we weren't going to do it again; it's just who she is. I genuinely enjoyed playing music with my bard friend; maybe I could see myself not feeling like I've gotten better at music to justify giving it another go. It's not like going to the mall takes skill, and we certainly didn't do or see even close to everything. Also, this was the second rave I've gone to by EvilSoundGuy. I go for the CRT displays with glitching visuals, and because I love internetcore genres. Robopup and Pinkii were performing, and it was certainly much more different than the first time. Noteably nobody dragged around a guy on a leash on stage or made everyone in the audience kneel to her or call her mommy. For that, I quietly stood in the corner not drawing attention to myself

Again, the reason I went to the mall was for this rave, and she wanted to see Pinkii so badly... but then couldn't make it. I honestly expected it, and I wasn't that bothered. I can talk to just about anyone; I chatted with people in line and made a lot of strangers laugh with random bits I have on post-it notes on my bedroom wall. I got to downtown early and was wandering around looking at buildings to draw when I heard my name from a window. I looked and it was my friend!! Well, a mutual friend from the birthday Pool Party I mentioned last time. I stepped in through the window and it's an art studio!! I hung out with a few of their friends they talked about their pains with jerking off their friend. Mind you I've spoken to them for like, 5 minutes maybe most at the party. I met the guy who owns the art studio and he loved my artwork, and I might hit him up for screenprinting something. This moment could be a pivotal one for me; I really dislike a lot of graphic t designs and I feel like I can do better. Might be my next autism project.

So maybe I don't think retreading the piano hangout would lead to something like this? It'd be fun, but it wouldn't be... pivotal. But there's a lot of ways it could be, like what if one of their friend shows up and we make a band. There's an infinite amount of ways it could change my life. Also, do I even want to change my life anymore? I feel like that was my chief operating method for so long I don't know how to live... comfortably?

It seems like all I ever want is to keep moving. I don't know what I want beyond that. People think I'm shy or quiet when they ask me how I'm feeling or doing or what I want, but I genuinely can't -think- of any words no matter how long I sit with it. It's one of my worst failings at communication is I say I want one thing, and then i do the complete opposite. I always feel so terrible, and it makes me never want to speak because it can be hurtful. I've tried really hard this summer to learn how to want things: going out and walking or skateboarding, going into random shops and grabbing something if I liked it. I can't keep it up anymore. I got invited out to Renaissance Faire and I've ALWAYS thought about going: when my mom was looking at summer camps I told her I wanted to go to a blacksmithing one. That's literally all I cared about up until age 15 was blacksmithing and metallurgy. I couldn't, though.... I'm exhausted.

My last moment of summer was going to the State faire with my oldest online-to-IRL friends. We used to be like 15 people and had a few raid groups, but now it's two couples and me. We hadn't met up since December for the Avatar 3 movie, and I loved walking around for 10 hours doing random shit. But the experience made me sad. Like, immediately I wanted to cry when I stepped onto the grounds alone to look for them. Last year, I had gone with my best friend. We had a tradition of spending every Thursday together for a long time, and I was really excited to take them back next year.

I do love to see my online friends. I've always idolized getting to hang out in person - I could never convince my D&D friends to play D&D in-person. Well we did walk around together once, but it was a month before I had to move out of the city. It's something I'm still bitter about.

It took a few years, but now I have friends here. We have an art night hangout every Friday. It's nice to have people who get sad or miss you when you aren't there for a week. I love that we go out and do non-art things and just hang out, but I'm starting to realize there's no difference between these offline and online relationships. I've held this belief since I was maybe 7... so I'm still trying to understand the implications of this. I've made some major life decisions because I cared so much. I had an IRL friend yell at me for something I didn't intend or even do, and it threw me back to the years of being yelled at online and thinking "If only they saw my smile when I talked to them". I thought it'd be different.

I've been feeling like not speaking, again. I'm hoping it's just a temporary feeling that passes; I'm an extremely seasonal person. My two fantasy worlds, Twilight of the Idols & Carcaso, are worked on in the opposing seasons. I play a specific video game type every year: a Pokemon romhack, a Europa Universalis run, 100%ing a roguelite, etc. So, maybe this is just me getting ready for winter. I just never want to be who I was before, and am trying to remove my old associations: someone used to call me Peach, so I use Lemon for my tags now.

I love being able to just simply type out my thoughts here, and in FFXIV in those chatrooms. I feel safe. I did all of the Beastmaster content within the first week and got my Hydra, which is a first for me since the first raid series dropped and I cleared Savage week 1 in Party finder. Which made me crash out so hard I played Terraria for 200 hours. A few friends I haven't seen in years have been talking to me; some of them are hacked accounts however haha. One of them tried to pretend to be someone I haven't talked to in 6 years. They invited me to watch anime or a movie, which threw me for a loop. I almost wanted to say yes? I don't know what the hacker was trying to get at, maybe they were just lonely. I thought that spontaneity was beautiful; I do really well with people who clearly want something and want to include me with it. When I used to be on Spotify, I used to randomly invite friends to listen to albums. I made a few friends listen to all of the Protomen ones when Act 3 dropped, and it was a wonderful, random night. I miss being kidnapped for random stuff.

This damp weekend was spent inside. D&D got cancelled, as did raid. My favorite venue in FFXIV hasn't been open in a few weeks. If it wasn't raining outside, I don't know where I'd go. I mentioned toward the start of summer in White Stone Black I've felt more like a dandelion than a Sunflower. I don't know if I feel the same, I don't know if I inherently need to wander. If being trapped is anthetic to who I am. I want to be there for everyone I love whether it's online, offline, or people I'll only see once. Above all else, I want to be free, and if I want something I'm scared of being owned by that thing.

I don't need anything from my friends except for them to be happy. If I didn't exist, but I got to see my friends be happy, that'd be good enough for me. But being observed, having expectations, judged and needed: those all scare me. I don't want to be trapped in the rituals that I crave: I remember running dailies with a friend for weeks, but I had to interrupt for a doctor's visit, and they playfully were upset. That guilt tripping, even if it was coated in a joke, made me not want to do it anymore. Even if I liked doing it. I'm OK with my art night friends being sad I wasn't there because it's a group I'm not in control of. Sometimes a friend group will revolve around me and I have to dip out to let it reset. Or rituals that are one on one or extremely small is much more pressure; the best are rituals that go on without me. A venue that's open when I'm not there. Art nights that happen without me. When I've tried to setup those Thursday hangouts for people important to me, they don't work out. It's mostly on my end, I'm trying to force it and I shouldn't. Good morning and good night texts inherently stress me out.

So, maybe that's why I softly said that I was too busy to the Bard friend. It almost doesn't matter WHAT he offered to do. It was the way it was phrased, not by his words but by the circumstance. If it's beautiful enough, and narratively interesting enough, I'll do anything. I used to need a week's notice before wanting to do anything; if I didn't have an agenda for a hangout I'd get upset because I wanted to do research and try my best and mentally prepare. I feel like I've become the complete opposite person. I don't want to be the author of my own life. I am happy to be a character I am observing. I was fascinated with learning piano, but I was also fascinated with watching myself learn. Those thoughts I penned in At Rest I have constantly about everything I'm learning. I've always struggled to answer "How are you doing?" and now I know: when I'm winding down for the evening with a friend, I'll tell them all the fascinations I've noticed while observing Taming. I hope your evening goes wonderfully, my friend.