Category Archives: Real Life

My family and I are newly home from a family vacation in Omaha, thanks to my out-laws wanting to get everyone together for the Fourth of July.

I love the Omaha area so much. The Old Market is full of good food and neat art, like the odd and wonderful Garden of the Zodiac, which I love. It is slowly getting more and more overgrown and wild, and I feel like there is some sort of commentary about our culture’s use of zodiac signs and horoscopes in that.

We also saw some paintings by Bart Vargas, exploring Americanism. It was really great, and I wish I had enough money that I could have bough a few. He is very clever with textures and his titles made already remarkable pieces even better. You can find his website over here.

Omaha also has a world class zoo, and there is an amazing safari park nearby so I got to take a lot of pictures of cute animals.

The Omaha zoo is really amazing (and has Okapi, my favorite animal!). They keep making it better and better. They really understand both what visitors want and that the animals have needs too so they are doing things like building bigger and better habitats for the animals while giving the humans great views and transportation options.

Their train now gives you great views of the animals and the waiting area has great music. Our waiting area was right across from where the ostriches and impalas hang out.

All in all it was an amazing vacation, and I will probably be sorting pictures from it until it is time to go to WorldCon.

Well, you can see I didn’t meet my New Years posting goal. There are two big reasons for it.

The first, and probably biggest, is that it is hard to speak when nobody is listening because it is hard to know if what you are saying is worth it without feedback. I have a lot of insecurities/worries about not being good or worthwhile enough and that quickly turns into wondering why I bother, which turns into not bothering.

The second is that my tip jar has my legal name on it. Having my legal name where people can see it is so very dysmorphic, but at the same time I need the tip jar because if I’m going to be providing content, my broke ass needs a way to allow people who like it to pay me for it.

I’m back because I had a great WisCon. I talked to a lot of people I tend to feel are too cool for me and it turns out that such a thing is probably all in my head. I’m even Facebook friends with some of them now.

I’m going to look into more ways of getting eyes on this blog and that should help the first one. Hopefully after this year’s WorldCon I can get my name changed and fix the second one. But there is going to be a lot of sucking it up and a lot of pretending that I think I am good enough.

Unlike some, my new year’s goals are not set for the new calendar year but rather the anniversary of my birth. Since my birthday is this Sunday, it is time for me to gather my goals.

1) Post to my blog once a week
2) Control my diabetes enough that I can stop taking Januvia and then get it back down to non-diabetic numbers again.
3) Spend 5 minutes every day exercising in one of the following manners: treadmill, weight lifting in in-between moments, awkward dance parties, wii fit
4) Reduce soda intake to 1, with a +1 allowance for stressful days and a Fuck It allowance for eating out.
5) Get one of those Rode ID medical tags for my fitbit
6) Color more
7) Write more

So they aren’t the most fun goals, but they are designed to be very achievable and produce welcome results.

I’ve never thought my writing to have any merit.

I’ve been told that it is graceful.
I find that doubtful.

I’ve been told that it is a mixture of printing and cursive.
I find that plausible.

When I look at it, all I see is a man whose hands shake.

A man who rushes rushes rushes with neither goal nor dream.

When I look at my writing I find a man who cannot choose, whose style whirls and teeters without the slightest hope of balance.

Maybe some day I will see a man who feels no need to choose, who glories in his momentum- moving for the glory and the pleasure of it.

Yet even then my hands will still shake.

I don’t understand how people do New Years resolutions. Not because of commitment or follow through.

I’m just so tired after the holidays. I spent all my hustle and then some on making a Merry Christmas.

And it being winter doesn’t help.  All winter does is make me want to hibernate, and make me grumpy that I cannot.

So when do I make my decisions on my goals for the new year? Spring, mostly. Sometimes I do it on my birthday (since we are already counting my years that way), but thematically Easter works better. All the new life, the rebirth.

My New Year’s resolution is to spend my winter dreaming, and my spring blooming.