The Blog
A place for sporadic dumping of thoughts
or things that come to me in my dreams
A place for sporadic dumping of thoughts
or things that come to me in my dreams
I feel weird and uncomfortable and I have nobody to openly talk to, so I'll do it here.
I don't post a lot of my face online and recently I did it on facebook for my birthday. One of my sister's colleagues saw it and asked my sister if I would be interested in meeting her brother-in-law. As soon as my sister told me about it, I felt so unbelievably uncomfortable and refused immediately. I am happy single, I do not want anybody, I don't think I'll ever get married, tbh. My sister was ok with it, but it also felt like she thought I was overreacting, which made me sad. Plus, this guy is 37 and his sister-in-law is scouting for dates for him? Whuh?
I never had a boyfriend and I was never in love. I doubt it will ever happen at this point, I'm 110% sure I'm on the aroace spectrum, and I don't really want it to happen either. I am happy as I am now. I have my family, my art, my stories. I am more than happy being my niece's fun single auntie, and I do like the idea of becoming the chic, fun, unmarried old lady. Adding a new person to my life would disrupt so much of my peace and comfort, all the the things I've built around me, and I don't want that. If I were to get married I would have to move all my books and trinkets and things into another house. It sounds silly, but it's a genuine thing I don't want to do. Unless he can make my life better than it is, which is a high bar to surpass, I don't want him.
So many things I've heard from people who are dating and married turned me off from ever wanting anything of the sort. The peace of being single is truly something you should never give up easily. And my own family encouraged it too! Don't get married unless you're 100% sure. If a guy makes you unhappy, dump him. And then they turn around and ask when I'll get married, when I'll settle down too. Paradoxes, all of them. Ugh.
It makes me really uncomfortable when people try to set me up with others, when they push on me to show interest in other people and "give them a try" even though I do not want to at all. There is a whole story from my teens I don't really want to talk about, which is definitely where a lot of trauma comes from regarding being forced to go along wiht plans other people made for me without actually asking me. I want to do what I want, when I want. Not just to be nice or to give someone pity. That's shit is so embarrassing. It also really bothers me how people seem to think nothing else matters other than romantic relationships, whether or not you are coupled up and married. Your accomplishments, your art, your work, your family and friends - none of those matter compared to whether or not you're married yet or have popped out kids.
I guess it also upset me that my sister of all people did this too. There was nothing malicious in her telling me her coworker's inquiry, but I guess I always viewed my sister as on my side. I could always be the weirdo younger sister around her, be myself. I never told her my feelings about not wanting to get married maybe ever, because I do kinda want to if I meet the right person at some nebulous time in the future, and I already know the platitutes I would receive if I told her or anybody else: oh, you will be so lonely, you need to open up more, you need to stop being so stiff. I don't feel like hearing all that, so I just don't.
I don't know, man. This whole blog update is about me feeling icky because my sister told me another lady suggested I meet her brother-in-law (both people I never met in my life), and how it momentarily brought up some trauma from my teens I want to forget already. It feels stupid and embarrassing to even feel affected by such a small thing, but here I am typing it out, hoping it will stop my dumb body from being tense and upset at my sister whom I love and I know would never purposefully hurt me. I kinda don't even want to post it anymore, but fuck it. Yolo.
I just ordered some books for myself that should arrive next week, after my birthday!
One of the things I do at work, especially when I have to be at the office, is browse online second-hand stores. I remember seeing areel a long time ago saying that people with bad jobs tend to develop shopping addictions because they need the dopamine of buying themselves something nice after so much bs at work, or something along those lines. My sister and I can confirm it is true. I know spending money whenever you are annoyed, upset, bored, disillusioned, etc is not a good idea, but money is the reason I work at all so it's in my right to spend it on whatever I want.
I also buy second hand things more often than not, so I'm giving beautiful things a new home while I'm at it. I really, really like old books, especially these old magazines I discovered. The world of publishing in lit mags and chapbooks doesn't seem to have changed that much! In the past it was more cute, because they have all these hand-painted covers, and I imagine people were sending manuscripts through the mail, not emails like now. It also makes me excited when I recognise authors that get published multiple times in these small(er) presses. It also kinda makes me sad when I can't find anything about them online. They were just some average people like me who loved fiction, wrote stories and published them while probably doing something else, "having a real job". The science fiction magazine CPSF that I found went on for 500+ issues, but I can't find more information about it other than the very basic things, like when it was published, who bought who, that there was some communist propaganda in it, obviously. It says it was extremely popular during its run in the 1950s-1970s, and I am discovering it so late, after it's all done.
I am, admitedly, not taking part in the publishing scene in Romania, and I've seen things only from the sidelines. I prefer to write in English, but I can't really say I have a huge reason for it. It's just easier. I've always written in English. Writing in Romania comes with the pressure of correct grammar and spelling and expressing myself in ways that make sense. It would be embarrassing to write badly in my native language. In English I can take more artistic liberties and fuck around. Maybe it's the opposite for other people, idk. I found a Romanian lit mag on instagram at one point, but it was the most pretentious thing ever and it bored me quickly.
I wonder if the stuff I publish in online journals will be found someday in the future by someone scrolling through forgotten archives? Or if someboyd will start collecting them the way I am, hehe. I remember seeing a tumblr post about a college class combing through newspapers and magazines in the Victorian era looking for early examples of detective stories and horror stories. There's probably going to be an internet equivalent as well, even though finding stuff that has been deleted from the internet is getting harder and harder. "What you post online stays there forever" then why can't I find it anymore?? Not even the internet archive has them, and if it does, all the links are broken.
Another reason I like old books is because of their physicality. I can hold them in my hands and read, they were printed long before AI and all that other bullshit. I don't like reading off of a screen or listening to audio books, I like to feel it in front of me. And there's an earnestness in stories published by unknown people submitting to smaller lit mags that I don't see in more famous, polished, commercial publishing. I guess that's why I like neocities too, it's real people making real art, flawed and awkward as it may be. I know every era has its bad books and garbage literature, but the modern era is so bad in so many ways, I'm just eternally bitter with a lot of it. Just the other day I saw a post about a book I have been thinking of reading, "Shy Girl", is allegedly AI slop. Sigh.
I want to go back to writing standalone short stories more and submitting them to lit mags, but between work and reading and my ocs, I barely have the energy for anything, and only two of those are worth the fatigue. I don't really have inspiration either, but hopefully it will come again.
God, I'm so sick of being in-person at the office. When I get home at 5 pm I'm too tired to do anything, I can't draw or write properly for almost two whole weeks out of the month. I can feel myself degrading mentally as the working from the office period goes by, I become such a misanthrope because of my coworkers. I can't wait to go back to working remotely and not be around anybody for hours.
My coworkers are just so very insufferable. Especially this one lady who sits in the cubicle behind me. She is constantly talking and talking and talking, she is exhausting to listen to. Even when I don't want to listen to her, she is so fucking loud. And she is constantly calling people over because she is constantly stressed out and panicking over shit that won't matter in a week. It took me so long to finish writing this because people kep walking behind me because of her. She stresses so much over everything and then wonders why she has health problems.
Oh! And speaking of AI earlier, she is one of those people obsessed with AI too. She can't do anything without asking copilot or chatgpt, I swear to God. And she believes in those conspiracy theories that there will be an evil AI in the future that will take over the world. If I told her about Roko's Basilisk she would probably lose her mind, lmao.
I try to make friends at work and be nice and social, but I just don't like any of these people. None of the things they talk about interest me. I can't go on vacation in a foreign country twice a year, I can't buy the most expensive skin care, I don't care about kpop or Zara clothes. And they're so mean-spirited and clique-y. I don't trust them with how I really feel abut things or my interests. And it's exhausting to put on a smile and pretend to be interested. When working remote I don't have to face them and fix my face constantly. Ugh. I can't wait to go back home.
This blog post got derailed, huh? Sorry if there's typos, I'm typing fast and like I said, annoying people keep walking by my laptop and I'd rather they don't see me bitch about them, so I have to keep minimising the tab. Lord, if I didn't need money to survive, they would never see me again.
I don't have that much to talk about or update to my site, but I also don't want to work right now, so I will procrastinate for as long as I am able to get away with.
Today at work I'm wearing a necklace I made myself out of clay! I'm really proud how it turned out and I wanted to post it in my art section, but then I realised I never actually took a photo of it after I finished it, with a nice white background and all. I only have the photo today with my outfit, which I love, but I also want a plainer display photo. I'll do it at home and then post it tomorrow, I guess. But I'm still very happy with how it turned out, I am definitely going to make myself for clay jewellry. For a while I wanted to make little beetle figurines, but I never got around to it since work starte again properly. I miss the winter vacation, having all the time in the world for myself...
The coughing has been going away, I'm not as bad as I used to be. In December when I had the diabolical flu, it was the first time I got seriously sick in, I think, almost 5 years. It was hell on earth, and I thought it was over, but then it started again now. I blame work and being outside during this freezing cold temperatures. There's a choir of coughing and sneezing people all around me at the office too. I can't wait to work from home again. I just don't enjoy being in the office, I can't lay down if my back gives out and there is no break from other people. When I get home I have to be completely alone for a few hours, or else I start feeling like I'm losing it. More often than not I end up staying up late for longer than I should just so I can be alone without anyone trying to talk to me.
My birthday is also Monday next week! I haven't gotten the existential crisis over it yet, but we'll see as the date gets closer. I don't really want anything fancy, just to stay at home and eat good with my niece coming over. I really, REALLY don't want to go outside anymore. Not until it's warmer. I've been thinking of splurging on vinted again, lol, for my book collection or maybe a cute little trinket.
Oh, I really gotta get around to taking photos of my collections and making pages for them on here. I want one for my cherished teddies collection, and another for my CPSF books. It's gonna be so cool. I should order more of the books for my birthday actually. Fuck it up. I saw a whole mini-series on a site called targul cartii (I don't feel like looking up diacritice unicodes rn), that's like 6 books about 5 lei each. That's do-able, one haul, I think. I do try to restrain myself so I don't spend money like crazy every month, but I do allow myself one big spending spree to cheer myself up. I technically already did it this month, but my birthday is coming up! I do what I want! Shut up!
I think the best way to go about this blog is to keep it open and write as ideas hit me throughout the day, then hit save when I'm done.
And I'm done.
I go back to work in-office for one day and I start coughing again, faaaaaaaaawk.
I won't reveal where I work, just that it's an office job at a multinational company and I spend most of my time sending emails and listening to French people's nonsense. A lot of my job feels extremely redundant and pointless, ngl. Maybe it's because of how my brain is wired. It's not like drawing or crafting or writing, where I can hold it in my hands, in front of my eyes and think "I made this!", and feel a deep pride. I just click click clack, type out an email and send it, never to hear from it again. I don't see the results of what I've done, except for maybe some names in passing. I don't mind it that much, the repetitiveness and predictability work for me, and I definitely don't except fulfillment from my job, lol. It's just a job, I only do it to support me and my parents.
Here comes the bitching part. The way some of my coworkers, especially my higher-ups, act about work is like they genuinely expect they will receive a prize or something. They think they will erect statues in their honour in front of the company building. My team coordinator especially, she's such a workaholic it's concercing. Again I won't reveal details because I don't want to air out another person's struggles, just that she's going through a lot in her personal life right now, yet all she does is work and get on our asses about work like WOMAN. This is just a job! You have more important things to worry about!
And it's all so hypocritical too. She's always yapping about giving 100%, not having too much idle time while at work, "justifying why we are paid for 8 hours a day" (oh my fucking God, she pissed me off so much with that phrase), yet I can turn my head around 50 degrees and see her online shopping more often than not, looking for vacation deals, taking free time any chance she can. So many times, especially in November and December last year, I was left basically alone to deal with everything because I was the only one available to do backup for everybody, but "oooh don't forget to use your PTO, you're not allowed to take more than 5 days into the next year!" And the reason I had so much leftover PTO was again because of her! "You can't take free time during this month, we have this project to finish" or "You have to do backup for someone else that isn't even part of your job description, but the company won't hire a second person, so we will jsut train someone already here" or "Oh no I have last-minute problems again, can you do backup?" Uuuuuuuuuuugh
I agree that you have to help the people around you, but I know for a fact they would not do the same for me. So many times while I was in vacation I would come back to tasks they were supposed to back me up for left undone because "oh, it's best she does them herself when she returns". But if I were to do the same, I would get my ass beat. My coordinator starts fuming like a train if a task is felt undone for more than a day, but I see her emails are unread for days at a time while she does fuckall. In December I was dabolically sick, but I still had to work because I was the only one left avaiable and instead of any sort of encouragement, the main manager said to be careful not to let anything run late, "we all depend on you rn." I fucking hate them. Fake-ass mean girls who take your entire arm if you offer them a single finger.
The higher higher-ups are no better either. They make me wonder how the fuck is this company still running. I swear, they are ALLERGIC to talking to each-other, the communication is garbage from a landfill. It always ends up with us having to do other people's job of spreading information, and instead of demanding answers from the people who set it all up, they jump down our throats first. I swear they use us as meat shields. There is one manager in France, let's call her Shmorinne, who has good ideas, I won't deny it, but the execution is always, ALWAYS, such a mess! She only cares about France, fuck the Romanian branches I guess, and she is always like "hurry, hurry, implement, from tomorrow onward everybody does this", and then for months afterwards it's "actually, here's an update, here's another update, oops we should have thought of that, here's another update". All of our procedures are such a hodgepodge mess now.
If you think corporate jobs are easy or well-organized or professional, you've been lied to. They're fucking lawless messes where everybody insists on putting on this mask of pristine professionalism, meanwhile the office is freezing cold full of flu germs in the air, and the food at the canteen is inedible most days. If I didn't need the money I'd quit this shithole so fast. Ideally, I'd never work at all. I don't want to let it affect me or my mental health, that's why I try to view it as only a money source, but everybody is so freaking annoying. Good God. Just let me do my job with clear guidelines. I will happily send the same email everyday for 50 years, just don't be an asshole to me and take advantage of me having to be polite to you or else.
Man, I hope nobody walks past my monitor and sees me as I am typing this, lmao
You ever randomly remember something you used to be obsessed with when you were younger? That's how I'm feeling right now. It's 8 am and I'm supposed to be working at my corporate job, but my brain is suddenly thinking about Kuroshitsuji.
I used to love it as a preteen/young teen, then hated it and the weird ass fandom in my late teens. As an adult woman, looking back, it was really freaking weird. I think my perception on it can be described like this:
What I used to think Kuroshitsuji was: dark dramatic mystery with comedic elements
What I think Kuroshitsuji is now: dark comedy with dramatic mystery elements
The manga (I was a manga reader) was just so freaking strange! The more I remember things about it, plot points and scenes, the more I think "did that really happen??", so I look it and, to my horror, it did happen. It felt like an abstract project at times. Not just that, it would get so absurd I just know the author was trying to see what she can get away with, which I can respect. She also capitalised on young fujoshis who didn't fully comprehend how iffy it was, and on old fujoshis who didn't give a fuck. I'm still a fujo, but I have standards now. I like my men old.
If I remember correctly, I stopped keeping up around the time of the Brother Reveal(tm). I don't know, it felt like such a final scene, like the world-shattering reveal at the very end. And then there was that huge hiatus that made me kind of forget about Black Butler for a few years. I felt the same way about The Ancient Magus Bride, after they defeat that guy and Chise starts going to magic college. Like that guy (whose name I forgot) going to sleep and Chise coming to terms with her painful past, again, felt so final. What else could they possibly talk about afterwards?
As I write this, it got me thinking about my own story Garofița. I want there to be this really big and world-shattering moment, but the story continues on for a while after it and now I'm wondering if I'll commit the same personal problem I'm talking about here. I'll try not to!
Another thing from my childhood I got reminded of this morning was FNAF. I'm listening to a new episode of Creepcast and Hunter said he doesn't know virtually anything about FNAF, and that he played the first game for the first time. It kind of shocked me how different people's knowledge of media can be, like how can you not know what FNAF is? Have you not been chronically online for the past 10 years?? It's how I felt when I played neopets at 11 years old and none of the Romanian kids I hung out with had any idea what I was talking about. Like do y'all not surf the web?? Lmao
I was unsure whether to make a blog section on my site, mostly because, knowing myself, I would either lose interest after a while or straight-up forget about updating it. I also didn't want to give myself a strict schedule to update it because schedules suck out all the joy in what I do creatively, and this is what this site is all about. I think the best option for me is to update it sporadically, whenever inspiration hits me.
I also think I'm going to make it very stream of consciousness. Just blurt out whatever is on my mind at the time of writing. I was thinking over the last few days what I was going to mention, things I was doing that could be worthy of being mentioned, so here it goes:
I'm really happy with the latest chapter of Garofița! It is the beginning of a new arc I have been cooking in my brain for a while. The characters of Garofița and Aurora have been cooking in my brain for years, they are just the latest iteration of ocs I always kind of carried with me. I feel really smart for what I came up with Aurora's backstory and I can't wait to drip-feed it in the story. The girls are narrative foils for each-other, each being a representation of how their lives could have gone differently. Alternative universe versions of each-other, even. I love my daughters, sprouting out of my head like Athenas.
I have also been reading "Thirteen Storeys" by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute London. That podcast will never leave me, and for a good reason. I have wanted this book ever since it first came out, I wanted it sooo badly, but I was in school and didn't know how to find it in local markets or how to buy online from the UK. But my lovely beautiful spectacular show-stopping obsession-supporting sister got it for me, for Christmas!
It is everything I wanted and more. It is so freaking good, y'all. I love love love the way Sims writes, the tension and the fake-outs, where you think the person escaped the horror only to get dragged right back in. I am reading and covering half the page to not accidentaly spoil myself, because it will be pretty tame, a little odd but tame, and then it goes full insanity, 1000 miles an hour within a second.
aaaaaaaaaaa I love it
I really want to be able to read like that, to catch attention and make hearts skip a beat with sentences alone.
So yeah this is my first blog post,
let's see how long I'll keep it up!