out in daylight, my potential

All my grades are in, finally, with four As and a B. That B is in the required freshman orientation class that I could not give less of a shit about, and I scraped by with an A in my worst class (Spanish), so I am counting this semester as a big victory overall.

Now I just have to relearn math and test into college algebra by the next semester. I took a practice test today, and I did have to look a lot of shit up just to remember what the fuck I was doing, but I didn't do... too badly. It's just been ten years since I did any math at all, so there was a lot of "okay, so I'm just going to try some things and see what happens. Do I add something here? Do I multiply? How do long division anyway?"

I worked it out eventually. I might not be as bad at this as I thought I was. I still need to take a few more practice tests to hammer it home before I feel comfortable actually scheduling the test.

( More fussing about school, possibly only interesting to me )

*

We took Trinket to the dog park today, because he finally has all his shots and is safe to meet other dogs now. I think he was kind of overwhelmed by the number of dogs there, and he got bowled over a few times and did not like that at all - at one point he ducked a lab mix only to get slammed by this tiny pudgy French Bulldog not much older than him, and just laid there with his paws in the air looking confused until four people converged on him to reassure him.

But he seems to have enjoyed himself despite all that, and he is very polite with other dogs. Much more so than his terrible sisters are, in fact. He also managed to thoroughly exhaust himself, which is not an easy thing to do.

(There was an actual adult Pyrenees at the park, too. They're... surprisingly common around here, along with Anatolians. It was such a giant fluffy cloud. Trinket will never be that floof, but... maybe that big, and it's kind of terrifying to imagine. ONE DAY. MY VERY OWN GIANT BEAR DOG.)

Trinket knocked a thing down, scared himself with the noise, and in the space of 2.5 seconds climbed up my chest and onto my shoulder like a cat. And then clung there, koala-like, until I managed to coax him down.

He weighs 50 lbs now. He will probably eventually weigh twice that. I... I kind of have to just resign myself to being crushed to death by this enormous furry idiot, huh?

Started a fight about Neanderthals with my professor in the middle of our class' review for the final. It's the last time I will be in her class and I am DONE, she's wrong and I'm going to make sure everyone knows it.

(She knows it and immediately started backpedaling too. Bitch I know what you said and I'll pull up your own PowerPoint to prove it.)

IT'S TIME!!!

( Dog picture under the cut )

Somehow in uploading icons, my default got changed to this horribly offended Pearl, and that is so hilariously appropriate to my mood the last week or so that I'm just going to keep it for now.

EDIT: And then I restructured my entire journal layout around it. Because aesthetic.

I really need to find something to do today that's not just being sad and repeatedly refreshing tumblr in the hopes it will distract me. It won't. Tumblr cannot save me.

I keep trying to kick myself into poking at writing things but I don't even know where to start right now. Even just messing with my bullet journal doesn't seem worth the energy. Every time I try to put on something for background noise, I get annoyed with it after a minute or two.

What the fuck do I do with myself when it feels like the world is quietly ending? I've got nothing.

D&D Adventurer's League is tonight, and I keep getting excited because I miss my rogue and haven't played her in like a month... and then I remember. Tonight is only 1-4 tables. She is level 5 now.

My level 2 baby cleric is fun too, and since clerics are super rare in our store for some reason, she's really useful, but... I miss rogueing.

( And now, a story of the best thing that rogue has done to date )

So April was a mess thanks to a combination of still not being over that shitty thing my best friend did to me, my meds suddenly dropping off in effectiveness, and actually running out of meds for a while before I could see the doctor for a refill. It was not good, but my meds are back at a higher dosage, I'm slowly feeling better, and we will not speak of this April again.

I'm kind of... staring at everything I abandoned for a month, trying to figure out how to get a handle on any of it again. I don't even know what I want to deal with rn. Outlining? Worldbuilding? Screwing around with short ficlets untiL I remember how to put words together? Goal-setting is hard and I don't have energy for it, but I kind of... need to... anyway.

(I do need to find my inner Hamilton again and write another letter by the 20th, but that will only take a day, so I have some time to get around to that. Other than that... ehhhh. I don't know.)

Hrrrm. Idk if I'm going to manage Camp NaNo this round after all. My sleep schedule's been fucked up and that has ruined every schedule that exists (because I have OCD, and the exact times matter and if I can't do things at that exact time nothing is getting done), so... not a lot of writing got done this month.

I was on schedule for, like, one glorious week, though, and in that time managed to get down an outline for this book. I need to tweak it and expand on it, but it is definitely story-shaped and not terrible! It's actually starting to look like it's going to be really fun to write, when I get there. So maybe the Camp NaNo after this one...


Only tangentially related to writing, but I came to a realization this week that kind of... broke through some of the learned helplessness about my life. And suddenly I have a plan for shit and, like, some hope that things will get better than they are, and it is strange but a really nice change.

I really need to Hamilton the shit out of a thing at some point today, and I am stalling on starting because I don't totally know what I'm doing and I'm very concerned I'm going to fuck it up... buuut I'll get over that once I've had a little more coffee. Despite the schedule fuckery, I am feeling a lot more on top of my shit than I have in a long long time.

Maybe some day I will stop giving basically every protagonist ever some variety of crippling anxiety. ...but it's definitely not going to happen on this story.

Plus, you know, I don't think I have a single friend who's not mentally ill in one way or another, so whatever. So what if all my characters reflect that? Like with queer characters, at a certain point I just... yeah, straight people exist in the world. So do neurotypical people. And someone else can go write stories about them, because I don't care.

(This post brought to you by a lot of second-guessing myself, because wow, Birdie, that is the third main character in a row with anxiety maybe reel it in a little there. BUT NOPE I REFUSE.)