Was I saying reality is my escapism? 

Took this quiz from a comic artist I follow on Instagram:  

https://uquiz.com/quiz/dGkWX5?p=527033

Your Result:

Elaine Miller

You're laid back, with a protective streak for those you care about (which is, though you'll never admit it, almost everyone). You're practically the founder of the stupidcore aesthetic. Despite the fact that you talk with your mouth full and operate on a philosophy of kick-first-ask-questions-later, you're a great person to hang out with. And you have tons of potential -- just clean up all the water bottles from around your bed. What you also have, though, is an unimaginable amount of repressed yearning. Your inability to take yourself seriously may just make it harder to cope when all of those feelings clothesline you one day.

Sparked a few thoughts.  Repressed yearning? Me? As in, there's yearning I want to do but I refuse to allow myself, or that I am feeling the yearning and repressing it? Probably the latter. The former doesn't make much sense and why would anyone think that.

I don't know what a stupidcore aesthetic is. Also I don't keep a water bottle by my bed. I used to, but now I just go to bed extremely hydrated, then grab a drink when I have to get up to use the bathroom.

Also, I happen to take myself very seriously. I suppose I also believe I take myself far too seriously and try to keep that in mind, but I don't believe these things are at odds. Not most of the time anyway. I consider myself a recovering Romanticist, in that I like the ideas but they're still just ideas. These things have "-ism" tacked on to the end of them for a reason. 

Sometimes I feel like things can't go on this way. Mostly when my knee aches. I've been lifting weights and exercising, but I think it's time to admit that I have to somewhat maybe consider putting some thought into my food intake. Instead of eating all things indiscriminately. Time is the issue. I want more time in a day to do the things I tell myself I would do if I had the free time. Will I do them is of course another question but I'd at least like the option.

The problem with abandoning madness is that it's quite useful. All my brain training doesn't mean I don't feel as impulsive as ever. The training serves as an interrupt when those impulses occur. The challenge becomes not using this technique on everything, including what I want to do. If a person were dieting, for example. Suppose a person had the ability to turn hunger off completely. Hardly an ideal solution, because if they got too caught up in other things they might suddenly pass out or something. 

What if I'm not myself unless I'm following my impulses? Without them I'd just settle into this common denominator of personhood. Grr. It's not a bad thing; but it rather bores me. 

I'll think a little more on it. No need to be hasty. 

There are pleasant breezes stirring the silt.

Time to eat some pecans. Delicious!

I've been enjoying that the news is relatively boring lately. Just the usual plague stuff, with the added flavor of Reddit taking on Wall Street. Pretty dang entertaining. 

I slept pretty well last night. At some point, the pups climbed into bed, and I noticed, but they didn't disturb me after that. 

Spoiled pups.

My friends were playing Jackbox on Discord last night. I was still walking and did not join. I do miss playing Quiplash 2. 

Even though I'm much less interested in getting tattoos than I was in my twenties, I still feel a temptation for the "runes" from Bloodborne, the video game. Specifically, the one that symbolizes the hunter character. Looks like this:

In the game, there a bunch of these runes. It's the style and atmosphere of the game that I enjoy so much. After all the horror and cosmic horror I've consumed, it was in this game that I felt a real connection to the material. Because what a game can do is make you feel the emotional journey, in miniature, of being constantly beaten down by a world you don't really understand. The game says "Hey, go do this thing. You don't need to know why. You can try to understand why, but it won't really matter or even change anything. There's only a few outcomes, some worse than others, but none of them are good." And then I say, as the player, "Hold my blood vial" and put myself through it anyway. 

All things are but pasteboard masks, and in that striving, I see the living thing straining underneath. That is what I strike.To paraphrase Ahab.

Unlikely I will get another tattoo. I'd rather prefer not to have any tattoos at this point, although I don't mind them exactly. I see them as things I like, and they're fine. Then again, that was my initial approach; to get tattoos of things I like but aren't so meaningful that they need to stand up under the weight of some grand idea of myself.

Not sure where I would place it. I've got kind of a symmetry going with my current placement. Left shoulder, right shoulder, chest. Hmm...maybe on the right leg. In the game, there's a superstition that beasthood creeps up the right leg. Maybe on my quadriceps, where the player characters inject their blood vials. My other tattoo approach was to not get them where they can be seen in my usual clothing. Again, I feel like a tattoo is equivalent to a person saying a thing over and over. Which is why actual sentences bother me so much. They just say that one thing every time. It's like "Here, I'll tell you exactly what to think." 

Historians must have a interesting time. Or, they will. The sheer volume of recorded information generated in a person's life must still boggle their minds every now and then. Oh, I'm sure they still face all the usual challenges of obtaining the data, but to imagine it. These people carried a device, you see, that tracked their every movement. It also tracked what they were reading, who they were talking to, what they were saying...everything.

Plus, since every society that ever existed has collapsed, they will have an amazing level of insight into what exactly happens right up to that point. 

The greatest predictor: memes.

The new bed we purchased arrived yesterday. Kelly and I broke down our existing bed and set to work assembling the new one. Halfway through, we found that it was missing a bag of hardware. So we slept on a mattress on the floor last night. It wasn't bad; I feel pretty rested today. The dogs were happy about too because they could just walk right on to the bed. Getting out of bed was confusing as in my groggy state I tried to step down and found the floor immediately. 

It may be a few days before the replacement hardware arrives. I'm sure I'll learn.

My puppies love playing in the rain, and thus, they love getting muddy. And they share the love, by bringing the mud into the house for all to enjoy.

Other than the higher-than-usual mud content, the weekend was pleasant. I arose earlier in the morning and finally hung up that curtain rod that had been sitting under my bed for nigh on two years. Looks good too. 

Fascinating stuff, this drywall. I imagine that living in a home of brick or stone like in ye olden days would have made a simple thing like this require a Freemason and perhaps a chicken or goat sacrifice. 

There's other shelving I want to put up in the game/workout room, but I don't want to pay for it just yet. And I don't want to brave the Ikea gauntlet to obtain it. Because of illness.

Which is okay. If it were vital, I would do it. The curtain rod, for example, was just a better-looking version of an already functional hanging. Now if it was falling down, swinging crazily and whacking me in the face, I'd probably have replaced it within a week or so.

I wonder about that Memory Palace technique of recalling information. Surely there is a limit. What if it works too well, and whole sections of life experiences are walled off from each other? That version of you still locked up somewhere reliving everything the same way. Only to be summoned and gawked at on occasion by the person you would have become, if you'd let yourself. 

Note to self: dismantle Memory Palace.