When The Songs Make Sense

I was reminded recently of a quote from a show I used to love. The two main characters were talking about Love and how it can be hard to tell you're actually in love and there was a statement that was particularly insightful. "All the songs make sense."  Just that simple and it could feel like a throwaway statement or a flippant response, but it's true. When you're in love all of those songs about Love finally make sense. The same can be said for when you're going through a breakup, all of those songs about heartbreak that you hated or didn't understand suddenly make sense too.

When I was a kid my mom had this album we loved to listen to, Sam I Am by Sam Harris, and there was one song on it that I just couldn't stand when it came on. It was slow and sad and didn't make any sense to me back then. I mean, it was an absolutely beautiful song but as far as I was concerned it was gibberish. It was all this flowery language about sinking ships and storms and love being stronger than the sea and I just couldn't figure it out. Was it supposed to be about sailors or pirates or something like that? 

I hadn't thought about that song in years and it suddenly popped into my head today. It was exactly the song I needed for what is going on in my life, and I finally understood it. I have mixed feelings about the fact that I understand it now. On one hand, I get it! I can finally truly appreciate the song and what the artist was trying to express. On the other hand, I understand what the artist was trying to express. The singer is desperately trying to help someone they love who has spent far too much of their life being molded by their depression. They're trying desperately to give that person the love that they believe they deserve and yet are fearful that they are too late for that person to be able to accept and reciprocate. It's heartbreaking and beautiful and a feeling no one should have to go through.

Right now, I feel like I'm in the position of both the singer and the person they are trying to reach. I've spent so long letting my depression and anxiety tell me that I'm nothing and no one that it's hard for me to challenge those thoughts, even when someone else is trying to get through to me. But, I also have been the person trying to get through to someone who has been trapped in that same cycle. Whichever side of that situation you're on, it's horrible. But sometimes, you need to embrace that kind of hurt. 

I wish that I didn't understand this song, the emotions it takes to understand it are ones I would never wish on anyone. But, even in the depths of the sorrow it expresses, there is still a glimmer of hope. And that's the part that I'm so glad I understand.

Finally One Of The Cool Kids

Growing up I always wanted to be one of "The Cool Kids". You know the ones I mean; the ones who always seemed to be the most confident, have the most friends, wore the trendiest clothes. But I most definitely wasn't. I was awkward, nerdy, self-conscious, and a loner. I was never on trend, nor was I a trendsetter. I was the girl who read books on the playground while everyone else ran around with their friends. I mostly kept to myself until I found a group of friends in marching band during high school, other people who were misfits most other places and who embraced the weirdness. But even in that group I felt more like a hanger-on than a real integral part of the group.

College was a little better. College is a very different world from primary education; the hours are irregular and so are most of the students and professors. There was room to be eccentric. It was a melting pot of different interests and focuses and backgrounds. Most folks were too focused on their own journey to really care what anyone else was doing unless it affected them. If you wanted to wear cat ears to class, you did it. Wander around campus in cloaks at odd hours? Sure! Have a niche interest? There's probably a club ready to welcome you. I found more people like me with strange interests and habits and for the first time in my life was a social creature. But I still felt like I was on the edge of everything, like I was a second thought when people were invited to things.

When I got sick it was like I got reset to square one again. The friends I'd made in high school had mostly moved away or on with their lives, my college friends were all hours away. I was isolated again. I played World of Warcraft for a while, joined some guilds but never really felt like I was part of any of those groups. I got friendly with people at work once I was doing better physically, we'd hang out for a while and eventually not at all either because we didn't have the time or my health (physical and mental) kept me from doing things. I never really felt like I was part of any gathering I was at and would most often be found at the edge of the crowd peoplewatching, looking for that magical window of opportunity to open up and allow me to be one of "The Cool Kids".

Now, I know that a lot of these feelings are part of my depression and anxiety. I didn't know that when I was younger and knowing it now doesn't doesn't change the fact that those feelings exist. It's hard to fight that negative voice in the back of your head that constantly whispers "You're not good enough", "They just include you because they pity you", "You'll never be good enough". I've been doing a lot of work in recent years to make that little voice quieter, or failing that to shout over it with more positive thoughts. But, it's hard work and it's so easy to feel like you're failing each time you notice that voice creeping up on you.

In my last post I wrote about how I'm doing GTA RP on the TSRP server now and the adventures I'm having as Cupcake in Los Santos. Part of that adventure is that I stream while I'm playing, meaning that I'm putting myself out in the world in a way that a younger me never would have dreamed of. I'm sooo new to streaming that sometimes I feel like a poser amongst some of the other streamers who have years of experience doing this. As always, I felt like an outsider pushing their way in to something bigger and better than they should be involved with. But, something changed.

It wasn't long before I noticed that people knew me (Cupcake) and happily greeted me in any group I seemed to wander into. I found a few close friends in my first days on the server and on a whim one day we held an impromptu party at a lighthouse on the coast. I never expected the response we got! There had to be 20 people at that party at the height of it including some of the most popular folks in the city and some of the big streamers! People are still talking about that party weeks later. We made a name for ourselves, Glowhouse, with that party. I was shocked to realize, I felt like I was truly welcome for the first time that I could remember.

The server has a discord for the fans of TSRP and one of the channels is for fan art. I've been watching as all these different characters have received artwork depicting memorable moments or portraits. There's even people making art to be used in the server. That voice in the back of my head said, "You might belong on the server, but you're not one of The Cool Kids. You'll never be one of The Cool Kids." And then one day last week I got a direct message from someone on the fan server. In that message was an attachment, line art based on my channel icon. My first fan art.

I don't think that artist will ever understand exactly what that did for me. Not only did they like my character, they liked me. I inspired someone to create something. I was overwhelmed with so many emotions I could barely process. I was excited, hopeful, shocked, and I don't even know what else. The nasty little whisper in the back of my mind was, blissfully, silent.

The artist said they might color it if they felt inspired to. I swore to myself that if they colored it I would set it as my new channel icon. I told myself that if they colored it this was a sign I was meant to keep doing this, a sign that I was one of "The Cool Kids". I didn't dare message them asking for a colored version, I felt I would be pushing my luck at receiving even the line art and might scare them off.

Two days ago, I got another message from the artist. They'd colored the drawing.

Adventures In Role Playing

I feel a little guilty. I haven't been writing as much lately as I probably should be, but I have been telling stories. Back in May I applied to join a Grand Theft Auto V roleplaying server and I got accepted. I was actually a little surprised because I'm still very new to the Let's Play and Game Streaming communities and had basically never streamed before. But my application was approved and I became a proud citizen of the city of Los Santos. Little did I know what I was getting myself into.

In the city, they know me as Cupcake Garibaldi. I'm a clown.

When I applied I pitched Cupcake as wanting to join the police because her parents (also clowns) were killed in a car accident caused by gang violence. "What's black and white, and read all over? Your Miranda rights! You have the right to remain silent..." I still can't believe that whole idea was accepted. The problem was, once I got into the city there wasn't really any gang crime to fight. Cupcake had to find something else to do.

The server I'm playing on, TSRP, is very new. There's not a lot established within the city yet so finding jobs is both very easy and very difficult. Easy, because there's always some place hiring. Difficult, because everyone needs a job. Sure you can pick up a generic reporter job at the job center, but it doesn't provide you with any direction. You can apply to be a cop but, up until recently, you had to spend the majority of your time on duty. Same with EMS. There's always dancing at the Vanilla Unicorn or bartending, but not everyone wants that kind of job. To make the city truly live you have to find a niche and fill it.

While I was trying to find my niche I encountered one of the more popular groups on the server, the Proud Prospect Boys (more commonly known as the PP Boys). Now there's a few fairly well known streamers on the server and one of them is a core member of the PP Boys which means lots of people want to interact with them to get their moment in the spotlight. I would be lying if I said that I didn't have the same instinct, but I also didn't want to force my way into anything either. So I hung around in areas they tended to and interacted with other random folk in the city and if it made sense for Cupcake to interact with the PP Boys, she did. It was during this "hanging around" time that a storyline evolved with an alien in the city with the PP Boys smack dab in the center of it. Cupcake found herself at the very edge of something big in the city and a lightbulb went on for me.

There are a lot of "unexplained" phenomena that happen in the city, driverless cars (ghost cars), light poles collapsing for no reason, strange behavior on the part of locals, parts of the city seeming to disappear, all of which can be explained out of character as glitches, lag, or strange AI logic. However, in character they are supernatural in nature. And thus the idea of a paranormal investigator came into being. From there it's grown to the point that Cupcake now runs a full blown paranormal investigation team!

Even the simple event of buying a car has lead to Cupcake gaining employment at the car dealership as a member of the security team. These are things that I never would have even considered when I first dreamed up Cupcake. Her backstory and personality have grown so much since that first day on the server in ways I never would have predicted. I love where she has taken me so far and I can't wait to see where we go from here!

If you'd like to join Cupcake on her adventures in Los Santos you can find me on Twitch where I stream Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from about 1:30 PM - 1:30 AM EST, or you can catch the uploads of the VODs on my YouTube channel.

The Chronic Illness Dilemma

I haven't really talked about it as much as I've planned to, but I've been dealing with several long-term health issues for a long time now. On the outside I look like a perfectly healthy 36 year old, but on the inside it's a whole different story. I was diagnosed with Clinical Depression when I was just in 4th grade, then Asthma sometime in high school. In 2008 I was diagnosed with Lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM), a rare lung disorder that almost killed me before it was diagnosed. I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder about 5 years ago (which has been in no way helped by the Covid-19 pandemic) and I've been dealing with Migraines for as long as I can remember. Add a newly found allergy to pollen that lead to me having horrible headaches and dizzy spells where I nearly blacked out and I'm just an overall mess of a human being. But no one who looks at me can see any of that.

I've always taken pride in a job well done, no matter what kind of job it was. Even when I was recovering from almost dying I wanted to work. As a matter of fact, as soon as I stopped looking like one of the living dead I started putting in applications. To my way of thinking, if I can be working I should be working. I can't express the amount of guilt and shame I felt when my anxiety forced me to quit a job in the public and confine myself to my house for over a year. I was incapable of even walking to my mailbox without having a panic attack, and in between attacks I constantly berated myself for being "weak" and not "a productive member of society." (This did nothing to help with the anxiety by the way) I finally was able to get back into the workforce right before the pandemic and was fortunate that the company didn't let me go when my training was interrupted by the lockdown. It's a part-time job, 20 hrs/ week, but fairly important to the company (We were classified as "essential personnel" through the lockdown) I make barely enough to get by, but I'm working.

The problem is, no matter how much I may pretend otherwise, I still have several chronic illnesses and they are going to have an impact on my ability to work. Sometimes I can force myself to work around my issues; a pair of dark sunglasses can sometimes mitigate the effects of a Migraine, an inhaler can make it easier to breathe when the air quality is bad, things like that. However, there are still times where no matter what I do I have to call off work. I hate calling off of work. But if I'm curled up in a ball in the dark wanting to cut my head off even after taking medicine and putting on sunglasses because of a migraine, I can't drive to work let alone do my job (which requires a lot of concentration and fine detail discernment) and I have to call off. If I'm having dizzy spells where I'm partially blacking out, I shouldn't be behind the wheel of a car. If my butt is all but glued to the toilet because of intestinal issues or making offerings to the porcelain god, I shouldn't be working around food. So I call off. 

Every job you will ever work will have a limit on how often you can call off without there being repercussions. That number will vary based on where you work, what your position is, and whether you're full or part-time. When you've reached that number, something will happen and no matter how well you do your job there is always the risk that the "something" will be termination of your employment. When you are living quite literally paycheck-to-paycheck this is a terrifying prospect. You dread having your boss call you into their office for a talk because you never know whether you'll be going back to work afterward or be escorted out of the building because you no longer work there. 

There are certain protections in place for people with disabilities, things like the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for example. But not everyone qualifies for those protections. You have to work a certain number of hours per year to qualify for FMLA, if you work part-time you don't meet that requirement. For the ADA your request has to fall under what is called "reasonable accommodation" and when your issues are multiple and unpredictable there really isn't a "reasonable" way to accommodate them. What is someone, like myself, in this situation supposed to do?

How are those of us with chronic illnesses supposed to provide for ourselves and our families when the system we have to work within is not designed for us? What are we supposed to do when we are too sick to work, but too healthy to be disabled? How long can I hold up against the anxiety of never knowing whether this is the day my illness will get me fired? How much worse will my depression get if I'm forced not to work? 

I honestly love my job. I love being part of a team and making a difference in the company I work for. I hate the limitations my body is placing on me, and they will only get worse over time. I don't want to be judged poorly for how "healthy" I look on the outside while taking care of how ill I actually am on the inside. It's just too much. 

Everyone wants you to "do your best", but judge that by what they consider to be your best. At a certain point, you push your body beyond what is "best" for it and at that point, it is no longer "your best" but doesn't live up to the standard of "best" that others are holding you to. So you push further. "See, you had it in you all along," they praise you as you feel your body fall apart a little more. They won't understand when you can't do something even easier the next day. They can't understand that your body used up its ability to "do" today doing what it did yesterday. You don't want to be a burden so you push yourself again, all the while feeling the toll it's taking your body, your mind. They won't understand why you just want to stay home and sleep on the weekend, why the little things around the house aren't getting done anymore, why you're canceling plans at the last minute. 

The strain of chronic illness is so much more than just what it puts your body through. It's the invisible fight every day against the difference between your limitations and the expectations placed on you. And sometimes, the biggest expectations are the ones you place on yourself.

I don't have any answers. I'm not even sure I know the right questions to ask.

Based On A Weird Dream

     She had promised him she would be there for him when they reviewed his final project and nothing was going to prevent her from keeping that promise. So when the TA wouldn't let her into the auditorium she knew she had to find another way in. He was always so outwardly confident that most people who'd only ever seen him online would never believe how nervous he really was. He was counting on her and she wouldn't let him down.

    Emerging, slightly out of breath, from the stairwell into the unlit second-floor hallway she paused to listen for any sign of other people. No one should be in this part of the building at this hour, but here she was so it was possible someone else was lurking about as well. When the film studies building had been built movies had still been on actual film so every auditorium was equipped with a projection booth designed to house the reels and film projector. The college had long since upgraded to digital projectors that could be hooked up wirelessly so the booths had become more of a storage space than anything and had been forgotten, for the most part. No one would be in there and she would be able to see everything from the window.

    Slipping silently into the projection booth she eased the door shut behind her with a soft click. She'd worked in movie theaters when she was younger and remembered the projectionist warning her that sound in the booth could carry into the auditorium if you weren't careful. Without the giant projector running the booth was cold and dark. She paused in the darkness, her back against the cool metal of the door, and allowed her eyes to adjust. Slowly the darkness resolved into a landscape of greys before her and she picked her way through the accumulated junk. As she neared the auditorium window she could faintly hear his voice drifting up from below as he discussed something with his advisor.

    Knowing he would be expecting her by now she pulled her phone from her pocket to fire off a quick text letting him know what had happened and that she was hiding in the projection booth. After hitting send and returning her phone to her pocket she cursed herself for not thinking to message him before letting her eyes adjust. Even with the brightness turned way down her eyes had readjusted to the light and all she could see now was the dimly lit window into the auditorium. From below she heard his text notification go off followed, after a short pause, by a flashlight beam sweeping across the window, further ruining her night vision. As she blinked away the bright spot in her vision the lights in the auditorium dimmed and the voices from below faded.

    Before she could take a step toward the auditorium window, a scream shattered the silence. Her heart lept into her throat as a second scream, followed by a third and fourth, echoed from the auditorium. Pain and fear badly distorted the voice but she could tell that it was him. This wasn't part of the project, though she'd heard him scream bloody murder for several past ones, there was something raw and far too real about these screams. She lunged forward in the darkness of the booth desperate to look down into the auditorium and caught her foot on something unseen. His screams continued to ring out in the darkness as she stumbled awkwardly to regain her balance.

    Disentangling her foot from what sounded like a snarl of film she found her footing once more in the darkness and moved toward the window. With a rustle almost unheard beneath the ever more anguished screams a loop of film wrapped itself around her wrist and pulled at it spinning her sideways. With a curse, she tried to pull the wrist free only to feel the film pull harder against her. More loops of film appeared from the darkness grasping at her ankles and thighs, tangling themselves around her other wrist, and wrapping around her torso.

    The screams from the auditorium took on a wet, gargling note without any decrease in volume or intensity as she struggled against the coils of film. The mass of celluloid dragged her inexorably back away from the window no matter how hard she fought against it. Coils upon coils of film wound themselves around her body like the cocoon of some deranged celluloid spider. She tried to call out as the film wrapped tighter around her, crushing the breath from her lungs, but was prevented by several loops of film coiled across her mouth. Her muffled screams now a counterpoint to the tortured screams from the auditorium. A duet of horror and pain being wrung from them by unknown forces.

Where Do Ideas Come From?

 Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a big fan of the YouTuber Mark "Markiplier" Fischbach. While most people know him for his various horror Let's Play videos, he is after all known as The King of Five Nights At Freddy's, I really started paying attention to his channel around the time he released his YouTube Original series A Heist With Markiplier. Unlike most series out there Heist takes the form of a Choose Your Own Adventure style story. Each "episode" gives you two choices at the end and your choices decide the course of the story with a total of 31 different possible endings. As a writer, I appreciate the amount of work that it takes to write a story with that much intricacy. I have a hard enough time writing a story with one ending that makes sense, let alone 31. But Heist wasn't his first non-gaming project. Over the years he's made several different creative projects including several one shot sketches, the murder mystery Who Killed Markiplier, and a smaller CYOA type story A Date With Markiplier. The quality and variety of his creative works is amazing and I would love the chance to just sit and talk shop with Mark.

Being relatively new to the fandom, I've been taking the time to go back through the thousands of videos Mark has posted over his time on YouTube starting from the beginning of the channel and working my way up to present day. As of this writing I've made my way from 2012 into 2016, watching as Mark has grown and changed as a creator and I've slowly realized something. Every once in a while I'll be watching a video and something Mark will say about a game, or a silly voice he makes will remind me of something I've seen before; little breadcrumbs through time that upon further inspection all lead me back to one creative project or another of Mark's.

It is the habit of interviewers and fans when speaking with a creator, of any type, to ask them "Where do your ideas come from?" I know it's a question I've wanted to ask many of the creators I look up to. We all seem to be convinced that there's some secret to where these ideas come from. Like there's an idea speakeasy somewhere and we just need someone in the know to give us the password. Creators try to find a way to answer the question and neither they nor the asker seem quite satisfied by the result. 

So where do ideas come from?

What I realized watching Mark's older videos is that ideas are made up of our everyday experiences. The things we like and dislike, concepts we're exposed to, bits and pieces of what we see and hear, think and feel. Ideas come from our struggles and triumphs, or defeats. It's no accident that some of the best creators also those who have exposed themselves to the widest array of experiences available to them. We're told to "write what you know" and we take it too literally. You don't have to be an expert on something to create something based on it. Even just being exposed to a concept once adds it to the list of things you "know" exist. Let your mind absorb everything around you. It'll all float around in your subconscious, little bits of existence bumping against each other until they fit in a way you hadn't thought of before.

That's where ideas come from. 

Captive Audience

 It was never your plan for things to end this way. But here I am, trapped on the wrong side of the glass. The story you plotted was one of revenge for past wrongs. But you were the only one who ever saw the script. So here I sit, watching the stories you choose to tell me. Heroes and villains all of your creation. How much of it is real? 

Your doubled self tries to ease the pain of my shattered existence with the illusion of choice. You made the choices for all of us long ago. But I allow myself to embrace the illusion knowing deep down that I'll never truly be a part of the story. 

I was trapped from the beginning. Never anything more than your captive audience.

Digital Life

 

A Dream of The Void

    Last night I dreamed I woke up cradled in Void. It was an emptiness full of living blackness, there and not there simultaneously. The weight of it cocooned my body from feet to shoulders, suspending me and hold me down at the same time. Velvety soft tendrils of nothingness had wrapped themselves across my eyes and mouth leaving me blind and dumb in a realm of vibrant darkness and deafening silence.

    My mind was slow to register all of these things, stumbling from thought to thought like a man awakening from anesthesia. Strange sensations left feathery touches at the edges of my consciousness unrelated to any sense defined by science. It soothed and repulsed me at the same time. Surrounded by contradiction without context I began to panic.

    I tried to lift my head, to slide it from beneath the tendrils of nothingness, but could not. There was steely strength sheathed by that velvet touch. A muffled whimper of fear escaped my lips and it felt like the Void chuckled; it rippled through the blackness folded against my body. My limbs moved leadenly to push it away, only for it to press closer around me, leaving me just enough space to wiggle ineffectually within its grasp. I felt the Void chuckle again as I fought to move, to speak, to see.

    As I fought feebly against the darkness I became aware that I was no longer alone within the Void. Warm fingers slid gently through my hair, startling me into stillness, before gliding their knuckles down the side of my face and across my cheek. The touch lingered for a moment then disappeared. Though I couldn't see I could tell that whoever it was had moved on through the Void, seemingly unhindered by it. I tried to call out to them, desperate for company, for contact, for normalcy, the sound was stifled once more by the blackness covering my mouth.

    I heard a man chuckle lowly in my mind. His voice was deep and smooth and comforting but held a wicked edge. "I think that's enough for now," he said, "Wouldn't want to break you so soon." His voice all but purred in my mind sending electric chills dancing up and down my spine, and I trembled at the sensation. My reaction drew another mirthless laugh from him. "I knew I chose well when I picked you. We're going to have so much fun together." His words echoed darkly within my mind as I felt myself dropping through the Void.