Complaining

It is 4:07 am and I’ll try to keep this one a little shorter because I really should get some sleep. Classes for the semester are ending and I can’t afford to completely destroy my sleep schedule quite yet. I wasn’t really sure what to write about. I couldn’t sleep but I wasn’t focused on one topic, so I thought I’d just write something to see if it helps. Have you ever felt like everything sucks but you can’t complain about anything? I’ve never actually liked complaining, it kind of always felt pointless unless there was a goal behind it. One time I had a serious injury and never complained to my parents about it during recovery. Unless I needed another dose of pain medication, there wasn’t any use to saying how much it sucked, so I didn’t.

I could complain about so much in my life recently. My parent’s divorce, my mom moving half way across the country and I’ve only seen her in person for a week in the past year, school work, the fact that my anxiety hasn’t gotten any better, the fact that I’m pretty sure I have more serious mental problems than the people around me realize, and that the small social life I’ve had has yet gotten smaller. The funny thing is, I sort of can’t complain. Except, I think right now I’m complaining that I can’t complain... At the end of the day, I still have a roof over my head, my new step-family is mostly pretty nice to me, financially I’m more fortunate than a lot of people. But that doesn’t make the problems less of a big deal to me. It just means if I complain, it looks like I’m ungrateful for being better off than a lot of people (side note: I’m by no means rich, just upper middle-class probably).

Just wanted this one to be kind of short. It’s 4:20 am. Nice.

Animation Fastination

It’s 3:34 am and I really should be trying to sleep, but I thought I’d share someone positive that I love. Ever since I was little I’ve loved animation. Old Pixar movies, kids shows, stop-motions, all of it. I started making my own stop-motions using an old tape recorder camera, but I started and stopped the video as quickly as I could to try and make individual “frames.” I started this with lego, then moved to basic play dough characters. They were pretty terrible of course, but what could you expect. When I was about 13 I think I got into Minecraft (yes, I know it’s not cool now and probably never was, but back then it wasn’t 99% little kids, and I know I’m ranting way off course here). I found that on YouTube there were all these fan animations based on Minecraft. The most prominent being music video parodies. I remember the first one that really caught my eye was CaptainSparklez’s “Revenge” video. It was the first time I realized that making digital 3d animation wasn’t something only huge studios could do. Naturally, I downloaded Blender (free 3d animation software, I’ll probably rant about it another time) and looked up some tutorials, with the goal of making my own Minecraft music video some day. I very quickly realized that was not easy, but I was still interested in learning about the general field. I started making 3d renderings of random objects, buildings, etc. Then I got back into the animation part and started learning how “good animation” was made. About 4 years later and a huge amount of terrible animations and I was hired to make a Minecraft music video for this YouTuber, “TryHardNinja”. This was insane. Not only did I actually get to complete my original goal when I started (and was paid for it!), but I was making it for the guy who sang the vocals for the “Revenge” video, which basically got me started in the first place. This was about 2 years ago, and since I’ve tried to completely separate myself from the Minecraft era of my work, so I rarely show the video to anyone anymore, but it’s still one of the things I’m most proud of. 

I actually started this wanting to talk about something a little different, but I think that’s a good story so I went with it. What I wanted to get to was why I like animation so much. There’s something incredibly interesting to me about not just trying to replicate human/animal motion, but to also make it appealing. There are so many tiny details to pay attention to, I’m always learning new things. I once read a whole article just about animating blinks. Something so small, but it has such a huge impact on your character’s emotions. While blinking biologically serves to keep your eyes from drying out, they can also say so much about what a character is thinking. One of the great ways to utilize blinks in animation is to hint at a change of thought. Frantic blinking shows confusion in a character. Even having a character not blink at all makes people a little uneasy and creeped out. Another detail I’ve read about/used is for dialog mostly. When a character reads a line, there’s going to be an emphasis on one or more of the words. Take this sentence for example with different words italicized, and you’ll read it different ways, and it changes the meaning slightly: That man ate a sandwich. And: That man ate a sandwich. A great way to really drive the emphasized word home is by having the character perform a movement when saying that word. Take the example of “That man ate a sandwich.” If you have the character point at another guy when he says “that,” it just looks right. I once used this for a personal project where I had a character saying “you can do it,” but without any audio or voice. After careful mouth positioning and having her tilt her head up as she said “do,” you could almost hear the sentence in your head. It’s one of the only times I was completely satisfied with animating lip-sync, and there was no voice.

It’s now 4:04 am, and I am up way too late. I wonder the different ways you could convey someone as being tired though their movements. Not just moving slower, but maybe less coordinated also, like going to turn a door knob and failing the first attempt. Longer reaction times to things around them too.

A bonus to the relationships rant

Completely unrelated, but something that I wanted to share.

When I was little we lived pretty close to a railroad track. Sometimes at night we could hear a train go by, with it’s horn going off a couple times. For some reason I always liked hearing it late at night. At one point we moved farther away from the railroad, so I could hear it every once and a while but it was much quieter. Earlier this year we moved again, and not under a situation I was happy about. This time we are much farther away from the railroad tracks. It was a smaller thing, but I actually really missed hearing that train go by late at night, with no other sounds. I don’t know why I liked that train horn so much, something about it was just so calming. Maybe it’s that it’s been there since I was a little kid, while everything else changed. Since we moved so many months ago especially things have changed so drastically, I wished I had that constant soothing sound.

Just a few minutes ago: A train horn sounded off in the distance. 

3:33 am.

Relationships

I remember when talking to new people wasn’t so hard. I’ve always been more of a shy person, but it didn’t always feel like I just don’t know how communication works. Right now, I there are 3 people I would consider friends. One of them I’ve known since near-birth, the other I met around 5th grade, and the third was around the end of middle-school I think (about 6 years ago if my math is right). Since then, I’ve found it extremely difficult to create a new relationship with just about anyone.

Right before I started high school, I specifically remember my dad telling me that “you can’t go through all of high school without making new friends” when I told him about being nervous. Funny enough, he was wrong. It turns out I could, and did, go through all of high school without making any friends. There were two times I actually came close to making a friend. The first was this kid I met in a robotics class. Smart guy, overall pretty friendly, and he was more of an “outcast” from the social norm. At one point I started to realize that he could be kind of a jerk to other people, even though he was pretty nice to me. It’s hard to give an example, but after a while you could kind of tell that he believed he was far superior to everyone around him. I slowly started to distance myself from him; I felt like this wasn’t the kind of person I wanted to spend time with. The second had a similar start but a different outcome. In a drafting class I was grouped up with this kid who we’ll call Tom (not his real name). Tom was actually really nice, he respected other students and teachers, he seemed to do well in with his school work, and for some reason I might never understand, he seemed to like me. I never talked to him outside of school, but during we worked on multiple projects together, helped each other with work, and even had some small-talk and discussed things we were interested in sometimes. This is where the story changes directions from the first person. At one point something clicked in my mind and I realized that I was becoming friends with someone. Another person, that for some reason, seemed to like being around me. I panicked. I can’t explain exactly why, but the realization that someone might want to be my friend freaked me the hell out. I started not talking to him much. I avoided small-talk. I didn’t flat out ignore him, but I know I made signals that I wasn’t interested. And I felt really bad about it. “I” didn’t want to push him away, but I did. When I was around him it felt like I was on auto-pilot, where my actions were guided for me, even though it wasn’t what I wanted. Or maybe deep-down this was what I wanted, but I convinced myself it wasn’t so that I wouldn’t feel like a bad person. I thought it would be nice to become friends with Tom, but I wouldn’t let myself.

I’m jealous of the people who seemingly chit-chat with others without any problems. From my point of view, it seems like some people are born with this crazy ability to interact with others completely naturally. From other people’s point of view, I’m the weird one. But that seems like such an odd concept to me, how someone could walk up to a complete stranger and ask for directions, or point out that an order of food had a mistake to a waitress, or to raise your hand in class with a question, without any hesitation. It’s alien. Another thing that’s become an unnatural common practice is basic eye contact. This one I know is not normal, even from my own perspective. I’m not sure when it started, a long time ago at least, but I realized that making eye contact is weirdly not easy. And by not easy, I almost never do it. The best way to describe it is an immense sense of being uncomfortable. Not physically painful, but I react as if it were. I know making eye contact won’t hurt me, but when I do, my body is suddenly telling me to look to the side, the same as if it were telling me to take my hand off a very hot plate. I could go on about how it makes me feel “disconnected from the world” or something like most people would probably think, but instead one of the main ways this bothers me is social logistics. Being around others in a social setting of any kind can be tricky to navigate. If I go to a restaurant with others the first thing I think about when going to sit down is “how can I position myself so that I’m not directly facing anyone, or at the very least someone I’m comfortable around, without looking out of place.” I get really uncomfortable when I don’t have a place or direction for my eyes to rest without worrying that I’m going to make accidental eye contact with someone. The times when I’m most comfortable talking to someone are when me and the person aren’t facing each other, most likely facing the same direction. 

I wonder if eventually I’ll have a romantic relationship with someone who’s fine with these things. As discussed before, creating any meaningful relationship isn’t going to be easy, but I still have some hope. The tricky things is that eye contact is so largely associated with romantic relationships. Not saying that I’m looking for someone who is fine never making eye contact, but someone who is okay with a long “warming-up” period. Kind of weird, but at this point it’s basically one of my dreams to be in a relationship with someone that I’m completely comfortable making eye contact with. 

I’ve thought about what could have caused myself to become like this. One of my main theories is Asperger's Syndrome. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s classified as being on the autism-spectrum, but very different than what most people think of when they hear “autism” (it actually was classified as it’s own disorder until only 2013). People who have it typically have completely normal intelligence and language development, but severely impaired social skills. People with it often have few facial expressions, poor social skills, have trouble reading body-language, lack empathy for others, have awkward body movements, and are generally seen as just sort of  “odd.” Luckily, these people aren’t so “odd” that they can’t function in normal day-to-day life, they just do so a little differently. To be clear, I haven’t self-diagnosed myself with this. It can be a really tricky thing to diagnose properly, and I am not a professional. There are some smaller symptoms that don’t quite line up with me, but the main ones I listed I have noticed in myself to some degree (with some being very much so). 

It’s kind of weird to be 19 and not have had any romantic relationship, or even many friends. People say things like “oh I wished I would have waited that long to start dating,” or “you’ll make someone very happy some day,” but I feel like going this long without even making a real attempt isn’t normal. How do you even start, really? It’s not like I don’t like people; I’ve had many “crushes” over the years. One girl in particular I’ve liked for years, but I know even if she wasn’t in a relationship already that I wouldn’t say anything to her anyways. I’ve gone back-and-forth between wishing I wasn’t single to being completely okay with it. On one hand, my relationship status doesn’t define who I am. There’s so much more to life that being with one person in particular. On the other hand, it would be really nice to have someone I can be comfortable around and personal with. Either way, whatever happens, happens. It might take another 10 years before I find someone, or it could be next week.

This was a long one to write, started around 2 am and it’s now 3. Hopefully this didn’t get too messy by the end, I’m pretty tired at this point. I have a lot of feeling around these subject, so there’s a good change I’ll write something like this again. I didn’t exactly end on a great note, but it wasn’t super depressing, so I say that’s good enough. I’ll leave a link below for my source on the Asperger’s Syndrome information if you want to read more, it’s an interesting disorder.

http://kidshealth.org/en/parents/asperger.html# 

Christianity. Oh boy.

So here is the first post where might be super offended by what I say. That’s alright, but first of all I’m not saying that everyone who is Christian is a bad person or is wrong. Let’s get started cracking open this big ‘ole can of worms.

So a bit of context: I was raised as far back as I can remember as Christian. Never really had a problem with it. I went to church once a week, learned about the bible, was told what things were bad and what things were good. Honestly I think the religion itself is actually a pretty great thing. Sure there will always be extremists that take things too far or misunderstand what something means, but overall the whole thing is basically “Be excellent to each other.” I mean a lot of the guidelines are just some basic “nice guy” things. Don’t kill each other, don’t disrespect your parents, don’t be greedy, help those who are in need. All of my friends around me were raised the same way, and it wasn’t until I was maybe 15 or 16 that I started to notice some little things around me.

So this isn’t really always spoken out-loud, but there’s this weird thing where it’s extremely looked down-upon to even try and learn about other religions. You’ll see advocacy groups trying to stop schools from teaching anything other than Christian views. If someone in my church were to say something like “hey so I was reading about atheism last night and I found some interesting points” most people there I know would think he’s going to hell for questioning Christianity. (Side note, the pastor there is actually an awesome dude. He legitimately respects other people’s views and loves having conversations about religion with people who have vastly different opinions. I respect him a lot). The thing that really drives me nuts is that one of the big parts of being Christian is to try to get other people to convert to Christianity. Not as much as the Jehovah’s Witnesses that are infamous for that, mind you, but it’s still a big point. So is it not hypocritical to shun your own members from learning about other views, but expect people from other religions to listen to you? (This is a good time to point out again that not every Christian I know is like this, not trying to say if you’re a Christian then you’re bad). Maybe another good example of this is when the topic of abortion is brought up. Heavy subject. I don’t have the answer to it. Most Christians I know would go into attack mode if you even mention that there should be a conversation about whether or not abortion is ethical (Also side note again, my pastor actually has logical reasons for why he thinks it is not ethical, and is willing to have a civil discussion about it. He’s cool). I honestly don’t know where I stand on this subject, and I’m afraid if I tell anyone that, I’m going to get a 20 minute lecture on why I’m wrong for even thinking there could be another possible answer. 

On the other hand, these observations could just as well be because people suck in general and that isn’t tied to one specific group of people. There are bad apples in every group of people you can pick out. Making huge blanket statements like “All Christians are bad” is horrible and only creates a larger divide between people. I’ll probably save that one for another time.

Also, Stranger Things season 2 was amazing. There, ended on a good note. 

3:11 am (I think I like adding what times I write these at, I’ll probably keep doing it).

A preamble to my thoughts on mental health medication

Ok, so I’ve spent a lot of time at night over the past year or so trying to put into words how I feel about taking medication to help with your mental health. 1st of all, in no way am I saying that if you feel like it helps you to not take it. 2nd of all, I am one person, and this person is not licensed to give you advice. Listen to a professional for real help, these are just my personal thoughts. This is a complicated subject that I definitely do not have the answer to. Even though I’m much better at writing out my thoughts than speaking them, it’s been hard for me to explain exactly how I feel about it. So instead, here are two quotes from John Green’s most recent novel, Turtles All The Way Down (These are conversations between the main character and her therapist about taking medication for her mental health, and basically spoiler free): 

# 1: ”Are you taking your Lexapro?” she asked. 

“Yeah,” I said. She just stared at me. “It freaks me out some to take it, so not every day.”

“Freaks you out?”

“I don’t know.” She kept watching me, her foot tapping. The air felt dead in the room. “If taking a pill makes you different, like, if it changes the way-down you ... that’s just kind of a screwed-up idea, you know? Who’s deciding that me means-me or the employees of the factory that makes Lexapro?

#2 The conversation devolved into her telling me that medication only works if you take it, and that I had to treat my health problem with consistency and care, and me trying to explain that there is something intensely weird and upsetting about the notion that you can only become yourself by ingesting a medication that changes your self.

That’s all. It’s 3:03 am, so I didn’t want to try and write out all of my feelings about this, but these excerpts actually fit pretty well.

Hello.

It is currently 1:29 am where I live, which is actually earlier than when I usually go to sleep (I know it’s probably not healthy), but for some unknown reason I am especially tired. Not sure why, but anyways I thought I’d start this to document thoughts I have at night. The idea to start this was, in fact, an idea that was keeping me up. Truth be told it’s less to document thoughts (think dream-journal style) and more in the hopes that it helps me put my thoughts together so maybe one day I can go back to sleeping like seemingly how most people who, where you put your head down on a pillow and that’s just it, you don’t stay up for hours thinking about the same few things over and over, not even really getting anywhere with them, trying to tell yourself to think about something simple so maybe your brain will turn off for a while. But it doesn’t really.

Fun fact, the second to last sentence just then was 93 words long, with the last sentence being only 4. In an English class a while back we read a passage where some guy writes extremely long sentences and follows them with extremely short ones. It’s supposed to make certain lines stand out, or make the short sentence feel like a long exhale after holding your breath, which is great for putting emphasis on a point you want to make or a spot you want the reader to pause and think about. Or maybe it doesn’t.

Part of the reason I thought this could be interesting is that I’m trying to remain completely anonymous here. Of course people do this all the time (it is the internet, after all), but I realized you could cross-reference most of my social media to find out info that wasn’t on the one you started with. For example, you could see my Twitch name (I love Twitch by the way, that’s bound to come up many more times), use that to find my Twitter handle, then use my real first name, real first letter of my last name, and the few real life friends I follow to find my Facebook account, which, even though I never post on it anymore, could still lead to information about where I live, what school’s I’ve gone to, who my family is, etc. A little concerning. Has my mention of following long sentences with short ones made you look for it as you kept reading? I just did it again a few seconds ago.

I realized I didn’t finish the point I was trying to make in the last paragraph. The reason I think it might be interesting to be completely anonymous here is that I don’t think I’ll be afraid to talk about thoughts I have that I don’t share with anyone else. Everyone always has things they’ll never share with anyone else, but in real life I’m especially emotionally reserved. Hopefully no one will be able to use my other social media’s to find this page. I’ll probably end up talking about depression, anxiety, my parent’s divorce, what ‘you’ really means, if anything actually matters, the fact that the default Windows sticky notes are amazing, the possibly existence of a higher power or a lack thereof, you know, normal things. Also because of the anonymity (thank you, spell checker), I’ll probably try out using some curse words here and there. Sounds super dumb, but I hate cursing. I don’t know why. It’s not like if I did anyone would be upset, I don’t find my friends cursing around me, I just, don’t.  

This won’t necessarily be all Debbie-Downer material, I do still enjoy some things. Mostly not as much as I used to, but wow I am kind of bad at not being pessimistic right now. I’m pretty much just writing this for myself anyways, but maybe taking the time to write about things I enjoy is good for me too.

I do wonder if anyone is actually going to read any of this. If you are reading this, well, um, hello. Nice to meet you. I’m really bad at introductions, or any social interactions for that matter, but thanks for taking the time to read this. Just as a heads-up, I’ll probably get a little dark at times and I’m not exactly a ‘fun’ person to be around, so honestly if you don’t want to stick around for the ride, I don’t blame you. I wish I had the choice to stop reading the blog of my life and continue on to something else like you have the option to. That’s kind of makes me sound suicidal... aaaand look’s like we’re already going there. That was fast. Just in case you are worried, no, I am not suicidal. Of course, people who are suicidal don’t often tell others, so it’s not like you could really take my word for it, but I guess that doesn’t matter since you don’t care about me, not really. Not that that’s a bad things, but if you’re reading this you hardly know me at all. Ok this paragraph is taking some twisted turns I didn’t intend, so I’ll end that train here.

Ok, something nice to talk about before I end this introduction. Let’s see... Ok I’ll be honest that took me a little longer than I would have liked. I’ve been learning the Ukulele lately. I feel like there’s this weird idea that people have where if you didn’t start learning an instrument when you were a kid then it’s not even worth it to start now because you’ll never be as good or something. That’s some bull shit (feels weird to write that, but it’s true). Learning new things is super fun. Maybe you won’t be as good as some kid whose parents forced him to start learning piano at the age of 4, but who cared. I’ll probably never be a super talented Ukulele player, but I think it’s fun. A little bit ago I learned how to play “Everything Stays” from Adventure Time (written by Rebecca Sugar (Fittingly, the original demo the tab is based off was posted on Tumblr)). I freaking love that song, and it sounds super nice to play.

I did it! I ended on a happy note! Can’t promise that will always happen, but maybe I should try to. If for some reason you read through all of this, hopefully I did alright. I like to think my writing isn’t horrible, but I am pretty tired so this might be a mess and I have no clue. I have no idea how frequently I’ll write here, or the length of each entry, but I think I like this. It is currently 2:12 am where I live, and I am going to lay down again and hope I can fall asleep like a normal person.