I find it wholesome to be alone in the greater part of the time. - Thoreau

Hmmm… I haven’t read Walden and Civil Disobedience in forever. The fact that he’s top of mind today might mean it’s time for a reread. I mean, I still have my copy from high school. I’m surprised it’s held together this long.

The blue book in the background was an Xmas gift from the X, (Ha!) but I haven’t read it yet.

(Also, running around my head is R.E.M.‘s Finest Worksong, where we throw Thoreau and rearrange. Whatever that means. Michael, if you’re reading this, please explain yourself.)

Wow. THAT was the tangent to end all tangents. (Today at least.)

And now I’ve forgotten what…

Nope, I remember.

Can I just say what a bitch it is to start a company? Especially when you’re into tech and have a creative / marketing background? I spent a ton on software templates and social media posts in an effort to cut corners. The social media stuff may be well worth it and the two software tutorials / templates seem to be worth their money as well.

I spent last night branding the social media posts and building out the recommended schedule for them. I launch January 1st, so it’s coming up quick.

I just had a five day vacay from the day job and didn’t accomplish as much as I wanted to on the side hustle… but I also relaxed a lot. Burnout has been my constant companion for months and dealing with seasonal depression and obsessing about my move to Maine isn’t helping matters.

I have to work on day job stuff today because I don’t want to close November in January, but that’s a choice I’m making. Not the best one, but it’s a choice.

In the meantime, I’ll throw up a crappy home page with a link to my Calendly, Facebook, and Instagram pages. It’s at least something while I work on the back end.

Is it bad I’m buying shit from Amazon instead of leaving the house and going to Target just because I want the boxes? Yeah, it’s probably pretty bad…

In other news, I gave into the hype and saw Wicked. I broke much sooner than I did with Hamilton, and I’m just as disappointed. Hamilton’s soundtrack won me over, but I can’t say the same for Wicked’s. I don’t know why I can’t see these and obsess over them like my friends do. I want to love them that much, but they’re just… bleh.

So yeah, about that move.

I am constantly pissed off that I’m spending as much on a 700 sq ft apartment as I did on a 2K+ sq ft house. I can’t afford this on my salary, but none of the less expensive ones were as nice and after all their add ons (especially the cat charges), they were just as expensive. Florida real estate is stupid.

I can get decent houses in Maine for $100K - $200K. With a nice deposit, my mortgage will be more than reasonable. AND if I’m spending $2K a month on a place to live, I’d rather create equity than line some landlord’s pockets.

I’m moving in May / June and I will be working remotely with some support in Florida. At least that’s the plan. The boss already knows that I’m moving so it’s been discussed; he just doesn’t know the timeline. I’m saving that for after the holidays.

We’ll see.

Alright, I should stop stalling. The sooner I get the day job shit done, the sooner I can get back to doing nothing.

I owe Eminem an apology

So, yeah.

Eminem.

I didn’t give him enough credit when The Slim Shady EP dropped, but fuck, he gets it all and more now.

I can’t even begin to tell you how much I enjoy the way he plays with words. The way they fit his mouth, dance over the track, just… everything.

This song right now is on repeat.  Ed Sheeran’s chorus is spot on, the word play, and the emotion that comes across in that one “FUCK!” (you’ll know when you hear it)—Absolute perfection. Every single second of it.

(TW: abortion)

Two weekends ago, I spent three amazing days with my little brother.

I hadn’t realised how much I needed to see him until that first hug in Epcot.

I was the first friend he ever brought home from college and, apparently, I’m the only one that stuck around.

There’s so much I can say about that… but I’m not ready to discuss it. Yet.

I hired a photographer to do a Dopey medal photo shoot at Uni. It was a birthday present to myself, but I didn’t splurge - I hired a person who took photos as a hobby so that she could build out her portfolio and… I’m not happy with about 99% of them, but this one came out exactly as I imagined it! Well… if the medals were in focus, maybe.

I had a feeling I could be someone

Dude.

I cannot stop listening to this.

Chills and tears. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

Also, I hit 60 miles for the month today. Definitely going to make it to 200 at this rate.

But I hate running, so I’m not excited by that at all.

Nope.

Wherever I am, I will not forget home

Quick entry… because guys! (Gals! Non-Binary Pals!)

I. AM. WATCHING. MY. SECOND. HOCKEY. GAME. OF. THE. NIGHT.

OF!! THE!! NIGHT!!

I watched the BU / Maine game - and got to listen to the BU announcers. (*sniff*) BU won, barely. I might have jinxed them… they were doing really well before I logged into ESPN+.

Now, I’m watching the Boston feed of the Bruins / Habs game. I’m hoping it inspires me to pick up what I’m lovingly calling the Drarry Hockey AU Disaster.

I haven’t been writing very much and I’m pretty sure finishing 50K words this month just became impossible, but you never know.

Instead, I’ve been bouncing between The Sims and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I’ve invested in a gaming PC because the Sims and the (disturbing) amount of CC I have is killing my little MacBook. The Sims is playing great on it, I have a smexy new keyboard, and I can revisit my favourite legacy. Their save file used to crash non-stop on the Mac, but it lives again!!!!

Stuff’s been on my mind, partly because of reliving happy days that turned sour, and partly for other reasons.

I got swept during the half marathon again. Asthma / panic attack at mile 8 did me in. I managed to keep going and got pulled at roughly 11.5 miles. The sad thing is that the new asthma meds were working. I PR’d the 5K and 10K. Which is almost nearly impossible at Disney if you’re a back of the packer. I was doing really well on the half until I wasn’t.

I have the Turkey Trot 10K on Thursday and the Space Coast Half on Sunday. We’ll see how those go.

But, in happier news, KALUSH fucking kicked ass. I needed their chaotic live show in a way I didn’t think was possible. Of course, it being Florida, it fucking poured that night. In the five minute walk to the parking lot, I was as drenched as if I was pushed into a swimming pool. Also, the drainage in the parking lot sucked and I was walking through almost knee deep water at points.

But. I got my live music fix and now… it’s all quiet until February.

(Although there are a lot of new Ukrainian bands I want to see coming through Miami. Guess it’s a good thing I’m done with runDisney!)

Psst! Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes? AMAZING. The book was still better than the movie, but the movie was definitely excellent.

‘I say fuck a lot’ might be the understatement of the year.

I stumbled upon this completely fucking adorable book on Thursday and DEVOURED it on Friday, since I didn’t have anything (not a single fucking thing and not an exaggeration) to do at work.

Upside Down by N.R. Walker completely captured the asexual relationship I was trying to write perfectly. So, that’s totally my roadmap if I ever go back to that fic.

I’ve gotten into the habit of taking screenshots of my favourite bits as I come across them, and this one?

Holy. Fucking. Shitballs. Batman.

Thankfully, I got to this part at lunchtime. (Or unfortunately?) I laughed so hard, I choked on my sandwich.

It was doubly hysterical because I’d just gotten done having (roughly) the same conversation about my usage of the word with a coworker.

Fuck is one of those amazing words that fits just about any sentence. Intonation fills in the blanks that context doesn’t, too.

It’s just a fucking magical word.

I am still riding the high from the Антитіла show.

I might still be watching the videos I took.

And I might still be listening to their albums and only their albums. At this rate, their music will be my Wine & Dine soundtrack.

Fuck my BPM playlist.

While I’m on the topic of live bands and concerts, next up is KALUSH. I’ve already seen them this year, but I do like the chaotic energy of their live shows. They remind me of Studio 158 and Gabe setting fire to his trumpet back in the day. It was always fun hanging with Scott-the-Roadie and getting to see the backstage shenanigans.

Hey, Mr. Soundman, I think there’s something on fire.

But anyway.

I forgot to mention that when I see SKOFKA in February that he’s splitting the bill with two other artists. One of which is KOZAK SIROMAHA. You might remember him from the video on this post. I might be looking forward to seeing him just as much as SKOFKA. (And what is up with the caps? KALUSH, SKOFKA, KOZAK SIROMAHA… *sigh*)

WHY THE FUCK is half the music I want to buy not available on the iTunes store? This might make me a shitty person, and probably a thief, but I’ve reverted to using Audio Hijack and pulling the audio off of YouTube. I mean, how do you add a YouTube video to a running playlist?

So… that’s my day sorted: pulling music off of YouTube, creating a new Ukie music running playlist, and world building.

Somehow, Aeon Timeline shit the bed and fucked up my hockey schedules. The dates have all shifted and it’s the weirdest thing. I’ve been using AT since version 1 and beta tested v2 (sort of - I didn’t have a lot of reasons to use it during the beta period but I did download it and play with it.)... I have never had a problem with it. NEVER.

But, you know, there’s only 82 hockey games in a season, and like 6 preseason games… for two teams. Granted, I ‘borrowed’ the schedules from Montreal and Boston, but they still had to be entered by hand because I couldn’t export them to a csv file or anything remotely useful. Annoyed doesn’t begin to describe my current mood. It is such a pain in the ass to go back and fix them.

And it’s not even getting the scheduled dates correct. It’s about remembering that for a 19:00 game, the players have to be there at 16:30 and they spend about 5 hours at the arena. There were a couple of games where the time shifted, too. So I had to do the fucking maths AGAIN to make sure I was getting the game day timeframe correct.

I’ve never been part of a team where the players didn’t play shinny somewhere in the arena as part of their warmup, so that’s an important detail I’m not leaving out, nor the fact that usually the ‘puck’ is a tennis ball. In college, sometimes the boys played with a ball of stick tape. The first time they did it was during a road trip because SOMEONE forgot a tennis ball (apparently, I only had ONE JOB and it wasn’t worrying about the boxed lunches, the uniforms, the extra blades, sticks, torches, the water jugs/bottles, nor the skate sharpener…). Joke’s on them, though, because they enjoyed whipping the tape at each other. Don’t think I didn’t notice that they played with the tape more than once. Even when I remembered the fucking tennis ball.

I never seem to talk about when englishing is not hard and the words go good, but I am SO HAPPY with this that I’m going to share this as a reminder that I’m not a completely shitty writer…

Families are messy. It’s one thing when the people who are supposed to build you up only want to tear you down. It’s another thing entirely when the people who are supposed to love you can’t fucking stand the sight of you.

Write what you know, right?

And finally, this is my new favourite song. Enjoy.