It has been a month of self-discovery. I've been fighting. I've been pushing. I'm realizing that I have some severe hangups that have roadblocked my life. I have no solutions for them but I better understand them. I recently came out to friends at a drinking party that I knew I was going to die alone and that would have to be ok. And it's not some incel "nobody will ever love me" thing. It's that nobody will ever match what I am. I phrased it as "nobody in this world will ever be able to match my freak." That's a cringy way that people say that these days. If I read this back in a decade, I hope I can giggle at that.
But it's true. My interests are too hyper-specific. So I could find one of those relationships where two very different people come together? Yes, absolutely. But then, I'd want to find someone who is at least into the same stuff I am relationship-wise. I have only ever met two or three people who are really my "type," and they were never anyone I had the ability or desire to pursue in that way. Even my past relationships, I had to try to steer the ship in that direction which at the time seemed to work out, but I look back on those relationships and it's nightmarish trauma.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Yeah, sorry about that. I just want a person who wants to look cute. Everyone I meet who is into simple, cute fashion tend to also not be the powerful sort of personality I want in my life. Am I being too demanding? Yes. Is that unreasonable? Also yes. Can I help it? Not even a little bit.
So now, where did August go? I have a lot of projects in the pipeline and most of them stalled out or I haven't even tackled yet. I didn't even write in this blog all month because I pulled the server that hosts it offline and I'm too mentally roadblocked to migrate or move it. That being said, I have gotten a fair bit done in the never-ending pile of tech projects.
My friend Horatio even got me back into VRChat. My room is too much of a furniture disaster right now to actually use my VR tools, but the desktop mode is enough to toy with avatar stuff. I bought an avatar back in 2022 but never got to use it; my account was too new. A half hour into being back into it in 2024, they granted me the ability to upload stuff now. But I checked and the model I bought is not looking right. Another friend got me in touch with a friend of his who does a lot of VRChat stuff and he said it would take so much work it's probably not worth it. I'd been ripped off.
But then, a week or so later, Anne, a newer member of my Discord who came in through the Final Fantasy 14 raiding group, looked at it, spent an hour or so getting it up and running. She said it wasn't that bad. She even instructed me on how to add to it, modify it, and give it animations. I programmed the menus to set the colours. I'm ridiculous, you can teach this old dog new tricks.
But this old dog continues on elsewise. Receding gums are back. I've changed approach, stopped using mouthwash. I started using dry mouth rinse and using a mouthguard when I sleep. Took a lot of getting used to and it didn't really take well to my initial fitting so it doesn't seal up in there. I end up clenching my teeth all night just to keep the thing in. I've probably trained myself wrong. As a joke.
I've been spending a touch more time with the parents. We go out to lunch when we all have a day off and I spend time here and there with Dad. We're worried about him, he has been acting a bit erratic and forgetting easy things. He did a dementia test with the hospital a few weeks ago and they said his mind is advancing past his age, but it's nothing seriously troubling and does not seem to be dementia. I hope that's something I can read in a decade and take comfort in. And to that decade older version of me, first of all how in the hell are you alive? Second of all, I'm sorry for talking about all this. It's cruel speaking through time.