Sometimes I wish there were firmware updates for my brain.

So much is going on and I feel like I’m running an outdated operating system with insufficient ram. Much like my 10-year-old laptop, I need someone to open me up, swap out the 8 gig for a 16 gig so I don’t have to give up my USB Ports and disc drive… this metaphor may have gone a bit far.

When I started this blog, I was in love with the idea of posting to it. I’ve been a writer all my life and I thought “what better way to share my writing with a blog?” Then I discovered self-publishing and found that I could write the fiction that I love and put it in the world for people to see. After I hit publish, I thought readers would magically appear, but I don’t write in the magically appearing reader genre. I write in the “have an email list, every imaginable social media and cry in the shower” genre. Thank dog for walking in the woods but I can’t keep up with blogs and books, also TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and that bird app I legit stink at. There are not enough characters for my level of snark.

Now, there is nothing wrong with humorous mysteries. I love them and so do a lot of other people. Like… a lot of them. But keeping up with a writing schedule, a newsletter and posting on social medias has left a disconnected skeleton feeling. Like when Miguel’s dad runs into something and all of his bones go different directions in Coco?

Unfortunately, my pieces don’t come back together into a human shape. Everything is oozing and squishy, not quite sure where it was supposed to go and impossible to get back where it belongs. This blog is still very important to me, so rather than trying to force my words into a cohesive story or social media picture, I’m instead going to empty out my thoughts here.

There are only like… six subscribers, so it’s almost the same as putting it in a diary or burying it in a time capsule for future generations to judge me by… assuming reading the internet is still a thing in the future, since everyone is moving toward a video only life and I’m just over here like “it’s too loud”.

I mean, why is everything always so loud? Nothing is at a reasonable volume and if it is I can’t hear it which is why I watch things with subtitles.

When I left Glendale, the city I worked at for six years, after therapy, I still had nightmares that I was somehow forced to go back. It’s been over a year, I live in a different state, and I had another one last night… I actually got a tattoo on my hand because I knew there was no way they would let me work there with a hand tattoo.

Also, I just kind of wanted it.

Despite the therapy and self-work, that place still makes me question my worth as an employee and a person. My ability to discern my own thoughts, feelings and intentions from what other people tell me they must have been because I’m some sort of Machiavellian plotter. I’m not sure if it comes from being autistic and constantly trying to mirror my emotions to the rest of the group to come off as “normal” or because I live in a never-ending cycle of needing people who don’t matter to like me.

Do you know how frustrating it is to care what people you hate think about you?

My brain is now filled with numbers and procedures for purchasing and student registration assistance. No longer do I have to worry that if I speak honestly or recommend something in the direction of progress, I’ll be written up and punished for the next most convenient accusation they can put on paper. Instead, it’s full of anxiety ridden emails where I toe the line between telling people what to do and making it sound like a request.

Like “No Professor, you can’t use a robot to grade papers and give them grades based on the fourth letter of their last name. Don’t you think it would be better to just make a grading rubric and let someone else do it?” or maybe “It’s not my job to pass out your textbooks, just like I told you last year, what alternative solutions have you come up with to better serve your students?”

I’d like to blame the patriarchy, but even men in the education system can’t be direct. Our faculty are all stubborn little hoarders with no discernable system for moving forward beyond the next second and there is a great deal of hand holding to get things done.

Especially with sportball coaches. Sweet cheese and crackers they are a needy group of babies.

There are too many delicious cheeses in the world, and I don’t know how to try them all. We do a wine and cheese night (much more often than we should) and we get little blocks of their fancy cheeses and pair them with crackers and fruits and different wines, but is my life long enough to try all the cheeses? What about dogs? Will I be able to adopt enough of them before I die to feel like a made a dent in their perceptions of human affection?

We moved to Idaho, a state I most certainly do not belong. My biggest joy would be to acquire a paintball gun and shoot paint at campaign signs and flags… A little at the people posting them as well, but mostly the signs. I don’t care what you believe or think, but don’t shove it down my throat with a seven-foot politician support flag.

It does make it easier to know who to avoid though.

When they were about to overturn Roe vs. Wade, I posted about my abortion on Facebook. Everyone was very kind and had many nice words. When it was officially overturned, I posted that I was angry and was attacked. Informed that I knew nothing about the law, and it wasn’t that bad, and morality and religion are not the same thing (spoiler alert: anything with a fundamental ideology that encourage group behaviors in accordance with a set of rules declared right and wrong is a moral philosophy).

Then I blocked a dude I’ve known since Kindergarten and I regret not doing it sooner. He was a plague on both our houses… or however Shakespeare said it.

Recently, I was researching Ohio presidents for my book and that led me down the rabbit hole of prohibition, forcing yourself to do things you don’t believe in, and human trafficking of Canadian mountain men for performances in the adult film industry… well, the last was a plot point, not so much a research topic but I did have to look up immigration.

Again.

For a country filled with the descendants of seamen who crashed their boats into a land mass and declared it theirs, they sure are touchy about letting people in. I mean it’s not theirs… or ours… well, unless “our” is indigenous peoples of the land in which case it is theirs and whitey needs to stop.

Also, on the list of things whitey needs to stop: imposing restrictions in the name of equality that cause people of diverse backgrounds more discomfort in their implementation than the thing being restricted.

Example: Brown Bag lunch.

When I was in school, cool kids brought their lunch in a brown bag. It was just the right amount of eco-friendly but not trying too hard and you had something to draw on. Apparently, brown bag is offensive because of an old racist standard that no one remembers as far as I can tell. Why are we censoring things based on a forgotten history instead of dealing with actual issues?

Like why I keep watching the Big Bang Theory despite how truly awful it is.

A bunch of grown man complaining about women, degrading them and constantly whining about sex. Growing up, period jokes were a way for men to minimize women’s feelings and give men something to mock so we felt forced to conceal how we felt. This show reminds me why I was embarrassed and ashamed of being female and menstruating.

It also reminds me why nerdy guys were no better or different than the “hot Neanderthal”. If I watched this show when it originally aired, I’d probably have become like a non-religious monk person… an ace woman that was mocked because she didn’t like “the good guys” and “wasn’t fulfilling her reproductive responsibilities”.

Like, look Adam and Eve, I’m taking care of the animals in the garden you jerk. The life I nurture is no less valuable because I didn’t eject it from my body like a flume ride log. I enjoy saying gay, treating children like a privilege and not a consequence you regret, and mocking those who take their beliefs to levels I would refer to as “aggressive” and “psychosis”. My kids are hairy, scary and rarely ever sticky.

Unlike me, since I regularly spill and fall into things. I even did goat yoga and let goats jump on me, not clean but really fun. Goat hooves are really amazing at acupressure. Also poking holes in my ear is uncomfortable for a much shorter period of time than having ink needled into my skin, so I’ll probably switch to poking holes instead of scraping cells for a while.

Also hair extensions are itchy and I’m not a huge fan of them… but they were expensive and now I’m torn between wanting them out and getting another set to make it look normal-er. But if I’m being honest, what would make me most happy would be bedazzling my face like Mabel in Gravity Falls.

I’d also like women to be acceptably sized as chonky. Being not-chonky goes against everything I believe in and I’m tired of fighting myself to look a certain way. My joints would like me to be lighter, but the rest of me suffers from the effort of trying… especially this time of year.

Halloween candy season is my favorite, encompassed within tree-peeping season and pumpkin everything. Overall, the biggest disappointment of this move has been Dutch Bros losing it’s magic. It’s only 1.5 miles away now and I’ve only gone a few times. It’s just not special or exciting anymore.

I’m not sure this is a complete brain dump, but it satisfies my need to clear up space for the moment.