[katextravaganza]

01/30/21

I lost a good friend today to misunderstanding and trauma. My friend is alive, and better off without me, and I know that. But I also feel the need to process the pain anyways. Loss is loss, and if I don’t process now I probably never will.

My resolution after this is to ask more questions and be upfront about something when I don’t truly understand it. I’ve spent so many years learning to fake social interactions. I know things aren’t black and white, but it seems lately that it’s done me a lot of harm to be “successful” at keeping the mood good, or the conversation flowing. It makes sense in hindsight, that committing so hard to being “good” at social interactions was unhealthy for me. I mean, it served me a lot of good. It helped me cope with my social anxiety. I was able to convince myself I was actually pretty good at coming off as normal, if not charismatic. I suppose that was what I was trying to achieve. I know there’s wisdom in leaving some things alone and not shove my nose into every situation. I’m apparently prone to asking inappropriate questions at inappropriate times... but even though I believe deep down that digging into pain and trauma brings healing, I have to acknowledge the valid need for silence.

So I suppose, instead of learning how to gloss over my misunderstandings, I’d rather start learning silence. Silence and asking questions. It’s terrifying because I’m still afraid I’ll do something wrong, and still end up hurting people I love.

But that’s life... just remember to hold close your lessons that you’ve learned, and do your best in the next relationships.

To process what actually happened with my friend that I lost... Apparently I was becoming a toxic presence in their life. Our friendship began on a mutual understanding of dirty sex humor and not being attracted or in love with each other. That was so important to me, and it was to him too. Somehow though, when a red flag came up for him and he communicated it, I didn’t understand the metaphors he was speaking in, but told him I did. I tried to gloss over it in conversation in hopes that I would get context clues later, and come to the right conclusion about what he was telling me. Even though the same foundation was true- that I wasn’t at all interested in forming anything more than a friendship with him- that foundation was compromised because of this.

I hate how horrible my memory is. I forget most details about everything in my life. I’ve never had a good recall ability for conversations with my closest friends, especially if I was just having fun conversations. I only remember what I thought about something- and not even what that something was- just my takeaway.

I thought he was in a toxic relationship, and I wanted to have him know he deserved better. I didn’t know that the ways our conversations happened made him feel like I was preying on him. And in hindsight, it makes sense. Even though I still believe he’s self-sacrificing too much, I couldn’t properly respect his feelings, thought processes, and decisions. All he could get from me was a weak “I see where you’re coming from” followed by a slew of criticism of his partner. In hindsight that is a very toxic thing to get from someone who you trusted a lot to understand you.

But I was too afraid of losing touch with my friend by admitting I didn’t understand him a lot of the time. Somewhere I lost the trust in myself to ask the hundred questions I needed to ask to truly understand. Somehow I thought things would just magically make sense in my mind and he would never have to know how confused I was by his writing and meticulous metaphors. I didn’t want to seem stupid to someone who probably thought I was intelligent because of my many questions.

And it’s okay. It’s easier for me to step out of his life than to try and mend the friendship that has made him feel so unsafe and a victim. He deserves better. And I want better for him. All that’s in my control is to better state my confusion in the future. It’s after all, all I have to truly understand anything, and if that’s not the point of living this life, then I don’t know what is. I hate knowing that I was the source of so much pain and anxiety inside of someone I love. But I have to remember I can only move forward, and do my best to cultivate what I still have.

[staff]

A better, more positive Tumblr

Since its founding in 2007, Tumblr has always been a place for wide open, creative self-expression at the heart of community and culture. To borrow from our founder David Karp, we’re proud to have inspired a generation of artists, writers, creators, curators, and crusaders to redefine our culture and to help empower individuality.

Over the past several months, and inspired by our storied past, we’ve given serious thought to who we want to be to our community moving forward and have been hard at work laying the foundation for a better Tumblr. We’ve realized that in order to continue to fulfill our promise and place in culture, especially as it evolves, we must change. Some of that change began with fostering more constructive dialogue among our community members. Today, we’re taking another step by no longer allowing adult content, including explicit sexual content and nudity (with some exceptions).  

Let’s first be unequivocal about something that should not be confused with today’s policy change: posting anything that is harmful to minors, including child pornography, is abhorrent and has no place in our community. We’ve always had and always will have a zero tolerance policy for this type of content. To this end, we continuously invest in the enforcement of this policy, including industry-standard machine monitoring, a growing team of human moderators, and user tools that make it easy to report abuse. We also closely partner with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation, two invaluable organizations at the forefront of protecting our children from abuse, and through these partnerships we report violations of this policy to law enforcement authorities. We can never prevent all bad actors from attempting to abuse our platform, but we make it our highest priority to keep the community as safe as possible.

So what is changing?

Posts that contain adult content will no longer be allowed on Tumblr, and we’ve updated our Community Guidelines to reflect this policy change. We recognize Tumblr is also a place to speak freely about topics like art, sex positivity, your relationships, your sexuality, and your personal journey. We want to make sure that we continue to foster this type of diversity of expression in the community, so our new policy strives to strike a balance.

Why are we doing this?

It is our continued, humble aspiration that Tumblr be a safe place for creative expression, self-discovery, and a deep sense of community. As Tumblr continues to grow and evolve, and our understanding of our impact on our world becomes clearer, we have a responsibility to consider that impact across different age groups, demographics, cultures, and mindsets. We spent considerable time weighing the pros and cons of expression in the community that includes adult content. In doing so, it became clear that without this content we have the opportunity to create a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves.

Bottom line: There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content. We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community.

So what’s next?

Starting December 17, 2018, we will begin enforcing this new policy. Community members with content that is no longer permitted on Tumblr will get a heads up from us in advance and steps they can take to appeal or preserve their content outside the community if they so choose. All changes won’t happen overnight as something of this complexity takes time.

Another thing, filtering this type of content versus say, a political protest with nudity or the statue of David, is not simple at scale. We’re relying on automated tools to identify adult content and humans to help train and keep our systems in check. We know there will be mistakes, but we’ve done our best to create and enforce a policy that acknowledges the breadth of expression we see in the community.

Most importantly, we’re going to be as transparent as possible with you about the decisions we’re making and resources available to you, including more detailed information, product enhancements, and more content moderators to interface directly with the community and content.

Like you, we love Tumblr and what it’s come to mean for millions of people around the world. Our actions are out of love and hope for our community. We won’t always get this right, especially in the beginning, but we are determined to make your experience a positive one.

Jeff D’Onofrio CEO

[katextravaganza]

 Do you realize child pornography and children having access to porn are two insanely different things?

Do you realize your blanket assumptions and censorship do far more damage than good?

Do you realize teaching kids to be comfortable with their bodies and sexuality is more instructive than destructive? Have you ever researched correlations between sex education and sti’s, sexual assault, and teen pregnancy? 

Do you realize porn can be empowering? 

I’m not feeling that “love and hope” you’re talking about when you’re cutting out millions of images that represent an already repressed part of our culture. (Body positivity, sexuality, feminism, artistic voice, just to name a few. )

[katextravaganza]

Holy Crap

I haven’t taken the time to do writing in a really long time. It’s incredible when I look back at the most recent posts I made on here and get a glimpse into what I was going through. I wonder what has been gained and lost from this. How much I’ve been happy to keep the thoughts in my head, and unaffected by not putting them down. How many people I have lost communication with, whom I only had tumblr as a point of contact with. Part of me feels as if I have grown out of tumblr, and yet part of me is very aware of how little growth I’ve actually gone through. Well, some things have changed. I was an aupair in Germany, and am now making money by taking care of cats (the dream). Part of me wants to talk about the experience as an aupair, because it was so incredibly loaded and destructive for me, and yet I feel like I’ve finally started to move on from all the ptsd that came from it. I’m starting therapy again too. The first time since a few months before going to Germany- maybe even over a year ago. 

There have been so many good things to happen to me lately. Life felt like a sustained peaceful high. I had an anxious and depressive episode just recently, but somehow it smoothed itself out. It was why I felt the need to find a therapist. I haven’t felt like I have the friends I need around me to help me remember my goodness, and it was hard not to get sucked into wallowing. I tried reaching out to the friends, but was getting no responses. A pattern I’m not unfamiliar with, but wasn’t ready to face the consequences of being ghosted. It was hard not to feel heartbroken and loss. Other friends of mine have been going through really dangerous suicidal episodes. That was something I wasn’t able to really deal with. The world seems to require a lot more self-sacrificing than I was hoping for. It seems like I can only handle on relationship like that at a time, and even then I’m not good at being the emotional support for long. If distance is a factor, I lose patience even more quickly with the person and find myself thinking “God, this is horrible and it almost would be better if you just killed yourself”, because I can’t even maintain the emotional stamina to be supportive of them, so when they lose that small point of hope (for some of my friends it seems like I am the only one they confide in about this, and the only point of hope for them) it just makes sense to end it all. 

Hope is such a brutal, brutal thing. There is never any empirical proof to put stock in hope. It almost always disappoints, and then demands more hope as the solution. Hope makes the ground unstable, and then promises nothing but more instability. And yet as humans, it’s all we have. It’s all there is keeping us from cynicism, war, hate, anger, resentment, fear, and cruelty. Faith and hope in humanity is the only thing that makes our existence worthwhile, beautiful, and wholesome. It is what makes food delicious, sex empowering, hugs fulfilling, laughter contagious, and souls connected. Hope disappoints more than it rewards, but when it does reward, it changes the world. 

Well, I’ve been in a sappy mood today. I think it’s because I finally don’t have to write from a place of anxiety (right now anyways), and because I’ve been getting to work with cats every other day. It helps that I have a friend moving closer, and that my family has been so loving lately. It helps that I met up with someone who just made a drastic change in her life that was completely empowering despite the economic consequences, and will potentially be spending even more time with her later. I’m definitely also just hazy from it being before bedtime, and oddly horny which sometimes puts my brain in a different mood. I’m ready to pleasure and cuddle up with someone. Will just have to settle for myself right now. I’m seriously considering a body pillow though. Those things are life-changing in terms of quality of sleep.

[katextravaganza]

Things to consider when applying to [everything]:

skills: straightforward things you can do with your hand and your brain. 

strengths: things you have to explain. 

the why: the desire and need for the [everything] position

the what: picture[s], short bio, brief in-depth expose of whatever niche in the brain is being offered up, resume

Applications are horribly daunting. Jobs, internships, and everything in between. And yet... they never go away. 

I need some emotional support here. 

[katextravaganza]

Been thinking about friends and the ones that you bond with on a philosophical level... I usually hate anything that’s got anything to do with philosophy (thanks to my philosophy of science course back in the day) but there’s definitely something to be said for connecting with someone who shares and appreciates your fundamental values. 

I was thinking about some of my friends that I made sophomore year, my worst year, where I was having a hard time coping with everything. I had lost my regular friend time because we were all too busy and unable to work in the same places. I was trying to date one of my best friends, but that had really disastrous consequences for me. I had really difficult classes, and really painful classes where the teachers obviously didn’t want to be there. 

I’m primarily thinking about one of my roommates, and a mutual friend that I had one of my most frustrating classes with. These two were a lot closer than I was, but befriending them both felt incredibly natural, like somehow everything we said to each other was at the right time, and of the right essence. We didn’t go out of our ways to hang out, but whenever we happened to be together, it was incredibly affirming. I think it came down to our mutual beliefs of human potential combined with realistic optimism. They were both psychology majors and I was (still am) a psychology hobbyist/buff/nerd. I guess our interest in why people do things mixed with a hopeful idea of the world was what made this happen.

My best friend from preschool dropped by the other day for a surprise visit, and I was really surprised that we had so much in common in the same way. We went to the same highschool, but with my awkwardness over a bunch of random things and the fact that we never had any classes together (despite it being a small school), we didn’t spend any time with each other. 

Facebook let me slowly get comfortable again and as I saw the videos she posted and the positive content, I grew a lot of new affection and respect for her. She had the courage to drop by, and I had the courage to be myself while she was visiting, and it was amazing how much we shared in common. 

I guess it’s kind of odd and maybe a little sad that we can have so many different types of friends, but it takes a lot of effort to keep them close to balance out our needs. We need our friends that share vastly different perspectives but share our sense of humor. We need our friends that support us unequivocally, and our friends that hold us accountable. We need our friends that we share our trade with, and we need the ones that work outside our field. 

It’s no wonder calling out to my friends when I’m depressed is so difficult- which ones do I need right now? Who is actually available? How can I rationalize the energy it takes to put into meeting with one person when I know it won’t be fulfilling all my needs? There are so many questions that go on in my head in my low points, but I used to think they were over the top or obsessive. They’re actually incredibly pointed, and at a point where every detail in your life counts, it seems so obvious that it be necessary to mince. 

[katextravaganza]

2017 reflections on 2016 (because somehow on my own, I’m always late for holiday doings)

2016 was a year of necessary evils I suppose. I dealt with a lot of dread, self-doubt, fear, and vulnerability. I keep looking back and feeling awful about it, but as I’m writing down things I’ve rediscovered how helpful it is to try and remember the good things that happened, as hard as that is. So many things didn’t go the way I wanted them, but I’m so lucky to walk away alive. I have my laundry lists of relationships flunked, opportunities messed up, fears quietly fed, and new walls built, and honestly I see them every day in the little things that I do, as well as in the bigger. In the tried-and-true way of forced and ruthless optimism though, there are still moments to be remembered and simmered on.

At the beginning of the year, I got to live with some of my best friends for the remainder of the school year, and I got to celebrate the little things with them like snow and food and really cute outfits. I watched a lot of videogame playing which was a seemingly silly, but really potent way to spend my time for me and hopefully for my friend. I got to pour out my love into the people I wanted to support the most, and I also learned my own limitations.

I started online dating, talked to a flurry of people, met a few, fell hard in love and had the privilege of having someone open their heart to me. I also had to learn to let go. I went up in my medications for a while and did a lot of stupid things, started therapy with someone in Charlotte and rebuilt some of my own validation. I became a new kitten mom.

I got to feel and flaunt my own attractiveness in all its unconventionality (and conventionality). I found validation in hidden places, overshared more/as usual, and am glad to say that I plan on continuing that wonderfully unfortunate habit.

 I had an anticlimactic finish to school. I explored a lot of avenues for myself and invested in what I knew was important to act on in the moment, despite their insignificance in any grander scheme. I had moments all to myself in the hotshop to make and learn from my mistakes at my own pace. I made things for the sake of making. I published my book that I wanted to do for years. I fiddled around more with glaze calc. I produced pots in a way I didn’t know I could. I later produced more pots in different ways that I was afraid I wouldn’t grow towards. 

I left my entire community of craftspeople, mentors, and friends in Richmond and moved back in with my parents with very little gusto to put forward into any kind of big anything. I took a workshop at Penland with fun classmates and a really inspiring teacher, but strained to connect with anyone. I slept poorly, dwelled on what I had lost, what I was losing, and what I was supposed to do with myself. I felt isolated surrounded by wonderful people and I struggled to reconcile my ideals and logical environment with the environment that my brain was processing as my reality.

I spent months between unfinished projects, countless dead-end job searches, and a rapidly declining sense of independence and worth. 

I took up a job that I had fantasized about for years and finally just did it. I was met with incredible support from the faculty, I regained motivations, I planted myself into a new community and did sprout, if even just a little. 

My chronically destroyed lips finally began to act like normal chapped lips again. A solid year of that malady hopefully in the past for good. 

I caught the sickness that is half driven by a virus and half driven by dormant patterns of anxiety and depression. To be honest I’m still fighting it off. 

I reconnected with some of my favorite people that I don’t know that well in Charlotte, and I grew new friendships. On the second day of the new year, I’ve already made the same mistakes I made before, but hopefully as I age more in 2017, I will also grow.

[katextravaganza]

Maybe These Failures Are Just Okay

I’m 22 years old. I have one bill to pay every month. It’s for my student loans- about $300, and I’m having a hard time paying it. I’ve never had a very healthy relationship with money or working (any kind of work). I ignored money because it was such a symbol of my worth, and I binged on work because it was the other symbol that I somehow managed to redeem my net-zero worth. I gave up valuing my studently good looks in the name of self-care, so really I don’t have much to ‘work’ with. That’s problem number one.

My parents are coddling me, and I can’t help but think over and over again that I’m abusing it. The awareness of this paralyzes me. I’m actively engaging in an abusive and self-serving dynamic with my parents. It’s horrifying. Why are they letting me do this to them? Why am I still doing it? How could I ever expect anyone to care for me if this is how I treat them? How do I reconcile that with my self-worth? That’s problem number two.

I know I’m imperfect. I know I’m not a saint. But aren’t those values things to strive for? How do I forgive myself when there hasn’t been an end to the act that needs forgiving? The thing is, I go every day through the process of seeing my actions and forgiving them- I know I can’t move forward without believing I’m worth the time, space, energy, and love despite my wrong-doings, but I’m so stuck in them. (Problem number two-point-one.)

Part of me knows it’s too much time in isolation that keeps me in my own muck. Amy, my short-termed and post-college-crisis therapist, acknowledged the fact that I’m still at a cognitive age to where I need the emotional support and validation of others to thrive. I feel like I need it just to “normalize” which I suppose given my idealistic hopes and goals and dreams, is thriving. I guess that’s because there’s not much of an acceptable middle-ground for me between failing and thriving. There are kinds of failure that I eat up, usually artistic or academic. But when it comes to emotional failures, that of hurting someone or being unable to console a close friend, or failing to be an asset to them because they deserve phenomenal, capable, compassionate, and generous friends- when it comes to these failures I lose my breath, my confidence, my joy. I lose my hope. It’s even harder then to ask for their love, their energy and time. There’s problem number three.

Of course, it’s important for me to learn how to do for myself what I rely on from friends- that overwhelming love and support that doesn’t seem right to give to oneself. Acknowledgments to balance out my horrible acts... because that’s how I’m inevitably going to get through the day and move beyond them.

I’ve graduated college. Four years of learning, engaging, trying new things, building incredible relationships, pushing and questioning my boundaries, standards, and ideals. While I’m still having a hard time coping with the loss of all the support, structure, stimulus, and love that came with the Craft department, it’s a done deal and I need to move on. 

I got a job. No matter that it’s part-time with few hours, and practically an indulgence more than work, and it’s not sustainable enough to be a career path. It was something I wanted to do for a while, and had nothing to do with ceramics or the art world I wanted to be in- I did it. It pays, which was hard for me to get to, and it’s given me a place to task-complete without any other kind of consequence (like how cleaning the house is really just a form of procrastinating). 

I’ve gotten over my fear of public busses. That’s a personal milestone that seems absurd, but has allowed a small but empowering shift with my social anxiety. 

I made new friendships. Even though they still feel so tender and delicate to me, I can’t ignore the fact that I’ve connected with an incredible group of people at CPCC. My insecurities still feed heavily into how I perceive myself in relationship to them, but they’ve seen the Kathleen in me that I’ve lost sight of, and that has made my amorphous transition easier. 

I have a kitten. Well, that’s not an accomplishment on my part at all since I’m not responsible for any of her financial burden, but hey, it’s a nice thing worth mentioning. Because cats are great and I get to snuggle with one. 

And I guess, at the end of the day I have learned a little bit about myself. I re-learned that I need community, and discovered that I’m fairly good at building it no matter where I go. I’ve learned what it feels like to go through loss. I’ve survived with the help of family, friends, a therapist, and a temporary change to my medications (hehe). I know it won’t be easy, but at least it will make more sense the next time it happens. 

With all these things considered, I still have to deal with my demons though. Problems one through three, not to mention every variation.

I’m still afraid of turning into a different form of maladapted- of making some progress, just to have it enable me in other ways to justify my dependance on my parents. I’m afraid of losing the time I have to invest in new communities that can contribute to my long distance goals. I’m afraid my goals are too idealistic to achieve in the first place. I’m afraid of realizing that striving will lead me to burn-out. I’m afraid that I’m already burned-out, with very little to show for it. I’m afraid of losing what little I still have to offer- the few and weak abilities left to accomplish anything at all. I’m afraid my resilience isn’t quantifiably enough to justify asking for help. 

There’s the reality that I don’t have what I wish I did to show, for all the time I’ve spent with such unbelievable freedom. But if that short list of accomplishments is all that I have, it’s a list of accomplishments that I’ll just have to work with. Maybe at the end of the day, I am worth it and okay. 

[katextravaganza]

[katextravaganza]

For those in need of Valentine’s day to be not serious or romantic, here are some ridiculous drawings of myself to help you celebrate it in the cheesiest and most genuinely self- and friend-centric day! Feel free to print any of these out and use them for your own personal valentine’s day cards~

[katextravaganza]

I should have kept the last two messages from this guy. They were something along the lines of 'hey cutie how are you?' and a week or so later, 'so do you always ignore messages from people like this?' I deleted them both though because I thought he’d get the idea that I wasn’t going to reply. But then he sent this. Hopefully it ends with this. 

[katextravaganza]

Don’t mind these feelings- they’re too much already for me to handle

A diary entry, since I still long for these sometimes. I’ve played with the idea of deleting this blog over and over again, but I’m glad I keep it. 

Maybe it’s the influence of hormones, or maybe it’s my sentimentality, but I was musing over my experiences with falling in love, my problems with older men, and a book I once read when I was a preteen. I was probably twelve or thirteen when I read it, and I don’t remember very much at all about it other than the moment where the protagonist realized her feelings for a much older man who she had befriended in the setting of a grey fishing town type world, probably period, and definitely dreary and introspective. I can’t remember if I enjoyed the book or not. I just remember the moment where she looked at his wrinkled hands and knew that she had fallen in love with him, the cynical, older, wiser, and yet incredibly (disturbingly) attractive older widowed man. She was probably only sixteen in the story. I remember reading the book and feeling the same suggestive feelings she did before they were actualized to the reader, but I felt like it was something very wrong, before and after reading the passage. Somehow when the story realized her feelings as romantic (and hinted as sensual), I felt violated and guilty for feeling the same things as her. Maybe I was feeling her angst and her longing, and her own unusual nature of attraction. Somehow I’m still trying to understand why I felt that way upon reading it though… It came back to me today because I had the pleasure of seeing my favorite professor whom I totally forgot I was head over heels for. Imagine that, forgetting you were in love with someone. It made me remember why I tried hard not to think about it-- unreciprocated love definitely warrants angst. But it also made me realize I was even more of a sucker for my own feelings than I thought. There I was cleaning counters and sweeping dust, and all I could think about was his low and quite voice talking to my friends, and how I wish I wasn’t in class so I could be a part of their conversation, even though reality has hardly given me any chances with romance. Over and over again I try to tell myself it’s not some reason intrinsic to me. Yeah I know I’m a little off-kilter, and yes I know I’m not conventionally attractive (since I shaved my head anyways- looking back on older photos I realize I was actually very conventionally attractive- ha), I know I’ve got social anxiety that I really suck at dealing with, I make crude jokes, I laugh too loud, I’m stubborn, opinionated, critical, overly-honest, and cold to the stranger (see the social anxiety part), BUT I also really believe a lot of these could be equally attractive attributes, and I really love some of them too. So of course, then my mind goes to the circumstances- a friend of mine says that Richmond has no worthwhile dating scene. While I do see a lot of people I really wouldn’t want to date, I can’t help but think that’s too much of an overgeneralization. I also think about all of the other places I’ve spent significant amounts of time, and I can’t help but feel the same lack of mutual feelings. Then I wonder if my standards are too high, but that’s not really something I think about when I fall madly in love with people’s personalities. Sometimes I wonder if the people I love are too charismatic and attractive (in so many ways more than just looks) for me, but I really don’t want that to be true. I would like to believe myself to be someone attractive and charismatic, but, but, but…

Anyways, I just felt the need to get some of this off of my chest. I still don’t know where my phobia of dealing with old men comes from, but it is rather odd that I ended up falling in love with someone who could very literally be my grandfather. Lucky for me he’s married and madly in love with his wife. No, really. Lucky for me, because who knows who I would have been if I had been worrying about all of the things that come with an experience gap that drastic.

Oh, life. Nausea, cramps, lovelorn heart, and so much more work to go on my projects before it’s okay to go to bed… THANKS, no, but really, there are so many great things to give thanks for. So thanks…

[katextravaganza]

VMFA Day a few weeks back. We saw the Japanese Tattoo exhibit, which only solidified my desire for large parts of my body to be covered in art. Better start a tattoo fund, because who needs to pay off college loans? HA.

[katextravaganza]

crazy dreams about basements, people flying boats, being late for things, carpooling, family, pep talks, goosebumps, and finally having unrequited love requited

[katextravaganza]

living in a bubble and stepping outside of it every so often. How do we stay decent humans? What a loaded question. 

[katextravaganza]

I’ve started dreaming with actual dialogue. That’s really strange to me because before there were almost never words. It was always just feelings and communicating, but kind of hazily and ambiguously so. Having the words is so exciting! Also, so much more drama. Haha!

[katextravaganza]

OH man I just remembered fragments of my crazy epic dream from last night, and here’s a recap of it:  

There was lots of German, Japanese, quilting, snowy mountains, gift shops, claustrophobic food courts and assigned seating at cushy colorful tables nearby the gift shops, milkshakes, passports, glasses of wine, floor to ceiling windows, cameos of my brother Matthew, red wagons, large rideable cardboard trains, highways, “back massagers” that were clearly those little bullet themed vibrators (collect one from each gift shop along the hike?) people getting locked out from the next levels, international competition involving obstacle course brain twisters (???), my roommates from Japan and their families, visual puns using some kind of iconography that was hilarious once I “got” it, but which make no sense in reality, elementary school children, being held up at gunpoint but not really, antique furniture, ceramic friends talking about mugs, green grass, grumpy owners of property, speed limits, and some questionable romance with the visual pun character.

 It was pretty confusing. It was also pretty great. 

[katextravaganza]

someone ban me from yaoi

shit’s fuckin’ dangerous

also dad, it’s probably for your own good that you stop following this blog. I love you very very much, but I hate to have you know I cuss and read dirty books. Although I’m pretty sure you already knew about the second part. If you follow my portfolio blog here  you won’t have to worry about reading bad words coming from your most lovable daughter’s mouth! 

I mean, I try not to cuss in front of certain folks, but there’s a whole strange psychology that comes with internet and blog use (or practically abuse), and I definitely take part in it. It’s that thing where it’s a simultaneously private and public space, but everyone doesn’t want to have to hide their slightly more expressive and often deviant sides, whatever that entails. (With a little perspective, my deviant side turns out to be pretty dang tame)