Pittoo

Left tumblr for a long time, came back. Just looking to chill and see cool art. He/He/He/He/He/He/He/Him. Pfp is by my good friend, zvarricopter

[pittooer]

Waiting No More

Wait and wait, I wait for the date

I don't have to wait, or be up too late

I wait, I wait, a minute and a day

To be awake for things that yet lay

For the life that waits for me to be

More than one who waits and see

It struggles to sit just beneath the waves

And burst out when the wait decays

Its jaws holding rows of teeth

Who shred through the apathy beneath

And make once more a mind yet restless

To wait no more for a form so listless

[fadinggechoes]

What they don't tell you about having a DND character you love is that you start seeing them in everything. And I mean everything.

That person's name? Wow that's the same one as my DND character!

I watch a video essay on a series I read a few years back? Wow one of the characters is eerily similar to my DND character!

Go to class and learn about how Sand Tiger Sharks exhibit this pretty cool trait? Could be symbolic of my DND character!

ITS ALL MY DND CHARACTER GET OUT OF MY HEAD

[pittooer]

This but x10 for being a DM

[pittooer]

Potted Home

In the corner of a crowded cafeteria, a girl sits alone. Though lunch was already halfway over, she does not eat. A soggy ham sandwich hangs limply in her hands as two boys' conversation occupies her attention.

"I still can't believe how big your house is! It's gotta be as big...no BIGGER, than my dad's car!"

"Thanks, mom and dad had the help working on it day and night to make sure it's gonna be the best ever. They say it'll be tall as a skyscraper one day!"

"Man, I'm so jealous! Mine still only comes up to my waist. But mom says it's gonna be one of the biggest in the neighborhood if I keep watering it every day."

"I'm sure it's gonna be great, don't worry. And hey, you hear about the new kid?"

"What about him?"

"So I found out his is gonna be, like, a studio apartment when it's done. It's barely as big as my cat right now!"

"No way! Dude, how does that happen?"

"He told me his parents didn't know to keep it in sunlight when he was a baby. I mean, I guess they figured it out since he said it's still growing. How the heck are a couple of adults that stupid, though?"

"Beats me. Glad I'm not him. If my mom did that, I might hate her forever!"

"Really? Your own mom? Forever?"

"I mean...no...not really. I love my mom. I guess I'd forgive her after like...ummm...a hundred years!"

"You'd already be dead! Nobody is gonna hate their mom that long, moron."

"Ugh yeah, yeah, you're right. Maybe...eighty years?"

Before they can continue, a school bell's ring brings a sudden end to both their lunch and talk. The pair bids each other farewell before returning to their respective classrooms.

Yet the girl remains. As kids shuffle out of the room, her soggy ham is stuffed uneaten back into her lunchbox. She trudges through her remaining classes far more quietly than usual.

When finally she opens the door to her silent household, she tosses her backpack to the side and quickly makes her way to the kitchen. She knows there will be a fast food bag of one brand or another waiting in the fridge, but it is not her hunger that brings her here.

She pulls a dirty glass out of the overflowing dish pit, as well as a crusty rag from a nearby pile. She uses the tap to soak the rag, then fill the glass to the brim. Taking both in her unsteady hands as best she can, she quietly makes her way to her bedroom.

As she squeezes through her barely opened doorway, her eyes struggle to see in the dimly-lit room. Slowly, her feet step carefully one after another towards a lone pot on the ground. She draws closer, and bends over with the glass in her hands to pour water in until the pot, too, is filled to the brim. Carefully, she carries the pot over to her dresser and shakily places it as close as she can to her window.

With great effort, she manages to balance herself next to the pot. Reaching for her curtains, she pulls them aside and ties them up. Grabbing her crusty, damp rag, she presses it into the window as hard as she can and begins wiping in circles. Though it does more to smear the dirt than to clean it away, a clear spot begins to form.

As she pulls away from the window, the girl smiles hopefully at a faint sliver of sunlight reaching down to the floating soil in her pot.

[pittooer]

As someone who does enjoy reading, I've come to learn I'm not great at learning anything from it.

Like, through the years I've read big, epic fantasies and political dramas with complex storylines with no problem.

But actually learning and retaining information? Awful. I can barely do it at all, even if I enjoy what I read. Makes online classes almost impossible for me, since those have almost exclusively curriculums that force you to learn what you read.

But in-person classes? I'm great, no issues at all. And it makes me a bit sad since I enjoy books, but they're just not effective for learning to me.

Luckily, doesn't affect my writing skills!

[pittooer]

Misery is a fact of life that I've been forced to think on of late. Not just what I've experienced, but that of those beyond me or my own.

The last couple of months have been a difficult time. Helping a friend of mine avoid homelessness meant taking a toll on my own shoulders. While I don't regret extending a hand to help her, it was never going to be easy. She splits a room with me now; one small bedroom that was barely enough for me. As such, a lot of my life has become cramped and difficult, and it did little to ease what troubles were already there.

But what misery I have is not the same my friend's. Being abandoned by your family, and turned on by several "friends" all at the same time is a different type of pain. I don't want to go into all of the darker part of mine nor my friend's life, though. Comparing levels of grief does little good for anyone. However, a chance encounter just the other day has plagued my thoughts and brought this subject back to the forefront of my mind.

To tell the truth, I should not have been where I was at the time. I lost track of my schedule and ended up in an area forty minutes away from home without much I could do. My plans for that day should have been one day later, but I do not regret that mistake. Me and that same friend I mentioned before were wandering the area a bit, choosing to "not waste" our time going there. Sunk cost fallacy at its finest, but it resulted in us happening upon a homeless person with a wheelchair who slept right outside the front door of an urgent care clinic. At the time, we choose to leave them be since it was easy to assume enough people would be harassing them regardless. No need, in our minds, to add to that.

Well it would so happen that roughly an hour or so later, we wandered back to my car to return home. It was a pretty big shock, then, to see now a man in a wheelchair in the middle of the road right next to a busy intersection. Not on the sidewalk, or a divider, or even a crosswalk!

Obviously, this seriously concerned the both of us and we quickly offered help in getting him out of there. It was then he asked for a ride to go somewhere. I obliged, helping him load up his wheelchair and quickly punching the address into google maps. It was only a 10 minute drive, but it feels much longer in retrospect. What conversation I could get was in brief, scattered chunks; I was greatly trying to see what options he had available. Unfortunately, this just proved how limited they truly were.

He introduced himself a "Smiley", but said he "don't do much smilin anymore". I asked if he was the one who was sleeping at the urgent care earlier. He said yes, that he had gotten out of surgery at the nearby hospital to remove his leg the previous night, and that it was the only spot he could find to sleep. From what he said, he had nowhere to go and no insurance to stay in one of the hospital rooms longer than absolutely necessary.

The place he wanted us to take him ended up being a local business near a few houses. He used to live right next door, he said, and he knew the area well. I asked if that meant someone nearby would help give him a place to stay. "No" he said, "nobody".

I offered to let him use my phone to make any calls, hoping this might help. He took me up on the offer, but said it probably wouldn't do any good. Whatever number he typed in, they didn't answer. I asked about leaving a voicemail, but he said it wouldn't matter. He bid us farewell, and rolled off to seemingly find a place to settle for a while.

The rest of the ride home was silent.

This encounter spoke to me heavily. Smiley was likely in his sixties or seventies. No friends, no family to care for him. Disabled and homeless make for a deadly combination.

Smiley could very well be any of us. I dread a society that does not care for its elderly, irregardless of their financial status.

This encounter has left me deeply affected. I said before that comparing misery does little good for anyone, but encountering someone going through such a genuinely bleak time has left me feeling my own troubles to be miniscule. Yes, they are real and do affect me. But life still has a chance. Tomorrow, for me, may very well hold opportunity for good fortunes.

I hope that's true for Smiley, too. Somehow.

[pittooer]

Hello, Tumblr!

Strange to be back after all this time, but here I am. In my ever-endless search for the character art I lack the ability to create (and refusing to use AI) I have returned to you once again. Those pathfinder games need faces, after all! I'm doing these for free, but if I had the money to full-time hire an artist to do all those beloved NPCs then I would save a lot of time.

Thooough...I do think part of me would miss that bit of fun in finding an undiscovered talent with an art style I adore.

But I digress. It is good to be back!