46/M/The Sea of Chaos Just another guy doing my thing and occasionally sharing those things
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Holding Back
I've held back so much my entire life. Physically, mentally, and emotionally. It has hindered me too much. Even when I break through a boundary, I'm still holding back, like I'm saving for something, or maybe I'm afraid that my best won't be good enough, and it's somehow better to not find out.
That was so stupid and cowardly of me.
No more.
I don't care anymore whether it is good enough or not. I don't care if I fail. I don't care if I look stupid. I don't care about the pain. I am well past the midpoint in my life. If I make it to 70, I will be shocked to my core. At this point, I have to know. I need to know my limits. I need to see what I can do. If I die before I know that, that will be the true failure.
It is time to see who I really am, and what I can really do. Wherever that road leads, so long as I can see it, I can leave this world at peace with myself.
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Political Leanings
I suppose with November fast approaching, politics are damned near impossible to avoid nowadays. I've tried to minimize it popping up on me, but I suppose the only way to avoid it is to not be online. Easier said than done. As to what I think of our presidential candidates, it is not flattering for either one. I am going to vote, and I know who I'm voting for, but I'm going to hate it. I always said voting felt like choosing the lesser of two evils. This is the first time I've REALLY felt that. It's a depressing thought.
For me, I've always felt like my political barometer was left of center. While I am relatively indifferent on a lot of hot button issues, one thing I am very much not indifferent about is how people of different demographics are treated. It is obvious what groups the laws of this country favor, and how people outside of those groups are treated or outright dismissed is disgusting. One thing I will always say is I don't care where you come from, where you live, what your ethnic background is, how much money you have in your bank account, what gods you worship, what you identify as, what you have between your legs, or whose genitals you like having in your mouth. No one is above anyone else, and everyone deserves to be seen and heard. To paraphrase Boondock Saints, do not kill, do not rape, do not steal. These are principles anyone can embrace. Being black doesn't make you a criminal. Being white doesn't make you a racist. Being Latinx doesn't make you a drug dealer or a rapist. Being Asian doesn't make you...whatever bad stereotype comes with that, and being LGBTQ doesn't make you a child molester or groomer. I could go on, but I think I made my point. We are who we choose to be, regardless of where we are on that spectrum.
As I said, that is probably my strongly political viewpoint. I am fiscally conservative. While I think it is admirable wanting to have all these programs for disadvantaged groups, if you don't have the money, you don't have the money. I would give some help to people, but I'm not going to financially screw myself to do it.
Gun rights. I do believe owning guns is perfectly fine. I also believe in regulations to attempt to keep guns from people who shouldn't have them. I understand if someone wants a gun badly enough, they will find a way to get one. Doesn't mean we have to make it as easy as walking into a Wal-Mart and saying "Gun me, please". I also don't understand the need for one person to own a triple-digit number of guns. I know gun collecting is a thing. Historical guns, antiques, things like that. But, when you are like this one guy I've met in the past whose proudest achievement is owning 80 rifles and two dozen handguns...yeah, I'm giving you bombastic side-eye.
Immigration. On one hand, I am all about preventing people from illegally crossing our borders. I mean, if you want to come here, do it the right way. At the same time, I'm not going to forget that these people are exactly that. People. And they deserve to be treated as such. And too many people that cry "illegal alien" need to honest with themselves and admit the "illegal" part isn't the problem with them. Own your bigotry.
The fact that things like climate change, poverty, and Covid are political issues is beyond absurd to me. I mean, come on. You managed to politicize a goddamn pandemic that killed millions. And climate change? You literally see and feel it every day. Sure, maybe you can argue the degree to which we affect it, but to deny its very existence? Well, flat-earthers are a thing, so why am I surprised? To quote the late, great George Carlin; "Some people are really fucking stupid!"
As I said earlier, I could on and on about this. But I won't. It saddens me that people don't vote for the good of the country. We vote because our candidate pisses off people who don't agree with us. We vote because we hope our choice will get rid of people who make us uncomfortable or scared. How many people even still read up on who they vote for? We don't learn who they are, what they believe in, or what their goals are. All so many people care about when they vote is what letter comes after their names. The D or the R.
Ok, I'm done. I still encourage anyone who can vote to do so. I hope, if you do, you take one moment to consider everyone in this country, and not just you and yours. I hope you remember the lessons from the past and take that into consideration. I, for one, would really love to see this country's 250th anniversary.
I want to remember what it means to have pride in our country and ALL of its people.
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D&D Characters 2
Last time, I talked about the first D&D character I ever played. This time, I'll talk about one of my more recent characters.
This one is a Loxodon War Domain Cleric I named Convoy. I pulled from several places of inspiration for him. The name came from the Japanese name for the Transformers character Optimus Prime, one of my favorite fictional characters (a post for another day). Funny thing is that I discovered that "Con Voi" was Vietnamese for elephant, which I thought was wild. I made his height 7'5", and his weight 520 lbs, which were the billed height and weight for Andre the Giant, my all time favorite pro wrestler. Since I rolled a 7 for Charisma, I gave him a very grouchy attitude. I went for a "kind but not nice" approach. He will help and heal his allies without hesitation, but he will give you absolute shit about getting hurt or in trouble in the first place.
Backstory was a simple one, since I was unfamiliar with the game world we were in. He was a military officer and healer in a big war. After the war was finished, he becomes help for hire, and ends up with a crew for special assignments. Didn't bother with family or a complex past. I keep telling myself that I'd read up on that world and flesh him out more at some point.
I rather enjoy playing him. He is actually the first spellcaster I've ever played, so I'm learning a lot more about that. It is also the first time I've been in a party with no human characters. We have a Shifter Barbarian, a Warforged Druid, a Tortle Artificer, and a Halfling Bard (or maybe a Gnome, can't recall). It is certainly an experience.
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Losing People
I understand that as I get older, I am going to lose more people close to me. Loss is something I am certainly no stranger to. In my life, I've lost my parents, my grandparents, my son, my wife, and other close friends and family. The more I lose, the more it hurts. One might think it would be the opposite, but not for me.
Recently, I experienced a new kind of loss. A close friend of mine committed suicide. I never saw it coming. After the initial shock wore off, I started going through every recent interaction I had with him, looking for something that would have hinted at this. I could not think of any moment like that. He was gone, and I will never know why. A hard thing to deal with, but deal with it I must. I cannot stop living life because of this. The world keeps turning. Time marches on.
In the end, this is another reminder that tomorrow is never promised. I will remember all whom I have lost. I will honor their memories the best way I know how.
Gotta keeping on rolling til my time comes to stop.
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Friends
One important aspect of my life has always been trying to keep in touch with friends. For people who matter to me, I will reach out whenever I can. I could be better at it, yes. But I do try. What I am starting to see in my recent years is how many people I reach out to never do the same. I realize it is always me reaching out to them, never the other way.
Now, I adopted a simple rule some years back. Came up with it after I called up a girl I was interested in way too many times with no response before it hit me that I was being ghosted. Turns out I dodged a pretty big bullet there, but that is another story for another time. It made me feel desperate. Made me feel like a borderline stalker. So, I made a rule of three. Three times I'll reach out. Be it phone call, text, email, DM. Whatever the medium, three attempts are made. After I reach out the third time with no response, I go silent. If the person does eventually respond, great. But the longer they take, the more detached I become from them and the less I care. I mentally prepare myself for the likelihood that I will not hear from them again.
Of course, with the ones I really cared about, the ones I did not want to lose, this is hard. But, it does tie in to my last post about letting go. For the people who don't respond, or only ever communicate when I reach out, I am finding my desire to talk to them waning.
I know this is what needs to happen to get to that better place. I know it won't be easy. But, difficult as it may be, it is a necessary step, and one I must take.
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Letting Go
For the last year I've been seeing a therapist. Now this is not the first therapist I've seen. Unfortunately, I have had an unfortunate history with them. Most of the ones I saw were the type that just sat back while I talked. They never really worked for me. I might as well have been talking to myself. After my wife passed away, I was pointed in the direction of a new therapist. For the first time, I found someone who would actually engage with me and bounce thoughts back and forth. He was absolutely instrumental in helping me deal with my grief. I continued to stick with him for awhile up until the end of last year when his practice decided to stop accepting insurance. I was devastated having to walk away from the first helpful therapist I had. However, it would end up being the best thing that could happen.
Fast forward a couple months. I was seeing a psychiatrist (different company) for my medication. When I told her about losing my therapist, she encouraged me to reach out to a therapist within her company, which I did. The woman I ended up with was, for lack of a better term, a godsend. As I said, my old therapist was helpful, and even after I dealt with my loss, I still continued to see him. As I would come to realize, my problem was that I would only see him when I had a pressing issue. He would give me advice on how to deal with that and I might not see him for a few weeks or months. Essentially, I was dealing with symptoms as they appeared. I was not tackling the real problem, the core issue.
My current therapist actually pushed me, challenged me to look deeper, dig harder, and find the source of my issues. Now, I knew I had issues with letting go of things. Embarrassing moments, lost opportunities, old grudges, I held on to a lot. She made me see the degree of how that was negatively impacting me. I held on to so much, and rather than learn from those moments and move past them, I obsessed about ways to fix them, or make them disappear like it never happened. I knew it was impossible in most cases, but I did. Decades-old animosities, missed relationship opportunities, humiliating moments. I tried to imagine any way I could make them...unhappen. It sounds insane, I know. But that is where I was for so long. Too long.
I have finally begun to revisit all those moments. Accept that they happened. Learn what I could from them, and finally let them go. It is a slow and painful process, but with every past event I do this with, it almost feels like a little more weight slides off my shoulders. Every day, I feel a little more free. Letting go not only makes my heart and mind feel lighter, but it also made me see how much of the present moment I was missing because I was so fixated on the past. Finally I could be in the moment, be mindful of what is around me. Let the past be the past. Every day when I wake up, I say those inspirational words from Kung Fu Panda:
"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present"
I am on a long road to be my better self. It will be a long journey, full of dark moments and obstacles, but with every step forward I take, it is a victory. It is progress. I learned that the most important step is not the first step, it is each next step. As long as my mind and will are my own, I will keep moving forward, no matter what comes.
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Direction
Ever since I started blogging here, I have started writing then deleting so many entries. I don't know why exactly. Sometimes it seems like I lose interest while typing it, or it seems less important to get out. I don't know for sure. Nevertheless, I will at least attempt to brain dump here. We shall see what comes of it.
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Last Words
For a long time I've been convinced that my final words would be one of the following:
"Trust me. I know what I'm doing"
"Hey y'all, watch this!"
"VALHALLA!!!!!"
What I'm saying is I'm seeing myself dying doing something absurd. For what it's worth, I hope that isn't the case. It's one of those rare instances that I hope I'm wrong.
I lost my fear of death a long time ago. As they say, there's no point being afraid of the inevitable. But I do think about it. When it will happen, how it will happen, etc. But mostly, I wonder, when it comes, will I be satisfied with what I've done with my time here. If I were to die right now, I would find myself feeling disappointed. There is more I want to do. I know I have not pushed myself to my limits. I feel like there is more to be done. I cannot speak to everything that entails, but I do feel, for lack of a better term, incomplete. My biggest hope is that I find that thing that will make me feel complete. One can hope.
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D&D Characters
Among many of my other geekdoms, I am big fan of RPGs and tabletop games. I played D&D for the first time in college far too many years ago. I started out in 2nd edition, and have played at least one adventure in every future iteration up to 5e. I will say role playing was a challenge. Until then, I had no experience with it. The closest I'd come to that point was the RPG video games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior and the like. Of course this was way different. I never immersed myself in a character completely of my own design. Now, I did know a small amount about the D&D world prior to my first game, having read a number of the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms books. Also read one or two Ravenloft books, which was good since the game was taking place there.
Having just re-read the Dragonlance Chronicles, and having no alignment restrictions for the parts, I opted to play as a Knight of Takhisis who happened to stumble into the Mists. I named him Samhain and made him an evil Paladin. As it was my first character, my actual role-playing was...rough. I found it extremely difficult to stay in character, and I kept inadvertently meta-gaming not realizing that was frowned upon. Our DM, due to it being the end of the semester, decided a few adventures in to go with the "rocks fall, everyone dies" approach to end the campaign. Needless to say, I was pissed. It would be a while before I would do it again, but I did. While I'd love to go more into this character (stats, personality, backstory, etc), it has been way too long since then, so those details are fuzzy. I do want to post more about my other characters and experiences, so hopefully I'll get that opportunity. But those are posts for another day.
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Blurred Lines
Before I start, I will note that this post is not about the Robin Thicke song.
That said, I wanted to recall an experience I had with a friend of mine. This happened several years back. At the time, I was married, though my wife was very sick, and sadly, eventually passed away. Now, I had no intention of sleeping with anyone else at the time, even though she did give me a hall pass to "deal with my urges". Didn't feel right doing that. But, back to the story. I was chatting with one of my high school friends semi-regularly. She was, and still is, married as well. One of the topics we bonded over was, shock of shocks, sex. Not with each other, but just the general topic. We talked about what we've done, what we like, etc. She even posted herself nude on a chat group. She has very nice boobs. And, yes, I get it. Slippery slope and all that. But it was what it was.
Fast forward to the actual passing of my wife. Of course, I was in a very bad way. One of her sisters definitely was not helpful (another story for another day). At the same time, she was having her own issues. So we talked. We consoled each other, and, as you may imagine, we got more...detailed about our desires. We went so far as showing each other more intimate photos and videos of ourselves, and we hit the point where we both voiced our desire for each other. We both realized a line had been crossed after we ended up having phone sex. We simply stopped talking to each other for awhile afterward.
Eventually we did reestablish contact and we talked about everything. We realized how much we let things spiral out of control without even seeing it before it was almost too late. We still keep in touch, but we felt it was best to back off overall. I certainly did not want to ruin her marriage, and I started seeing someone else, so it seemed like the right thing to do.
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Pronouns
I am not ashamed to admit that the whole pronoun thing still throws me a bit. Don't get me wrong, I will happily utilize one's preferred pronouns. Got no problem with that at all. I think I am still getting used to the singular "they/them". It doesn't feel natural to just say it. As my late wife might've said, "It feels weird to my mouthspace". But I am trying. And I hope that people understand that it is an adjustment for many of us, and have patience with us.
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Politics
It is hard to discuss anything political these days. Watched enough YouTube and Tiktok videos to know it's like pulling a pin on a grenade. Everyone is so antagonistic now.
As to my leanings, I would say I am center-left on the spectrum. I am registered as Independent. I have both left and right leaning views, but my strongest views are left leaning. Specifically, I feel very strongly about equality. I don't care about biological sex, gender identity, ethnic background, religious belief, or any other specific identity marker. Everyone should have an equal seat at the table, period.
I could go on and on for a good long while about this, but that isn't why I'm writing this. I bring this up because I realize I simply cannot talk politics anymore. It seems like it is impossible to have an intelligent political debate anymore that does not eventually devolve into insults and name calling. And the sad part to me is most of the subject matter in question is something that has either been debunked multiple times, or would take literally five minutes of research on the appropriate information sites. I see it on both sides. Like now it's like all people care about is pissing off the "other side". I feel like 99% of what I see politically are fueled by people who are either straight-up trolls or, being polite here, willfully ignorant. Doesn't seem to be anything in between anymore. It is sad to me that is what we are. It is what it is, I suppose.
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Been many years since I've actually upkept a blog. Even though I have a Facebook and Instagram account, I have not entered anything worthwhile since before the pandemic. I suppose I can try to give this a shot.
So, about me. I'm a male mid-40s very bisexual gaming and collectible nerd. I enjoy reading and going to the movie theater, though the rising cost of the latter is discouraging me from that. I enjoy the movies and music of the late 1900s. That's about it, at least all you need to know on the surface level.
As to what I might post...well, I've been the brain dumping type, meaning I post whatever tends to fall out of my head. I may post a gaming experience. I may post about a movie or book I like. I may post a sexual experience. I may post pictures, but those will be safe-ish for work. I mean, as SFW as posing action figures in compromising positions is. I mean, I'll post other things, but that may be among them. You can always message me if you want.
That's about it. Guess we will see what happens. I'll be honest, nothing may come of this. This could be my last post, but I certainly hope not.
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All these years and never made a post. I suppose I ought to remedy that.
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