Mists

So, Open Diary has been down for some time, and I have been busy with other things. Rather than recap every little thing, I think this will be a somewhat different entry.

During the time that the site was down, I think we went to the Hack & Slash Christmas show, which turned out not to be terribly Christmas related, but was more of a send-off for Hack and Slash, covering lots of their old material. Normally, that would have been a bummer, but since it was a farewell, it was a nice walk down memory lane. We went to a diner afterwards, and hung out, then Matt and Ryan stayed over, and we exchanged gifts the next morning and made Yule dinner, which was nice. We had slow cooked cider ham, home made macaroni and cheese, dirty rice, zuppa toscana, and salad, with rum balls and bread pudding for dessert. It was a nice dinner.

There was a lot of work getting things together after that, packing up and sending our gifts, and getting packed for our trip to Florida. Megan left on Wednesday, and I had some time to play video games and get my things together in between then and Saturday. At some point, I started playing Rocksmith for a little while, and I think I will try to do that some more, since it might get me playing the guitar again. Still, I did play Skyrim a bit, though I was tired of it at some point and just watched Netflix instead. I filtered out some shows I was not planning to watch, and watched Serenity, to finish off the whole Firefly thing, and my opinion remains the same. It’s okay, but nothing special… and has kind of a downer ending, to boot.

I went to Florida on Saturday, and we hung out, and it was a bit more sedate than normal. We didn’t go out on the boat, since the gulf was choppy, but we went to the beach, and I went swimming, which was fun. We looked for shark teeth, went out to eat a couple of times, had ham for dinner on Christmas eve, played games, opened presents on Christmas, and then flew back in the evening. Jim picked us up at the airport, and he had been busy. He got rid of this big brush that was overgrown in our yard, which was something we had been meaning to do, but since there was a lot of it, we had thought about hiring someone to do it. That was cool. He might put in some bushes by the house, as well, which would be cool, I guess, though it is different from what I had been planning. He also fixed some lights around the house, and that was nice. We spent some time opening presents, bot the ones he got us and the ones that had come in the mail. He opened the stuff we gave him, and it was cool. We called my mom afterwards, since some of the stuff had come from them, and we talked for a while, since the kids were excited about all the gifts they had gotten. We got to bed a bit late, and I was ridiculously tired this morning, since I slept poorly again.

That should cover what happened, but I wanted to talk a bit more about my thoughts and feelings recently. I have been feeling pretty broken down and listless. My St. John’s wort pills ran out, so I have been trying to bridge the gap between when they ran out and when my new shipment arrived by using a tea that has St. John’s wort in it along with some older St. John’s wort pills that had been in heat and shriveled and blackened. I figure they are not as good, but are better than nothing. I’m not entirely sure that they worked, since I had been feeling pretty off, anyway, but I think they helped some (and my new ones have arrived, now). My job has been frustrating, even though it hasn’t been particularly demanding, but it feels like a dead end, and is not something I really want to stay in. Still, though I don’t want to stay here, I don’t actually have a conception of something I would rather be doing. I had, at one time, considered massage as something I was good at and might enjoy, but my hands have developed quite a lot of stiffness and soreness recently, and that seems less like a valid option the worse it gets. The heat in Florida didn’t do very much for that, either, so I’m not sure what it might be. I haven’t been playing the guitar like I used to, though I have been doing a bit more than I had been, but it doesn’t seem like I could really make any kind of career out of it, in any case. I like writing, at least some times, but don’t really know how to break into that. I do still like the idea of studying herbalism, but it’s a lot more work, so I don’t know. I have similar ideas about going back to school to study physics, since I have enjoyed that, but it would take a lot of work, since I don’t have many of the prerequisites for it.

Anyhow, despite feeling somewhat directionless, I have had some glimmerings of hope. While in Florida, I got the idea to start a blog where I would write the stories of a bunch of D&D characters. It’s not marketable, but it would help me refine my writing ability, and let me tell the stories of all of the characters I have made up in my head. I have quite a lot of them, so I think it might prove an interesting diversion, if nothing else.

The gift that Megan’s parents gave me was a lingam stone. That was kind of a surprise. It’s not something that they would characteristically have even have heard about, and Megan’s mom had done a good bit of research into it, which was interesting. It was a bit… odd… when I first opened it, but the thought behind it was very nice. They wanted to help me with my depression (which I guess Megan told them about), and problems sleeping, and thought it would help me find direction and make a new path in life. She didn’t know about the fertility aspects of it, which would carry a different meaning. I also got a lingam necklace, which I have been wearing since. I will make an effort to meditate with it like they suggested, and see if it helps me… like I would very much like it to.

We don’t really have plans for New Year’s… though there are other things coming up. Despite the trip to Florida being fairly low-key, I would still like to just relax a little bit, honestly. There has been a lot of socializing, logistics, and some other stressful things recently, and I would like to just not deal with much of anything for a while.