Lots of stuff to gab about. Let’s start with the big one.

No thanks, I’ll just take the check

Got my check, finally.

Early this morning (okay…. ten minutes before 11 am…. I overslept) I called the 1-866 (line 1-800, but hipper) line for Social Services and told them my check had no materialized over the weekend and so we had to do the whole lost or stolen check tango. The dude on the phone, who thankfully spoke very clear English (I get socially anxious when I have to interpret accents in realtime) told me that he could start the process himself (and he did), but I had to come in to the office to sign a form and only then would they print the check for me.

Most parenthetical paragraph EVER! (w00t!)

This meant that my plan to get Joe to drop me off there on the way to work was no longer feasible. I would have arrived at like 3:45 pm and they close at 4 pm and I doubt they print checks that fast.

So I had to go knock on Joe’s door and ask him to drive me there like, soon. We got there at around 1:30 pm, and I went in to get things done. I ascertained that the check would indeed be available today, but not till 3 pm. So I went out to the parking lot and told Joe and Julian, who were waiting patiently, that there was no point in them hanging around. I would get home on my own. It’s only like, six blocks total.

And that is what happened. Got my check after 3, went to Money Mart to cash it, stopped off at the little convenience store in the mini-mall to get a few things, then got home around 4 pm.

Where did the sun go?

This was all accomplishes against a background of bleak depression. For some reason, the news that getting my check would be more complicated than I thought was just the trigger to get my mood to collapse like a melting ice sculpture. Never know which snowflake will start the avalanche, I guess.

Notice this frozen water theme I am developing here? It’s not repetition, it’s literature.

I am deliberately not trying to figure out what it “means” or why it happened or any of that bullshit. That crap is just mindless mental masturbation disguised as self-analysis. Why should it mean anything? Maybe it’s just random flux in my brain chemicals. Maybe it was the product of a psychological process so deep that it could only be described in grunts. Maybe it was just that I hadn’t had my psych meds yet. Who the fuck knows.

What is important is that I felt like crap, but I did the right thing anyhow. I did not let the fluctuations of my unstable mood keep me from getting things done. I am sick of being the captive of this stupid brain flux. I am going to develop character even if it kills me.

It could happen!

It’s not just A killing, it’s….

I was bored with the anime series I decided to watch after finishing episode 9 of Bones, so I checked my instant queue and saw that I had added critical darling The Killing at some point.

So I gave the premiere episode/pilot a shot.

It seems potentially interesting. I like the main character, the female detective. There is something extremely West Coast about her, which is appropriate as the show is set in Seattle. (I wonder if that means it was shot here?)

She just really seems like someone I might meet around her, and she has a quiet intensity about her that speaks to me, as well as a deep focus on what she is doing.

The show takes a broad view of telling murder stories. It shows not just the detectives but the victims as well, and plot threads started (from the audience’s point of view) independently from one another end up interweaving.

That explains why the critics love it. They go nuts for that kind of stuff.

The tone is very bleak, though, even to the point of doing that thing where the color pallet is shifted towards the darker tones, making it look like the sun never shines in Seattle.

Hopefully, they will get over that. CSI : NY tried that shit and it just made the show unrealistically unpleasant to watch. Sure, Seattle is rainy, but it doesn’t exist in constant low clouds and near-night.

Still, it’s just the pilot. The rules are different for pilots because they are meant to sell the show, so they have to be jam=packed with everything that is good about it.

I will reserve judgment till I watch an actual episode or two.

In darkest night…..

My mood is often dark lately. But an entirely new breed of dark than before. This is not the despairing dark of a locked-off soul. I feel like I can use my dark moods now. I can use their intensity and energy to bridge the gap between wanting to do something and doing it. I feel like I don’t have to lock everything away any more. I can let some of the darkness out and the world completely fails to end.

The struggle is far from over, of course. I am still nowhere near my goal of being as in sync with the world as I want to be. But I grow stronger every day, and with strength comes so much more. I am on the way to harnessing my emotions instead of ignoring and suppressing them, and that has to be way healthier.

I have such enormous energies within me, just looking for a use. The fires of creation burn bright within me, and a lot of my suffering comes from all the pain and effort of keeping my light under that bushel. My destiny lays, as always, with growing strong enough to use the strength I already have.

Someday I will walk confidently into the sunshine and never look back.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.