06-18-03 @ 7:16 am EDT

No specific title, because this is no specific entry. Just junk.

A while back I printed out the totality of Skew as it was then. I copied and pasted and printed it from the Diaryland version so it would have that cool Tempus Sans ITC font, but...well...now I'm wondering if I should print it all out again. >_< Because there are just some LITTLE things about that printout that get to me. Main thing being that Diaryland separates paragraphs using the paragraph tag, not the "br" tag, so when I have lots of spaces after a paragraph, it recognizes and displays only one. I hate having my pages display incorrectly! I've been meaning to go through ALL the entries on the Writing.com version of Skew, compare them to the Diaryland pages, and update accordingly, replacing some paragraph tags with br tags, but haven't yet. Plus I'd still need to reprint certain pages, and since I used the backs of the pages, some might need extra reprinting...*sigh* I'm so anal. PLUS, I've been wondering if I should completely revamp my dream journal here to reflect the organization at the DJ version. The DJ version has over 700 entries, but they're all very nicely sorted--one dream per entry. The Writing.com version is all lumped together and junky and not even proofread. (There are bad typos in it, yes.) This would entail either DELETING all the entries as they are now and reposting everything from scratch, or else deleting the content of all entries and replacing it with proper content and retitling the entries as fits. (Would Writing.com even allow this?--for all I know they have imposed daily limits on journal entries without telling us, because so far nobody has bumped up against those limits--remember when *I* was the first to find out about the new Upgraded limits, because I was the only one they then affected?) The thing is, EITHER move would mess up some links I have in Skew, when I refer to those dreams. I would then have to EDIT entries in Skew to reflect these changes. And since I HATE how the system currently changes the original posting date when you edit your entries here, I'd have to add an edit to each edited entry to reflect THAT fact, as well. ("This entry was originally posted bla bla bla.") I HATE BEING SO ANAL! But I want my dream journal to be nicer, and I want Skew to be tidy too. It's too bad links can't update themselves... >_<

What's kept me from doing all this? Well, besides the tedium that would be involved, it's the necessary reprinting of Skew, that's what.

If I were to reprint it anyway, with an easier-to-read font (Tempus Sans ITC is nice, but...well...not the most legible in the world) and such, that would give me an excuse to go through and edit old entries to reflect new changes in links bla bla bla. You can tell that I HATE editing old entries because to me, they are set in stone. I've even considered abandoning the whole "Best of Skew" thing because of all the back-editing it requires. *sigh!*

I know this would be an incredible waste of paper and ink, based on what happened last time I printed it all out...I so hate wasting. :( But I hate imperfection. I really want to finally have decent printouts of Skew--one little booklet for each month. I have a page hole puncher and little metal clasps and everything.

I just need to make up my mind if it's worth all the damn trouble.

I do not like this. The NMO situation. Ma finally got my old e-mail account back and...I got 400 F**KING SPAM MESSAGES!! I thought they were bouncing my mail BACK, not holding it for me! GAWD! Not a single legitimate e-mail among them...her own account still seems kind of wonky though, and I had to go in and fix mine because she had HER name on it. Gah. But anyway, she didn't bring up the "200 hour" thing and it's still very much bothering me. I've been logging on using the "1" account ever since the guy set it up but right when I tried to log on a few moments ago, it told me the same thing it had the last time it acted up--check your username or password. Great. I figured the allotted hours had been used up and I would have to wait until a few hours later to call the asswipes and demand a fix. Just for the hell of it I removed the "1" to use our old account name though, and...it logged me on without a hitch. ???? Have they then reset the "1" accounts or something? Are we going to be charged TRIPLE? I know for a FACT that I could never be online over 400 hours a month (the time allotted by the phone company--NMO USED to be unlimited, but with this 200 hours thing, I have no clue if they mean that's all we get or what!), so I'm beyond confused. They said they'd reset the "1" accounts at the END of the month...yet we got that e-mail yesterday, and today is only June 18th. What is up with these idiots? I'm freaking out that I'm costing us a fortune and I'll be kicked off at any time. (This limit thing WOULD explain why they're always logging me off! I was on not even TWO HOURS earlier and they kicked me off, RIGHT AS I WAS POSTING! Not even TWO LOUSY HOURS online! It used to be THREE hours or more. Asswipes...)

So I'm very confused. I realize none of that probably made sense to anyone; I don't get it either. If these dipshits would just INFORM their users AHEAD of time of changes and whatnot, we could be spared much trouble. I hate it when people don't tell you the whole story. They should be HURT.

I won a book at eBay! Hooray! I just don't seem to have luck winning things there lately. :/ One thing I bid on was...wait a minute...did I already go over this? Well, if I didn't, it was a book on Egyptian mythology. The starting bid was $9.99 and the reserve price was of course unlisted, but the "buy it now" price was $25. The seller claimed the book's retail price was like $39.95. I think there was already a bid on it but I put in a maximum bid of $17, I think, because I'd rather buy it lower than the "buy it now" price. I was the high bidder, but the reserve was NOT YET MET! Well, how high WAS that reserve? Why have a starting bid as low as $9.99 if you aren't willing to SELL IT at around that price? For God's sake, was the reserve the same as the buy it now price? What would the point of the starting bid being $9.99 be, then? I checked it out at Amazon, BTW, before bidding and it retailed there for about $25! So much for this alleged retail of FORTY DOLLARS! I could probably buy the damn thing at Amazon CHEAPER than what THIS schmuck was offering! So I said screw it; if he wasn't willing to hold at least CLOSE to his starting bid, then I didn't want it. If he wants to sell the book so damn badly he'll drop the reserve price so it's at least REASONABLE. Last I knew he had not relisted it. Serves him right. Maybe it's not the same edition or something, which might explain the retail price differences, but I don't care for editions, I just care for readability. Dumbass can keep his book if he's so reluctant to part with it for a reasonable price.

I tried bidding on two PTSD books but was outbid...*sigh* That person REALLY wanted those books. Well, at least I drove the price up on them...yes, I'm petty...

And I got the Woodland Indians one, though somebody just HAD to bid on it and jack the price up...yeah, I'm a bidding hypocrite. Next up is another copy of one of the PTSD books offered...and somebody has bid on it! Sheesh. I'm also interested in a BPD book and something else...ritual abuse, I think. Abuse books are INCREDIBLY popular so I'll probably lose out on that one. Who knows, who cares, bla bla. You know I've been wanting a copy of the DSM-IV (now in some revised edition, I dunno the name) for ages and I can never get one because EVERY time one comes up at eBay, it has a ZILLION bids on it? Why do so many people want that thing??

I've been wanting to write a letter to respond to someone else's journal entries but I just can't stop procrastinating. :/ I won't give the name, though they'll know who they are. I'll try to keep this relatively shorter than I was planning since I've already blathered so much.

Fact in fiction: In an earlier entry I wrote about how I feel readers will find out I'm a fraud if my fiction isn't "authentic" enough. Why is this? Why do some writers feel the need to get every fact right, even when they're writing fantasy and when most readers wouldn't know what's wrong, anyway? I think it's primarily a self-esteem issue, at least in my case. I would so HATE to have somebody call my bluff! In fantasy, you can obviously make up many of the things you don't know about; but if it's based on fact, or on somewhere real (like Manitou Island being based on Mackinac Island and the Ojibwa Indians, or the fictional Cheboygan that appears in the D4D stories), you ARE expected to get SOME things right. If you have to make up so much that it's obvious you haven't studied what you're writing about, readers familiar with the place (even if there are few or none!) can call you on it, and that calls your writing into doubt. I've read a few things by Stephen King and I'm always amazed by his attention to detail--it makes it all so real, even when it isn't. I'm no Stephen King, but because I don't know everything about what I write, I do feel lazy (and to an extent, I am), and hate the thought of somebody seeing through me. Hence such huge disclaimers on Minot and such...a couple of people who really DO know Minot commented on it before!! (*gah*) They didn't criticize me, but I really, really hated the thought of them reading it through...and seeing how little I really know about my writing...

Class reunions: I will never attend one. Ever. Even if they have them, even if I'm invited, they will not see me there. I doubt anyone will even ask, "Whatever happened to her...?" Because I never stood out enough, or made an impression, that would have gotten me noticed. Only the small handful of people I regularly hung out with might notice me gone, but who's to say they will even be there. I parted on bad terms with many of them anyway. I was never popular or well known so I'm not going. I don't need to revisit that part of my life. Despite what my "Seventeen" entries sound like, I did not enjoy high school; 1995 was a very lonely year, near the end.

About the friend who pushed one away rather than expose them to a bad lifestyle...this sounds so familiar it hurts. It reminds me of what I went through with Mya. The situation in this case was reversed, and didn't take place in school; she had already moved far away and by then we were only in contact via snail-mail. But it still hurt so much. To this day I still count Mya as the only best friend I ever had who did not end up stabbing me in the back. I can count the ways all the rest badly hurt me, betrayed my trust, broke their promises...some, like Eric, I am still angry with and might never forgive; others, like Jessie, I have sadly forgiven; and still others, like Desirae, I have forgiven, yet can never trust again. None of them I have become close to again, either. Once someone betrays my trust badly enough, even if I eventually forgive them, I don't usually let them back into my life. It's not a big loss for them though, since they usually have other friends to rely on anyway. Else they wouldn't have broken my trust in the first place.

But Mya did not do that. We just...drifted apart. When we wrote, I tried to keep up the spirit of what we used to do, have fun together through our characters. But as time went on, she changed, and I didn't. My letters were still about Damien and Chernobyl and Amy and goofy voices and such...her letters became about sex, boyfriends, and alcohol. I was grieved to see the path she was taking, but I did not want to judge her, so I commented little on what she said other than to advise her to be careful. I guess she felt somewhat the same way about what I wrote to her--it probably carried little meaning for her anymore--so she commented on IT little, and just wrote about what she knew. It got to the point where we were writing AT each other, rather than TO each other...I got the feeling she did not read a word of my letters, and I did not understand a word of hers. We were just too foreign to each other.

And so, even though it hurt me like nothing else, I broke off the friendship. I believe I did tell her that I still cared about her, and that she had not hurt me; but we just didn't have anything in common anymore, and I didn't want to hold her back from her new life, because it had so little to do with mine. I wished her well, thanked her for being my friend, and stopped writing.

I didn't hear back until she sent me a letter to tell me she was getting married. I think we spoke on the phone, too. She wanted to know if I was mad at her. Of course not, I said. It turned out I could not make it to her wedding, but she didn't seem upset; only sad. She didn't sound at all like the bubbly, funny Mya I'd known in school and on our visits together. She sounded tired and sad and...I can't think of the right word. "Out of it" isn't it, as that implies she was drunk or stoned when she wasn't. Neither do I feel she was regretful of her new life. She just didn't have the spirit she had before. That broke my heart, to hear her talk that way, and to receive her new letters when we again tried to write. Gone was the cheerful silly person from junior high, and even the out-of-control person from shortly before. Now, everything was about surviving--moving into a new place, settling down with her husband, getting a job. I asked if she was online and she gave me an e-mail address; I wrote to her there, and tried to be cheerful and funny, to evoke the old days. Her responses were always very short and humorless. I asked her if she had much time to reply or read at that e-mail address and she told me it was her husband's work address.

That turned me off immediately. I sensed I was bothering her with my longwinded chatty e-mails which she barely had time to respond to. I stopped writing...I hope she understood, on some level. I don't think I even told her why. It wasn't personal, again. It was just that again I sensed we were not the people we used to be--she moved on, while I stayed stuck behind--and our priorities were nowhere near the same. I literally can't understand her world, and by now she's probably forgotten what mine is like. I could not bear the thought of imposing on her with her new life. I would have just held her back. So I let her go, yet again. I have not heard back from her since, and I do not know what became of her.

While digging upstairs I found a couple of old letters from her last known address, but quickly tucked them away again without reading them. I couldn't handle seeing them again. I can't even bear the thought of peering through them to see if they contain the old e-mail address, or of attempting to send a snail-mail to the address on the envelopes. What if she's no longer there? I will then know for a fact that I have truly lost touch with her, forever. Worse yet, what if she IS still there? What would I even say to her, by now? I know I could never read what she might send back...I wasn't angry with her, but she has every right to be angry with me...

All I can do is regret that we changed so much--that she changed, that I didn't, who knows which is worse--and hope that she understands why I did what I did.

Losing touch with Mya is one of the biggest things I ever regret doing, but I also feel it was just necessary. I could never face her now. I'm too ashamed of what a lousy friend I turned out to be, when she was the best real-life friend I ever had. I SHOULD have been there for her, just kept writing to her, but I couldn't understand her anymore...and how good of a friend can you be when you can't even understand each other? :*(

Some days I have hopes that she or somebody else I've long lost touch with will happen across my journal, recognize me or themselves, and contact me...then I immediately shun such thoughts. If that happened, it would probably be DISASTROUS! For all I know the people I knew in HS are not online and do not know of my online existence...nor even wonder where I am, much less remember me...and it's probably best that it remain that way...

I also read about self-injuring. I could not believe it when I first read it. I had no idea. I have never burned myself, and never gotten drunk...I could never do either one of those things. As dumb as this sounds, I just don't have the guts. But I THINK I know how much pain it takes to want to hurt yourself in that way...and my heart just ached. Nobody should ever have to feel that kind of pain, the kind that makes you want to hurt yourself just because it's easier to deal with, or you feel you deserve it, or whatever. The reason doesn't matter, and I won't impose my own reasons on somebody else; we're all different. But the pain is pretty much the same, I think. And I hate that feeling. I hate that others feel it. I had no idea, until I read that entry. I'm almost crying now because I hate that somebody else I know and like felt that way. Here I am always talking about it in my own journal, and I had no clue they likely understand it themselves. I'm very sorry that it hurt so much, but if it helps in any way, I know that feeling too. :*(

There go my tears...time to move on. The last thing I want to comment on was...my own story.

I wasn't even aware a promise had been made to read the whole thing; and if THIS helps, I haven't a clue how everybody who does read it reads it so fast--the entire thing in one day? Remember that I myself can only proof about 1000 words at a sitting...and it took a week to write one part each. So not being able to read the entire thing at once is NOT a bad thing. I think if I read more than two or three chapters a day, even if I had not written the damn thing and already knew how it went, I would go batty from lack of attention span. ^_^ How fast some people read it always impresses me because I know I could never read it that fast without dying of boredom.

While I DON'T like that the beginning of it may be boring and hard to get into, I DO find it interesting that the story picks up on the Island. Very intriguing; I never even noticed. (Some of the earlier parts, though, are what I deem the worst chapters...which one was it? I think it was Part 5 that I officially dubbed "Boring Part Number 1." Ugh.) Getting into a story is a big difficulty of mine, and is why I don't write many short stories, since the buildup goes on so long. (Still stuck on Trench Rats.) I sense that is why it drags at first. I'm glad it picks up, though I'm going to have to think over ways to make the intro less draggy...as that's where the writer keeps or loses the reader's attention. I'm not up for editing the thing at this point in time as I'm still far too close to it, but what suggestions I've gotten on it so far will definitely help whenever and if ever I should choose to do that.

(If I went after it now I believe I would drive myself insane. O_o )

And now misc. little things.

Fooey. My item in the Fantasy newsletter was just that dumb hand drawing of mine. :( I really wish it had been some writing of mine instead. The images didn't even get any credit as only the item numbers were given; they weren't linked to. I think there was some misunderstanding on the part of the editor; they COULD have been linked to, and saved space in the newsletter, by using just the bitem links or item links; then the creators would have gotten credit in the newsletter, and the readers could have simply clicked on them from there. The "image" tag is for use usually only by the creator themselves, and wouldn't have worked in the newsletter anyway. Images CAN be linked to the same as statics, without having to display on the page. Maybe I misunderstood what was said in the letter, but I'm not sure if the editor knew this or not. Anyway, I was actually going to delete that image long ago but last I knew Pallas Athene had it linked in her links journal and that was the only reason I kept it and a couple of my poems, which I otherwise would have gotten rid of long ago. Just something about my ego... :/ I really would have rather had a piece of writing of mine in there instead, though. I don't even like that image very much; it's from high school, and is low quality. I've drawn so much better. Plus images do not get much attention around here (my last featured image, a snapshot of Lake Huron that even *I* thought was not very good compared to some of my other pics, didn't get any ratings from being in the newsletter, that I can recall)...and I don't care for much feedback on them by now anyway. I used to have tons more but they just seemed to be fodder for hate raters to ding, so I deleted 'em. I had slews of Mackinac Island pics that nobody even noticed. o_O Bla bla, I sound like I'm whining when I'm not. Except to say I wish it had been a story instead.

Anyway, what else? I thought I had ONE more thing. :/ Drat. Crapness. I KNOW I had another thing but I don't remember it! I hate this. I feel it concerned a guy, but...UGH!! DAMNIT! I bet I'll remember it right after I post this, too!

I guess I'll have to cut myself off and post it another time. Grrr. >:/ Sorry about that...tar.