~BigotedSJW

I must admit, to date I have never dated. I am just too shy.

Even further than that, outside of the occasional teasing compliment, no one has directly expressed romantic interest in me to date. I am not all that embarrassed by it. In fact, I am somewhat proud. One of my life goals is to never exchange bodily fluids, spit or otherwise, with someone I cannot confidently support enough, or at least support myself enough, to avoid both of us needing to work full time.

Per the headline, I have felt compelled to add a further caveat: I will not reciprocate interest in such a relationship, not even to engage in romantic RP, from anyone less than two-thirds my age. I am presently 31. After the age of 33 I might entertain making exceptions for people as young as 22, under very exceptional circumstances, but no younger.

To enforce this, should anything of such an amorous nature comes to pass, I will insist that a trusted third party have photos -- not scans, actual photos -- of picture IDs held in hand with indication of age from both of us. Said third party will be someone tech savvy enough to recognize if anything's been doctored, which is easier to spot in a photo rather than in a scan. I do not need to see whoever's, and until whoever wishes to meet me physically, they do not need to see my picture ID. But said third party will still be in a position respond appropriately should anything go awry.

The reasoning behind adding this caveat to my covenant ring is intensely personal, but it is a personal thing I have become more and more comfortable with the idea of sharing as days pass, unflattering as it is even in light of the first sentence and the first full paragraph of this journal. We shall see.

I've been sleeping in a lot more and feeling much more blase during the day after work.
It's been at least two weeks since I coded as a hobby.
Months since I drew anything.
Who knows how long since I touched anything in my game library.

I'm giving myself one more week to see if I need to take much more drastic measures to motivate my own behind.

Figured my prior journal expired long ago. I have a new, somewhat private place until early 2019. I have been much more participative, as can be seen, but-- this should not be an excuse, but I typically work from about 9 to 5:30pm, and I am home around 6:30pm or later. I still have not figured out how to make the best use of my evenings or how to most effectively wind down. Improving how I wind down will be my focus of this week. I'll report back next Sunday to see how I do, if I do not post something else worthwhile before then.

I was really hoping to get some fan art or another fan coloring in before today. I have been down in Georgia with my parents this past week, so I have felt more free to access places like FurAffinity. Tonight I will be heading back to DC. The room that was loaned to me in DC after my parents moved down to Georgia is of a very conservative church going couple. As someone who is still in many ways a rather conservative church goer, I plan to respect that, as I have been, regardless of whether their internet connection is actually monitored. So, starting tomorrow, my time on here, tumblr, discord, streams, &c will be limited once more, and will remain so until I have my own internet connection that I am paying for, or at least am paying for a room elsewhere. Those in touch with me on steam or Skype are still free to reach out to me. Over the next weeks I plan to make more conscious efforts to reach out to those of you I am connected to over those mediums.

Otherwise, until I am financially independent, I offer my heartfelt thanks for your fellowship and encouragement.

So I best make up for the lack of arts with news: I graduate Thursday. Almost with honors. It will be a function of how well I do on my one and only remaining final exam on Tuesday (ed:opps), but I don't think I'll land above a 3.4 GPA out of 4.0 overall.

After that I should have a whole lot more free time. Assuming I'm not employed soon after that, which I may well be. I have a lengthy technical interview ahead of me to evaluate my ability to program.

Thanks for your engagement, patience, and encouragement. It is each of your interests in interacting with me, not my GPA, that makes me feel valued.

I made a promise here that I'd let you all know when I turn 30. Well, looks like I may not be around on that day, so I'll spill the beans now.

Today is the last day I'll be in my twenties. The fact that there some silly rumour making headlines about signs showing planet X is coming on my birthday is just too precious.

I wish I had at minimum updated my avatar to reflect what Feretta oh so generously created for me by now. I wish I had done many other things before now. I'm sure I'll figure out some way to make up for some of that lack next week.

Maybe I should reevaluate what good I have done under this handle, what harm I may have brought, and how to best move forward. IDK.

I do know this: after several consecutive days of taking my meds consistently and sleeping at consistent hours, things have fallen out of sync on both the meds and the sleep front. Even with no present school or job obligations, it makes achieving what I hoped here hard. Like there's a coloring project I started last week I still have not gotten back to. I don't expect to be around the common chat rooms I tend to hang about as often as I had in the past for the remainder of this week.

We shall see.

I can sit here and waste this moment of privacy away from home to heap guilt upon myself for not following through on planned drawings for @TatorTots, ZekeStar, MeekaRose and SimulatorWave; how it's been three months since I uploaded anything to here... well I just did waste some time doing just that, nevertheless...

It's thanks to the friends I've formed here that I've worked up the nerve to draw and share what I draw at all. But even without my limited output, I must reiterate the special thanks to  Ruzha I made last year. If it were not for her sharing the first several pages of that product of her roleplay with her girlfriend,  Feretta on e621, I may well have never found my way here, and formed the friendships I have now.

Hope those of you stateside had a wonderful thanksgiving. I will continue to endeavor to be worth following here and elsewhere.

They did not fix the six-bits-per-sub-pixel issue. I bet if they took the same panel and put in any other make with the same hardware (but with a different display controller), I'd get all 16 million colors. I'm stuck with 262k, and 64 shades of brightness. At least Acer did not try to make me pay for it.

Nevertheless, it means my unplanned absence will soon come to an end. Depending on how I progress with database homework on Thursday, I hope to get started on an overly ambitious birthday present for the first person I talked to on FA after creating an account here, yet before I started following Feretta again some months later. (I was planning on just adding some lines and coloring, but now it looks to be more involved, requiring that I redo some linework). Between much of Friday and the end of Sunday I will be traveling again, to the beach this time; another lovely bookend to what has been a fantastic birthweek for me. But that also means that even if I do manage to follow through this time, it will likely wind up being a late present.

We shall see.

Something got mixed up, and I did not get the rush shipping on getting my laptop warranty service. It will not arrive in Texas until late Tuesday evening. Adding insult to injury: I kept the laptop until Wednesday night because I had class that night; hoping I'd get it back within a week.

And I leave for New York next week to be with extended family for my birthday. So I may not have a full computer I can use privately to be in the common chatroom until after I get back home.

This sucks.

"..several hours I've been awake." I can't count the number of times I've judged myself like that. The self-flagellation is not helpful. It has not made me any more fruitful, nor has it made me any quicker in getting my day started.

Those of you who have frequented Feretta's nearly daily streams as often as I had may have noticed I have not been around much since classes started. The hope was, by the time school started, I would have gotten "my act together," since I presently have nothing that conflicts schedule-wise with me participating. I'm enrolled in two classes, a total of six credit-hours, and one of those two classes are online; the other meets once a week in the evening. Plus I'm presently not employed. It's not that I feel it's wrong to not participate, it's that I wish to watch and learn as much as I can from Sensei  Feretta and enjoy the particularly peculiar crowd that has grown around her.

I'll still endeavor to set up and clear up a daily to-do list before noon, but if it's late in the afternoon, well...
Not sure why I've determined now to try to not "punish" myself for what may well simply be executive dysfuction, but I'll try to at least join for the final 20 minutes to an hour of Fer's regular streams, or just join for chat around 3pm EST each day if she's not streaming, regardless of how little I've accomplished by that time.

Celebrating the small victories ~PQ

😇
For all my lack of activity here, and requests I asked to do that I left hanging. Well, there are exactly two of those. Won't be around so much today as of having a bad night. We'll see.

Or at least nothing complete and worth submitting. Even if I don't feel like it or don't quite enjoy it, if I want to get into the kinds of software careers I wish to get into (effects and animation, possibly games), I need to keep a good eye and a good hand. Oh and it's been months since I wrote a single line of code. Again, even if the spark I had in my teens is no longer there, there is only one way to get it back, and that's to keep on trucking. In all likelihood they'll never read this (as I am not followed by them and have little reason to be followed), but special thanks to Feretta and Lyunadarsi for bringing a little of that spark back, such that I finally tried to doodle some in the past week.

(writing this from my phone)
And of all odd coincidences... This http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7560318 has me reconsidering the balances in my life. I don't think outright quitting this community is the answer for me, as I tried that before and it did not work out all that well. Odd coincidences are why I have elected to come back and stay over a year ago, after all. Odd coincidences lead me to believe this weekend retreat I signed up for at the last hour was not completely my own plan, even though I would not have signed up had I been fully aware it was during the weekend before finals, odd coincidences that happened during that retreat. Nothing particularly exciting or miraculous, just odd and improbable. But now I have a better, fresher mind with which to study and review. Was planning on joining the common chat room and see how everyone is doing as I studied, but I'll defer engaging in things like that until after my final exams.

Hope to hear from you all again in a few short days, and I aim to have something worth sharing for once.

Not that I have done much... I've been even less consistent in checking journals the past few weeks. I was expecting to get a better grapple on things as of quitting my job. I think it has been two months since I last shared any sketches or doodles. Good news is it looks like I can still pass my programming class despite missing half the homework. But anyways...

I’ll be travelling right after an appointment Friday morning to a place with limited wifi access and cellular reception.. and I’m certain the places I usually hang (tumblr, picarto, here) are blocked over wifi.* I will not be back until Sunday afternoon EST.
^{*It’s a religious retreat, what can I say?}

_{Kind of mean of me, even if there were something about me worth missing as of yet, but I hope I’m missed.}

"Plus the other class nearly got caught up with since resigning my job, the one I was originally more worried about, is also on the knife's edge of failure, should I not finish this paper 23 hours from now."

The paper was a day late, yet I did not get penalized for it. "Very Creative"
"Psychologically and subtly perceptive, this work on race as conversion experience portrayed in these two films, and critiqued, is a masterpiece of social commentary." That paper alone has brought up my overall grade from failing to passing.

Doesn't completely quell my disappointment, as I did not get to a 400 word prompt due last night, and there is a major programming assignment due tonight for my other class that I did not work on yesterday as planned, because I had found out a major portion of the group project for that programming class did not get uploaded to github, and I could not save my work on the library loaner laptop I was working on; said loaner laptop did not recognize my thumbdrive for some strange reason.

And it's been nearly a month since I've drawn anything. So much for being more active here by mid-April.
Still, I have hope I can make it to the end of this semester feeling like I've earned a break, and will feel a whole lot less guilty over what my CBT refers to as self-care.

That verse segment, from Philippians 1:6, was cited in a testimony shared in the young adult worship service I attended this evening.

Given what just happened, it will be my meditation verse for tonight. For those who see me on tumblr, you may know I've been very irregular when it comes to doing that nightly. Well, turns out that's not the only thing that's irregular.

Should I get a valid excuse for an incomplete final grade for my junior-year level programming course as of my medical situation, it will be the third class I've gotten an incomplete as a final grade since I transferred to this university. I am beyond disappointed and disillusioned. I'm just numb. My hope of making room for proper self-care and deeper social interaction by the end of this week may well have been destroyed. Plus the other class nearly got caught up with since resigning my job, the one I was originally more worried about, is also on the knife's edge of failure, should I not finish this paper 23 hours from now.

I forgot lunch today while trying to get that paper together from research I gathered Saturday. I had a plan that spread out working on that paper throughout the week, but by the end of the week I had just caught up with class reading material.

I know this much: Had I kept my job, there would be no possibility of passing.

(literally) thank Christ!
https://inkbunny.net/journalview.php?id=221608
May God's justice be swift upon the troll who masqueraded as a family member, posting photos and all. Doubt she's the kind to appreciate it, but please keep Chelsea in your thoughts and prayers; that she has peace, time for spiritual healing, and space to grieve over her loved one in spite of that prolapsed bloody rectum of a troll.

It's amazing how intractable and defensive people can be, even in the face of such horror; some people would rather blame "bias" or "popular opinion" instead of being seen as eating crow.

If the person in question (I don't care to even recall his handle) is reading this: just make an earnest apology. It's not hard. To do otherwise, to put on a facade of being a victim when the real victim has suffered so much more, is real self-censorship.

Normally I'd avoid sticking my nose into sensitive matters of people I don't know, but I cannot stay silent when I see something like this. I don't care how popular someone is or what connections they may have; I won't even check before responding, even knowing how people might react to my handle. I'll call out such crap for what it is.

Edit: wasted more time sleuthing only to find: some of the gossip about Chelsea's supposed deceptiveness stems from none other than gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria! Of all things to harp on!

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews.....ry,2008-4.html
Yes, me and numbers. And AMD fanboyism. And vanity.
On an unrelated note: I hope to get some cougar/big cat anatomy drawing practice in before work.
Let's see if I follow through on that hope.

T[color=#CE9366]h[color=#CD9476]i[color=#C69294]s [color=#BC8D9D]i[color=#BD90A1]s [color=#BD90A1]a [color=#A88AA2]t[color=#878AB2]e[color=#2870B8]s[color=#0864B7]t of using colors without closing tags, to see if it BBCode here supports nesting tags and doesn't requires closing tags

Should look like this:

This is a test

Test of 12bit (3 hex) color

Maximum charcount

Maximum charco unt

As of last night all 100 pages have at least a doodle on it; there are some pages that don't have a drawing or writing on both sides but still... I will post results (four drawings) to tumblr and to FA tonight.

I was hoping to get that done 2 birthdays ago. In fact I had a note on the back cardboard saying "Goal: Fill Pad Before I turn 2#." First dated drawing is from 19-January-2011; it was the prep thumbnail for this.

Here's to hoping I can fill another 100 pages of a larger sketchpad in three months instead of five years. Just need to do at least 1 doodle a day. I can do this.

Edit: Didn't work out; but I will not be stopped so easily

Further Edit: 2-27: Or maybe I will be, and get behind in classwork too. *sigh*

or is it himself? Never got that clear.
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/7375451/
Not sure if (s)he is still open, but do check him (her?) out
and tip generously if you can

I like to check the stats tab. Though I have yet to be of note.
Strange thing happened: since like last week my cell shading of fighting game Fen Fen and my commission for Ruzha by PinkiePawsh have had the same number of views. Like, exactly the same. For a whole week. If not more than a week.

I almost suspect bots may be at work. Suspicions aside, both pictures have crossed the 100 view threshold.
Means I should make more stuff to upload ^_^ but in all likelihood I'll commission someone to redraw something of mine before I make anything substantial.
I have not forgotten about the pumas I asked if I could draw (thank you for giving me permission), but I think I have more learning to do, given my last collage I threw in my scraps.

Why does it bother me so much? Why do I feel so angry about it? Why do I even care?

I even understand why he did it; I made a tongue-in-cheek comment here, which would be the first comment I ever gave him. I still believe the comment (quoting as best I can remember) was relevant ("What you said about censorship reminded me of...") as was the link ("this video [I kid I kid, mostly]", e.g. Bob Chipman's video on what censorship is not). Maybe I shouldn't try to use humor as a balm toward someone I have not talked to outside of picarto before; Not the best thing to do towards someone whose nerves are raw on a matter, but still...

The reaction feels grossly disproportionate. Maybe hide the comment and send me a warning via a note if it bothers you so much, instead of categorizing me as a harasser after a single comment, leaving me absolutely no avenue for appeal? Because now I do feel picked on and blamed; accused of behavior I'd never engage in.

Maybe it's because I only discovered the block 17 days after the fact, when I tried to add one of his submissions to my favorites. Given his sizable following, it's unlikely anyone would care to point him towards this journal (or he'd care to react if someone did); but getting this off my chest makes me feel a little better.

Sorry for posting yet another journal update instead of art. I aim to fix the lack of artistic output in the very near term.