me, blogs, the rubber menagerie

Hello.

I have kept a blog a few times.
1. Elementary/middle school. That blog was mostly silly jokes or just pages full of the word "meow" repeated several hundred times.
2. The fall of my sophomore year of high school, when I was very alone and very lonely in small town Argentina, trying desperately to figure out what plank in reason broke
3. Blogs were required for my high school English classes in junior and senior years. All those sites are still up if you feel like finding them...

I like blogs. I remember reading and loving people's blogs during their heyday, though that was a little before my time. I was a true child of YouTube, too late for MySpace and Livejournal, and just straight up blogging. The Vlogbrothers, Kristina Horner/5 Awesome Girls, Meekakitty/Nanalew, Charlieissocoollike, ItsWayPastMyBedtime, and their kind of webworld was my whole everything when I discovered them-- though maybe I misremember. I was a really busy kid. Tumblr is a whole other story, and maybe I'll tell you that one someday.

But I like blogs. I like how they're long-form, because looking through Twitter and Instagram makes me want to forget how to read. I like how they're personal, how I don't feel any pressure to post about my Takes, or my accomplishments, or even really my life events, and I can just put my thoughts down for the reading. I appreciate not having to see everything everyone is thinking all the time. A blog, though, is infinitely more public than my journal, which is kind of reserved for the long long mental-illness-y ramblings to which I'm prone.

I also think there's a really pleasant retro feel to the blogosphere now.

I wonder if I'll outgrow social media?* Or maybe if I already have?

I don't see myself leaving YouTube, certainly not in the near future. My friend Solomia put it well, I think, when we were talking the other day, she said (forgive me Solo for paraphrasing) that she likes YouTube because it doesn't "require anything of me." Social media demands your attention, in a way that was engrossing, enthralling, when I was a kid. As I grow up, though, it feels more and more like drinking the last beer I shouldn't've and passing out on the couch; staying in a conversation for far too long, so I'm bored and "mmhmm"-ing my way through the next hour; or trying to walk home after I've been lying in the sun all day-- the steady creep of nausea up my throat. I'm bored, but I can't stop. I feel uncreative because I never spend any time idly living in my own head.

Part of that is the unhealth I've been in. I've been in some state of active depression for the better part of a year right now-- that's right, it started before all of this-- and boy does that illness make it hard to spend time with yourself. I was recently diagnosed with a genetic disorder called Ehlers Danlos syndrome (it's less of a big deal than you think it is) as well, which has thrown just how much my body is also me right at my face.

And the current situation has also kind of ripped away my main thing from me as well. I'm an aerialist-- a trapeze artist primarily. I have done trapeze a total of one time since March 14th, 2020, and that's, um, been hard. I'll write more about how that feels, but suffice it to say it sucks.

But I don't want to dwell in the negative. There are a lot of good things in my life right now, and I'm happy a lot of the time. While I feel the stress and fear that come along with being 19, and the pandemic, and my anxiety disorder, and fears about the future; I also can't let those be the things that swallow me up. So, a List of Things I'm Into Right Now:

1. Painting my nails. Oh my gosh, why didn't anybody tell me I could do art and then wear it on my hands until just about a month ago? I love it.
2. Feist!! I fell in love with her fourth album, Metals (2011) in May of this year and since then I can't stop listening. Literally all of her albums are no-skips for me.*
3. Contortion and handstands: the only circus arts you can do from home (don't come at me with juggling).
4. Bringing back 2005. 
5. Kids clothes. Apparently I wear a size 10-14 in girls clothes still? Kids clothes are cute and also cheap. I'm having fun with that.
6. The Sims 4.
7. Top Chef. I can't wait to make a blog post about only Top Chef, if only to save my friends from my rambling.
8. Singing very loudly with my family in our house.
9. My cats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
10. This menagerie of little rubber figurines I found and bought at Beachy's Bulk Foods in Arthur, IL.

I wonder: are they all sized in proportion to the pig, the lion, the chicken, the bear, the sheep, the cow, the horse, or the baby??? If it's the baby, that's a lot of small ass animals. If it's the cow, I'm seriously concerned about the size of that baby!!!!!

Til soon, blog. Til soon.

*the major ones, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I know blogs are social media, as is YouTube.
*also: Rilo Kiley, Metric (first band I ever loved),  Frances Quinlan, and Lady Gaga.