A lot of stuff is happening...

Just an update of where I have been and what's been going on.

Photo by Josefa nDiaz on Unsplash

Crazy Times.

Hello Substack, since we last spoke many things have happened. I ended up putting my cat to sleep, which sucked badly and I am still reeling from that. The next two weeks after I put Ivan to sleep myself and my family had very nasty cases of Covid. I am not sure, but we think this may have been our first time getting it. I was very ill and there are whole days I don’t remember because I was so sick. My car has broken down twice in the past week and the first time I was at the funeral home picking up my cat’s ashes. We fixed the problem, and it was fine for a few days. Then the muffler broke off for a second time on a busy road, causing sparks, and it was dragging on the pavement. It was not a pleasant situation. My car is from 1999 so me and my husband decided it was time to get a new car, so we are in that process right now, and I have a rental. Our old car also has some other issues and isn’t that safe to drive any longer? But until recently that car has been amazing, and it made it past 200k miles. I have a rental right now, and I swear to god to me it feels so futuristic, like a spaceship. I guess cars made in this century are going to run differently than what I’m used to. A lot of other stuff is happening too, but I won’t go into that here. I am OK, my family is OK, and it’s hopefully things that will change with some effort. I also have charged myself with cleaning up the art room that Ivan was sleeping in for a while because he had some accidents.

Cleaning out my art room is something I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, I’m ready to remodel it and make it a cool place for me to paint, write, and work on music. The style is one that doesn’t reflect my current tastes in aesthetics. (Think a lot of pink hearts and dolls everywhere). The current decoration triggers memories of Ivan being ill and dying as well. I am thinking of doing something with inspirations of eco-brutalism and a lot of black and grey. But I do not want to work on it because it makes me overwhelmed and sad being in there, and also I’m busy. I know I need to start it, and I made a step-by-step plan where I would finish it in January. There are a lot of things that need to be thrown away in there, and even before Ivan was in hospice, I was planning to declutter more. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I did a huge declutter in 2020, but I didn’t finish that room.

Also, the furniture is kind of falling apart because it is cheap, and I would like to get nicer things in there that will last longer. I had daydreams of making my own bookshelves and desk, but I lack the skill and tools to do that. The front room of my home has a full wall of bookshelves. Two of which are the expected Billy’s from Ikea, but the extensive middle section is a large wooden bookshelf my father made before I was born. I love this shelf even though it’s getting a little banged up. I grew up with that shelf and I was so happy I got to take it. My father passed away in 2016 and we were quite close, so when I see it, it feels like I have a little piece of him still. That is the beautiful thing about handmade furniture. It has so much character, and you can tailor it to suit your needs. I want a concrete desk, but the logistics of that make it unlikely this dream will come true. Anyway, yeah, the room needs a lot of work, new floors, new furniture and paint, and extensive cleaning. I’m a little nervous to begin, but I need to. My goal for October is to get the trash out of there and break down the desk and bookshelf. Not a lot to ask, but I get intimidated and I’m not in the best shape, so this will be tiring.

I have not gotten as much creative work as usual done. I have been trying to write when I can on that final draft and edit other pieces time allowing. I really want to do Nano this year, I have the perfect project for it. But I am unsure if I will be able to, so maybe I’ll make some flex goals. I have been working on the same YouTube video for three weeks! I hope to finish it before next week, seeing as how I’m on the last step, I think that is possible. It is another New Mutants video, but I have several scripts for non-Marvel topics. I also have a video sitting in limbo, it’s finished but because of the subject, I am a little afraid to release it. I really need a sensitivity person to watch it. I am behind on my Drawloween weekly challenge as well. I only have done the first week.

Interestingly, I need to completely re-write part of the novel I release on here every month because of recent world events. There was a plot point about a potential conflict between Israel and Palestine, which I find inappropriate given the current global situation. I have many thoughts about the Middle East, but I want to fact-check before addressing them in a separate post. I will say this, it’s a humanitarian disaster, and it’s hard to watch all these innocent people die. I believe everyone should be free and children should be safe. But yeah, when I wrote this plot point a long time ago I didn’t know a ton about the situation there except it was tense, so I also kind of found it a little tacky to include it even if there wasn’t a war going on. I was a bit of an edge lord when I originally wrote this story too, so this wasn’t the first thing I needed to change because it came across as tone-deaf.

I have mastered about five songs off the album, which I hope to release in mid-November. But I need to test them in car speakers still. I know that sounds weird but sometimes things can sound ok multiple places and then sound like shit on car speakers :3. I am planning to buy a new electric guitar soon, and I have my heart set on a white Fender. I know it’s not the best guitar ever, but it should be fine for my purposes. To my surprise, I have been considering trying to play some live shows if possible. I don’t know if I actually have the balls to do so, but I’m at least considering it. The main issue I think is that my equipment is not the best, mostly I’m speaking of my laptop here. A common theme in my life is having old stuff that works just well enough. My laptop is a MacBook Pro from 2012. I had a newer one but my cat knocked it off a tall shelf and it was dead to the world after the fall. So I don’t think equipment-wise I am ready yet to play live.

TWO DAYS LATER—>

So I am coming back to this draft now, and a lot has happened. Today we bought a new car, and it is so beautiful and clean and new. I feel so grateful and blessed that we could afford something new and nice. We found out our credit scores are apparently so high, like crazy high. But if I think about it, we don’t ever pay anything late and we pay off our credit card completely every month. (We mostly use it for airline miles for a trip we plan to take next year with my family.) So I guess this all was a pleasant surprise. I have realized over the past few days that I am really lucky even though a lot is stressful at the moment. I think I have to have times like this every so often to remain grounded and also know how privileged I am.

Also, my cat Mozart sprained his foot, and now we have to give him pain pills. He probably sprained it because he is too fat, I mean he is really enormous. He is almost 21 pounds. Because of his food aggression issues, we have put him on Prozac to address the problem before considering another diet. I don’t want him to get diabetes, or worse, he is only six years old.

Another thing is I am waiting to see if I can get decent financial aid for going back to school. I am planning to finish an English degree. (Sorry if I already talked about this before, I can’t remember if I’ve talked about this yet on Substack!) I am nervous about school, but also kind of excited. I am planning on also taking some classes in programming languages I have not studied before, like Java Script. I am thinking of trying a few UX classes as well. My goal is to get a job writing or be more marketable as a freelancer. I am working on a few technical writing projects, but because I have been so busy, they are going at a snail’s pace.

Well, that’s about it for right now. Hopefully, there will be more regular updates from now on here! I hope you are all doing well and the world isn’t getting you too down.

-Aisling