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jakebeToday was Husboo's 48th birthday! He spent the day playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and for lunch we ordered in from a local place called Pasta Mobsters. In the afternoon, we took a trip over to Illusive Comics so Ratty could buy a couple of gift cards and Husboo could look into getting an Unsanctioned box. Then, off to Buffalo Wild Wings for a chill birthday dinner before an evening showing of Predator: Badlands.
The movie was pretty good! I really love what they're doing with the Predator mythos these days; using the simple premise to tell unusual, engaging sci-fi thrillers. This one featured the Predator as the main character, and the story was almost a bildungsroman about the runt of a clan learning how to become the hunter he wanted to be. I guess it's just accepted that the Alien and Predator universes are the same now, and it allows the former franchise to share in the renaissance energy of the latter. Dek, the Yautja/Predator, takes along an android in a partnership of convenience when he crash-lands on the planet where he means to take an impossible trophy -- the unkillable Kalisk. They both learn how to work with the local ecology instead of against it, and that proves to be how they triumph in the end.
It makes me kind of excited to dig into the local flora of California and start planting (maybe) native herbs or fruiting plants next year. The backyard is going to need quite a bit of work if I'm going to make a go of it, and it'll take some doing to wrangle some order into the garden. I really should make a project plan and schedule if I'm serious about it.
Anywho, that was the birthday. We'll extend the celebration out for a few days so we could reserve a table at a local steakhouse on Friday. Saturday, we have a D&D game and then a holiday party at a new friend's place. It should be a fun time!
We're well and truly in the holidays now, I suppose. I spent over a week at Boss Dog's place, where I slept through a Roll Party, made a pie and several batches of cookies, celebrated Thanksgiving, did our customary Black Friday trip, and came home. This year was a little different because we were down two of our regulars and met a lot of new people, but it was a wonderful time even still. The new folks aren't *completely* new; we had seen them a few times this year and follow each other on social media, that kind of thing. This was the first time we got to actually hang with them, though, and there's always some anxiety wrapped around that. Boss Dog has a number of friends who are highly successful in the world, know how to do a lot of varied, complex things, and see the world a lot differently than I do. I always worry I come across as some brain-dead yokel in company like that, but...I don't need to.
Both Husboo and I dissolved many of the barriers we had erected between us and our community through the trip, and that was just awesome to see/experience. Over the last several years, I've felt myself crossing over into a different stage of life. Even though I still feel like some messed-up little kid, the fact is that I'm 45 years old, a whole grown-ass man. As I shake off the torpor of the last decade or so, I find myself more and more motivated to step into the demands of adulthood. I'm already paying car insurance and rent, that sort of thing -- but I also want to shift my mindset from 'trauma survivor' to 'authentic, loving person'. Not that they're mutually-exclusive, of course. But for me, fear and anxiety make me curl up and brace for pain. It's hard to be open and vulnerable when you're always cringing from anything that gets near you. And that's just...where I've been for a while.
But at the same time, there's no denying that the pain and fear I've held for so long has changed me. It's not something I can expunge, but it IS something I can incorporate in a healthy way. I don't want to shut down anymore, but at the same time I have to recognize the situations that frazzle me, you know? I don't want to make any of it anyone else's problem, but I also need to make space for it and be OK with asking others to make space for it, too. Not everyone will be able to do that, for various reasons, and for the most part I think I can be OK with that. I get that my journey is my own, and that it might not look like anyone else's.
The trip...brought those differences into relief for me in a way that allowed me to see things a bit clearly. The Black Friday trip was a lot more physical than previous ones, and that was mostly the influence of the new folks. I don't think the host minded at all, and...neither did most people, I think. It allowed me to observe how folks behaved sexually with each other without feeling like a giant creep about it, and I think I finally realized just how...little sexual experience I've had in general.
I've been all but celibate for the past...20 years now? after a string of traumatizing experiences in my 20s. I think that my natural predilection is for less sex, especially on Fluoxetine, though -- so maybe it's not the trauma after all. I could be quite happy not ever being sexually intimate with another person ever again. That doesn't mean I don't like cuddling though, and touching and being touched. That's *quite* nice.
And if I could be reasonably confident that fondling didn't *have* to lead to orgasm, I might even be comfortable with that too. I *am* curious, and I would like to explore -- but I want to go at my own pace and direct my own experience. And that's not an unreasonable expectation in one's sexual life.
Tomorrow, I'll continue updating my job tracker and (hopefully) certifying for unemployment these last two weeks. Then I'll focus on writing for the rest of the day.
The movie was pretty good! I really love what they're doing with the Predator mythos these days; using the simple premise to tell unusual, engaging sci-fi thrillers. This one featured the Predator as the main character, and the story was almost a bildungsroman about the runt of a clan learning how to become the hunter he wanted to be. I guess it's just accepted that the Alien and Predator universes are the same now, and it allows the former franchise to share in the renaissance energy of the latter. Dek, the Yautja/Predator, takes along an android in a partnership of convenience when he crash-lands on the planet where he means to take an impossible trophy -- the unkillable Kalisk. They both learn how to work with the local ecology instead of against it, and that proves to be how they triumph in the end.
It makes me kind of excited to dig into the local flora of California and start planting (maybe) native herbs or fruiting plants next year. The backyard is going to need quite a bit of work if I'm going to make a go of it, and it'll take some doing to wrangle some order into the garden. I really should make a project plan and schedule if I'm serious about it.
Anywho, that was the birthday. We'll extend the celebration out for a few days so we could reserve a table at a local steakhouse on Friday. Saturday, we have a D&D game and then a holiday party at a new friend's place. It should be a fun time!
We're well and truly in the holidays now, I suppose. I spent over a week at Boss Dog's place, where I slept through a Roll Party, made a pie and several batches of cookies, celebrated Thanksgiving, did our customary Black Friday trip, and came home. This year was a little different because we were down two of our regulars and met a lot of new people, but it was a wonderful time even still. The new folks aren't *completely* new; we had seen them a few times this year and follow each other on social media, that kind of thing. This was the first time we got to actually hang with them, though, and there's always some anxiety wrapped around that. Boss Dog has a number of friends who are highly successful in the world, know how to do a lot of varied, complex things, and see the world a lot differently than I do. I always worry I come across as some brain-dead yokel in company like that, but...I don't need to.
Both Husboo and I dissolved many of the barriers we had erected between us and our community through the trip, and that was just awesome to see/experience. Over the last several years, I've felt myself crossing over into a different stage of life. Even though I still feel like some messed-up little kid, the fact is that I'm 45 years old, a whole grown-ass man. As I shake off the torpor of the last decade or so, I find myself more and more motivated to step into the demands of adulthood. I'm already paying car insurance and rent, that sort of thing -- but I also want to shift my mindset from 'trauma survivor' to 'authentic, loving person'. Not that they're mutually-exclusive, of course. But for me, fear and anxiety make me curl up and brace for pain. It's hard to be open and vulnerable when you're always cringing from anything that gets near you. And that's just...where I've been for a while.
But at the same time, there's no denying that the pain and fear I've held for so long has changed me. It's not something I can expunge, but it IS something I can incorporate in a healthy way. I don't want to shut down anymore, but at the same time I have to recognize the situations that frazzle me, you know? I don't want to make any of it anyone else's problem, but I also need to make space for it and be OK with asking others to make space for it, too. Not everyone will be able to do that, for various reasons, and for the most part I think I can be OK with that. I get that my journey is my own, and that it might not look like anyone else's.
The trip...brought those differences into relief for me in a way that allowed me to see things a bit clearly. The Black Friday trip was a lot more physical than previous ones, and that was mostly the influence of the new folks. I don't think the host minded at all, and...neither did most people, I think. It allowed me to observe how folks behaved sexually with each other without feeling like a giant creep about it, and I think I finally realized just how...little sexual experience I've had in general.
I've been all but celibate for the past...20 years now? after a string of traumatizing experiences in my 20s. I think that my natural predilection is for less sex, especially on Fluoxetine, though -- so maybe it's not the trauma after all. I could be quite happy not ever being sexually intimate with another person ever again. That doesn't mean I don't like cuddling though, and touching and being touched. That's *quite* nice.
And if I could be reasonably confident that fondling didn't *have* to lead to orgasm, I might even be comfortable with that too. I *am* curious, and I would like to explore -- but I want to go at my own pace and direct my own experience. And that's not an unreasonable expectation in one's sexual life.
Tomorrow, I'll continue updating my job tracker and (hopefully) certifying for unemployment these last two weeks. Then I'll focus on writing for the rest of the day.
