all our lonely kicks are getting harder to find

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*taps microphone* Uh....is this thing still on?

Two years since I last updated this thing, and almost three years since a proper update. Geez. My LJ and Dreamwidth accounts have always been for myself first and foremost, but it's hard to motivate yourself to write an update when you know hardly anyone is going to read it. And this post isn't going to be an update....well, not a proper one anyway. This is just to let you all know that I'm still alive, that I hope it stays that way for a long time to come, and that I really appreciate all of you who have stuck around. ;-)

I really do miss when these places were a lot more active than they are now; even though I never met any of my "friends" in person, I felt a lot more connected with others and the world, and in turn happier and more satisfied, even when I was otherwise going through a pretty bad rough patch. And I understand why they stopped being active -- other sites (Tumblr, Twitter, etc.) are shinier and have lots more people, and LJ has always been clueless on how to run a website. :P

(Speaking of LJ: I haven't signed in to Dreamwidth ever since last year's mass exodus from LJ due to the TOS changes, and I've stuck around on LJ because I thought a lot of the issues being brought up, while certainly well-intentioned, were overblown. So if you're one of those who left, I have no clue what's been going on in your lives for the past year or so. I'm really, really sorry about that.)

But as much as I miss all the activity, I suspect that in the end it's all for the best. For one, it's not nearly as easy to find and meet new people on these newer social media sites as it was on LJ and DW, and those places are designed more to be addictive than anything else (plus, it seems like the world is finally waking up to the fact that social media really isn't the best place to have any sort of quality conversation in the first place).

More importantly, though, is that I'm not nearly the same person I was in 2010, or even in 2015. Of course in many essential ways I still am the same person, still struggling with many of the same things I was then. But the way I look at the world, the things that matter most to me, the things I'm fascinated by, the things that piss me off, all the things I want out of life -- those have changed a lot in the meantime. To the point where, if I ever did reconnect with my close LJ/DW friends, if I could get the opportunity to be open and honest with who I am and what I'm about nowadays....I'm fairly sure they wouldn't want to have anything to do with me, or maybe even wonder how the hell they were friends with me in the first place. Not just because too much time had gone by, but because our interests, opinions, and lives have diverged so greatly that there'd be little chance to make a connection even if we pretended it was the first time we'd ever met. I've already had some of these acquaintanceships end acrimoniously precisely for these reasons, so I'd rather have the rest of them simply fade away instead of ending the same way.

And while we would all like our friendships to be lifelong, more often than not the people in our lives are merely the people we need to have in our lives at that particular point in time. And as both we and them changes, and our interests and their interests change, having these same people in our lives becomes maladaptive and counterproductive. So part of life, it seems, is learning when to let them go and have new people enter our lives.

Lately I've been doing a lot of letting go. For a while now I've been done with fandom as a whole; I realized that I'm not actually the kind of person that "fits in" well with the concept of fandom, that I was faking a lot of the enthusiasm I showed for various TV shows and movies just so I could "fit in," that I'm really just a "casual" at heart, and that I was doing it only as an excuse to meet new people. Sure, I'll appreciate good fanart whenever I see it, and if a fanfic looks especially interesting I might read it, but online fandom spaces have become so toxic and depressing that it's better if I just walk away from it all.

But more importantly, my grandmother (on my mother's side of the family) passed away eight days ago; I no longer have any living grandparents. Also last week, I left a part-time job I had since December 2016. At the end of next month(!) I'll be "letting go" of stagnation by starting a master's degree program, and next year I'll be "letting go" of my twenties by turning THIRTY. ._.,

So....a lot of change has happened recently, and a lot more change is to come. Which makes this summer kind of an "in-between" period -- a good time to rest, recharge, and reflect. Which is why I've finally gotten around to updating this thing after so long.

I've had this LJ account for almost ten years now, and I've used the site regularly for a little over twelve. (The only reason I joined was to access mecha_erotica -- and I lied about my birthdate in order to get in because I was still in high school. XD) I've been on DW for almost eight. I've been on here so long and so consistently (even when I wasn't posting or commenting on anything) that it's felt like a home to me, like it's always been this essential part of my life. But now I think that, once I post a proper update, it's time to "let go" of LJ and DW -- if not entirely, then just as a way to communicate with other people instead of keeping it as a diary of sorts. Being active on these sites -- especially when you feel you don't get much in return -- takes a lot more effort than you'd think, and I'm going to start needing that effort for other things.

I've been putting off a proper update for so long because there's so much worth talking about, and the more time passes the more the stuff worth talking about accumulates. ^_^; Tomorrow I plan on working on it, and I should have it ready by the end of this week. In the meantime, I'd love to reconnect with you all. I'm not active at too many other places, but I definitely encourage you to add me on Facebook if you haven't already -- just please be sure to tell me your LJ/DW username first. You can also email me at james.l.hexter -AT- gmail -DOT- com -- yes, unlike most people these days it seems, I still like using email to communicate. XD

Sorry for the long radio silence, but thanks again for all you who have stuck around -- I truly appreciate it. :-)

Uh.......hi. Been a while since my last (real) post. Sorry about that. ^_^;

So, I've graduated from college. I'd write more about it -- about all the things I'm going to miss about Middlebury and Vermont (and everything I won't miss, because there's plenty of that too), about all the awesome things that happened to me over the past four years, about how much Middlebury became a second home for me whether I liked it or not, about how I changed and how beautiful things were there, etc. But this past week, I've had zero energy to do anything more taxing on my brain than doing some unpacking and spending all day on Tumblr. (Seriously, it's gotten to be a near-addiction at this point. I should probably ease off on it sometime soon. :PPP) I might still write about it eventually, but I have a track record of saying I'll make an entry about something and not actually doing it, and besides, if you've known me long enough I'm sure you could guess what I'd write about anyway. :B

Anyway, not much happened the day before graduation -- just eating at restaurants with my mom and sister (including dinner at American Flatbread), buying some more books for myself, and spending the rest of my time trying to relax alone. I was feeling rather disconnected from everyone else there the last few weeks of the semester, which sucked because I had grown close to lots of different people over the past year and I wanted to see them again and celebrate graduation with them, but at the same time I was extremely tired and wanted nothing more than to go home.

Graduation itself was fine -- not much to write home about, really, except that even though at least have the class was hungover, no serious shenanigans happened. Oh, and as per Middlebury tradition, we all got canes in addition to our diplomas, as a rather symbolic "souvenir," for lack of a better term. (It's a pretty badass cane, if I do say so myself. 8D) This page has some pictures and video of commencement, in case you're curious. And this page has some more information, and is totally worth looking at because of a comment left by "Pissed Off Crip" about some of the transphobic and ableist BS that went down during the ceremony.

And I got a new digital camera as a graduation present! :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD In addition to money and some new clothes, of course. And my parents decided to decorate my bedroom as a surprise when I got home -- complete with balloons and banners and a fake tree. And some of the bunny statuettes around the house were wearing mortarboards too. SERIOUSLY U GUYZ *embarrased.gif* XD

So yeah, that's about all the interesting stuff that's happened lately. I need at least another week to rest and recuperate from everything and just........deal with the fact that I've graduated from college, holy fuck holy shit how did this happen seriously. ._., And the trip to California in mid-June will certainly help. I am going to have to look for a job pretty soon, though, considering I have student loans to pay off (even though the first bill won't come until next March), but the good news is I do have some long-term goals I want to start working toward. I'll write about said goals eventually (and I will get around to it, scout's honor!), but for now, all I'll say is that it's great to finally have some direction in my life right now.

And I'll end this rambling here. Thank you very much for all the well-wishes! And feel free to make this into a party post or whatever, since this journal certainly needs one. ;-)