quadruplify: John Watson (from BBC's Sherlock) standing in Buckingham Palace ([Sherlock] John - standing)


*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 [livejournal.com profile] 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. :-)
quadruplify: Matt Berninger (lead singer of The National) with forehead on microphone, eyes closed ([Music] The National - microphone)
••• First of all, THANK YOU SO MUCH for all the well wishes you sent my way since my last entry, both here and on Facebook. It was a tough time for all of us, so all your comments really helped, and I appreciate that.

Here's what's happened since then... )

••• The last month and a half has been rough on me, and not just because of the stuff I just mentioned. I've gotten into a habit of going to bed and getting up later than I feel comfortable doing, sometimes to the point I'm having "breakfast" at 3 in the afternoon. I know there are tons of people out there with worse sleeping schedules, but it's really thrown me off, to the point where I'm sorely tempted just to stay in bed all day for days on end. (I haven't actually done that, thankfully.)

In which wangst and self-loathing make a triumphant comeback! =_= )

••• And then there's the psoriasis as well, which hasn't been getting worse, but hasn't been getting better either. Last weekend I started taking soriatane, which should help the light treatments be more effective. It won't kick in for a couple of months, and I have to go for regular blood tests because oral medications for psoriasis are pretty strong and could do some damage if you're not careful, but here's hoping it works. :P

All right, enough depressing stuff. Here's some of the better news:

••• The Low concert was absolutely excellent! :D Unfortunately, K. had to cancel on me because she had to get really fucking sick that afternoon arrrrrrrggggghhh. >_<; Stupidly, I thought we could salvage this by having her come later, because I really really wanted her to show up (it's just no fun going to a concert all on your lonesome, no?), but right when I got there she texted me saying she had thrown up for the umpteenth time, so I told her it would be a good idea to stay at home and focus on getting better. So yeah, the concert would've been better if I wasn't alone, but I had a good time all the same. ^_^;

(Afterward K. told me she wanted to make it up to me by taking me to another concert; I suggested Explosions in the Sky playing at Toad's Place on August 9. I was hoping we'd get to talk about whether or not it'd be a good idea...but she went and already bought the tickets. So I guess that's a "yes," then! :D)

The opening act was Mike Doughty, who used to be the lead singer for a band called Soul Coughing back in the 90s. I've heard of him before, but I never really got into his music, and after seeing him perform I don't plan on it anytime soon. It's not like I didn't like his music, far from it actually -- he was pretty funny and had great stage presence (considering it was just him with a guitar and someone else with a drum kit), and his songs were well-written and catchy. It's just that it was pretty standard indie guitar rock, and nothing really stood out at me. I did like his performance of "Looking at the World From the Bottom of a Well," though, which was the song I listened to when I first heard of him.

I expected a phenomenal performance from Low because they're one of my all-time favorite bands, and they didn't disappoint. They played with the lights down very low, and against a backdrop of vintage film footage of airplanes, nature, cityscapes, acrobats, and the like, which somehow suited the music well no matter what kind it was. And Alan Sparhawk's guitar playing was really good, especially in how he incorporated feedback and reverb to make something beautiful. Just...wow. I'm pretty bad at explaining why it was so good without sounding awkward or like a weirdo, so I've linked some YouTube videos of the concert below to give you an idea. (And someone uploaded audio from two other concerts from the same mini-tour here, in case you really want to get an idea. ~_^)

After the concert I bought yet another tour poster (:3) and CD copies of The Great Destroyer and their latest album The Invisible Way (which was an album I enjoyed the first few times I listened to it but couldn't get too enthusiastic about, but after hearing a lot of the songs live I realized that they were actually very good, so I had to buy the album for myself). So yeah, as far as eventful nights go, I've had plenty worse. XD

Anyway, here's the setlist:

Read more... )

••• Apparently Tumblr has started censoring posts from certain blogs from showing up in tag searches as a way to crack down on porn? From what I've read (and here's an article with more information), the site has been flagging various blogs as either "NSFW" or "adult"; if your blog is flagged as "NSFW," your posts won't show up in tracked tags (other than the people already following you), and if it's flagged as "adult" they won't show up not only in any tag searches, but on outside search engines like Google as well. And as far as I know, this flagging is done without the blog owner's consent, and there's no way to undo it once it's done. The justification for this is to make the site more friendly to advertisers (after all, Yahoo bought out Tumblr precisely because they were having trouble making enough money to stay afloat), but the end result is that if you really want to look up porn on Tumblr (or just discover new content in general, if the blogs being flagged don't exclusively post porn), you have to be linked to it directly.

Now, I'm hardly the most pro-porn guy on the planet (I'm not a fan of how it the porn industry exploits women, or how it makes men less empathetic and more prone to Internet addiction and unrealistic expectations about sex), but I indulge in NSFW stuff just as much as anyone my age would, and I realize this would have a huge effect on fandom, not to mention other kinds of content that has nothing to do with porn. And, well, I'm really not a fan of it. :/ I'm curious what everyone else here thinks about it, though.

••• Two more months:


Guys, this looks fucking awesome, and I absolutely cannot wait for it. 8DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD



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