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. :-)

--France Twitter case: Prosecuting racists won't stop racism
--Why Geeks Get Bullied (It's Not Necessarily For Being Geeks)  (excellent takedown of the whole "fake geek girls" controversy, and why it's even such an issue in the first place)
--30 Rock's Rejection of White Guilt
--Video: Moonrise in Real Time
--More Evidence That Mars Once Had Flowing Water
--Just How Much Is Sports Fandom Like Religion?  (interesting connections between sports and religion, and probably has implications for other kinds of fandom as well)
--Dolls With Age: A Longing for Youth, a Recognition of Mortality  (kinda creepy, but in a cool way ^_^;)
--20 amazing facts about the human body
--In a Week of Space Tragedy Anniversaries, We Must Continue to Venture Onward
--Infographic: The Cost of Living on Mars
--Are you a terrible person for eating quinoa?
--I'm not a leader. And that's okay.
--6 Ridiculous Myths About the Middle Ages Everyone Believes
--6 Awesome Superpowers That Would Suck in Real Life  (a.k.a. why sometimes living in a mundane world without superheroes is a good thing)
--5 So-Called Signs of Genius That Any Idiot Can Learn
--3 Despicable Internet Behaviors (That Are Really Your Fault)
--9 Famous Movie Villains Who Were Right All Along
--6 Enlightened Ideas Brought to You by Evil Empires
--6 Painful Things Nobody Tells You About Fighting  (a.k.a. why violence is never the answer XD)

I really feel like crap right now; I haven't been sleeping well the past few nights, and I've been waking up much earlier than I normally do, which is just extremely frustrating.  So in the meantime, have another meme, stolen from gingeynary :

Name a character from one of my fandoms, and I will reply saying:
* How I FEEEEEL about this character
* All the people I ship romantically with this character
* My non-romantic OTP for this character
* My unpopular opinion about this character
* One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I'm not interested in answering questions about Transformers right now, but characters from any other fandom you know I'm familiar with are fair game.  ^_^;

Ugh, this week was a total bust. I hardly got any of my work done -- especially the activist stuff for Social Movements -- I didn't get a chance to do most of the things I wanted to do, I didn't look for any jobs or things like that, I'm still angsting over the summer job I wanted that won't work out, the pictures for my class yearbook all came out horrible, a bunch of other little things I won't mention here, and I've just been lethargic and unmotivated the whole time, doing nothing but sitting at the computer all day. And I go back to college tomorrow. And I have an hour-long exam on Monday morning that I barely studied for. Wonderful. :PPP

I mean, I suppose none of this is really all that bad, since none of my assignments for classes were all that urgent, and some of these other things can be fixed rather easily. Besides, I've decided that it's probably a good idea to wait to get a job until I get my driver's license, because it would be really hard for me to get a job otherwise, considering my parents' work schedules and the piss-poor public transportation around here. Not to mention my mom wants us to go on a family vacation sometime this summer, so there's that too. >_>; Things could always be worse, I suppose, but even though things aren't bad, per se, they're just......blah. Let's just hope life picks up once I get back; after the exam on Monday, I won't have any major assignments due for another month, and I plan on skipping all the schoolwork I can afford to skip, making sure I enjoy and make the most out of the last few weeks of college in the meantime.

The only things of note I did this week was start rewatching A:tLA yet again, and seeing two movies, the Italian movie The Right Distance, which was awesome, and the Korean film A Frozen Flower, which sucked horribly. I've been meaning to write a long-winded rant on A Frozen Flower (yes, I hate it that much), but I'll have to get around to it later. Maybe. ^_^;  (Oh yes, and the latest episode of Pioneer One, which was awesome as always.  :D)

Here are the only two plans I have for summer so far:
--June 4: Okkervil River will be playing at Toad's Place. It's close by, it's on a Saturday night, and I really want to go!
--June 8-12: Trip to California for my cousin's high school graduation. I'm definitely looking forward to this, especially since I love the Bay Area and I've wanted to go back since I visited three years ago. (Yes, this means spending a good portion of my 22nd birthday on an airplane, but it's all good. XD)

Also, queer_fest has released its list of prompts! Here are some that really caught my attention, and hope someone gets around to fill:

( Cool prompts and ramblings on them behind the cut.... )

Finally, so that this post isn't completely pointless, here are some links:

--Ten adverts that shocked the world -- This is why I won't go into advertising, and you shouldn't either.
--Creepy app warns of an end to privacy
--Behind the Scenes: How Do You Get Into Amherst? -- Warning: Likely to be very disheartening and rage-inducing
--How Americans defeated efficiency with consumerism
--More Black Men Now in Prison System than Were Enslaved
--For Lovers and Fighters -- A long but EXCELLENT piece on polyamory, queer and trans* identities, and what love actually is (hint: it has nothing to do with romance) -- *HIGHLY RECOMMENDED*
--fightingarrival: "I have trouble following conversations on Tumblr" -- in which Sucker Punch and female empowerment is discussed, and Sady Doyle from Tiger Beatdown fucks up royally.
--The Male German Bodybuilder That Got Gandhi All Hot and Bothered
--Straight Gamer Calls for "No Homosexuality Option" in Dragon Age 2; Game Maker Responds: Shut It -- I'm only posting this link for the video. (Is it bad that I want to play this game now? XD)
--Information Is Beautiful!
--Color Picker Pen by Jinsu Park -- THIS IS SUCH A COOL INVENTION OMG *_*
--Nature photography by Henrik Just -- HOLY CRAP Y'ALL THIS STUFF IS AMAZING :O
--"Animal portraits" by Alex Castro
--DADT photography by Jeff Sheng
--Strange Maps @ Big Think
--What would've happened if Peanuts was written by Charles Bukowski.
--3eanuts, in which the last panel of Peanuts strips are omitted.

That's about it for me right now -- now time for me to stay up for a few more hours and regret it when I have to get up early in the morning. :B

Stolen from stunt_muppet:

Comment with the name of a character, pairing, etc., in one of my fandoms/fandom we share.

I'll post you an "instant" mini-fanmix: a cover and 3-5 songs that remind me of that character/pairing/show/etc. I'll upload the songs and everything!