Musings of a Crocodile

Not dreading going to work every day is an -amazing- thing. It's still not my all-time most favourite place to be, but I don't hate it and I don't have an endless case of the I-don't-wanna's, where it's hard to get out of bed in the morning because I have to -force- myself to go to work. So far, am really enjoying the atmosphere and general attitude.

The bump up to 13$ an hour from my last job is awesome as well, and they're going to pay me to study for my insurance licenses, pay for the licensing test and the licenses themselves in forty-six different states. On licensing, pay'll bump up to 15.60$ an hour.

Plus, I’ve only been in training for a week, and my trainer is already talking about helping me to become a team manager once I hit the floor, which is, itself, another pay boost.

Pancakes are the code word for murder.

Waffles mean everything is awesome and no assistance to hide bodies is required.

I have wandered around the country since 2007. I’ve lived in more places than I can name in under five minutes. Most of the places I moved, I was chasing love, though occasionally it was just friendship and shelter that prompted the moves. In 2007, I floored everyone that knew me and up and moved to Canada. Most of the people I knew didn’t even know I knew anyone that lived in Canada. Then after six months or so, I came back in 2008 and bounced around Texas a bit. Belleville and Magnolia mostly. And then after two years of that, in 2010 I moved to Arkansas with a friend. And then to St. Louis, Missouri. And then to Atlanta, Georgia. And then I moved back to Texas again and wandered there for another while. Houston, Hutto, Austin. And then I moved up to Tulsa, Oklahoma. And then Oklahoma City. And then back to Austin for a couple weeks. And then up to Albany. Back to Texas for a month and change, and then Nevada, where I’ve lived the longest period of time since I was a kid and grew up in the same house for roughly 18 years. I have absolutely no regrets in my wandering. I’ve tried very hard to live my life with a why not mentality. If I didn’t have a legitimate why not, there’s no reason to place limits on myself that put me into the box of what people expected from me. It was not uncommon for me to call my parents at random and say things like, “Oh, by the way, dad. I moved to Missouri last night.” I’ve lived in Vegas, if not in the same domicile, (going on the seventh place and moving again in May) for three years. The only thing in the dislike column for me, with Vegas, is the summer heat. But it’s reasonably inexpensive to live here, the jobs are plentiful, the bus system is amazing, and I can summon waffles at two AM if it pleases me. (And it does, let me tell you.) I like it here. The city doesn’t sleep, which is a plus to me, because I’ve had insomnia troubles my entire adult life. I think I’ve finally settled down, though the person I moved here for up and moved to Florida. If nothing else, I have furniture and stuff now and it’d be a huge pain in the ass to move out of state. My stuff can no longer fit into two suitcases and a laptop bag. After living that way for nine years, it’s so WEIRD to have furniture. I’ve never owned furniture that was mine, really. I mean. I’ve bought a few beds over time, but I left them wherever I’d been living when I moved on because it’d be too much of a pain to bring them with me.

I’ve had insomnia on and off since I was six years old. On the plus side, I get a lot of writing done at night. On the downside, I’m not sixteen anymore and days where I didn’t get any/enough sleep the night before tend to run higher on the anxiety scale. Won’t complain about the upside though. I enjoy writing. I’ve learned that writing while sleep deprived is relatively fine, but that editing while sleep deprived is a disaster waiting to happen. Doesn’t help that when I get mildly tired, I start swapping homophones and spellcheck doesn’t pick up on them. Or that when I get really tired, I start swapping words out for words that vaguely sound the same, like ‘arrow’ and ‘error’. Or that when it gets even worse, I start swapping out words for ‘words’ that aren’t even real words.

Am uncertain why I suddenly feel motivated to start writing here. I don’t promise consistency in what I post, except that I will do my damnedest to not put forward negative vibes and that the only people I will judge at all, much less harshly, are those who fall under the nazi banner. Ultimately, you can expect everything from adorable cat pictures to lengthy ponderings pertaining to the world or my life or whatever else strikes my fancy. Everything from art, both self-made and that which I’ve found that inspires me from others to writing prompts. Seriousness level will range. I will say, straight out of the gate so no one has to speculate, that I am female, pansexual, pagan and poly.

I’ve found that twenty years and change of on-going depression has forged me into a person who dwells on the negative. Who doesn’t look forward to the future. For the longest time, I was convinced I wouldn’t live long enough to be an adult. Not for any particular reason, but because I didn’t expect to survive this long. As time goes on, I’m coming to find that I -am- strong enough to do this. That I -can- and I -will- survive no matter what the world throws at me. So I’m now attempting to overcome decades of self-conditioning to re-learn positive, healthy coping mechanisms that don’t involve pretending everything is okay when nothing in the world is actually okay. I’m attempting to re-wire my brain, so-to-speak, so it throws positive things at me by default, instead of waiting until my depression is particularly bad to rise up and drown me in despair. For now, I will start with three positive things about today. 1) I have a new job that starts on the tenth, and I can begin to discard the things in my life which have not been working for me. 2) This is the start to a glorious three-day weekend because I have monday off. 3) My kitten (Cathulu) is sweet and snuggled up in my bed with me.