#self talking

I lake of words for tell you how touched I am by your support! ♥ Your reactions are priceless, I laugh so hard and I am amused and happy you like and be sensible to my art, concept and little stories behind my illustrations. I love to play with detailes of the show to incorporet in my drawings, and it's a pleasure when people notice them! I would to thanks each of you individualy for your comments, thanks you, thanks you, thanks you ♥♥♥

This fandom is so crazy and kind and open minded, I am glad to be part of you and give you joy sharing my drawings!

Be sure I read all notes, all tags and all comments here, on my twitter and sometimes on Elliot's House too! I don't know where and how to express exactly my feelings, but here I try : thanks you so much for the joy you bring to me by your reactions! You made my days!

Thanks again to peoples who makes events like this permit me to explore all the TUA universe through my drawings and to share it with you, same as I discovered others artworks, it's a pleasure!

I also see so many amazing fanworks, I come back on my fan tumblr @mokolataddict​ to share them when I am more available (you deserves so much visibility and compliments too! ♥♥♥)

Thanks you again everyone!

Love you ♥

Mokolat

"why don't you?"

"you tell me"

"is it because I'm just on your mind?"

FINALLY!!!!! I FINISHED ThE DAMn EXAMS!!!!

I rode about 70 miles again today, and by the time I arrived in Marinette, my backside was ready for the break. Rolled into the motel parking lot around 12pm, well ahead of the 3pm check in time. Not sure I'll stay here for the full two day reservation I've made, as it's not particularly inspiring from the outside.

The route today was pretty easy, mostly road (but with a sudden overgrown trail that required a few feet of hike-a-bike to get around a barrier to block people like me from coming through easily. Google maps, you drunk). Mostly flat as well, although it had a few hills to contend with along the way. Nothing to write home about on some level, beyond the amount of time spent in the saddle. Long hours seem to slip by. At least until you're about 20 miles away, then they drag. I find myself checking my computer every 10 minutes or so to see how close I am, and every time I'm reminded how slow a bike can be when you just want to be done for the day.

I didn't have the nerves of the first day, nor the safety challenge of the second, so this day was actually kind of boring. I try to look around and enjoy the surroundings, and make note of the noteworthy, but the mental notes I took don't seem to suggest too much at first glance:

lots of road kill.

long straight stretches of road, in between farms.

Almost no towns for 50 miles.

More road kill.

Those are some big trucks.

That's a clear cut section of woods. Logging country.

Lots of deer.

Road kill.

And it's that way for something like 60 miles. Which, at my not-so-stunning pace of 15 mph, is a lot of hours.

It's a lot of time on a bike is what I'm saying.

So I talk to myself. A lot. I've always been a self-talker. My wife, bless her heart, now just ignores it, and accepts that I mutter to myself a lot, sometimes laced with swears. I try not to be too loud, but I do forget myself from time to time, and I catch Sam looking at me like I'm a crazy person.

Which, to be fair, I'm trying to bike from Houghton to Chicago and back while collecting stories for a book. Sanity is a tenuous thing at the minute.

In any case, I'm a self-talker, but I believe it's a habit that prepares me for those long stretches of road where I'm alone for hours, turning the pedals over and over and over. Well, perhaps not exactly alone. My bike does have a name after all.

I talk to myself (and my bike) about all kinds of things. I talk about what I see up ahead in the road, or what we just passed by. I talk about some inane thing I need to do when I get a break or stop for the night. I talk about imaginary worlds, like being a professional cyclist to pump myself up when I'm feeling exhausted, giving fake interviews. Sometimes I sing. "Country Roads" was the song of the day, and if you were standing by the side of the road somewhere 10 miles north of Peshtigo WI today you would have heard a full-throated butchering of Mr. Denver's classic by a man in lycra.

Hey, it's company for me and my bike.

I don't really know when I became a self-talker to be honest, but I do know it runs in my family. My older sister was also (and possibly still is) a self-talker, and would have remarkably full conversations with herself that you could hear through the thin walls of our house growing up. Much like my self-talking, it was about all manner of inane things, with only the context of her own mind lending sense to the words that trickled through the walls.

These self-talk conversations just added to the din of an already loud home, and I remember many of the conversations in the house being aggressive. Perhaps it's Filipino culture around parenting to pride brash, if not rude, honesty over feelings or empathy. Perhaps it was just the personalities involved, or having four kids with all manner of tempers. Why we yelled and fought so much remains a mystery to me.

For us (or at least for me), I responded to aggression with aggression. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I told you that I was a pretty angry kid. And sometimes my teachers and friends bore the brunt of that aggression. I probably owe a few people apologies for being, well, a handful.

When I left the home and went to college, my behavior shifted dramatically. It's almost like I became a different person. I mean, I was hundreds of miles away from home for months at a time for the first time in my life, being exposed to all kinds of new things and people, making new friends in a place where the first thing they gave me was an ID card with a number on it. A number I still remember: 1075-1640. It was a new name (of sorts) and, with it, the chance to create a new identity.

But I was still a self-talker. And still am today. Because no matter how things change, the person at the other end of the conversation always listens and lets the conversation just be what it becomes. Aggressive when needed. Soft and reassuring when appropriate. Even educational when the world seems short of answers.

And when you're alone for hours and hours and hours on a bike, its a friendly voice to accompany you.