Eureka! Epiphany!

| Now Playing: Vacation by Superfruit |

I can't believe I still get like this,
My body on fire, Breathless.
I only wanna be alone with you.
It's alright,
I'm coming for you baby.
Hold tight,
Let me break on you like a wave.
And don't you pretend that you can't feel it.

I'm yours tonight if you say that you want it,

Our paradise if you think you can go there.

Sweet summer love vacation,

Feeling the good vibrations.

Our paradise if you say that you want it.

__________________________________________________

And I'm telling you, (I'm not going. You're the best man, I've eeeeeeevvverrrr known. No there's no way I can, eeeeeeeeevvverrrr go. No no there's no way. No way I'm living without you. I'm not living without you. I don't want to be freeeEEEEeee. I'm staying, I'm staying. And you. And you. You're gonna love meeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeee.) Please ignore that, I just went on a musical tangent for a second there. Anyway, I'm telling you, work this week has been pretty insufferable. It's just been so intense with all those prices changes and everything, it's just been so overwhelming. Thursday was filled with more of the same. More prices changes, more extra stuff that they wanted me to do that I didn't have time for. And Friday I was STILL trying to get all of the late clearance out of the way. I finally was able to clear all the late ones. But there was still over a thousand when I left. Plus I had time to cut Thursday from staying over the day before. But this weird thing happened Friday that I was super thankful for and kept me from literally losing my shit.

I was mentally coaching myself, talking myself down from being so wound and feeling like I was teetering on the edge of mental capacity. I kept telling myself that I can only do what I can do and just to quit stressing out so much. I just have got to quit letting that place effect me so much. So I felt a little better, and the stress just absolutely left me after thinking about the second book and the plotlines just shifted everything into perspective for me and everything. It was really needed.

Today was Lays Potato Chips, but it's what I needed. I did do laundry, so now I have all clean clothes for the first time since I moved back to Salem. Oh, and Friday, I treated myself and bought some books from Amazon and also stopped by Gamestop and picked up my copy of Splatoon 2. And thank God I did. It was exactly what I needed. Splatoon 2 is such a damn fun game and it really allowed myself to get lost in it and just enjoy it to the fullest extent. I might play a little here in a minute just before bed. I cleaned my room some more, playing more Splatoon, watched some Charmed, fell asleep for an hour, and woke up about an hour ago just to write this and everything. And then I saw a massive spider in my room the size of the raven on my tattooed hand that my grandma had to kill because I was petrochemically petrified. And now, Benzo and I are sending voice texts quoting Matilda. We're enough haha. I'm glad tomorrow's her birthday so we can eat, be Lays Potato Chips: The Sequel, and enjoy each other's company.

This is the shortest blog I've had in a while. But that's because I haven't done much, and I've been trying to destress from this week before overnights start next Sunday. Pray for me. (PRAY WITH ME FORREST, PRAY WITH ME). I'm enough tonight.

Thankful for the little epiphanies,

-- Jesse

Dark Side Of The American Dream

| Now Playing: Without You by Lana Del Rey |

Summer time is nice and hot,
And my life is sweet like vanilla is.
Gold and silver line my heart,
But burned into my brain are these stolen images.
Stolen images, baby, stolen images.
Can you picture it?
Babe, the life we could've lived.

Hello, hello,

Can you hear me?

I can be your china doll,

If you like to see me fall.

Boy you're so dope,

You're love is deadly.

Tell me life is beautiful,

They all think I have it all.

I've nothing without you,

All my dreams and all the lights mean,

Nothing without you.

___________________________________________________________

I know, I know. I'm complete trash for having a Lana Del Rey song in the NP for the third time in a row, I'm aware. But she's just so damn good and this song has literally been stuck in my head the past couple of days, that I literally had no choice. Every time I've been in the car, I've alternated between Million Dollar Man and Without You. Lana's Born To Die album is just so fucking good, I can't escape it even if I wanted to. Now that that's out of the way, onto our regularly scheduled shit show.

Let's start with the positives, or as I like to call it, Sunday. That's where my positives' peaked, and it's been a runoff of toxic sludge ever since.

Sunday was really good. I set out a personal goal to just write on my last day off before the work week, and that's exactly what I did. I actually wrote a whopping ten pages. I was pretty impressed with myself. I'm finally, and trying to keep up the momentum, churning out this second book on a more regular basis. I've needed to for a while now. It's been over a year since I started the second book and the first book's publishing and subsequent release took over so much that I didn't really have a whole lot of time to write in the second book. But I suppose that's the price of being a writer, and a self-published one at that.

Monday, meaning work, is when things plummeted. As they tend to do lately, when work is involved. During the morning meeting, we learned that all of us were blitzing out the Back to School freight. All of it. And all of it, was ten pallets. That's literally so insane, I still can't believe we finished it all. Of course, it took us over two hours to get everything done. Not to mention everything else we had to get done that day. And to top it all off, I checked my departments price changes, and I had over 3500. 3500. I didn't know what to do with myself, so I just laughed. Because there was no way I was going to have time to get to them after having over two hours of my day taken away from me because of BTS. There was just no way in hell. The only real good that came out of the day was when I decided to start posting my novel on my old stomping grounds, good ol' Young Writers Society. I remembered how much feedback I used to get on my writing, and we all know that's the one thing I've been dying to devour since my novel's release. I suppose it's a lot easier to take in single chapters, most reading is. So that was literally the only plus.

Things didn't really get better with yesterday. I woke up to five notifications on YWS, which floored me that I had such an active response on just posting the Prologue from my book. So that was wonderful. I didn't get to read everything and soak it in in detail until much later, but waking up to that was nice. Another benefit I forgot to mention from leaving the weekend was my sleep. I stayed up a little longer Sunday night to see if that helped my sleeping, and it did. I'd love more than six and half hours of sleep, but apparently, my body just can't handle it. Anyway, work wasn't too bad and nothing really special or crazy happened, except that I literally cast out all my fucks and wore a shirt to work that's not approved. I wanted to be comfortable and my 90's cartoon nostalgia shirt just needed to be kept on from slumber. So I did. Luckily, I think I got away with it only because it's blue. It doesn't have a collar like we're supposed to don, but it was good enough from me, and honestly, all that they were getting from me.

Mawmaw made Poor Mans for dinner, much to my excitement. With her famous mashed potatoes, it was a lovely dinner. I'm only mentioning this because it was one of the few things that has been enjoyable about the past few days, so I'm reveling in them when I'm presented the opportunity. It was hella good on every level, so I kept on metaphorically dancing (I'm sorry, I'm just a sucker for that classic No Doubt song). The responses from Young Writers Society weren't bad, and I'm really good at taking constructive criticism, especially when I'm so proud of this body of work, more than anything I've ever created, so I don't sweat the small stuff. Plus, the book is already published, so it doesn't matter what I'm advised to "work on". But feedback was what I wanted and that's what I got. I actually noticed some things to take away from the reviews and comments, which is always a good thing. I just hate that you have to gain "points" by reviewing other's work just to post your own. It's a definite flaw in their system, but whatever works to get people looking at your stuff.

Today was just enough. Enough in pretty much every aspect of my life. One plus being is I didn't stay too much after work and we had Taco Bell for dinner. I can't remember the last time I'd had the delectably sinful delights from Taco Bell, but it was a nice reminder for how much I really need to lose weight. But the time though, where is it? Price changes consumed my work day, as I still had a fair amount upon coming in. I knew I was going to be doing them all day, but what I wasn't counting on was the fact that some of them, miraculously, became late halfway through the day. I wasn't even aware that such a thing could happen, but I know now I suppose. I was going to stay until 5, or even 6 or 7 to get more of these "late" ones done, but Sean (My assistant manager) told me via a text from April R to go ahead and head home, and he'd try to work out some help for the prices changes tomorrow. Hopefully he's true to his word because I still have over 2000. There's no way I'm going to be finished with them by the end of the week, let alone the three day time period we're "supposed" to have on them.

Yet another thing to siphon my good feelings has been the latest in Trump Tweets Bullshit. Not allowing transgender individuals in the military and banning them from further serving is just absolutely garbage. I'm not here for it, and talking politics in my family is just dangerous. My grandparents hold such...I won't say strict, let's say rigid, republican standards that it's hard to reason with them, more so my grandpa, who let's just save time and say holds some still rather radical views on things that shouldn't be radical anymore. It got me really heated today when we were talking about it (With my dad, who made a surprise visit), and it just really got me down. I'm so tried of feeling so oppressed all the time. And I already have enough self-doubt and demonic depression holding me down without getting added artillery from our so called triumphant leader. I've just had enough this week, and I'm so ready for the weekend. I'm hoping to do something with Benzo for her birthday, only I don't know what. Even if it's just spend time together, I'm all for it. I just need a reprieve.

Speaking of reprieves, Big Brother is about to come on. So I'm going to go soak into that for a good while before I possibly do some writing, possibly do some reading, I don't know. I'm going to be up after it's over is all I know. I'm too wound up to wind down at the moment.

Forever a dark-sided dreamer,

-- Jesse

Full Dark, No Stars

| Now Playing: Million Dollar Man by Lana Del Rey |

I don't know how you convince them and get them,

I don't know what you do.

It's unbelievable.

And I don't know how you get over,

Get over.

Someone as dangerous, tainted, and flawless as you

One for the money,

Two for the show.

I love you honey,

I'm ready, I'm ready to go.

How did you get that way?

I don't know.

You're screwed up and brilliant,

Look like a million dollar man.

So why is my heart broke?

___________________________________________________________

Since my wonderful day off, work has tried it. I mean, really tried. Even more so than at the beginning of this week. I don't even want to get into the details because I'm so over it. Just more and more of the same, more and more of expecting me to get all of this work done without staying over to get said work done. And because I stayed after Thursday, it meant that Friday was going to be a blessed day. And really, a thrice blessed day.

It's no secret that I've been getting into Lana Del Rey recently. And by "getting into" I mean "falling down the deepest darkest hole of her beautiful music's soul". It seems that the songs from Born To Die are probably my favorite, but that hasn't stopped me from pretty much downloading her entire audio arsenal. And Thursday night, after the trials of work and it's long day of acquiring overtime, I thought to myself "When in the hell does Lana's new album come out?". I knew it was soon, but upon looking it up, I saw that I only had to wait until morning for Lana to fuck me up with Lust For Life in full. And bitch. I. Wasn't. Ready. It's so good. Definitely more hip-hop influenced than the rest of her work, in my opinion, but Jesus H. Christ, I was unprepared. I mean, 13 Beaches? White Mustang? God Bless America - And All The Beautiful Women In It? Lana, you've successfully fucked this gay up.

Anyways, after listening to her album in the car Friday morning before work, I was elated and just ready to get the day over with. Not only was there a new Lana album to obsess over, but also, because I had the hour and a half of overtime, I was planning on taking a super long lunch to cut my time, and in turn using that time to write more in the second book. That ended up happening, but not the super long lunch part.

There was work drama. About the cutting of time. After being so drilled in our brains to not cut time on Fridays, everyone pretty much knew that if you still had time on Fridays, you had to cut it on lunch. This was again reiterated to us during the morning meeting. But as I and another associate were called to stay after, we were told to break this very rule because we had such an excess of time. So then one associate heard that another, one who's allowed to do literally whatever the hell she wants because of the department that she's over, had FOUR hours to kill. Then I was stopped by good ol' gossip Hardware that Electronics was pissed about Pick-Up. Then the drama hit the fan when an electronics associate called out Pick-Up saying, "It must be nice to be so favored that you get to do what you want, whenever you want." GIRL. The T was hot, and served with strawberry toast. Ya girl was L I V I N G.

But since Paper Chemicals had my back and I had hers from the meeting, we went ahead and followed order to only cut thirty minutes of our overtime on lunch and cut the rest by leaving early. I agree that it sucks and everyone should be held to the same exact standards, but I was just following orders at the end of the day. Big Brother had a Battle Back this week, Friday, so I got to enjoy that fresh hell. I'm so annoyed by who came back, but I also totally expected it. Whatever, I'm getting cheese fries. It's a train wreck and I'm over it. I got to write some again last night, to Lana of course, and some good shit was pouring out of me. But it was late and I needed to stop before it got too late. I wanted to write some more after this, but now I'm not so sure. I'm getting really tired and I might just lay in bed with some MPGIS.

Today wasn't too bad. I didn't sleep much. I kept on having these weird dreams about some of my fears, among them being my teeth falling out and my car being stolen and someone trying to murder me. But I guess that's just the fucked up psyche of the average creative type. At least, that's what I'm telling myself so that I can move on with my life. I got into Riverdale last night. I had watched the pilot with Benzo a while back, and I loved it. The Archie characters, I've always loved. And Archie's Weird Mysteries was my SHIT. So I kept up the trend today and binged the first season. Thanks Netflix! It's dialogue is very up my alley, and the title of this blog came from it. I know it's also a Stephen King novel, but recycled saying or not, I love it to death. But the show is amazing. It's literally so good. Gives me a good vibe for my book too. So that's always a plus.

Also, as a side note, I tried to litter this blog with amazing gifs, but Blogger wasn't having it I guess because when I went to paste in my third one, it didn't even appear, but messed with the formatting. So only Lana up there shall remain. Fitting, as that damn Million Dollar Man song has been plaguing my dreams so effervescently.

Honorable Mention for NP goes to Shania Twain's new song, Poor Me. THE QUEEN OF CROSSOVER IS BACK BITCHES. I can't wait for Now to be released as a full album. I'm so ready, willing, and able for it.

Starless and darkful,

-- Jesse