work last night was really, really hard. just a very blunt reminder [think baseball bat to the face every 30 minutes] that once best!manager is gone, i need to GET OUT. as soon as possible if not before. that place is not a good place for me to be without her influence and last night made it painfully clear for me yet again. tonight may be more of the same, i don't know. hopefully i'll be better prepared, my morale was in tatters pretty much the whole night and i felt terrible.
it was another instance of my instinctive tendency to shut myself off from headspace when stress levels get high enough. it's a very bad habit because it effectively eliminates almost all of my coping skills, and so the bad emotions have nowhere to go and just snowball inside my head until before i know it i'm a zombie with a migraine and all of my spoons to keep some semblance of tact or self control are completely gone, meaning my sharp tongue is unsheathed and i'll just get myself into more trouble by speaking the nasty, painful thoughts in my head.
anyway. i'm done talking about work because it's putting me back in that shitty, shitty mindset i was in last night. i'm determined to start tonight with a clean slate. and i have a couple more hours of free time before that happens anyway. so.
actually, there is one thing i want to mention about work. before i got so stressed out that the best i could do was a sputtering, failing connection to inner space, i was bustling around trying to get work done, and i remember heading out of the freezer with a bunch of stuff being stressed out and having stressed out thoughts, and i felt him - the Toy Soldier. silent, as always, but i felt him lay his hands and arms over and within mine... he's definitely a ghost. i felt him envelop me like a cloak, cover me with his spirit, and the silence within him was apparent. the immediate imagery was of a silent, still football field full of us, full of marching band kids, full of Toy Soldiers, at attention and utterly still, waiting for the cue. the chill October wind blew inside me, that was the only sound. i wish i could have kept that going, it was very kind of him, and very helpful. what a nice experience.
on a similar note, something echoed inside my head a few days ago when i was driving down the road with the windows down and the cold autumn night blew through me...
"it's October and the Toy Soldier is issuing an order. a call that I can't answer."
the thought came with a peculiar ache. i know what it is. it's the height of marching season.
it's been six years since my last appearance on the field, and it hurts. but right now there's nothing i can do, except medicate myself with occasional visits to see other bands perform and wish i could have been out there with them.
i've finally started that new lj!! i was going to try and make myself wait until i got the new laptop, but the backup lappy is being pretty good with LJ so i decided hell why not. maybe it'll be good for me, and for the System as a whole. i updated it through the beginning of this month from this journal that i've started keeping via ZenWriter, which has turned out to be a wonderful little thing!! thank you ZW. and i'm going to thank myself, a month ago, for sitting down and randomly starting this and then keeping it running until now. that's how all good things begin. you just pick it up and run with it.
so early last night at work, before the BS began, i was back in the hole in the back, stealing a moment to doodle on receipt paper with the pens i always keep in my pocket every day when i go. and suddenly realized -- this is exactly the same as when i was in school. every moment i could, getting away to doodle a little bit, sketching, but no real finished pieces, not that it was important. and the other side of it -- not really being supposed to, but doing it anyway because i must. anywhere i can, risking being reprimanded for my art. it's EXACTLY what i used to do in like 2007 when i was ridiculously prolific with my art and so much development was allowed to happen. that was a very good feeling, seeing myself going back to those old habits. it cements my connection to healthier artistic habits, and it further proves my feeling that i'm the healthiest, art-wise, that i've been in YEARS. i think that's very true. even if i haven't sat down and done any serious art-ing in several days, i'm doodling every day at work, and saving those simple doodles. if only i could use my moleskine more, but you do what you can and that's what matters. [i bought this tiny little music-staff moleskine years ago because i was like OMG MUSIC PAPER?!, then forgot i'm totally blocked when it comes to composing music, so eventually decided to put it to use instead of letting it rot.]
also: for whatever it means, now or later, Gray is absolutely my color. the thought came up last night and i held my head high and proud thinking of myself as the Gray. whatever it stands for, i don't really know quite yet, but just as Kristanova is Mint [+ red + white you know how it goes], i'm definitely Gray.
so, a note about Raditz. i mentioned him the other day but i didn't mention his specifics, which are extremely important. he is, as he seems to exist in headspace, an "AU" Raditz. meaning alternate universe. specifically, his background comes from that of the first "fanfiction" type thing i ever read, when i was about 10, before I even knew what fanfic was. they are also much longer and more "story-like" than most run of the mill fanfiction you'll find nowadays, even novella-length at times -- which might have led to my general distaste for the fanfic fare you get most of the time online. [brief rant: romantic fanfic bores the shit out of me. i need a STORY. tell me a story. i don't CARE about romance 9 times out of 10. i don't mind including it in the story at all, that's fine and can even be really lovely. but like. the whole point of fanfiction is to tell stories using the universe and characters you love, but all anyone cares about is one specific type of story. the incredibly boring and samey kind. wEH]
the stories were hosted at republicofnewhome.org and i'm pretty sure it's still running, same as it was in 2001ish. so to understand our headspace's Raditz, you have to understand the events of the stories.
tl;dr:
- Raditz lives and dies same as he did in the manga/anime, killed by Piccolo etc.
- Goes to Hell [which isn't exactly the Abrahamic hell? it is related to the goofy ass HFIL from the anime, but also kinda tied in with Norse religion and various other stuff, this was where i got my first taste of Norse mythology! super random and now Norse myth is, for me, irreversibly intertwined with a weird dragonball z AU. lmfao], works with/for the other Saiyans as a sort of demon hitman? for a while
- Vegeta dies because of plot related reasons, goes to Hell, finds Raditz and charges him with going to Earth and watching over his wife and kid because eternal fealty to the Saiyan royal family and shit. [Kacie is snickering rn just so you know]
- goes to Earth as a ghost, checks up on his brother and nephews and stuff. has regrets for the way he lived his mortal life, wishes he had a second chance
- Goten can see ghosts LOL??? and sees Raditz. begins to form a sort of relationship with him. at this point Goten is like, 3. so bear that in mind.
- [Ox King also can see ghosts]
- Not going to spoil the story because the original fanfic is amazing and please read it, but basically he accidentally gets wished back to life by Bulma/Gohan [who were on a quest to find some non-dragonball wish-granting beings because the dragonballs weren't available or w/e] due to being in the exact right place at the right time.
so YEAH. basically. Raditz in headspace is tied to heart magic, which is something i really need to... well, figure out so i can expound upon it some more in text form, because honestly i don't know how i'd explain it anyway at this point. LOL. but it's very important and something i call on a lot, and could use a lot more successfully if i understood it better!! he is also of course tied to Kacie, being from pretty much the same source universe, although Kacie is technically native to this System, just with heavy outside influences.
very brief explanation of Kacie: she is half-Saiyan, Vegeta's daughter, younger than Trunks, one of the very oldest headpeople to still be sticking around headspace, from around 2002 or so. she won't really let me tell you more on her behalf, i guess i'll have to let her type it herself later on lol.
shiiieeet. yeah. reading over the original fic [which, yep, is still available on
its original site, god bless Dragoness Eclectic for still keeping it going] and i definitely feel Raditz's presence within the System. he's here without a doubt. well, i guess that's ok. but damn, for a System once so hostile towards fictives, it seems like we're letting our guard down this year. which Hiccup attests is a good thing. /shrug.