T. B. A. S.

it's not quite 5am, i just walked in the door from work. i just wanted to share what a success tonight was for me and us, because i'm scared i'll forget when i wake up to talk about it.

so, it was saturday night. aka hell night. tonight was exceptionally crazy due to some event going on in the city, and we were short staffed as always, and the staff we did have were new, etc. so it was pretty much a disaster all night. there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth among the crew, morale was really low. no one got a break last night. but somehow... miraculously?... i survived intact. i fully expected this shift to be emotionally devastating to me, like many before it had been, but somehow... my spirit was untouched, my flow unstopped.

i feel somehow like i have two things to thank for carrying me through:

one, when i first walked in the door and went to the back room to check some things, the song Magic by Coldplay was on the radio. and there's just something about the chill, yet spiritual and romantic humming flow of that song that really got to me. i couldn't stop singing it to myself all the night through. when i'd shift to other songs i'd start to feel more tense, because my other songs typically are a little more rousing and maybe higher tension. but the chill sweetness of this song just carried me like a little boat. i listened to it on the ride home again, and the relaxed groove just is... really nice. just what i needed tonight i guess.

two: my heart. not my organic one, the one i wear around my neck. and have since 2010. i put it on literally, as a spare heart. extra courage, extra compassion. and extra power to take on tough things, extra protection from the cruelty of people sometimes. the past few days i'd been carrying Lugia around in my pocket, and it'd just been absolute madness and chaos. but then i wore my extra heart, and it went amazingly smoothly. i had a clear head the whole time. no fuzz, no confusion, no blanking out, no being unable to handle anything. not asshole or angry customers, not the incredible busy crazyness that happened between 1 to 3 am, nothing. i flowed through all of it no problem. and it was amazing.

Hiccup and Thirteen and the Toy Soldier and Trolley and Jewel and the new girl, who on the ride up there i think named herself "Apostrophe"... they were all within reach, pretty much the whole night. yes, even Trolley! even the Toy Soldier! i don't think it's necessarily that they're closer, but i am getting so much better at tapping in and staying tapped into the world within! being able to focus on them both, not get overwhelmed in "dreams" or in the "waking" either!

speaking of dreams, i need to get to bed. it's gonna be a long day. i may continue this entry, or i may start a new one, we'll see how i feel when i wake up.



-later-
today makes one year since Pokemon X&Y came out. let me wax emotional for a bit over this, mk? :D
i NEVER anticipated the effect these games would have over me. i was excited like all the rest, but when i got my hands on it... holy wow. i didn't actually get to play it until January 2nd when i bought myself a 3DS XL, but when i did... man oh man. i beat the game for the first time in about four weeks. that's CRAZY for me, especially since i never used to beat the storyline anyway.
fletchling. that pokemon and its line. oh man. you don't know what they mean to me! i remember the first time i played with Jacqueline, my Talonflame, as a tiny Fletchling in pokemon-amie. i burst into excited tears. i finally get to interact with my pokemon. and it was SO FUCKING CUTE I COULDN'T STAND IT TINY ADORABLE BIRD FRIEND
and just. JUST. the scenery. all your friends that you have. even your mom, she's actually sort of a character in this game! all of the pokemon are great, there's not a single pokemon in gen 6 that i don't like. ALL of them.
and the legENDARIES oh my god. best legendaries since gen 2 hands fucking down. i LOVE how they're going back to more basic, organic animal-based designs instead of crazy robot looking things. i love Yveltal so so much. and Xerneas too but Yveltal is definitely my favorite. and Zygarde is amazing and will be even more so when we learn more about him [WE BETTER GET AN EFFIN' Z VERSION PLZ ALTHOUGH X2 AND Y2 WOULD BE CLEVER].
i cried like a fucking baby the first time i beat the game. holy shit. that final shot of Fletchling, echoing the very first thing i saw when I began my first Kalos adventure... that compounded with what Fletchling had come to mean to me!! i cried so hard. it was wonderful.
the first time i beat the game was during a power outage and my 3DS was blinking red power during the last fight with AZ and man it was INTENSE!!! i think i ended up having to redo that last fight and watch the credits again, but it autosaves before that so it was ok.
but like. dude. i never EVER expected what i would find within that tiny cartridge when i first played Y version. i NEVER expected any region to beat out Kanto as my all time favorite. i had always believed that as good as a new pokemon game gets, it will never beat out the original in my heart. but guess what? Kalos unseated the champion. not because it's of superior quality necessarily [I don't really think you can compare them honestly!], but just going by the sheer emotional power it had on me, I guess. all i know is i love all regions, but Kalos is the first place I would travel to in the pokemon world, had I the chance.


man, christmas is coming, and that means supermarkets like target and walmart and such all have their super awesome christmas toy type stuff on the shelves. and i WANT IT. EUGH
like that big Toothless. i am determined to bring him home. he is absolutely beautiful even if i have nowhere to put him. when i move out, i will have somewhere for sure.

it just strikes me how... so many other adults will pretend like they don't get excited over toys. or not let themselves. or like not allow themselves to know what's going on in "kids stuff" these days. animation, movies, tv shows, games etc. i think if you're an adult and you say you don't like or want toys anymore, you're lying.


time to play Drakan. man i knew i missed this game, but i didn't know just how much. it's been years and years since i've played. this is probably my favorite PS2 title. i love it. the weapons, the enemies, the kinda shitty fight system, AROKH, FLYING AROKH.... yaaassss.

you know... it just struck me. i was looking over here while playing and i have 1,210 words before i started writing this paragraph. and that's nothing, just one average day's worth of writing. isn't NaNoWriMo supposed to be at least 10,000 words?? damn... i've always wanted to do it but never thought about it in time... maybe i have time this year to start preparing for something to write???
it probably wouldn't be a novel, but maybe a series of stories or tales about the Order, the System and such... i bet i could do that. 10,000 words over the course of a month sounds easy.
oh, nope. it's 50,000 words. i guess that's a bit more of a challenge. BUT, hey. i might just do it anyway.

not sure why i'm making a distinction between system update and journal entries? but it feels necessary so i will continue. i think there's some kind of internal pressure to talk about my outerlife in journal entries, and my innerlife in system updates. idk?

people close to the front lately: me [Oli], Hiccup, Thirteen, Summer, Jewel, Trolley, Nentor, the Toy Soldier, Josiah, Apostrophe, Kacie

so like 7-10 people if you include spirits??? holy crap. that's CRAZY. i'm so glad. it used to be so hard for me to reach anyone except maybe Thirteen.
and out of those, four or five are suspected Bloodline members. we need to come up with a name. maybe Apostrophe. she said she likes naming things.

so far the Bloodline goes in order:
Summer, Apostrophe, Thirteen, me
could be more or less, i'm not sure.


so i was super hungry but wasn't feeding myself, but work time is coming. so instead of digging up whatever unhealthy crap i could find, i ate a couple of the lembas bread/ship's biscuits he made for the festival since it's Sunday and he had a lot left over. but i was still hungry, so i dug through the crisper... and found we had a ton of broccoli left as well as celery, carrots and grapes!? and they were getting old so i just piled a ton of veggies and fruit onto a plate and i'm gonna fill myself with veggies and one more ship's biscuit. aw yeah. and i'm gonna use these leftover ranch cups from DQ and jack in the box. because i like them but rarely have a use for them. >_>

it rained yesterday, it's been grey and drizzly all day today, and my phone just warned me it's gonna rain tomorrow too. awww yeah. this is my kind of weather. just gotta get through the ten hour work shift tonight, then i'm finally free for a bit.

oh! something else quick, before i go. i think Hiccup's existence has kind of lightened headspace's feelings about fictives, because... i've been feeling flashes of Raditz lately. yeah, fucking Raditz of all people. he's connected through Kacie, i don't think he'd ever be here on his own, but he does mean a lot to us and I suspect, to Apostrophe in particular. [and another note: if Raditz is here, he's definitely been here, in some form, since fucking 2001. that's insane.]

Apostrophe and Summer have an interesting connection, they're both from around the same time in our past, but both have very separate interests. they definitely both hold very different parts of our mind from back then. for example, although Summer is stuck in 1999-2002, she doesn't really care about pokemon at all. unlike Apostrophe, who is totally crazy obsessed. remember a week ago or so, wandering around in walmart, and someone we didn't know was fronting and very angry that there was no pokemon stuff? that was most likely Apostrophe!