ANYONE STILL ALIVE HERE???

[hellmonja]

Gad, I can't believe I'm back here. This place's a time capsule...
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<-- Now Defunct

[GrinfilledCelt]

I'm still here occasionally and Nodes and Dread were here a few weeks ago. Time capsule is right. Sometimes I read the old threads remember the days when I was witty. Good to hear from you, Hellmo.
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Songs for the flash frozen.

[hellmonja]

Haha! Nice to see you too, Grin. Just 'Hell' is fine, actually. Man! I can't believe this site still exists. I forgot about it after AG shut down for good. You mean you guys dropped by here occasionally all these years??? Other than that what have you guys up to lately?...
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<-- Now Defunct

[GrinfilledCelt]

Mostly I hang out at MAL these days ( http://myanimelist.net/clubs.php?cid=41303 ). I've moved to St Ignace Mi. I have a girlfriend and a pretty good life now so I don't get to watch as much anime as I used to and I don't have as much time to sit around yakking about it with friends I never met. Sometimes I miss the simpler days. =0|

Do you still watch anime? They are still trying to come up with something as good as Cowboy Bebop. Sometimes they come close.
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Songs for the flash frozen.

[swollenlymphnodes]

Hello!

Can't believe it. We pretty much passed our 10 year anniversary here.
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nodes aka GTBaka
eh?
*Eternally Lurking*

[hellmonja]

[swollenlymphnodes]

Awesome! Congrats on the family! Business! Life!

For me many things have changed, but what amazes me is how all the years start to fly by or how 5 years feels like a single year. now we know how Grin feels. lol. i have way too many interests to know about game modding. I'm pretty amazed by what people can do with game mods from whatever i do see. Music is still my main thing, but i'm interested in more videography. I've also picked up barbering as a hobby, and the next thing is sewing. so random I know.

I hear you on anime. Ever since it went mainstream I stopped having to dig so deep for it. Would just watch whatever is on netflix. Funny you should mention that show since I've only recently started watching again after seeing One Punch Man. I'll post in the what are you watching thread someday.

Anyway, nice catching up hellmo!
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nodes aka GTBaka
eh?
*Eternally Lurking*

[GrinfilledCelt]

It makes me grin to hear you guys doing so well. Having a family really changes your perspective and priorities, eh?

I myself have been accumulating pesky interests outside of anime. I have a girlfriend now who is planning to move in with me this fall. She's making all sorts of plans to modify the place and it isn't even mine. I've also picked up leather working. I haven't made much yet other than a few lopsided bags but I'm having fun.
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Songs for the flash frozen.

[MidNightBlue]

How is the girlfriend?

It has been a LONG time! Let's see. I went back to school to get a master's degree while working full time. SO painful. So very very painful. Worth it thought because it got me the job I wanted. I had to move for my job, again painful so very very painful as I was quite happy living where I was before. Where I am now is like a personal purgatory - limited access to books, dance, and poor transportation system which means I'm late all the time (I am very into timeliness and it goes against my inner most nature to not be on time). Indirectly due to the move, I lost a long term relationship. Also very very painful. I started seeing a new person. As an introvert and someone very slow to open up to new people (I mean like record breaking slow, my previous person pursued me for 7 years before I gave in), I find the entire USA style of dating to be very very painful.

And one more thing, just yesterday I called my mother in an attempt to connect. My relationship with my parents is uneasy at best and it has occurred to me that because of this, other areas of my life are being affected in unforeseen ways. Another painful process. She proceeded to insult me as usual, reminding me why I tend to avoid speaking to her.

All this has made me start seriously pursuing the spiritual aspect of life. Been reading Nisargadatta Maharaj and Ramana Maharshi, re-reading Eckhart Tolle and Byron Katie. I also just started reading The Red Book by Carl Jung and going through the exercises in A Course in Miracles. No one has sent me to insane asylum yet.

In short I am in a period of many changes and transitions in my life and the whole lot of it is rather painful. The end.

P.S. - Just to make this anime relevant, new person has never seen Cowboy Bebop so that is on the must watch list granted we are still together by the time we get around to it. Men are so confusing, why can't they just say what they mean and mean what they say?

[swollenlymphnodes]

Hi MNB. Sorry to hear about all the painful experiences you've gone through. But you know what? I'm immediately drawn to people who have been through crap, but survived it. IDK what it is, it just makes you have more character, more genuine. I guess it can make a person cynical... I too have had to go through long phases of that... but at some point you realize it's not worth stressing over. I'm not advocating a, 'don't care what people think' attitude ... eff em all... because that is pretty selfish and will often leave people feeling lonely and unfulfilled. It's what people describe certain individuals as "old souls." These are ones who make pretty solid decision on things they have control over, and those who don't fret over things that they do not have control. Or maybe in like your case... they make a decision which involves sacrifice but it results in something they really want or need... and then they live with it and accept it wholeheartedly. i.e. work hard to get a career they want, but sacrifice convenience, certain relationships, etc... Although I suspect you may be revisiting this in due course? No books, dancing? Ahhh! Poor MNB. Well... it will be a process before you can get that equilibrium I guess.

As far as your relationship with your mother, I can relate. I have a great relationship with my father, but I can't really speak to my mom. It's cordial, but there's no super close bond like I once had. She did and said things to me when I was younger that made me cut her off emotionally. At least she doesn't go out of her way to insult me. But back then in her efforts to talk to me she would say biting things that only pushed me away more and more. It's great that you try though. Sometimes the strain of a relationship can longer be your fault but lie with the other person. If they don't change... not much you can do.

As far as spirituality goes, that is probably the most important thing to me which has kept me sane. Although I don't talk about it with friends unless they really want to know. It's something along the lines of avoiding discussions about Religion/Spirituality and Politics at the dinner table. Not discouraging you from sharing that here, just saying a discussion w/ me in particular would be off to the side.

Girls are the same way btw. "What's wrong?" "Nothing!" (Arms crossed and pouting). The relationship thing is learning that communication is more than just words. That's not just between couples. People want to be understood, but sometimes the ego gets in the way of communication.
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nodes aka GTBaka
eh?
*Eternally Lurking*

[MidNightBlue]

And since that last post I made, more drama has ensued. It is like life just will not leave me alone and give me any downtime. How do I even summarize? The last week of March my male housemate started to harass me. I never had an issue with him before so this was really out of the blue and I had always felt safe living there up until then. All of sudden I do not feel safe living there. He was apparently also harassing my female housemate. The police were called but refused to do anything since there was no evidence that he overtly threatened us and he did not physically touch us. What also upset me was when I told my male friends about this they automatically assumed that I somehow solicited the harassment, I pointed out to them this is why women do not report harassment because when they do the women get blamed and the man goes off scot free and the women's lives are ruined. I moved out of there as soon as I could but that also means I am now living with my mother and have a 2 hour commute one way to work. It like living with an evil I know versus living with an unpredicatable evil. Maybe evil is too strong of a word.

On the work front, since I have a contract position, not a permanent position, I am up in the air as to whether or not they will renew my contract every 6 months. To compress and summarize, the result is I will be jobless after June. Honestly I am looking forward to not doing anything in the summer. I tend to be one of those people who plan things out way in advance, like I have my 5 year plan, etc. But I am now purposely not planning anything. I think I seriously need some downtime to do nothing.

Just today I found out that my ex's family has been stalking me on Facebook. Minor issue compared to all the other stuff, but still it is disturbing to me. I have always been concerned with internet security and now I am even more freaked out about what information people have about me online. At least I managed to get things back to some kind of equilibrium with him. We always had a pretty solid friendship so I am glad that things are back to that comfortable platonic stage. Although he did surprise me when he said he is moving so basically I need to move all my stuff out of the old apartment, which I plan to do next week. Since I furnished 90% of it that is a lot of stuff to move.

Things are not proceeding well with new guy. I feel like I am emotionally investing into a dead end so it seems pointless to continue. It does make me feel kind of used though. Not a happy feeling for sure. I am battling my tendency to just close off to all of humanity and hate men, also not a healthy extreme. I think the hard part is trying to figure out where that line is, is it something fixable or not? I feel like he lacks an emotional capacity to have an authentic connection with anyone outside of his family. At this moment I do not think there is anything I can possibly do to make it better, but who knows this has been so unstable, things could be different tomorrow. It bothers me because I am usually not unstable. It has made me question myself, my values, and what I really want from a relationship as I see myself repeat past patterns in a new relationship.

With all the moving around it has become more clear to me what I want to be maximally happy: 1) book access 2) Argentine tango 3) yoga and 4) Shakespeare. Where I was living last month, since there was no tango or Shakespeare I actually started my own groups. I opened an Argentine tango studio for 3 months, not financially feasible to keep going but I enjoyed it while it lasted. I also started a Shakespeare group which is still running. Kind of awkward running it running it from so far away but it has been in my opinion a real success. I am thinking about starting another Shakespeare group closer to where I am currently living, my goal is to finish all of the history plays. I feel like I really need a group for that because history is my weak point.

My other concern for myself is that I am losing friends due to religion and marriage. I cannot talk to one person any more like the way I used to because all information then gets known by the new spouse. Several of my other friends have become progressively more religious and rigid in their viewpoint over time so I cannot talk openly to them anymore without feeling judged. I couldn't even talk about what I am reading because one friend would say, "All you need is the Bible. Stop trying to mix and match religions." All of a sudden it is like, oh no I need to find new friends. And it is much harder to find friends now than before and my introvertedness really does not help.

Oddly enough I do not actually feel a need to necessarily talk about my spiritual explorations (two people either both see it the same way or they don't, I do not see what there is to talk about or discuss and I also do not see any point in trying to assert that one thing is more right than another, I mean it would be awesome to find another person who saw things the same way but I have long given up on that one when I quickly realized that the stuff I tend to dwell on as a middle schooler were simply not what all the other kids were interested in) but I do need to give some explanation for why I am shutting down my phone in order to meditate over the weekend. I would say that I have never been really religious and I do not think I ever will, but I have always been inquisitive, constantly trying to understand myself and the world around me. So I question everything and I am always looking for a cohesive theory. I am INTJ, not sure if I mentioned that before but it gives a pretty good profile for my personality when it comes to continuously trying to find the underlying equation of the universe. Any "truth" goes through a pretty vigorous vetting process before it is integrated into my belief system and the system itself gets re-examined periodically.

Yes, I am also attracted to characters with a painful past and it definitely does force them to be mature from an early age. It seems that suffering is necessary for growth. I recently read Susan Stiffelman's book Parenting Without Power Struggles and I have been recommending it and the sequel Parenting With Presence to everyone, regardless of whether or not they have kids as I find the principles applicable to any relationship.

Okay, and now I am off to the library to try and convince them for the second time to issue me a permanent library card. I talked to 3 library staff people last week and couldn't convince them to give me card. At this point I am considering going into the business of forging library cards, it will be a small clientele but I am sure there must be others in a similar situation. Why can't we have a national library system? I also couldn't help thinking that it is probably easier to buy a gun than to get a library card, I can visualize it as a cartoon. As a last attempt, I think I will just pretend to be my mother and apply for one in her name. This is ridiculous.