THIS HAS BEEN A GREAT MONTH!!!!!!!!!!!!! THINGS ARE LOOKING UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The True End of the Unemployment Arc

I have a job!!!! Officially. I will be starting here in a couple weeks once my background check is finished up. I’ll be working with embroidery machines making custom designs meant for funerals. The job pays well, and while not really a graphic design position, my title will be graphic designer, so it’ll be great experience for my resume. There’s actual benefits, I’ll have weekends off, and I won’t have to work with the general public. I’m so excited. This is going to go so crazy and I can’t wait until a month from now when I’m whining and bitching about the job.

Image of embroidery embedded on the lid of a casket.

I am still doing graphic design things for the tech conference, I’ll be able to work on it in my off time and on weekends. I’m still excited for that! I think doing both at the same time might be a lot, but I have more creative freedom with the tech conference, given these designs aren’t going to be displayed at funerals next to a casket lol.

Funny story with this job. As with most Big Boy jobs, they wanted to have me do a drug test. Which made me extremely nervous, despite using delta 8 and not “real” weed, it still tests positive for marijuana on drug tests. It’s completely legal in my state, but in my mind, they’ve got no reason to believe me if I say “It’s just delta 8 promise.” So I quit using up until the test obviously, but after about a week without getting high, I bought an at home drug test from Walmart just to ease my own worries and I tested positive. So by Rachel’s suggestion, I bought some Certo and Gatorade to flush it out of my system. Basically, Certo is what turns fruit into jelly and jam and stuff. If you put it in Gatorade, or any other sugary juice with electrolytes, and then proceed to drink gallons and gallons of water, you will piss all the pot out of your system. It is awful though, disgusting. And drinking that much water when you’re not thirsty is physically painful. But none of it mattered, because when it all came down to it, they don’t even test for marijuana! So that was both a weight off my shoulders and really fucking annoying.

Image of a Walmart basket with Certo, Gatorade, and an at home marijuana drug test.

Anyway, the 4th of July

Rachel came down and visited Cass and I for the 4th of July. We drank.. a lot.. and watched a firework show in Cincinnati. We also thought we were going to get shot with a gun, which was fun. This was also how I found out between the three of us, I was the only one with survival instincts because when someone screamed “I’ve been shot” I was the only person who ran and I almost left Cass and Rachel behind. Anyway, no one actually got shot, some teenagers just shot fireworks at each other and everyone was okay. Also shout out to the police officers who didn’t do anything.

The fireworks were cool, but I think I forgot that they’re kinda boring after 5 minutes. There was also a drone show, which was fun to watch.

Image of the Cincinnati skyline with the sun setting behind it.

Image of the Cincinnati skyline with red fireworks and drones spelling '1776' in the sky.

Rachel and I were left unattended that Saturday, where we proceeded to get completely fucked up and stood on the balcony trying to get cars driving by to wave at us. We succeeded kind of, getting 1 car to honk and 2 to wave back. But this required several dozen cars driving right past us.

Blurry image of empty beer bottles and shooters.

Larry and Javier

I have spent an unfortunate amount of time thinking about Larry and Javier, who are characters made by Michaela and I for an upcoming Shadow of the Demon Lord campaign. Once we realized they have romantic chemistry.. well we went insane. At least I did. I drew them on horseback together and wrote several thousand words of them being angsty and not admitting their feelings for each other. Unfortunately I can’t share too much of what I’ve written, given that Larry has some secrets that other party members shouldn’t exactly be privy to. But I’ll probably share them someday, probably in a different blogpost.

Image of Larry and Javier sitting on a horse together in the desert. They are smiling while holding hands while Larry puts his head on Javier's shoulder.

General Health Check-In

I’ve been very diligent so far in my blog when talking about when I’m not doing well. I think I’ve done a good job of talking about what’s wrong and how I’m dealing with it. But now I’m pleased to say I am doing extremely well. I am happy and haven’t felt better in a long, long time. I feel extremely fulfilled with my creative hobbies at this point, writing has become such a passion for me I never knew I had. Specifically through DMing a campaign, which I’m still doing! It’s been so much fun and I’ve felt great doing it. Physically I also feel really good. I mentioned in last month’s post I’m walking and running in the mornings. Unfortunately the habit isn’t sticking as much as I’d like, some days it’s just too damn hot out. But I’ve also changed what I eat. I don’t eat the best, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve been taking smaller steps to improve my diet without huge overhauling changes. Slightly more protein, slightly less sugar. Slightly more veggies, slightly less candy.

I didn’t really go into this with the expressed goal of losing weight. Which might not make sense, but let me try and explain. As a trans man, I wear a binder. It’s a full torso piece of fabric that looks a bit like a tank top that is meant to compress my chest area. Binders are extremely uncomfortable to anyone who isn’t a twink. But despite any discomfort or pain, there aren’t really any long term negative consequences… if you wear them for less than 8 hours at a time and take ample breaks and don’t get out of breath while you wear them. Which are hard things to adhere to when you have a job. Granted, I’ve been unemployed since February, so none of this really matters, but working at Walmart and then going to my second job or hanging out with friends after my shift pushed me well into the 12-15 hour range with no breaks. And that has fucked me up. I pretty regularly experience back and rib pain which aren’t the most painful in the world, but add a lot of unnecessary discomfort into my life.

I don’t want to live like that forever. I mean, ideally I would get top surgery and this wouldn’t even be a problem but. If you’ve paid attention to the news, you know how that’s going right now. Not to mention it isn’t exactly an easy or cheap surgery to get and recover from. 10 years from now I hope to have had top surgery. But there’s a lot of time between now and then and there’s a lot I can do to make myself more comfortable now. Plus I want to have more energy to run around in mosh pits at concerts. I don’t have an exact number in mind I want to hit in terms of my weight, I don’t really care what the number is. I just care that I can fit into older clothes easier, I have more energy when I go on my walks, and I just in general feel better. This is the healthiest I’ve ever approached weight loss and because of that, I think this will be the most successful. I had tried many times in high school in college, usually ending in me giving up and hating myself more because of it. But not anymore! I’m going to be able to bind safer, run around more, and have more fun!!! In total I’ve lost 15lbs/6.8kg so far. I don’t know how often I’ll be updating this number, I may never talk about this again, but if you see me in a few months and I look different.. well, you’ll know why!

There’s Always a Bigger Fish

You may remember a few months ago I announced that Cass and I were working on a fishing mod for Minecraft. We developed the core mechanics together in our brainstorming sessions, then Cass wrote the code and I drew the pixel art. It’s still under construction, the minigame specifically has taken longer than we’ve expected. But I’m finished with my part! I’m hoping to have some organized images of all the fish together to show off, but pixel art is hard and between other stuff I haven’t worked on it as much as I’d like. However! I’m extremely excited to show off the banner and logo I made for it.

Image of a Minecraft screenshot with 'There's Always a Bigger Fish' written on it in orange text. There is also an orange fishing pole. Surrounding the image are several pixel art fish of various different kinds.

Image of two pixel art fish on a fishing pole.

Eventually when the mod is fully out, you’ll be able to find it here on Modrinth and play for yourself!

Guppy and Goodbye

This has been a great month for me! I’m super proud of myself and how things have been going lately. In between all the things I’ve talked about here, I’ve also been spending a lot more time with my friends than normal. Shoutout to Evan and Michaela for watching Red vs. Blue with me, as well as Robin and Elliott for showing me Deltarune. Here’s the photo dump for this month also.

Image of a tabby cat staring at the camera with a very put together posture.

Image of a tabby cat with big, large eyes staring at the camera extremely close.

Image of a tabby cat sitting in someone's lap. She is making passive aggressive eye contact.

Image of a tabby cat laying on a purple sheet. There is loose cat fur all around her.