Updates On All Kinds Of Things

Life is kinda nuts right now? I thought I was going to be homeless for a minute, I was forced out of the closet at a family gathering, my mom was treated for stage one cancer, and my step sister and I decided to write matching memoirs exposing our family's cycle of child abuse and manipulation detailing both of our slightly different personal stories. My working blog for my memoirs is Memoirs of the Family Disappointment. The writing style is a bit more dark and intense because that's how my family makes me feel. All of my posts on there have various trigger warnings so if you don't have stuff that triggers you blacklisted, I suggest not checking it out for your own safety <3 SJ

This Is Kinda Shitty

Well, I'm stuck on mobile, even though I'm back from my trip, so my posts will keep being very spread out and badly we written because I HATE typing on my phone. I'll try to update.

I Will Be Active While I'm Gone After All

I found blogger on mobile so I will still be posting while I'm on my road trip. But since I will be busy and on my phone, do not hold me accountable for any and all spelling errors I make. I'm terrible at typing on my phone, but I have a few posts on queue already so I'll burn through those before trying to type on my phone. I'm also going to try to keep up with my bullet journal while I'm gone. I hope that I can stay on top of it. If I do, I'll post pictures of my journal while I'm on the go. <3 SJ

My Bullet Journal

Day four, page fifteen of my newest journal and it's still going strong! The format and template I set up for the lists, reading updates, writing updates , and diary entries remains intact, a quality that my last journal did not have. I'm feeling really hopeful about it and am really hoping I don't fall out of the good habits I've kept with it so far. Writing this it is July 6 and I leave for Illinois in a few days. I'm not so excited to see my mom but I get to see one of my best friends, Dorian <3. I'm also siked because my sister made a bunch of mixes for the road trip and we have the same music preferences so It's going to be pretty cool.

My Identity Board

In an attempt to fully encapsulate my identity and who I am, I have started a pinterest board based on me. You will see it shares some likeness to Aerin's board, which is mainly because I want to be androgynous and am agender. There is some stuff about my autism and stuff referring to how I feel about gender roles and presentation. I believe that this board will illustrate how my characters came from me and how I wish to represent who I am through my writing. <3 SJ

Another Thing About Me

Call me what you want, a grandma, an old lady, but I am proud to say that I love working with yarn, textiles, and fabrics of all kinds. These interests apply to quilting, weaving, embroidery, sewing, knitting, crocheting, and fashion design. I see a bunch of scraps of fabric and I think "What could I do with all of this?" and like every creative endeavor I go on, I start a pinterest board and find and form ideas on what to do with my box of scraps. Believe it or not, all of these things inspire me as much as any character or song. Working with my hands and letting my mind wander instead of writing and applying my mind to work on it  gives me time to think and build complexity without getting restless or losing concentration. My most current project is a wall hanging ( a quilty thing that isn't a quilt but is built like one) for my mom. I had a bunch of blues and orange and yellow scraps so I'm doing a hanging of a fiery golden sunset on the sea. My mom loves the ocean almost as much as I do.

My Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

So, I'm writing about genderqueer trans people and non-heterosexualities. If I were a reader, I would personally question the credibility of anyone writing about anything LGBTQ until knowing more about the author, because I have read some works that tried to represent in  a positive manner but were unable to accurately do so because they did not personally know how the genders/ sexualities they were trying to write worked. These writers meant the best, but I was not 100% satisfied with the representation.
 I am agender, demipansexual, and panromantic. Being agender means that I do not identify as ANY gender. I am not any gender in particular. I just exist. Demipansexuality is a sub-category of demisexuality. Demisexuality is when you are attracted to someone after forming a deep bond. If I haven't known someone for at least six months and am not romantically attracted to them, I will not be sexually attracted to them. I  may see them as hot, and enjoy Imagining having sex with them, but when It becomes something that could realistically happen and I think about it in terms of "Do I Want This Person Inside Of Me", it doesn't sound so appealing. "Pan", of course, is short for pansexual. I have been attracted to a few people in my whole life with a sex drive (about 4 years), and they have been all over the place gender wise. Being panromantic means I'm romantically attracted to every gender (which of course is proving true as well).
Although I would like to be androgynous, I am currently presenting fem (bleh) because I am not out to my family. This means I can't order a binder or get a "lesbian hair cut" as my mom so eloquently refers to undercuts and short hair in general. This has led to bouts of extreme dysphoria and an almost absolute inability to do anything about it. I also have a very hard time with pronouns (even binary pronouns) because of how I phrase things in my head*, so it would not be right of me to ask for people to change the pronouns they refer to me to when I can't seem to remember their pronouns ever in general. Maybe, someday I will be able to start using gender neutral pronouns ( the minute I can actually refer to someone correctly without accidentally misgendering them I will assume new pronouns).
I started brainstorming Aerin because I want their body shape, their androgyny. I began developing them because I want representation. I came up with Wren upon the realization that my Perfect androgynous ideal wasn't the only group in need of representation. There are always, of course, groups in need of representation. I think that's really something more writers should think about. And talk about, and write about. I mean, what are we supposed to write about besides stuff that means something to us? My identity and my need for the ability to exhibit my pride, which is repressed and only exhausted through my writing on the internet, are the most important things to me . These are things I want people to know about, to acknowledge. I also want people who don't feel represented to see that they can represent themselves and they should in any way possible.
Outside of my home, during the school year, I'm as loud and proud of my sexuality and gender as anyone else. Around my mom and her passive aggressive transphobia and homophobia, I was unable to do things like this, putting all my time toward unbridled self expression and pursuing my happiness. Since my mom has left me here with my sister ( who I am out to, to an extent, and who is incredibly accepting and loving and wants me teach my nephew about such things), I have felt more freedom than I ever felt when she was here. I'm going to visit my mom in a few days, and though I'm going to have to get back in the closet after I've spent the past few months being out, I'm hoping that the freedom and hope I feel for my future here doesn't go away while I'm there. I may be leaving my home and my laptop, but I can't leave the person I've become and my mom and her quiet hatefulness will no longer hurt me. My mother is a good person. She, out of the kindness of her heart, adopted three out of seven siblings from a turbulent, abusive home. She is, however, unlucky; a woman raised in a pentecostal church in  southern missouri in the '50s managed to adopt a queer autistic mexican mixed child with PTSD. The combination of our personalities has not turned out well. <3 SJ

*My autism causes my vocabulary and sentence structure to get all jumbled up in my head. Most of the time I just refer to people by name instead of pronoun in my head "The Dorian", "The Hannah". It causes communication issues and pronoun problems but I always catch myself and am very disappointed when I misgender someone. Sometimes more upset than the person I misgendered.

Doodle A Day Journal

So, In one of my posts about journaling I said I was starting a doodle-a-day journal. It has been three days and I already failed at it. My bullet journal, however, is both thriving and helping me thrive. I have a really good feeling that this one is going to last awhile and help me keep my shit together into the school year. <3 SJ

Pinterest Character Board: Wren

Wren is a very soft but complicated character to write. Since these are my two favorite things about her I tend to focus on them. To see how I used pictures, ideas, and concepts gathered from the internet to create Wren, follow this link! <3 SJ

Character Pinterest Boards: Aerin

Aerin is a very complex character ( at least in my head). In order to develop this character, I  have been working on a pinterest board for them. If you would like to see my inspiration and references for Aerin, the link is here. <3 SJ

My Bullet Journal!!

I've started my new bullet journal! It's so cute and going so well so far! I changed how I formatted the list since my last one, and these are working better than the old one.

Bullet Journal!

After hours on pinterest, I'm starting anew bullet journal! Mine, of course, won't be as fancy as others' but that's ok because it will still be useful and the inside will be just as pretty as anyone else's. Wish me luck lmao.

My Journals!!!

Anyone who knows me will tell you that journals are a very large part of my life. I have autism, which makes it hard for me to express myself verbally, process my feelings and senses, and process events in certain orders. Journals are Very useful in doing all those things, as well as being fun and a good writing/ art exercise. In the past year I've kept a poetry journal ( which was actually a letter to someone) , a bullet journal, and a sketch-a-day journal. I am currently keeping a letter journal, a doodle a day journal, a college planning journal, this blog for my writing, and I plan on starting a new bullet journal on the first of august. Here are some descriptions of the journals I've completed:

1. The Letter Journal- This is pretty much just a letter. I wrote many poems and drew some sketches  over the course of a really, really intense crush and I  bound the pages  together by hand and gave the completed journal to the girl I wrote it for ( I'm currently working on  another one in a spiral  addressed to a friend that lives far away so I don't get to talk to them every day and tell them everything I'd like to tell them) 
2. Bullet Journal- I used a templated bullet journal to chart my anxiety/ stress for the second part of last school year ( It really helped last year so I'm planning on starting a new bullet journal before next school year starts). 
3. a sketch a day journal- 365 paged sketchbook that I worked on for awhile ( I think it finishes in February but I didn't keep up with it very well so I'm not going to try to finish it at this point). Pretty much what that was was sketches inspired by book quotes or things that happened ( there are like 3 pages from a concert I went to with a friend and so much fanart for that band after that) 

Beyond that, I'll try to update about my journaling endeavors. I'm coming up with a layout for my bullet journal. I'm thinking of giving it a kind of hipstery vibe and maybe including some stuff from my college planning journal in it. The real question, though, is whether or not to hand bind it. I'll continue stewing up ideas for Wren as well. When I've fully developed enough of her to  write solidly I'll upload the sketches and work on her character chart.

I'm not good at blogging on a day to day basis

Ok,, So I'm not very good at regularly updating things. I usually set goals depending on when I start a project, and I've been taking Wren and Aerin in tiny steps. I haven't started much on Wren. You will eventually hear from me again, I promise. A little wait is going to be worth it, because when I rush things tend to get super messy. Show my brain some patience while she figures out exactly how Wren is supposed to be. Also, I'll be Gone for a whole week and I'm trying to queue some stuff for it but it may or may not go well. I know, I don't update much as it is, but I'll pull a few all nighters and make sure there's enough substance to last awhile. While I am working on Wren, maybe I'll start writing about my journals? Journals are always fun and I've done like 5 of them in the past year. Anyways, that's the docket for the next couple weeks I guess. I have to sync my queue and stuff so that it updates regularly while I'm gone/ busy and such. If you're willing to wait and have been waiting since my last update, thank. <3 SJ