So far, so good. It’s refreshing, really, to see the changes that have already taken effect. So far, systems of leisure and pleasure are either still fully functional or have taken on advanced functionalities. The initial calm that we felt has become the norm, for the most part. There are still things in our life that we want to correct, but we’ll get to those later. It’s important to us that we keep track of things as they progress, so that we have something to reflect back on.
We must admit, we’re still trying to get the hang of figuring out how this will/should affect our diet. Things seemed to have steadied out, but (perhaps since the ramping up of estradiol from 1 mg to 2 mg per day) our blood pressure has been noticeably lower today, to the point where doing much of anything seemed a bit of a chore. We didn’t entirely let that stop us, though. The prospect of general physical weakness really doesn’t bother us, though. In fact, it’s something we’ve already considered a trait we carry for some time now. I suppose as a whole we have mixed feelings, but personally, bodily strength is not a trait that I much care to have myself.
That mysterious force, sound
Music has returned to our lives. Begun to, at least. This is something which makes us very glad, as we think it was one of the contributing factors to our general malaise during the past several months or so. It’s helping to be able to set up our current personal laptop (though our new one should arrive on Tuesday~) with a music player and access to our library. We’ve still got a lot of ripping to do, we want to be able to listen to all the lovely tapes that we’ve missed so very much again.
We were in an accident last March, and goodness, it’s almost been a year, but for a while, we were afraid that it’d permanently damaged our ability to enjoy music to the extent that we had before. And perhaps, for a while, it did, but certainly not forever. Recovery is a slow process, we’re finding. Health is a somewhat frightening word. Perhaps we’ve never really been healthy, but because we don’t eat as much as some expect, and are picky about the kinds of things that we allow into our body, we give off the impression of being health-conscious. We suppose we’ll really have to be, now. So far it hasn’t proven much of a chore, remembering to take our set of pills, but it’s only been three days, really. Well, four since we were given our prescription, but we didn’t take the first dose until right before bed, and what an experience that was! (But we’ve talked about that already.)
Anyway, back to music. We’re finding that it’s not enough simply to listen, we need to start making it again. And indeed we have. Our toolset is somewhat limited here; we suspect moving back in to our apartment full time will help with that. It really is frustrating, not having been able to play some of our favorite instruments for such a long time. But a keyboard and a computer do allow for some creative expression. A kind of organ-timbred drone was produced tonight, and while it’s somewhat unlikely that anything will end up happening with it, the fact that we did still satisfies us. We’ll try not to leave it wholly raw and unfinished, we’ve applied some track automation and effects to give it a more rounded-out sound (LMMS is kind of frustrating, though, we expect when our laptop arrives, we’ll be putting REAPER on it, as we think it should be more than capable of running it, even if we have to dedicate a Windows VM to some part of our recording toolchain).
While we’re at it…
Art. We want to create it. It’s hard to get started, and apparently we give off the impression that we’ve no inclination toward visual art whatsoever, which is totally false. Actually, the greatest limiting factor for us has been a repetition of the following chain of events:
- (Re)Discovery of a certain medium that catches one or more of our interests.
- Research, thinking out possible ideas, usually in a surge of raw thought, rarely documented (we could fix that here, you know~ <3).
- Limitation (by lack of funds or appropriate space to work on the medium in question, discouragement by lack of tools often follows).
- Either we lose the opportunity or something else comes by and catches our interest, and the process begins anew.
I don’t think this will go on forever. We want to try our hand at a great many things, and perhaps we’ll master none of them, but that’s alright. Printmaking seems wonderful, the one linocut print that we’ve done so far was richly satisfying. We’ll need to make more of a habit of going to museums and galleries, though their presence is somewhat limited around here. Perhaps when we move (and we do hope to do so, soon) that’ll be rectified. Visiting a nearby art school that our blood sibling plans on applying to was definitely an inspiring force. Especially, and this is very important, the fact that each student had a space of their own that was their studio. It was where they worked on their artistic endeavors, and did nothing else. This seems extremely, extremely important. We have no such space of our own, currently. There are always distractions. That might be one of the most limiting factors for us, there’s nowhere that we can really just escape to. Let’s fix that. We will fix it, I’m sure… Creative release is so important. We’ve gotten so bogged down in technical things that we’ve neglected ourselves, the creative part of our mind.
Honestly, in the past, a lot of our free time was consumed, one way or another, by our libido. This doesn’t seem like it’ll be as much of a problem anymore. It really is freeing, not to be held under control of that. At the same time, some of us worried that we wouldn’t be able to submit to those urges when others were involved, which is part and parcel of the experience for us. So far, this has not proven to be the case! ^////^
So, until next time…
I think that’s about enough for now. This was nice. We’ll need to do this more often. I also need to make sure to give others a chance to write. Being the predominant front has downsides sometimes. Don’t worry everyone, we’ll all get a word in sooner or later, I promise. Until next time, be well. We love you.