16 January 2025

Birthday blues

As a sort of epilogue on the whole birthday thing I had mentioned, in a previous post, telling a woman who’s doing odd jobs for Neighbor and L that it was my birthday last Friday. (I didn’t make it clear then, but she and I have interacted before so no, I wasn’t being a weirdo telling a random stranger it was my birthday. Okay, she’s pretty much still a stranger, BUT.) And that she’d claimed to think I was in my thirties, and yadda yadda yadda. Right? Okay.

So, Monday we had my usual odd job and then meat-sorting. Sometimes other people help me and Neighbor with the meat-sorting and sometimes not. This lady has helped in the past, but not very often; lately she’s around more due to her other commitment. So she was there Monday evening. One of the first things she asked me was how my birthday had gone.

Up to this point, Neighbor hadn’t said a word about it being my birthday last Friday. He and L had been out of town (he had business to attend to in Medford, which is over the state line and something like two hours away), but that wasn’t the whole day and we’re friends on Facebook and he surely gets birthday notifications for his Facebook friends. Silence. From L too, but she’d been out of town for her birthday back in September and I hadn’t known ‘til practically the last minute and was pretty broke at the time, and I’m pretty sure I at least left a “happy birthday” comment but still, I wouldn’t have expected a lot of effort from her when I’d not given her much of any either. But I’d actually attended Neighbor’s birthday party and given him a small gift, so I was kind of hurt by the complete lack of reciprocity; I’d have been content if he’d just said something. Only knowing how absent-minded he is and how busy he’s been lately really mitigated it any for me. So I didn’t say anything. Have thrown huge hints on Facebook, none of which he apparently picked up, but he’s also got over four thousand friends on Facebook and could have easily missed them all. I’d given it up for a bad job. I was in kind of a shitty mood, though.

But when the odd-jobs lady said that about my birthday Monday night, I was looking straight at her and noticed, out of the corner of my eye, him glancing up quickly at me after she said it. I continued the conversation and pretended nothing had happened. Thought maybe he’d say something then. He still didn’t.

BUT, usually when I’ve done my weekly odd job for him, I have to remind him to pay me — not because he doesn’t want to but because, as I said, he’s absent-minded and frequently forgets things. He actually warned me about this early in our acquaintance because he knows it’s a problem, and asked me to please remind him of things when I needed to, and he wouldn’t be offended. So I do, and he never is, and he follows up.

Well, this time I didn’t have to remind him. I think that’s the earliest he’s ever paid me for the weekly work, and it was rather a nice surprise. I thanked him, as I always do, and he came back with “and this time you didn’t have to remind me.” Now, I said “usually” as far as when I have to remind him — if I remember correctly, I have had to do it every fucking week so far. This is possibly the first one in which I haven’t had to. If not the first, then the first in several weeks.

So I’m kind of wondering if this was his “happy birthday” to me. And if it was, why the weird indirectness. But it’s not a question I can answer, and it’s certainly not one I’m ever going to ask. I’m not reading anything hinky into it, either. I mean, possibly he wonders why I didn’t say anything. But I’m just going to leave all that alone because I don’t know what the fuck is going on there, and I’ve learned the hard way that when I don’t know what the fuck is going on, I’m better off keeping my (physical or mental) distance. I don’t always ABIDE by that lesson, but I’ve definitely learned it. Several times.

But generally, I was in a bad mood about my birthday. I don’t know why, because I am horrible about everyone else’s. But specific people not acknowledging it made me wonder where I stand with them. I don’t even mean the obvious people (and one of them is subscribed here). I mean people whose birthdays I have not yet had adequate time to be horrible about.

Well, I guess I’m gonna start. Not even to be petty, or not just that — I need to get out of the habit of trying to please people who can’t lift a finger in effort for me. It isn’t going to solve my goddamn daddy issues and it’s not going to make me happy. I also can’t completely stop engaging in some efforts, because those keep me alive and at least I’m getting paid, but if there’s no fair exchange going on? Meh. I might keep you around on the socials, but believe me: if you aren’t putting in, it means nothing.

Artistically speaking

So, in an effort to cheer myself up, I set up an album on Facebook where I could share stuff I’ve made over the years. (That’s public.) Even Neighbor liked something there, which was nice. Here’s a bit.

I have this whole setup to enable me to get my work out to a larger audience, but I… haven’t been doing the work. I don’t know what it is. I feel good about these things when I get them done but it’s the starting. Or more like the continuing after the starting. I have been having trouble with this ever since my life ended in ‘21. I think it’s grief, honestly. That was a thing before December 9.

Oh, and speaking of which, someone on Instagram direct-messaged me through my main account asking me if I would give him the handle for the art account that is part of the above-mentioned setup. Uh… NO. Thanks for playing. Bye.

Manual labor

I’d rather be doing stuff like that than what I’ve been doing. I’m not allergic to work — even Neighbor would vouch for me there — but every time I set out driving all over southwestern Oregon or I go lugging around heavy things, I run the risk of being injured. The problem is that I need to be paid, and people largely don’t want to pay me for what I like to do. Right now they mostly want to pay me for busting my ass. There’s one exception to that general rule, but that’s a one-off and at some point I’ll be done and that’ll be the end of that, and back to the brute-force application for cashola again. Still. Whatever.

The one good thing I can say about it is I’m now physically stronger than I was when I moved here. I can’t remember the last time I needed Neighbor’s help to lift a heavy box, because I can lift all of them now. When I actually put in the effort, I get conditioned quickly. (I went through a similar thing when I moved into the homeless shelter in ‘23, because I was sleeping on a top bunk and it had been a long time since I’d had to climb anything and WOW was I fucked up for about a week. But I got strong enough for that in a hurry.) So I’m happy for the exercise.

I just wish there were a lot less risk involved. Because if I can’t make actual friends here, if I’m just The Help, then my living situation is only as good as my continued physical ability. If I lose that, I’ll be fucked.

Recovering nerd

Among the many, many other things I’ve loved and then lost to the gender-identity movement, such as my daughter (who isn’t a thing, but you know what I mean), I’ve had to seriously re-assess my participation in nerd culture. This has been a source of much contentment in my life and you cannot know how much it’s hurt.

I don’t know why, because the news about Neil Gaiman (if you’ve not heard, google it) didn’t surprise me as much as I might have expected it to do. Possibly this is because I know nerd men too well. Equally possibly it is because I already knew about his “open relationship” with Amanda Palmer, and that they had broken up, and that guys in that specific situation are usually not the good guys. It might be years before you hear the relevant details of said relationship implosion but I shit you not, there will be details. So maybe I was expecting it the whole time.

(Strangely, as far as I’ve seen, no one’s been calling Palmer out for covering for him — but I would bet you money I do not even have that she fucking knew, and that’s why they split.)

He’s not my only issue with nerd culture — not even close. I just thought of it today because yesterday I was looking to replace one of my favorite nerd shirts that I had ended up donating to Goodwill after my life ended, because I didn’t have enough room for a huge t-shirt wardrobe anymore and anyway, I thought they rather made me look like a giant child. But I’ve been missing this one. It was an image of David Bowie dressed as a Time Lord from Doctor Who — you know, in their traditional robes with those weird high collars? His TARDIS is in the background and says TIN CAN where it should say POLICE BOX. It was brilliant. Lately I’ve been wanting to get another one; for a while, I could still find it on one of the t-shirt sites.

But I also debated with myself. I love Bowie’s music, but he’s long been considered problematic for allegedly statutory-raping a fifteen-year-old virgin (worse, she might have been fourteen — I cannot be arsed looking it up just now, fifteen is bad enough). And then there are the problems with the Doctor Who franchise, including several of the actors and showrunners being irredeemable trans-pushing pricks. Did I really want to wear a representation of this whole trainwreck on the front of my body, ever again? Even if my daughter and I used to bond over both of them?

And yet, I was disappointed to learn that the shirt is gone. The artist who designed the work doesn’t even feature it on his socials anymore. I don’t know if the BBC sued him, or what. It doesn’t matter. The choice has been taken out of my hands.

I suppose I need to design my own stuff and forge my own fandoms. There will probably never be a place for me ever again in Nerdland anyway.

Also, I am really tired of losing everything to this fucking cult. Make it stop.

—

Okay. Stuff to do. ‘Later.