All posts by Kendra Short

Kendra's Mental Health Central

Masks

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For most of my life, I’ve been known as a cheerful, hyper, random kind of girl. A lot of people I talk to classify me as a people person, and one to cheer others up when they need it. In school, I was goofy and full of energy.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that a lot of that is a mask. I’m really not as cheerful as I seem, and being around people for very long is extremely draining for me. And while I love to help others and make them feel great, I hate to ask for help.

I love to feel needed, and hate to feel needy. Spending time with people is draining, but seeing people around me happy is the best feeling in the world.

These feelings boiled down to one simple truth for me, when I was younger: I could not, under any circumstances, let others know that I wasn’t as strong, mature, and relaxed as I seemed.

My coping strategies, when I was younger, was to just act more cheerful and energetic around people, then escape into books and video games when I was alone. Writing became something of a savior to me, as it gave me the chance to live out my fantasies through whatever characters I created.

The character that ended up helping save my life, though, has since become one of my best friends: Shorty Scorch.

I originally made Shorty when I was a younger kid on the Neopets forums. She was based on this awesome new anime that I saw and absolutely loved, Naruto. She was a badass, a ninja, and harbored a demon. I know, cliche, but I was, like, 7 to 10. Sue me.

Since then, however, Shorty has grown and evolved just like a real person. I feel like she’s no longer just some vague character, but a part of me. So much so that she occasionally gets to step out and say her bit, here on the blog.

This might just seem like a long personal history and backstory, but it’s not. See, as I got older, Shorty Scorch became more and more a part of me. I talk to her in my mind when I need someone to discuss things with. She’s always calm and reasonable, and motherly. Admittedly, that description sounds a lot like a mental illness, but it’s not. Shorty isn’t a separate personality or something, and I’m always in control of my own body and emotions. She’s just a way for me to help verbalize/conceptualize some of my behaviors, thoughts, and feelings.

But, in the end, as much status as I give her, Shorty is still one thing: A mask. Everything else above I described? All of it is the same: Masks. Layers and layers of masks, to hide my pain or weakness.

Now, here’s the thing about masks: Everyone has one. No one is without some sort of cover for some kind of situation. Some masks are more developed than others, like Shorty is for me. Other masks are pretty easy to see through. But they’re all masks, ways to hide or cover ourselves.

What a person needs to know is when to remove the mask, or at least pull it enough away to get help. Mental health is important, and wearing an “I’m a perfectly normal human” mask when you’re struggling with dark thoughts, self-harm, or other signs of mental illness is just the same as wearing long sleeves to hide bruises. Some people will realize what you’re doing pretty quickly, others will take time, and some will never get it.

If you’re struggling, if you need someone to help you and don’t know how, please… Just take off the mask. It only needs to be for a short time, long enough to talk to a professional, or even just someone that cares and will help you get with a professional. Don’t hide behind your own Shorty, or cheerful and hyper side, or cool and aloof side- Whatever mask you wear, remember that it only hinders you when you need help.

I know it’s hard. Believe me, I still struggle with it on a daily basis. But a few minutes can be all it takes to get you back on a healthy track.

Feel free to reach out to me from the Contact page if you need a friendly ear, and please, stay on top of your mental health.

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United We Stand

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This isn’t my normal style of post. Nor will it be anywhere near my internet comfort zone. As a rule, I don’t discuss politics or current events that are heated online. I find that the internet just isn’t usually a conducive place to have a constructive and polite conversation about such things, so I avoid it in such a forum.

However, things have taken a decidedly different turn from normal. Days are becoming bleak, and the outlook is getting very concerning.

Allow me to preface with a brief description of myself. I am in the Midwestern United States. As a 27 year old female, I have an interest in hunting, the outdoors, guns and knives (mostly swords, really), and a lot of geek culture. As one could gather from my blog, I am an author. Depression and anxiety are constants in my life, but manageable ones. My only “babies” are four cats that range in age from 8 to under 1. My best friends are either high school besties, or the bestie I met on Neopets in elementary school and have since basically adopted as my, like, third or fourth sister at this point.

Religiously, I am a Christian. I don’t go to church or regularly read the bible, but I try to live how I feel the good Lord wants me to. Some of my friends live opposed to how some Christians feel they should, and that’s fine by me. They’re happy and healthy, and that’s more important to me.

Politically, I like to call myself decidedly independent. I really couldn’t tell you what my political leanings are, but I can tell you when I agree or disagree with something someone’s doing.

This is all background so you see how I see myself. I feel like I’m coming from a pretty neutral ground, though you may feel otherwise. As I have no other real description or background of myself on this site, I feel this is vital so that you may read my thoughts on the current situation in the country in the light I see them in.

In recent times, an unarmed, potentially innocent man was killed by a cruel police officer while other cruel officers stood idly by and watched. This unarmed man was already restrained, already in handcuffs and under control, and was of no threat to the officers on the scene. This man pleaded for his life, and instead it was taken from him.

I hope the Lord has a safe, comforting place for his soul to rest, and that he does not watch what has unfolded since.

It took several days for the officer responsible for the arrest to be arrested and charged for the death. This is reprehensible. Many, all across the nation, have said so. Many officers across the nation have said as much, of the entire situation.

We don’t like what happened, at all. We agree, this needs to change.

Naturally, the protests begin. People have begun exercising their First Amendment rights. This is the way to change. Many in history have done just this, peaceful gatherings and marches for their causes.

Unfortunately, some have corrupted these peaceful gatherings. Looting and rioting have begun, across the nation. Innocent people are being hurt, killed, in these protests. Officers who are only trying to keep the peace are falling in the line of duty. Business owners with no stakes in the game other than being American citizens are having their shops ransacked, their livelihoods ruined just because their place of business was there and not heavily guarded enough.

In other areas, either officers in charge or politicians in charge make terrible decisions to use unnecessary force on peaceful protests. Innocent people get gassed, shot with rubber munitions, and beat on. It reminds me of the reactions to marches for the Civil Rights Movement.

Yes, I capitalized that. It was important. That was a huge part of American history, and we need to learn from it.

Our protests need to be peaceful. It makes our message more sincere, and harder to deny. They can’t use those who are violent or use the protests for criminal activity to sully the meaning.

At the same time, the opposition needs to be peaceful as well. History will look back and see how cruel we are to each other now. Future generations will see it, and be sickened and disgusted by the police attacking peaceful protesters, the rioting and looting during what should be a sincere and honest protest, and the absolute civil unrest.

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. We are seeing this right now. Worse, everyone has easy access to cameras and video recorders now. This will be even better documented than in the past. We must correct our course now, before we fall prey to our own hatred, viciousness, and evils.

To close, I have a message not just for my fellow Americans, but for the world. Because as 2020 continues to rage out of control, peace, love, and unity are more important than ever, and I feel this message is just as important to the world as it is to the country:

United we stand, Divided we fall.

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Respect

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So I’ve realized something…

Yeah?

I mentioned wanting to do something else to my hair that someone didn’t like… but they didn’t argue. They offered an alternative in a very natural manner that we both like. Unfortunately, both options cost more than just a haircut, so… it’ll be a while. But that’s respect right there. No, “what are you thinking, that’s so dumb, don’t do that.” Instead, just an attempt to offer a different perspective in a way that won’t lead to arguments or hurt feelings.

Pretty nice, isn’t it? If more people could do that, there’d be less hate, anger, and hurt in the world. Are you going to opt for the alternative, then?

I don’t know yet. I mean, it’ll be a bit before I have the money to do either. So I’ll contemplate both and just go with regular haircuts until then. Maybe I’ll find another alternative we both like, too, and we can discuss further what we’d like best.

That sounds pretty good. I like that idea.

It’s nice to go from the two of us having heavy disagreements about my hair, of all things, to a more respectful dialogue. I understand she doesn’t like the haircuts I’ve gotten lately, but I love them. So I continue to try new versions of this super-short cut to see if we can find a style that she likes, and I love. It’s one of the few things I’ve realized I can change in a big way and make myself much happier.

Your haircut? That is all it took to make you happy?

Happier, about myself. I always hated my hair. And I think that’s hard for some people to understand. I’ve always been pretty cool with myself. I mean, at one point my weight was a problem, but because I felt I was too light. But I’ve never really been in love with my hair. Not until I started getting it cut short.

Well, loving yourself is important. I saw weigh your options carefully and decide what’s best for you.

Journey in a Strange World, Stories

Journey – Day 5

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Alexander woke me up around dawn this morning, according to his clock. We’re eating breakfast now, and we’ve already discussed our plan for today. He thinks that instead of just blindly wandering the caves, we should try strip mining. He thinks there’s a good way we can do this and cover more ground.

His plan is to pick a spot and start mining straight ahead. I’ll go three blocks to his left in the same wall and start mining the same direction. He thinks that this will expose the most rock to us and give us the best chance of hitting diamonds. We’ll open windows every five blocks so we can see and hear each other, and we can make a tunnel between the two when we need to take a break.

By my thinking, this should also help with monsters. If we do this and light up behind us, we shouldn’t run into as many monsters. The only ones we should run into are ones in dark passage ways we mine into. If we’re careful, that still shouldn’t be a problem. That, and we should be able to hear most of them before we get to that point in our mining.

Alexander says he’ll let me know around 9, at least as best he can tell since this clock doesn’t have numbers on it, that we should take a break if we haven’t already. Then we’ll stop again at noon for lunch, at 3 for another break, then at 6 for the evening. I think that sounds like a solid plan.

We started the strip mining- Alexander stopped me a couple minutes ago for a break. He wants to be sure we don’t overwork ourselves, so he figures we just work slow and carefully. So far, the mining has been uneventful.

I did get the strange feeling someone was watching me while we worked though. I don’t know how they could be- Minus the windows Alexander and I made to talk to each other through, there’s not much chance of anyone watching us. Maybe I’m just getting paranoid in this close space we’re working in, but I’ve never been claustrophobic before. It’s hard to say.

After we eat and rest a bit, we’ll be getting back to work. Alexander thinks we can find diamonds before long if we keep this up. I hope so. It’s a little weird being underground for so long. At least, baring sand and gravel, we don’t have to worry about a cave in. Those seem to be the only things that actually fall around here.

On the plus side, I don’t think we’ll find much sand this far down, and gravel has an obvious texture difference to it, so we should know ahead of time if we’re going to hit it. The only thing I’m really worried about is hitting a pool of lava. If one of us mines into a pool of lava, we could be in trouble. Thankfully, if we mine over one instead of into the side of one, we should be able to make a path out of some of the stone that’s dropped. (Sorry, cobble. Alexander glanced over and saw that and is insistent that stone breaks into cobble, not more stone. I don’t see the difference, it’s a block of rock either way!) He also says that if we mine into the side of lava, we’ll have plenty of time to block it up and keep it from flowing into our area.

Alexander wants to get moving again if I’m ready. I’ll write more when we stop again.

Oh my God, this is nuts! I can’t believe this is happening! I saw him- The man with the white eyes from my dream! He was watching me from a ways back in my tunnel!

I kept getting that feeling I was being watched, so I finally just turned and looked, and there he was! As soon as I saw him, I freaked the hell out. I screamed, and he turned and walked away. Just walked away! Calm as could be! Thankfully, I know I’m not crazy. Alexander tunneled through the wall to me and saw him walking back down the tunnel. We’re in a little room we made now, with the wall built back up so nothing, and no one, can get in to get us. Alexander is thinking about what we should do and who that could’ve been, and wants me to try to rest. He thinks I’m too freaked out to head back to the surface. He’s right, really- I don’t think I can handle any of those stupid monsters right now. I’m shaking and I keep hearing things that I haven’t heard here before, and it’s making me jumpy.

I think I’ll try to eat something and calm down. It’s not even noon yet- Once I’m calmed down, we plan to head back up to the surface. Alexander thinks that’ll be a faster trip than our first trip down here, especially since we placed torches in such a way that they should lead us back up. I just want to get out of this stupid cave system- I want to get back to our houses and away from this creepy block man!

We’re about halfway out of the caves now, and I am exhausted. Alexander said I don’t look like I’m doing too well either. According to him, I’m pale and look like I might just pass out. I feel like I might just pass out. Three times while we’ve been walking I’ve spotted him again- Alexander saw him as well two of those three times. It’s clear he’s following us- But I don’t know why. Is he a native that thinks we’re trespassing? He hasn’t actually approached us, just watched from afar. Is he trying to decide if we’re a threat? What if he’s looking for the best time to-

It’s been about an hour. Alexander took my journal because I was getting more worked up. I’m a lot calmer now. It’s almost noon, and we are still in the same spot. Alexander said we might as well give it a few more minutes, then we should move on. He figures we should go ahead and eat, make sure we’re all good, and then go. Given the speed we’ve been moving, we should easily be out of the caves by dark. Thankfully, the town isn’t far. We can hurry back to the town from the caves and lock ourselves in. I don’t intend to come out even once overnight. I might even block up my door so only Alexander can come in. (I don’t think I’ve mentioned that we took up separate abandoned houses. We may be in some strange alternate world, but there are still some places a woman just has to draw a line.)

It’s surprising I haven’t gotten sick of this bread yet. Or apples. That’s most of what we eat, since we don’t want to risk getting lost trying to find pigs or cows to kill. God that sounds gross and I would hate to do it back home, but at least these things don’t bleed or anything. They just fall over and turn into raw meat. It’s so weird, but it works! And apparently, this raw meat actually never goes bad. Weird, but super handy. If we get lucky and large herd of cows comes walking right through the village, we can kill as many as possible and have meat for days! I miss meat…

Speaking of, I should eat something to build my strength back in. If we stop again, I’ll update this. Otherwise, I won’t until we get home.

We made it back out to the village safely. God it’s good to be holed up in my own little house. I’m actually hidden back in a corner I set up as a make-shift shower… I broke out the windows back here, walled the section off, and pretty much made sure a certain guy in the village can’t be a creeper. I managed to set up a spot for water to fall from, and all I have to do is break a dirt block to start it and put it back when I’m done. The only sucky thing is I have to air dry, but it’s not cold here. It’s not hot either. So what I’ve been doing is washing my clothes first, at least as good as I can without soap of any kind, before taking a shower myself.

The main point of all that was just that I am trying to stay as far out of sight as possible. I don’t want to so much as see the block man. Alexander immediately ran to see if he can find anything on this guy in his book. I might just take a nap back here and see if he comes up with anything.

Alexander just came to tell me he did find something on the block man. Bafflingly, he only found his name: The Gatekeeper. There’s no description of this guy in Alexander’s book, just a picture and that name. I hope we can find something more out about this guy… I at least want to know if he’s dangerous, or if he could even help us. Then again, he might not even understand English… There might be some strange language spoken here, and that alone could cause problems for us…

I guess time will tell. The look on the gatekeeper’s face though… It’s intimidating, and he doesn’t look too happy when he looks at us… I just hope he’s not dangerous.

Before bed, Alexander wanted to discuss our next steps. For a couple days, or really nights, he wants to try to hunt endermen and try to get the pearls we’ll need. He said we’ll need some just to find the place we need, and then we’ll need even more to activate the portal to the end. This is going to be a nightmare and a half… He said he’ll do some more research and see if his book says anything about the best time or place to find endermen, then tomorrow morning we can plan a bit more, then go hunting.

I’m not looking forward to this.

Kendra's Mental Health Central

Why It’s Okay To Not Be Okay

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Some people who know me might not know this, but I live with depression. I was diagnosed in high school, after I went to the school counselor with suicidal thoughts. After some medication, I recovered and was back to normal.

At least, for a while. Now, I’m on medication again and have been for a couple years. Probably will be for the foreseeable future. But there was a difference this time: I wasn’t afraid to ask for help.

See, when I had my first bout of depression, I was afraid to speak up. What would my parents think? Would Mom blame herself?

“She’s always been a great mom, I don’t want to hurt her. I just have to keep being the perfectly normal kid and everything will be okay. No one has to know something’s wrong with me.”

But there wasn’t anything wrong with me, I was just ill. Desperately so, in fact. By the time I got help, I was scared of myself, and no one should ever be in a state like that. No one should ever be afraid to ask for help when they’re struggling.

It’s okay not to be okay, just like it’s okay to have a cold or the flu. That’s all mental illness is, another sickness. Something that needs attention and treatment. If you get the flu or an infection, you go to the doctor. If you aren’t feeling right in your mind, you should see someone about that, too.

I know it can be scary and intimidating- trust me, I’ve been there. But the scarier thing is knowing that one day, your loved ones could be faced with something happening to you because no one knew you needed help. Because that’s what’s terrifying about mental illnesses- they can be invisible.

My worst days of depression are highlighted by my best laughs and biggest smiles, when people are looking. Despite knowing I can ask for help, I still hide behind a mask. The people I ask for help are few and far between, but they’re always within reach. However, I still have to remind myself that I can talk to those people on those bad days.

If you are having those bad days and feel like you have no one to talk to, please, find the local hotline for your issue and call it. Or drop me a line on the Contact page and I’ll do my best to talk it out with you. I’m not any sort of licensed professional, but I care about you. All of you, everyone reading this, are worthy of my love and care, and you’re worthy of feeling okay. But if you’re not okay right now, that’s okay.

People are here for you.

Journey in a Strange World, Stories

journey – Day 4

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I woke up early this morning to find it was raining. From my little temporary house, looking outside, I could see monsters everywhere. And yet, I feel so calm and peaceful this morning. Maybe this is some strange sort of calm before a storm scenario. It might just be that I’m finally starting to gain hope that we can make it out of here. After all, our plan for at least the first phase of this expedition is pretty solid to my untrained mind. Things seem to work differently in this world, but Alexander seems to have a good grasp on that. I’d hope so, after three years here. I’m just glad I met him. I’m not sure I could handle this alone, if I’d even made it past my second day.

I think it’ll be a bit before Alexander wakes up, so for now I intend to just… Think about things, maybe write in here if I come up with anything important.

I miss my family. My mom’s probably worried sick about me. Today would’ve been my youngest sister’s dance recital, and an hour after that would be my youngest brother’s soccer game. The twins would likely have asked me for help with math again, and my friends and I would take everyone out for pizza. Mom would insist we didn’t have to buy dinner, and we’d just brush it off.

Things are rough at home, but not in a bad way. Mom’s just struggling to feed five hungry kids. She told me I didn’t have to, but I got a babysitting job to help out, and I tutor on the weekends. It helps pay the bills, and I save gas money by riding my bike around. The twins plan to get a job once they hit 15 in two weeks, and that should help out even more. My two best friends, Amy and Becky, help out too by helping us buy groceries. They don’t have to, but their families are well off and don’t need the extra cash. It’d all go to clothes or shoes or such otherwise, so they figure it’s a better investment.

Becky’s birthday is tomorrow, November 5th. Amy’s isn’t until January. I’ll feel bad about missing Becky’s, but I’m sure she’ll just be glad I’m home. I hope I’m home in time for the twins’ on the 20th, but I know they’ll understand if I’m not.

I should describe my siblings since I’ve brought them up. Nikki and Ryan are 14, born on November 20th. Nikki is into softball, and Ryan is into anything mechanical. They both get good grades in school, and help each other where they need it. The only thing they both suck at is math, but I help them out with that. Mikey is 10, and loves sports. He likes soccer the most and is the best player on his team. They haven’t lost a match yet this year, and Mikey is super proud of that. Trisha is 8 and wants to be a ballerina when she grows up. She started dance classes two years ago and has stuck with them ever since. It’s made her hate being sick- Mom’s rule is if we are too sick for school, we’re too sick for any of our normal after school activities.

Alexander is awake now and wants me to help double check our supplies before we go. I will write when we stop for a break.

We’ve been mining for what feels like a few hours now. According to the strange little clock Alexander apparently had this whole time and didn’t bother to tell me about, it’s not quite noon yet. So far we don’t have any diamonds, but Alexander isn’t sure we’re far enough down yet. We stopped for a break and to eat a bit. Our little rest area is just a small hole we dug into a wall and blocked back up. We lit up the area around it in this cave system first, to try to keep monsters away from us. I don’t remember if I wrote it before, and I don’t want to take the time to look cause we won’t be stopped long, but light deters most of the monsters. Zombies and Skeletons burn in sunlight, and artificial light like what comes from our torches keeps new monsters from popping up.

About these torches- They’re super weird but super useful. They don’t require fuel of any kind, and they never stop burning! Alexander said he hasn’t had to replace a single torch in the three years he’s been here. We can make four torches using just a stick and a piece of coal, so they’re super duper easy to make too! Plus, since we brought extra wood, we can make more if we need to. We keep finding pockets of coal while we’re walking. Which is great, because we can also use that to power the furnaces we brought if we need to use them.

Alexander says we’ll need to be careful when we get a bit further down- Apparently, at the depth we’re heading to, he’s seen a lot of lava pools. He said they’re actually not hot to stand around, but he can tell from monsters that have fallen in that the lava is still dangerous. It’s so weird that it doesn’t hurt us to stand near, though. He said we can even safely carry it in buckets! Like, metal buckets! I didn’t do the best in science, but even I know metal is supposed to heat up when exposed to, well, heat.

I’m going to eat something before we keep moving. I’ll write again at our next stop.

It’s sometime after noon now, and we’re a lot deeper in. We passed several of those lava pits, and Alexander wasn’t lying at all! It wasn’t any hotter standing next to the lava pit than it has been. I could hardly believe it! We did have to watch out for little embers that would occasionally pop out of the lava, but those were easy enough to avoid.

We spotted our first enderman while we were down here. It spotted us too, and it really did not like us looking at it. It teleported right at us and attacked, but Alexander fought it off bravely! It was amazing to watch, like something right out of a movie! Well, a weird, blocky movie anyway. Unfortunately, we didn’t get one of those pearl thingies that Alexander says we need, but he did manage to kill it. We’ve also had to deal with several spiders, a number of skeletons, and a huge wave of zombies.

Alexander said we stumbled on what his book called a “spawner” and that’s why there were so many zombies. We surrounded it with torches, because that’s supposed to deactivate it, and looked in this chest that was nearby. There was some really weird shaped armor, an old-style vinyl record, and some bread. We took the bread and left the rest- Alexander told me the armor looks like horse armor. We don’t need it.

Thankfully, we haven’t run into any creepers here. I think it might be harder to deal with them in close quarters like this. Their explosions could be useful for mining large chunks out of walls, but at the same time it’d be difficult for us to avoid getting hurt from that. We’re going to get moving again here in a minute. Here’s hoping we find the diamonds we need soon!

We found a spot to stop for the night. No diamonds, but a lot of what Alexander called redstone. We also found a little bit of gold, but it’s not very useful to us at the moment. There are these cute little bats down in the caves, and I don’t think I’ve mentioned them yet. They seem completely harmless, and they are just so adorable!

Don’t get me wrong- I wouldn’t go anywhere near a bat back home. But these bats are so different and cute! And stupid. Very, very stupid. I’ve counted ten now that have flown straight into a lavafall. (Is that even a word? It’s like a waterfall, but made of lava.) I counted another three that flew into corners and just seemed to get stuck there. Wouldn’t turn around, wouldn’t hang on the ceiling there, nothing. So weird.

We’re staying down in the caves for the night. I wasn’t too keen on that idea at first, but it’s better not to waste our time trying to go back up just to have to spend pretty much an equal amount of time coming back down here. We’ll have to continue our hunt for diamonds tomorrow, and hope we find some. Maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll run into more endermen too. If we can knock the diamonds and the ender pearl things out in one go, all the better for us!

I just hope we can round up everything we need soon. I want to go home. I miss my family and my friends. I just hope my they’re not all too worried about me.

I hope we can get through this alive.

Monologued Dialogue

Curious Mind

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Need some help figuring out who is Me and who is Shorty? Head over to our “Meet the Family” Page to find out!

Ugh. I have so many ideas and not enough time to implement them. So many things I want to learn, and no idea which to prioritize. There’s so much I want to do, see, know…

Congratulations on having such a curious mind. Not everyone does. I know you feel it’s a burden at times, but look at where it’s gotten you already. You’re beginning to learn Japanese, something you’ve wanted since you were young. You’ve started a site to share your musings, our conversations, and some of your works. And the work you haven’t publicly shared has been seen as good by your friends that have read it.

But I get distracted by new ideas so easily… I know Journey is somewhat popular, considering my small viewer base, and yet I’m so slow to update it.

You just need to organize and structure yourself. And then stick to it, kid! You’ve got a start to a schedule, add to it and stick to it. You’ll get more done and feel better about yourself. And don’t start new projects until you finish one. Write your general ideas down and save them. It works for your roleplaying with your friend.

You’re right. I need to organize. I’ll start a schedule and try to keep it.

That’s the way. You can do this, kid. Just do it.

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Ideas, plans, and expectations

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Need some help figuring out who is Me and who is Shorty? Head over to our “Meet the Family” Page to find out!

Alright, I officially don’t understand people anymore. It’s nuts. People expect you to care about others, which I certainly do. But you have to balance that with self-care, and people are realizing and accepting this. But then you self-care, and people think you’re selfish or lazy because you’re not concerned about others, or you’re not doing chores, or you’re not spending time with family. Like, where does it end?

Well now, where is this one coming from? You’ve seemed pretty “I’ve got this balance down” level of handling things lately.

From my brother, where else? He has no balance on it, and he’s part of the problem with my own balance. He swings between all he cares about is other people, up to and including forgoing making sure I have money to pay our bills to just give away hundreds of dollars worth of goods. Don’t get me wrong, helping people is great! But he needs to remember that he has to make sure that we’ve got what we need, or we lose utilities, our vehicles, our house… Then, he’ll get so fed up about helping people, he’ll just be a jackass to and about everyone else. He throws fits at the tiniest inconvenience when he’s in this mode, and it makes him sound like an entitled snowflake. And you know I hate that term, Shorty.

Did you consider that most people can’t decide how much is too much, both in terms of self-care and in terms of helping people? Some people give until they’re the ones who need the help, and that’s definitely too much. But then others only self-care, all day, every day. Nothing gets done, and they don’t do anything to look out for their fellow man.

It’s just nuts. Like, I can’t get time to learn a new language, or work harder on my streaming, or even to write, whether for the blog or just stories, because then I’m lazy. And if I ask for help with anything so that I can get things done and still have some time for self-care, I’m lazy and I get a lot of push-back. Like, dude, I’m a depressed and anxious young lady already that’s trying to clean up after others, and myself, and I also try to make time to help others in any way I can. How am I the bad guy here?

You’re only the bad guy if you’re not being true to you, you’re being actively hurtful to others, or you just don’t give a shit if you’re accidentally hurtful to others. Do you think you fit into one of those categories?

Honestly… I just don’t know anymore. Is that really the only categorizations for bad guys? I’ll have to think about that one some more…

Think all you need. You know I’ll be here for you as you need.

Stories, Taking Back the Kingdom

Taking back the kingdom – Chapter 2

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It was two days of walking before I arrived at the nearest town. While I still had plenty of food and water, thanks to Pa, I hadn’t quite brought enough supplies to keep clean with. My clothes were starting to look pretty filthy, and I figured it was time to stop by a shop to pick up a couple additional things.

It didn’t take long to find the town’s shop. A brightly painted sign pointed the way, though not a lot of customers seemed to be coming and going at the moment. Heading inside to look around, I noticed that the shop was neat and tidy, with inventory displayed on well-crafted wooden tables and shelves. 

What was odd, however, was the abundance of goods for what looked to be a well-off shop. Most shops that were popular enough to have such nice displays and beautiful signs had trouble keeping the shelves stocked throughout the day, due to the abundance of customers.

And where were the customers? At this time of day, nearing noon, a shop like this should have been packed. I shouldn’t have been able to hear myself think for the noise of haggling. Yet, there wasn’t a soul here save myself and the shopkeep, who watched me hopefully.

I shook off the shock of the situation and went about grabbing supplies, heading to the counter with it. “Good day, sir.”

“Good day to you,” The shopkeep smiled. “It’s good to have a customer again.” He went through my items as I frowned.

“This looks like a popular shop, what would make custom fall so much you would say that?”

“The damned taxes, for one. People have less money to spend. Then, one of his fancy new ‘inspectors’ came to have a look at the shop, and we got hit with a large fine for a law no one’s ever even bothered with! We aren’t allowed to mark prices up for tourists. You know how the monarchy is, they didn’t really actually care as long as you paid the proper taxes on it. But then here comes this new fella, and he starts enforcing that old, foolish law! Says prices are meant to be equal to all, no matter where they’re from. But that’s the only way small shops can stay in business- My shop will survive, we’re the only one in town. But small shops in big towns? How will they fair, not being able to mark up prices to tourists? Where’ll they get that income?”

“He’s messing with the natural flow of everything, isn’t he? Higher taxes, messing with the practices of every shop in the land- And not everyone will be fined, I bet. He’s likely going to ‘make examples’ of certain shops, just to get a handle on it. Just wants to control people, I think,” I grumbled. “Well, don’t you worry. I’m on my way to try to help get the rightful queen back on the throne, and get rid of this imposter.”

“Good on ya, son. I just had a couple people pass through last week, talkin’ bout the same. That was the day before the fine hit.” The man sighed, accepting my payment and going back to his work. “Have a safe trip.” I gave a nod and a wave, collecting my goods and heading out.

—————–

“Sire, our latest reports,” A young woman said, coming into the study Marcus used and handing him a sheaf of papers. “While your changes are taking hold… There are dissenters…” She watched as Marcus scanned through the papers.

“Ah, I see… A small force gathering, eh?” He asked, sighing. “That’s what has you concerned, Olivia. Well… I guess we’ll just have to take emergency measures. Prepare the Guard, but do not have them march yet. Have this group watched for now, and report on them every two days for the time being. From there, we will decide what to do. Understood?”

“Yes, sire, of course.” With a small frown, Olivia bowed and went off to do as she had been ordered. Marcus sighed and turned to look out a window.

“Time to see which way this whole thing will fall…”

Journey in a Strange World, Stories

Journey in a strange world – Day 3

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Alexander woke me up early this morning for breakfast and to talk over how we intend to set all of this up. Breakfast was some bread and porkchops. It works, I guess. At least we’ve got food, and there’s a well in town for water. Alexander also has a couple cows penned up to get milk from. So we’re set up for food. I guess carrots, potatoes, and wheat are already growing in the various farms in the village, and they grow fast. That works for us. It means we should never run out of food. We’ll always at least have bread.

Our talk this morning consisted of Alexander going over what kind of practice I’d have to do before he’d even come close to considering me ready to face the dragon. After that… Wonderful discussion, we started discussing getting to the dragon to begin with.

“So how do we get to this dimension in the first place? I mean, if we can’t get there, we can’t fight the dragon.”

“Well, that’ll be the hard part. According to the book, we’ll need a number of what are called enderpearls. You can get them from endermen- Which I’ve only seen one of. But we’ll need at least nine, probably more. We’ll also need to go to another dimension called the nether to find some creatures called blazes. We’ll need to kill them for another component we’ll need.”

“Let me guess- Blazes are also super dangerous.” I am really starting to think I’ll be stuck here forever.

“Yes, as are most of the other inhabitants of the nether. Luckily, we can make defenses for ourselves. Armor, weapons, potions- We just need to get a strategy and we’ll be golden.” Alexander seems a little more optimistic about this than he was yesterday. “Now- Getting to the nether is going to be another task that will take some time and preperation. For that, we are going to need, as near as my math can tell, we need 14 blocks of obsidian to construct the portal to get there. To get obsidian, we’ll need a pickaxe made of diamonds. Diamonds… Are a pain to find. I’ve personally never found any.”

“None? In three years?” That sounds kinda… Super hard to find.

“To be fair, I haven’t been actively looking for them, and I try not to go out on mining expeditions for too long at a time. On top of that, I only go down there if I need something. I usually don’t.” Well, I guess that makes sense, then. Why would he want to go down there in the dark and risk getting himself hurt, or worse, if he doesn’t need anything down there. “But I have a general idea of how to find them, at least. We’ll probably be down for long periods at a time, so… Let’s start planning things out. Figure out what we’ll need for a trip, what to bring extra of, things like that.” Alexander said, getting up. I agreed and we started planning.

It’s been a few hours now, and I think we’ve about got this figured out. We’ve decided that we should pack extra food, extra iron to make more pickaxes should ours break on us- Apparently, they can break. I wouldn’t have thought that was a thing, but apparently it’s a thing. We also want to bring an extra furnace in case we run out of iron- This way we can refine some more to use should we need it. Other things on the list:

Several bunches of torches, to help light our way, as they apparently only give off light when on a wall; plenty of wood so we’ll be able to use it for pickaxes, which have handles made of wood; buckets of water, to take care of any lava we see and keep us from accidentally falling in; two beds so if we get exhausted we can set up a small base camp and rest up; a crafting table each, so we can actually make the pickaxes.

Alexander helped me practice the sword after we had finished that. It isn’t nearly as hard as I had thought- You don’t need any fancy fencing to use these things, thankfully. The main thing he wanted me to practice was blocking, as that’s the best way to keep from being hit by arrows from skeletons. Thankfully, the swords are kinda wide, so that should help. They really aren’t heavy like you would expect, either- These are pretty light, and thin, but super solid and super sharp. I’m not complaining, of course. That just means that I can learn how to use this thing quickly and easily.

Currently, we think we’ll be heading out tomorrow to start searching for diamonds. We don’t really have a way to tell the time underground, so we’re just going to assume we’ll be down there for a couple days. That’s why we’ve planned to take extra food and beds. Alexander mentioned finding a good, deep spot to set up an actual, defensible base camp and set up a furnace, a crafting table, and the beds there, along with plenty of light. Apparently, most of these mosters only appear in the dark, though they can travel in the light. There is an exception to that- Zombies and Skeletons die in direct sunlight, but not man-made light.

Alexander did warn me we’ll have a chance of encountering several dangers underground that we haven’t here. He mentioned lava, creatures he called slimes, and what are called cave spiders. Cave spiders are still giant spiders… They are just poisonous whereas the spiders we’ve been seeing aboveground here aren’t. So poisonous giant spiders that we may or may not see coming… Yeah, I’m not excited for this.

It could mostly just be nerves, but I really don’t want to go underground for potentially days on end. It could be the fact that I am a huge arachnophobe, or that I really don’t like the thought that we could get trapped down there forever. But I think a large part of it is a dream I had last night. It was a short dream, but enough to creep me out. I haven’t mentioned it to Alex yet.

I dreamt that I had woken in the middle of the night and decided to look outside. Everything looked pretty calm, like any normal night, except for a strange figure not too far from the window. He looked like a blocky human- Everything about him was a square or a rectangle. He had on a green shirt and blue pants, and he had brown hair. Nothing too freaky- Until he turned around. His eyes were pure white, no pupils or anything. He looked right at me, watched me for a few minutes, then turned and walked away.

I really hope it was just a dream, and I didn’t really wake up and see that guy. It would make me a nervous wreck to know that something like that is running around here, and knows where we are. It might be the case that he’s not our enemy- He could just be a native of this world and have found us and come to see if we meant any harm. It could be that he’s just travelling, saw me, and decided my presence was none of his business. But the scary idea is that he could be a demon of some kind, and could be watching us waiting for a chance to strike. He could kill us here, and no one at home would ever know what happened to us.

I should stop writing about it- Alexander keeps looking over at me while I’m writing, and he looks a bit concerned. I might look scared- I’ll just tell him it’s the spider thing. I don’t want to tell him about the dream. I’m sure it was just a dream- After all, he’s been here three years. If there were any natives here, I’m sure he’d have run into at least one of them, right?

For now, I’ll end my day’s writing here, unless something else comes up before bed. If we’re going to set out tomorrow, we need to make sure everything is packed up today. This is going to be a long, tiring adventure. I just hope we’re both ready for it.

Alexander did ask what was bugging me while I was writing. He thankfully didn’t ask for any explanation beyond my fear of spiders- Rather, he accepted that and promised me he would do his best to handle any spiders we come across so I wouldn’t have to. That does make me feel considerably better. Maybe this trip won’t be so bad after all.