I have lots to report in this entry of My Life, so I'll just jump right in with the tea: I have spent the past few months healing from The Breakup, and I am MUCH better off now than I was then.

In the beginning of this month I picked up two weekly night shifts at a second job with the same hotel chain my brother-rommate Billy works at. It's not a glamorous job, but it pays well and opens me up to the hospitality industry. Since they are overnight shifts that means that I need to get myself used to sleeping as much as possible on the rest of the nights of the week, perhaps requiring melatonin to ensure I sleep all the way through my sleep cycles. It will take some time to adjust to the new sleep schedule, but I would not have picked up these shifts if I didn't think I could balance them while working full-time at my day job (selling perfume). And things were going great UNTIL a life-altering event took place on the 15th (what is it with bad shit happening on the 15th of the month?! So uncool...).

What happened was my brother's dog Lucy (who really puts the bully in pitbull) went after my dog Medusa (a boxer/pitbull mix but mostly a boxer) after she made it clear she didn't want Lucy near her (Medusa's) food bowl. Lucy took it as a challenge and tried to latch onto Medusa's chest; I tried to pry her jaw open and pull her away, but in the process Lucy bit off the tip off of the index finger on my left hand. The tip tissue actually fell into the food bowl that started it all. She had just gone full-on beast mode, and ended up hurting one of her absolute favorite humans without any clue as to what she had done. Before this happened, and ever since we moved into this new apartment back in April, Lucy has been getting increasingly more territorial and possessive— over things like toys, spaces, food, me & my attention ("mama love"), everything. I managed to get Lucy into the kennel and afterwards called my brother, who took me to the ER as soon as he returned home. They washed & x-rayed my hand, showing that the first little bone tip in my finger had been bitten off & only a splinter remained. I was able to handle the situation through the pain simply because I would not allow myself to see the wound with my own eyes (and also this pain paled in comparison to the pain of having blood clots throughout my body years earlier). Billy felt (and still feels) incredibly bad about the whole thing, and we agreed it would be best for her to not live with us any longer. We were advised by our veterinarian to put her down, and even the Dumb Friend's League said they would probably put her down too, but we just did not want that to happen. She made a huge mistake and could no longer live with us but she still has so much love to give and doesn't really understand what she's done anyways, and I absolutely believe her unreasonable aggression can be redirected by someone with greater resources than Billy & I currently have available to us. We reached out to some old friends with connections in the animal rescue circuit, and we brought her to them instead. The dog bite and the sudden loss of Lucy from our immediate family has been a jarring and woeful experience that is still quite fresh. My fingertip will take months to heal & will probably end in a nub for the rest of my life. My brother no longer has a dog, and although he feels she cannot stay with us, I know her absence truly wrenches his heart.

And yes, we still love and adore Lucy with every fiber of our hearts, and we will continue to do so forever. Anyone who says "pitbull, told you so" can eat my entire ass after giving me all their money, because that shit does not fly around me.

With that unfortunate event aside, my life has otherwise been going pretty well: low-key, no mess, less stress, with lots of introspection & meditation— just the way I like it. My dreams for Celestial Pearl and Project Zeitgeist are still as alive as ever, but there is an obscene amount of work to be done for both that will require me to massively upgrade MYSELF first, and I am actively working on that. I want to be able to make my dreams come true, but I need greater discipline, focus, and people skills than I am currently able to muster. As much as I want to be ready to master my life, I just am not yet ready for self-employment, and the only person who can do anything about that conundrum is me. I've recently picked up greyscale oil painting and am currently working on my first oil painting ever. I had some old black-and-white acrylic paints sitting in my closet for years that I wanted to use to get rid of, but the consistency didn't please me as I painted— and I had always wanted to try oil paints anyways, so I went out and got some. I've also picked up some other fresh art supplies and am hoping to create some greyscale conceptual illustrations with them soon.

Meanwhile, at my paying job, perfume sales at the department store are mind-numbingly slow and have been so ever since I joined the fragrance department back in February. I really love the store I'm working in— the floor space is clean and beautiful, the coworkers (including the management) are generally wonderful and actually care about each other, most of my customers are very polite and appreciative— but there is just not that much foot traffic in the mall at all. There is only so much selling I can do to people who aren't physically in the store, and that irritates me because I know the people at the top don't care & won't do anything to help but will still expect us to make our sales numbers anyways. And it is such a shame, because I LOVE selling perfume to people— the process is an exquisite blend of psychology, neuroscience, aesthetics, harmony, and intimacy that I have never experienced while selling anything else. I love helping people find something that makes them melt & go "Ohh!" or "Ahh!", whether it is for themselves or someone they love. Perfume really does make such an excellent gift, when one knows what the person wearing it wants. Although the long hours of being "on" when there's no one around to sell to does take its toll, I am not yet ready to leave such a glamorous job behind, even for a job that keeps me on my toes. I am eagerly looking forward to the inevitable holiday rush we anticipate in the coming months, since the rest of the year has been so slow.

Now that life has calmed down enough for me to see things clearly, I am once again reviewing my life through fresh eyes and thinking of the near future with deep consideration. I want to set some long-term goals I can look forward to that will keep me inspired on a daily basis, and I want them all to involve traveling. There are two of my oldest dreams that fit this bill perfectly: van-dwelling and overseas immigration. I don't know which one would happen first (maybe I could do both at the same time one day?) but I do know I've wanted to do both of these things for decades now. I have dreamed about camping and traveling across Colorado and North America in a mobile home for years, which makes perfect sense because I used to love playing "pioneer" by myself as a child all the time. I've also been thinking of moving somewhere overseas outside the USA, and found a company that hires native English users to move to Japan to teach English. I think I am going to apply, just to see what happens. If I do decide to take on such an ambitious endeavor, I will definitely need to teach myself to read, write, speak & listen to Japanese— which I am more than happy to do, since the language arts have always been my forte. Medusa would have to come with me, of course, because anywhere she cannot come with me will be an instant dealbreaker and I will not move there. I have done a modest amount of research into both of these challenging dreams and found them to be both promising and feasible together. So its safe to say my next big life purchase will probably be either a custom van or a nest-egg for moving to the other side of the world. Time will tell what happens either way, though.

On a totally unrelated note, I actually left my "mank-ave" and went out with Billy & some friends last night to a free concert featuring Chali 2na and Cut Chemist— an amazing musical duo (and 35-year-old friendship!) that Billy & I have seen perform several times over the years. But last night we both got to see something new to us: they switched roles! CC rapped and 2na got behind the booth! It was awesome!!