Has it really been two years since I wrote a flippin journal entry? I suppose it has. How. . .odd.

Well, since my last journal entry, I've switched careers. I made enough money being a writer to take some time, breathe, and figure out that which I most wanted to do with my life.

I also got the ability to breathe properly back by quitting smoking, which would have been a serious impediment to my life plans.

So, after taking some time to think, getting my lungs back and deep navel diving sessions, I've decided to become a horseshoer. I've always been horsemad, and I've wanted to work with them since I was little. I don't have the kind of budget it would take to become a profitable trainer, I don't have the time to become a vet at this late date, and I also like blacksmithing so here goes.

Yes, for the record, it is the bleeding edge scariest thing I think I've ever done. Oh, the horror of having to go for your dreams instead of leaving them safely on the shelf! If they stay on the shelf you can never fail, but if you go for them and miss, you have to deal with that concrete, granite wall at 70 miles per hour affirmation from reality that you are unworthy. Eeek!

Oh, screw it. You only live once, and I don't want to do it on half burn. I've created another dA account, *ladyhorseshoer, to put up all my farrier and horse related stuff. Check it out over there for my blacksmithing art.

On another subject, since coming out of my self-imposed isolation and started dealing with people again, I've noticed that people are really, really shallow. I don't mean any offense to anyone here, the deviants that I've interacted with are lovely, complex people with deep interests. I mean most of the people I deal with out there. Superficial sex, candied-up violence and pointless altered states of conscious seem to be the main interests of huge swaths of the population out there.

I insist on the adjectives for a variety of reasons. Sexual interaction rates as one of the biggest roller-coaster rides of human experience. In the words of one of my characters, "How can you call something of such violent grace 'superficial'?" Bad pornography just reduces sexual interaction to its biggest and least subtle components. It's like VanGogh mutilated by Barney the purple dinosaur. However, this is what's preferred by most people instead of anything with thought or originality. Umm, why? There comes a point where it gets boring.

The violence depicted in film and game is candied up, not real. Real violence gives most people a serious case of the heaves if not outright vomiting. You really don't know what a dead body looks like until you've seen one, and it's one of the most horrifying things ever. Not entertainment. However, many people I know like to think of themselves as "kick a**" and capable of "throwing down" without any real clue as to what consequences that would entail. Makes me a bit crazy.

Furthermore, the candied up violence also gets boring.

Last, pointless altered states of consciousness. I have nothing against altering one's consciousness with any of the variety of pharmaceuticals out there, including alcohol. I just think it's pretty boring to want to do it every bloody night. Come on, isn't there something better to do? Please? What I've observed so far is that the people who do it all the time need the excuse of the drug in order to let their inhibitions loose. I don't tend to have that problem because I actively work to sand away ingrained inhibitions, so maybe I just don't understand. However, still seems boring as hell.

So, most people take the three greatest possible human diversions, reduce them down to stupidity, and insist on living at this bottommost level all the time. And people wonder why I tend to hole up in my house for months on end.

"We’re more of the blood, love, and rhetoric school. […] I can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive, but I can’t do you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory — they’re all blood, you see." - Tom Stoppard