Oh Man, Life. Oh Man

One journal would not have the sufficient capacity to outline the series of events that has been happening since I last wrote. Most of it would not be in the interests of most anyhow who would have little care in the day to day struggle of some random nerdy artist girl. So as usual, I’ll parse it down to the most relevant events and maybe you’ll have an idea of what life’s been like that I can’t even afford to summon up the willingness to blog as I used to. Lesse…

-I had a job at a boutique shop that you prolly heard about. Was fired a week into it due to selling cigarettes to a minor when I should have gotten her ID. Lucky me that I just happened to make the mistake with an agent from the Revenue of Taxation. Was kinda bummed out for a while about that.

-Me and my roommate’s van was out for weeks (from the last week of August to around the middle of October). He forced his van up the hill we’re currently residing (and the hill is quite steep) while it was out of gas and blew something out, rendering the thing undrivable.

His first mistake was trusting one of his friends to fix it, a guy who has no formal teaching or license in auto mechanics but trusts him to be the best around. After dicking around for four weeks (4 weeks) , he finally got around to settling down with the thing and even he admitted he had no idea what was wrong with it. What they suspected to be the fuel pump that blew out turned out it wasn’t the case when the van still wouldn’t start.

Then he tried the mechanic from the tow shop our landlord works at, confident he could fix it. Guess who felt stupid the next day.

Finally, my roommate did the first smart thing he did since our van broke down and told our tower landlord to just take it to someone with a diagnostics machine…someone reputable who could actually fix it. The van ended up going to a mechanic on Swamp Road. Mention this to anyone on Guam and they will groan sympathetically. It took him…oh, iono. It –seemed- like ten weeks before he finally fixed it. All throughout the time he gave us every excuse in the book- the O2 sensor was bad, you don’t have the right fuel pump, the computer box needed to be replaced. On the day he finally drove it up to the house claiming to fix it, a day prior he was telling us another part needed to be replaced right before his house’s power was cut off. It runs, but it had a host of major problems that weren’t there when we first gave it to him. And the little shit still had the nerve to keep calling to ask for his pay.

-Due to van catastrophe, we pretty much ran ourselves broke (we were borrowing money and scraping up whatever savings we could, most of it being used on the van and keeping ourselves alive). We couldn’t work because we had no car to get anywhere, having to pay people to lend us rides. We finally applied for financial aide when our van was finally fixed and it took a load off the majority of our expenses, giving us some reprieve to get back on our feet.

-I grew more eager with my art upon joining PMD-Explorers. Figured its Pokemon that perked me out of my artist’s block, but I’ve come to accept that Pokemon is a vast opportunity to practice design on different creatures as well as getting back on the RP groove that I’d lost years ago. The group unfortunately has its set-backs which I attempt to ignore, though for how long is questionable.

-I attempted to make money off commissions in desperation. My concentration isn’t the greatest working on it, however, I’ve been doing my best to have it all done.

-I nearly got into a fight with the neighbors over an off-comment. Let’s just say I have a way with words that ticks people off, though I don’t mean how they interpreted it to be. And not with the intention to set someone off enough to beat my ass- I’m such an asshole trolololol. But in all seriousness, the incident made me hellbound to move the instant I’m able to- everyone in that place is quite intolerable. It was bad enough that I’m kind enough to clean the house after everyone, but it only encourages them to pick after themselves less and less to a point where I can’t even go out for a day and come back with beer cans littering every table and floor with leftover food and ants swarming over them, every eating utensil that I spend a good chunk of my day washing carelessly thrown back out. There isn’t even a fucking sink to wash that shit in- it’s a faucet over a small canal, and I squat and bend over it for a good half an hour scrubbing and disinfecting the dishes because they are literally just thrown out in the yard. One roommate goes through our water and coffee like a fat kid on crack, and the other is so cheap he won’t even go to refill the five gallon bottle for $1.25, even when he has a job, is getting our rent and retirement benefits and we aren’t getting squat.

Not to mention that ever since the car wreck (if you haven’t heard yet…yes, I’ve been in a head on collision and lucky enough to get off with just seatbelt bruises), just driving anywhere stresses me the fuck out. Of course, that’s only true if its someone else (especially my roommate) driving, and I can drive on my own just fine. Its that crushing feeling of having no control, of anticipating the moment where you just feel a sharp jerk and hoping that nothing smashes your head in. After every drive my nerves are just shattered, and of course it doesn’t help that my roommate is an asshole driver. I desperately need my own car.

-We had put an ad on the paper for caretaker and carpenter services and had a few people interested. I’m currently a caregiver for an elderly man and the man that hired me offered me to work in his daughter’s boutique nearby, letting me be more accessible to helping him while also doing a little more than working a day a week. Hopefully that works out. Although taxing, I do actually like doing it.

That’s life as it is now. I’m living well but broke as hell, but hopefully I’ll be getting back to that ‘start to live my own life’ plan that seemed to be indefinitely on hold. I’ve gone through such moments of desperation that I’ve actually started to pray…I don’t have much religious faith, but when you’ve got nothing left to lose, I guess its all you’ve got.

~Taddle

Bad Luck Week

So many things have happened since I wrote last. So many things to talk about. For an attempt to change my way of life, which was essentially non-existent, I may have bitten off more than I can chew. Let’s see if I can build up from start to end in an organized matter, starting with why I’ve been horribly inactive with my online activity.

About around the point of my last entry, I’ve been quite depressed with the progress I was making. I couldn’t do anything, the places I’ve sought help for (Job Corps) were determined to make it as much of a struggle for some kind of self sufficiency as they can, which only further demotivated me from trying. I’m not really sure what I was doing at that point- I think I just decided to get distracted from online games and wait for something to happen.

Cue event one. Someone had responded to a personals ad I put up online looking for people to hang out with. Because I had nothing else going on and figured I didn’t have much else to lose, I decided why the hell not (note to kids: Never EVER meet strange people without a friend or someone you know with you. And never meet on their terms- always go to a place with plenty of people around, or familiar enough that you know were you can get help, just in case. I broke both those rules that night.). He and his friend wanted to go hang out at a bar and then at a party afterwards, and sent his friend to pick me up since he apparently lived closer to me. And they all seemed like a cool bunch, if only because they acted a lot like people my own age, and people with active social lives. I didn’t feel like I had to prove something to them, so for the first time, I actually enjoyed myself. The guy that had picked me up was especially nice that, after telling him my job problems, he was actually willing to help me. I didn’t think anything of it- a lot of people all say the same thing and I never hear from them again, so I just nodded and went on home.

Cue event two. He actually calls back the next day and offers to take me around places to look for work. We visit a bunch of his mates who point us to a few places, and end up going to see different parts of the island. This went on in the course of a few days, which I felt were the best times I had since I got on Guam. Not just because I had someone actually willing to finally show me around, but willing to help me, and I felt I was actually making some progress somewhat. I spent a lot less time at home, that much I can say proudly. He trusted me enough (somehow) to drive his van when he started working (although I can only assume that because his van is so shoddy and beaten up that if I bump it into something, it wouldn’t really make much difference), so I had plenty of time to practice and get used to driving, though admittedly it was scary at first hulking around a big sized van on my own. Eventually, I fell into driving quite comfortably without freaking out, and progressively got my job requirements done.

Cue event three. Just when I thought everything was going right for once, bad luck decided to rear its ugly head and give me the whipping of my life. It all started when I was going to an interview at a gift shop at one of the fancy hotels down town. It wasn’t a very far drive from my place, maybe ten minutes at best. Still, I got caught along the main street by police passing through the nearby mall, and I panicked. I don’t know if I made some traffic violation or anything because I wasn’t really paying attention and just driving as normal. I stopped at the side of the road and they directed me to go to a parking lot in one of the nearby condos. Now, me getting caught by the police was NOT a good thing, mostly because I didn’t have the license to be driving on my own. Due to the most retarded law I’ve ever heard, I’m not allowed to get a license until I’ve held a learner’s permit for six months. Even when I’ve already been through all the school requirements (which was also dumb), have a state permit and already fulfilled those hours, technically meaning I won’t be getting a license till next year at –best-. And while I was in the driver’s seat, shakily trying to find the registration and insurance papers they were asking for, I asked why they had pulled me over, if I had done something wrong. What they told me wasn’t something I expected- it wasn’t anything I did; they just noticed that the tags on the van were expired. No big deal. At least it shouldn’t have been, but they found out that I didn’t have the proper license to be driving so they scolded me on that. I was also in trouble because what papers I did find were not under my friend’s name, but under the former owner of the car. As it turns out, he never updated the registration and insurance of the car, so as a result, they had to confiscate the license plates and have it towed someplace until I can get that done, on top of paying for the citation ticket they gave me for driving a vehicle without those things (it was either because it was my first violation or that I was crying horribly that they decided to waive my violation of driving without a licensed driver). Needless to say, it wasn’t a good day for me. I never made that job interview.

Cue event four. So we spent the rest of the day figuring out what to do- me, my friend and his cousin that was living with him. In some diabolical twist of fate, what would have been a simple task of getting everything sorted out and the van back and running within the day turned far more complicated than it should have been. For one, it turns out my friend had a bench warrant for his arrest sometime in the past (not sure if that was when he was on island back in ’98 or something more recently), and, as his cousin warned, going to the DMV to get the registration would cause them to find his record and get him apprehended. His cousin apparently can’t do it because he was currently on probation for an earlier assault charge (a different story on that, but trust me when I say that it was probably worth it), and I couldn’t do it because- OHSHIT- I need a fucking driver’s license. Sigh. I’m not sure if they called friends or not, but apparently none of them were either eligible or willing to help. My friend probably decided that no matter what he tried to do, he’d be screwed either way, because he needed that van to get to work. Which probably prompted his very ill-advised decision to go out the next day to get the registration and insurance anyway, despite the risks his cousin warned about. It probably wasn’t risky enough, because he decided to drive the –van- to do it (the car we were using previously decided to conveniently break down and become unusable). It wasn’t a good decision at all, since it was a Saturday at the time, and most of the places he’d needed to go to were closed for the weekend. I’ll…let you figure out what happened next, because it was all too obvious.

Cue event five. So I spent the rest of the weekend stressing over the van, because we left it back in that town and I was having problems coordinating with his cousin and the towing company to get it back home. I had been asking my relatives at the time if I could borrow their cars but there were always excuses. “I need to go to a part time job”, even when he never left the house to do that job. “I need the car to work” even when she stays indoors in the hotel for the entire day straight and would have no feasible use for the car whatsoever, even letting my cousin exchange his car for hers. “I need to take them to Chuck E Cheeses” when I asked him again about the car, saying that taking my cousin and her kid was far more important than me trying to get my things done. At some point, my friend’s cousin managed to finally get his car fixed and we finally managed to retrieve the van, and thus began the long week of trying to convince my aunt to help me get it registered. Because that’s all she needed to do- have her get the insurance and registration, which would cost her no more than maybe a few hours of the very small sliver of time when she is actually not working (she works morning to midnight), since me and my friend would be paying for everything. But at every instance she protests on some reason or another why she would be unable to, even when I CONFIRMED at the DMV and the insurance company themselves that there was no problem whatsoever with her registering as long as I provided the payment and papers, which I have. I don’t want to believe my aunt is as dense as she’s making herself to be, which makes me assume that she doesn’t want to help me for some reason. Which makes even LESS sense since helping me would be helping her get me out of her house and being able to finally get a job, some work, and maybe even help pay off her rent, which she has been complaining about it rising recently (and blaming me on that one day I decided to wash the clothes my friend left in his van because I would rather not have the place become some kind of biohazard when most of the reason her water prices are going up is because her daughter in law uses the washing machine almost every other day.)

So…that’s my week in a nutshell. In retrospect, I remember a black cat had run across the street one time when we were driving. I did remember saying that I wasn’t superstitious. But now…I feel like shoving my foot where my mouth is. They say in times of trouble is when you know who your real friends are, and I have to say I am quite disappointed at what I’ve come to find out about that. I’ve always accepted things as they come and never bothered anyone for help, but help is most definitely something I need right now when people ironically are unwilling to give it.

~Taddle

Minor Rant

I’m the kind of person that stops and stares at the world. I think about things no one wonders about. I care about the irrelevant, I question the unquestionable. I see things in a way no one else does- things that only ever make sense to me. Some people call me smart; I tell them I just have the time to dwell on it. It makes me different.

But the question in my mind as of late…is that really a good thing?

The world praises uniqueness and individuality, but often at what cost would one have to pay for it? People hold tight to the familiarity of conformity; to them, its their safety blanket, unwilling to face the consequences that come with breaking the norm. Subjected to judgment, alienated and unaccepted- deep inside every person is that feeling of deprivation they fear to face, because the world works only on what it ‘knows’ works, and rarely on ‘what ifs’. My views on life, my attitudes, my reactions, my philosophies, my ethics, my beliefs…they are all of what makes who I am. And yet…its these values that are often put into question by those that don’t see things in the same light. Sometimes the subject of anger or ridicule, or confusion, simply because it isn’t the norm. “You aren’t normal” they tell me, and I’m forced to step back to reevaluate myself as a person, as I have done so many countless times, wondering where I went wrong and trying to understand why it is when I don’t. And I have to force myself to change, to keep up with what they see is right, believing it’s the right thing to do when my mind says otherwise. Oftentimes I end up more confused than I was, more frustrated and more alienated, trying to compromise people’s ways with mine.

I guess this is just a backwards way of saying that I’ve never really felt I belonged anywhere. More specifically- my family. I dislike everything about the Filipino side of my family, most of what people do and believe anathema to my own way of thinking. And not quite fitting in with the American part either, never experiencing their way of life and so out of place in their setting. Its always a struggle for me, on both sides, how to be able to fit in and not feel like dead weight in their eyes. Its just…I keep going back to my past wondering what went wrong, what made me so different from everyone else. If I was just as good or better than any other person, then why can’t I succeed at life while everyone else never seems to have a problem doing so. It seems like the problems are tied to what I am, because I’m not who I’m supposed to be, or expected to be. I’m never sure of who I am, always needing someone to tell me whether what I’m doing is right or wrong, always afraid of screwing up because somehow, some way, I’ll upset someone unintentionally and get bashed for it. My extreme cynicism often shows when I joke around with people, always stating the worse in a situation though maybe this might come off as passive aggressiveness to them.

I like being who I am. I try my best to please everyone. But its hard to live in constant doubt of yourself, feeling that maybe you were better off never being around and never having to be the subject of grief to everyone around you.

~Taddle

Random Crack 06-11-2011

Conversation that stemmed...uhmm...this:

Vizier Tempus: I can see it now: you bring a friend over, tell them to hold on while you grab a jacket, and they're shocked to see a man in a banana hammock standing in the closet holding a rose in his mouth. =3=



O bby~

~Taddle

Sketchdump 05-29-11

(Actual conversation that motivated the making of this journal:

Vizier Tempus: P.S. Do your journal, even if it's a short one, or I'll set fire to your tree >:(
Rej: DX OKAY.
Vizier Tempus: Sure waffles could just bring it back BUT I'M WARNING YOU.
Rej: FINE I'LL DO IT JEEZ. >.< )

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I don't really have much to contribute as of late. My time in Guam is a dodgy one as I continue in my efforts to find employment and lead myself to self-sufficiency. I often wonder what I'm doing wrong, though, cause it certainly isn't a lack of trying. I've applied to every position I could possibly perform within the limitations of my experience (which sadly isn't that much). That unfortunately cuts me off a vast majority of opportunities, leaving only entry level jobs which are quickly being usurped by the Filipinos that are migrating from the Philippines to live here. USURPERS.
I do follow up on my applications, even when the last thing I like doing is further nagging people to look over it, and most of the time I'm simply told to wait out the period and not call up. Guam isn't a very big place so there really isn't a lot of demand, especially now that its in a huge recession due to the Japan tsunami (the economy mainly thrived on Japanese tourism). I picked a perfect time to arrive huh. Adding to the pressure of my mom demanding I return home since it was taking so long to find a job (I've been here for barely a month). So...yeah. Spending time online is a bit low on my priority list at the moment.

I doubled back and went around my folders, finding old sketches and WIPs I've never finished, mostly because they sucked or were forgotten. Might as well fit them in here.

First off...werewuffies!




A Blastoise from one of my commissions I wasn't satisfied with.


Two Sonic fancharacters, one of the first I've ever made. The dude on the left used to be called Raven until I made his little brother on the right, making their team name Glitch n' Glide. I thought it was funny.


This was meant to be an ID for a friend, but over time I wasn't satisfied with how I drew it and wanted to redo it.


I'm a Kilplix fan and used to watch his videos. When he got a Blogger I wanted to make a picture for him but ended up not finishing it because all the anatomy mistakes (especially the hands) bugged me too much. His Youtube is Kilplixism. His older vids were especially hilarious.


And lastly...not really a WIP. Just the full image of the Street Fighter Challenge meme I did on DA. Something about thick lines, man...


~Taddle