My paid account status expires, literally, tomorrow. I know this journal will still be here but the extra userpics won't and...I have just moved on anyway.

I've also been a terrible friend and not reading your stuff, so I'm sorry about that. I don't want to abandon people just because I choose to withdraw from a particular medium so...

http://khristopia.wordpress.com/ - I write stuff there
http://twitter.com/khrismonegenege - I write even more (albeit shorter) stuff there, and if you are on Twitter I would very, very much like to maintain some kind of contact there. I may be stalking through your profiles to see if you have your Twitter username handy for me to add.

Remember when we used to post here several times a day?

You know those moments when you can escape your mind enough to know that you're being very [insert somewhat negative adjective here] but you don't have the will to change it? You know you're being boring but you still ramble on and on. You know you're making an uncomfortable face but you don't change the expression. You know that if you just suck it up for a bit longer and feign interest in whatever thing you're at you'll save face by making it through the evening, but you still give up?

That's me all the time. In some ways I'm just a weak person. Half-assed at best. And yet, because of this, I don't go to the lengths to change it.

I've generally been much happier lately, but sometimes something little can really bring my sense of self-worth down. http://khristopia.wordpress.com/2012/02/12/anomie-in-creativity/

The days in between finishing one can of red paint for my kitchen and buying another because with red you need around 7 coats, my caretaker lets him and a painter in (with permission of course) to fix my bathroom ceiling and walls. There's poor ventilation in my old building, so the paint curls easily and I want that fixed so chips don't keep falling on me in the shower.

Like my kitchen, the top half of the bathroom is white. The bottom half was painted grey, but also had some bubbles from water damage. The painter today sealed over those bubbles, effectively removing streaks of grey from the walls. Is he going to paint both the top and bottom? I made a note on my request for maintenance that it wasn't necessary, but it's hardly an issue as I was considering redoing the bathroom in navy anyway. There's a shelving unit that's the same colour of grey, but I will try it out with white (if it's all painted white) first. If I opt to buy navy paint, I may paint it navy.

The point is: I'm not going to worry about this. Aside from not being able to shower for a couple of days (and I'm really not accustomed to washing my hair in a bath), this is hardly an inconvenience. I need to lay back and relax more. I need to be happy and appreciate that change is happening all the time and this is action rather than stalling. I'm so used to stalling, but that is no longer the case.

I get to go to the Jets game tomorrow, and they're playing everybody's LEAST favourite team (at least everybody who doesn't live in or come from Toronto) - THE MAPLE LEAFS. Yes, apparently in Toronto the correct pluralization of a "leaf" is "leafs". They are...special, there, where they don't acknowledge foliage as "leaves".

Work is going well, in that I'm mostly enjoying the new new job and my probation period expires as of tomorrow - meaning that's when my benefits kick in meaning I can go to the dentist again! And save 80% on my expensive prescriptions! And not have to foot or have my parents foot an ambulance bill the next time that inevitably happens! Good things are happening all around. Bad things too, I mean, it's been a messed up few weeks with various parts of my body giving out on me in almost suspiciously synchronized fashions, but that's largely over. Even the zits on my face are gradually going away, without giant ones replacing them. I went to a play last week, I've won the last two curling games, but I have also made somewhat unwise choices in delaying key things like grocery shopping. But it doesn't matter. Why cry over spilt milk, or rather a lack of milk? (My milk supply is actually good, but I have no breakfast cereal to pour it in.)

Life is good. Stop thinking it isn't.

Three coats and...it looks incredibly uneven. I'm still waiting on the third coat to dry, but that's not going to change much. I'm terrible at painting. Any experienced painter will probably say that what I need is more coats because red is a difficult colour to get even because it's just enough between dark and light that it doesn't blend in well with itself. But clearly my own doom to be sloppy is mostly to blame.

The paint needs to blend in with the existing colour on the wall, would be another factor. My kitchen had gaps of its red paint and I decided to suck it up and take the initiative to fix it. I got paint on the weekend, decided that my evenings are only wasted anyway, and I've spent the past two nights painting it. Three coats in. I have enough paint for maybe one more coat if I focus on the lighter spots, which I think I'll do because there's no way that can make things worse right now. I'll probably cry, then wait for two weeks, then get another quart of paint and try again. I hate painting. My knees are terribly bruised because I'm painting the lower half of a wall. I will inevitably get paint in places it's not supposed to go. I can't use my kitchen for its practical purposes without being paranoid something terrible and paint-related will happen. I hate washing off the brush and roller every time. I can't put the paint anywhere else.

So tomorrow I'm going to use up the rest of that can and wait. If it continues to look as bad as it does, it doesn't matter. Only I will see it. Nobody ever wants to come over. And when they do come over, they'll at least see that I've tried. It will at least be better than what it was before.

But, with most things, I'd rather give off the impression that I never tried than that I tried and failed. It's the I-can-but-I-won't excuse. I know it's not the way to go through life, I'm well aware of the inspiring quotes by highly successful people that advise against it. So if I've failed to perform a basic home task like painting a wall, I need to keep a positive attitude. If I fail so terribly now, there's no way I can do any worse in the future.

Sooooo, I'm trying this out now:

http://khristopia.wordpress.com/

I'm not sure what I'll do on this side of the...wait, what do they call this fictional place on the abstract concept of the internet? The "blogosphere"? No, that can't be right. You're...kidding me, right? Damn. Blogosphere? Okay, well, I guess that's what this is!

Ahem. Anyway, I don't know what to do with this LiveJournal account. It's paid until the end of the month, with an extra icon package good until June that will disappear if I don't renew it. I'm not sure if I want to completely abandon this or keep it here for personal stuff, or for interacting with youse guys specifically. To be honest I'm kind of vain and still want to get comments on what I write. I want to know it's being read and enjoyed, but I don't even get a sense of that here anymore.

So, please check out the new blog and tell me what you think. Does it seem more mature, more thought provoking, better written? Would you read at least certain posts in it here and there if you just happened to come across it, rather than being referred to it directly by me? I need to write to keep myself sane and engaged. And yes, this selfish part of me also needs to get attention for what I write. So let me know. Please.

I will be near-abandoning LiveJournal around mid-year. I really, really need to write, but I need to write better things than day-to-day sorts of things, in a more suiting place than here. It's been good for the 11 years it lasted, but I'm in such need of a change.

Christmas and New Year's were nothing remarkable. Things over all haven't been very remarkable, so there's no point in keeping a "journal" in the personal day-to-day sense. I work all day with numbers and I want to relax all night with words. Reading things of interest to me that enrich my mind and remind me of why giggly passion for knowledge produces some of the best feelings throughout my whole body - I need more of that. Writing in wittier ways than a forced recap of events that won't matter in a year's time - I would die if I stopped writing, so it's best for my health if I focus on getting back to writing well.

I will wean off of this and gradually move to another home. I'll let you know as that happens, for those who want to continue following me. For some messed up reason.

December is my month to be crazy. It's not by choice - it was instilled in me ten years ago in my first year of university when several papers were due, exams were written, and I worked in the insane world of retail during the month of consumer frenzy. Add to that my own Giftmas shopping, cold weather, short hours of daylight, and a strong desire to hibernate in a warm bed for the entirety of winter, and you have a detailed mosaic of why to go crazy.

Having repeated that over five years clearly embedded the kick-in of crazy permanently, because it came in full-swing last night. I went to the city's biggest shopping mall, purposely on the slow(er) evening of the week, and visited my friend-in-crazy Veronica at work. When I went home, with two more gifts to cross off my list, all I could do was make gibberish noises and giggle while almost crying - not out of laughter, but just out of, well, crazy. Much of the craziness followed me to bed, and the morning routine, and the walk to work. I tried to tone it down at work but in this state a conscious effort can only go so far. This crazy is sticking around, to the end of December at least.

But the busy season at the new place of work is January-February, when apparently everybody in the universe is terrible at giving their employees proper tax documentation so they can file their returns for 2011. Maybe The Crazy will be extended. It might become a regular all-winter thing. I guess it's seasonally practical, if it maybe keeps me warm...or at least makes me think I'm warm. Crazy can do things like that. Crazy can do almost anything.