*sigh* [Hikaru's LJ?] Ver 2 Options

[Itena]

You're a very competent person, Batou-chi. No need to say that. ♥

Ah yes, parenthood requires a lot of patience and responsibility. I can see that with my own mother. To be a parent means your actually taking a big role in society, since you're bringing up a person who can either do good or harm to society. A child is a block of clay that needs careful molding and attention, and it's not like you can throw away that block of clay if it dries or is ruined.

My friends tell me they don't want to have children or get married because of the responsibility. For me, it's a responsibility that I want badly. I want to be able to raise and love a child, to experience the need to protect someone more than yourself(that's not to say that I wouldn't take the bullet for somebody, though in the end I won't know until such a situation takes place).

Also, there's the extra step that I'll be experiencing as a mother. Heh. ;; I'm not entirely sure what I think about it, but I've been told that it's definitely worth it, so I'm just going to not think about it. :/

[Shiidou Hikaru]

For a little while this morning I went back to a web archive site to look at the original version of my "Hikaru's LJ" thread and I now I'm starting to feel a bit of the sadness of that time five years ago come back to me. But also another sadness, a new one is coming to me too. When I read that old thread I can see how open I used to be with my feelings back then an how nearly every day I would come to the forum and say what was going on with me that day, whether it was good or bad. Nowadays I seem to no longer share anything about myself here anymore and now I need to search for a reason why *snff* time for box of Kleenex ...

When I first made the forum, I was the only person that came here for a long time after it started so maybe the sense of privacy let me feel more secure about typing out my feelings in a place where I could read them back to myself. Since no one else saw them I didn't have to worry about anyone criticizing me or making myself a burden for someone else to carry. But I guess that's just the way people are - we're afraid to be hurt even more than we already are, so we often bear our sorrows alone and in silence.

I think that somewhere along the line there was a change in the forum. An online forum is, almost by definition, a community meeting place so using one for private space is almost a silly idea since that sort of goes against what it was originally designed to do. It was enjoyable to have a place where I could bounce around like a happy idiot or comfort myself crying my sorrows out, but I became afraid to continue doing those kinds of things when other people started to visit the board regularly and it actually became very busy here for a while. No longer was I the little person looking for comfort and peace, I had become the admin, or party hostess, or town mayor, etc.

When I started to feel like I was popular or someone that people looked up to, I think that started to make me a bit selfish and wanting to hold onto that status. I began to feel like if I presented myself too pitifully or too ditzy or too silly that I would lose the respect of those around me. The very things that I'd originally come here to do I gradually stopped doing and maybe that's how I undid everything I had originally made. I had replaced my humility with pride and I wasn't vigilant to prevent that from happening. For anyone that happens to read this, I am so sorry ... v_v

Maybe because I feel that old sense of privacy returning to the forum once again I feel secure starting to write about my feelings again. It does feel good to take the time to come here and do this now, but the question to ask myself is how to keep it up? It is possible to make a private life and a public life work together in the same place? I really don't know the answer to that question. Part of me does enjoy being a community leader, but I also like just being myself with all of fun and iccky things that entails. Somehow I'll have to sort this out with a lot of thought, but for now I think that I will to start using the forum as a private space again.

[Shiidou Hikaru]

I have to very much agree with you Batou-kun about the necessity of maintaining relationships. Like a flower garden, a relationship will only live for so long without care and nourishment before it slowly withers and dies. And that's even under benign circumstances and I know all too well that outside forces can actively work to destroy the relationship between friends. This past week has been a prime example of that.

It saddens me that it's taken me so long to come back here to talk a little more. At one time or another I'm sure that everyone has been through a time where life just won't let you stop running and catch your breath for even a moment. After I posted here last Saturday, the rest of the day went pretty smoothly. I watched a couple of episodes of MKR in order the stay in tuned with the MKR rewatch group that Milieva-chan is doing and later on in the evening I played some online gaming.

Then the starting gun made its shot. Sunday morning I went to mass with my family as I do every week although this week was my turn to serve as Eucharistic Minister. After coming home I had lunch and went outside to do yard work (autumn is a messy time of the year around here). Then that evening I took the kids to the bowling alley for their league play. It used to be on Saturday morning but they moved it to Sunday night which I think I like better because it was always rather stressful to get the kiddies up on Saturday morning and get them ready for bowling.

Monday began the visit to our company from a number of people from the Navy who came to see the project that I've been working on. They're good people to work with easy to get along with and everything, however this was another situation where I found myself in the position of playing the party hostess. So that pretty much meant that I spent my entire day with them while I was at work. It meant that I couldn't sneak away very often to do much of anything else, much less come here and see what had been going on. *sigh* I'm so sorry ... v_v

This continued for all five days this week, but the company did buy us lunch every day too! I know that the visit was a good thing and I'm not upset or anything about having to dedicate so much time to my work. It just meant that I couldn't pay attention to some things that I would've liked too. The evenings normally give me some time to do something a little recreational, but this week left very little for any online time. Monday night is the night we bring the kiddies to Religious Ed, but that's always a good thing because it's the one night of the week that we can do something together, like have dinner, without the kiddies XD. Tuesday night I spent the evening playing World of Warcraft, the mmo game I play most often, so that was the only night this week that it was really my choice of what to do. So everyone can throw tomatoes at me for not coming here on Tuesday night. *splat* *sploosh* *splut* Icck ...

Wednesday evening is the night I go to a church group meeting every week. I'm not sure if anyone knows what RCIA is, but it's how we initiate new members that want to join our church. I've been helping out with it for a really long time and I still learn a few new things myself now and then. This past Wednesday I stayed to help clean up afterwards, which I usually do but and my friend that runs the program, her husband was sick and didn't come that night so she was very happy to have me there this time to help.

Thursday night began our little local anime convention - Bakuretsu Con. This year they started it on Thursday which is an experimental first for us. The dealer's room wasn't setup so all I could really do was register and look around a bit. The game room and video room was going but I don't really play games at anime cons. I was able to see a few episodes of Princess 9 which I found to be an odd mix of shoujo and sports genres. I saw 4 episodes and still hadn't decided if the mix was good or not. ;; The music was really good though.

Friday night saw Bakuretsu Con off and running like normal. I found a Rayearth art book and I was very happy about that. I also saw at least one of Lantis-san's (Honou Productions) AMV's in the music video contest and I thought it was very cool! I got to see episodes of a few different anime shows including Dragonball Z, Bludgeoning Angel, and Munto. Munto I've seen before and it's okies and kinda cute at times. Bludgeoning Angel was quite an off the wall series if you ask me. It's like a mixture of a magical girl anime and FLCL if you can get a good picture of that. ;; The male lead ... I really feel sorry for him ... very sorry for him ... I did all of this after work so it was a busy night.

Now I'm finally caught up to today. This morning a slept late to get some much needed rest before running off to Baku-con again. This afternoon and evening I saw episodes of several series including Tweeny Witches, Fate/Stay Night, Hell Girl, Lucky Star and finished the evening with Millenium Actress. Millenium Actress is a favorite of mine that I'm pretty sure I reviewed here a few years back. Lucky Star was pretty funny and really cute, and I had fun watching it. I'd like to see more of Lucky Star and Fate/Stay Night which was also an interesting series because I like those kind of magical/fantasy shows. In the dealer's room I found a number of decorative chopstick sets and also found a pretty silk jacket. I can't remember what they called the jacket, but it is a short version of a yukata.

Of course the usual mundane activities of daily life were also mixed in with everything else I've written about already. So to say I've had a full week would be very accurate, but fortunately the stress level has been lower than I'd usually expect it to be with so much non-stop activity for me this week. Things haven't been going bad for me, there just have been a lot of things. A lot of them have been fun things too, so like with everyone else, my attention has been drawn away from the forum here too. I feel really bad about not writing my impressions of MKR episodes 1 and 2 in the rewatch forum yet and I still haven't watched episodes 3 and 4 either. *sigh* I'll just have to remember that the things keeping people are probably good things for them too.

[Dr. Casey]

It's been a while since October 2008. How's life, Hikaru-sensei? Would be nice to read about what's been going on lately.

[Shiidou Hikaru]

Hmm, what's been going on with me ...

One word to sum it up would be ... work ... and lots of it. 2009 and most of 2010 were pretty lean years for our company (like everyone else) but in Q4 2010, the floodgates opened and in just a few short weeks we were inundated with orders. Lots of big items, small items, new things too, so I've been on 10 hours for the last three months or so and there is no end in sight. This is good in a lot of ways, but it sure eats up a lot of time. Me just busy busy busy all the time now.

Besides work, we all had a birthday party for Mom yesterday which was a lot of fun to get together with my two brothers that still live in this area. The cousins all got together and had a great time too. My kids continue to grow up and this year they will both finish up at their respective schools. Next year my son will be off to high school ( ... uggh that makes me feel old ...) and my daughter will go off to middle school. She is doing so much better with school now, but I still need to keep after her to do homework. She can be a real party animal and loves to hang out with her friends that live next door.

I'm sorry that I don't have time to write more, I need to go back to work. Tomorrow I'll see if I can find a few more goodies to post.

[Shiidou Hikaru]

I just wanted to say Merry Christmas to everyone ... that happens to stop by. It's a relief that most of the holiday chaos is over and now I have a week of vacation to look forward to. **

[Shiidou Hikaru]

Happy Birthday to me today! ^_^ Hopefully someone will come by and see ... and this is the first post of 2013! Yaayy! ^_^ I also looked back at the old Ezboard (now Yuku) forum and saw that it was founded in July 2003. So this year in July, the forum will be 10 years old ... that's just wow ... it can't possibly be that long ago that I came here for the first time and opened up shop.