• tiny stripey canopy tent ordered. I got a grey/white stripe one. I like stripes, they have that carnival/steampunk feel.

• I still don't want to sell on etsy. But I found a similar online handmade marketplace that started up recently and donates 100% of profits to charity. Plus they have stricter ideas of what is handmade and are sticking to US buyers/sellers for now. So that might be a not-terrible way to sell online if I choose. I'm not so much concerned about getting product in front of as many eyeballs as possible as I am interested in giving people a second chance to purchase something that sticks in their memory after they've seen it in person. So a smaller upstart marketplace like this might be just the thing. Donating to charity is a bonus. The cynical side of me thinks that's a feel-good trick, but this is still the most likely candidate for online selling I have run across. Etsy was always more about the drop-shippers and mass manufacturers than the real handmade, and they haven't gotten better over the years. Anyway I am mulling it over.

=> https://goimagine.com/

• Grey and rainy the past couple days, and I don't know if that's it or hormones or what but I am in a blue mood. I got thinking about my wedding, which was basically a total failure and a real low point for me. I guess the best analogy is when Luke Skywalker goes into the cave on Dagobah and loses a fight with the dark side in Empire Strikes Back. Nothing good comes of thinking about that wedding. So that has sucked a bit of the wind out of my sails. I think I just miss people. I'd tacked some hopes on the wedding that I'd be able to fit in better with the in-laws since we weren't living in sin anymore. I don't fit in with my family, I guess I had some sort of fragile hope of connecting with spouse's family. The wedding was barely a wedding at all - we had no guests (intentionally, just due to logistics). And it was such an sad failure I feel like it killed that chance at feeling like a family member. Like I'm just embarrassed to exist at this point, and I have been scheming to create some sort of impressive success to redeem myself ever since. I feel like I've been marinating in my failures and I wish I had a friend to blubber at while we drink adult beverages and eat junk food and even better if she's having some kind of romantic trouble. I could tell her that her ex is a lousy jerk and she could tell me I'm not a failure. Spouse is great but I keep my blubbering around him to a minimum because I don't actually want him to figure out he married a loser. Good job, buddy. Wedding sucked and it was downhill from there.

Every time I get to thinking about that wedding it ruins me for a couple days. It's become this symbolic tangle of intentions and thought patterns gone wrong. "That is why you fail," in a nutshell. So many things going on internally right now that I am trying to puzzle out. I might be on the cusp of a headspace shift, but real change is never an easy thing. If it's easy it's not real change.

This is such a weird limbo year. I have no idea if I'm going to look back and think I was a lazy git who only accomplished making a dent on the couch, or if I'm going to be surprised at all the mental groundwork I laid and the changes I internalized.

I guess I have always felt like a bow without an arrow, or an arrow without a bow. Kinda useful, but missing something. Like I've never stepped into the real potential of who I am for various reasons, the core of which might be I am just afraid of the solitude. There is comfort in seeking the structure of authority or the familiarity of conforming. Sometimes it's nice to take shelter under someone else's expectations, even if they are not a good fit. But I feel like there might be a chance for me to be the complete person I've wanted to be. Part of that process is understanding why I failed in the past. That stupid wedding.

Anyway I'm in a mood. Is it good? Is it bad? It is a mood.