Somehow things worked out over the last two days that I have been awake for almost 48 hours. Sometimes in life these circumstances occur and you aren’t exactly sure how you ended up there until you have a chance to look back. It wasn’t disaster, or malice, it was just a trickle of tiny things building up and all moving in one direction. It’s kind of like when you’re standing in a stream just before flood waters arrive. At first the flow increases a bit and it looks murky, then there’s branches and stuff in the water. The current increases, and you need your brain to put things together before it’s too late. Sometimes your brain doesn’t do the math in time. I’m glad I wasn’t standing in a real stream or I’d be dead. In any event I’m writing this post many hours before I would normally. My intention is to get dad fed when he gets home and then finally go to sleep. My brain has many what I call “power saving” modes from years of trauma being inflicted upon it by various things. A lot of the time now I walk around with my left eye open and my right one shut. It puts my consciousness behind the open eye and the rest of my head powers down. Whatever part of my brain still functions when I do this is the stripped down version that maintains more focus than I usually do. My right eye is always my sleepy eye and when it’s the one I’m using while the other one rests I’m not as sharp. My mind wanders, I pause a lot to think, it takes longer to answer questions. It’s the meandering part of my brain. I’m not sure if it has any effect on this strange process but my left eye can see far, but not close and the other is the opposite. Maybe my left eye just works better as a general purpose eye and the right is better for tasks that I’m closer to and that’s how they now divide up my world.
When I sit in the kitchen I often lean my head on the cabinet such that it holds my right eye shut. It reduces the effort of keeping it closed even more and I can pay more attention out of the other side. It seems very natural until I take notice of it. Then I can’t stop noticing the reduction of depth perception. If I don’t notice it doesn’t bother me at all, but it I accidentally do then I get screwed up for a few minutes until it resets. Kind of like when you notice your breathing.

Anyway, the silent panel is meant to illustrate the long pause that’s supposed to happen after the previous page. A lot of times I will forget that the pause that comes after a new page won’t exist for a reader that comes along later. When I reread things I sometimes notice that things read slightly faster than I intended since when I made the page there was a pause of not having another page. Most of the time it doesn’t matter all that much, but with this series of pages I really wanted to drive it home how much John has gotten into his head over things. It’s been building up more and more over time. At first he barely reacted at all, then he got a little pressed over things, and now he’s fully slid into wallowing. Usually in his life when things went awry he just walked away, or moved away in some cases, but now he has things he doesn’t want to give up. It’s easier to be a rolling stone when you don’t love anything. Having no attachments is very freeing, but it may not always be the best way to live. Despite what some people might tell you. Being bound to family, even if you made it out of random parts, is often how we start repairing our lives and our world.

At the moment my world is very tired though so I’m going to make sure I get Precious fed before I’m too tired to navigate a dog food bag. I hope you have a nice Wednesday. I’ll see you on Friday. Until then, collect all 80!

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Does Bridgette know about Vicky’s feelings for John?

I can’t remember; have we the readers had that clarified/made explicit to us, or is it just implied thus far?

Victoria asked Alex about her and John being a match a while back.

I always kind of felt like a lot of people have been pushing that pairing with relatively little evidence of it this far.

… Starting to like Reggie’s sister a little less at this point. She could, y’know, NOT be snarky about EVERY SINGLE UTTERANCE John makes. It’d be, I guess, a change of pace? He gets it, he’s the butt of your joke and ‘wry condescending amusement’. Ugh. At least Reggie is just an outright dick when he’s being one.

You do realize they are siblings, who grew up in the same environment. They are quite similar, and even considering the snarky comments, this is still much better than Reggies worst.

That is some god tier projection.

I think something to keep in mind is since this isn’t an audio media, we aren’t hearing what the tone if for the conversation. To me I “hear” Victoria’s quips as lighthearted rather than condescending – think trying to make a joke at the situation and have John share with them instead of making John the joke and trying to keep him as her and Bridgette’s entertainment. I want to say I think this is how some of their previous interactions went too, like the car ride home, but it’s been a bit so will have to go back and reread those to see if I took the same vibe.

To me personally I’d prefer someone like her around me at a time like that. Rather than empty platitudes of sympathy which many characters might utter, to me her responses are light-hearted or even fun.

I mean sure they designed to be snarky or condescending, but I don’t read that to be the true “meaning” behind them. You can feel bad for someone and still tease them provided you’re reading the room right.

:33 < this is a really smart way to phrase this, it gets really empty when all anybody says is just the same praise. i think i purrfer her character more than i enjoy john's.

Oh Lordy, here’s hoping you get some decent rest after that stretch

Comic wise, I’m enjoying this little trio, not sure how much longer this particular interaction is going to run but it’s been fun thinking back on some of my own late night group hang conversations regardless if they were serious, goofy, somber, or lighthearted.

Huh. I may get scolded by Jackie again, but this feels incongruous in my mind. As I recall, when we meet Alex, John is asked about her crushing on him and he is a combination of guilty and frustrated. As if this is someone he met a few times and every time she flirts with him, a near-stranger he doesn’t want to be mean to but, you know, take a hint. So it’s weird to find out that, no, they actually hung out for months, all the time, and she actively helped structure and improve his day-to-day life. At the end of the last comic, I was actually happy that John learned a lesson, of what else a life partner can provide beside a fun buddy. I felt like it was him reflecting on positive growth as a new perspective takes hold. Now I’m told it’s “sad” and “pathetic” and I’m just sort of scratching my head as to why–he learned something, he’s growing, and that’s bad? Or are we going that far just to insult him for not being attracted to fat women? I just don’t understand what I’ve missed.

Also, Jackie, if your eyes are that different, you’re probably more on the money than you realize; one eye likely developed less when you were a kid, meaning you have to work harder to use it, making it tired, making YOU tired. It’s kind of like how they say forcing yourself to smile does actually make you feel happier, because there’s a feedback loop; well, we are designed for our eyes to get tired when we are exhausted, to cause us to close them and sleep, but if you exhaust your eyes on their own, it works backwards and causes your brain to start feeling tired. And if one eye is weaker and constantly straining to keep up, well, it’s tired alot.

:33 < wowza, i never thought about it like this. the crush meow f33ls a little egregious.

Good save, John. You aired your dirty laundry and took the complaints and jokes in stride, without sounding like a whiny pussy. There is hope for you among the current throng of eligible women yet.

God forbid a man express honest emotion without either being or feigning being ‘game for a laugh’ at his own expense… I guess? Hm. Something seems wrong there. Oh well.

2975 That’s Rough, Bud.

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