To be technical, it was a dream after I had woken up for the morning, work was canceled due to the snow, and then I went back to bed, so it's more like a dream this morning.

But this was no ordinary occurrence.

I had a dream that felt real. And more than that, it felt like I was viewing flashes in time. Memories sent to my past self, from my future, but like memories often are, not in chronological order.

The first I saw was of me and my wife, Kelsey, raising a daughter. (One I felt had a name starting with A and at least one more a in it, and which felt like it was primarily softer sounds rather than mostly harder ones.) I saw her as a young girl, somewhere in the age range of 4 - 9, and we were raising her in a relatively large space.

The second I saw was of her, now a young adult, visiting us with her own daughter (our granddaughter), around the same age range of 4 - 9. What initially confused me was that she was visiting us in a smaller space than the one she was raised in, but it was still her and she was still visiting us.

Then I saw a vision of us buying what felt like a mansion--a place large enough to raise our infant (she was appearing as a baby less than 2 years old, felt less than a year old) and to let Parker, our puppy that we just got, run free. (Oh yeah I haven't blogged in nearly a month, so I forgot to share the news in a blog. kels and I have a puppy now! He's a 4 month old white Shepherd mix. We don't know more yet.) We somehow managed to get a place for the both of them.

And then I got a vision of us, after our daughter was an adult, going back to a smaller residence, it felt like an apartment. It wasn't something we needed to do, but for whatever reason we wanted to.

And it felt so real.

I shared it to my wife, thinking it important...

...And then I was blown away to learn...

Kels had nearly the exact same dream.

kels had seen us raising our daughter.
kels had seen us having a larger house.
And kels had even seen us making the decision to downsize.

We had nearly the exact same dream at the exact same time.

That feels like it can't be coincidence.

Like...obviously, there's no guarantee that what we saw will come to pass. This felt like it wasn't a vision of an alternate reality, it felt like it was a premonition of what's to come in this one, but at the same time, the future is fluid. What happens isn't set in stone. So there's no guarantee this will be a life we live.

But at the same time?

...I want that vision to come true.

I want to make what we saw come to pass.

I don't know how we'll pull it off.
Every step of the way is uncertain. How we'll raise a daughter (method of getting a daughter), how we'll get the funds to procure a place for her, how we'll make all of it happen.

But...I want that future. And kels does, too.
And that has given me a whole lot of hope for the future, too--if it's a future we currently hold the power to make, then it is a future that is worth living in and raising a child in, where that child may choose to have a child of her own. 

I don't know how we'll pull it off--but having seen this future so vividly and clearly, with my wife having seen it too, and both of us wanting to make it happen, we'll find a way. We have to.

I'm not giving up on that future, on having a family we raise. What we saw felt like it was a gentle nudge, a reminder, of the lives we want to live. And it doesn't need to be perfect, it doesn't need to be exactly as we saw, but, I believe if we take actions in pursuit of that future, it will happen.

We're facing overwhelming challenges. Illegally high rent, medical insurance exploitation, health issues, work issues, car issues, and more ugly surprises at every turn. It's not going to be given to us, and would be easy to be taken away from us. We need to not only take action, but also prevent those which close off that future.

But, I believe in that future, and want it. How we'll get there, we're still figuring out. But it is a future worth fighting for.

After one of the worst possible weeks to endure, today was terrific.

To catch you all up, my car nearly exploded on me. I told my boss about this, and my boss threatened corrective action if I didn't show up despite how my car wasn't safe to drive. So I drove a damaged car to work (endangering my safety in the process), it nearly stalled four times and had multiple kickbacks and was probably damaged by this process more than it already was.

And, knowing it wouldn't make it back home, I made some emergency maintenance on my car at work. The good news is, it mostly fixed the car. My car could still break any day, mind you (largely from the damage sustained from the drive I didn't want to do), but it's less likely to after the repair I did. The bad news is, because I wasn't in an environment suited for the repair and had to make it myself and without the tools at home, I spilled oil all over.

And then my boss threatened me again from it, saying if the oil got to the storm drain then the city could sue my workplace and I would be held liable for it. This being the same boss who I TOLD HER ABOUT MY CAR BEING UNSAFE TO DRIVE. I would not have needed to repair it in my workplace parking lot if I wasn't threatened with corrective action for prioritizing the repair over prioritizing showing up for my scheduled shift.

But because my boss threatened corrective action if I did prioritize the repair and my safety, I had to sacrifice both for the sake of showing up for my shift. And then to make it back home the emergency repair I did made my boss threaten me AGAIN for something which never would have happened if she listened to me in the first place!

And then I had to wait all day for them to come up with a solution. Tired, cold, hungry, with no help, and no effort to prioritize the spill over anything else. And I will have to pay for the stuff which got bought to be used, after my next paycheck. Meaning they are going to charge ME for a problem MY BOSS CREATED BY THREATENING ME and not listening. I SAID my car was unsafe to drive, and instead of accommodating for my life circumstance, I had my job threatened, and had to try and do a repair in an environment ill-suited for it, and got threatened for the result.

All of this also meant that I was outside in the freezing cold for a long time. Doing lots of hard physical labor. Banging and bruising my head and back. While sick. I was, and still technically am, sick. And I was straining myself by overly physically exerting myself. And being exposed to the cold for a long time. 

And since then I've been just trying to rest, relax, recover, and get through the day.

That led to a lot of things, namely, cleaning, at our apartment falling behind.

Until today!

I fully cleaned the apartment of all trash, removing it all.

I made progress on getting the dishes cleaned, too!

So like...got a lot done and am still resting and relaxing.

A lot could go wrong, but at least today, I have a lot to be proud of. <3

...Okay to be fair, I haven't blogged a lot so that joke is less effective than normal, butstill.

I'm still sick, recovering. Returning from vacation got me one sickness, and to be honest, I'm not even sure I was over it when Christmas hit and I got another sickness.

Both me and my wife got it pretty bad, but we're recovering.

And we've gotten some really good stuff now.

We're getting a free futon, as well as apparently also some free other stuff. A free desk and maybe recliner down the line.

So we've been cleaning our apartment to make room, and already our apartment is so much neater and cleaner.

There's a lot more work to be done, slow going because we're sick still and we don't want to prolong said sickness by pushing it, but it's going and going pretty good!

We got a lot of cooking supplies, including a microwave, so once again, in all ways but one, life is good!!!

The one way it isn't remains illegal financial charges, but...we're working on it.

In the meanwhile?

I'm making tremendous progress on my novel!

I'm cruising through writing, and in terms of organizing notes...

...Well, it's, ah. It's both going well, but also needs some cleanup. Because my worldbuilding is going faster than my notes can keep up with.

I know the details of basically every Abundant Argon.

When they formed.
Why they formed.
What they look like.
Even ones I didn't before.

I have an unofficial backstory for Luden (kept that way deliberately, but rather extensive), and a loose ETA of when. I always knew what Luden looked like.

I've always known what Lilith looks like, and her backstory (rather extensive). Her timeframe of when is actually a bit of a chronological rock/anchor for me in fact; knowing when things happened in regards to her lets me place when they  happen because of how well I know her timeline.

​Zeboel I relatively recently figured out the event causing their fall, what they look like, and the time involved. It's enough to be a Musical.

Deumos I already knew was the demon who caused Bothai's fall, but Deumos's own backstory, I figured out today!!! (It's ridiculously extensive.) Some of Deumos's backstory would be shown during Bothai's story, and Deumos's character growth would be largely because of Bothai. This also gave me his appearance.

Sanatas I knew the appearance and backstory of (relatively extensive). He was kinda a rock, as he had to be pre-Seidonia.

Dabadon I knew the approximate appearance and backstory of already. He was another rock, thanks to sinking Seidonia. A story extensive enough to be a live action show imo.

Rarma's appearance and backstory I've known for quite a while. (I want to write a novel about it in fact.) The one thing not QUITE set is the timing of her ascension. It's after Deumos's, as she wasn't ruling Angea back then, and presumably after Mastemo's unless she randomly left North Angea untouched. This would make her among the younger, but not among the youngest, as she's pre-Bothai (who is pre-Rothasta).

Belchevore's backstory is largely lost to the ages, but I know what he looks like now! And I have an approximate time he rose to power, too! (It's in one of the two Dark Ages. I'm thinking the mini Dark Age caused by Toran's fall, placing Belchevore as between Deumos's Ascension and Mastemo's Ascension.)

Mastemo, I knew the appearance and backstory of (pretty extensive, although relatively easy to summarize). He also served as a bit of a rock, as I knew exactly what the earth equivalent of his Ascension was. (The earth equivalent being the Fall of Rome. The farn equivalent of the Roman Empire pushed him too far in corruption, laziness, and greed.)

​Trisairo, I know the appearance of and have a working backstory (I admit it's basic, as it amounts to "She's the Demon of Order, who tried to bring Order to the Fae Realm, and the Fae being Fae, this was Not A Good Thing", but not every member of The Abundant Argon needs a whole life story. Most do, but it needn't be ALL of them.)

Ditto Milodee. Trisairo and Milodee are two of the few chronological absentees, in that I don't have their timeframe established yet.

Both are on the much older, but not ancient, side. We're talking pre-Deumos. Whether pre-Dabadon or post-Dabadon is the real debate at the moment. I'll figure it out soon.

​Bemoheth and Athaneva are unique among the Abundant Argon in that they have no backstory. I don't have their exact appearance nailed down definitively, or at least not their human forms. (I know what their true forms look like.) They are basically as old as farn itself, so they predate even Luden. While I need to know what their human forms look like, I don't need to know anything more about them because there isn't more to know about them. They're proto-spirits who chose to become demons just because they could. They're siblings and spouses. (Demons and Gods, natch. Refer to basically any mythology for how Gods are entwined.) That's about it.

​Bothai is one of the youngest Abundant Argon. I've known his backstory and appearance for a while, but finding his exact chronology has been a challenge. I'm honing in on an approximate timeframe, but it isn't nailed down to anything specific quite yet. He's younger than Zeboel by a considerable margin, and younger than Rarma, too. In fact I'm pretty sure he's the third-youngest, with only Rothasta and the 18th Abundant Argon as younger.

​Belreach is basically as old as Bemoheth and Athaneva and ever so slightly older than Luden, so is among the oldest of the Abundant Argon. I know his backstory, for what little there is, but his exact appearance isn't quite nailed down. He's a man. He looks like a dude. That's...about it, for details I know for sure.

​Phaimyustazael is one of the Abundant Argon I know the least about. He's got new info I know about him as of today (well, mostly it's stuff I internally already had, but wrote down more definitively), namely why his name is so ridiculous compared to the others. (As the King of Contracts, it's by design. It makes it easier for him to deceive people and makes it harder for would-be loopholers to succeed.) I have a really good idea what he looks like (basically, a constant grin fairly pale white man with black hair that's slightly animesque but more subdued and realistic, with shining ocean blue eyes), and a basic idea of how he became the Demon of Contracts.

I don't have an exact chronology set, it's somewhere likely in the range of Deumos: definitely after Dabadon, but before Mastemo. He might be the farn equivalent to King Midas? (As Midas was pre-Troy and Deumos was at the end of Troy, if so this would make him pre-Deumos but responsible for a disastrous fall of an empire.) Which would place him as over 4,000 years ago.
Someone who could cause the fall of an empire like the Babylonians, Myceneans, Hittites, or Assyrians. He could have caused the equivalent of the Knossos, Crete earthquake, the Minoan eruption, or the equivalent of the Thera eruption, etc., all about 200 - 500 years prior to Deumos.

And then we get to the youngest two.

Rothasta was 100 - 200 years ago in the demon realm. Her life as a mortal was pre-Bothai, and might be even pre-Mastemo, as knowledge of her kingdom was lost even to him. Since knowledge of an entire kingdom being wiped out with no trace is rare, this places her most likely human on farn times as immediately post-Zeboel or immediately post-Deumos. However this culminated in her actual Ascension being only a couple hundred years ago because she held onto her humanity in the demon realm for hundreds of years. I know what she looks like, and what she did. Her own pre-guardian history is lost even to her, but I can trace it based on her kingdom not having any trace of existing. It's quite possible she was a resident of the Ferachen Empire, in fact. But if so, would be closer to its founding under King Arnos. She could have even met the guy, been friends with him, even been one of his knights.

And the youngest of the Abundant Argon technically hasn't formed yet, but is known who they are to the Abundant Argon. The 18th member is a spoiler though, but I know who they are, what they look like, and what would cause their Ascension.

Soyeah. Making a lot of worldbuilding progress!

The Abundant Argon have always been a kind of linchpin by which the rest of farn's history has formed through. Other pantheons' rules were modeled after the Demon God-Lords out-of-universe (not in-universe). Ditto their powers, how they work, etc. The mechanics of divine entities were largely reverse-engineered from the mechanics of demons specifically. So, similarly, their history has shaped farn's own history, as well as geography.

I've mapped out farn's geography to have most places named.

And with the abundant argon having shaped the history of those places, I have basically the entirety of the background of the world of farn memorized to the level of an average farn well-educated college general-education adult.

Which is about the level of earth well-educated college general-education adult about earth's geography, history, and religion.

I've always said that farn is comparable to earth in history, geography, socioeconomics, geopolitical climate, cultures, etc. But now I have the how laid out, to the point where I can point to earth events I know about, and point to their farn equivalent. And vice-versa. And how they're similar, and how they're different.

Farn and Earth, despite Farn having magic and explicit deities as well as numerous different sapients, follow nearly identical trajectories as a whole in their progression and regression, in their societal collapses and empire collapses and empire rises. Not identical, especially as The Old World became more "crowded" by divine beings as time passed, and The New World was discovered far sooner chronologically (we're talking basically a thousand years sooner or so, loosely speaking), with Bairn's history more being a mixture of USA and United Kingdom history (history for the region dates back to the equivalent of the Roman Empire, so 1600+ years ago, albeit with large gaps until 1000 years ago or so when Baeyern, the farn equivalent to William the Conqueror, founded the country that would bear a simplification of his name), so like...it's not really a 1:1.

A lot of earth events are condensed into a single farn event, and vice-versa, with what might be a single earth event having been extrapolated to be numerous different farn events. But loosely, the overall trajectory of the two planets is OVERALL comparable, enough that any reasonably relatively well-educated adult from earth if transported to farn would just kinda...GET it.

Both so that Vee, said earthling, would be able to comprehend...and more pragmatically, so my readers, also earthlings, can too!

I hope you all like the final result.

Farn is eventually going to be turned over to the masses.

I've always seen me as just the medium by which stories of farn begin to get shared. Not as the only earth resident producing them.

Farn is as real as earth is, but that makes it a world too big for me to tell every tale of. I want to open it to others, too.

So the work I do now will help let others carry on my work in telling the tale of the planet after I am done sharing what I personally know.

Let's write the future together.

My body requires an annoyingly large amount of upkeep. I basically have a ridiculously fast metabolism which was meant to slow down except it never actually did. As stereotypical as it is, I have the metabolism of a teenage boy. Or maybe not quite that high, so let's say teenage girl. (Who are not the stereotype so I assume are still high consumers but not quite as high.) I need to eat a lot. Like, a lot a lot. I'd roughly estimate probably in the 3,000 range to not have a deficit? I dunno how food really works for the body, honestly. But I need to eat a lot to maintain 100%.

Like...no matter how much or how little I eat I never gain or lose weight. Not in any significant notable amount. I average somewhere in the 148 range. If I am eating a lot and less active that can climb higher but never above 153. If I'm active and starving myself it can fall to like 143. But I don't really gain or lose any real notable weight. I have no idea why, but that's just the way my body works. (I know, a lot of people would consider this a good thing, but it's just a thing, neither good nor bad.)

All of this is to say, what I eat doesn't matter for my weight. But it does matter for my energy and my ability to function throughout the day. (I'm getting to the point, I promise.) When I'm not eating enough, I end up lethargic, lacking energy, drained easily, tired, mentally foggy, etc. And I require a ludicrously large amount of food to eat enough. We're talking three large meals a day as the bare minimum. Which, I can't always get.

And lately...I've been having the opposite.

My wife and I since we've gotten back from vacation have been surviving off a single container of Ritz per day. 1 - 2 Ritz cylinders, shared between us. Not each. That one or two packs, split between us. Half a pack, or one full pack, each. For the entire day. For the better part of three days in a row. While I was relatively physically active, no less.

Suffice to say, it had a rather...negative effect on my ability to function effectively. Like, it's enough to survive, but I was exactly the things I said above. Lethargic, lacking energy, easily drained, mentally foggy, easily stressed, highly depressed, etc. I was unable to really function at all.

...But now...today...I actually feel...well it's hard to tell, half of me right now feels fully full, half of me feels like I could have some more, so it's hard to say, but...I...might actually be full??? And like...for the first time since getting back, I don't feel drained. I feel energetic.

And more than that.

I'm feeling like I'm not sick anymore. Time will tell if I'm not actually sick, but I'm not feeling sick anymore.

And you know what?

All of this?

...Was only possible because of the support I received from loved ones.

My mom gave me just enough to deal with rent.
My dad paid for my car's tabs renewal.
But I still didn't have enough money for groceries after the literal thousands they bailed me out with.

Yet after I mentioned to my friends yesterday night what I was going through...

...They rallied to support me, and gave just enough money for me to get groceries today.

And because I was able to eat today, I am now feeling more alive.

I have received the support of so many who have given me just enough to make it by, this month.

The one and only thing I haven't dealt with is the company that I believe is illegally charging me.

Granted! I still have to pursue taking action against the illegal charges and fighting back.

And I need to find food banks that work with my work schedule so I can go to one after work.

And I need to look into things like food stamps.

And I need to do a lot of stuff still.

And I didn't quite have the ability to today because while I was gaining energy today, I didn't have the energy until about an hour ago.

But! I am feeling hopeful. I'm feeling energetic. I'm feeling loved.

I know that I've gotten this far off of loads of support I won't be able to pay back.

But I'm not starving anymore. I'm not in despair anymore. I'm feeling like, tomorrow, I can tackle everything.

I can't afford to slack off--but at the same time, I feel like, as long as I don't? As long as I take action and am proactive? I will be okay. Things will work out. It won't be easy. But I am rested and recharged--tomorrow, it's time to use that energy.

I am insanely blessed. But I want to use that blessing and not waste it.

Thank you, everyone. For getting me through this tough time.

In whatever way I can, I will pay you back. I might not be able to ever pay you back in any meaningful way--but I still will pay you back. Because when I am this loved, it only redoubles my resolve to spread the love. You all deserve it. <3

...and only a fraction of it got done.

I wanted to make a followthrough blog to my blog about what happened last year, talking about the three worst things I could've done last year and how ironically, despite them being the worst possible things I could have done (and I tried my hardest to do none of them), it turns out there was validity behind them, in hindsight. Explaining this needs a blog proper, which I wanted to actually do yesterday, but I forgot until I crashed yesterday and today, I just have no energy for it.

I wanted to enjoy the Yuletide witch market, but I could tell kels wasn't enjoying it.

I wanted to get a lot of the apartment done, but I couldn't tackle the biggest area of the mess. I ran out of energy.

I wanted to work more on my novel, but that didn't happen.
I wanted to record TikTok and Instagram videos; neither happened.

I wanted to tackle more work on the illegal charges, but did neither.

I'm not progressing on any of the time-sensitive things I need to be.

And I feel pretty drained.

To be fair.

kels and I have been surviving on a single pack of Ritz per day. As our only meal. Shared between us. Yes, one or two cylinders, split between us, with no other food. At all. Whatsoever.

And I'm still sick.

And I did get a lot of cleaning done.

So like...I did have reason to get drained.

But...I still feel like I'm not doing enough quickly enough. While I'm not doing nothing, I don't feel like I'm doing enough quickly enough to handle life going forward.

I can't sustain this indefinitely. Things need to change. And for that...I need to step up.

I just am struggling to right now.