I had dance and it was same as usual overall. Tomorrow I believe we're celebrating my mom's birthday even though her birthday isn't until a weekday but that's the reason why we need to celebrate it on our weekend. (Friday.)

So, not much, and don't expect much from me tomorrow.

...By which, I mean, without a reminder I would have completely and totally forgotten to blog. Whoops. Ah well. Uhh...let's see. I had my counseling appointment, but it wasn't the most productive of things. What else? There's not much I can really think of honestly.

Tomorrow's going to be one of those long days (in that I'll be working from 8 to four and have tae kwon do after that), and after it I'll probably need to spend the day doing mafia stuff I haven't done yet. (Which will eat up all of my day.) I am basically free the whole week except for round dancing on Thursday and family night on Friday, so that means that I can stay up REALLY late tomorrow and every day thereafter, basically meaning a near-infinite amount of time on my hands.

​We'll have to see how many creative ways I come up with to waste it all!

Things just haven't been going my way recently. I'm not really functioning nearly on the level I should be. I'm just...really, really in a spot where things are shutting down right now. I kinda wish I wasn't, but I am.

So as promised, I'll talk about it today. Yesterday featured me having the talk with my boss. I was pretty incompetent in delivering the information. SO much important stuff was left unsaid, but I did manage to say, essentially, "I'm a girl, and I haven't made that well-known because I am dependent on my close-minded dad". Which conveys most of the issue, but it is inadequate to the point where I even had to have a later talk with my boss.

That later talk with my boss means that the issue might not be resolved yet. I said what I could do about the issue presented to me. My boss basically said it'd require a couple of days to think about. Meaning that either on Thursday or on Sunday, we'll be having another conversation. Still. Regardless. The information I shared I had multiple times emphasized would be guaranteed to be kept private between us. So. The most important part? (Keeping things from my dad.) Got that.

It's just a matter of the rest since there's still the risk of mutually exclusive goals. That being, a job requirement that I as a closeted transwoman am incapable of fulfilling. So basically, I'm not worried about being outed. I am a bit worried about whether I can keep my job though. Losing it wouldn't be the end of the world...but it would suck. Especially with the inevitable questions of why I lost it, and confrontation from my mom who actually knows and supports me since me having a job is one of the few things she thinks I'm doing right.

Not exactly helping matters: later in the day, I was negligent in my lifeguarding duties because I was waiting for the bathroom. Said bathroom is the only unisex bathroom in the entire building, and it was closed for 15 minutes...all of which, I needed to use it for. All of which time, I wasn't doing work duties. My coworker was visibly...well, insert basically every anger-related word in here and you get the idea. Livid. Agitated. Frustrated. To the point where I'm pretty sure they actually reported me.

I'm just continuing to not have the greatest of success with work. It could have gone much, much, much worse. It could also be going much, much, much better. We'll have to see if I can maneuver myself into being in a more favorable position, though I know not how.

The other thing which happened? In tae kwon do, I had a knee-shin collision...with the same guy who I have had at least two prior knee-shin collisions. At least one of those times was him-shin, me-knee, but this time he got nailed in the knee while my shin got clobbered. My teacher commented--in a way where it's impossible to know for sure whether she was serious or joking, but regardless of which I don't think she'd enforce it--that we should be barred from fighting one another thanks to the frequency of the injury.

It comes from both of us being really, really, really fast with our kicks, usually round-house kicks. The perfect combination of pain results when both of us simultaneously note an opening in the others' defense...one which will be closed so much as a split-second later. So we need to kick fast, and we attempt to...only, we both try and thus, our legs intersect because we were moving too fast to avert the collision.

Both injuries have their side-effects. The knee injury is the type which tends to hurt a lot for a couple of days, and limits mobility more (it is a joint after all), but once you get past that point, the pain's basically gone and it heals in no time flat. The shin injury meanwhile is the type which hurts a fair amount, but is not debilitating. It still knocks you out of commission from doing tae kwon do for the rest of the night, but it is something you can work around. The tradeoff? Shin injuries take weeks, if not months to heal.

So you'll be stuck with that pain, ow ow ow ow, for week after week. Often subtly so. And usually only as a direct result of some sort of pressure being applied to the shin. But most definitively noticeable way past the two-day mark the knee injury takes to heal, essentially. So one's a short-term nightmare, the other a long-term inconvenience.

The lump I got from it was rather impressive. Said lump vanished after icing, but it was a huge deformed rounded-rectangle/ellipse (somewhere between the two) that stuck up at least a couple of inches if not more and had a color deformity in that it was a bunch of darker colors. It looked really, really bad basically. Didn't hurt really, really badly, mind you, but that's because my body has a high tolerance to pain.

I could tell that I was badly injured even if the pain signals from it were weaker than that. (Having a high tolerance to pain is a double-edged sword, in that yeah it allows me to function in spite of pain...but pain is the body's way of saying "THIS IS INJURED", and with my lowered ability to be affected by pain, that means I have less of an innate way of sensing how injured I am. I have to use intuition instead.)

Of course, after one round of icing, the lump was basically gone, such that by the second round of icing the only way I could tell where to apply the ice is by guessing. (I tried a combination of visualization and triangulating the pain I still felt to locate the best ice spot but I have no clue how successful I was.) So that's an injury I'll have with me for a while. It kinda sucked, too. That injury happened in the second fight of the night--still warming up. And it was such a good fight, too, until the collision. Which happened in like the last five seconds of the fight.

​Oh well. It is what it is.
Anyway, the last death throes of my square dance club are tonight. Our swan song was earlier in the year you may recall. So tonight we'll be going out not with a bang but a whimper. By which, I mean. We'll be attempting to keep the club going, but if nobody shows up, we'll be calling quits. Permanently. And I am not expecting anything. Why would I, when I have so consistently been disappointed time and time again by broken promise after broken promise?

Still. I may not expect anything. But that won't stop me from going anyway. Because while I may expect failure, my presence can and does have the potential to make the difference between failure and success. Basically, me not going guarantees failure whereas me going has a chance no matter how remote of success, so I go anyway even knowing the outcome will unsurprisingly disappoint me.

​While, cynical optimist, idealistic pessimist, kinda thing. (I'm a fair share of both basically.)

It was a total bust. Aside from the caller, my sister, and I, a grand total of...one person...showed up. Since it's difficult for the caller to call while in a square, that effectively meant we had 3/8 needed. No lesson kids, obviously, either. We're going to keep trying, but I'm honestly not optimistic. I've basically already accepted that what we're doing will be a waste of time unless we can get some real retention, which would be a miracle. Yet I'm still going to do it, for the hope I'm wrong and that we can pull through, thanks to what the club has meant to me.

I'm going to work tomorrow, so I can't really do much tonight. After work comes dance, and because my parents are down in Oregon (remember the day I didn't blog? I meant to mention this back then) right now dealing with legal stuff, I will have to drive myself there. Given my experience today doing the same (the dance hall for square dancing and round dancing is the same), it's gonna be hell.

Because today? Aside from rude awakenings from a missed phone call, from maybe a text or two, and other such similar things (weird lucid dreams distracting me and making me not really want to wake up), I got a full night's sleep. In spite of that, I was really tired when driving. Tomorrow, I'm going to be getting up early in order to take a shower (meaning, I'll get 5 or so hours of sleep when ideal is a minimum of six), have a six-hour long work day, and then only a short window before I leave for dance, meaning barely any nap time.

Of course. I'll manage to squeeze it in anyway. But while I don't think I'll be driving dangerously, I certainly will be absolutely exhausted and in need of naps, plural, to take care of it all. It is what it is, so I'm gonna have a rough day. But I'll manage.

I'd say "not my fault" but that wouldn't be true it really was my fault. Basically I meant to take a small nap after dance today because I needed one really, really badly. I ended up sleeping for six hours. Essentially a full night's sleep. Yet it's not yet Friday for me because I woke up at 4:30 AM. That's still way too early to be tomorrow! Meaning once I type this I am going to go back to bed to reset my body to what it should be waking up to.

​Still kinda ticked off though since that means all that time I woulda spent doing stuff went down the drain for nothing.

I was promised that when I took my shower, it would be warm. I made a ton of prep work for taking a long shower, too. I prepared a bath. I brought a rag to put soap on so that I could clean myself with soap (something I typically don't do normally). I couldn't find shampoo, but I was going to make liberal usage of the conditioner and then let it sit for a while before thoroughly washing it out. (My understanding of conditioner: don't leave it in past the shower; I was told by a professional that's very bad, but don't immediately wash it out; you lose the benefits if you just put it in to immediately be removed.)

It started out promising enough...and then, like a switch, was suddenly gone. It wasn't really gradual, either. It went from scalding-hot-when-on-max to lukewarm-on-max in an instant, and from there, slowly deteriorated to the point where it was essentially "fighting to maintain temperature but losing the battle badly bit by bit", more or less. I was less than pleased by this development. I rushed through the shower, from skipping any hope of shampoo to not using liberal amounts of conditioner (I did use some though, but I didn't cover my entire scalp, just two major areas) to immediately washing it out and so on.

Unlike at home, the bath tub we have here is actually deep enough to have a decent bath in. But unlike at home (where by the time the shower fills it to the top, it's warm water still), this one didn't have time to get warm. It was like a condensed version of a pool in temperature, more or less: I could tell that it was reasonably warm, but it was still well below body temperature, with my own body heat doing more to warm it up than anything else. Body heat, which would slowly over time be lost. Because water conducts heat. (In a small enough environment, this is a blessing, since it means the heat is maintained for longer. In too large a setting, a curse as it is seeped quickly.)

So I didn't even have a chance to have any real post-shower relaxation time. I was hoping--praying--that my time spent in there would allow me to maybe get warm again, or failing that, that I'd be able to at least relax and spend time lost in thought as is my favorite shower pastime. Nnnnnnnope! Just cold. It wasn't severe cold. But it was enough of cold to drive me out.

This came after me having been rather restless during the night. Do you know how, if you're traveling for too long sitting, you can get really, really uncomfortable? Especially on the point of contact your body makes with the seat? (I.e., your butt.) Yes, well...for some reason, I was having that same effect during the night sleeping on my bed I've used for years without trouble. I tried shifting positions multiple times, but shifting to the other side (which is the side I normally sleep on) was for some reason REALLY uncomfortable (worse even than the pain from sleeping on the side I was), sleeping facing up was uncomfortable, and sleeping facing down was murdering my back.

No matter what I did, I wasn't getting a decent rest. No position worked. I at times was for some reason worried about being delicate with things (dream logic may have been in play), but even when I threw caution to the wind and was like "I don't care what this damages, I need to find something comfortable", I...couldn't find anything even remotely comfortable.

My dreams were also strange. Part fantasy, part reality, part mixed timeline, part could-be-real-but-clearly-isn't, all very, very real-feeling at the time. In particular, one part of the dream had me absolutely convinced that we weren't down here for a funeral, but rather a wedding. One attended by square dancers I know rather exclusively. Except for a few local relatives, including my recently-deceased grandfather whose funeral we're here for. He was rather alive in the dream.

It was even using that wording: "Not a funeral, a wedding". As in, at times, there were somehow reminders of reality, and yet in the dream realm they were responded to consistently and adamantly that it was a wedding. I can even vaguely recall the faces of the couple being wed, and yet, they're not someone I can pin down from reality.

Then there was a separate section of the dream involving some hipster eco-terrorist organization I think it was, which had a particular modus operandi: some cheaply-made home explosives for an initial shock that was ultimately harmless, then a minor electronic sabotage (in one case ruining a playstation3 for their intended target) as a warning. Then, later, if their demands wouldn't be met, a much larger and rather lethal traditional explosion would be set off to level the place.

They had a bit of an unusual recruitment policy, born of caution: members don't join the organization by volunteering. That sets off red flags. Rather, instead, they would seek out members such that they would recruit them individually. I was more awake than asleep at this point and was formally woken up before I could explore this further though.

Anyway, I've been warming myself up this last half hour or so (the time it's taken to type this), and now I'm going to finish my prep work for leaving. We leave in half an hour or so, and I need to finish getting dressed and brush my teeth. Probably not in that order. Won't quite take me half an hour (probably ten minutes or so), but it'll take enough time that I want to start now, especially since you never know what I might have to do. Oh, including things like my third hair brushing. (When I take a shower, I brush my hair before, to make sure I don't have a bunch of hair come out in the shower. Then, I do it immediately after the shower, both to help accelerate the drying and to make sure it sets right. The third is a final correction.)

Soyeah. Stuff to do, and I'm gonna do it. Noon now, so a second entry is almost assuredly coming today.

The funeral is a two-part process. The first part: at the funeral home, meeting a bunch of people I don't really know who somehow know/remember me or apologize if they do not, when I have absolutely no recollection of them. Aside from those that I vaguely recall from last year which were the same thing, essentially. People who have some kind of relation to the deceased, be it neighbor or blood, that are important and yet I just have zero ability to retain memories of how.

It also is a time where lots of stuff can be done, in this case including a speech by my dad. It included a fair amount of history, things I somewhat knew and somewhat did not. I knew my grandfather was a fighter pilot in world war two, and that he was shot down over Italy and was stuck in his plane for 24 hours (he rode the plane all the way down). What I didn't know was that his whole squadron was shot down and he was the only survivor, and that the people rescuing him quickly shipped him off because he technically wasn't supposed to be there. (Presumably, shifty orders from above to do something sketchy.)

I also knew he managed an energy plant for the remainder of the war, and was vaguely aware he learned some Arabic from his Arabic subordinates. I even recalled that he learned enough to briefly be appointed a translator until his superiors learned he didn't quite know enough to get by as one. However, details like him being able to listen to a film as recently as two years ago and recognize the Arabic spoken there would not be how a native speaker would phrase it, that I didn't know. Nor did I know that he had survived riots from protesters. (Though, hurtful as it sounds to talk ill of the deceased, I couldn't help but wonder if his experience there was how his racism got transferred onto my dad).

One of the things my dad focused on was that my grandfather put family first and built a strong family which emphasized love, values he passed on. But standing from my perspective, I couldn't help but think that my grandfather, similar to my dad, had a "family as HE sees it" view, in that an outside view would have been punished severely. I did feel bad for thinking of it in that terms, but it's difficult not to.

For all intents and purposes, as far as everyone knows, my dad loves his children. Even he thinks that, and even we acknowledge his love is there and is strong...but with the dark undertone that it wouldn't be there if the truth were exposed. Meaning those outside of his narrow viewpoint of the world live in constant fear of that love NOT being unconditional and turning to hate.

There was lots of mingling and storytelling and sharing of lives and whatnot, which I am very bad at doing in-person. I'm just not good at socializing, which this was largely doing. I wouldn't say I'm the black sheep of the family since that would imply my family is white sheep, nor could I claim the inverse. It'd probably be more apt to say I'm a brown sheep in a flock of gray sheep, in that we are at opposites in many ways, yet neither could be inherently better or worse than the other.

I did reflect a little bit on death during the time I had and more or less came to find I was able to sum my thoughts up there in a neat little thing easily quotable:
Death is a celebration of life. Do not mourn by lamenting loss; instead, rejoice by remembering.

I mean, there's a little bit more to it than that, but that's a fairly laconic method of stating my viewpoint, and it's something which holds true regardless of your viewpoint on subjects such as religion (e.g. thoughts on life after death, thoughts on the meaning of life). Death is an undeniable part of the world, but it is no coincidence that many a fiction writers have written it such that mortality is actually a gift of sorts.

There's many quotes to the same effect on there, even: "What's the point in living if you can't die?". Endless numbers of fictional works have explored this subject to great extents. They've gone on and on and on about it, detailing the nuances there. Anime/manga, Comic books, Western Animation, films, and especially Literature, among many other media which have the subject be a focal point.

And to some extent, they have merit. Living Forever Is Awesome, and make no mistake, I intend to, but failing that. Failing immortality, failing living forever...having a good, long life filled with happy memories is in of itself worthy, even if you leave no visible legacy. Your actions impact others, even if they don't remember them, and while some of said actions will impact things negatively, for the MOST part, even negative actions can cause an overall raise to the happiness of others in the long-run, in any number of unpredictable ways.

I mean, obviously the negative actions in your life you will regret. You will regret the consequences of those actions, too. Even if you know said actions led to better things, you'd still feel bad about them. And factor in how most likely you WON'T know if those things led to better overall lives you're likely to assume they led to worse ones...it adds up to lots and lots of self-misery. And yet. We are human. We can't pretend we're not. We're flawed, we make mistakes, and we try to grow from them but an attempt is no guarantee we succeed.

We fail. Then we fail again, often at the same thing we just failed. And we keep failing and feeling worse about our failures. But sometimes, even if only on chance alone. Those failures end up giving us things we could never have had without them. Failing at being successful, for instance, is probably one of the only reasons why I have two girlfriends I love in the first place. Had I succeeded when I was younger, had I not been a failure, I almost assuredly would have never met either of them. I could never call that a bad thing (the opposite, having two girlfriends to love is the largest blessing I could have), even though to happen it required a lack of a good thing.

Basically, what I'm saying is...a single happy memory of a good time outweighs any number of painful memories of lesser times. And that's what death brings forward. Another often-repeated line is something to the effect of "Do not speak ill of the dead", and I actually think it is for much the same reasons I'm outlining here.

Because death is a celebration of life. While you can acknowledge the dead had shortcomings, disrespecting them, insulting them, is choosing to focus on the negative rather than the positive. It is making an active choice to not celebrate their life, to not give meaning to their positives, to the happiness they have instilled in the world.

I wish I could explain it better than that. But basically, I feel that while we all feel the pain of loss, it's an unavoidable part of life...so instead of focusing on the inevitable, we should make the choice to enjoy all the good things, no matter how big, basic, small, or complex. We can't ignore the existence of the negative. Acknowledging it is a must, since denying it is a really bad idea. But having an active focus on the negative is something I think reinforces it and I don't think that's healthy.

Which is why my mourning doesn't involve tears. (As if I could produce them anyway, but I don't feel sadness.) I do feel loss...but I also feel warmth of the good, of what was nice in life.

I hope I don't sound crazy for this.

...And it's about at this time that I realize I only described the first half. The second half, more private, is at the cemetery, where the body was lowered into the grave. Each sibling placed a rose on one of the three graves we have there. (One for our grandfather, one for our grandmother, and one for our aunt who had been dead since before any of us were born since she died in her teens and was my dad's younger sister).

That's about all I can think about. But, yeah. Today was a bit of a heavy day. I kinda wanted to talk actively with my girlfriends while at the funeral, but I knew it would be bad form to do so. I mean, I kinda sorta did so anyway even knowing I shouldn't, but I couldn't help it. I wanted them. I wanted them a lot. I still want them. I want to talk to them and I want to cuddle with them and to hold them and just be all...close. Where I would be able to feel life instead of death, as it were.

I don't want to be alone. I still feel that way because while I might have family, they don't quite get me.
...Oh, that reminds me. Just before leaving, I was asked if I needed to wear my ridiculously-stupid ring. I took it off, and was asked why I wore it. I told the truth: it's because I like to have an object on my hand to fidget with, and I use the fidget-ring all the time. This is not the whole truth, because I genuinely just like wearing rings. Buuuuuut, I'm pretty sure I'm getting some rings for Christmas now, which will be nice. My first official jewelry! Albeit based on a half-truth, butstill!

Anyway, dinner's done, so I'll be having it. I may or may not make a third entry today, depending on what we do tonight. We leave tomorrow, presumably in the morning, which means packing stuff tonight. I can't wait to get back home again. Because while I don't hate being here...I love being at home because everything I really care about is there, in that there I can contact my friends and girlfriends whereas here I cannot. And that's basically like 90% of my life I can't have. So while the 10% of me I have right now isn't bad...it's still only 10% of me.

The other 90% is all too eagerly awaiting my return. (Or so I hope!)

Mainly because stuff happened! For supper, I had lasagna, which was a gift given to us by some old lady I really don't know the name of. While my dad was eating, I did some artwork. There was a drawing I wanted to make, but I quickly learned I lacked the reference images to make it real and with no internet connection (well, not quite true: dial-up on the local desktop, which would never be able to load the needed images), so I only finished the initial sketch with a promise to do more on it later. (A promise I'll probably forget, but eh, we'll have to see.)

After that, my brother and my younger sister played cards with me. We started out with Crazy 8s (which I won), then transitioned to poker at around 6 or so. I don't know why they chose five-card-stud poker, but they did. As it so happens, I'm pretty good at playing conventional poker. The problem is, I got a harsh reality lesson: my siblings don't bluff. My siblings will call basically anything unafraid, so bluffing doesn't work. Meaning, I couldn't bluff them (what I'm good at), and if they bet, I knew I would be outplayed. Ultimately though, I'd say that putting myself at a chip disadvantage to have that knowledge was useful.

I did manage to adjust, and while for most of the game I wasn't well-off chip-wise, by the battle of luck (since literally no wits were involved as nobody was bluffing ever), I managed to mostly regain my footing. This ended up leading us to a finale where we all went all-in. (That technically shouldn't be possible but oh well.) I had a full house that round and neither of them had anything close to that, but at that point they were ready to throw the game just wanting it to end so...it ended! With me winning. At like...10:30. A full three and a half hours later. A bit monotonous and a drag which started to become more of a chore than fun (which is why it ended when it did), but it had moments making it worth at least mentioning, thus this entry.

We leave tomorrow, and last I heard, the plan was to get up "whenever (my brother) gets up". This may have been said only semi-seriously so I should go out to get an update, but regardless, it's not gonna be late. It will be, at least reasonably close, to early, which means prep work tonight: packing everything. Once again, I have no time limit on this, but unlike at home where I pulled an all-nighter, here with no internet, I'm gonna run out of tasks eventually. So I'll be fully packed tomorrow and I'll be ready to leave quickly, and I'll even get some sleep. Even if it's only 2-4 hours, the rest can be done on the trip.

Soyeah, gonna put my laptop to sleep now. Next entry will be when I've returned!

More specifically, about elements. I may or may not have rambled on the subject before, but elements are a thing of great fascination to me. I figured the best way to start is to start by talking about the basic western and eastern element systems.

A commonly-forgotten fact about the western-element system is that it is not, as media commonly portrays it, actually a four-element system. The western element system we are familiar with has a fifth element, a "heavenly" element, Aether/Ether, the element of the stars, what the heavens are composed of. But I'll talk about that more in a bit.

The "worldly" elements were the four elements making up the world: fire, water, air, and earth. We all know the four-element chart. Water, opposite of fire; Air, opposite of earth; Water beats fire beats air beats earth beats water is often also used. There's so many things about this system which are commonly seen. It's a pretty standard system, subverted plenty of times, and people often "get creative" by later introducing a 'fifth element' of their own (which is usually something completely different from the original fifth element but not necessarily!).

I'm not quite as familiar with the eastern-element system, but they also use a five element system. I believe their traditional system is Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood. But coincidentally, at least in my own elemental creativity, I will be talking about those later, too.

The next step up is the eight-element system. It keeps Fire, Water, Earth, and Air, but adds Light, Dark, Ice, and Energy to the spectrum. This also has a side-effect of changing elemental dynamics. Water gets paired with Energy; Fire gets paired with Ice. Because eight elements are more complicated, there's a lot more diversity and interpretation in there. Do you have a wheel on elemental affinities (i.e., one element beats another but is beaten by a third)? The possibilities are far more diverse than with only four.

This is the system I tend to most commonly use, thanks to my upbringing in Artix Entertainment's first game, Adventure Quest. It was what I used in my previous webcomic (speaking of which I made art for that today!), and it's what I use in Red Hood Rider, too. I like the eight-element system because of the incredible flexibility it provides. A four-element system gives you access to some creative ideas (for instance a favorite of mine is, "four elements, four fundamental forces of the universe"), but an eight-element system just feels a whole lot more ~official~ I suppose it would be, in that when I have it I feel more grounded in reality. It provides the best balance between having a lot and having a little, because once you expand beyond eight, there's no limit to what you can give.

For instance. The obvious step up from eight is the ten-element system. Generally the simplest and easiest way to get a ten-element system is to subdivide the Earth-element. (You can blame Bionicle for what I ended up with.) You can subdivide it into any number of different things, but I have a preference for these three:
-Metal
-Rock
-And Nature.

Included in Nature would therefore be Wood. The reason I like these three is because these three are all relatively broad, yet common, elements which encompass essentially everything Earth has to offer. Metal is everywhere in our world. If Metal is not classified as its own element, it's under Earth because where else would it go? It's not fire, it's not ice, it's not energy, it's not water, it's not light, it's not dark, it's not air. It's either a part of Earth, or it's its own element.

Avatar: The Last Airbender may have popularized the idea of metal as an element (at least a sub-element of earth), but the idea has been around since long before then. It makes sense, after all. The explanation given is usually to the effect of what Avatar gave, in that metal is just refined rock, but I like to separate metal and rock.

Rock is what covers a significant portion of the Earth, too.

And Nature is what makes up life. I tend to not call it Life as an element (because that itself can be an element, but see below), but the sentiment is there: it is both flora and fauna, in that it is everything organic, more or less, in the world. It WOULD be possible to subdivide it in half, into said flora and fauna (making it basically be Wood / Nature as two separate things), but this is not something I often do.

...However, something I DO do? Often, if this still feels too narrow--and it usually is--instead of not including an element named Earth, I will include an element named Earth, which would be the broad sweeping category of "everything on the planet (more or less) not fitting into one of those three categories". If sand/dirt don't count as Rock, they'd count as this version of Earth. Things like poison, acid, gasses which aren't classified as air, and the like would also fit into here.

We're up to eleven at this point.

Then comes the biggie category. Spirit/Soul, Aether/Ether, Heart/Love/Life, Heavens/Stars/Divinity/Holy, Ethereal/Dream, Ki/Chi/Xi/Chakra/Body Energy. You can potentially get 10-12 elements from these, or you could lump them all into one element of your choice name. They cover similar concepts which is why I lump them together, but they are not in fact synonymous. I tend to separate them out into about two (maybe three) categories: "heavenly otherworldly element", and "material otherworldly element"/"earth otherworldly element".

That is: I create one element which is an element that exists outside of the normal plane of existence, on a level associated with divinity. Spirit/Soul/Heavens/Stars/Divinity are the likely candidates for the type of name I would give that element, in that it is something on another realm and that realm is higher.

I also create one element which exists outside the normal plan of existence, which is otherworldly, and yet closely mirrors and is very directly tied to our world. Think like "The Force", or similar: something which is likely to exist in most things (or at least most living things if not). This can be Spirit/Soul/Aether/Ether/Heart/Life/Ethereal/Dream/Body Energy/Ki/Chi/Chakra.

...But often, that won't quite be adequate enough, in that you can have a need to explore something which is neither of those and yet still doesn't have a negative connotation associated with it. Something which is often considered stronger, but isn't necessarily so, in that it is an element that is necessary for the others to exist and yet it is not something superior in of itself. Soul/Heart/Life/Dream/Ethereal are the most likely candidates for this element.

Of course. There is an element that can go as far back as being the ninth element. Ninth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, or fifteenth by this point. This element is one of my most common elements. It is, simply put: Void. Void is my staple element once I expand outside of the elemental-eight. With an eight-element system it gets lumped in as part of Darkness but the moment I free myself of that restriction, Void is in as one of my elements.

Void is an otherworldly element, yet it represents more of "nothingness" than it does "something". If I have just one between all the words I gave above, this is a binary relationship in that void is the opposite of that one. But if I have more than one, it goes something like this.

The more divine/heavenly one can be thought of as "purity of thought", more or less. The more earthly one can be thought of as "pure potential". The third would be more "purity of existence". The void, in essence, is "purity of absence". It is most strongly a counter to the first two in that it is not strictly speaking tied to death (though if death is not an element, it is likely under the realm of Void), but it is tied to the nothingness associated with a purity which stands in contrast to them.

Nothingness is itself a potential element, but it's not one I'm going to include in the list. Instead, making the list in spite of it being tied to body energy/heart/life among others, is Blood. When I expand my element system beyond the eight given, blood is often among my list, because blood serves a purpose and has a great versatility within it.

Fire, Ice, Energy/Lightning, Water, Light, Darkness, Air/Wind, Earth, Nature, Metal, Rock, Void, Blood. And then we get to choose how many of those otherworldly elements we use. At least one, with three being what we want to max out on. Which would give us a nice comfy 16-element system. This could be worked down to 15 by scrapping one. It could be worked down to 13 by two of {scrapping the second and leaving only one, combining blood with one, combining an earth element}, if I did my math right.

But this is where I tend to draw the line. 13-16 elements is about as far as I'll go. You can go further, of course. To pull up a TVTropes list of commonly-used elements (when I say 'just earth', btw, I mean "earth or an element which in an 8-element system would be part of earth"),
​-Storm (I have no clue but it's not really an element)
-Gaia (just earth)
-Machines (really just use Metal)
-Crystal (just earth)
-Death
-Poison (just earth)
-Lava/magma (seriously it's just fire)
-Sun (it's just light)
-Sound (mostly just air though this is a serious contender for its own element)
-Radiation (just earth)
-Magnetism (just energy)
-Smoke/gas/mist (air or earth)
-Explosions (mostly fire with maybe some air butyeah definitely not an element on its own for me)
-Mud (just earth)
-Hellfire (just fire will do nicely thankyouverymuch)
-Illusion (neat power, but not an element)
-Time
-Space
-Gravity (strong power but not in of itself an element--it's something some elements may control though)

Some of these are things that I can probably flesh out more, but basically, most of them are covered already. You might note looking at the list that I left some off, but that's because the ones I left off were ones which had names I didn't use but were describing things I already have used.

I'm content with my little expansion, though I think I should off of an expanded-element system list what each element would actually do. Ah well. Some future blog I suppose.

And with it, my cell phone. Which was actually convenient, because I ended up needing it today to respond to my tae kwon do teacher. I let them know I couldn't make it to a planned workout on this Thursday thanks to a schedule conflict (I have dance), and also let them know that yes, my foot injury is being taken care of. (I mean it's getting much much much worse and I don't know the details and I keep on forgetting to ask about them but I know that it's not something which was forgotten and is being dealt with.)

Today I played Don't Starve Together with one of my girlfriends. We made it to day 21, and I survived 15 of those days. (I died once to something I can't remember; I died a second time to a treeguard who one-shotted me when I didn't even know the treeguard was targeting me since I thought it was targeting my girlfriend, and it took a while before a revival could be arranged.)

Winter had come, but that's not what did us in. We were inside our camp, but to our misfortune, a beefalo had wandered into said camp. A beefalo in heat. In. our. camp. Awake during times like the night. And in the winter. Where you can freeze to death even during the day time. It didn't help my mouse died on me right in the middle of said beefalo charging, but my girlfriend was charged at by the beast, and the beefalo is just as fast as the character; there was no escaping so she too was offed by, of all things, the beefalo.

It was pretty fun. The other noteworthy game out recently which I played today? The third part of Medieval Cop 8. I cannot express enough my love for that series. It just keeps on getting better and better. That's about all I can think of to comment on for today though. Does that mean nothing else happened, heck no, but it does mean I'm at a loss for what else to blog about.

And even if I had material I'm sleepy enough where it'd be best to call it a night.

On the way home, my sister and I discussed the car we took and how we now have jerk lights. What are jerk lights, you may ask? Why, exactly what they sound like. They are those really really really really bright lights you see drivers (typically the ones tailgating you who rarely if ever hesitate to pass you) with, that are owned 75% by jerks. These are the people who when they're behind you pressure you to go faster...but you can't, because the other 25% of owners for that type of light are cops.

Thus.

Jerk lights. You know the type. Heck it could even be you are the type but for your sake I'd hope not. (Because jerk driving is dangerous driving and I wouldn't want you to get hurt.) Our car used to be dim, and thus, be the polar opposite. Yet our dad "fixed" it by installing new, ultra-bright lights, lights which even on the non-bright setting illuminate everything and I imagine are blinding to be behind. So much to our dismay, we discussed that we have the jerk lights, and the best we can do is to try and avoid driving like the stereotype.

When we got home, our little kitty was on the desktop chair, her head jerking around. It was clear she was looking for something. The moment my sister came through the door and saw it, she went, "Bug?"; I affirmed that was likely, and it didn't take long to have confirmation from the moth itself she was hunting. We saved it by catching it and letting it out of the front door, much to the disappointment of our little cat.

My feet are killing me right now and that doctor appointment couldn't come soon enough. I don't know exactly when it is or the details thereof, but I know it is a thing being taken care of and that yes I will indeed be going. When exactly, would have to ask my dad. But this is a thing which I will be doing!