Stephanie Bri

I often tell people who ask about my spiritual practice today that I am a chaos witch. I don’t usually go into details what that means to me but I will say that I have dabbled in different practices over the years.

The earliest forms of witchcraft I remember trying were just simple spells I read about in books I found at the library. Encantations and simple prayers to various Pagan gods, the fey or other spirital beings. By the time I was seven years old I was already learning to read cards, use runes and even crafted my own ouja board. By the time I was 12 I had shifted to necromancy. I used to go into graveyards late at night by myself and make attempts to talk to the spirits hanging out there. Sometimes I would get a few faint whispers, sometimes I would get flashes or images of foggy beings but nobody ever really spoke to me during those sessions.

I took a short break from witchcraft during my teen years when I was pursuing a Christian religious practice. By the time I was in my 30s I had converted to Catholicsm where I could be far more spiritual than as a Baptists while still claiming to be Christian. A few years ago I decided to give up pretending to be Christian altogether and settle on becoming fully Pagan.

Since that time I have learnt moon magic, mirrir magic, tarot, candle magic, spells of will and intetion, and yes I have even done some encantations and rituals designed to tame demons. I maintain a somewhat working relationship with several Pagan deities, but my closest relationship in that real is with the Celtic Goddess, Brigid, whom I idtentify as my Mother Goddess. I did a very speciific ritual inviting guidance from any spiritual forces willing to answer my call. She was the first to come to me and agree to be my guide. Since then I have had a rocky relationship with her but we maintain a strong mother-daughter situation. Yes, we fight from time to time like real life mothers and their daughters do but we always make up.

There are some types of witchcraft I am more inclinded to try than others, but I think it is safe to say I don’t rely entirely on any single practice. I don’t even always have a defined goal when I attempt to use the supernaturl forces of the universe. Sometimes, I’m just trying to see what happens. One thing I will say is no matter what you believe, never let anyone tell you that you can’t do what you want. Even if you end up making mistakes, tell people they are your mistakes to make and that you will learn from them. Your practice, your faith, your craft is yours. Nobody has any right to interfere with that.

I know there will come a time when I bring myself to describe some of the encounters I have had with what I believe to be spiritual forces over the years. I have had plenty to share. Instead I wanted to ponder a few more definitive ones that left a lasting impression on me.

I became fascinated with witchcraft at an early age. I couldn’t tell you for sure how early but I know that my earliest memories I have include me having at least some interest in magic. Not illusions but the magic you read about in fantasy novels and experience in games of Dungeons and Dragons. In fact it was my obsession with magic that drew me to D&D in the first place.

I don’t want to describe the encounter in vivid details, at least not yet. My earliest memory that I think involved a spiritual entitity, probably a ghost, was when I was in Kindergarten. It was just this dead mutilated cat that would appear to me in the distance from time to time. It was really just the head of the cat and it’s fron paws. I could clearly see it’s body was severed by the bloody entrails where the rest of it’s body should have been. I saw this dead cat ghost several times in my life. It was never in the same place either. Since we moved around a lot it would always just appear off in the distance, usually in the bushes or tall grass. Sometimes I would see it under a bed or sitting on top of a fence in the countryside.

The earliest I remember seeing it I was six years old and in Kindergartent. It was half burdied under some leaves beneath the merry go round at the playground of my elementary school. It appeared to me days before I met the ghost of a little boy who had fallen down the stairs years before my time. That boy only appeared to me once but it was enough to scare the living daylights out of me.

The last time I remember seeing the cat was when I was about 16 years old. It was sort of sitting off in the distance during a thunderstorm where I saw, what I am certain to be a demon, eating some wild animals in my backyard. I never saw that cat’s imagery ever again. I realistically couldn’t tell you how many times I encountered it over the years. I have a few different memories but I am sure it might have been there a few times I probably wasn’t paying too close attention. Either way, I never new where it came from or what it wanted from me. I do remember it had softly glowing yellow eyes and blood in it’s fangs. It never made a sound, it just sort of glared at me from time to time.

The wind howls again making every board in the dusty old trailer house creak yet again. While the storm rages outside stirring up terrible sounds, inside the house is dead silent. Everyone is sleeping peacefully through another round of Midwestern Great Plains thunderstorms. That is except for one troubled soul who was woken up by an unseen force calling to her.

I was 11 years old. I walked down the hallway from my bedroom towards the empty living room while my family slept in their beds, oblivious to the whispers calling to me. Hanging there on the wall just before I entered the safety of the living room, my comfort zone, was this painting. It was an old painting. Some western scene. A borded up old rustic house in the middle of the dessert. I never asked my parents where it came from or who painted it. I just knew there was something living inside it;.

I would be lying if I said I could picture the entire painting vividly in my aging mind. What I do remember is a foggy image of that rustic house in the dessert, in the yard next to the house was a small pond and in the dead center of the pond was an old timey wagon wheel. I do remember the wagon wheel was faded. I know this to be the case because my sisters and I talked about that faded wheel on many occassions. I wasn’t the only one who claimed to see a faded, foggy figure hiding in that rustic old western house from time to time. It never took a solid, recognizable shape. Just a faint pair of eyes hiding behind these dark, brown bangs.

I never saw a fully defined face in that painting. Just a faint outline of the shape of a face in the shadows. It wasn’t visible during the day. My sisters each claimed to have seen it at least once in their lives. This particular night was different. It was the same as always, faint barely visible outline of a face hiding in the window of the house. But where normally the eyes were just a barely visible shadow, tonight they were glowing dark red. Not bright, blood red you see in the movies when filmmakers try to depict demonic forces, it was a dark red more akin to the color of a dusty brick wall. At least that is sorta how I remember it.

What made this night different wasn’t just the eyes being more clearly visible, but the shadowy face was also more defined than I had ever seen it before. It was clearly a little girl wearing overalls and an old straw hat. She had the same dark bangs as always but this time I could see her hair draping down the side of her face. I knew this was very definitively my first verifiable solid encoutner with a ghost or spirit.

I knew it was real because it was whispering to me. It wasn’t using my deadname, nor was it saying the name I had internalized for myself. It was more an impression of myself. I can’t really explain how I knew it was calling specifically to me other than a very strong feeling. I stared deep into it’s evil looking red eyes as the intangible whispers continued. It’s, or maybe her, mouth, never moved. It wasn’t audible in my ears the way a person’s whisper would be either just a faint impression in my mind. I didn’t say a word. I just stared at it, frozen in fear. I wasn’t able to bring myself to ask the spirit what it wanted. I just mustered my own audible whisper. “Leave me alone, go away.”

That was the last time I ever saw any anomolies in that haunted painting. I am certain I was awake because I remember stubbing my toe on a toy truck I hadf left in the hall on my way back to my bedroom.  That night I had dreams of ghosts. I knew it was whoever she was not consiously, or rather subconciously, but again just an impression in my soul. She lifted my spirit out of my body and took me into the clouds. She showed me visions I couldn’t make sense of at the time. Looking back on it over the years, I don’t honestly think I ever could make sense of them. Not even today as I sit here recalling the images. What I do remember is the rest of the dream.

She took me back down from the clouds and into this video arcade that was nearby where we lived. Inside the arcade the machines were playing themselves. Not in their default attract mode as was their programming, but it was like invisible players were playing every game simultaneously. Slowly a song began to play on the jukebox in the game room. I can still hear that haunting melody in my mind from time to time. As the song began to increase in volume so did the appearances of the ghosts that were in the room playign the different video games. There was a couple playing pool. There were a coule of kid ghosts running around the adjacent laundrymat next door. What scared me the most were the formless ghosts flying around the room humming along to the tune of that song that was now overpowering my senses.

I remember waking up the next morning from that nightmare not screaming from the frightening images I had seen but crying. I was sad because the song playing in the air was sad and I could tell those ghosts were also sad. To this day I never really told anyone else this story. It was a haunting night I remember in my own faded memories. I want to be clear this is not a story of fiction from a horror writer. This is an absolutely true event that I never knew how to unpack until tonight. I still don’t know what that little girl ghost was trying to tell me. The only thing I remember for certain from her was the image she showed me as a girl myself. I had known I was trans long before this night but it was the first time I ever felt any hope in my heart that I could some day live my life as the girl I was born to be. I don’t know if that was what her intention was or even who she was but I will never forget her. Whoever she is, I hope she has found peace in the afterlife by now. At the very least I wish to honor her for showing me things that, while terrifying, I think I needed to see.

I have talked extensively about my several years working as a professional journalist in the news business but there’s something about that time I haven’t been totally up front about. I really wasn’t that good at it.

Let me clarify. When I worked in production (video editing, cameras, mixing, page design etc.) I was pretty good at that stuff. I was also a pretty decent writer, for the most part. Except the things I was terrible at were why I never went very far in the industry. First is the most important one, deadlines. Every single news outlet I worked for had to regularly and very intensely reprimand and discipline me, constantly, for frequently missing deadlines. It wasn’t that I can’t work fast or that I can’t multi task, cuz I certainly can. But the problem is partly because I am bipolar I have a very non existant attention span.

You see even when I worked at a weekly newspaper where I had at least three to four full eight hour work days to write my stories, I was still turning things in so far past deadline we often were at the office on deadline day well into the early AM hours. My editor used to scold me for this pretty much every week. I am not good at meeting deadlines. I am also not good at handling pressure or high stress situations. Yes a lot of my time was covering breaking news or fatalities. While I could turn off my emotions and be professional while on scene, once I was in my car I often would break down and cry for several minutes. This stuff was hard on my soul.

I also talk about the different jobs I had. I was a video editor, staff writer, camera operator, Master Control technician, beat reporter, paginator, digital content manager, news editor, government reporter, and television news producer (which is a management level job so I had some skills I could capitalize on but I still was severely limited)

Like I said, when I was doing the technical jobs I was very fast, proficient and very professional. I probably should have stuck with editing and I might have lasted longer and gone further than I did. You see I didn’t go into the editorial side because it was what I wanted to do or even what I was best at, I went into the editorial side purely out of vanity. I wanted to be known, popular, famous. I didn’t want to be just a behind the scenes video editor or no name production assistant. I desperately wanted to sit at the desk, go out into the field and report live on the air, anything to be noticed and liked. Well, unfortunately I wasn’t young enough or skinny enough when I started out to get those jobs so I went into the print newspaper side because it was easier to get a staff writer job at a small town weekly than it was at a TV station.

Now I should mention I was not bad at the job, I just wasn’t great at it either. Yes I mention from time to time I am an award winning journalist. This is true I did win an award one time for a single article I wrote once. Okay so I won an award, it still technically makes me an award winning journalist but it wasn’t an extremely prestigious award if I am being honest, but who cares it’s still technically true.

After working a few years at different newspapers, working my way up to government reporter at a daily mid sized metro paper I finally talked my way into being given a change to work at a TV station as a producer. Except I should pull back the curtain here a little. You see I worked for a small market station in rural Texas. They had two channels. Their flagship was the CBS affiliate where they aired their prime time news programs that got all the views and attention. Then there was a sub station, a small town nothing Fox affiliate nobody watched that aired a single 30-minute newscast that had so few ratings the station was constantly talking about pulling it off the air. I worked on that nothing Fox program for three out of the five days of my work week. Except I have to be further honest. The station management basically told me since nobody watches that show anyways I had freedom to do whatever I wanted, within reason. Most of the time the anchor and I agreed since the CBS station was the most important and our show was filler, we usually just copied the entire show from an earlier CBS broadcast and made updates as necessary. In other words I was barely producing that show. In reality what I was doing was taking a show someone else had already previously produced eariler in the day and just repeating in on my show with new infromation if we had it. I mostly just pulled network filler content off the web to fill in the gaps where there was content I couldn’t pull over.

The other two days of the week I did get to produce the higher rated CBS newscast. Except only because I was the weekend producer. While the 10 PM cast is the one everyone watches. because of sports most weekends we didn’t even have a 5 PM show so most weeks I had an entire 7 hours to produce 15 minutes of TV news, sports and weather got the rest of the time. So yeah I was technically a TV producer but I reallty wasn’t great at it and I was only entrusted with basically the broadcasts nobody was even watching anyways. It was supposed to be training for eventually taking over the flagship show but well let’s just say I screwed up the one time I was allowed to do that and I was pulled from the rotation and told I wasn’t allowed to produce that show without supervision. Not to mention I only worked at that station for barely nine months before I was let go.

The reason I wanted to confess my true experiences in the business is because yes I bring it up that I did those things and I do talk about the work I did that was considered important, I need to be very clear, I was never really the top level editorial staff at any establishment, more often than not I was usually doing filler work most people weren’t even going to bother with. And the only reason I was given the government reporter beat was because of mass layoffs left our staff of 12 full time reporters cut down to just 2 full time and me, the part timer they kept because I didn’t fetch the higher wages that those they laid off did. In other words it was a great opportunity for me and I did a damn good job during my tenure, I wasn’t picked because I was the best candidate for that beat, it was just they had no other option and I would work for mnimum wage whereas other, much better journalists than I, would not. so there you have it a much more accurate depiction of my time working in the news industry. Yes the work I did was important, I was good enough to last several years and I wasn’t a slouch by any means but there was very obviously better people in the field around me and I just sorta floated along until I wasn’t able to anymore.

A list of lists just for the sake of making lists

Not an article just some semi randomlists for the hell of it

Cartoons:

Transformers

GI Joe A Real American Hero

Tiny Toon Adventures

DuckTales

Chip N Dal Rescue Rangers

The Smurfs

Care Bears

Rainbow Brite

Wuzzles

Rugrats

Doug

Ahh Real Monsters

Ren and Stimpy

X-Men

Spider-Man

Batman

COPS

Gummi Bears

Aladdin

Conan the Adventurer

Peter Pan and the Pirates

A Pup Names Scooby Doo

Scooby Doo Where Are You?

13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo

Whacky Races

Popey

Looney Tunes

Merry Melodies

Captain Planet the the Planeteers

Captain N the Game Master

The Super Mario Super Show

The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3

Super Mario World

Sonic the Hedgehog

The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog

Mega Man

Double Dragon

Mortal Kombat Defenders of the Realm

TaleSpin

Darkwing Duck

Transformers Generation Two

Transformers Beast Wars

Transformers Robots in Disguise

Transformers Armada

Transformers Cybertron

Transformers Energon

the other Robots in Disguss

Transformers Prime

Transformers Cyberverse

Challenge of the Gobots

Pound Puppies

Garfield and Friends

The Tick

Eek the Cat

Bobby’s World

Exosquad

The Botsmaster

Tom and Jerry

Movies:

Star Wars

The Empires Strikes Back

Return of the Jedi

The Mask

Dumb and Dumber

The Terminator

T2: Judgement Day

Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines

Halloween

Halloween 2

Halloween 3 Season of the Witch

Halloween 4 The Return of Michael Myers

Halloween 5 the Revenge of Michael Myers

Curse of Michael Myers

H20

Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th Part 2

Friday the 13th 3D

Friday the 13th Part 4 the Final Chapter

Friday the 13th Part 5 A New Beginning

Friday the 13th Part 6 Jason Lives

A Nightmare on Elm Street

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 Freddy’s Revenge

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 The Dream Warriors

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 The Dream Master

A Nightmare on Elm Street 5 The Dream Child

Freddy’s Dead The Final Nightmare

Freddy vs. Jason

X-Men

X2 X-Men United

X-Men The Last Stand

Spider-Man

Spider-Man 2

Fantastic Four

Elektra

Tremors

Robocop

Robocop 2

Total Recall

True Lies

Twister

Independence Day

Men in Black

Bad Boys

The Fifth Element

E.T. The Extra terrestrial

Jaws

Jurassic Park

The Evil Dead

Army of Darkness

The Evil Dead remake

Evil Dead Rise

Sleepaway Camp

Slumber Party Massacre

976-EVIl

Pumpkinhead

Alien

Aliens

Alien 3

Event Horizon

Pitch Black

House of 1000 Corpses

Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Last House on the Left

Weird Science

Sixteen Candles

The Breakfast Club

Pretty in Pink

Night of the Comet

Maximum Overdrive

Species

StarShip Troopers

A Christmas Story

Honey, I Shrunk the Kids

Child’s Play

Bride of Chucky

Seed of Chucky

Curse of Chucky

Cult of Chucky

Terrifier

Terrifier 2

Terrifier 3

Hatchet

The Ring

Oculus

Smile

Truth or Dare

Latenight with the Devil

M3gan

X

Pearl

The Great Outdoors

Nothing But Trouble

Spies Like Use

Groundhog Day

Ace Venture Pet Detective

Bruce Almighty

Empire Records

Batteries Not Included

The Thing

Mortal Kombat

Street Fighter

Double Dragon

Resident Evil

Super Mario Bros

The Wizard

Labyrinth

Gremlins

Gremlins 2

Back to the Future

Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters 2

Lethal Weapon

Lethal Weapon 2

Final Destination

Scream

I Know What You Did Last Summer

The Faculty

10 Things I Hate About You

American Pie

American Wedding

She’s All That

Clueless

Can’t Hardly Wait

Mr. Mom

Throw Momma From the Train

Delisious

Hudson Hawk

Critters 2

Night of the Creeps

Return of the Killer Tomatoes

Night of the Living Dead

Dawn of the Dead

Day of the Dead

Return of the Living Dead

iRobot

Minority Report

Transformers

Bumblebee

The Avengers

Avengers Age of Ultron

Avengers Infinity War

Avengers Endgame

Batman

Batman Forever

Batman Begins

The Dark Knight

Kick Ass

The Matrix

The Matrix Reloaded

The Matrix Revolutions

Ghost World

The Virgin Suicides

Being John Malkovich

Clerks

Mallrats

Chasing Amy

Friday

House Party

Space Camp

Lady in White

Commando

The Running Man

My Science Project

Can’t Buy Me Love

Pet Sematary

Misery

The Lost Boys

The Goonies

The Monster Squad

Stand By Me

Needful Things

Escape From New York

Lassie

Invaders from Mars

The Fly

TV Shows

Roseanne

That 70s Show

Boy Meets World

Home Improvement

3rd Rock from the Sun

Friends

How I Met Your Mother

Yes Dear

Full House

Family Matters

Perfect Strangers

Punky Brewster

Bones

Sabrina the Teenage Witch

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

True Blood

Community

The Big Bang Theory

The Good Place

Cheers

Magnum PI

Psych

Saved by the Bell

Girl Meets World

All That

Clarissa Explains it all

Grace Under Fire

Everybody Loves Raymond

The Middle

The Goldbergs

Rules of Engagement

Stranger Things

GLOW

Eureka

Doctor Who

Star Trek

Star Trek the Next Generation

Sliders

Heroes

All in the Family

Who’s the Boss

Family Ties

Growing Pains

Dinosaurs

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

Power Rangers Zeo

Cars

Buick

Oldsmobile

Ford

GM

Caddilac

Mustang

Beetle

Pontiac

Jeep

books

A Wrinle in Time

To Kill A Mockingbird

Misery

IT

Pet Semetary

The Amityville Horror

A Doll in the Garden

When I was in college I took a few literature and creative wring type classes. One concept I remember learning about is referred to as the Canon or the English canon. This is a list, I guess, of literary works that are supposedly important to the development and history of the English language and surrounding culture. One such book that made the cut is the Canturburry Tales. Unfortunately I had to read it in Middle English for my Linguistics class and it went way over my head.

In modern internet culture we use the term canon in a similar, but different way. When someone says something is canon what they mean is it’s part of the “officia;” mythos of whatever they are discussion, such as which Star Wars movies are considered canon, etc.

I tried to adapt this to my own obsessive need to keep endless amounts of lists that I dare not share here. I tried to develop my own canons, not of mythos mind you but more in the classical sense. A canon of action figures, a canon of video games, a canon of horror movies, etc. Oh, by the way I keep dozens upon dozens of notebooks and notepads filled to the brim with useless lists for my own nerdy pursposes. So one of my projects was trying to define my own various canons. Then I decided I didn’t like that term because it implied a definitive offical status I wasn’t really trying to convey.

After I decided to scrap the canons projects, which I had already invested let’s just say way too much time into, I decided to start over with a more focused apporoach. This time i set out to redefine my lists not as any official canon, even being just my own personal canon, and replaced it with the term essentials. I didn’t want to make favorites lists or top… lists because that’s too limiting. I settled on essentials because I figured I could define those by my own terms. As in essential, to me. I figured a canon implied an officality or even some sort of authority I wasn’t fully comfortable with. I don’t know why I decided to share this, I guess lack of sleep makes my mind wander sometimes.

I have moved a lot in my life.  If I was to sit down and write up every single place I have lived over the years I know it would be a garbled mess not to mention I am sure to leave off a few due to lack of concrete memories. But there are a few key places I have lived in my life that have left a lasting impression on me so I wanted to write a little bit about some of them.

First I wantr to talk about is Salina, Kansas. I lived in several towns in Kansas and only one would I claim had more impact on me than Salina, but I’ll get to that one in a bit. Salina is not a big city by any definition but for Kansas it’s one of the bigget communities. For those of us who lived in extremely small towns in rural Kansas, yeah Salina sure felt like a city.  Nowhere near as big as Wichita or even Topeka, but big enough for central Kansas I suppose.

If you’ve never been to Salina there’s really nothing special about it. It lookms like your typical suburban type small city. A few shops, mostly national chains and a sorta robust downtown for the size of the city.  If I was trying to entice a tourist to visit Salina, I’d surely fail as there’s nothing spectacular or noteworthy to go out of your way to see unless yur goal is to visit small cities in rural Middle America I suppose. Even then there’s probably at least a dozen better places.

I didn’t live in Salina long but I lived in it proper more than once, and in nearby surrounding towns for a good chunk of my childhood, so it was pretty central to my development early on. Looking back, it’s just another boring regtular old nothing special place. But I guess at the time it felt so much more important than it actually is.

Tri Cities, Nebraska

I won’t spend too much time on this. The tri cities refers to Kearney, Hastings and Grand Island. Three mostly similar sized nothing cities not different enough from each other to matter, and frankly nearly indistinguisable from the nothing Salina I just wrote about. I went to middle school in Hasting, University in Kearney and shopped at the Best Buy in Grand Island but other than that, they’re basically the same city.  The one I spent the most time in would be Hastings as that’s where my uncle lived and we would visit him frequently. We also lived there on a couple of seperate occasions. Not a particularly memorable place but one I visited often enough to stick in my head I suppose.

Jackpot, Nevada. The gatway to the Nine Hells. Nothing to discuss just a dust bowl in the Nevada dessert with a couple of generic western themed casinos and not much else. I went to high school here and lived off and on more times than I would care to remember.

Twin Falls, Idaho

One of the most special places to me mostly because it’s where I was born. It’s only marginally larger than the four above mentioned nothing cities in Kansas and Nebraska but it’s at least truly spectaculary for touristy stuff. It’s built along side the Snake River Canyon, right by the Twin Falls water fall and the Shoshone Falls water fall. It’s also got some hot springs nearby, rock climbing and a few outdoors type things you can’t find in the flatt ass nothing Great Plains. But it’s still a fairly generic small city with the same national shops you’d find nearly anywhere else. Noth much local flair, to be honest, but it is overrun with Mormons so there is that, for what it’s not worth.

Then there is Miltonvale, Kansas. I have already written several articles and blogs about Miltonvale. All I will say here, not to repeat myself too much, is it was the first town where I had a proper friend group that wasn’t just my sisters and cousins. Nothing at all special, even the school district shut down and there’s not much but remnants of businesses that onces existed but have been forgotten to time. It was where I had my first girlfriend though so that’s something at least.

That’s about it. Aside from that year and a half I lived in Dallas, every other place I lived is rather forgetable. I don’t have to say anything about Dallas for gods sake it’s a major US city, everyone knows about it. I did live inside actually city limits, and not just a suburn or on the outskirts, so there is that I suppose.

Cats versus dogs. It’s a timeless debate some in our society seem to place far too much importance upon for some reason.  There is more to it than just being a simple question, depending on who is asking. When an American male asks are you a cat person or a dog person, what they are really asking is are you masculine or feminine. You see there is this perception in American society that dogs are for males and cats are for females. Furthermore they believe, especially the toxic masculines, that males who prefer cats are either weak, or gay. Yet women who like dogs or cats don’t seem to have their sexuality called into question regardless of which answer they provide. I never understood this.

Then there are those who answer both or neither. Both can be an acceptable answer, depending again on the gender of the person giving the answer. Again for some reason if a woman says she likes both, nobody seems to care. If a man says both, then they usually have to immediately follow it up with their parner, or child, likes cats so they’re just trying to be a good partner or parent depending on their situation. This seems to be midly acceptable to most yet still can garner judgement still.

What about those who say neither? Well this is where things can really get complicated depending on whatever responses come next. If a male says neither and responds with they like reptiles or fish, mostly acceptable. If they say they prefer birds there is a whole new set of judgements getting past onto them, usually accusations of insanity or some similar ilk. If they say things like hamsters or horses, well more worms getting opened. Rodents have similar negative connotations as cats and birds, usually accusations of homosexuality, femininity or insanity. A male can say they like horses if they are a cowboy and clarify they ride horses for sport but if they keep them as pets, that can causes raised eyebrows yet again.

In yet another example of double standards, regardless of what answer a female American gives usually garners far fewer judgments. Girls can like birds, fish, rodents, dogs, cats, horses, ponies or most warm blooded pets but she could receive harsh judgement and criticsm if she says she likes reptiles. You see in American society boys are allowed to like reptiles but girls are supposed to be afraid of them or some such nonesense. Neither gender is permited to suggest their preferred pets are insectoid or arachnids at all. That brings a whole new set of judgments not of being insane, but of being too intellectual or nerdy.

I find it entirely pointless that American society places so much meaning behind what type of pets a person claims to be drawn to. I know there are far more important things in our society we could be focused on than what pet one prefers but this is just another area where there is some unseen force placing undue pressure on everyone to give the correct answer, whatever that may be. I couldn’t care less myself. I’m fairly open to nearly all sorts of pets except reptiles, bugs and horses. Dogs I am iffy on but not entirely against. But my answer will always be cats.

Every writer to have ever lived has had the same common foe: the blank page. We each develop our own strategies to how we slay said beast yet every writer will tell you their individual method is fool proof and try to pass it off as definitive. We’re all wrong, of course, what works for me might not be feesible for your brain, depending on how it is wired. There is one prompt, however, every writer is told when we are learning our craft from those who came before us, write about what you know about.

While I was in college I had to write a ton of crap about things I had zero knowledge of and even elss interest in. While write what you know sounds good, in theory, let me tell you as a former professional journalist, sometimes you have to get to know something in a hurry, and as such you never fully become an expert in that subject, you just learn enough to do the job and move on to the next project. Things move pretty fast in the breaking news cycle so your constantly learning, and immediately forgetting so much useless crap that it starts to make you feel like you never get to actually wring about the things you do know, like your professors kept saying.

So here I am writing about what I do know about. That is myself. This isn’t just an opportunity to jot down my own thoughts on what writing means to me, although I can clearly see it going in that direction. I also want to kinda of use this as a chance to talk about a few things I am familiar with that I probably wouldn’t do so otherwise.

The first thing I want to get off my chest is the false narrative surrounding the importance of proper grammar. Sure in my English classes the professors insisted grammar was essential to good writing. Yet in my Linguistics class my professor proved, time and again, how false that notion truly was. The common example English nerds use is “We’re gaving grandma for supper” versus “we’re having grandma, for supper.” they argue that placing the comma in the wrong spot would confuse the reader into thinking the familer were cannibals. Yet my Lingustics professor pointed out that based on context clues, even without the so-called correct placement of the comma, the context dictates that nobody would read that sentence and immediately assume cannibalism. Obviously this is a single example grammar nerds use but there are surely others. Even when I was still in college I hard to learn MLA style APA style and AP style. If you are not familiar with AP style, that is Associated Press, they are less interested in correct punctuation and grammar as they are more about concise thoughts. The idea is newspapers used to have to pay for ink so they wanted to minimize the charatcers put to page to reduce the cost of going to press. This led to the development of a semi formal but casual, readable gramma that, technically more correct than spoken vernacular, is still not what English professors would call “proper” by any stretch. Of course these days everything is written with digital in mind so the ink cost is no longer a factor.  I guess my point is focus more on clarity than so called rules. If the reader is confused, in our world of instant feedback, they will surely let you know in which case you can provide additional clarity if needed, or edit the article to rectify said perceived wrongs. The point is write what you know and don’t worry if it is English school textbook correct or now. Because at the end of the day, nobody cares.

When  I first started what later became this site it really just started out as a directionless blog. It’s gone through a few domain name changes from thespiderslair to theretrowitch to its current state but the core blog underneath has remained the same ever since I was still in college.

I find myself returning to a desire to just blog about random stuff these days rather than trying to maintain any semblence of a purpose. I rebranded it a few times while trying to focus the types of topics I wrote about, yet each time I always ended up using it as a simple blog. So that is what I am doing today. Partially I am wide ass awake at 2:18 in the morning on what is now a Sunday. I am also partially trying to organize and process my thoughts on a few things that have been on my mind lately. I suppose there is also a part of me that is just bored.

I am not sure exactly what I want to write about. Sometimes I have a skeleton plan before I start typing and other times I just start putting down words and see where it goes. This is one of those times. I don’t really have a plan, I just want to be typing, I guess in a way just for the sake of it.

I have tried to maintain some remnants of my training as a professional journalist over the years. I’ve tried to do some newsy type stuff here on this site while also doing some newscast type stuff on my various Youtube channels. Like many bipolar souls out there. I often find myself victim of the racing thoughs. That is to say dozens of random thoughts popping into my brain all at once. I guess this is just as good a way to get them out of my head as any other method. I could be listening to music but that doesn’t appeal to me right now.

I remember one of my ealiest articles I wrote for an earlier version of this site was a passionate retrospective on Code Red Mountain Dew. I remember it well because the news editor I worked for at the time read it and told me he wished I would be as passionate about writing city hall stories as I was writing about soda pop. I eventually did become more invested in that stuff during my time as a professional journalist but these days I have to say my interest in any sort of politics is not what it used to be.

Even though this site has lasted through several domain name changes and rebrandings, going back over a dacade and a half at this point, it’s far from the first online space I tried to make my home for my random thoughts. Let’s just say I have had dozens of blogs, websites and online profiles over the years where I could put down my thoughts. This one has easily lasted longer than any of those and for that reason I guess it holds a special place in my heart.

I made my very first website all the way back in 1999 when I was 16 years old and still in high school. It was a half assed project I coded by hand entirely in html for a Publications class I was taking at the time. Remember back then computers were still just taking off and the web was still fairly new. This was before the infamous dot-com bubble. My high school was offering a class in basic web design because they claimed it was the key to future employment in the changing world. They weren’t entirely correct about that. Sure in the early days of the world wide web it required some knowledge of HTML and computer savvy but it really didn’t take the tech industry long to realize they be better served developing user friendly do-it-yourself low cost webkits rather than paying web designers higher wages to do it professionally. Once local mom and pop shops learned they could make a decent website themselves using these new low cost tools instead of paying freelance web designers like myself, well that market dried up in a hurry.  Sure the larger corporations learned they needed more functionality in their sites than a template could provide, but by and large that lucrative future coding websites I was promised never really materialized. At least not for those who didn’t take the time to learn to code apps instead. Thanks a lot Apple.

Whatever. I never intented to make a career out of making websites. Sure, like countless others my generation who were duped into learning web design I tried to make the next big website. Until the devestating dot-com bubble burst and we all realize that dream was dead on arrival. Oh well, you live and learn as they say. Yet it didn’t take long before I realize I wasn’t making websites in any attempt to turn them into a profitable venture, well except for a couple but those were related to business I was involved offline too. I really always just wanted a place to put down my thoughts while honing my writing skills at the same time. Obviously this served me well as I worked for nearly a decade as a paid writer before leaving the news business behind. One thing it did do was push me to finish writing my first novel until I could get it published. I have since published two more novels so I guess it was a good investment in my time.

I’m not really sure what the purpose of this place is anymore. I have largely turned to vlogging on Youtube as a means of saying the things I want to say these days. Yet as a writer it is hard coded in my DNA to want to put words to paper, even if it is digital paper I suppose. Like this websites own identity changes over the years my own interests change often enough that I don’t really get too invested in any one thing for too long. I guess that is my nature. One of my former editors once said a writers knowledge base runs a mile wide and an inch deep. I think he was right.