Kaye's Days

I’ve lost a lot of my hobbies lately, all due to lack of interest.

I haven’t updated my art blog in months and I can’t remember the last time I drew even a scribble in my sketchbook. I have three sketchbooks. One is full, the second is half-full, and the third is empty and will continue to remain unused. While I did create something in Paint Tool Sai recently, that only came about due to a random bout of motivation.

I haven’t been blogging as much and I do not only mean on here. My main Tumblr blog has become much less active than it used to be. I’ve begun going days without posting anything. I don’t read my favorite blogs as much anymore. I don’t speak to anyone (well, Tumblr took away the reply feature…). I might log in from time to time to browse my dashboard, but that’s really it. I don’t go through what used to be my favorite tags.

I don’t browse as many sites as I used to. The only sites I regularly visit are FMyLife, The Sims Forums, Not Always Right, and Not Always Working. Notice out of those four sites, only one is really meant for communicating. Forum websites or similar used to be a regular thing I browsed. Not so much anymore.

I don’t play my video games as much. My playtime of The Sims has been declining and my 3DS gets used sparingly. The games I rotate between are Sims and Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon. The others remain shelved, having been unused for several months at this point.

While I can’t pinpoint exactly the cause of losing interest in what used to be my favorite hobbies, I have one suspicion: disappointment.

A lot of things have negatively changed over this year and while none of them are really of importance, they’ve led to continuous disappointments on my part.

My favorite game series has become a shell of itself. My favorite show has become exceedingly childish and while childishness is expected of a cartoon aimed at ages 5 to 12, it was nowhere near as childish as it is today, despite the intended target age range never changing. Said show has also become poorly written, uncreative, and just plain generic and bland, with the creators going so far as to rewrite their own canon for the sake of filling in some plot hole. The number of plot devices within the show is so blatantly high and obvious, it’s not funny. The main cast no longer has much of anything unique about them. They’re all cut from the same cloth.

Among the smaller disappointments are an annoying IM feature introduced by the Tumblr staff and the confiscation of the reply feature on posts. I reserve IM for people I know in real life. I do not want people online instant messaging me. It’s the same reason I don’t give my Facebook profile to someone if I don’t know them in real life. I’m not comfortable speaking like that. Thankfully, Xkit took care of that problem, I don’t have to deal with the IM nuisance anymore. They’ve introduced a few other, minor “updates” since then, all which I can’t help but roll my eyes at. Really, the blocking system was the only thing Tumblr staff ever updated well.

For the record, yes, I’m aware the world does not revolve around me. I’m not claiming it does. I know other people are happy with the changes of all of the above and that’s why I don’t contest them, regardless of how much I think they’re stupid as heck. That does not change my personal feelings, however, and I’m allowed to have those as much as the others are allowed to be pleased. And, truthfully, those are just the disappointments off the top of my head.

Among some of the more major ones, it’s certain realities falling into place. Like there is no fixing the relationship between my mother and myself. That ship has sailed, crashed into an iceberg, and sunk down to the deepest of the oceanic depths. In fact, almost the entire side of my mother’s family may as well be non-existent to me. The only person I speak to regularly on her side is my grandmother. I couldn’t speak to any of the others if I tried because I have no information about them. In other words, it’s the reality of my family finally, after so many years of being held together like broken glass with glue, falling apart. And I have no choice but to accept it because there is no fixing it. It can’t be held together any longer. Their problems are beyond my control. I can’t help them. We were a (somewhat) happy family at one point. Now, I’m wondering if it was all just an illusion that’s crumbling down because I’m now an adult and there’s no reason to keep up the act anymore.

I’ve gotten mixed feelings about having a job now. I still want one because I want my own source of income, but I’ve watched my best friend work her job over the past few months. That is, I’ve watched her deal with unstable schedules, becoming too exhausted to speak, and being frustrated and fed up with rude customers on a daily basis. Now, I know work is not supposed to be fun and I don’t expect it to be, but her description makes it sound like she’s being dragged through Hell. She doesn’t even have time to send so much as a single text, something she’s apologetic for, but can’t help. I don’t bother her about it – I’d be a bad friend if I did – but the truth is I miss her. Yes, I know it’s part of adulthood, but it’s a part I’m not handling so well. Heck, here I am making her problems all about me and sounding like a selfish twit when she’s the one with the job, not me. Hence why I keep my mouth shut and vent here in this post.

2015 has been better than 2014, so there is that, but it’s mostly been because I’ve stopped responding, so to speak. I’ve spent this year trying to figure things out and I have. It feels heavy. I’ve heard people say no adult knows what the heck they’re doing, but it doesn’t seem that way. I can’t figure out which direction to go in, but everyone else seems to have found a clear-cut path. Maybe they’re better at hiding it than I am.

I’m not looking forward to 2016. It’s a cynical thought, but I have the feeling something is going to crash on top of everything else that has already crashed and burned. I hope I’m wrong and it’s only pessimism speaking, but rarely has that ever been the case.