Happy New Year From The Central Time Zone!

Happy New Year from the Central Time Zone!

I’m ringing in 2023 with the first ever K-Pop song I heard: GOT7’s Stop, Stop It

I hope to bring new projects to you all in the New Year, and do a lot of healing.

Here’s to 2023!

Where do you get your inspiration for your writing? I want to get into it but I don’t know where to start

Oh boy, I’m going to be no help here 😮‍💨

Everywhere. Literally everywhere. All the time.

If you could see my prompts & ideas folder/docs you guys would balk at the absolute mess it is. It makes NO sense to anyone BUT ME.

It’s random sentences, pieces of dreams, memories, prompts, titles from books or movies I haven’t even read or watched, daydreams, one is actually from a recipe I read years ago that I don’t remember except that one line, Instagram and Tiktok filters, songs, decorations I’ve seen—literally anything can become inspiration for a project.

I guess the best place to start would be to go through writing prompts until you find one that speaks to you and sparks a storyline or scene. I’ve used prompt generators and prompt profiles (Instagram has some good ones)

Hope that…didn’t completely disappoint you?

I miss Jin already 😩😩

Well. I was informed last night by a friend that Seoulmates has been uploaded without my permission not only on AO3 (under a far less creative name), but on here as well.

If your an OG follower, you may remember that the entire reason this blog exists is because the KPop blog I posted on before was shared with someone who had been caught plagiarizing (on a separate, non-KPop blog), and I didn’t feel comfortable being associated with her anymore. For good reason, it seems, because (surprise, surprise) she’s the one who stole my work and reposted it.

She has since blocked me (saw it coming), and deleted the blog (I have lots of friends to keep you in check chica) as well as has taken Seoulmates down on AO3.

Like…honestly. How did you think that was going to go? I haven’t updated in over a year. Were you planning on picking it up and writing the rest? How were you going to explain the shift in style, tone, even fucking grammar to your followers? Did you think it wouldn’t get back to me? Really?

Do better.

TL;DR: I’m sending a gift to a friend (who has been repeatedly hit with darkness) that she loved and jokingly asked for in a post because she didn’t think anyone would actually buy it, and I’m doing it anonymously.

Ok so I am terrible at keeping certain secrets to myself. Tell me your deepest, darkest, shameful secret and I’ll die with it, but tell me about a gift or surprise you’re doing and it eats at me with excitement. I have to tell someone, usually my mom (which should be a given because she’s my best friend).

I’m even worse when it’s me doing the surprise or giving the gift. I just get so excited about how the person will react to it (I put a lot of thought, significance, and love into the gifts/cards/services I give). I have to tell someone (again, usually my mom. It makes it 1,000x harder when the thing is for her and I have to tell someone else or I’ll explode).

I have decided not to tell anyone who personally knows me in my life that I’ve done my latest secret gift. BUT, I’m dying to tell someone. No one on here knows me outside of Tumblr, and few people in my life even know I write fanfiction (let alone what fandom they belong to or that it’s Tumblr). A couple know I’m on Tumblr, but haven’t the slightest idea I actually post anything.

So, here’s my latest random act of…love? Kindness? Honestly giving gifts is my output love language.

A friend I met a few years ago when she started working at the bakery with me posted early last month (December) about a piece of clothing she was in love with and jokingly said “someone please buy this for me 😭😭🤣”. I tracked it down to a shopping website, and took a screenshot of the price and item name and everything for later, because after 2 years of no income I am officially broke. Well, I got a little spending money for Christmas. I bought a couple small things on New Year’s Day I need electronic-accessory wise. Then I was scrolling through my pictures for a particular one and found the screenshot of the top—and smiled.

Now, something you should know about this girl (10 years or more older than me), is that when we met she was in an abusive marriage. It had progressed past manipulation and emotional/mental abuse to physical about two years before I met her. She also has 2 sons from a previous marriage (also not a good one) who love their mother very much, and had reached that point that they were starting to interfere a little with the abuse. One of the first times she opened up to me in regards to this was when she had started to fear that her husband would start hurting her boys, but felt she was stuck. She didn’t make enough, she felt, to support them well enough on her own.

Over the course of the next 6 months, I repeatedly told her that she deserved better, that both she and her boys were in a toxic, unsafe environment. I prayed for and with her, and made sure to always be encouraging and show her that she was worth more than he led her to believe; that she had other people in her corner who were ready and willing to help her and her boys. I had a card in my wallet from way before at school for an organization that helped women in those situations, and had always wondered why I kept it. I gave it to her, which I feel was the reason I had it. She contacted them. She filed for divorce. They got her a divorce attorney. She and her boys moved in with her parents, and me and 4 others I rounded up helped her go get HER stuff from her now-ex’s place while he was under court order not to be there. He had cameras that he let slip he watched, and which rooms they were in, and as the others loaded the last thing into the truck, I said “hey ___, you’ve lost probably the best you’ve ever had, and probably will ever. Oh, and fuck you” as I flipped the room off (never knew exactly where the cams were, just that they were there). The women’s advocacy group helped set her up in an apartment complex that worked with them at a low rate (a nice apartment with more space than she had furniture to fill). They even paid for her rent and utilities while she was in divorce court. We helped her move her stuff again, and even gathered things from within our family and friend circle that was in good shape but not used/wanted anymore. She cried each time, and just kept thanking us and was worried she couldn’t repay us. I finally told her “___, you’re not going to repay us; we don’t want you to. This is what being a Christian, a child of God, is about. If anything, we want you to pay it forward one day, when you come across someone in need.”

The breaking point, when she said realized they were out of the dark, was that Christmas, when my family forwent buying things we didn’t need and instead bought her boys both wants and needs (at first she didn’t know why I was asking so much about her kids, then figured it out and cried). And for her, too. I watched this woman, who had been in 2 bad marriages and just wanted her boys taken care of, go from being timid and unsure to confident, happy, positive, and strong. She is very much the “fuck around and find out” type now that she’s herself again. She will one day be a bridesmaid at my wedding, she’s such an important part of my life now. She’s fallen on hard times again, and is fighting for custody of her kids (a family member of their father’s has legal custody and is doing a shit job and lying through their teeth in court), but she has an amazing guy and his son to keep her grounded. She says I seem to always pop up with cards or gifts or just kind words and encouragement when she needs it most. She doesn’t realize how much she helps me in turn, that she’s helped me in the struggles with my own faith the last 2 years of chronic long-COVID illness.

She’s a forever friend.

So, as I looked at the screenshot of that top she really wanted last night, I decided I was going to give a little more sunshine into her life to start the year on the positive. I ordered it, set the address to hers and put her name on it, and will be anxiously tracking it and waiting to see if she posts about it and/or figures out it was me (haven’t decided if I’ll admit it was me if she strongly suspects or not).

Everyone deserves little things to show that someone cares, that they’re not alone in the dark this world brings. That besides (or in spite of) people expected to care (who may or may not), there are people who have chosen to.

Okay, okay, I have a little story to tell. My grandmother got her eyeliner and brows tattooed years ago, and for a long while you couldn’t tell if you didn’t know (only her sisters knew, who also got their eyeliner done but not the brows). The brows started fading to green. I kid you not. They’re green. And we just assumed that’s the color she chose or something, before she told us last year that they were tattooed (I find it hypocritical that she criticizes others with tattoos that show, but whatever).

Before we found this out though, my brother and I were talking about the green tinted brows and her purple lipstick (it’s a faded purple, but still definitely not a good choice), and said something that to this day we laugh about.

He called her Yzma. From The Emperor’s New Groove. I thought my momma was going to suffocate from not being able to breathe, with me right behind her on the path to the afterlife.

You have to know this woman. She has very Yzma-esque moments.

Sometimes my brother does a good one, I tell you. Smh