Sweet Suffering

"When the Japanese mend broken objects they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold, because they believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful." ~ Barbara Bloom

     Well, for those uninterested in my personal life, allow me to start with the art news. Trying to get started on some men's jewelry, so yesterday I made an interesting necklace. I like it, but I don't know if anyone else will. I used a shark's tooth I bought in Brevard, some round leopard skin jasper beads, and stone chips in a dark reddish brown. Don't know what the off-white beads are made of. Cue crappy webcam shot.

     So yeah, there it is. Can't see anything in that picture, but oh well. Anyway, I have two more shark teeth and two arrowheads to use, along with bunches of stone and shell chips. We'll see what happens. 

     Ok, prepare for the personal stuff. I've been doing pretty well lately. Feeling better about myself, and I'm hoping it lasts. Feeling a lot of things lately. Last night I kind of scared myself. I actually felt real, true empathy last night for the first time in God only knows how long. I don't mean the "I feel bad for you" sympathy stuff... I mean the full-blown empathy where you can feel your heart breaking in your chest because someone else is hurting. I was really blown away by it. I cried for at least an hour, and I felt ridiculous but... relieved as well. I thought I couldn't feel like that anymore. Weird. At least I'm still socially awkward. I think my brain might blow up if I ever get the hang of handling social situations. One change at a time. 

     Well, I still screw up every relationship I have. I'm pretty sure I have two of my friends upset with me in one way or another. Now I'm just kind of sitting here worrying about that. It's hard to focus on work when I'm wondering how badly I messed things up this time. I'm a walking social disaster. 

     I've rediscovered iTunes radio stations. I'm out of Pandora hours so it's serving as my replacement for my Pandora addiction until the new month starts tomorrow. I've found a lot of French radio stations (that play classic American music) on there, so I've been trying to listen to them and brush up on my French. It's really depressing that after five French classes (two in high school, three in college) I don't know the language any better than I do. Oh well. C'est la vie. 

     I'm out of things to say now. Off to find new ways to keep myself occupied.