Fridays tragedy has brought about yet another reminder of stuff, mostly of how much I dislike the holidays. Having depression sucks. This time of year is especially worse for those who suffer from depression. But I don’t want to comment more on what happened.
As I said, depression sucks. This time of the year has routinely never been happy for me. This time of year, well, specifically Christmas(1978), I got a yoyo. At least i think it was 1978. Maybe it was 1977. I’m getting old. I forget stuff. The memory kinda ain’t what it used to be. I just remember which house I was in when it was taken away. I seem to recall it being given to me at the house in San Francisco, but taken away in the house in Citrus Heights. Wow, talk about a stretch to keep this on topic.
As many of you have noticed, I’ve been rather busy. Many of you have seen “Gnarwal and Puffin Homecoming”, and some of you have seen “How Much Is That Dingo In The Window”, my unboxing animations. These are things I’ve done to distract myself and manage depression. They are fun, but they are work. I still have a yet to be unopened box that arrived on Cyber Monday. now with two more YYE boxes en-route, I wonder if those may end up as videos due to how that worked out. To all who have seen these, thank you. Seeing the numbers bump up makes me happy.
Sunday, the 9th, someone took my Aero-Yo Cold Metal. This does NOT help someone who has to bust his tail to earn money, not to mention having issues with depression. This really DID NOT help me. It just angers me that I make a massive effort to get to these meets and bring out the “high dollar” gear to allow those who cannot otherwise have a chance at this stuff to have a chance to play it. I just hope this works out.
We all need to find things to do with spare time or idle time. So here’s where we get to my progress.
1: Kendama. Turns out a nephew of mine is into kendama and did pretty good at a regional tournament. Turns out I can get some help now. I’ve bought a better kendama earlier today. Turns out the show I am doing is running a commercial for the place that sells the kendamas. This place does NOT sell yoyos. I can go more on that, but let’s just say that things lined up nicely. The funny part was they were as fascinated by the yoyo as I was about the kendama. I had theroybit with me, both of us were throwing. I intend to use this synergy to create skill toy meets. I am all for the yoyo, but I feel that variety is good. If you can go to one meet and see lots of skill toys on display and in use, the odds of catching the interest of someone on something increases.
2: 2A is kicking my butt. I’m moving backwards, yet forward. I lubed my 6 Unleashed and put enw strings on 2 of them. Learned a lot of stuff about 2A. For some reason, I can’t do 5 inside loops anymore. I just need to practice harder and more
3: GSquared. Got the new AL7. Why have you NOT gotten one yet? It’s everything you like about the Albatross but done a bit better. OMG, loving this. I had to do my unboxing capture stuff so I could enjoy this yoyo. I really bare-bones it. I hope I have what I need to get the job done. I haven’t reviewed the photos so I don’t know what is or isn’t viable. This one will be vastly different than the others.
Other places have received orders from me. One Drop sold me a Project! This was my “major score”. I’ve been fortunately to ensure I secured a Cliff and Puffin from YYE.
4: Many other new items came in or are coming. I need a new case. I’ll wait until after New Years.
5: new 1A tricks, I’ve got down Asian pops, thanks to GSquared videos. I think Jacob Gross also put up another one called Snowflake, which I think may be my next logical trick to master. 4A: working on arm orbits.
OK, personal life crap:
Throwing at the kids’ school. Getting attention, mostly good that I can tell. I’m finding the yoyo is becoming quite a bit more important. Things around my house aren’t as happy as they should be. It doesn’t take me much to go into a downward spiral. There’s lots of bad things going on, stuff I don’t feel like talking about, but I will say I’m doing far too much yelling and screaming, and the results of this are a sore throat and no other results. Doing these unboxing videos takes a lot of time and forces me to focus on the task at hand for a long period of time. However, I am finding that I need to break things up more.
Back when I had been throwing for about 5-6 months, I decided to drop a sizable chunk at YYE. It contained, among other things, 2A yoyos and 4A yoyos. The concept was “I’m not ready for it, but when I am, the moment I need it, it will be available at the moment I want it”. I like to plan ahead. 2012 has been interesting. I have gotten into 4A out of boredom in February and that was fun. 2A came out of needing to challenge myself when 1A stalled for me. I also have spin tops, kenama, diabolo and juggling balls. I intend to get some skills in all of those areas. When something stalls for me, I can move into something else. Outside of doing events, skill toys have been about the only thing that helps me manage my depression. Shows don’t really help me manage the issues, they just force me to not deal with it for the length of the job. Skill toys are more on my terms, but they do get played for purposes other than “therapeutic” purposes.
I’ll be uploading more videos to YouTube. It will mostly be single songs from events I’ve done. They may eve include nearly entire concerts, just one song at a time.
Now, to be more useful:
As I’ve stated, I have depression. I dislike this time of year. Unfortunately, a lot of people also have the same issues. It’s how we choose to handle this that is of critical importance. For those of you who have similar issues, the best thing I can do is find something to take your mind off of it for a bit. Grab a yoyo or skill toy and take your mind off it. Learn a new trick, make a new trick, try new combos. Teach someone to throw. Turn a negative into a positive. You CAN get through this. There’s always a tomorrow.
I’m drained. I gotta get sleep. I’ve had some extremely long days and my arms are tired from throwing yoyos all day long all week. Yeah, it’s been one of those weeks!