After news last night of Xanga possibly/maybe/likely shutting down on July 15th, I thought I’d take a cue from a friend and provide my email address so that if you want to stay in touch you can. Feel free to leave yours in the comment section and I’ll save it.

Shadow81Dan@netscape.net

Okay so @thetheologianscafe began this last night and @shamrocklover posted to continue the trend just a short time ago. So I thought I’d jump on board and find out what word you would use to describe me. Go!

Yeah Buddy!

I have my big idea. It has been bubbling beneath the surface ever since I started thinking of a follow up idea to my Light Warrior novel. I’ve mentioned before that The Light Warriors was my attempt at being the next Timothy Zahn and try to start a Final Fantasy Expanded Universe similar to Zahn’s Star Wars Expanded Universe. Well I don’t think that’s good enough for me anymore. I don’t want to build upon someone else’s universe. I want to create my own.

So yeah, all I can really say at this point is that the writing project I wish to do will be a massive, massive undertaking. I’m a year and a half in to The Light Warriors and am just about half way through(17 chapters). The project I am thinking about will take far longer and require all of my efforts of concentration to complete. I’ve blogged every once in a while about the current project mainly because it’s nice to get feedback and update people on the progress I’ve been making. But this new one is going to be very hush hush as I’m a tad paranoid that someone will be a literary version of Thomas Edison will steal my idea and get all the credit for it. I’m not even sure I will put it on my cloud drives or email accounts for safe keeping simply because they are all monitored by somebody. This is not some regular book, I have honestly never heard of this kind of thing being done so I really can’t elaborate too much. It’s not that I don’t trust you guys, it’s just that I don’t trust the internet. My only hope is that with my weight and cholesterol continuing to improve that I can now live long enough to see these projects come to fruition. Thanks to all of you for your support over the past year or so and for your continued support even when my future pulses just say, “Project 2, Chapter 1 complete,” etc etc. Haha. Go Penguins!

Thanks to David J. Garrow and his book about Martin Luther King Jr. for inadvertently supplying the idea.

You know, I am honestly just plain tired of my cognitive behavior therapy sessions. I know it’s been a while since I talked about them, but the past few have left me feeling very very negative. My next appointment is Thursday morning and I am planning on letting my doctor know that I am done with them. For those of you who can’t recall, they started out with the purpose of helping me get over my issues with dogs, separation anxiety and social anxiety.

Dogs? I still don’t want them around, but if they it’s not a big deal.

Separation Anxiety? I just plain do not get a chance to work on this enough to justify going week or biweekly. My next opportunity isn’t until July 1st and that will be an overload of four to five days by myself. When you need to learn how to swim, jumping off the 30 foot high dive isn’t exactly the best idea.

Social Anxiety? When my Uncle died a couple months ago I saw firsthand what would be required of me at a funeral. Right now weddings and funerals are out. But you know what I’ve learned through my CBT? It’s that not wanting to go to weddings does not make me a bad person. There is no such thing as a bad person. Others might see me that way(Ahem, family), but I can’t control their perception. I can only control my own. So I no longer feel so guilty about not going to my brother’s wedding in 2011 and am no longer worried about not going to my other brother’s wedding whenever that comes around.

But you know what does worry me? The fact that my therapist and I have been on a tangent for the past month or so about me expressing anger. When I was abused as a kid, I figured it would be too embarassing to talk about so I kept it in. When my Dad left my family in the mid 90′s I was deeply deeply angry at him and his girlfriend/fiancee/wife but when I showed even a hint of anger at him, he basically told me I was wrong. Not misguided, wrong. I wasn’t allowed to express anger at him. That divorce threw my Mom into a deep depression and being deeply sensitive myself I never felt like I could get angry at her because her emotional state wasn’t her fault. Being that dumb kid I was I took my anger out on inantimate things like lego’s or would swear up a storm at a friend’s house(Sorry Brad). I just had all this anger inside of me and no one to turn to. It sucked.

Well I feel like the older I got the less and less likely it was for me to express anger. Instead I use my sense of humor as a defense mechanism. Rather than get angry at my family for parroting the latest political talking points, I’ll just make a joke, get a laugh, and then move on. I don’t know how to do anything else.

And I’m not sure I want to know how to do anything else. You’ve seen me post hearts scores? As happy as I get at perfect scores and high winning percentages, I get equally angry when the cards don’t go my way. I usually play by myself and get furious at bad moves by the other players. Well now that fury is carrying over into other areas of my life. I’m finding all kinds of reasons to be mad at my Dad, Mom, Brothers and sister in law and potential sister in law, stepmother, friends, potential girlfriends and all kinds of other people from various walks of life.

I don’t want to become an angry, bitter and/or hostile person overflowing with negativity. I liked who I was before last month. Now I don’t. So I plan to talk about this with my therapist and tell him that Thursday will be my final session.