Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

First, to get an approximation of culture out of the way first - watching Land of the Lost, the Will Ferrell movie, which is just damned weird, and the best thing out of it is the music off A Chorus Line.  He can't be gold all the time, Anchorman coming up though.  Also, planning on going to Giselle at the ballet in May.

And for some reason earlier, had Don't Rain On My Parade running through my head.  I'm such a musical boy.  Though I do think Rent is overrated, I can't be a true musical theatre fan.  Like the fact that I can't stand Triple J for extended periods of time, I can't be a true hipster lol.

Anyways, enough of the culture and pop mash up.  Onto the weekend.

Went to a collaring ceremony last night.  Fetish event.  I femmed up for it.  I look fantastic as a blonde, hence tonight's title lol.  Was a nice night, wasn't too noisy or busy at all.  Was nice to catch up with some people, and, being the first actual kinda play party I had been to in a while, a few people there I was actively trying to avoid or just do the polite and happy thing with.

Drama llama cull continuing apace.  While at the same time, adding some new people.  Only quality people of course.  And a couple of workmates.  I was actually trying to avoid workmates on Facecrack to be honest, but eh, if they want to add me, all good.  A couple of them are friends of friends of mine who are in the fetish scene.  I won't be talking to those particular workmates about extra curricular activities like EVER lol.  I don't blush all that often anymore, but that could be a likely blush situation if ever those two worlds met.  I'm not that quiet about how I am enjoying life much at all anymore, but work is, if not quite a hard limit, then certainly a flexible one.

Got home before midnight last night.  Was quieter than I expected at the party itself.  Some play, but not a lot.  More conversations about the footy and the cricket, and goon bags attached to the rotary clothes line and spun around like wheel of fortune.  Goon all over the cleavage of several female friends.  And Steps and S Club 7 on the DJ set.  Felt like I was nineteen again at stages.  Apart from the, you know, dress, make up, stockings, boots and wig hahaha.

Today was lovely.  Another catch up with Roma.  We were supposed to sign up for yoga, but the place was closed, or we couldn't find the right door or something.  Eh, these things happen, and it's not as if Perth is lacking yoga spots.  This particular plan might not happen, but yoga in the near time frame will occur, and hopefully I will have yoga buddy with me.

She was dragging me around the shops for shopping as well, and we had brunch at PICA, which is another one of my fave spots around the city.  Stopped by her place for a bit as well, we could have just relaxed there, but she said she needed more shoes.  So on the second part of the expedition she got a tee and skirt.  Was quite tiring actually, but so quality time.  And we will do the regular Wednesday dinner thing.

Life is good.

The haiku for today -

Fave brunch spot in Perth

The food never disappoints

Is very central

Pretty in Pink

So, it's been an interesting week.

A free day on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday with Roma, Thursday a quiet night in, pizza and Doctor Who marathon with Jacksonville, and last night with another J girl, we will call this one Johannesburg.  Went rock climbing last night, and I failed to inform Joburg that I have an issue with heights.  It was my first time and she is kinda sorta experienced, but it's been so long since I have even thought of heights, that it completely slipped my mind.  Plus, she didn't ask LOL.  She was most amused that I hadn't told her.

But, it's part of my no fear, try anything once, throwing myself into life motto at the moment.  It was the fear of falling that was the thing with me at the climbing venue (it was artificial indoor, I wasn't attempting the South Face of the Eiger or anything just yet), and, looking back on it, you were securely fastened to the floor and your climbing buddy, with no slack in the rope, it wasn't going to be a major injury.  Though we will wear contact lenses next time, my glasses fell off the once yesterday and that was kinda heart in mouth moment.  Got a wicked bruise on my right knee already though.

So, even though I might not ever become an accomplished mountaineer, I learned fast being the support person with the ropes.  I might never get on the Discovery Channel, but I may be Joburg's cameraman one day.  She was also most amused at the fact that I was looking up at her when she was climbing, making sure she was safe, while incidentally her legs were all akimbo all over the place.

Akimbo, I like that word.

After enduring several heart attacks at the climbing place, we headed for 'my' part of Northbridge, fancy cocktails and restaurant land lol.  Had a quick martini at Frisk, man I love that place, and Joburg perused the two hundred and twelve gins they now have on the books, they've added seven since last time I looked.  Just a nice, relaxed, place.  One of my fave places, as the haiku earlier in the week attested.

Then to Zapatas for dinner, Mexican/Latin.  I'll go to the haiku for the place first -

Large, value portions

The perfect amount of spice

Often quite busy

Joburg was wanting some spice in her food, and there's no good Indian places that I have been to in Northbridge yet, and we didn't quite decide on Thai.  So Mexican it was.

Zapatas is a nice spot, not fantastic, but nice.  The food is good, if also not fantastic.  And both at Frisk and Zapatas, Joburg and I partook in people watching.  The table full of 21 year old girls, their night would be a meal, then Air and Metro and Connies, the latter for a bit of a laugh.  I will desist from commenting on their fashion senses or their Contiki travel stories.  The red dress in Frisk that made both of us do a double take, with the black heels and scoping the place out to see whether there was an edgy nervous boyfriend in tow.  LOL, hey it wasn't just me, Joburg was just as culpable.

It's funny with how different her and I are, how close we are, and how well we get along.  I can't remember whether I mentioned it last week, but Joburg is the girl who may have an apartment in the city before too long, and may be in need of a flatmate.  Now, both of us, 95% of our friends we would gladly strangle before living together, but the dynamic is interesting.  We are besties, and we could potentially live together.  We have already organised the details of our (fake) Vegas wedding.

It's just lovely to have that comfort level, and it is a different type of comfort to how I am with, I think, any of my other friends.  Most of my other close friends, I couldn't even consider living with, for various reasons.

So, yes, verbal shenanigans.  All the tales of misbehaviour.  Which we could get away with at Zapatas because it was just so loud last night.

Back to the rest of the week.  I was thumbing through Game of Thrones, the book, at Jacksonville's place on Thursday, and she basically threw books one and two at me.  She likes the TV show, but she can't stand George R R Martin's writing style.  I will consider that fair warning as I start through the books.  Must track down one of my mates to pirate the show when season four starts.

Wednesday, the haikus about the lovely evening out with Roma.  And the job interview earlier in the day, for my own job, but with the potential to go permanent.  Which would be nice.  Was easier than I expected, and the actual interview portion of the thing seemed very rushed, it was like they wanted bullet points and then onto the next rather than any full extrapolation of how my skill sets are.

I do remember my answer to what I think my team mates think of me, and to be honest, I think it could apply to me in the wider world as well.  Focussed, friendly, gets the job done, dry sense of humour.  Gets the job done of course being a positive way of saying stubborn lol.

Tuesday night was FUN.  Roma basically kidnapped me.  Well, I say kidnap in the loosest sense of the phrase.  I went over to her place, she painted my toenails (hence the entry title today), ordered me to shave my legs (still got some work to do on that, actually, or maybe I just should do it more often, or waxing could be easier), and cuffed me on her bed, both hands and feet.  Evil things were done, but instead of breaking down and being vulnerable and all, both of us mostly dissolved into fits of giggles.  Which is a damn good sign that fun is happening.

And meeting her flatmate, and the drive up to Lawley for pizza.  Was just really, really fun.

Even though I am culling a lot of my acquaintances this month, the close friends that I am concentrating on are keepers.

It's been a great week.

Another Fantastic Week Thus Far

And another fantastic Wednesday of cocktails, good food, and great company.  Another three Perth spots for the haiku machine -

Cheeky Sparrow, Perth

Gorgeous cocktails

Hipster spot, but not painful

Love the piano

The Painted Bird, Perth

Flavour explosions

In my mouth; desserts oh my

Staff were fantastic

Frisk Small Bar, Northbridge

Staff very friendly

Great espresso martinis

One of Northbridge faves

Hmm.  Suddenly tired.  There's more to write, but I might get to it later this evening or later on :)

The Weekend Just Gone

Old Bakery on Eighth, Maylands

Average value
Food was good, not fantastic
Better spots close by

The Principal Bar & Restaurant, Midland

Friendly staff, nice vibe
Food is always fantastic
A great time was had

Coventry Seafood Bar & Grill, Morley

Fish and chips were great
Wandered in for random lunch
Quite acceptable

It's been a bit of a weird weekend, I've caught up with three mates, two of whom I haven't seen in ages, but at the same time, it's been a bit blah and disjointed.  Had more beer than I have had in a long time last night, not enough to like have a hangover or anything, but enough to feel drunk at the time and tired and somewhat silly this morning.

And today, after having lunch with my mate 'Barcelona', I came home and slept from 3pm until 10pm.  Was obviously exhausted.  Just in a weird mood as well.

Movie wise lately, has been good, changing topics and all.  Seen The Usual Suspects, Black Hawk Down and Scarface in the last week.  There was another classic - oh, Silence of the Lambs, a couple of weeks ago.  It's amazing how few times I get to the cinema nowadays, but if, how you go searching, there are all the classics on television.

Codename Casablanca

First, the good stuff out of the way.  Yesterday's haiku, for Izakaya Sakura in Northbridge...

Love the soft shell crab

My fave Japanese in Perth

Great value as well

Now onto other stuff.

We shall call my best friend, Casablanca.  There's a couple of similarities between the movie and our relationship that I can see, but I won't get fully into it all just yet.  Don't need to go into cruddy movies with huge reputations right this minute lol.  Was out with her last night for dinner, and with all the ease Agent Roma and I have, including the previous night at Aviary, all the awkwardness with Ms Casablanca.

Hmm, where to start.  Dinner was lovely, but conversation, ah conversation.  I think it started when she said I was making an art form out of being non committal.  Or maybe it was - hmm, there were two strands of conversation going on.  The first of which is my worry about her, that she has gone through, for want of a better term, a bad run with men.  She is in the process of breaking up with the latest one.  I mean, as in, I think he has broken up with her, and not talking, and she is doing her best to process through it, so she's still breaking up even though he already has.

And I'm concerned about her, because I've seen her crash and burn through relationships before.  Many times.  But she is like, but I'm fine, don't worry about me, I've already processed it, and this is nothing.  But she says that every time, and it is in the way she says not to worry about her, it's like she is invalidating every single iota of care I have for her, she is invalidating my love.  And that hurts like a motherfucker.  And it has for the last two and a half years, since we transitioned from the potential relationship that could have been.

I've just learned to live with the hurt, and bottle it away.  For the most part.

The second major thread in the conversation was that she was concerned about one of her friends, who she has had an on again, off again, sometime relationship with, who has been barred from a pub that we go to monthly, for being a predator.  I think he's a dickhead wanker cunt myself, but there's no accounting for taste lol.  Anyways, so she's pouring a lot of her energy into righteous indignation on his behalf, and the pub 'our group' goes to monthly has increased the security at our meets.  But that was more related to a fight that happened a couple of months ago, more than anything else.

But Casablanca was getting her knickers in a twist about how the security and staff at this bar are making judgements on what is going on based on what she says are vanilla judgements.  She asked me whether I was worried about what the staff and security motivation in watching us was, whether I was worried that I would be barred from the pub for no apparent reason.  And no, I'm not concerned at all.

Primarily because I don't do any sort of dodgy behaviour at pubs.  That I don't go to pubs to pick up, let alone pick up drunk young girls, which apparently is classed as predatory behaviour now.  I don't think it is predatory per se, I think it is just damned fucking stupid (as I recall my almost chance with a teenager a couple months back and thank my lucky stars that I didn't follow through on it hahaha).  And even if I was barred from this particular pub, it wouldn't be the end of the world because there are easily twenty better drinking spots in Perth without even thinking about the options all that much.

I'm not concerned if the staff at a pub are really all that interested in the minutae of my life, or my behaviour, or whatever.  Google does it.  Facebook does it.  The NSA do it.  Yeah, sure, I'm concerned in the big picture loss of privacy way about it all, but that boat sailed a long time ago.  I'm not doing anything dodgy, so yeah, staff members, security staff, knock yourselves out watching me.

I tried to defuse the tenor of the conversation by saying that Casablanca and I are very different people.  To which she said -

Yes, I have opinions.

You know that motherfucker hurt from her seeming to invalidate my love?  Yeah, well that has been going on for two and a half years or so.  That line, insinuating that I don't have opinions, hit me like a bolt and I was like speechless for about thirty seconds before simply saying ouch.

She also gets annoyed by the way I sit on the fence.  Which also was a bit of a curveball, because I am less a fence sitter nowadays than I used to be.  Is being diplomatic all that wrong?  I have plenty of opinions, just that mine usually said out loud are the wrong ones that she doesn't want to hear.

So yes, I said to her worries about loss of privacy and all that, that I have no concerns, there is no fence, because there is no pro-privacy or anti-privacy, at least in the micro sense of a Sunday session at the pub that she was meaning, if there is no fence, then how can I be accused of sitting on it.  It's the fucking Great Plains of no fenceness in my opinion.  Ooh, the O word LOL.

But yes, after she said that, I had to rebut in some form or another.  Which, in a way, is a sense of more growth, since I wouldn't even thought to rebut Casablanca two or three years ago.  Hell, even last year I wasn't this strong in myself.

The crux of my argument, or discussion or whatever it is, is that I have spent more years than I care to remember worrying about what others think, worrying about their motivations, stressing about the small stuff.  Now that I have gotten rid of a lot of that burden, I am happy.  The important things to me are friends, good food and, to apply a stereotype, cocktails.  I would have also included family in there as well, but they are a continent distance away, so although I care for them and all, they aren't a huge factor at the moment.

If you aren't cutting me off from good restaurants, or attacking my friends, I'm pretty much live and let live at the moment.  And Casablanca appears to be unhappy with me being happy.

Lovely discussion that one.  And she complained about the ice cream from the Ben and Jerry's cart.  And was overly worried about the length of my pants, and that she would have taken it back to the tailors to redo.  Sweating the small stuff indeed honey.

Just a whole capital A of Awkward.

And she thinks there's nothing to worry about in her life.  Oh hell yeah, I haz opinions.

And... exhale...

Hope the above made some sort of sense.

So Far This Week...

So, we will start with a haiku for tonight's restaurant, Aviary in Perth -

So close to perfect

Awesome, relaxed vibe, cute staff

Love comfy couches

I migrated the rest of my blogger blogs over to here, hence the 32 to 1490 posts in twenty four hours.  It was as easy as I thought it was, and could do it all in half an hour, rather than the cut and paste I did for the first few days.  Of course, how much it actually makes sense, seven blogs, with seven different guiding ideas, I'm not sure, but hell, they are each and every one a part of me, so let's make it whole.  Like Voltron, or Power Rangers lol.

Next on the agenda is a couple of livejournal blogs still floating around, and then some journal entries I have done on an OMG WTF Adult Website lol.  Hopefully it will be as easy as cut and paste those, but somehow I doubt it.  Eh, will see how we go.

Have a job interview next week, for my own job lol.  The whole going from fixed term contract to ongoing permanency thing that most of the job market seems baited for nowadays.  I realized earlier today that it has been almost three years since I have had a permanent job, and if if when I do get the next one, the sense of relief will be fucking palpable.

So we have done the full range of restaurants lately, via the haiku, less of the girls lately.  At least, blogging less about the girls.  Rest assured, they are still there, every single day, but just hmm, how to write about them.  Perhaps I will do a haiku on my gal pals each time I see them as well as the restaurants.  Though, that could be interesting lol.

The cull of drama llamas continues at a good pace.  Rule one in culling, if you aren't going to talk to me for months, either in person or online or via text, there's a good chance you will get culled.  I got rid of a couple I nicknamed 'the Germans' today.  For those who know me, and know how I went last year, that will likely be a rather large surprise.  I had fun with them, but fuck em, they haven't even responded at all to any of my texts for the last three months.

Much else on the agenda?  Culling contacts, restaurants, girls, job interview, hmm, think that's it for the moment.  Au revoir, peeps :) 

Chocolateria San Churro, Northbridge

Is always buzzing
Chocolate coma ahoy
Nice after dins spot

More Haiku

Okay, so this will get rid of the backlog from the start of the month lol.

Who's Your Mumma, Fremantle

Drinks are delicious
Barman a bit pretentious
Tables more relaxed

Lapa Brazilian Barbeque, Subiaco

Very tasty meat
Is all you can eat pricing
Must bring appetite

Belgian Beer Cafe, Perth

Good food, atmosphere
Beer options great, with cherry
Service levels meh

Ria Malaysian Restaurant, Leederville

Delicious spices
Staff outstanding, great value
Want all the food, yum

Greens & Co, Leederville

Best Perth coffee spot
People watching fantastic
Cakes not bad either

Sandrino Cafe, Fremantle

Staff were outstanding
Sticky date pudding awesome
Pasta great as well

Court Hotel, Perth

Comfort levels high
Pizza good, rest average
My local, I guess

Another Fantastic Idea

Haiku restaurant reviews.  We will see how long this idea will last, but it's a winner so far.

As follows - 

1907 Restaurant & Bar, Perth

Has fancy cocktails

And impeccable service

Quite expensive though

Devilles Pad, Perth

Carbalicious food

Quieter than used to be

Still a good night out

Flying Scotsman, Mount Lawley

Good, safe pub option

Fosters more expensive than

Kronenbourg, what the?

ECucina, Perth

Booth dining, awesome

Pork belly is my weakness

Looks stuck up, isn't.

Print Hall, Perth

Food was to die for

Surprisingly underwhelmed

By the rest of it

Must Winebar, Highgate

Spanish sav blanc meh

Lovely atmosphere, set up

The cocktails looked nice

Ilpasto Italian Trattoria, Inglewood

Feta, oh my god

In Inglewood of all spots

Great Italian

The Windsor, South Perth

Service rather slow

Typical Friday night crowd

Will give extra chance

Random, Friday morning

The girl at the service station where stop in most mornings for a drink (sugar free, but usually caffeinated), just asked had I lost weight? On replying yes, she said I was looking gorgeous.

Totally randomly just made my day there. And I'm now all sorts of awesome that I wasn't quite feeling beforehand.

eCucina

Nine hours with one of my fave peeps, Seville, today.

Shoe shopping, lunch, watching Firefly on DVD (have seen Serenity, but never seen the actual TV program before) and then pizza for dinner.  So relaxed.

eCucina was lovely.  Have walked past it plenty of times, and to be honest, it has looked extremely stuck up, but we actually went in today and it was comfortable, reasonably priced and OMG the food was amazeballs.  Slow cooked pork belly for me, and a burger for Seville.

Was an absolute corker of a day :)

Flying Scotsman

So, another night where I thought I wasn't going to be doing much of anything, turned into something more than that.  Not by much, but by a bit.

Karaoke was involved, unsurprisingly.  New girl on the agenda, as it were, we will call this one Lisbon, who is very touchy feely already, and I've only known her a short time.  We started out at Flying Scotsman, and then ended up at My Place.  Not my first choice options to go, but cheap cheap cheap.

And in which universe is Fosters more expensive than Kronenbourg?  The Flying Scotsman universe, that's where.  And just the fact of finding Fosters in an Australian bar, in Australia.  Down the rabbit hole indeed on that one.

Should be a good weekend, have a bit planned.

Devilles Pad

Another Thursday, another karaoke evening at Devilles.

I actually wasn't going to go out tonight, as I had a job application to do that was kind of doing my head in, but then one of my besties, we will call her Jacksonville, wanted me to come out, and I worked on the job app as quickly as possible, rather than linger over it, and then go out.

I still wasn't really in the mood, but I made it out, caught up with Jacksonville, Stockholm, Edinburgh and Jakarta.  So that is the women sorted, but food and cocktails not so much.  Was just Diet Coking at Devilles, and as for food, it was a lazy Maccas after work.  Yes, not one of my finer evenings food wise.

And as for culture, does karaoke count?  I did Give It Away by Chili Peppers tonight.  And I fucking smashed it, as much an endorphin rush succeeding at singing that as anything else over the last month or two.

And I wore some brand spanking new clothes.  I have lost over thirteen kilos in the last fifteen months, and it was about time to start updating the wardrobe.  I looked and felt fantastic.

More tomorrow.

Equateur

So, I'm not going to make any secret that I am based in Perth, Western Australia.  Nor are the locations going to be changed all that much.  However, one thing I will change are the names of my friends and those others in my life - I am thinking aliases based on city names might be the best to go with.  Protecting the innocent and all that jazz.

With that in mind, I want to introduce you to Ms Roma, named after The Eternal City, where I spent a few days on a bus trip a lifetime ago.  I look back on that and wonder why I rushed through the entire Vatican museums just for a quick glimpse of the Sistine Chapel.  I was a bit less cultured back in the day.

Roma is one of my best friends, one of the people I don't have to hide my Twue Self from, that I don't have to act with, and hopefully she feels the same in return.  She's amazing.  Yes, I do get a bit gushy sometimes about the important people in my life.

She is also looking like a solid plan for the forseeable future on Wednesdays.  So that is the Girl portion of my blog title ticked off for the day.

Equateur is a brand spanking new restaurant in Subiaco, so new in fact, it isn't on Google Maps yet.  I was scoping restaurants out in Subi over the weekend, and this place got a 98 rating on Urbanspoon, but wasn't quite the right vibe for the friend I was lunching with on Sunday.  Roma is a different story however.  Equateur is also so brand spanking new that it doesn't have it's liquor license, nor eftpos facilities.  It's been an age since I've gone to a BYO restaurant, something almost quite 90s retro about it.  Cute in a way.

Which is also what Roma said about our waiter.  Something about the French accent.

So yes, the cuisine is French, in an Indian Ocean sense, Mauritius and Reunion specifically.  For starters I had the avocado and prawn tartare, with mayonnaise, while my dinner buddy had chicken samoussa.  For mains we chose the creole chicken (me), and the creole prawn (her).  And dessert was ganouche mousse and lime kaffir creme brulee.

We could not fault the food at all.  It was delicious, well sized, and very well priced.  $50 per head for a three course meal, in Perth, is very good value.  Or $39, if we could have resisted a course.  Which we wouldn't have.

Small venue, almost the size of a small lounge room, but I guess the positive word is intimate.  There were eight of us in there at the busiest tonight, and I don't know what the place would have been like any busier.  Perhaps a bit too noisy?  The service was great, and when we left, there was a red carpet outside with candles.  Not quite over the top, but it made the both of us smile broadly.

Then across town to 1907 Bar, which is ultra classy, a bit on the pricey side, but they do amazing cocktails.  Mojito for me, espresso martini for Roma.  It was also exceedingly dead, with we being the only ones in there at 8pm.  I said to my cocktail buddy it may be because Perth currently has a surplus of classy bars and restaurants, and especially in the middle of the week, it must be hard for all of them to be making money.  But, let's just make the most of it while we can.  Not all of them are going to be around by the end of the year, methinks.

So yes, we have ticks in the categories of pretty girls, great food, delicious cocktails (all the sugar in Cuba seemed to be in my mojito tonight).  Cross against the culture mark.  Not bad for a Wednesday night.

Quote of the night - Roma saying 'it's been an age since I've had a good curry.  Oh wait, the Indian I had with you this time last week.'  How easy they forget lol.  I'm all about the food odyssey with my besties.

Yet Another Reboot

So, here we go again.  Another year, another blog.  But this time, we will try to do something different.  I will try to bring my entire blogging career, including the olden style paper diaries from back in the day, eventually, into the one spot.  Well, I'm pretty sure a couple of my blogs have disappeared into the ether, but I still have access to most of them.  And I will put them in order appropriately, which means that this will NOT be the first post, date wise at least.

Could be confusing lol.  But it could be fun.  It should be fun.

As for the title, good food (and cocktails), pretty girls, and culture - art, theatre and the like - are my three favourite things in life.  There will likely be some adult content around the place, so please don't be prudish.

And this will be a good distraction from a particular website that I'm trying to cut down on.

Lead on, MacDuff...

Insert Snazzy Title Here

Warning - Adult Content

I took a bit of a break from social media recently.  Oh, I was still constantly on Facebook and Fet, but I was just observing, on silent running as it were. I was just laying low, recharging the batteries, and decluttering.  It had been a rather busy start to the year.

And a thing happened.  The more I bit my tongue from commenting, or posting about my day, or avoiding posting photos - the last of which probably the hardest, I love my photography - the more I was doing all that, the less I felt the need to.

The more I felt I could do things on my terms, perhaps.  Helped that during my 'break' I was reading all sorts of strong motivationals.  Not to go into great detail, but mostly extensions of the 'I do what I want' thinking.

Believe it or not, I do a lot of reading on Fet.  And I'm realising a lot of what I read isn't healthy for me.  In the long term at least.  There are a lot of things around here that -

a) make me doubt my submissiveness;

b) make me doubt my abilities in regards to sex;

c) make me doubt my masculinity, and, associated with this, my attractiveness to the opposite sex and relationships and all that jazz;

d) make me doubt my abilities as a writer.

With the last one, I see so many good pieces where people can talk and write about relationships and associated topics in such depth and so well, and I feel the topics I can write about well are all related to depression in one form or another.  Sometimes I wish I could offer the wider Fet community better writing on better topics.

Though the last paragraph in itself is a perfect example of what I shouldn't be doing.  Comparing myself to others, in a negative manner.

What I do well in life, I do really well.  I am happy with how things are going probably 95 percent of the time.  Which is a good ratio.  My close friends enjoy my company, and accept me for me, flaws and all.  Over the last two years especially, I have surrounded myself with some fabulous people, whose company I enjoy in return, and whom I don't have to put on any kind of act with.

As for the doubts raised by reading too much on Fet, I've got a whole suite of those in my own head, I don't need external encouragement, as it were.  I'm probably actually not going to read any less than I have been, to be honest, but my filters will be reset, and my general care factors will likely decrease.

I'm perfectly strong and capable in myself the vast majority of the time.  I am good enough to attract a wide range of wonderful people into my life.  And as for that five percent weakness?  I don't need to let social media and the wider world in at those times, basically.

Roll on 2014.