⛤ December Q&A (Patreon)

Happy new year! When you read this, it is either new year's eve or new year's day. I hope you've had at least a decent holiday season. I know it's been chaotic and speckled with detours and challenges, at least if you've had anything similar to my own experience of the holidays this year, and maybe instead of festive and cheerful it has felt cold and dark. I mean that not as a judgement, but as an observation of the energy around me. People are just not feeling cheery this year. I think we are collectively exhausted from all the disease and war and conflict we have been plagued with to the point where festivities and warmth and holiday cheer are nothing more than a distant memory. Some people will have gone through the motions and stuck with the obligatory social visits and traditions because "that's just what is done", while others have "just not bothered". It didn't seem appropriate either way, did it? It felt more like pretending than any year before that but we still try to enjoy the little things that get us through the winter. In a way, I think this holiday season has been about celebrating the mundane. Staying down to earth has never felt so satisfying - even pleasurable. The thing I've enjoyed the most is the evenings spent hanging out with my little family. Jack, me and the cat. Not doing anything, just being... together. The second thing I've enjoyed most is being with our friends, though it has left me with a stubborn hangover. We don't want anything special, nor do we crave anything extravagant. What we all want this year, I think, is just to remember to live. 

With that in mind, allow me to answer the questions you've waited all month to have answered. 

Did you and Jack have a pleasant thanksgiving? Yes, thank you. I made us a beautiful thanksgiving dinner for two and we still had leftovers for days. Between turkey breast, gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing, garlic knots, pumpkin pie and salads, it was a proper feast - and all but the stuffing I made from scratch. I even whipped the cream my damn self. Cooking big dinners like that is exhausting but everything was very good. I could go for some of those garlic knots with bourbon gravy right now.

Have you watched The Ancient Magus' Bride? No. Is it any good? It's been a while since we watched anime. I think the last one we watched was Working!! It's a really fun show with quirky characters and fun relationship dynamics which is hard to pull off. I loved how the characters' weird traits interacted with one another to create downright hilarious situations in an otherwise mundane business setting. Good entertainment. 

Is there coming up more singing videos from you? Yes. I love to sing so there will most certainly be more singing videos. Ever since I started making them I just realized that I don't sound as good as I do in my head so I'm a bit more nitpicky about the execution. But there is a good chance that I will sing you to sleep with Snake River Conspiracy in the coming year. One of my resolutions (which I am making a bonus video about today) is to sing more. I don't know why I stopped, I may have been self-conscious about it when we still had next door neighbors. But it's my favorite way to express myself and I want to gain better control of my voice so I have to practice more. 

Got any plans for 2023? No. We don't like to make plans that far in advance as we are rather spontaneous people with erratic schedules. There is a chance I will be interviewed for my permanent visa unless they see our mountain of relationship evidence and instantly approve me. I am due to have my IUD replaced in the summer but we are also looking into alternative birth control methods as IUDs are pure god damn evil. Other than that everything is still in the air. I have a few ideas of things I might want to do, but there's just no telling what the future will bring. The direction I want to go in is towards more artistic expression, whereas this year has been about domestic establishment. I have claimed my new home and carved out a role in my social circle that I am happy and comfortable in, aswell as settled into my domestic responsibilities. Jack works a lot so we can afford to eat with inflation prices for basic groceries so most of the housework falls on me, which I don't mind. I like to cook and bake and that alone saves us a lot of money. Unless it's something that calls for chocolate. I have learned how to clean things effectively so I no longer dread doing it and I have orchestrated our house and kitchen to meet my needs and inspire creativity so I have incentive to want to keep things nice and tidy. On that basis I now want to expand my creative endeavors, not only in the form of photography and videography, but also dipping my toes into the baking business, magical crafts and creating music. 

How often do you procrastinate? Only every time I have to edit a video. Lol. Editing is the bane of my existence and oftentimes I will avoid doing it just because I can only listen to my own voice for so long before I want to not exist anymore. I would be mad about that, except I am never as productive as when I am procrastinating. Because I will keep VERY busy doing literally anything else rather than the thing I despise doing and that's how the house gets clean, photos get edited and posts get written.

Do you ever have repetitive dreams? Yes. I have recurring dreams on a regular basis that seem to be rooted in my internal experience of my current life situation at any given time. For a while when I was living in Germany, I had recurring dreams about walking through a mall hungry and deciding what to eat when none of it really appealed to me, only to find everything closed down by the time I arrived at a decision, leaving me hungry and without options. Being nocturnal in Germany is hard when you have about 3 hours between rolling out of bed and every store in the whole state closing up for the night and possibly the weekend. Not only did this whole place have nothing that I wanted, but it also had nothing at all at times that would have been convenient for me. Right now the recurring dreams I see most often are about aliens/monsters raiding an old house and I have to find a place to hide so they don't kill me. One I remember in particular was set in my old school building - an old Georgian style building previously used as a hospital amongst other things and with the appropriate dark, suffocating energy looming throughout every corner of the god forsaken place. In this dream there was a party held in this place and many of my friends and family were attending and chatting and having fun. Soon, however, the energy turned dark as the people in the building were brainwashed or fell victim to some manipulating forces and turned... evil. I felt that change happening and found myself the only person around seemingly unaffected or untempted by this force. But now I found myself in the middle of a crowd of hundreds of people who were out for blood if anyone dared stand out from the collective evil. An old man I didn't know handed me a note in passing, as if he knew it was the end for him, before disappearing into the crowd. I opened the note and it only read "rebel" and I took that to mean that he wanted me to rebel against the hideous turn the collective was taking. I also knew it would make me a target. It's as if they could smell I was not like them. Didn't think the same as them. Didn't want to end up the same as them. And that therefore, they could not control me. And that therefore, I was public enemy #1. And the rest of the dream unfolded as per usual, I tried to escape and hide while being actively hunted until I woke up. Looking back, this dream seems like a pretty accurate representation of the psychological experience of being bullied for... simply being. Maybe being a little different. Maybe being able to think for myself. But definitely for not being like everyone else. I have been doing some trauma work this month and have had something of a breakthrough, so my best educated guess is that this is my subconscious clearing out the clutter from the emotional damage I suffered early in life. Now that I am actively healing, it makes sense that these things would get processed one by one. 

Do you watch other's ASMR? If so, who? It's been an eternity and a half since I've watched other's ASMR. It just makes me think of work and tends to put me in a bad mind space if I compare my work to others' for even a second. Once in a blue moon I will revisit old favorites, like pigsbum53's spa and wedding planner videos, but everything new that's recommended to me is not really my style of ASMR. It's all just "[character] examines you" and "[character] takes care of you" or worse - "my pet makes slobbery eating noises" and I'm like... have artists gotten bored? Is ASMR boring? Cause I can't seem to find anything like the good classics I'm used to from channels like WhisperCrystal, WhispersUnicorn, pigsbum53, The Water Whispers Ilse and all the creators that have inspired me to start this shit in the first place. 

What is your favorite ice cream? I'm a huge fan of rum raisin, but will also take other interesting and complex flavors. I like ice creams that are more than one flavor, like the lemon lime "margarita" flavored Walmart brand sherbet they had the first year I lived here and never again. Mint chocolate chip is good. Chocolate chip cookie dough is good as long as they aren't skimpy with the dough. Though one of the best ice creams I had in my life was an aldi brand from when I was young flavored like my favorite cake - German tree cake (Baumkuchen). The cake itself is flavored with rum, baked in toasted layers and coated in chocolate which gives it a beautiful complexity and sophistication. Put that in ice cream with some more rum extract and little bits of shortbread and you have heaven. They had a cheesecake flavor, too, but I did prefer the Baumkuchen. Not like I'll say no to anything with little cake bits. 

What did you get for Christmas? Everything I asked for and more. As you guys know, I am a big fan of practical gifts so this Christmas was a smash hit. I will probably show you guys my "haul" in a video in the new year, but just to summarize, I got: an incense holder that I've been eyeing for a year straight, a candle scribe I am still waiting on, all the planet zoo DLC I didn't have yet, a 2TB hard drive for my work laptop so I can work on more than one main video at the same time, baking tools and extracts, a sweet picture from my friend that made her think of me, catnip bubbles to tease Ash with, a candle in a really pretty ceramic cauldron and two stainless steel skillets (not a gift but I consider it one since I've been wrecking nonstick pans like nobody's business trying to actually cook things in them). What did you get? 

I hope you guys survive this year's boom-boom (I have my ear plugs ready) and I will see you in 2023. Thank you for reading and for supporting me all this time. It means more than you know. If there's anything else you want to know, there will be a new Q&A post in January. I sense that in the new year, the energies are looking up (there's positive energy building up right now) but the trend of chaos is still there so it will be a wild ride. It won't be without reward, but it may be hectic and demanding. You're best off being ready to jump into action at all times. The lifting of the looming pessimism will be a welcome break for all of us, but we must be proactive so that life can happen through us instead of to us. Happy new year.

Cheers 🍸