Musins'

Melting

01/08/26

This is a day late, due to the events that happened on 01/07/26 in Minnepolis, MN. Here it is, for reference. Now, while I am starkly aware that violence against humans is not new in the good old US of A, or even by the hands of the faux gestapo, I am still sick to my stomach. She was a mother. She was a wife. How many beloved humans do we have to lose at the hands of state sactioned violence before we even start to acknowledge it? My heart is disgustingly heavy the longer this goes on.

In 2016, his descent down that golden escalator loomed over my 18th year, my first election where I had the right to vote. I thought that his mocking of a disabled reporter would disqualify him. I thought that his 'locker room talk' would disqualify him. I thought Jan 6th would disqualify him. I thought his name and pictures with Epstein would have disqualified him.

None of it has.

I don't know how to convince others to have empathy, when it comes so naturally to me. I feel almost as if I am losing my mind. The very same people who claim to follow the teachings of Jesus are laughing.

Sorry if I don't have much to post this week. I think I need to sit with these feelings.

Wish Away Your Nightmare

12/31/25

I hope everyone is having a happy holiday.

To be honest, my holidays were not so happy. And I feel guilty for having these feelings. I have a loving wife, a room to sleep in, my cats, and my health. It is more than most people can say. So why wasn’t I happy?

I have made some lifestyle changes that I think have delayed the inevitable for a long time. About realizations of things that had happened to me when I was young and my brain had protected me from. Things I did not deserve, and yet they are so etched into the foundation of who I am that I don’t think I’ll ever rid myself of the scars.

It is unfortunate when things like this happen to young people. Some never recover from it. Some live the rest of their life in perpetual victim hood and grief of what was taken from them. A whole soul, robbed of their joy based off of the decision of another. It is cruel. It is heartbreaking.

I don’t want to live like this forever. I don’t want to keep having flashbacks of things that my body has been trying to forget for twenty years. But I don’t know how. Letting go of all of the pain I feel almost feels like I’m betraying the young girl it happened directly to. But carrying it feels like betraying the vision of the future she imagined for me. So I don’t really know what to do with myself.

Right now I’m taking it one day at a time, I think. I’m going to have to start being kinder to myself. I’m resting. I really hope in 2026, I can see some opportunities for the work I’ve been putting in. I want a job that feels like I’m helping people. I want my book to be seen by readers. I want my words to help others come to terms with their own experiences. Here’s hoping the year of the horse is kinder.

Sick Break

12/17/25

Happy Holidays to those who celebrate!

Full transparency, I haven't gotten much accomplished this week, as my wife and I are suffering from what I've lovingly dubbed 'the Crud'. Getting a negative from flu and covid tests alike, I can only imagine this is something I've picked up from my baby nieces (of whom I love dearly, even if their hands are a perpetual state of sticky and questionable). I was able to get some writing done for my second novel in the Otherworld series (about 50,000 words in for my 90,000 word goal!) and finish some art for my sister in law's OC as a Christmas present. I used to feel bad when I wasn't able to be productive every second of every day, but in retrospect I fear it is the capalist propaganda speaking and I will take whatever breaks my body needs guilt free from here on out. Winter is supposed to be a time of rest, regardless. I hope y'all are getting a lot of it out there!

Money

12/10/25

I grew up in a family that substituted money for affection.

When you grow up like this, you do not understand that functional, healthy families just do things for each other because they love them. As innocuous as it might feel to pay a sibling to do the dishes for you, money starts to become the primary motivator for any favor or task that you would need your family's help with. A vehicle emergency, watching your pet, whatever it is, money starts to become the expectation. It coats your soul with a greed that is hard to describe, and makes it nearly impossible to accept help from anyone else for free. I always feel like I need to compensate everyone for their time just being around me. It took me a long time to realize this is not normal. I still carry intense shame and anxiety over feeling like I am 'taking advantage' of other people's kindness, even when the help is offered.

As of writing this, I am completely no contact with my family. The decision to do this was not made lightly. Nobody ever talks about how hard it is to ignore the hole in your chest where your family should be, despite knowing it was the right decision. For a long time, it felt as if I was holding fire in my hands, trying desperately to feel the warmth and not realize I was scorching myself. I have only recently been able to soothe the raw edges of the burn in my soul that had been neglected for years. Choosing myself has been one of the hardest and most rewarding decisions I have made in my 27 years on this mortal plane.

Despite knowing this was the best outcome for myself, I miss them. I feel guilty for missing them. Both for their feelings and the person I am stepping into. I wish they were able to understand where I was coming from. I wish they were able to hold themselves accountable for the years of mistreatement I have experienced. I wish I was chosen and considered by the people who were supposed to be my tribe. It feels like I have been robbed of something so inherent to personhood that I sometimes forget I am one.

The holidays are always hard when you are in a position like I am. If you resonate with this, I am sending you all of the love and peace in the world. One day you will find the people who put you first. As misfortunate as I feel, I am so incredibly lucky to have my beautiful wife and her family. Every day I am around them, I am being chosen and considered. They do not ask me to pay them for simple tasks, I just find myself waking up to a homemade meal, or my laundry being done, or invited to hang out and spend time with them. As heartbroken as I am about my biological family, my family has made me feel so loved and welcome. I hope this kind of love for everyone in the world.

This week, I have updated some of the character pages in the gallery (check out Gallery>Characters>Jonas and Gallery>Characters>Percy for some lore about my ocs!), and have announced a Free Art Giveaway on my Tiktok (ending on December 25th, 2025). I think I'll stick to a Wednesday update schedule for this mini-blog, and I am also working on my first article for my Substack (link in Navigation). I hope y'all will stick around!

Mirroring

12/03/25

Look at me, posting two weeks consistently! I have also updated some of the Character pages in the Gallery, if you'd like to check them out!

The lesson I am learning this week is that I am a mirror. For a long time, the relationships I would have with people would follow a specific formula. We would enmesh almost completely, the person would take whatever they needed from me to further their own personal transformation, and the relationship would quickly fall apart as they changed and I stayed the same. It was only recently that I began to let go of the idea that something was inherently wrong with me. Like I was a slow burning poison that took awhile to take effect. Or one of those pictures that you stare at for too long and start to notice the weird and disturbing small details.

I am a mirror in a sense that people look at me and see the parts of themselves that they are most ashamed of. I have always taken great care to cradle people like this. I have purposely dimmed my own light, and shared it with others to my own detriment to make them feel better about themselves. To make them stay. I was harming myself this way. I was internalizing all of it. I no longer have the capacity to do it anymore.

2025 was a cocoon year for me. I have completely liquified and morphed myself back together into a shape I can look at and feel proud of. For once, this emergence moment is mine and mine alone. I am no longer beholding someone else's beauty but my own, and I plan on using it to bring about the right energy and opportunities that I know I deserve. I am proud of myself for once. It is a strange, new world out there, but it feels as bright as it did when I was a child, unburdened by the expectations of others.

If any of this sounds familiar to your lived experience, I want you to know there isn't anything wrong with you. You don't slowly destroy every relationship you have just by existing as a mirror for others. But you do have a special power, and I want you to use it. This is the year of the Snake in the Chinese Zodiac, a 9 year, and a day before the last full moon of December 2025. It is the perfect time to shed that outer skin and step into your power before next year. You are a mirror, and you have the ability to live unapologetically as yourself. Not everyone is as free as people like us. Embrace it.

First Post

11/22/25

This first post will be expectations of what I want this website to me, and a way for you to gauge my vibes. I don't bite (I promise).

Cringe introductions aside, this is my first project ever that I am letting myself be intentionally bad at. While I was a novice HTML coder in my humble tumblr, myspace, and neopet days, my brain has long since took on the burdens of adulthood in such a way I have only been able to maintain breathing and barely taking care of myself. This changes now, of course, as I have recently chosen to quit my full time corporate job in search for life fulfillment. Part of that goal is to finally allow myself to be imperfect at what I love to do, and enjoy the process. This means the website will almost always be in a constant state of 'In Progress', with a bunch of random placeholder gifs and spurts of updates when my ADHD allows me to refocus on this momentous task.

In this age of artifical intelligence, I believe we owe it to each other to present our most authentic selves. So this is my formal attempt at doing that. The Musin's page will be dedicated to random blog-like posts of my thoughts, life lessons, and my experiences. In order not to burn myself out, I will not have a set schedule as of right now, but my goal is to update at least once a week. The Writings page will be filled with my fictional writing, and my Substack will be more political based essays and thoughts. I also plan to have a dedicated set of pages for my novel characters, and an art gallery of their concept art to their current designs.

Ultimately, this website is a love letter to my home, as is anything I try to do creatively these days. I will primarily be focused on my Appalachain novel Mountain Legacies and various cultural aspects of the Appalachian Mountains. I am very much y'allternative as well, so please stick around if that's your vibe!