I went to go record my vblog yesterday and while at the studio, Producer Towa and I had a brainstorm and decided to do a live show.
15 minutes before filming.
Crazy.
Still, I feel wonderful how it came out and I might look at doing more in the future. Please give me feedback as to what you you think!!
#hugapony
I love my friends. They come across something My Little Pony related and they send it my way. I absolutely love being that guy.
Today, a friend sent me this awesome post:
Mom blogger HerBadMother writes about her son and his love of My Little Pony.
I can absolutely relate when HerBadMother says “This is why we have Girls Who Code (which is great) but not Boys Who Nurture.” As a stay at home day dad, I understand the struggles and they are real. Being the homemaker as a male is not very well accepted. Telling people that I hold down the home while my wife works gets me looks that make me feel less than OK.
And then there is me being a brony as well.
I remember when I worked at Gamestop (I have worked even if I don’t now), a little boy, about 9, came up to the cash register. He had 2 ponies attached to his belt loop. I asked him about it and the boy’s father started making excuses for the boy saying they were his sisters. The boy had a flash of pride and told his dad the ponies were his. I got down on one knee, looked him in the eye, and asked who his favorite pony was, “Twilight”, he said. “Mine is Fluttershy,” I responded. I then told him he was awesome for liking ponies.
“It’s totally understandable, to Jasper and his friends,” HerBadMother writes “why girls like Star Wars. There are spaceships, and light saber battles, and the one princess in the series is actually a general who wears pants. But My Little Pony? That’s all about sparkle and unicorns and kindness; it’s a world full of puffy clouds and rainbows and friendship, where the character’s powers are signified by ‘cutie marks.’ It’s the very definition of girly.”
The land of Equestria (Where My Little Pony is set) is filled with rainbows and cutie marks and lots of pink. There are lessons on friendship and how to be kind to others. And then there’s a raging demon tearing up the country side. Ponies get sucked into a comic book and have to fight Avengers style. They have a dragon just coming into manhood and being picked on for not being manly enough. There’s epic battles in the sky that rival Star Wars … OK that is a stretch but the comparison has been made by more than just me.
There are whole conventions dedicated to My Little Pony, where fans of all ages and genders go to have fun and enjoy the fandom. Even Cosmopolitan agrees!. http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/news/a36628/i-went-to-a-brony-con-on-valentines-day-and-fell-in-love/
My most recent birthday party was pink and rainbows.
I want to say, HerBadMother, thank you. Let your son know that there are plenty of boys and men who like My Little Pony such as myself.
We are out there and there is no shame.
Don’t be so quick to dismiss the Bronies!
#Hugapony
I have my next episode of my vblog and just in time for my birthday!!! Yes, I am 31 now. So as a birthday gift to everyone else here is the video! All I ask is that you like, comment, and subscribe the video on YouTube and like, follow, comment, on here as a birthday gift to me! I am a cheap birthday present!
#Hugapony!
I have done quite a few activities and tests to explore who I am over the past 7 years. I have fought hard and struggled with some of the results. I came to a point that I was not willing to accept any more criticism from what the results where telling me. Then my wife came across one that changed what I thought about everything.
My dearest wife was given the 16 Personalities test online to find out more about herself for her direct sales job. This test comes from the Myers & Briggs psychological types that have been identified. She answered the one hundred or so questions and got the lettered results. If you have never seen them, here is a brief overview of the types:
After getting her results she looked through and tried to figure out mine. She made a guess and asked me to take the test.
I was hesitant.
I have issues with these sorts of test because it seem all subjective to whoever made the test, what mood the person is in taking it, and I almost never relate to the answer. After some pleading from the person dearest to my heart (i.e. she looked me deep in my eyes and told me to do it), I accepted her request.
I was surprised with the result.
I found out I was an INFJ. As you can see from the list above it means I have Introversion, Intuition, Feeling, and Judging. I went on through the results as the www.16personalities.com gives you more insight into yourself and I was fascinated.
This really did show me more about myself.
I am one of the smallest populated personality type (less than 2% of the population) which might explain more of why people would have issues understanding more about me. It told me I have have great instincts and judgement calls. One of my flaws was that I could get overwhelmed sometimes and would need to take time and decompress. Something like writing a blog even. There were famous people with this personality type also.
Plato
Mahatma Gandhi
Thomas Jefferson
Leo Tolstoy
I was floored. There was no way I could be put in the same sentence as these names. But here was a test (that I took multiple times from several sites with the same result) telling me that I was special. This was a hard thing for me to accept. I talked about it with my wife and a few of my closest friends and they all agreed that it hit my personality on the head.
It is hard being faced with who you are, even if it is too good.
This had shown me more about myself than anything before. I was fascinated and I still am. I will be doing a few more posts on this subject but I wanted to encourage anyone to go to www.16personalities.com and find out more about themselves.
Hug a pony my friends.
My darling wife is an amazing person. She is strong, beautiful, smart, and keeps me fascinated every day. I have never been more thankful in my life to have met her.
When I was young, I was a weird kid. Go figure right? I was six when I started praying for my wife (who ever she was) and that God would bless her, keep her safe, and to one day let her know I was here on earth. I prayed that prayer almost every night until I was 14 and continued to pray that prayer at least once a week after that. I was raised to be a gentleman and to love everyone, so I took these lessons to heart and was the nicest person I could be so that one day, I could be the best person for her I could be.
It wasn’t until college that I met her. I saw her a couple of times around campus and we even had a few mutual friends. I knew from the first time I saw her she was special. There was an air about her that just was different and exciting. Through many upturns and downturns, we managed to grow closer together and finally became best friends.
And best friends tell each other everything.
It was then that she first saw the dark depression that was in me, eating away at my existence. She saw my social anxiety first hand. It was then that she started standing up for me to someone that had never been stood up to like that before.
Myself.
She fought my depression for me. She was able to see the two sides in me that waged war and she poked and prodded until she could find that part of me and squash it. It was a very painful process as it is hard having someone be that truthful to you. It looks and feels like being attacked by your best friend. And it is just that. They are attacking you.
That foul part of you that you can’t distinguish from yourself.
She has stayed with me many years now and has fought beside me through many of my battles. She keep watch over me when nightmares invaded my sleep of a time I had blocked out. She held my hands to keep me from hurting myself. She encouraged me to see a doctor to get more help.
She even bought me my first big stuffed pony for my birthday (Fluttershy of course).
I am coming up on our 10th year anniversary this year. I could never ask for a better friend. I could not ask for a better wife. I could not ask for a better warrior. She is my life.
I love my dear.
I would rather hug you every day.
#hugapony
Episode 6 of my vblog. This is fitting cause I had an OK day yesterday (during filming). Today I woke up in pain that has me stuck on the couch.
Hug a pony my friends.
Living with depression and anxiety is hard. I hear a lot of people who tell me, and others, just get over it. If it were that simple, I would have been cured a long time ago. I know that some people think they are helping by trying to motivate or drive those suffering but I want to take a moment to describe some ways a person acts the way they do and what they are thinking while suffering.
Randomly during the day you have the crushing weight of ALL your failures hit you all at once. It’s like having a personal highlight reel of worst moments set up in a compilation video playing through your brain over and over. Most depressed people are very intelligent and have a good memory. Because of this, your flaws and failures are branded and seared into your brain for you to remember. I still remember the time when I was 7 and I burnt my thumb on a hot iron right after my mother told me not to touch it. I was so excited to be going to a friends house down the street right after that happened and I was so scared that I would be in trouble I hid my pain and went to my friends house. Soon upon arrival my friends mother noticed my tears of pain and looked at my thumb. She was surprised that my mother would send me down there without doing something about my thumb. She called my mother asking about and surprised my mother with something my mother didn’t know anything about. It was no surprised that I was promptly sent home to both be healed and to be in trouble.
I tell this story because I am still embarrassed about trying to hid it. I still have it in the back of mind of what I did wrong. I still remember the pain of my thumb on fire. It pops in my head about every other week to remind me of how I have failed. I live with that memory and every other mistake and failure I have done in my life. I wish I could stop those memories from drowning me and some days I do great.
Other days not so much.
And its not just your mistakes.
When something goes wrong with someone else, you react two ways. You question if you messed something up, EVEN IF YOU HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. You cannot stop yourself from wondering if you could have done something to have helped them or if you could have changed something. The second way you react is you overreact by being overly sorry for what happened, again even if you had nothing to with what happened. You try to comfort and help that person in such a way that you end up looking like a “freak”.
It makes for a hard time trying to deal with other people’s failures while having your own failures play constantly playing in your mind.
It also makes you paranoid. You question everyone’s jokes and teasing. You are observing all the things going on around you and analyzing it. You wonder how much is true and what is a joke. You live in constant fear of what you say and how it could be taken wrong.
And this makes you tired.
You carry the weight of that around with you. The reason it is hard to get out of bed for a depressed person is two-fold. First, you are tired from carrying yours and everyone else’s burdens (even if they didn’t ask for it). Second, you know the only relief is sleep. Sleep because it is when you finally get a break.
It is hard to be depressed. It is hard living with anxiety.
I saw a post on social media that inspired this post and I want to share it now.
Fear. You live in constant fear.
“What if?”
The next time you see a depressed person or know someone who is depressed, take two seconds and think on these things. I could save a life.
#hugapony my friends.
New episode of my Video blog!!
I am very proud of doing one month of vBlog and I can’t wait to bring you more.
I have some cool stuff on the horizon I can’t wait to share!!!
I am thinking YouTube doesn’t like me as they once again gave us trouble with uploading the video, sorry it’s late.
It was, as we say in parentville, a long full day. It is 11:15 pm at the time of this writing and I am exhausted. This was a day for a Dad.
And I hope I was a good one.
I woke up to kids being awoken by the baby I watch during the day arriving. I made my coffee and Got the kids kids settled in for the morning. My dearest wife was up and out early with working (still an odd switch for me being home) and I prepared to start to the day. I was trying to get the coffee flowing in my veins but I could not get get motivated. I was sluggish and let the kids play and watching cooking shows as I struggled to get my rear in gear.
We have since moved into a new friends house. A lot of stress and pressure from were we were staying at was relieved. This brought with it a whole new stress. A stress that has made empires rise and fall. It has ended more than one marriage in my personal knowledge and is the one thing I have come to hate.
Money.
A dear friend who saved us from a difficult living situation has let us stay with him at no cost, and it has helped in more ways than I can count. The unfortunate side effect is that half our weekly income was also taken away in this move and we had to step up other bills. Medicine and medical bills have been due and past due. The shovel of paper is endless in the never ceasing tide in search of the green monster that I am to hold.
But it is not there for me to give.
I have been blessed by more people than I can name here who have come forward to help, and please don’t let me say that this is the most desperate I have been. I have lived in a time and place were I was trying not to steal a roll of toilet paper from work because I knew I had none at home. I have counted the pennies to go get a dollar burger from McDonald’s for lunch during a 12 hour work day and knew I had to make it last as my only meal. Hard times were every time. I am truly blessed with dear friends and wonderful family who have helped me in every turn.
Help was also due today in the form of “tax return”. Tax time is a wonderful time for me as I have dear friends who I go to for my taxes and I get money to pay those horrid bills that stack against me. It seems odd to look forward to doing your taxes, but in my case I rejoice.
My dearest wife and I set out to do taxes and other errands. We had just managed to put money in the bank to pull us out of the overdraft scare that comes when automatic billing comes at the wrong time when we realized that it was late in the day and my wife had a work event going on soon. I also had been invited with my girls to go see Kung Fu Panda 3 and this was to be a time of joy with my daughters.
We went to the theater with friends and we settled in for a good time. I got us a Sprite to drink as it was going to run late and I did not want caffeine for the girls. My eldest daughter, however, did not appreciate the drink choice I bought. She sat there and refused my offers of drink to the point of tears. I asked in hush whispers what was the matter and she let me know she hated Sprite and all she wanted was water. I told her I would go and get her some when she burst into more tears and told no in full body horror. I sat shocked at the way she said it and asked why not and I was met with a “I don’t want to tell you.” I told her again to let me just go and get her some water and the look of horror filled her eyes and she begged for me not too.
I sat in my chair confused to what was going on when my daughter leaned in and said I didn’t need to spend the money on her. It clicked. I told her not to worry about it and I would go and get her some water so she could have a drink. She was crying so hard at this point, I wasn’t sure I could stop her. She said I didn’t need to spend money on her like this and she would be fine. I told her that she didn’t need to worry about that and I would go buy her a drink. She finally broke and let me go buy it for her but was still extremely upset that I did it. I told her we would talk more about it when we got home.
We left the theater in much better spirits as the movie was excellent (I will talk more about it in my vblog this week). We came home to my dearest wife returned and we all sat in our room for a nice chat. Both my daughters explained (in great detail for the ages of 6 and 8) that they knew how tight money had been and how their mom and I were so stressed about money that they were scared to ask for anything because they didn’t want to cause us stress.
My heart aches just writing about it.
Tears came to my eyes as I explained that I wouldn’t spend money I didn’t have on them. I told them I would never be upset at them for asking for things. I said the only time I would be upset is when I told them “no” to something and they kept asking or crying about wanting it. I explained there was a time and place to spend money and I would keep track of that. I explained that it was my job to worry about it, not them.
Oh dear hearts of children.
I realize that my stress had bled over to them and it angered me. It had disgusted me to my core. Oh little pitchers with big ears, what do you hear? I felt a failure as a parent. And then they did something magical.
I stood there beating myself up inside when they said they understood and that they would do their best to better. They said they loved me and mom and they would do what they could to help.
Out of the mouth of babies came redemption.
I still feel pride as well at how they reacted and handled it. I feel I have much work to do to be better, but they were with me with a second chance. Who hasn’t made a mistake?
I have.
And I will do better next time.
Hug a pony my friends.
My Stuffed Little Therapy 