On Being Sort Of Single

 Life is weird...

Don't worry I'll unpack that. 

So... I'm what I call sort of single. There is a guy I like. We hang out, we get intimate but there's nothing official. We aren't exclusive and we haven't used terms like "boyfriend" or "partner". We're happy with how things are for now. And if I am honest, I don't think I want it to go beyond that. At least not yet.

Why is this important? Well, this is the first time in 9 years where I've actually felt comfortable in myself and with my own company when going to do things. Things I would usually have done with a partner. I've been going to the cinema alone, I've gone for meals alone, I've gone out and been places alone. That is something I've not done in a long time. 

It's actually been a hell of a revelation. It does garner some weird looks when I'm sat in a restaurant with a bulky novel and a notebook with pens rested on top, using the opposite chair to lie my coat on. Not as many strange looks as I got earlier tonight for dipping waffle fries in my peanut butter milkshake but still.

I know I'm the sort of person who is better with a partner. I always have been. But this slightly ambivalent situation that I am in right now, which ordinarily would have driven me up the wall and caused a gnawing anxiety, has ended up being revolutionary... which I never expected when meeting this guy.

Ain't life weird sometimes?

On another note, this may be the last thing I post this year so I wish you all a wonderful and prosperous new year.

Come and have a cuppa with me sometime ^_^

Fragrance of Dark Coffee

     There is a man and he is sitting at the window thinking about the night and how the night itself is thinking about love. They are both stagnant and gazing at each other; one with a million, million eyes. The man smokes a cheap cigarette as a red candle burns slowly down to the base of its holder. The night is cold in its observation - how it watches the man who watches each passing car, each tensed up person half-running to escape the rain. He breathes out a plume of smoke that the night could imagine were clouds. Clouds like its clouds that move so aimlessly as if lost. The man plays some jazz from a second-hand radio and sets down at his desk, replacing cigarette with pen; trying to craft some new phrase about how the night is his mother out at sea. The night yawns into the wind as it lulls itself to sleep.

Reflections - Christmas

Five days left to linger as the festivities press on towards us with unrelenting speed. And I'll be honest with you... it is not something that fills me with joy. In fact, it fills me with anything but.

Christmas is a time of year that is supposed to be fun and full of good cheer. But it is cold, bleak, full of petty narcissists mithering over all the things are going wrong in your life. Even worse when, like me, you spend most of your life going by a different name to the one your family insist on calling you.

But my problems are just... paltry, it feels like. 

People are on the street. Out in the cold and the dark of the streets. In shelters without family or friends. Or stranded in loveless houses they can no longer call homes out of fear or regret or anger. And here I am with these little problems. Little. And I can do nothing, right now, to try and aid in some way, some small way, those with a worse situation than me because I'm not financially stable enough. Neither can I volunteer as the main charities that operate this time of year are genuinely awful when it comes to LGBTQ folk and it would be obscene to me if I were to work with them.

So this is what life becomes when it hits this last week, leading up to Christmas day. I tend to go quiet. Stay out of the way. Try and store up the required amount of energy, of spoons, spell slots, however best you want to look at the theory of how much we expend on other people and other things throughout our day. And come the day I become a passenger. I sit. I smile. I make small talk. I drink and try to ignore the wrong name that I'm expected to responded to, pouring like sewage out of so many mouths...

And then I'll find a convenient time to excuse myself and disappear back to my sanctum. I can go back to the people I know, most of which live so far away from me, but who know me. They call me the name I use. They treat me with love, respect, joke with me, play games with me and above all else, they know me. I cannot honestly put into words just how thankful I am for all the friends I have made through things like Discord and who are so damn good to have in my life.

Not the most cheery holiday message... but there it is.

Best wishes to you and yours who read this. And have yourselves a good Christmas.

Happiness

 After the other day's post where I may have been a little gushing about the guy I have started talking to, a mutual follower and, I would like to think, friend on Twitter made a post about what happiness is and it got me thinking, as these things usually do. What are the things that make me happy?

Obviously, I made one of them quite clear already but, while on my break at work, I decided to write out some of the things that grant me a few moments of bliss:

A Litany of Happiness In Small Doses

Scalding hot tea
small sweetness against
bleak winter morning.

Touch of rain
against skin as anthracite
sky erupts above.

The scent of citrus
and sandalwood.

His lips, soft 
and searching 
against mine.

Fingers interlaced
as if seeking to shelter 
from the chill.

Hot mulled cider 
sat beside a bonfire;
cinnamon and smoke.

Luminescence of stars 
to wonder at while
sat at water's edge.

Warmth of his body,
pressed to me in the 
quiet, witching hours.

Hiss and spark of a lighter.

Smoothness of cut 
amethyst, rolled between 
thumb and forefinger.

Eyes bright and full as 
we lie together - peaceful 
and still as the moon.

The way he whispers 
in his sleep - an aria that 
no one else knows. 

Love In The Time Of COVID

I've always felt emotion very keenly. There has never been a moment of it being... mild or something that was nuanced. It has always been big, bright and loud. A total feast or famine situation. Couple this with being a little bit of a hopeless romantic and it can lead to some rather disastrous heartbreak. I'm not saying this lead to my spur of the moment decision to get my nose pierced or the amount of utter abuse that my hair has taken from 40 volume bleach but I'm equally not disqualifying it entirely.

COVID really has made me re-evaluate what I want from a relationship. I had a 7-year long relationship end just before the first lockdown hit so I had a lot of time to ponder what went wrong and where I need to improve myself. Since then, I've been through another short-lived but crucial relationship that was a revelation in a lot of ways - making me realise what I need and should actually expect from a good relationship. It also broadened my horizons in a lot of ways.

Now is the winter of our discontent (thank you again, Billy Shakes) and the new variant of this damnable virus is looming over the festive period like a heavy shroud but among that bleakness... I dare say I might be falling for someone all over again. And fate, it seems, is determined to have a laugh at my expense once again.

I moved cities in the summer for work. There was a fair amount of going between involved as I got everything moved but I'm now back in my hometown of Bristol... which naturally means that I got talking to this guy when I visited Southampton - the city I had just moved from. Did I instantly curse for a profound amount of time at the top of my lungs? 

Yes I did.

But he is so sweet and so laidback. Talking to him is relaxing. We share the same music tastes and both have a fascination with the supernatural. He's interested in playing a TTRPG for the first time and I'm hopefully gonna run something next time I see him. He also has a warmth and compassion I rarely see day-to-day, which is nice and refreshing. And we are both wimps when it comes to horror movies.

With his work schedule being erratic and mine being an 8-5, its hard to work out when we next get to see each other. But the difference to previous people I've been interested in/have dated, is that this doesn't prove to be an issue. He is so relaxed about it and needs his space so the gap between visits works well. 

One can't help but wonder if this will end up being the thing that I secretly hope it will become but time will tell. As this damnable island still can't get it's shit sorted enough to deal with COVID, the possibility of seeing each other over New Year's looks a little uncertain. But we will figure something out. It just got me thinking about all the other people in the same boat as us - in that sea of uncertainty when trying to build something new. And I can't help but feel that, for once, their is a small, silvery glow of hope cresting the horizon.

Today was a good day, reader. If you couldn't already tell. Here's to many more. But now I must tend to the my least favourite task at this time of year: wrapping presents.

Come and have a cuppa with me sometime ^_^

Late Night Tea & Little Rituals

Tea has been a staple of my life for a long time. From scalding myself with it because a spilled a mug as a kid right up to now. It's quite... phenomenal to me in a way how much in life is linked to a drink. And how it has such a bloody and brutal history itself.

But I'm not here to give a history lesson. However, if the history of tea does interest you, then this website is a good place to start - https://www.tea.co.uk/history-of-tea

What I did just want to talk about something that I've noticed as I get older and that is the little rituals we have in our lives. How we do things in specific ways and never deviate from them. And making tea is definitely one of those for me. There is a long culture of tea ceremonies and rituals across the world from East Asia, the Indian subcontinent, Persia, North Africa and Europe, across millennia. 

And it doesn't escape my notice how these little rituals are kind of a solace for me. Just the act of taking 5 or 10 minutes to boil the kettle, to sit back and wait quietly and just absorb and sort out my emotions from a long day. Infusing the water with the tea. Letting it step. Savouring the smell of the leaves as the steam rises. The first sip, closing my eyes and letting the heat wash through me. It's a little bit of bliss in an often tumultuous and at times, despair-inducing world.

It is one of the little wonders that I look forward to each day. And I just think about the way I do things now - the way I set down to read a book, the way I set down to write or to game. The way I start my mornings with the same playlist. The way I always click a pen three times before using it and again as I put it in my pocket. The way I organise my pockets before I leave the house - Phone, notebook and pen, keys, wallet. 

Each is a little ritual I perform each day without really thinking about it. But at some point I did. At some point there was a conscious decision to organise things in that way, to perform it in that way. And it made me realise just how much of a performance our lives really are; the masks we wear, the roles we play and the way we act them. Shakespeare had it right when he coined the phrase "All the world's a stage".

I don't say this with any hint of sarcasm or derision - I just marvel at the way we do things as human beings and how that forms intricate little parts of who we are as people.

Until next time though, I must finish my tea before it goes cold. That really would be a cardinal sin.

Come have a cuppa with me sometime.

A New Character

Dungeons & Dragons

A game that divides opinion like its football and one that really found me some of the best friends I could ever hope to have. For all its misgivings and behind the scene issues, I am thankful for this game to be a part of my life and it has given my quite the catalogue of writing projects with making homebrew spells, classes, races, items and such to use when playing. However, I've spend a lot of my time over the past year running games rather than playing them.

Recently, I got invited to play in a new game that is starting up in the new year and having had a productive discussion with the Game Master, I'm getting use some of my homebrewed content. So I decided, as I often do when playing this game, to make a Warlock.

Now, for those who don't know, a Warlock is a type of spellcaster or mage that gains their powers from some otherworldly or powerful being, ranging anywhere from the monarchs of the Feywild courts to the Princes of Hell itself. I love the roleplay potential of Warlocks. I always have. Just the ability to have that discussion around your pact, to potentially talk to your patron and ask things of them, the way it can drive a storyline... it feels so good and it is probably why I always tend to gravitate towards them.

This character is going to be different as I'm playing a female presenting character - something I haven't done in a few years. I've always played queer characters, male presenting or nonbinary characters but this is rather uncharted territory for me. 

But the homebrew I'm using? Oh that is going to be a world of fun.

So she is a Moon Elf and her patron is actually the Goddess of the Moon or "She Who Guides" as my character refers to her as. So I made a pact that works of the power of cosmic bodies - in this case, surprise to no one, the Moon. It involves some great radiant damage spells like Guiding Bolt and Moonbeam but also has other lunar-related spells like Control Water, based on the relationship between the moon and the tides.

In addition to this, when we hit level 3, I'm getting to use a homemade pact boon - Pact of The Staff. It basically is a "Build-A-Staff" boon and honestly, it opens up your spell list a lot more as you can store some in another object.

Just add a mega-nerdy element to her, I fell back on my love of Tolkien and the Elvish language for her name. So I came up with:

Fariel Ilmarë

Which, if my amateur translation has worked, means "Hunter of Starlight".

This campaign is already shaping up to be a whole lot of fun and I can't wait to share her adventures with you in the future.

In the meantime, flick the kettle on. I'll be back soon.

And In This Corner...

Greetings!

Welcome to my blog and indeed welcome to the rather weird and wonderful worlds that I will be sharing here. My name is Jayce - a late twenties, tired human who has a profound addiction to caffeine, dice, notebooks and scented candles. I'm also quite unapologetically queer. 

So what am I doing, setting up a blog where I have no clue or schedule of what I am going to be posting and working out where writing for this is going to fit in among my other projects? Well, funnily enough this may help with that! I'm a writer, TTRPG player, gamer and rather tea obsessed. Never am I happier than when I'm in a comfy chair with a cuppa and a good book or when I have Switch in hand.

I think I'm going to be mostly using this to just... process thoughts. To discuss things I'm writing or making. Maybe to show some of the things I work on. Or occasionally even just pop in with something anecdotal from work day or weekend. Sometimes just a quick note to add something positive to your day.

I also will likely cover things such as wrestling and Formula 1 as they are two of my oldest loves and I will no doubt have opinions on.

For now though, I would say thank you for reading this and hope you read on further!

Come and have a cuppa with me sometime.