Apathy Tree

9136 looks so excited to be in their presence. I wonder if that was intentional (starting the number with a 9, which, coupled with the eye, makes a left-facing face) or happenstance.

I used to do that, but I stopped because I’m trying to be less of a people-pleasing doormat in general. Plus people don’t like empty apologies from company reps anyway… it often led to more hostility. Apologizing also tends to give to the impression that they are right to be pissy whiny assholes, which isn’t something that should be encouraged at all.

Instead, I started saying “I very much understand your frustration; let’s see what we can do to get this resolved for you.” This makes you and the customer (psychologically) a team against the problem, and they are less likely to go off on you.

I definitely stole that tactic from car salespeople. And it works super well.

When I get decent sleep, I often lucid dream. I didn’t really practice, I’m just usually aware that I’m dreaming (maybe because I’m on drugs to suppress nightmares, so I’m just really aware of dreams).

I have a dream town I frequent, it’s… usually interestingly mundane though. I don’t need excitement often, just things I can’t do in real life, like taking stuff I want (collectibles!!), playing free at the arcade, eating free in fancy places, drinking free in the nice socializing bar, breathing underwater or flying sometimes if it fits the exploration…

It’s a really consistent sort of place that just grows over time, as more places are added and incorporated as welcoming spaces to explore. There’s even a glass water garden/aquarium/pool that reminds me of some final fantasy shit. And recently a massive underground transit structure was added on that has high-speed shuttles to different large attractions, and a whole new residential tower (for some reason I have a room on the 4th floor, it might be a college dorm), so that was an excellent confusing dream to have for several days.

There’s a house in it that’s sort of my landing pad. A mix of a lot of places I’ve lived or been that just keeps growing over time. It’s got dozens of spaces to explore that mix in things I want and things I know, and just some creepy huge empty spaces that will probably get filled in later but are just full of weird junk I haven’t unpacked at the moment.

I like to just explore the town and surrounding areas, and do things with random people. I don’t really do that in life anymore, so. I’d love to build it in VR but I have no idea how to do that. It seems perfectly suited for it.

I used to get a lot of false awakenings when I pushed too hard to control the story or environment, and I found those to be wildly unpleasant (nightmare reasons), so I don’t exert much control now. I can, but it’s more fun to go with the fantastical and let the adventure play out, fully aware that this new space I’m dreaming about is going to be a recurring space I can explore again in different ways later.