Category: Blogging

February 24, 2025

Be the Leg that Kicks the Ass that is Attached to a Better You

I mean, that’s a working title. I’ll probably keep it though.

It’s largely in reference to the previous post, which while inspired (and honestly really good, I think) is difficult to follow through on, though not due to fear or reluctance. It’s largely because the meds weren’t dialed in then. I was hypomanic when I wrote that. I was about six weeks into the antipsychotic medication that I’ve taken every day for the last nine months. And they don’t tell you this when you start, or during it, but it takes months to straighten you out. Only really in the last month or two do I feel like I’m actually fully in control. The complicated part is that you don’t know you’re getting better while you’re getting better, or that it’s steadily changing and progressing. Looking back now, I can see clearly that I’m doing a lot better than I was six or nine months ago, and it’s possible that six or nine months from now it’ll be an equally stark difference.

What this is manifesting as is subtle but profound. You can think of bipolar disorder as your mood being on a sine wave. I’m simplifying, and the precise shape of the wave is a bit different for me, but I was never good with math.

Medication shrinks the amplitude of the wave. It never makes it completely flat, but it makes the highs less high, and the lows less low.

I’d known that for quite a while now. What I didn’t know is that it would continue to reduce the amplitude even further as time went on. I’m now spending a lot more time around that center point. I was really lacking in the equipment and exposure to even know that things could be better.

There’s a … (More) “Be the Leg that Kicks the Ass that is Attached to a Better You”

Blogging Deep Thoughts Life

May 18, 2024

On Guarantees Or The Lack Thereof

You are guaranteed very, very little, bordering on nothing at all, in this world. There are guarantees of certain, axiomatic truths. Tautologies. So, nothing worth a shit.

You’re not guaranteed the sun will rise tomorrow, and you’re certainly not guaranteed that you will rise tomorrow. You’re not guaranteed peace, happiness, unhappiness, war, pestilence, or the winning lottery numbers. You’re not guaranteed that you’ll be able to finish a list of guarantees.

And you’re damn sure not guaranteed that the next thing you write will be any good.

How would you go about guaranteeing such a thing, just logically? You’re gonna know your next thoughts are gonna be good before you think them? Be fuckin’ for real. And just as there’s no idea too bad that it can’t be saved through amazing execution, there’s no idea so powerful, so moving and transcendental, that it couldn’t be sabotaged by the brain farts.

So, realistically, this shouldn’t be on your mind. Why waste cycles on an impossibility? You won’t know how a creative work goes until you do it any more than you won’t be positive your car will start the next time you try to go get a burrito.

Take the cap off the pen. Take the metaphorical computer cap off the computer pen. It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about what you’re going to write and fucking go. Write something people aren’t supposed to see, and put “if you’re reading this fuck you, I don’t like you” somewhere in there to let them know. Just go. Go in with no plans, go in with no thoughts and see what happens. You have my permission for it to be bad. You should extend yourself the same courtesy.

Just go. Write about your day, or the chair your sitting in, that it’s … (More) “On Guarantees Or The Lack Thereof”

Blogging Life

March 2, 2016

This parrot is dumb and your recipe is disgusting. How are you?

It took a little over ten years of encroachment, little by little. I don’t even recall when exactly it began, probably three or four years ago. But social media has finally bested me. The diatribes I see from everyone with a fucking axe to grind about something or other, pushing causes in a slacktivist rendition of “check out my mixtape, fam,” sharing rehashed content that serves as little more than a way to get some ad revenue.

For once in my life, I’d rather see a picture of your ugly baby than see another article about why your candidate is Jesus Christ and the other guy is Shitbag Hitler III. I am worn all the way the fuck out.

I don’t even know why I have 500 friends. I talk to…20 of you at the absolute most? I don’t even recognize some of your names, and it’s from those teenage years where more friends = more better person. I think every generation was told by their parents and other elders that you’ll grow apart with time, and every generation could flawlessly see the future and indirectly told said elders to shove it up their ass. And then we grow apart with time like we were fucking told would happen. But now there’s this weird tether of social media keeping us in the peripheral vision of the people we otherwise would’ve dumped like last week’s garbage.

It’s not all bad. I probably wouldn’t have known that a six-year classmate of mine, just starting to dabble with a guitar when we left high school, made it into Rolling Stone magazine. I wouldn’t have known that someone I went to college with my freshman year was in a horrific accident, and had to learn to talk, walk, feed himself, and basically become a … (More) “This parrot is dumb and your recipe is disgusting. How are you?”

Blogging Fragrance Gaming Life

December 4, 2011

First World Dilemmas

My creative impulses are dragging me all over the place. I’ve got about a half-dozen projects I want to work on and I’m paralyzed with indecision. Maybe writing them down will help. In no particular order, I want to…

– Get started on the perfume I’m making for Eve.
– Play the hell out of some Skyrim.
– Make something in FL Studio. I don’t really have a hook in my head to start with, though.
– Finish configuring the netbook for emulator play. Yesterday’s testing was mixed. It’s fine with NES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Sega Genesis, but some SNES games are choppy, particularly Super-FX enabled ones. N64 games were hit and miss, I was getting probably 50fps on Super Mario 64 but it choked up a big hairball on Goldeneye and Hot Wheels Turbo Racing. I haven’t bothered with my PSX roms. I haven’t set up Quickplay for my MAME roms yet as it’s quite involved.
– Get Quickbooks set up for Diana. She’s wanting to learn how to use it so she has another marketable skill for the future job search. The idea I had is that we can set up Shooting Star Perfumes as the business to learn with. It might get us back into making our own stuff.
– Eat the hell out of some pizza.
– Listen to some new albums that came out, particularly the new M83.
– Channel former blogging buddy Krooze L. Roy and review some old video games. I hope he reads this some time, because I miss the hell out of his writing, and I still want him to message me some time about Amplitude on PS2.

And even out of so many tempting options, the combination of pizza and Skyrim is a siren’s call I … (More) “First World Dilemmas”

Blogging Fragrance General Life

November 30, 2011

Am I a writer? Or just restless?

There’s a certain self-righteous quality to calling yourself a writer when you have no published/paid work to your name. At that point you are closer to the truth if you refer to yourself as a “typist.” I have some friends, though, that exhibit that trait that I think is the telltale sign of a “real” writer, and that’s the urge to write almost constantly.

I have these urges, but I am usually sated by a one-liner or statement that’s been on my mind. I have several friends that are finishing up on their NaNoWriMo projects today. A novel! Jeez. I don’t think I can keep a train of thought from derailing for that kind of length. An overactive imagination needs an outlet, though, and I have many. Lately it’s been Skyrim, but other common pastimes have been making perfumes, designing houses in The Sims 3, writing, trying to come close to the talent level of my 18-year old self at FL Studio, making stepcharts in StepMania, designing board, card, or role-playing games…I can keep busy. There’s something deeply satisfying about writing, especially on a platform like this where I can toss these words into empty space and whatever happens, happens.

Every creative outlet of mine has a muse, and for writing it is two entities. The first, my long-time muse, has been Jerry Holkins (Tycho Brahe) at Penny Arcade. He puts out the most amazingly smooth, polished work three times a week and his tone just makes me happy, his sense for when to drop the flowery language and rage-curse for a while is incredible. The second, a somewhat more recent find, are several of the writers at Cracked. What’s more, they blatantly encourage writing at all skill levels. Somehow, a website that routinely publishes lists like “The 7 Most … (More) “Am I a writer? Or just restless?”

Blogging Fragrance Nerd Stuff Work

July 23, 2011

Dreamweaving Again

So the good news is I’ve gone longer without posting on here, but that’s like saying midget murder is more condonable because they’re about half a life.

I’ve started on a new web project, and with the number of features I want to build out it stands to be my most ambitious project yet, and it’s gonna require some new technologies. Understand that I really don’t like the thought of relying on JavaScript, due to long-standing grudges, but jQuery does offer features I’m really gonna need in this project, in a prepackaged solution. When I hear that there are quite a few Top 100 websites that make use of it, I’m reassured.

So, Project Havana, as I’m calling it right now, is fragrance-related and fills a niche that no other industry website has sufficiently covered. This will also serve as a website I can show as a portfolio piece for both the UI and backend. That’s still a field I’d love to do as a day job again, and I’ve also just recently found all the code for the largest project I’d worked on but was under NDA on for a year. So it’ll be good to have both projects available to point to. I’m being rather tight-lipped on the particulars to this project as I want to develop it at a slower pace, get each feature dialed in before moving onto the next one, and then when I have something worth putting out there, I can do it without regret or concern. So that’s new, as I usually throw up core functionality and build out the site as it’s live, add those features as people use the site.

I’m going to try and get back on the three-day writing schedule, we will see.… (More) “Dreamweaving Again”

Blogging DanielTharp.com Fragrance Music Nerd Stuff

December 26, 2010

Time Management Fail

I should be getting ready for work right about now, but I feel like writing too. So writing wins for now. I’m getting myself psyched up for 2011 with plans and ideas for how I’m gonna keep things interesting for this Monday-Wednesday-Friday regularity of posting. My work schedule actually calls for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday off, and I have no plans to change that. So I’ll be writing a week ahead or two.

Mondays are gonna be fairly mixed with regards to music. Reviews of varying formality, top 10s, that sort of thing.

Wednesdays, my wildcard days, will likely have a lot of gaming. That’s for sure. That and whatever else I feel like writing about.

Fridays will be split between reviewing fragrances and a journal tracking Diana and I as we attempt to make custom perfumes, we’ve got about a year of off-and-on experience with it and I think we’re going to be stocking up on some new oils too. We haven’t broken out the EOs since we moved in together, so we’re both excited to get back to it.

Unrelated note, but if you haven’t been following the Steam Holiday Sale, you’re missing the true reason of the $ea$on. You can buy 55 games for $55, for crying out loud.… (More) “Time Management Fail”

Blogging DanielTharp.com General

December 9, 2010

Polished Turds and Reinvented Wheels

I did a pretty major reskin of the blog, in anticipation of some upcoming projects. I liked the previous theme, don’t get me wrong, but it was difficult to work with and had some nasty bugs of it’s own. This one is simple and quite a pleasure to use so far.

One thing I’ve come to accept is for the past 7 years I’ve been blogging, it’s been largely an emotional outlet. I have Twitter that serves admirably in that regard, and it’s taken away from the amount of other writing I do. I’m hoping I can keep motivated through 2011 and stick to the weekly schedule of Music Mondays, Wildcard Wednesdays (photography, gaming, rambling), and Fragrant Fridays. The latter will be crossposted on Il Mondo di Odore, a blog run by several high-profile Basenoters and some good friends. I’ve never been a contributor to a blog that wasn’t my own, so I’m quite excited about that.

The site is more secure than ever, I’m seeing the occasional 500 error I can’t pin down, but a refresh always seems to clear it up. I have four days to finish my final group project for Professional Writing and then I suspect I’ll start trying to get a feel for the self-set schedule and how much work and design I want to do. Stay tuned.… (More) “Polished Turds and Reinvented Wheels”

Blogging General Life Work

August 31, 2010

Remembering August

Rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated.

This month has been the best, busiest and most life-changing month I’ve ever experienced. Let me bring you up to speed.

Back in early August, Diana and I moved in together, which involved moving out of our respective cities and into a new town. We knew where we wanted to be, but even now as I sit here, looking out the window to see the sunset casting the Sandia Mountains red, it’s hard to believe that the hard work and determination paid off and we’re really here: Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The drive out here was an experience in itself, the first day was a long drive much like any other I’ve been on. The second, however, took us through the wind farms and hills of Western Oklahoma, the stark, desolate panhandle of Texas, devoid of life save for Amarillo, which seems to pop up from nothing and leaves you back on God’s definition of the flatlands just as quickly. After Texas was two hundred miles of New Mexico, and it included the most breathtaking driving of my life, through canyons and overlooking mesas and mountain ridges in the distance that evoked a thought I’d never had before, the thought that the landscape of where you call home could truly make you happy or sad, and maybe people are happier out here just because they get little flashes of the truly awesome in their day-to-day life. The fact that Diana and I still find breathtaking new views seemingly every week is confirmation in itself that we picked the right home, and in many ways I feel like I was always meant to end up here.

After moving quickly came work, four days after moving to a town where we knew nobody and had nary … (More) “Remembering August”

Blogging DanielTharp.com Fragrance

June 3, 2009

Niche Experiment Volume Two

Luckyscent is getting more business from me as I delve back into reviewing niche. Expect to see reviews for:

Andy Tauer Lonestar Memories
Andy Tauer Une Rose Chypree
CdG Series 2 (Red): Sequoia
CdG Series 3 (Incense): Avignon
Domenico Caraceni 1913
Keiko Mecheri Bois de Santal
L’Artisan Timbuktu
Le Labo Rose 31
Mazzolari Lui
Montale Red Vetyver
Parfums 06130 Cedre
Parfums de Nicolai New York… (More) “Niche Experiment Volume Two”