Intense Idealist/Spiritual Kinkster

Big Bri Bri’s Blog

  • An Introduction

    Howdy and welcome all to the wonderfully whacky world of my mind. 

    Let me get this out of the way upfront: there will be typos. There will be misspellings. I have let my fear of these things be an excuse to hold me back from writing. I’d rather get it posted than wither away in my drafts folder. 

    For those of you who don’t know me – my name is Brian. I live in Kansas City, KS. And I am obsessed with Worlds of Fun and roller coasters. 

    Also pens. I adopted the phrase “pen fetishist” from my mother. It’s gotta be a bold, fat line that makes me want to write with it. 

    If it sparkles, even better! 

    I have maintained a journal since high school. Those who know me have been pestering me “to just write” for years now. So here I am. 

    I have no set agenda or preconceived notions of where this will go but brace yourself for entries ranging from depression to long covid; from kink to coasters. 

    Basically, it’ll be my journal in online form. 

    It will get graphic at points. It will get naughty. Trigger warnings apply. 

    Without further ado – I guess I should start writing. 

  • Pushing Past the Resistance

    Not feeling it today, but it’s my own damn fault, and I’m pushing past the resistance. Without going into detail, I’ll just say I played last night, which involved pot and poppers. I knew my actions would have consequences, and here I am. 

    I take quetiapine as a sleep aid. One of its side effects is quetiapine munchies. The part of the brain that regulates your feeling full gets discombobulated, and you feel like you’re hungry no matter how much you’ve eaten. 

    Add pot to the mix and, as my friend Paul dubbed it, I eat the kitchen. 

    I ate everything I could get in my mouth. I ate trail mix, White Cheddar Cheez-Its, and a bowl of watermelon I brought back to bed. I kept eating until I finally fell asleep. 

    I smoked the pot. I accept the consequences. 

    I just don’t like them. 

    After brushing my teeth and having breakfast, I putzed around the house for a bit. 

    One of my current life themes is pushing past the resistance. 

    My body felt lethargic and groggy, but I got out the door and on my walk. Once I got my playlist going and took my first step, I settled into my groove and got moving to the music. 

    I pushed past the resistance and excuses, got outside, and went full speed – because I wanted to, because I want to keep getting better, because I want to heal.

    Because I want to burn off this fat and not jiggle so much. 

    I hit a new milestone today – two miles! Not only that, but I kept my pace even going up and down all of the hills in my neighborhood. A month ago, that would have been inconceivable with my long covid fatigue. 

    It’s not that I was punishing myself. I was disciplining myself. I wasn’t going to allow myself to slack off just because I didn’t feel 100% after the consequences of last night’s actions. 

    I’m applying the same discipline to my writing today. I have set the intention of posting to my blog once daily. 

    And here I am.

  • The Can in the Parking Lot

    Yesterday, Larry and I stopped at Family Dollar. I noticed a Minute Maid lemonade can sitting upright in the parking lot just outside the front door. I figured I would do the staff a favor by picking it up.

    I could have just thrown it away, but I’m someone who can’t trash something that’s reusable or recyclable. So, I brought it into the store with me.

    On the way out, the cashier spoke up and asked, “Are you going to pay for that?” At first I thought he meant the reams of filler paper I had already purchased from him. Then I realized he meant the can I was holding.

    I knew it was going to sound ridiculous to say I’d picked up the can in the parking lot. I even had the thought when I picked it up, “People will think you’re weird.” Little did I know that voice was alluding to a pending accusation of shoplifting. 

    We went back and forth. I told him I was going to recycle it. He kept asking if I was going to pay for it.

    He couldn’t seem to accept that I’d brought an empty can into the store simply to recycle it.

    Finally, Larry snapped and said, “What part aren’t you understanding? He told you he picked up the can in the parking lot to recycle it.”

    At that point, another employee chimed in and told us to just go.

    I feel unresolved. My mind hasn’t been able to let it go.

    I kept replaying the conversation, thinking of all the evidence I could have offered if I’d been given the chance.

    I wasn’t able to state my case. They could have pulled up the security footage and seen that I didn’t drink it. They don’t even sell canned drinks. They could have looked and found there were no open boxes of Minute Maid lemonade on the shelves.

    Instead, I was sent away with the assumption that I stole it.

    Journaling about it, I came to realize that what bothered me most is that someone thinks negatively of me. I find myself caring too much about what some random cashier thinks about me picking up a can in the parking lot.

    As if to prove the point to myself, today I found an ALDI bag on my walk. It had a small hole in it, but it was otherwise in great shape. I brought it home, cleaned it up, and I’ll patch the hole with duct tape. That’s just what I do.

  • One Small Flower Victory

    One Small Flower Victory

    Long Covid has taken a lot from me with its brutal fatigue. 

    The most visible impact is evident in our yard. 

    I am an avid gardener, primarily flowers. When the fatigue settled in, I didn’t have the energy to get out and maintain the yard and the flower beds. Now they are overgrown with weeds and vines. 

    It’s really quite depressing, but I had to let go and be okay with it. That was the only way for me to find some peace in it. 

    But all was not a lost cause. Last summer I planted one small bed in front of the house along with some pots on the front porch. This year, I expanded the planted area. 

    Being in front of the house I get to enjoy it whenever we go out to the car. 

    It’s only a fraction of the beds throughout our yards, but it’s a small victory. Once planted and mulched, it doesn’t require a lot of maintenance, just occasional watering. 

    It was one small area of my passions that I could keep up with even when the fatigue was bad; an act of defiance against long covid’s grip on my health and wellbeing. 

  • Planting Daisies

    Many days, long COVID limits me to short trips between the bed, kitchen, and bathroom. So today felt extraordinary…especially considering how I felt when the day started.

    I actually had energy today! 

    I know it may not seem like much, but I finally planted some of the daisies I started from seed this indoors this winter. It was my first time growing anything this way. 

    I also mulched the tomatoes and cucumbers. It was nice to make a dent in the mound of woodchips that have been on the driveway forever.

    By the time I finished mulching, my energy was becoming questionable. I’ve learned to stop sooner rather than later and pace myself.

    It just feels good to be functional. 

  • Man and Beast Reunite

    For years, the beast within him appeared silent, buried beneath survival, illness, and the slow erosion of possibility. But silence is not death, and hibernation is not disappearance.

    The beast went dormant to conserve energy. He hibernated while lessons unfolded that were never truly his to learn; lessons that needed to be lived before they could be understood.

    He remembers the life he came from — the excitement, the momentum, the feeling of limitless possibility. Part of him longs to return to that existence, but even in the cave, life continued its work, forcing the man to learn lessons the beast alone could never understand.

    The beast is raw, tender, sore from the trials and tribulations of daily existence – getting through, getting by. But he has learned enough not to leap to his feet too quickly. Moving too fast would only send him crashing back to the ground.

    Everything is culminating in the final test: the reunion of man and beast. Their knowledge, instincts, scars, and lived experience must now be integrated if they are to move forward together. The two reconnecting, reacquainting, testing and judging one another to understand where they now stand.

    The man has learned his lesson. This is not a world that can be navigated timidly. Shedding your truth for survival only leaves you battered and bruised.

    The beast has learned the lesson of age. He is no longer the young pup who conquered the world in his twenties. The world has changed. His body has changed. He cannot live like a twenty-year-old inside a forty-eight-year-old body.

    For now, the important task is the merging of the two back into one — integrating their strengths, instincts, wisdom, and power so they may coexist in a way that serves them both.

    The mind clears.
    The body awakens.
    The strength returns.

    Together, they roar.

  • Something That Felt Good

    Not everything has been heavy. 

    I’m in a long Covid treatment trial and I think I have the dose dialed in to the right amount. 

    Today, I was able to spend some time outdoors doing work in the yard. 

    My body felt like the pre-Covid me. I had energy. 

    I actually had to stop and pace myself so I didn’t do too much. 

    Normally, I’m so fatigued I can barely get out of bed. Trips to the bathroom and kitchen are about as much activity as I can handle. 

    In the activity of today I found hope that maybe I’m finally coming out of it. 

    And for now I’ll take what I can get. 

  • The Part of Me That Stops Everything

    There’s a part of me that shuts everything down the moment things start to move.

    When I try to move forward on something, I am a master at distracting myself. I’ll find anything to do to avoid doing the thing I intended to do. 

    It’s like a curtain in my mind closes over the task so I can’t see it. Everything else feels more important. 

    It’s usually triggered when it comes to writing or finances. 

    I’ll be about to take action in some sort of way; whether it be to write or job hunt. 

    The task at hand disappears from mind and then…ooh, shiny! 

    It keeps me stuck in place, repeating the same patterns. Deepening the rut I’m in. 

    I think it’s protecting me from doing the work and actually becoming the person I say I want to be. Because that part is convinced I’m not good enough. 

    I’m running out of time financially and it’s lit a fire under my ass to keep moving forward. 

  • Money Has Been Sitting There

    Money has been sitting in the background of everything lately. 

    It’s really been stressful. Thankfully, Dad lent me money otherwise I don’t know where I’d be. 

    The anxiety has been so bad at times that the black cloud took over my mind. 

    I go numb. It consumes my thinking and feels like a lead noose strung my neck. 

    It’s hard to feel optimistic some days. There’s so much I want to do but can’t because of the financial constraints. 

    I’m terrified that the long Covid will never loosen its grip and eventually the bottom will fall out. 

    For now, I’ve updated my resume and LinkedIn profile and examining my options. I’m doing the steps that I know I can take as the path unfolds before me. 

  • What Long Covid Has Done to Me

    Long Covid has changed my life in ways I didn’t expect. 

    The crippling fatigue has been the worst of it. There are stretches of days I spend in bed, too tired to do much of anything. 

    Thankfully, the brain fog isn’t as bad as it’s been in the past. 

    Some days I feel like a failure because I just can’t function like I did before. 

    I lost my job and my energy has been too inconsistent to honestly look for work. 

    I’ve missed out on so much of what I’ve wanted to do: working in my flower beds, going to my happy place, even doing chores around the house. 

    It’s really been hard on me, but I manage to keep my head above water. 

  • What Writing Used to Be for Me

    Writing hasn’t always been this hard for me. 

    Back when we had the store, I wrote like no one is reading. 

    It gave me a sense of freedom; that I could write without fear of what anyone would think. 

    Then an anonymous commenter challenged what I was writing as though it wasn’t worth my effort. 

    Soon after, we closed the store and I lost my safe space. 

    I felt like I lost my voice. 

    I’ve been wandering aimlessly since. 

    I know that my path is writing and so I’m posting, short and steady to start.