Jerry's House of Ass Beating

It started with The Hunger Games.

2010-2011 was a pretty rough time for me, mentally speaking. I spent a lot of it as an anxious wreck, and even though I was medicated, it was only working so well. For a while, it felt like literally anything could trigger a panic attack for me, but nothing was as sure-fire as depictions of violence. Didn't matter if they were fictional or real; if it involved people being hurt, I couldn't deal with it.

In early 2011, Mockingjay had been out for a couple months, and things were revving up for the first movie. Friends were recommending it to me, but the idea of a book/movie about a bunch of kids trying to kill each other turned my stomach.

Then I thought to myself, "I could just not."

It's a thought that probably shouldn't have felt like a revelation, but it did. I could just sit it out, let things pass me by, trade missing out on things I might enjoy for not having panic attacks.

Eventually, things changed in my life, and the panic attacks tapered off. I never went back to violence, though; my life was better without it, so I just decided to keep going. ( Read more... )

I go on and off with collecting things, but one of the things I love to collect is card decks. Card decks have a lot of attributes that I find excellent in a collectible- there's an endless variety, they're small, I can be satisfied with cheap ones, and I can play with them to my heart's content. I don't just find them pretty or useful, though prettiness and utility are nice. I like the physical sensation of holding a card, of feeling its surface, of weighing it in my hand. That, to me, is one of the most important things about a deck: the kind of sensation it will produce, and how.

There are a lot of decks I could show you, but I just moved, so everything I own is scattered to the winds. But I keep my tarot decks together and on hand, so let's stick with tarot, shall we? ( And away we go! )