I went mini-golfing with some Madison, Wisconsin area furs today, at the Vietnese Golfland in Madison, off of Whitney Way and Schroeder Road. Miniature golf always drives me nuts; it requires a very precise use of your putter and your ball, and I am not known for precision.
One of the parts I very much didn't enjoy, however, are the young children and their handlers. Parents would not supervise or motivate their children enough, leading me to stand in line and wait for them to go, while they play on props and playground equipmebnt in the area instead of actually trying to hit the balls in the hole. Like, hurry up. The family in front of us also had their two year old running around... like, keep better track of her people! She is going to interfere with my shop. I feel as if the issue with children are not with the children themselves, but with being raised in an electronic generation with apathetic parents who just want them to shut up instead of becoming good people.
After miniature golf, I measured the back of my car. For context, I have four life-size cardboard cutouts of my characters in my bedroom, and I am moving from Fitchburg, Wisconsin, to Saint Paul, Minnesota in a couple of months. My father wants to help me move, which I appreciate. However, he doesn't know about any of the furry stuff I get up to, or about my very fragile and very fruity sexuality, so I have to actually think about who can see my stuff when I'm moving it. Unfortunately, they won't fit in my Ford Focus as is, so I will probably need to peel the paper off of cardboard, carefully roll up the paper, then mount the paper onto new cardboard at a later time.
My goal in these past two years is to stop acting like a different person with different hobbies around different groups of people. I find it way less stressful to manage things if I'm the exact same product with the exact same things going on in every setting. In furry circles? "Oh, Hobart is kind of stubborn but he's funny and kinda hot looking." At work? Same thing. In front of my grandmother? Same thing, but only to the extent to where it's not incest. My mother knows what I get up to now, and accepts me for who I am. My brother and sister have known for about two to four years now. My dad knows nothing. He's a good man, but he's a product of growing up in the nineteen seventies to a household with parents who were exactly eighteen years and nine months old when they had their first kid.
Funnily enough, I do think I'm at the point where I'm getting some recognition in furry circles besides those I've sat in for years. I'm still an unhinged NPC to a lot of people, but I'm a regular, they know who Hobart is when I post things nobody wants to look at, and haven't repelled me yet. Between this and growing a nice looking mullet, I feel more confident about myself than I have in a while. I'm unsure if I will ever want to commit to a romantic relationship, considering how much I like living alone, but more friends, and the ability to get in bed with people, are things I will never complain about.
I got a commission whose subject matter I will not discuss on this blog (until I inevitably give up and start posting about my sex life, probably next week), and they genuinely really liked Hobart as a character and it makes me feel good inside. I've been riding that high all week. People like my weird pansexual son for some reason, people like me, and I'm amazed at every single instance it happens. I'm a little bit unhinged, and I screw up sometimes, but I'm very present, and not that disliked. What a time to be alive.
Is it bad to gain a parasocial relationship with your inanimate objects? Am I talking too much to my cougar pool toy I paid $375 for, or the Hobart body pillow? I will grill myself for everyone to read next, on The Hobart Website Blog!