Category: Four Sides of Calise

Learn to Fly: My Thoughts on Depression, Hope, and Silliness, through Enjoying Foo Fighters

November 30, 2019 / / 4 Comments

When I started writing this post, I was really struggling with why this was worth talking about.  You may have clicked on this post because of the serious topics mentioned in the header, but that’s not why I started writing this.  Like most things in my life, this little project started as a result of me enjoying people to a silly degree.  There’s a lot of silly stuff in this post; there’s stick figures, there’s looking at how the Four Sides of Calise enjoy music (from my angsty gothic succubus side to my lollipop-glitter princess side), there’s a lot of me going googly over how much I love men (in and out of women’s clothing), there’s a lot of 90s/00s nostalgia, and me watching music/concert videos way too closely.

And I started writing all that silly, basically because it wouldn’t leave me alone; my passion rarely will.  But I was seriously just screwing around.  I pictured the brief stick figure comic at the end of this post and thought I’d just preface it by how much I’ve come to love this music lately.  Honestly I was just having fun talking.  But as I was trying to quick-finish this post over a weekend (pfffft, when am I going to learn that I suck at brevity?!?) I was just struggling on repeat with why the &@%$= writing this mattered.

Like seriously, why the zombie (we’re making that an expletive now, roll with it) should anyone care that someone named Calise likes certain types of rock music, or gets really excited about the facial expressions someone makes while playing the drums??  And even more than that, why would anyone want to read something blissfully dancing around in silliness while the world just sucks right now?

Most of the people I know are having a “hard year.”  I literally cannot enumerate the number of people I care about who have or are currently struggling with heavy bouts of depression or anxiety.  And the number of times this year alone I’ve heard phrases akin to “I thought we’d be together forever,” as I’ve seen relationships come to an abrupt and heart-wrenching end.  People are in serious stomach-plunging freefall right now.

So who am I to be happy?? Continue reading

Thirty

October 22, 2019 / / 2 Comments

So my birthday is July 26, 1989.  That means I’ve been 30 years old for three months, this week.  So forgive the belatedness of this post; that’s just how I roll apparently 😜.

My actual birthday didn’t go exactly as planned.  I had shyly asked my friends if they’d mind having a photoshoot for me, after Justin and I went to a sushi buffet.  They were really sweet and willing… and then on the actual day things kept coming up, including a need to go to the DMV and taking care of my skin.  So Justin and I ended up celebrating my birthday with late night overpriced sushi, right before the restaurant closed, and a walk in Downtown Chattanooga.  It was nice, but I was super disappointed.  Tears were shed, which I felt super stupid for.

But I realized that so often I feel like I need a special occasion to let myself be special.  So I felt like if my birthday had passed and gone, I’d lost my opportunity.  And that’s not cool.  Why as adults do we feel the need to reserve being special for when people and events give us permission??  That’s lame.

So instead, I waited until it was pretty outside, instead of 90+ Fahrenheit, like it was at the end of July, and asked my friends to take several hours out of a random Thursday, taking photos of me like the frickn’ covergirl I am 😉.  And they were awesome and did it and made me feel incredible. And I had nearly 2000 photos to go through, which is absolutely bonkers.

But I’ve never felt as pretty in photos as I felt in these ones, and that’s a really special feeling.  I’m a total goober, and they helped me feel like that’s cool and pretty and worth looking at 😊.

At the beginning of my actual birthday, 4am to be exact, I wrote up my feelings on turning 30, Four Sides of Calise style (if you’re not familiar, you might want to check out that intro so you know why four different parts of my mind are talking to myself).  Usually I’d make stick figure comics to go with it, but that takes forever, especially with this much dialogue.

Besides, now I have a photoshoot commemorating being 30-and-3-months old, to illustrate this post instead.  And I’ll caption each picture with which side is predominantly showing, because that’s fun, and I like pinpointing it in myself, and why not? Continue reading

Four Sides of Calise | Songs of Sadness

April 22, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Haven’t met the Four Sides of Calise yet?
Read the intro and get to know them here!

This 4SoC was written 2/11/19, while I was attempting to work through some feels.  This is usually how it goes, lol.


Callous: So… what’s going on?  It’s too quiet.
Ecee: Shhh!  We’re being sad.  Ellie needs time to reflect on everything.


Squeezy: Trying so hard not to bring up everything we need to do.
Ecee:  You think it’s being easy for me?!  I have so many things I could suggest we be anxious about right now!  But… I think we really need this. Continue reading

Four Sides of Calise – Meet the Girls

February 6, 2019 / / 16 Comments

First, let me premise this by saying that I in no way shape or form take credit for this as an original concept.  “Personality Sides” were introduced to me by a really good friend on a later aLBoP forum, as a self-exploration exercise which, no surprise to anyone, I really love doing, as I’m pretty obsessed with myself and why the crap I do what I do.  That’s embarrassing to admit, straight off, but if you don’t like me or exploring my internal processes, then you should probably leave the website with my name at the top of the page, because this site is going to be exactly what it says on the tin.  (Nothing like starting a blog and immediately telling people to leave; off to a great start, Calisey.)

When my friend shared the exercise, she credited Thomas Sanders and linked his first video on the topic.  Honestly, I’ve watched a lot more of his Vine compilations and not much of his longer YouTube stuff, but he seems like a sweet, earnest fellow, and I appreciate him coming up with this idea, because it’s helped me immensely since I tried it, sometime in early 2018 I think.  I could look when exactly, but I’m lazy right now.

But the short version and purpose of “Personality Sides,” is breaking yourself down into sides of who you are, kinda akin to Inside Out (which I’ve actually only seen like half of), as sorta the little committee that runs your brain lol, in order to explore more about who you are and what’s going on inside you.  Everyone’s sides will be different.  I do think it’s interesting though, that as we explored our different sides on that forum, most people seemed to find themselves with four sides.  Now I think there are cognitive and dichotomous patterns behind that, but that’s not really what I want to go into here. Continue reading

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