The entrances are as much points of connection as they are points of attack. My current WIP and an on-going correspondence have me thinking about the vulnerability of the creative process, and, diagonally, love. I'm not particularly scared by writing. If anything, most would probably agree that I'd do well to tone it town from time to time, and save myself a lot of future trouble and embarassment. But to Hell with that. I suppose I spent most of my youth walled-off. I was never good at expressing my emotions. With few exceptions that were far between and all too inconsistent, I never had anybody I could open up to about my emotions. No siblings; I never had that kind of connection with my cousins; my parents fought a lot. At least, there was nobody I felt comfortable doing so with. I often felt misunderstood for this reason, and that created a feedback loop. At the end of the day I figured I could just ignore it all and it'd eventually go away. How wrong that was. But I didn't know any better. It made me an intense person who could get set-off and blow-up at events that were rightfully interpreted as inappropriate to the vast majority of others. It made all my friendships and any other relationships strenuous, and often tenuous. I pushed away everyone. Strictly in terms of emotional and social development, I might as well have been raised by wolves. I think it worked out serviceably when considering the context, because I am fortunate to be a relatively well functioning human being today, but it could've been better as much as it could've been worse. Even though in some respect it's dumb, that was broken just enough, for just long enough, when I fell for some girl I became friends with in late middle-school / early high-school. It's the only example I can recall of me falling in love with somebody. At least, whatever emotion I felt was truly wonderful and distinctly different from lust. Even if it was dumb love. Maybe, in some sense, that's the best kind. I returned to my previous state because it felt safe. Love was this powerful, surreal, moving force, but it was scary. I became painfully aware of my own short-comings and flaws. I beat myself up. Like I did before, I took my own problems out on other people. Specifically, her. (Verbally.) Long story short, I see how the vast majority of my issues were self-created and cascading. When I couldn't run away or escape from all these feelings and emotions in video games or hedonism, I'd shut-down. High-school wasn't the first time I'd experienced depression, but it was the first time I became aware of it. Before then I guess I must have thought how I was feeling was just normal, or maybe I'd been fooled by its false-sense of security. Note that this is long before any explicit thoughts of suicide started. That wasn't until shortly after graduating. The depression then, going back to middle-school and maybe even before, was not suicidal. That wasn't even something I could really conceptualize back then, perhaps with the sole exception being "I just want to disappear". But despite how young I was, I knew why I wished to disappear. It wasn't mysterious or deeply, terrifyingly existential. It was very surface-level and easy to identify, even for myself who was basically emotionally stunted. Depression was a means of hurting myself instead of others. Depression became a safe-haven that kept away responsibility. It was a crutch I could rely on at any time. I could be a perpetual victim and reap the benefits of being treated as such. Nobody was going to stop me except me. In fact, nobody could've stopped me if they tried. By the grace of God I became disgusted at myself and began making an effort to stop taking advantage of it. Nowadays I have a tendency to overcompensate. I refuse to bottle-up emotions. By doing so, I've painstakingly managed to reduce the frequency, duration, and intensity of depressive bouts. The drawback is being a very intense and grating individual. Working on these WIPs has forced me to relive and deeply reflect on my past experiences, because one WIP in particular is heavily inspired by some of my real life events. I'm taking deliberate strides to fictionalize it and still create something cohesive, but there are still major similarities, as to be expected. We are the stories we tell ourselves, as somebody masterfully put it, and I inadvertently started the process of doing that internally, even though I set-out to do something quite different. It was always easier to believe that I was a victim of some dark magic, of circumstance, bad luck, or an unknowable plan of God. But only easier in the sense that I didn't have to address the reality of my situations, or confront who I ultimately was versus who I wished I was or wanted to become. To this day, over the past 8 years or so I can recall a couple times where I've felt something akin to that first dumb love. But for whatever reason, that machinery hasn't lent itself too well to being reused. Really, I've come to understand that it can't be forced to work. The key thing about desire is whether or not it is within one's ability to control. I question how much the passions are within one's ability to "control". One must be careful not only about the stories of their *past* that they tell themselves, but also the stories they tell themselves about their future.
Fell asleep at 11PM. Woke at 4AM. Couldn't go back to bed. Thanks insomnia. In moments of reflection I see myself becoming more and more like my parents in some ways. Not in a deterministic sense, but I do think it happening in *some* fashion is inevitable. I'm starting to realize how my upbringing has greatly influenced me, and nowhere is this more clear than having to live with me. I have a very low tolerance for mess, which is seemingly the antithesis of every other person my age, ever. I would spend a lot of time in the rooms of other people growing up. What I mean by that, is at my cousin's house, we were always in my cousin's room playing video games. I was sort of allowed in there whenever I want, because I was trustworthy, raised right, and not a fucking idiot. Well, and we're family. Similarly, with other friends we would often hang-out in their own room, since that was where the gaming console would be. Every now and again their parents would come in and say, "Get the Hell out of here and go outside. It's nice out." How right they were. The point is, whereas the others often have their doors closed, I try to keep mine open whenever possible. That doesn't mean I don't give a shit; I'm still going to buy a door-knob with a lock on it. But that's honestly less for them and more for anybody they might have over. And also it would be clear when I was and wasn't home I think. I digress. I have a sticky-note on there that says if the door is open and I am in there, you can come in. Implying that if the door is open you can check to see if I'm in my room, if you want to talk to me or need my help with something. I've mentioned this before but I try to spend a good amount of time in the common area downstairs. R will be with his girlfriend most of the time, presumably in his room doing... whatever. I don't really know to be honest. M will often be doing the same, when not at his internship or playing guitar. B has moved his stuff in but will hardly be staying there at all during the summer it appears. My best bet for routine interaction looks like it will be A, who has an affinity for some friendly drinking, and just generally chilling out. Some of this may change with the surprise I will be bringing back with me. A new TV! (says in Price is Right announcer voice) About three times as much as they were willing to pay for one, but that's fine. If I'm going to buy something, I'm going to buy a nice something. It never made sense to me to buy what my dad would call a "turd-mobile" every six months that has all sorts of problems, when you can spend 5 times that amount for a car that should last you close to ten years if you take good care of it. Beggars can't be choosers I suppose. Anyway, this does mean that I need them to be particular about who they invite over and how many people. I'm not saying I worry about every other person being a thief or a conman. Really it's more a concern of how respectful they are. Most people I have found to be generally good, in that you can invite them over the first time and they won't rob you blind. But some people just aren't careful, and don't take care of things. Add alcohol into the equation and, well, you know. I'm not the only one with nice things in the apartment, after all. They also brought an entire record collection, a nice record player, etc. I'm all for having parties but I want the atmosphere to be pretty relaxed. I don't want more than, say, 15 people at one time, give or take one-two. Too many bodies, things get spilled, knocked over, broken. Accidents happen. Or, stupid shit happens. Either way, I want some chill parties. Not fucking ragers. The good news is that it appears they will feel the same way. They're not frat bros. I'll be interested to see who pitches in any money for the TV, how much, and how fast. Since this is a surprise and we didn't agree on a price, I'm not concerned with getting every penny by the ass-crack of dawn tomorrow, or anything. I'd be fine with just $100 to be honest, between the 3 of them. I just mean this as a general character test. I'm genuinely curious to see what happens. Maybe I'll get no money, in which case this is the last time I do this without getting the money *first*. But I should try and have a little more faith than that. TV courtesy of The Motherfucking Don himself. Cheers big fella'. I've got friends on capitol hill. Big friends. The friendliest friends. *sigh* Boy is it tough not being a super-lib in college. I'd rather be a permanent gaijin in Japan. I'm already hated for being a white male anyway, so it's not like it'd be any different. I'm not going to start sucking dick for social brownie points either. I'll have to kiss enough ass in my lifetime as it is. "I pick and destroy every target. Sometimes I don't think I'm an artist— Most of my ideas come out sounding fucking garbage."
Not asking for help on homework here. I always wait to get my final grade on an assignment before I share the draft with anybody here. That being said, think of this as me gathering my thoughts before I embark upon this assignment. My professor outlined a dozen or so topics that are off-limits because they've been overdone, assisted suicide being one of them. The topic I want to grapple with is suicide. So I just got through sending him an email discussing why I want to write a paper about the topic, and hopefully I'll convince him to let me at it. On my shelf I have two books on the subject of "acedia", one from a strictly theological perspective, the other from a heavily psychological one. In addition to those, I have Dr. Jordan B. Peterson's "12 Rules for Life" and Professor Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind". In effect, I want to approach the subject of suicide from a perspective that synthesizes the psychological and the theological, what I see as a possible alternative to psycho pharmaceuticals. I hope to also include sociocultural perspectives, as I believe they will help provide a key to understanding why this is a true epidemic. I think right now we're at the point where some part of us doesn't want to further investigate the problem because we won't like what we find. We'd rather leave a Schrodinger's bandaid on it and not unearth that the wound is worsening, infected. In other news, the corporation I work for offered us 30-days paid. I took it. I would've had to work today, but since Wednesday night, I've been feeling weird. Not totally bed ridden, but some persistent aches, sleeping a lot (which, coming from me, means something), and these weird shooting / stabbing pains in my rib areas. So far, those pains haven't been when I breathe... and they've been coming and going, not constant. I've been drinking a lot of water, making sure to eat. I had a headache for a couple days but so far it's completely gone today. I felt warm Thursday, but strangely I took my temperature with a thermometer at home several times, and it consistently showed I was just slightly under the norm. This morning my nose was not happy about something. I could barely breathe through it. Cleared up after an hour or so. Just occasional sneezes since then, and a little drainage, but I wonder if that's from dust and allergies. It's pretty dry, and I've been doing some light cleaning, like vacuuming. My mother is a nurse at a hospital in the part of the state where it's starting to hit the most, bless her soul, so it's possible I could get infected from her. I don't know, besides that I hung out with a couple friend's at their place, and they both work at a medical facility, but they just treat veins and do plastic surgery type stuff. They don't treat coronavirus patients. No other symptoms so far besides those. I remind myself I am a hypochondriac, so I've been staying away from coronavirus news, keeping off YouTube and Facebook. I've been taking it easy, although I did need to go to Home Depot to get a few pieces of pre-cut lumber, and I finally took all the books laying all over the floor and under my bed and got them onto the shelf downstairs. So one big mess of a project is now all tidied-up and done. That feels good.
If I were one of those young stars just drafted today into the NBA, would I be crying on my way up to the stage? During the minute-long interview after shaking hands with the commissioner? Would it feel like a dream come true, or would it still feel like a dream until I finally walked out onto the court of a professional basketball arena with thousands of fans watching? I've found that things usually don't hit me until it's too late. I've never been one to cry when it counts. Not a conscious decision on my part. I noticed that all of those kids had really strong connections with their parents. That's not an accident. For a while, my relationship with my parents was a struggle. It's still damaged, because I'm still damaged, and some of the things that caused it in the first place are still present. But with how things were in high-school, it's no wonder college felt like an option outside of consideration. Always feeling like I wasn't supported. For years, I'd bear the burden of two parents' secrets because I was asked to. Helping carry the baggage; venting, talking behind one another's backs, plans to divorce, guilt-tripping, fishing for sympathy. Trying to help crash-land a failing marriage. For years I blocked out the yelling matches, when I was too young to understand why they were wrong, but old enough to know that - somehow - they were. Even after I graduated high-school, I still remember mornings waking up to them having some sort of argument about me. So many things my father said about me that my conscious forgot, but you better fucking believe are being kept safe and sound by my unconscious. Repressed by complete accident. Biting, contemptuous, unfair, ignorant comments about me, and my mother defending me. If I'm lucky, this family, this household, will be like the ship that we first meet Jack Sparrow on. I, of course, am Jack. Nothing can undo all that happened. It can only be stopped from happening again. But it's all well beyond repair, and on the off-chance that I have kids (equivalent to getting the rarest drop from a World of Warcraft boss on the first run) I'm not playing this "go here one Christmas, go there the next" bullshit. Either be in the same room together, wherever it may be, or don't bother. You can come if you can act like adults for one evening. I don't care who did what anymore. I'm so done with playing that game. In some weird way, my going to college has brought about a ceasefire. I think I inadvertently forced them to work together. My father has been unusually supportive (at least financially) about something I'm trying to do. I'm helping myself in the ways that I can manage. I won't be bringing my gaming computer up there because I have absolutely no self-control or discipline. I will have my basic ass HP laptop for school-work and that. is. it. Well, and my phone too, but I barely even use that for texting and calling people. Hell, I probably use Google Maps more than anything else. Will I manage to quit nicotine? Yes, by simply telling my friends I'll be living with that I've quit, and not to offer me any and to scold me if I ask or if they see me relapse. Oh, and like my gaming computer, not bringing my "nic-stick" with me. I'm doing my best to try and get things situated. For having never done any of this before, I'd say I've done an alright job. My dad would sooner stare at the sun until it blinded him than ever say anything positive about something I'm doing. No, what he does is try and fill me with doubt or negativity, warnings and bad omens and threats, and then usually try to capitalize on having done that by making himself in control and doing things "his way". And my mother is so polar opposite to him that her positivity isn't even support. It's naivety. Still, I do appreciate what they are doing to help me. Assisting me with getting my things moved, giving me a financial safety net (in addition to straight-up paying for school). I try to say thank-you every time they do something to help me... luckily my problem isn't with meaning it, but simply remembering to do it since it wasn't something, uh, practiced, let's say. I appreciate that my mom is at least proud of me for deciding to go to school, and for finding a job along with that. I've come to accept though that my dad will not be the coach I wish I had. My mom will go on being my mom. I have to learn to help myself and be independent because they won't or can't do what other parents can. They don't have the answers anymore. They don't get involved anymore. My dad's planning his post-divorce bachelor Boomer retirement dream extrava-fucking-ganza or whatever, and my mom just works too damn much, and simply doesn't know anything. As I alluded to earlier, I get zero emotional support from my father, and only emotional support from my mother. I appreciate my friend Nick getting me out of a dark place and getting me to commit to college, even if he doesn't realize what an incredible kindness it was. I'm sure that if I ever said that to him, I'd say it so matter-of-factly and without so much as a hint of a tear in my eye. But sometimes if I'm alone at night and my mind won't stop thinking, or if I'm driving and the right song comes on and I happen to think about it, my eyes do tear up a little bit to remind me I'm not a psychopath. Just broken. Time to go scavenge around the house to see what alcohol can be found. Move from one addiction to the next and never stay in one long enough for it to become an ism.
I found out last week that Norm had passed. I rarely feel something when a celebrity dies, and I think that mainly has to do with how the media covers it and makes a spectacle of it. I think it also has to do with the fact that I don't have much of a connection. Maybe I don't watch their movies or listen to their music, for example. But Norm's comedy meant a lot to me. It was so different, and so funny. He seemed like a decent, down to earth guy, and I don't think I've ever heard a bad thing about him except when the PC crowd tried to come after him. So RIP Norm. You made me smile and laugh during the darkest of times.
Anything said from hereon is just my opinion; my personal feelings and experience. Not scientific research or objective fact. I'm going to word it as carefully and neutrally as I can. Get ready, because this will be a long one. This presidential election will probably be the first and the last that I vote in. Since I first went to high-school, but especially in 2016 when I graduated coinciding with the previous election, I've increasingly felt like I don't belong. Conversations with my peers on the internet or at school, with many friends or acquaintances in real life, act as routine reinforcement to this feeling. Since graduating, I've lost half of my friends. Some reading that I've done, including a basic level political science course, has taught me that politics isn't just a mere opinion like your favorite color or what food tastes good to you. Sit down and have a reasonable conversation with somebody you disagree with on a political issue, and you might dig deep enough to discover that you and this other person fundamentally disagree on a principle, or a value, buried beneath a heap of rubble and a lot of noise. You might also discover that some people are now defining words differently than you, and that their new definitions of these words have been deliberately crafted to suit their own view and arguments. This has happened to me too. We're not even using the same language anymore. This made the constant debates and arguments among my friend-group tedious, often talking past one another, with the conversation quickly fraying into multiple threads that couldn't be put back together; on one, we're disagreeing on what a certain term even means, on another we're disagreeing about what the "facts" are, and on yet another we're disagreeing on a principle or moral value. Hell, that's not even mentioning the other common thread: conflicting feelings. Then we can make feelings more philosophically complicated! Can feelings be wrong? What do I mean by "wrong"? The rabbit hole never stops. I've had enough. Ultimately the friend-group became very toxic. Every day I would wake to find more links from the various talking-head sites on the internet about the latest thing the president or another politician did, or the latest thing about the protests, riots; the headline of the latest dead cop right above or beneath the latest headline about a person killed by police. As I'm sure you're well aware, this only scratches the surface of the iceberg. We could talk about dozens— no, hundreds of other domestic issues for my country, not to mention issues around the world or the impending doom of climate change. Every day I would wake up to find my friends arguing back and forth. Basically, imagine the debate room here. Paragraphs upon paragraphs, and some name calling, and now and again multiple people ganging up on one person who can't hope to respond fast enough to defend themselves or make a case. And for what? What do we hope to accomplish by all this? I could maybe see the point if there were a crowd of truly undecided people. But this was not the case. Eventually it became a circle-jerk (for either team). Words were said, people left the group chat, a new group chat was made named something to the effect of "The non-racists" or something similarly petty. You get the idea. Those guys I no longer talk to. And among my friends who I am still close with, if not a little bit closer, figurative phrases such as "I don't know who they are anymore" have been spoken. Perhaps my ex-friends say the same. That is the jist of how close-to-home this ostracization has hit for me. I thought I knew these people but either I didn't, or they drastically changed to the point that our relationship had to be severed. Everything is becoming politicized to the point where it can hardly be escaped for a single day. Google says it knows what is best for you to see, TV has chosen commercials for you and you've got no say in the matter, ads on YouTube have been targeted for you like heat-seeking missiles... It never ends. And even among friends it has become an inevitability. The solution I came to was to do my best to opt-out, or otherwise tolerate it when I can't. I hardly watch TV anymore. I have a good ad-blocker on most of my devices. I can leave the room if the discussion is about something political. But really all that's happened is I've actually been distancing myself further and further away, leaving rooms more and more often, talking less and less to more and more people. I go to college orientation and feel like I don't belong because of the views and beliefs that are being expressed. But all the hundreds of my same-aged peers around me seem on board. I continue attending college and have to take these online socializing programs that are mandated by the administration, because I guess it wasn't enough to harp on these same views and beliefs at the three-day orientation weekend bonanza. Yet the only complaints on campus from my fellow students is that the administration isn't doing enough to force these ideas down my throat. I continue attending college and end up completely changing majors for a lot of these reasons; I did not like where the journalism industry was, or where it was heading. The director of the campus newspaper (which I worked for) says the ideological phrase to me, "We *ALWAYS* believe her." All I can think, is this place is crazy, and no journalist always believes anything. I changed majors to my one and only back-up, teaching English. I am very adamant with my new advisors that I want to minor in ESL because "I want to keep my options open". That was short-hand for saying "in case high-school English teaching has also been taken over by ideology". It becomes apparent to me that if you control the public education that ~90% of every new generation will attend, then you have a lot of control over what they think. This is social engineering. In my English course this semester, we're only examining literature through lenses that are in accordance to this aforementioned ideology. We are not learning about or utilizing a "Christian lens" or a "traditionalist lens" or a "conservative lens" or a "capitalist lens". Only, and exclusively the opposite. Begin to wonder if I'll be able to give future English students a balanced education. My roommates and I have a few people over, I don't know, maybe a month-and-a-half ago. One of them gets into a vehement disagreement about a hot-button issue with a couple of us. Has not been back over since despite many many opportunities. This person was treated as God's-child by the journalism program, and was specially selected to be the editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper, and post-graduation was assisted in landing a job at a major newspaper in a big city on the east side of the country. Starting to become apparent that "getting with the social engineering program" has its benefits. Watching the last debate the other night on the couch with one of my roommates and his girlfriend. Just like every other girl I've met at college, they are completely under the influence of this ideology. This isn't to say that she is a bad person, or that any of the others are bad people by merely being an advocate of this specific ideology. Not at all. In fact, her and I get along just fine. But the sheer idea of so much as questioning her on these specific beliefs is blasphemy, and elicits a most incredibly emotional, hostile reaction. She can speak her mind from the couch oh-so-freely, to the reveling of all! If only I could do the same. Starting to notice a trend that very beautiful girls like her get with the program to fit in socially. Like, if all these other people bought into it, clearly the product must be righteous. The other "option" would be social suicide to them, and that's not an option. This is assuming that they didn't already believe in this ideology for other reasons that aren't quite as superficial, or practical, for lack of better words. I think fitting in socially is a happy coincidence for many of them. Starting to feel that what I'm experiencing now are only the seeds, and that the future will only be worse. Starting to worry that how ostracized I feel now will only increase. How will it be, working for the rest of my life in a career where from the top-down I am forced to teach kids according to a system of social-engineering that I do not agree with? How will it be working in a career that is predominantly made-up of the same people that I know now? Not at all bad people, but people that I must always painfully maintain a specific distance from because of their beliefs about me, my skin color, or my gender. And so I'm already looking at other countries where this ideology has not yet sunk its teeth and claws into. The best option I can find is Japan. So, I'm taking four semesters of Japanese while at university so that maybe I can have a back-up plan of teaching English there. I'm not suggesting that Japan is a perfect country, or that this ideology doesn't exist there at all. And I'm sure in time, no doubt it will find its way there, and so too one of the few remaining eggs will be put into one basket. I happen to not agree with pretty much anything this new ideology has to offer. I do not find its arguments convincing. I find the way that it views me and other people to be abhorrent. Yet it is becoming more and more mainstream. It is increasingly considered to be virtuous. It will inevitably become the new normal because every generation is being taught to think these things. Social engineering ensures that those who disagree are encouraged to "get with the program", or else be called all sorts of -ists, be outcasted, be ignored. I'm not saying I like it, or that I enjoy it, or that it feels good. But my own beliefs and my own temperament do not allow me to sell-out myself and get with this program. I can't live like that. I've tried...
from the comment section of another blog post that I responded to. I felt that my response may have been a bit much. Like, "Did you forget to take your medicine?" much. Well, I've had my daily dose of alcohol and nicotine now. I'm going to try and make it a separate blog. Whoops, meant rant. I'm going into my "first" year of university. I tried starting a couple years ago at a community college. The reasons why I soon dropped all my classes were more personal and outside of the school environment, but I noticed much of the same thing you did. For one, I felt like I was right back in high-school again, which was dreadful. I didn't feel like I could really connect with anybody and I genuinely tried, even going so far as volunteering to be the "leader" of my table in my course on basic writing composition since nobody else wanted to. I thought the quality of teachers was going to be like you see in the movies -- oh captain my captain and all that -- but it was underwhelming. I was more engaged and interested in Dr. Kermit T. Froggerson's virtual lectures than actually sitting there in the dull classroom. Every damn campus I walk around that isn't Harvard or something might as well look like Chernobyl with a paint job. Square building here. Square building there. Brick. No sense of tradition, no sense of deep American culture (because America doesn't have any of those things). Just a weird, unimaginative factory. Like everywhere I go is the ghost of some pathetic, soulless vision of a chrome and glass "brighter future" from an awful propaganda film. It's criminal. I'm going to make an attempt again to make connections but I have a sinking feeling it's going to backfire. Things are way too left leaning nowadays *for me* and as a result I quickly stop getting along with people because they don't tolerate me. Funny how that works. (Well, I suppose I am quite intolerable, and toleration is way down on my personal list of virtues.) I'm knowingly going into the lion's den of the traveling circus that university campuses have become, with their "safe spaces" and other such nonsense, and numbingly stupid piss-poor takes on sexual conduct. A stark and terribly disappointing contrast to how Christopher Hitchens described his time at university. I'm pursuing journalism. I'd like to write for the university-run newspaper and/or magazine. What I would write, I don't know. Whether my wrong-think would be tolerated, I don't know. But if the only good thing about this country is it being a "melting pot" then bet your ass I'll have my shot at stirring it. You know, I think witches like melting pots too. They call them cauldrons. My roommate and high-school friend is married. I'm living with them and his brother off-campus. His wife told me that when she had done the leadership orientation that I am attending this Sunday, that one of the first things they did was introduce themselves and - sigh - tell everyone their preferred pronouns. I mean, you've got to be shitting me. I really didn't want to have to secretly write an expose on the stupid shit parents waste thousands of dollars on for four years at America's right-think centers, but it looks like I'll have to. I won't even be able to get through the first DAY without getting the spiel. If they ask me my pronouns, I'll tell them politely that they can take an educated guess and I'll correct them if I need to. I'm not playing along with this idiocy, no matter how well-intentioned. There are two biological genders and I am the one that I look like. Anything else is roleplaying, which is totally fine, but I'm not a part of your DND session. I should've guessed these leadership programs are to make everyone a neo-Comrade. Or do I make fun and pose as an other-kin, a fox? Should I stick one of those fake tails in my underwear and put on a tiara with fox ears? Call me Reynard? Want to see my collection of fox pictures? Isn't this one cute? And this one? I can't lie that it was cute when my ex from long-ago did that one night. It was about as welcoming of a surprise as the first time she called me daddy. Now THAT was a good trip. No shrooms required. The comedown still sucked though; still recovering from the hangover. Christ. Where's that JUUL... My nicotine pacifier. No no, take your hands off me-- I'll walk myself back to my padded room. You know doc', I really am looking forward to attending university. Being sincere: I know it's not all bad. Won't be all bad. I'm excited! After all, there must be a home for us marginalized weebs.
The Japanese concept was shared with me by another user on here. I'd heard of "ikigai" before but had completely forgotten about it; back then it hadn't made nearly as significant an impression on me as it did recently. In English it's basically "finding your purpose". Purpose is a lot more than just figuring out what it is that you want to do. It's bringing value to the world through doing what you love *and* what you're good at, and making a living while you're at it. It's the balance of four elements. I wrote a free post on Medium about it that you can check out here: I think it's a shame that the English language is still lacking in some respects. We only have one word for love, and we don't have such a clear concept for finding our purpose. I mean yeah, we can figure out how love is being used from context, but I think we'd benefit from actually defining different words and meanings, because words don't just impact how we communicate. They also fundamentally change the way in which we view and understand the world. That's why ideas are so powerful. And words represent ideas.
So quite a lot has happened since my last entry, but the foremost thing on my mind is my WIP "No Man's Land"; specifically acedia, anhedonia, avolition, general depression and anxiety, and the ways in which those all contrast, compare, and tie together into a terrible knot. Reading about these is a must. Related to this, on the one hand I know fighting depression is necessary, but like the Dark Ones from Metro 2033 there is knowledge and wisdom if we listen and pay attention. There is always a reason for depression, like the light behind a shadow. Note to self: for my WIP, think symbolism like campfires that light up the dark, but also attract and hide predators, and impair our vision so as to leave us vulnerable to danger that lurks out of sight. Every light casts a shadow, and when the shadow falls upon us we must take action if it will not pass on its own. As a reference to the Arago spot, Father Arago should be a character. Everything is ultimately defined comparatively. Light necessitates darkness. That aside, I updated my whiteboard. Added that I want to blog about my ventures into stoicism, and reading Willpower Doesn't Work by Benjamin Hardy, in the new "Brainstorming" space (previously poorly titled "Plans"). In blue dry-erase I wrote down 'QwerkyWriter S' and 'new watch'. These are color-coded as being on-hold because I'll need to save for both of them by working at the restaurant with my friend. However, first I need to save for getting new tires this fall. Going back to Willpower Doesn't Work, I like outsourcing things to my environment. This is actually something my EVO Planner recommends as well. You can learn more about Project EVO here. It's a planner that is organized around your personality, largely based on the ways you learn and function day-to-day. I'm an "Alchemist", and ignoring the corny name, the description was surprisingly accurate and specific to me. The daily quotes at the top of each page are also tailored to you. Outsourcing things to the environment is a great strategy for success because it lowers our mental processing load. Think RAM on a computer. We want all our cylinders and power focused towards whatever it is that we need to be doing in that moment. This is why I use KeyPass, which I need to backup on Google Drive. This is why I got the aforementioned whiteboard which I use in my room. This is why I leave the house and almost always go to Starbucks or a café to write. (I'd like to go to Tim Hortons more often but I prefer black tea to coffee.) This is why when I go to university this fall I will *not* be doing homework at home, but mainly at the library, or otherwise at a coffee shop / café. I want home to be a place where I can relax with my friend, his girlfriend, and his brother. I don't want those people to become distractions to me. I want my bedroom to be a place where I can read for enjoyment and relax, and sleep. No television (fortunately I don't have my own, and have no intentions of buying one), no staying up late doing essays or projects, and hopefully I can get my computer out of my room and in the living room. Reading Willpower Doesn't Work has taught me just how influenced we are by our environment, and how we can shape our environments to shape ourselves. This is why I'm only going over to a certain friend's house on Fridays and Saturdays, at least until I start working at that job and will need to stay over there more often to cut down my commute. This is why I won't install Facebook on my phone even though I'm using it again now, cleaned up the list of people and things I was following on Facebook, and going forward I'm using it with the express purpose of sharing my writing and building an online presence. The same can be said for Minds, Twitter, and Instagram. It's brand building now. Not an aimless, masturbatory competition and time waster. Thanks to Benjamin Hardy, I have a better understanding of what Dr. Jordan B. Peterson means when he says "Clean your room." Some people sneer at him in their false superiority, like atheists sneering at religion. Your environment, especially your room, not only significantly effects you but also acts as a reflection of yourself. Which comes first isn't as important as recognizing it's a feedback loop. It's the same advice he's giving when he talks about setting up rooms in a house, establishing their purposes and arranging the furniture accordingly, something you absolutely *must* do with whoever you're living with. The people living together need to be using the rooms for the same purposes and reasons or else there will be a lot of avoidable conflict. Get the television out of the bedroom. No eating in the bedroom. I myself need to buy an alarm clock so I can get my phone out of my bedroom. Minimize distractions, and don't get conflated and muddied together what you do in one place with what you do in another. Keep straight the mental processes, mental states, activities, and associated things that exist in separate environments. I need to use my laptop specifically for school when the time comes. That means I'll need a tablet of some kind and a QwerkyWriter S dedicated to my writing. No YouTube, no web surfing that isn't directly for writing. I even bought paperbacks of Webster's Dictionary and Oxford's Thesaurus to cut down on internet searches when reading and writing. This is no different than using this specific black-and-white comp. book for dreams and journaling, or using my EVO Planner as - you guessed it - a planner.
I'm applying to a university writing program. They average 1000 applications a year, including overseas applications, and accept 12 for poetry and 12 for fiction. You can apply to one or the other but not both; I'm applying for fiction. If you get in, you get to stay there on campus for three years while you attend the program, completely paid for. Am I expecting to get in? No. Do I think I have a reasonable chance? Yes. So I'm giving it more than the old college try. They're looking for those who write literary fiction. Which more or less just means that the writing has literary merit. In my opinion, The Lord of the Rings qualifies as having literary merit. Many might disagree. It's one of those "is rock better than rap?" or "what is art?" questions, in my opinion. Now it becomes a matter of whether or not my writing can be considered literary fiction. I can't say, but I do know that writing literary fiction is my goal. Those are the heights I would some day like to reach. Not that there's anything wrong with writing genre fiction, which I've done, and could do better. And not that there isn't overlap between genre and literary fiction. I believe I have the potential to write with literary merit, and that some of the ideas I have in my mind could become works of literary fiction. I should add that it doesn't say they're excluding genre writers. But it's clear they're going out of their way to find literary fiction writers. They said as much. Which, to my understanding, means writing that has relevance to social issues, politics, or is an exploration of the individual human condition. Of course, that's such a broad definition that you can put Marquis de Sade and Hemingway into the same category. I guess that by genre fiction they mean "paint by numbers" fiction - "fill in the blank" fiction - and literary fiction is whatever is outside of that. George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov and Notes from Underground, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Hosseini's The Kite Runner, Milton's Paradise Lost, Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Tolkien's The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis' Narnia... I think I've read enough literary fiction to have a modest understanding. Anyway, I hope that if I'm not accepted, it's on the grounds of merit. And if I am accepted, I hope it isn't an ideological indoctrination course. I hope it's actually a deep study of writing and story-telling. Different authors, different styles, themes, archetypes and structure, with a lot of workshopping. I would greatly benefit from such a learning opportunity. Having played soccer for 14 years of my life, from rec league, to travel, to high-school varsity, I know the importance and value of having a coach. Of having teammates, or otherwise peers, to grow with. I wish I appreciated it more at the time. Unfortunately, to the detriment of us all, it's increasingly difficult and rare to have an opportunity to apprentice yourself to the master of a craft. To have that level of attention. To have somebody who cares that greatly about you and cultivating your ability. Hell, not just your ability, but your character. I already know what you're going to say: read. That's cute, but go read all the soccer magazines you want, watch all the professional soccer games you want. Even go watch them in person. Go play the FIFA video games. You'll never be as good as me, who was fortunate enough to receive years of personal training by some of the most wonderful, talented, sacrificing individuals I've ever met. The unguided reading of novels and books on writing theory isn't enough if you want to be the best you can be.
I already knew what would happen and still I sat there by myself in theater 12, holding back tears. Once I walked out of AMC and crossed the parking-lot to my car, that's when I cried. Just like the previous four times. "Your Name" is an anime film about a guy and girl who switch bodies temporarily, and figuring out the meaning of that is what brings them together. There's more to it but I don't want to spoil anything. This fifth and final viewing was different though, because I finally asked myself "why". Both characters wonder the same thing, each at their own respective part during the story when they themselves are crying. Doesn't sound too inspirational yet but stay with me. All I could come up with then were the obvious reasons. I was crying because guys tend to always keep it bottled up until there's finally a moment they can let it out, alone. And what was I bottling up? Missing my ex-girlfriend. Loneliness. Anxiety. Fear. Regret. Resentment. In that order. After thinking about it a lot since then, I realized there was something else beneath the surface: I wasn't jaded anymore. The anesthesia was lifted, and even though that meant I felt every punch and cut that used to be numbed, now I remembered what it felt like to be alive too. I didn't believe in finding love anymore, and I still don't. This rebirth, however, provided me with a new purpose: to help others find it. Nothing in my life says I've ever known, or will ever know, love. I know lust. Desire. Hips that make you say wow and faces that still have a couple decades left before the expiration date. It's way too late for me; it wasn't meant to be; doomed from the start; destined to fall apart- there's many different ways I can put it. And so I quarantine myself. I'm not patient zero, but I also don't want blood on my hands. What I mean, is now I see it as my personal responsibility to keep others from going down this path. One of selfishness and perpetual discontent. Prevent others from making the same blunders I have, not by telling them what to do but by telling them what not to do. Or if they've fallen, to help them get back on their feet before the point of no return, by offering them a hand of forgiveness, an embrace of understanding, and words of advice. I've given up on myself but I won't give up on you, because I discovered the reason I cried was twofold. The first was feeling sorry for myself. The second was being happy for somebody else. Even if that somebody else was a fictitious character. I don't just hope love will find you. I have faith that it will because I've seen it happen to those around me, and because "Your Name" convinced me it's out there. Faith is what remains when you have all the reasons not to believe but you keep clinging onto that elusive something. It's for the times when there's no evidence to support your belief, or even evidence to the contrary. In any case, love didn't find me, so logic dictates it must have gone to somebody else. We're all a work in progress and I see a statue of David in you. Every chip taken out of you by the universe's chisel is nothing more than the bittersweet touch of a divine craftsman, shaping you into the best you can be. Yet even the gods among men, like Michelangelo, made mistakes when they were honing their craft. So I'll bear the embarrassment and be the example you can learn from. Armed with that experience, you'll realize your full potential. A masterpiece deserving of the love it will inevitably receive, rather than love it tried to take.
Happy New Year, everyone. Anxiety and depression have sometimes been awful. Still, I soldier on in the name of transience. I just finished a very difficult semester at uni with high marks; I think it's okay for me to reward myself for that. And the best way I can think of rewarding myself is by realizing I overworked myself. It can be tough to find a balance in life, but I definitely strayed too far to the right. Willpower got me through it, but I can tell I need time to recover. This coming semester I will be dialing it back. This year I hope to strike more of a balance. I haven't drank in 7 months and I intend to go on increasing that high-score. I had a couple relapses with nicotine but they didn't last. The urge can be most difficult to resist at the peak of stress, anxiety, depression. This makes sense because alcohol and nicotine were coping mechanisms for negative feelings. It takes a lot of time and patience to unlearn those habits... the memory will always be there, but it's possible to dismantle and unwire everything even though you'll always remember how to build it. That's the price you pay. My outlook on this coming year is... I actually don't have a strong one, for now. I think I do want to try erring more on the positive side, sure. And I do believe in hoping for the best in spite of setting myself up for disappointment. Vulnerability is a necessity, after all, or else you close yourself off from the world, from living. So maybe adopting a "let's wait and see, and then adapt as need be" type of approach to more things. I still suffer from some age old problems, but I am turning my attention to accepting my circumstances for what they are. I must be careful to not resign myself to them. I must be careful to distinguish between acceptance and resignation. But maybe there is a greater attitudinal component differentiating loneliness and being alone. Maybe there is a matter of being a willing participant as opposed to victim in my present circumstances. I could change the lack of romance in my life, but what if I don't really want to? Who says I should? Who insists that I be unhappy about that lack and why? I think in these past months that I've been away, focusing on school, I have bettered myself. I have had a lot of success, and naturally some failure that I have tried to learn from (after obligatory sulking, of course). I have learned that my body and mind are incredibly resilient, and I am blessed by God in this way. I only hope that by continuing to take better care of myself, this resiliency will continue. I have lots more to say. My longwindedness has not changed. However, I do not think I need to vomit everything out right this very moment. I've returned here mainly because I want come back to journaling. I like the way that the blog system here functions. Nobody has to read what I write, but sometimes people do, and sometimes people respond, and it's nice to have discussions. And I've found journaling to be very helpful for processing thoughts. Writing down thoughts can really help slow or stop spiraling. Glad to see the community here is still alive and well.
For months I've been hesitant to buy a new gaming rig. I think the jig is up. To the chagrin of humans, forests burn away their dead wood. And I've been feeling like burning something. Thoroughly eradicating something from my personal life. Deleting people I've never met in real life from my friend's list, people who I haven't played games with in over a year, people who I don't even remember how I met them or who they are, satiated the thirst for a bit. But it's back again demanding another sacrifice. Recently video games haven't been very fun. They've been a way to waste the time away because laying in bed actually doing nothing drives me up a wall. I usually just end up going to bed angry and frustrated, both that I didn't accomplish things I needed to actually do or arguably should've done, and for not doing well playing a game that doesn't matter. So it is that I'll be going to bed here shortly, somewhat pissed off at everything and anything and nothing at all, dreading an 8-hour-shift that begins in just 6 and a half hours. And by going to bed, I mean laying in bed and tossing and turning for an hour. I quit smoking/vaping over half a year ago. I haven't drank since Saint Patrick's Day. I guess I was under some self-induced illusion that my life would make some dramatic turn-around. Honestly, I wonder why I quit in the first place. For some imagined, potential pitfalls or something. The reality is that I'm still stuck with the same problems of my life being pretty mediocre, uneventful, sub-par, slightly below average, uninteresting, a bore, a chore. Exceptional at things that don't matter at all. I'm starting to remember that alcohol and nicotine made that reality tolerable. It's impossible to accept otherwise. The irony is I'm too unwell for the spotlight that part of me craves. Too inconsistent. A star one moment, then the next everybody's whispering if I just got lucky. Even I find myself whispering that to myself. Like starting a comedy set with a killer joke, then getting in your own head and bombing after that. Like playing an incredible opening song, and then getting booed off stage after that. Like having a 1-2-3 first inning and then getting pulled in the 2nd inning after walking four straight and then the next guy hits a grand slam on you. Like every story you write having a great hook, solid first page, and then sucking mega-ass from thereon. As if... as if suddenly you're not the same person anymore. The successful person left, and you have absolutely zero control over it. Like you're destined to fail. I feel like writing. But then I remember I suck, so then I don't. Too much work. But there's nothing else to do, because video games aren't fun anymore, because I suck at those too and they're completely unproductive. I'm too tired to read and I have too many things to read. And why would I read if I suck at writing? So I can be good at trivia when I go to the bar or something useless like that? Maybe I'll just watch anime, sleep, work, eat, watch anime, repeat. One begins to realize that success, to any degree, isn't worth it. It's unsustainable and it leads to inevitable failure. I feel like I'm changing inside but I really am not. That's how living with BPD is. As soon as you feel okay or that you are improving, you're not. You can't trust your own success, your own experience. You feel like a different person every day. You feel like completely different people throughout the day. One moment fairly positive, other times manic, the next completely dejected and jaded and done with life. Wearing a mask in this pandemic is nothing to me. I wear masks every day. One for when I'm at work. One when I'm with my roommates. One when I'm with my dad. One when I'm with other family. Yet another when I'm with friends. Another when I'm on here. And another when I'm in my classes. In the midst of all the masks, there is no me. With BPD, all you want is to be one thing, and one thing always. But you don't have a self-identity that isn't just a bunch of arbitrary meaningless bullshit, like a birthdate, or superficial characteristics that constitute appearance and a random name that people decided to give you. You get tired of the tumultuous volatility that makes you an exhausting pain to be around. You just want to be consistent every single day. Instead, every day is like a nightmare where your hands move contrary to your intent. You fail even though inside you're literally screaming, and crying, totally baffled as to why you can't do something right all of a sudden. The car crashes even though every muscle in your body, every synapse in your brain, is fighting against it. So you just want to give-up trying at all. You start to dissociate and feel like consciousness is a Hell in which you've been put into a body that moves all by itself in pre-scripted determinism. You have no control over your own success or failure. Rather, your ego lies to itself, telling itself that it brought about the success. The reality is that I'll never write a great novel. The reality is that I'll never be exceptional at anything except by complete and total luck. I'll only have a good family and children if that was decided. I have zero control over any outcome, because all the effort in the world would never get me what I want, if what I want was decided to be for thee but not for me. Everything is impossible except the very little which has been pre-ordained for you. All you have control over is whether you want to pretend like you're an agent of free-will, or just an observer along for the ride. If you start to believe the latter, then pray God made the movie of your life at least good enough to stay curious. As far as I'm concerned, I'm no different than a character in a story. The author decided what has happened, and what will happen. He simply let me think that I have influence. One begins identifying with the negativity, because it's more real, more *consistent* than anything else. You find yourself the anti-thesis of life, preferring a flatline to the ups-and-downs.
High-school is when my depression got really bad. Before classes, between classes, after classes, I almost always had my earbuds in. Listening to some stuff that I'm sure would make me cringe now. I kept my eyes to the desk, or the carpet, or the shiny hallway floors. Not everybody is as lucky as I was, I realize. I still had friends who always kept the door open for me. Most of my classmates were nice, or nice enough, or at least would leave you alone. Unlike some schools, I was fortunate to have some really great teachers. I'm also glad that my counselor and the principal and so many other people were as understanding as they were. I think if they hadn't been, I might've turned out a lot worse. But it's hard to say for sure. I can only remember so much, and memories are imperfect. But I remember being a bit out-of-touch with my own emotions when I was much younger. Maybe I wasn't socialized as well I should've been or something, I don't know. I was angry about something, that's for sure. And I think when I realized that I'd hurt other people—like tearing up a note that a girl wrote for me right in front of her because she liked me and I didn't like her, or turning down another girl a few years later in a pretty crass way—I must've turned all that inward. By the time I realized that I kind of just... fucking sucked as a person, it was too late to apologize to a lot of those people. I'd made up all kinds of lies about who I was because I didn't like my actual self or my life. I'm not quite sure where I got those ideas from. Maybe it was my parents fighting. Maybe it was the way that their frustration with each other would sometimes get taken out on me, not physically but verbally. I didn't have anybody to talk to about these things. I was too young to be able to understand it on my own yet. Instead, I figured that it'd all simply go away eventually. If I kept it bottled-up long enough, I'd forget. But forgetting isn't the same as going away. In middle-school I fell in love for the first time, if you can call it that. I call it that because I think it might be the only time I really fell for somebody and it had nothing to do with how they looked, but who they were. She had a radiant personality. I was too wrapped-up in myself to do anything about it. The chance came, and it went. But oh, in high-school I still tried. And failed. And embarrassed myself, and probably embarrassed her. I said some hateful things that I'll always regret, and that I apologized to her profusely about. Then eventually I did what I always do, and that's isolate myself. For the first time I really hated myself. While other people were having other kinds of firsts, I was learning what it felt like to not feel anything at all. I was having suicidal thoughts for the first time. Life isn't fair. It just is. It's taken me a long time to come to terms with the things I've done. It's tempting to say "it was just stupid stuff that happened when we were kids". I have adults say that kind of thing to me, and it doesn't make me feel any better. It doesn't seem to appreciate that, in reality, the stupid things we do or that happen to us when we are kids can significantly shape us. I don't think change is impossible, but the shame from the things I did to other people, and my completely toxic self-image, are why I struggle with looking people in the eye. I look down a lot; I don't mean sad, but literally. It took a lot of constant effort to change my posture to one that's more respectable, so at least I come across as shy and not as a total loser. No offense meant to anybody who feels like a total loser. I still feel like one every now and again. I merely put on appearances. A Silent Voice is a movie I needed when I was a freshman in high-school. In my senior year I think it's safe to say I'd hit rockbottom. At least, it was the worst I'd ever known, and it could only go up from there right? I was coming to terms with some things, and it didn't feel like I had to let my past define me. I went on isolating myself a lot, but I also played varsity soccer, a return to the sport that I'd quit a few years before that. That made me open up to people a little more; on occasion people would be talking about me, out of curiosity. I made a name for myself but even still, I kept being avoidant. Somehow my avoidant nature, my skipping classes, and some of my other antics had people thinking I was "cool" or that I was baked all the time. People actually thought me, the kid who can't take a puff of weed without having a panic attack, was the biggest class stoner. I got attention from girls who I believed would never give the real me the time of day. I got attention from the girls I'd wanted attention from, and yet there was something wrong: it only served to further ruin my outlook, and leave me with more misgivings about women and what they want. What they wanted is not only something that I wasn't, not only somebody that I couldn't be, but somebody I didn't want to be. I don't mean to make it sound like I got a lot of attention. Nobody asked me out in high-school. But girls made efforts to talk to me and inquired about who I was going to prom with and so on. They'd ask me to study and stuff like that. I didn't really get it, because I wasn't trying to attract them, and I didn't figure any of this out until years after I'd graduated. And it's possible that most of them just wanted to be friends. Whatever. It's safer solo. And by that time I'd embarrassed myself numerous times on social media when I'd go on a drunken bender, claiming that I identified as an anime girl on Instagram, loosely implying that I'd kill myself, etc. Sometime I wasn't even drunk, but not thinking-straight because emotionally and internally I was such a mess. The last I saw anybody from high-school except my closest friends, was at an unofficial reunion. I got shitfaced drunk, threw-up in the bathroom, and left without saying goodbye to anybody when it wasn't even midnight yet. I wished I'd had somebody to talk to all those years ago before I learned to live in sadness. I wished I'd known even just some of the things I know now; I wished I'd had a bit more perspective. I wished I wasn't a coward who ran from the bad things I did, instead of confronting them and asking for forgiveness and trying to be better. I wish somebody would have stopped me from emotionally and mentally lashing myself for more than half a decade. But, I've accepted that that's the way things went. They could've gone differently, but it can't be changed now. At least, maybe being able to put all this into words is a sign of making good progress. I think taking some gap years was the best decision I could've made before going to college, even though it was unintentional. In some ways turning that anger inward, beating myself down, tearing myself apart, it taught me some things, even though they may have been lessons I could've learned the easy way rather than the hard way. I think it made me nicer to people who feel the same things that I've felt so strongly, especially if they don't deserve them. I don't know if I deserved the things that happened to me, that I did to myself or not, but I can't change the past. The past still haunts me. Echoes of it, or sometimes face-to-face, but the past all the same. Since then I've tried to be a better person, and I've tried to not repeat the same mistakes that got me in such a terrible place to begin with. I've slowly figured out how to forgive myself, how to identify what was my fault and what wasn't, and that maybe I'm not quite as shitty of a person as I once believed. Emotional scars are like any other scar, in that they don't go away. There will always be reminders. Phantom pains. But, I do know that I don't have to let it define me. I'm not doomed to repeat the past, although habits can indeed be hard to change. And maybe I'll have to carry on with some of the damage, like how a person has to live to learn with a limp, or the loss of their hearing or something else. I've come to accept that struggling to meet the eyes of people is just that: a struggle that started somewhere back-when. It's something I can get better at, but it will take time.
"You should have been past this already." My dad said this in our last conversation a couple nights ago. He was right of course. I know all too well that these mental troubles I have, the ones I've talked about ad infinitum, are things that should've gotten resolved. Why they didn't, I do not know. The question of "why they didn't" isn't quite as important as figuring out how to solve them now. Better late than never. I do not have the energy (nor desire) to try and evaluate the accuracy of what was said. But it boiled down to: you are forcing yourself to do these things because there is a part of you that is resisting them. You are also not in a position in life where the circumstances simply and utterly demand these actions of you; that is to say, you have illusory options. Here the conversation went onto a separate track for a bit that was more about how kids are raised differently today than when my father was my age, and how some of these changes may be detrimental. Most of my generation, and most definitely me personally, were sheltered from the real adult world and how things actually work. You're allowed to live in an illusion for 20 years where everything will be paid for you by mommy and daddy, and when mommy and daddy are gone, the state will come in and be them for you. I was never really exposed to the realities of life until the day I stepped out of high-school. I mean, imagine being a North Korean defector, and North Korea has been your "reality" your entire life. You've been living in this Emerald City with these god like parents, and out of nowhere this is completely swept out from under you. The illusion you knew seems better than the real world, and you want to regress. Crawl back into bed and go to sleep. It seems, to me, only a natural response. Perhaps not the *only* natural response, but a. Nothing can be done about that now, except to wonder how I'd avoid putting my own kids through the same thing. Or to phrase it differently, how I might prepare them better. I wouldn't want to make their childhood miserable or otherwise totally steal it from them, but I don't want to set them up for this existential disappointment. To speak figuratively, I don't want to wait until they're 18, graduating high-school to realize on their own that Santa isn't real. Why do we raise kids this way? It seems so damaging. It was for me, anyway. Maybe I'm weak or defective in some way. The reason for the blog title is that this chapter has dragged on for long enough. Well, more like this sub-plot has gone on for long enough. I've been metaphorically thinking of ways to tie-it-up, to start the next thing. What is the next thing? And how to get there? Early morning ceiling fan thoughts. Because I don't want to be like this anymore. That's vague, but if you've ever had the thought in regards to yourself, then you should get it. Wherever it is that I'm going next—and I have some idea—I could not bring this writing dream with me. I had to let it die. I cannot bring these childhood video games with me. I will soon have to leave that behind. Hopefully the more I try to live in accordance with the way life is, the less I'll have to force myself to do things. I will simply do certain things because there is no other choice, and feelings will have nothing to do with it. Just practicality. Letting go makes much more sense now. I am figuring out what to let go of, and what to bring. "When your mother and I are gone, what will you do?" What will I do?