Fiction and Other Truths

Seven years since I posted an entry here.

Forty minutes until the end of 2020. I'm listening to the soundtrack of The Outer Wilds, which is a video game about experiencing the end of the world over and over again, on infinite loop, while you explore the universe in a ramshackle space ship and try to cobble together the answer to a mystery.

Just a quick cursory glance through my entries in 2013 was grim. I was so sick of Victoria back then, so upset with everything. Being 25 was probably the hardest age to reckon with. It was the first time I avoided having a birthday, because I so hated that I "missed the mark" with 24, that special magical age number when I was supposed to know everything and have my business together.

I'm thirty-two now, and next year I'll be thirty-three. I couldn't be happier to have made it here.

2020 was terrible, for everyone, everywhere, but thirty-two is officially my favourite age. I love being thirty-two, and I'd give a lot to just stay thirty-two for a little longer. I feel like I'm on the cusp where the signs of getting old are just beginning to unfurl, like spiderweb cracks in the skin. My eyes getting a little more tired. My body aching a little more when it's not looked after. The ability to stay up all night and play video games takes a clear toll, and I immediately know when I screw my body up with too much sugar.

But guess what, 10 year old me? Twenty-two years from now, you live on Galiano Island, where you dreamt of being. You have more video games than you could ever play in perhaps a lifetime, or half of one. You live next to--not with--your mom, and you get to see her every day if you want. You have a dog you never asked for, but she's the perfect companion, if only she could live a little longer. Just a bit.

If only everyone I know could live a bit longer.

Dad's spending Christmas and New Years in the hospital. Doctors say he's getting better. But that was the same situation in January. He's had a scary time, but he's getting better. It's a lot. And I'm terrified, but I can't let it dominate my life, can I? I can't be miserable. There's so much to feel grateful for. I got to talk to my new therapist. I got to spend time with my friends. I bought dinner for mom and watched internet videos with her. I'm doing okay. I'm going to be all right.

It's thirty minutes until 2021, and I'm blogging again. Because I promised this as a Christmas gift to Mom. I thought, hey, that bottle of Armagnac was expensive, but it was my sister's idea. What idea for a gift do I have that's unique?

Lately, the gifts my friends give each other are Steam codes for video games on that platform, and that's great. But not so great a gift idea for boomers. They don't quite know what to do with them. I should know, I tried.

But I've got this. I've got this ability to write, to come up with words that fit into a tiny white box. Maybe I'll come back to doing this--who knows? Maybe this is a change for the better. And maybe I'm getting a little bit braver. Is it going to be okay now? Is the world going to change for the better? Will I be able to make something I love, and that other people will think is cool? I hope so.

Might be nice to get paid for it, but you don't make art in the hopes of getting rich. At least the people I know who make art don't do it for that.

Twenty minutes to the end. Closer.

My playlist isn't on an iTunes application anymore. My friend has a family Spotify account I subscribe to, and I'm running music off that--all the "hits" I missed in 2020. Technically it's not giving that corporation money, right? Just like how I'm not giving money to CDProject Red, who made a broken game that I so desperately wanted to play in 2018, but someone gave me a gift copy of Cyberpunk 2077, so. Someday I should feel obligated to play it.

Some kind of electro track called "Anime Tiddies" popped onto my playlist the moment I started talking about Cyberpunk 2077. Serendipity... heh.

Maybe this will get easier. Writing in this format. By easier, I mean less awkward. I'm so self-aware of all of my writing foibles that I hate committing them again and again. But writing it all out like this was exercise for the mind, right? It felt good to just find a flow, eventually.

I'm running out of steam for this. Lots to talk about to bridge the gap between 2013 and 2020. Maybe I'll get there. For now, I think I've got to turn in before the dog gives me pitiful looks indicating it's time to go to bed.

Happy New Year, Mom. Hopefully you appreciate this post.

I'm taking steps to organize my life.

Also, I just came back from rollerblading on a pitch black, deserted road. I like this city at night - I get the roads all to myself.

Shame they're pretty worn roads. I think the ones in my old neighborhood were much nicer.

I'm beginning to organize my life. It's a strange feeling, recording checklists and calenders, setting reminders to play well in advance. It's a little bit like leaving notes out for a perpetual amnesiac... which I suppose could be the case for me.

I'm so stubborn and resistant to change, though. Have to keep fighting myself. This is a battle worth fighting. This is something I want, and I immediately feel better after getting reminders on things.

Maybe I'll start leaving my computer outside my bedroom and keeping my phone close by. That could be the first thing I look at. My to-do list, my agenda for the day... all that.

Pretty zonked out. Quench hunger then going to sleep.

Well. Meant to do an update at some point. I'm feeling better than I was.

Still having issues with phone. At one point it worked! I called Mom on it, it was great! Then I installed the update and it's locked up again. Damnit.

Gotta talk to my roommate and see if I somehow broke it.

I want to pause this day and come back to it later.

Through inaction, I made a decision that I feel okay about.

I just need to make sure it doesn't hurt me.

I'm talking to a counselor at school. Hopefully that'll turn out for the good.

Need to recognize my limits. I'm starting to see a pattern stretching back to 2008, and I'm eager to break it. Does mean that I need to start writing down goals, taking control of my life. Listening to the voices that encourage me to succeed.

For half a decade now, I've stumbled around with no direction. In this year, I've become envious of people who've already made it, jealous of the success of others. But I'm not like them. I need a bit more time to get where they were. Part of me still wants to become famous, but I don't need that much money... just enough to drink loose leaf tea when I like, put maple syrup on my pancakes, have a reservoir of purified water and a steady, powerful internet connection.

I went back to school to regain my confidence. And to an extent, I did. It served its purpose. Now I just need to get independent, become better at managing myself. Squash the evil voices in my mind.

I have a community that supports me, to an extent. And I need to support them back, be one of them for a while.

I have a gift of seeing things clearly, and articulating them well. I can be a voice for people who can't speak for themselves. The thought is exciting.

FYI, I'm shaving my head on April 3rd. For reasons.

I miss the goddamn cord to my goddamn headphones. I need music. I need it.

It costs $15 plus shipping, or plus the ferry ticket to Vancouver to get to the Bose store. Ugh.

I hate how coffee makes me feel. It's energy without enthusiasm. It's tiredness while moving. It makes me feel like an animated corpse.

And I finally have started missing my bike. My goddamn bike.

It was entirely my fault that I lost it. I just didn't appreciate it anymore. Left it in bizarre, stupid places for over a week, and the one time I did, I made it so entirely easy. Didn't even lock it properly. It was my own fault I lost it. I wanted to regret losing it so I'd appreciate it more, as stupid as it sounds.

Because biking is an awful, strenuous activity. It's forward, repetitive motion with your arms and legs locked into a constraining position, moving ever forward. Rollerblading's so much more fun, so much more active. But it's also not as convenient a way of getting around, I know this. Particularly after I bent one of the wheels and lost one of the screws.

But I do miss my bike. Anything for another day away from public transportation. Anything away from watching all the fucking, goddamn buses drive away ahead of schedule, not even stopping for two seconds to let me climb on. I can't stand buses anymore, I can't. Stand. Buses. Anymore. I can't do it. I need to not do it for a while.

I hate their noises, I hate the tight, constrained spaces, I hate bumping my head on the ceiling of the double decker's top floor. I hate the drivers, who I can't feel anger for because they're just doing their goddamn job. I hate the budget cuts, the schedule changes, the phasing out of paper-bound bus schedules, the lack of adherence to any schedule in the first place. I hate it all. I can't stand it.

I wish I could feel enthusiasm, any kind of enthusiasm at all for getting to class on time, but I don't, I don't, I don't want to do this anymore. I need to do something different.

I don't think I'm going to qualify for second year. I'm just going to let myself give in, stop worrying about whether I'm going to do it or not. Just get through. Just pass the course, at least, at least. Then do it another time, when I'm more confident.

If my goal is to stay alive, to stay happy, to do what I'd like to do, then not doing school for a while is a step in the right direction. I can come back to it when it's too difficult.

I don't want anyone worrying about me.

That's why I don't like asking for help. Even if I need it. People who know me, know that.

On my worst days, I try to protect other people from myself. I tell them that things are okay. I convince myself.

But I'm kidding, really. Telling lies, which I hate. It just twists things when I do. And I know: Things won't be okay until I start making goals for myself again. Things won't be okay until I stop hiding behind excuses and make myself into someone who wants to be here.

I just didn't want anyone to be disappointed, or worried about me. There's still time to fix things, isn't there? Isn't there still time? Always waiting till the deadline to get my act together, and when there's no deadline, I fall behind.

My mind has desperately been looking for role models, something to justify this supreme lack of drive, this lack of self. I look into the stories of younger days, looking into self-styled heroes and protagonists in their own story. It's okay, they were slackers too, they were confused and they couldn't find jobs and their friends worried about them too.

Some people can laugh about the times when they make earnest promises to themselves and then break them on the next day. Not me. Nope, I can't let myself do that, I have to make myself suffer for it. I have to guilt myself so hard that I run away again. Goddamnit, when am I going to break the cycle?

Matt invited me to see the rehearsal of the play, the rehearsal with the script I wrote. The script I meant to modify and send to him, and I can't get my act together enough to do that. Twenty minutes before they were going to put it on, I was cooking breakfast for myself and looking at the clock.

There's a games summit thing at my university, games without frontiers, talks I want to be in on, and I haven't gotten dressed for the day. What is wrong with me? Why can't I see beyond my own self-indulgences?

Why am I so stubborn to the voice that tells me to wake up?

All I've got are dreams that come and go. All I have are goals that I brush up against, as they reoccur, as I want them. Wanting is all I do these days. I can't commit. I go for what's easy. I stay oblivious. And people will abandon me for it, sooner or later. I won't be anything to them but a sad reminder.

Need to stop with this self-pity and stop writing and get up and at least get one thing done. Need to go to the post office and send my nephew a present, at the least, at the least. Promise myself that I'll look over my notes and revise the stories I want to tell, that I need to tell. Plan my own tiny little breakdown as I find I can't commit to my own goals.

I should get moving. Get moving. Get, get, moving.

I count the minutes down. I watch them go by, trying in vain to understand how it is that everything depends so much on timing. It means my shame if I miss it. It means I won't have time to clean up. It means that I can't sleep in. Have to get moving, have to go.

Have to write, even if it's about nothing, even if it's circular repetition, because sooner or later I get off the roller coaster and go somewhere else, some other ride.

I started to 'get' David Bowie while on a bus on the way to the ferry. Started listening to Ground Control to Major Tom as I was trying to calm down, because I was on the journey straight to a ferry terminal, and had already known that there was no way I'd make it, short of a miracle.

I'm on the bus now on the way to school. If there's any better metaphor for not having agency of my own life, I can't think of one. I climb on and it takes me in a direction, towards a class, towards a degree. It's mostly unknowns to me. I can't even imagine what's on the other side. All I desperately want is there to be no more monotomy. But that's not a realistic view.

Trying to read my entries from ten years ago, on my LJ account. Painful. Yet how far have I evolved, beyond those awful quizzes ("YOU'RE A HERBIVORE FURRY") and the "yay for ______"?

"Planet Earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do..."

I'm starting to see the blanks in the parts of my writing where I backspaced over the words I meant to say.

Some music is for when you're vulnerable. Other music is for when you need armour. Wonder how many people have made that distinction, in what forms?

Times like this I wish I was a tragic lover. Even if that were a truth, it'd be a little too depressing to play a solo act.

Times like this when I wish I could express language in some other form. Music or another language. The words are becoming stale.

Melancholia is draining the magic from me.

69%.

Everyone needs to stop telling me I'm brilliant.

I really, really need to write about something, or talk with someone, but I don't have anything in particular to say. Most people up at this hour are waking up or doing their own thing or there's a little snippet of concern between us that I don't feel like broaching.

I made a list. A list of all the things I have to do. Not sure how many pages it amounts to, but it's pretty large. Let's try the three things ... thing again. I have to try.

I want to get away from talking about my life.

Can't I just be happy once in a while? Even if I'm wasting my life, fucking up university, neglecting my real life friends that I know in real life because the friends I talk to are not friends I really know, and almost but not quite getting to the point where I'm churning out semi-regular prose pieces, I just want to enjoy the trivial things that I'm a part of, even if it's part of a familiar, samey cycle. I want to enjoy the things that make me happy, even if there's so many things that go missing from my head.

I always have to fight myself to do anything I don't want to do, or the things I know are important. I have to fight the urge to not want to care. I, aye, iy.

Doing it again.

Contemporary fiction bores me to fucking tears. I miss the days where I read something that enthralled me. I want surreal, strange, beautiful, terrifying. I want characters that pierce the veil of a mundane world and uncover a dangerous, compelling universe. Maybe that's why I'm enjoying the things I'm doing so much - I'm playing through fairytales and collecting research material. I'm learning how to tell a fairytale through characters.

I tell myself it's all useful, when too much of it's just entertainment. But still, I'm going to have to sacrifice something I enjoy to the cult of professional career-making. I'm going to have to learn how to fucking survive in a culture that demands I monetize the things I love doing.

And I have to decide how in hell I can be useful to someone, or something, for more than minimum wage.

The problem is that I hate competition. I hate the idea of competition. Sell a job to me as a race and I'll bow out before the gun goes off. I'd much rather die, penniless, in a ditch than have to fight myself, fight myself and then tell you how much I'm worth as a human being.

I I ay ay ay ay ay--shut UP.