Ahem.

Ok, so.  It has been a long time since I have been doing any writing with any kind of regularity, and as is often the case the long absence has been gnawing at over this time until nublike I am first to set fingers to keyboard and start pouring out ideas into the silent void of pixelated code, some attempt and literary communication to scratch that itch, that insistent drumbeat telling me to create verbally that for some forsaken reason I always end up deigning to slough off like a weight on my back or walk off like a cramp in my leg.  For some reason the protracted activity of sitting and thinking and typing and writing and putting thoughts into sentences and building them into paragraphs is something that invariably ends up bugging me.  Maybe my chair isn't comfortable enough or maybe I just can't sit still or maybe I am just lazy and undriven.  I can't think of anyway to trick my mind into doing it on a more regular basis.  I seem to be stuck in this cycle of typing typing typing for a week or two and then getting tired of it and going off and doing something like watching television or maybe reading a book, or just fucking around on the internet surfing tumblrs for hours and hours and hours or refreshing the same criticism websites over and over and over hoping that finally this time this one will have some new content for me to lie back and read on my laptop and then I will have that to do instead of writing and yet each and every time all the time that I am doing all of that I am thinking, you should be writing, you should be doing something constructive, this is not constructive, this is not getting you where you want to go in your life.  You don't get points for idling.  Even now a part of me, having written all this in one sitting is want to get, up walk around, pace for pacing's sake, maybe open up the firefox browser in the lower left hand corner and see, in one of those websites, any one of them, has maybe update one little thing, one new photo that they are reblogging from somewhere else on the internet.  A part of me, becoming so aware of this tendency, this seeming procrastination, has given up on ever making any progress on this writing thing, has, in fact, accepted that it is not to be, that writing is not my fate.  And, in fact, this part has been liberating.  A writer writes, after all, and keeps writing and writes every day.  I do not.  I am not a writer.  So if I am not a writer, what am I?  I just freed up the rest of my life!  What do I want to do with it?  Focus on a career?  Well, in truth, I have made some recent headway with that, enough to give me some momentary contentment in my forward momentum through time.  Start a family?  Well, that ties into a host of insecurities and eccentricities that I haven't even begun to grapple with, and in some small way do not want to, though I know my ignoring of them is stunting my development as a fully-fledged, fully-engaged person.  I think somewhat I am waiting to deal with the second thing until I get a little farther ahead in the first thing, build up enough self-confidence to feel I can move ahead with it.  But really, even counting those two things, what do I want to spend time doing?  What do I want to do, right now, that I actually find fulfilling?  And the most obvious direct answer to this, is something artistic.  And I basically have two avenues for accomplishing this, drumming and writing.  Well, three, but the third is drawing and that I find more aggravating and am poorer at than the other two.  I don't have a working situation to play the drums regularly, and don't seem to be working too hard to be find one, and have just been playing hand drums on my legs and desktops all the time.  This is a momentary respite, but is doesn't actually feel like accomplishment, and I think I crave that sense of accomplishment, the production of something.  Unfortunately,  accomplishing something more with drumming would involve forming a band, proactively hunting for one, and that involves a lot of social work and interaction and ringleading that I do note feel up to as someone who is still completely out in lunch on melodic music theory, or I could glom onto a band with a bunch of strangers, and I don't feel like setting up my kit in some stranger's den.   So that leaves writing.  Obviously I am a nascent and a neophyte at that activity, still developing, still unpolished, and unpublished, but I do get a little tinge of satisfaction at each short piece I finish and published on the internet, throwing out into the world like spare change.  And every little piece I do create gets me closer to some goal, makes me teach myself new things and come to innately understand more aspects of narrative structure and dramatic weights and characterization and imbuing theme and utilizing language, and even if I am not destined to be a Writer in the occupation sense, that doesn't mean I can't you know write, and thus be a writer, in the general sense.   It's ok if that is not my identity, and I think in some way holding on to that particular dream is holding me back from actually reaching it, at least, for me, because of the odd backwards-forwards way my mind is wired where my hopes become work becomes stress becomes something to flee from.  It's only when I stop wanting it, when it stops being a goal, that it becomes something that I am comfortable in doing, when I realize that if there some egotistical part of myself that thinks I deserve it, that that part is wrong, for I don't deserve it, there are many many people more deserving of that something, people who actually, you know, write, and enjoy it and do it and keep doing it whether it brings them something or not, and that the fact that I beat myself up over whether a small (and I think it might actually be quite small) part of myself deserves something is a sign of my own further neuroses, after all, some people think they deserve it and use that impetus to work harder until they do really deserve it, it is only when I realize all that they I can nevermind the bollocks and just get down and get back to the fun and the the creativity, the creation, of writing.  Of taking thoughts in my head that are floating around and setting them down in cold concrete prose.  When I can get down to doing that I'll be happy.  

dead weather

Not any writing lately.  I hit one of those bleak periods, where everything seems hard, the future is rearing up to scowl at me, and I am seriously doubting my abilities, or if I even have any, after reading or hearing something somewhere.  So basically, the emotional weather converged on a storm. 

But, not that bad a storm.  I feel like I am weathering it.  I think that, having gotten hit like this so many times before, I am starting to build up a defense to the feelings, and am able to just, ignore them, or rationalize them, or something.  Put them in context.  but I'm not there, all the way, yet.

Fever breaking

Over three thousand words today. Over 1800 of them were me just writing out character backstory, but in a way that I may or may not use as part of the body of the text at some point in the future, and over 1300 was new words for the actual body of the text which, I think in subtle ways, changes the tone of the story, but in a necessary way. It makes it less ambiguous, and removes any sense of purposely withheld drama (which I always find is more cliched and irritating than page-turning). Also requires future edits to the rest of the text to accommodate the earlier dispensation of certain pieces of information, as well as the change in tone. One of the things I realized, after reviewing the text, that the story isn't really about withholding everything from the reader, it is about relating the world that Ermys sees in front of him, but with a bare minimum of commentary coming from him, since he is not a very commentative guy. Thus, lots of details can be left out, because the aren't how Emrys would experience the world, and many can be left back in, because they are. I kind of want to go on, because I feel like the world is very present in my mind right now, but I eyes hurt from staring at the screen, and I am exhausted, so I am cashing in my creative chips for the night. I've been writing for something like three, maybe four hours now.

Earlier in the night, I had not really written anything all day, and I was feeling restless, and unhappy, and I knew what the next thing I had to write was. So I just thought, well, then write it. Stop making yourself feel bad. And I did. Now I feel pretty good. I got through a really bad spell, and am back in the game. a whole bunch of edits and ideas are piling themselves up in me right now, and I can't wait.

Realize you want to do something, then do it, and feel better. Huh. Funny how that works.

Why haven't I thought of that before?

And now for something much less depressing

Anyways, writing.

Not much on that front today either. Well, OK, not totally true. I resolved some issues of plot that needed to be resolved long ago, and also did some crucial editing. I am on track to return to the story, and make it itself. But then, my word count from probably like, less than 50. But a crucial set of fifty words! Lots of note-taking behind it, and reading and research. Oh, and pacing. Lots of pacing. I also went shopping and did the dishes, and that always feels like accomplishment.

One thing in general I feel is that the writing is slowly but surely becoming easier and more ingrained in my habits and desires. I really am, over a long period now, becoming more and more comfortable and effortless in the laying down of words and the organizing of ideas and the creation of plot. I consider my writing and am more cavalier in discarding or rearranging my ideas. I still have a ways to go, but it is coming. I even almost like editing now! That's a big thing for me!

The body of an American

This song has been helping get through this weeks doldrums. For some reason, it just soothes me.

In other news, I am finally learning how to whistle. At twenty-six, I know! So early of me! I just figured out how to do the Bogart on Bacall today. Two days ago I had gotten the "call the dog/children back in" down. Hopefully I'll be on melodies by some time next week.

Both whistling and the song are things I became interested in through the Wire, by the way. Funny that I haven't actually finished the last season yet, though I suppose that's in part because I don't want it to end.

...And I feel bad again.

So, it's back to drinking.

...And now I feel fine.

Well, I did start drinking. And stopped reading about politics. Still, I think I am having one of my bi-polar days.

No Dreams, No Future

It's Martin Luther King Day today. I have it off thanks to a schedule shift. I should be writing, or reading a book. Instead I stare the my laptop while sitting on my bed and click over and over through websites that aren't going to update so often on Martin Luther King Day because this fucking election on Massachusetts has me completely on edge.

The Democrats, man, the fucking Democrats. They fuck everything up.

Croakley was up by fifteen goddamn points. Fifteen points! And she pissed in all away in a stream of entitlement and lazy campaigning. And now some asshole Republican that no one can decide if he is a rightwing fruitcake or a "moderate republican" but who will definitely uphold a filibuster against, healthcare which, because the fucking Democrats wanted to be so nice to the Republicans who have given nothing but bad faith from the start, still hasn't fucking passed!

This should have been done by now! They should have been on to other things! But now, it looks like the healthcare might fall apart because the Democrats managed to fuck up and lose Ted Kennedy's seat!

I hate this. I hate Coakley, who can't run a fucking campaign. I hate the party apparatchiks who can't run a fucking party, and turn everything into a party machine putting these useless empty suit types up that nobody likes or is inspired by. I hate the fact this this band of cretins and losers is the only thing holding this country back from the Republican Death Cult that will surely destroy us. I hate the liberals out there, the influential ones and their followers, who don't see this, and in some act of holier than thou pique and display of false integrity and independence spend all their time shitting on the Obama Administration (about the only bastion of sane, responsible leadership and organization in the entire party), thus destroying his base of support, not just among themselves, but among independents as well, making situations like this special election fuckup possible. I hate independents, for not seeing how they are being manipulated by dishonest hacks into doing things that will hurt the country, thinking some kind of protest vote will somehow make things better instead of making it harder to get done the things that they want done and are angry are not getting done.

And of course most of all I hate the Republicans. Every last registered one of them. They have destroyed my country with their stupidity, hate, lies, and greed. They are all, every last motherfucking one of them, unAmerican, as unAmerican as they think I am, because everything they do, every action they take, every political cause they champion, hurts us. Hurts me, hurts them (unless they are rich, and those ones need to be fucking shot), hurts all the other Americans, and hurts everybody else in the world. I have nothing for them but contempt. Pure, leaden contempt, and I long for the day when they are gone and destroyed and their every value and ideal is has been crushed and cast aside by the wheels of history.

Today is not a Christian day for me. It is not a loving one. Some days, I am just so fucking tired of you people. You are just so goddamn stupid.

Old stuff

Well, the last few hours have been rather happy. Frustrated with the writing I have been working on, unsure of what content to include and unsure of the fineness of my sentences, I went back and read some old writings, just to remind myself of the continuity of the world I am working in, and found them to be...quite good! Not even "not bad," but quite good! In fact, one piece in particular that I was expecting to be clumsy and hamfisted, I found, minus a few easily corrected missteps and spelling errors, to actually be about as well-written as I could have hoped or wanted. It did everything I had been hoping for it to do, and that is something rare to say about your own writing, so don't think I am just trying to blow smoke up my own ass. I was legitimately surprised at how good it was.

Reading those old bits makes me feel quite positive about my abilities right now. It's always nice to get a bit of a pick me up.

Nag

I have been surfing the internet tonight, and at some point I read something that made me feel kind of down. But I can't remember what it was now. So I can't decide whether to feel kind of down right now or not. On the one hand, I had some reason to feel down, so that probably means I should be down. But what's the point of being miserable if you don't know why you are miserable?

It's confusing.

more deep thoughts, in quick succession

For some reason, I find it hard to write when my apartment is dirty. My apartment has been dirty recently, hence, little/no writing. Also, the general state of the country has me bummed. This fucking healthcare bill, man. It's like waiting to exhale, or something. This should have been done it August, and now it fucking December! Senators man. I hate them!

Anyways, I started cleaning up my apartment, lately. It's a several day affair. Even did some loads of laundry tonight, and you know I only do that once a blue moon. I read some more recently. That's good. I find it hard to be interested in writing when I haven't read recently. The whole enterprise seems beside the point somehow. Obsolete.

Identity

Have you ever just stared into a mirror, and looked at yourself? An almost sublime sense of selfhood emerges. A realization that you are really you, bound to this body, and to no one else. It is both incredibly limiting, and incredibly freeing, at the same time. Truly, truly sublime. I couldn't help but smile as I did it. I seemed so... unfamiliar... as I looked at myself. Yet who could I be, but the person staring back?

...

Consciousness, the existence of such, has, I think, always been the main source of my inspiration. I am just truly fascinated by what it is, what it means. Everything I have been trying to unwrap has boiled down to this very specific question. What does it mean to experience the world subjectively?

...

I have been thinking about Father, off and on, lately. He always comes back, it seems in waves, ebbing and flowing. More intense and more intense, then less so. Well, lately, Raymond Frederick Raven has played heavily upon my mind. I have been thinking about the normal person, how their conception of a distant parent differs so drastically from mine. How they see their absentee parent as at fault in some way. That is not the case for me. It is strange. I feel that I am constantly inundated with people whose stories of parental disconnect are so much worse than mine, yet so much better. Everyone is still alive. Sometimes, it feels exceedingly, fatalistically cruel, that I should unabashedly love my father so much, and yet be denied him. Everyone else seems so unaware how lucky they are, yet I can't help but feel that, given their blindness, that it is I who should be grateful, for I knew, Before, just how lucky I was, to have both of them. And though I feel sometimes, a resentment , born of my own stagnation, I know, KNOW, that without them, specifically, I would have been dead long ago.

Thank you.

Faster, stronger

I have written for the last three days. I wrote about 800 words on Thursday, around 700 last night, and just these last 45 minutes I wrote about 450. I am not worried too much about word count, just that I am doing it, but the numbers are a nice way of thinking about progress. One thing I have found, is that as I write more frequently, the entire process becomes less precious. It is easier to dismiss what I have written as junk, and start over. So usually at any stopping point I reach I have practically on my second draft, because I have done so much editing. In fact, After finishing last nights work, I realized that a significant amount of it was not really necessary, and depending on how the rest goes, I might throw out everything from that session. And I didn't feel bad about it! It was just that I had to write it that way, in order to find the way that I actually wanted to write it. It wasn't a finished process, but getting my ideas out like that was a critical step along the way.

I think writing, and probably a lot of other artistic activities (like, say, drawing) is a lot like exercising. Doing it is hard, but it gets comes easier the more you do it, and the less you do, the more it goes back to being hard again. So just doing it often enough will help you work up to doing it longer, and vice versa. Really just doing it is making it easier for me to just sit down and write.

Anyways, here's the bit that I plan on junking, since it probably won't see the light of day anywhere else. Dig those long sentences.

Last night, he had not been out participating in the festivities of Samhain. Though he could hardly have stopped the men from joining, many of them being followers of the old gods themselves, and the others, though Christians, were not above a bit of fun and lechery, he knew that Varus, being not only a Christian, but a Roman Christian, was not amenable to the Celt's somewhat looser interpretation of scripture, (as if always seemed to find room for the old gods and their holy days) and thus he thought it wise to, as the chief negotiator involved in the dispute at hand, to maintain the proper decorum desired by his host. Thus, as his men, including his brother, were out drinking whiskey and wine and bedding the local women, Emrys sat the ready in his small apartment, by the light of a single candle, in his full Centurion uniform, waiting, on the off chance he might be called for.

Last night he had been alone in his room. He was dressed in his full military garb, with his sword at his side, and was sitting upon the only chair in the room, it's back placed against the wall by the doorway. He was sitting perfectly still, his legs side by side, his hands placed gently upon his legs, and his back as straight as a post. He had pushed the table to the other end of the small room, upon which sat a candle, the room's only source of light. Outside he could hear the distance sounds of revelry: whooping, shouting, laughter, and other that, further away, but cutting through the din, the clear melody and rhythm of pipes and drums. He wondered if the people outside could hear them.

Where is my mind

Yes, so, no writing the last two days. Was working, and it was very tiring.

I've been thinking about my relationship to stimulants and depressants, namely caffeine and alcohol. I like both, but I have been, lately (as in within the last week) been cutting back on both, not out of any moral or self-improvement urge, but because, I think they might hamper my writing. I can't concentrate after a drink, and I can't fight through the cacaphony of voice when I have caffeine in me. (And now that I am cutting back, I can really tell when I have caffeine in me.) I need that calmness, that tranquility of untired reflection, in order to bring my mind to bear on writing. That's why I think in the past it has been easier to write in in the morning, at least morning when I'm not zonked out of my mind; I have no stimulants in my system. I have been sleeping. The most productive bout of writing I ever had was five days where I woke up at 5 and wrote until 11. I wrote an over 10,000 novella.

On the other hand, I feel that is still a place for such things in my creative process. Though caffeine is a poor aid to dramatic thinking, it's quite helpful when brainstorming ideas for things. And drinking has, for whatever reason, always worked to strip away my layers of anxieties, as opposed to many people for whom it seems to let them out; the times when I feel something like a religious experience, or perhaps just bouts of zealous humanism, have usually occurred while my mind races around after having a few. And both those states of mind have a marked influence on the things I think about writing, and the things I want to write about, even if they move me away from the disciplined state I need to actually write.

Still, best to decrease their usage.

Works in Progress, or, In Search of Lost Time

A couple years ago I had an idea for a story, set around Christmastime. I thought the idea was clever, but, for some reason or another, didn't write it. Either it came to me in an off-season, and I just didn't feel like thinking about Christmas, much as nobody likes hearing Christmas songs before, oh, Thanksgiving, or it came to me during Christmastime and I just didn't feel like writing it because I am lazy.

Then, every year around Christmastime I would remember the story again, and think, oh yeah, I should write that. But then Christmas would come and go, and I wouldn't write it, and I would forget about it until next year.

Well, last year, I finally started working on it around Christmastime, with the intention of finishing it, and then coming up with some way to present it to friends and family. Heck, maybe even post it on this blog! I was writing it out, and liking it, nailing a lot of the little elements that had come to me over seasons past.

Then I came what might have been, might be, the climax, and I got stuck. I had a whole bunch of paths to choose to get to the ending I wanted and wasn't sure which was the right one. So I sat on it, trying to figure that out. Then the Holiday came and went, and I didn't complete the story. It's still sitting, uncompleted, on my hard drive somewhere.

Now, it's late October. The Christmas lights are showing up in the stores. The candy will be here soon too, just as soon as the Halloween merchandise goes clearance. And so this story has reentered my mind, and I realize that I have been "working" on this story for almost a year, that if I finished it this year, it will be over a year in the making, and several years in development.

I have another story, that I celebrated knocking out the rough draft of on this blog, somewhat around the same time. I have never done another draft of it. I have several drafts of the beginning of a novel, maybe thirty pages of one, that I have spent two years working on. At this rate, I will finish it in my fifties. Recently I tried to write some essays recently for this blog, one a piece of criticism, one on politics (maybe philosophy), Just to write something. They are both a couple paragraphs in, saved onto blogger, abandoned after I lost track of where they were going, or didn't feel like spending the time and effort figuring out how to cut the path.

My relationship to writing is like having this large sack of pus growing on the inside of my skull. I go too long without doing it, and it swells up and the pressure on my brain hurts all over. Then I sit down to write, and it's like pounding a nail into my skull. Some of the pus leaks out, and the pain goes away enough to be bearable, and I think "Whew! Well, that's go for now!" And I stop writing and go about my day. But pretty soon the hole heals up, and that bag starts to re-inflate and I start walking around screaming at myself again.

I would like for the bag of pus inside my skull to go away. But the only way for that to happen is if I really commit to writing, and really get some things written, things I feel I have polished enough to show off a bit. And the only way I can do that is if I actually commit myself to writing, all the time, every day, and not just in my head while pacing, but while sitting and typing (or writing longhand in a notebook, either one, I don't mind). And I keep putting off doing that, thinking "Tomorrow!" or telling myself that work has me tired. And time keeps slipping by, and that sac pressing into my brain doesn't just pound harder, it grows, too, creeping slowly around the concavity of my skull.

I grow afraid, as time slips by, that even if I do ever get up off the ground, it will be so late all I manage to do is crash into those trees in the distance.

Whew! I feel better!

The Urge

Did lots of cleaning today. Put away much of the stuff littering my "living room" floor, organized and re -shelved all the books on my bookcase, dusted a whole bunch of stuff, finally moved that old television sitting in the middle of the floor up onto my dresser (I got it back in June), though I haven't plugged it in yet. I still need to buy a longer tv cord to stretch across the room.

I have been thinking about this Yglesias post from earlier in the day. The part that really got me was this bit:

Before I owned an air card, half of my train or bus trips to and from New York would inevitably result in me starting a novel of some sort. Not because I want to write a novel, but just because it seemed inconceivable to sit for that long with a laptop in my bad [sic] without writing something. Before there were blogs, I was always writing in a journal and apparently my grandfather did the same thing for decades. Consequently, I find it to be a great privilege to have a job where I can just write all the time, about all kinds of stuff, more-or-less at random. For me writing-as-such has always been a necessary activity, and trying to find constructive venues in which to do it a bit problematic. The blog solves the problem.

One of the problems, I have realized, with writing, and this is partially linked to the to epiphany that I mentioned in the last post that I haven't gotten to writing yet, is that i don't really give a shit about writing. It's not something I like doing. What I like is coming up with stories. Making up characters and thinking of things to happen to them. If I could tell those stories in comics or movies to theatre, I would be just as happy to do that. But I can't draw that well, since I wasn't taught to hold a pencil correctly with the left hand which means everything smears. i don't a millions of dollars lying around to hire actors and cameramen and CGI artists. I don't have a theatre troupe lying around. Plus, I am antisocial and, due to reading polomic interviews from Dave Sim and Jeff Smith and Alan Moore and Frank Miller and all the guys from Image, I have a fierce desire to work with my own creations and own my own creations. Writing was just something I fell in with, the easiest means to an end. And of course, like any of those other forms, there is actually an element of craft to the medium that had to be mastered, and so I went about trying to master it, and failing at it, since I don't really care, in some way, about that. Somewhere along the way, probably when I decided to major in English, I forgot that, and consequently disappeared up my own ass. This made it hard to write things I liked, since it was hard to write stories I liked, since it is hard to do anything that makes any kind of sense when in a state of phyiscal impossibility.

I am not saying that I need to forsake good writing. Good writing in inseparable from good storytelling, so I do need to be a good writing in order to tell stories well, and to tell good stories. But not all aspects of good writing are , or things that can be considered good writing, are things that necesarily need to be in good storytelling, and I don't need to concern myself with doing such things. What I need to concentrate on, is making the stories good, knowing what makes them good, and putting that in there. If I can start doing that, maybe I can actually start enjoying this whole writing thing.

As the nigh-endless absence (in blog-terms) from posting on this blogs, connotes, my late last attempt at getting energized about writing failed. Eventually it just ground to a halt. I just couldn't figure out who to write somehow, and I couldn't figure out why. So, I tried going in reverse; I went back to basics and just concentrated on reading, reading stuff I enjoyed. I felt like I had gotten so blocked up with pretensions and hopes and impatience that nothing could get out, and I just had to do something to detox my system, stop worrying about whether or not what i was doing was amounting to something or was important to some grand scheme and just take it easy, man.

And I think it has been helping. I don't know if I am done with it, but it has been nice to stop worrying about the future for a bit. I visited home to renew my driver's license, and while there I picked up all the paperback Redwall books I had, and I have been reading those. Just getting back in touch with some of the stories that originally made me be so interested in stories in the first place.

In fact, I have been giving some special attention to considering the topic of storytelling itself, and what makes for a good story. I have a theory on that, which I will outline in a later post. One of the problems I was having with writing is that I didn't feel like my stories meant anything, at least the ones I was working on. There were things happening, and characters having thoughts, but they didn't seem to matter to me, which made it impossible for me to really care to work on them. They didn't seem to have a purpose. They didn't seem necessary. Hopefully, going forward, if my theory is correct, it will make it easier to come up with stories that I actually want to complete, since they will have a purpose for existing. Another problem I was having is that I was trying to write about the things that I didn't really understand, places and situations I haven't been to or visited, or spent any time trying to visualize. This lead to a huge loss of confidence, since it's really hard to write a story about, say, a cop working in Chicago or landed gentry during the Regency when I don't acutally know anything about those places or people? Sure I have vague I ideas for stories, but without any sense of place of habits, trying to flesh those stories out into words is just impossible. In retrospect, trying to writes those stories is pretty dumb. Better to put work on something I know like, small-town Illinois (which I actually find insanely boring) or, ironically, cosmopolitan Rome. (I have some more research to do there, but its coming along. I really need to get to work on brushing up my Latin.)

Also, I have been fooling around on the guitar some more. The one I am using is a POS, and the second string just does not like to play, but it's enough to start learning. I finally learned by what the sequence of notes are. There are sharp/flat notes between all the normal notes except BC and EF, which I remember by thinking of the phrase "neolithic coitus". Or at least one that approximates it.

What condition is my condition in?

No real writing was done today, or last night after getting off from work. At the moment I have a bit of a mental block about the idea of doing it, which typing this is meant somewhat to address. Also, I have just been reading about this Specter switch thing, which just comes completely out of left field to me and seems weirder and weirder the more I think about it. Also, listening to that Decembrist album, which I was able to exchange for a playable copy. The last song is quite good, though no "The Rake's Song."

Another source of blockage was an occurrence of what could be called "The Crossroads Dilemma," which is when presented with two things that both need to be done, I don't know which one to do, can't make up my mind and end up doing neither. Engorging on blog posts on Specter was probably a mechanism of that. Besides writing, the other path was doing my state taxes. Finally I broke down and did the taxes, just now. It took about 15 minutes. Everything had already been filled out; I just had to do the master copy. Now everything is signed, sealed and ready to be driven to the post office tomorrow. (I really need to stop procrastinating.)

...Today, when walking out of work, I had a strange feeling. I had felt rather all right at work that day, in control and, in a way, unconcerned with my mental state. And as I was walking, out the automatic doors and into the mundane air, I felt as if some switch was switching in my head, and something vaguely, for a split instant, a bit like euphoria, but more like normalcy, slipping through. And then the switch stuck, not fully completing its process. And I walked on, across the parking lot, feeling this odd phantom of gears in my head. It was, I suspected, the depression lifting, the way one of the patients described it in Against Depression (which I never finished). A singular moment when the depression lifted, before the gears stuck.

I think I was what jammed those gears in place. I think a part of me was frightened of the idea of being without it, like, well, it sounds crude to say it, but almost like a battered lover. I was going "No darling, come back, I didn't mean it, I would never leave you. I couldn't live without you. I don't know what I would do without you. Please, hit me again. I want you to."

That sounds gross, but really, this is quite a bit was it was like, I think. My apologies.

I don't feel like I have gone all the way back, though. I am still standing in the doorway. The gears haven't turned back around; they are still jammed in place. The Switch was thrown. It has not been thrown back; it is only that its process has been halted.

I don't know what will happen next. Maybe some vile shit will happen and I will go right back. Maybe I will hold in this pattern a while. Maybe I will pull out the brace, and things will just...change. I don't know.

There is a part in Against Depression where the patient whose depression lifted, like that, talks about how the depression is not her. That it is something else, but not who she is. I always thought that interesting, because of the stance such a statement implies on what is "You." What is the nature of consciousness. I mean, if you aren't the chemicals in your brain, what are you? Are you more you when unaided by chemicals, when on anti-depressants, when drunk, when sober, with raging with hormones or castrated? It seems that each of those is you, or a different shade of you, to me, but I am not that certain. But what defines you? If you strip away all those influences, the external, the innately biological, the pumping of blood and collections of neurons, would there still even be a you (are we more or equal to the sum of you physical parts? Is there a metaphysical level to reality?).

I think part of my reticence is, I have been depressed so long, I have been this unhappy, nervous, anxious, angry person for so long, I have been wearing this weight, this Albatross, for so long, that I don't know what I would be without it. I don't know how it would feel. I don't know if it would feel like me, if I would even be me. Is there anything to me, other then my depression? If I escaped i's temple, would I dash out into endless green fields, or find myself facing a trek through a barren Wasteland? "No Excuses." Would the sun outside of the cave be too bright?

I need to keep doing this...

Throwback, Part 1; or, I can haz sugar?

So, Pepsi has released some new products called Pepsi Throwback, where they use sugar instead of corn syrup as the sweetener, just like back in ye olden tymes. It just came out today, and I bought some of the Mountain Dew version. It's chilling in the fridge as I type, and it will be tried shortly. I am kind of curious to see if the taste is noticeably different.

Also bought the Decembrists The Hazards of Love after listening to "The Rake's Song" over and over again after listening to it at Cogitamus. I just had to possess it. About halfway through it now, most of it is very...relaxing. Not like "The Rake's Song" at all, but still quite good. I think it made my headache go away.

Stuck Here Again

After all this time not writing the writing is hard again. Which means I must get back to writing to make it easy again. Three days off and I write next to nothing. It's hard and annoying and now I have a slope to climb up all over again. It's very Sisyphean.

But I cleaned! I moved around all the junk, and swept, and then washed the floors. The place smelled like Ammonia all day. Before everything was covered in dust. Now everything is not covered in dust, which is much better. Tomorrow I need to get down to organizing things. The books are all out of order.

Oh. I need to finish my state taxes and send those in. They need the be postmarked by Thusday, and they are about half-done, I think, so no real worries, but I must spend some time working on them after work tomorrow, or I might start panicking about them.

I took all the tape off my drums. I didn't know drums are supposed to sound that good. I didn't know that that was what my ride cymbal really sounded like! It's beautiful.