The End is Nigh! Repent!

So, the end of the world is upon  us!

Again.

Yep, come 12:00 a.m. there is a probability (built on faith and imagination) that the world will end at some point within a 24 hour period.  Delinquents are making bomb/shooting threats all over the place as a result of the Connecticut massacre.  Schools are closing, and the ones that aren't are in such a high level of caution that it's laughable.

But what if it did?  I don't really mean to say that the world will end, but what if something did happen?  Supernatural or otherwise, I secretly long for a change in the dynamic of what we call life.  Change.  Real change.  Something to turn this tired horse of a system on its head and rethink the wheel itself.  Something to jump start advancement away from the tweet-o-sphere.

I don't know why I want something like this to happen.  I guess it's just the sadist in me.  I have goals, most of which require that the system stay just the way it is.  I've always been adept at meandering my way through the monkey bars of the system.  It's not hard to excel when you know the rules and how the machine works.  And more often than not, it's fun.  But how do you become an author if there are no mass forms of publications left after all the nuclear bombs have dropped?  How do you go to school when every major city in the world has been struck with a flesh-eating plague?  How do you thrive as a writer in a society in which the faceless man behind the curtain pulls the strings and silences all dissenters after creating a single world order?

Perhaps that's why I write.  Maybe what I want is change; to break free of the mundane and slide into something exciting and unknown, and that this moment right now breathes the promise of transformation.  Just my luck, I'd be the poor sap who gets an apple caught in his carapace.  Or not.

With Christmas has come a huge influx of Christmas-related projects and gifting, as always.  This double edged sword has given the grace of eliminating my free gaming time in order to be productive but also saps away at my attention from writing.  I can stitch a doll while watching Netflix, but I can't write a poem or dabble in a story with my hands tied up elsewhere.  But soon the nonsense will be over.  Five days, four more gifts, and as many delicious dextrose-sweetened pumpkin cookies as I dare to eat!

I've been thinking about creating another blog - one with purpose.  God knows what I'd talk about though.  Sewing?  Writing?  Frucmal?  Each would be successful, I'm sure.  Sewing would be the most fun, and I don't dare do a video game based blog.  Unless it was intended to be funny.  But I still haven't grasped how to write funny.  It's my kryptonite.  You want dark?  Chaotic?  Dreary?  Sad?  Powerful?  Exciting?  I got that.  But if you want humor?

Nope.

It sucks, because I'm generally a very funny person.  But expressing that in writing is impossible very difficult.  I've tried, and I have the ability to recognize humorous writing, but I just can't seem to get the hang of it.  That should be a project I focus on for the new year.  If there is a new year.

The world is ending, after all.

Well, if tomorrow ends up being just another day, I'll return and type some more as I figure out what do to about life.  If not, here's to the next place: may it be bountiful in joys and capable of delivering an experience to keep the heart racing.

The Return

Oh.

Hello, blog.

Listen, I've been meaning to write and everything, but you know how these things go.  But hey, here I am.  Can't we just let all that nastiness fall away behind us?  Let's move forward.  Together.  Hand in metaphorical appendage symbolizing a bond.

:)

There's a lot going on right now - more than what is necessary to write lest this becomes a journal.  But then again, that's what this particular blog is.  It's just for me.  No stardom here.  No teaching.  Just expression and the blissful existence of traveling through the quiet.

But it's late.  Maybe I'll write something of worth tomorrow.  Or not of worth - just something.  I tried Tumblr in my absence from this blog and hated it.  I guess that's the newest form of blogging, but all I see if artistic stuff/animatd gifs that are either original or reposted with the tiniest and most rare occasions of actual writing.  It's more like a massive, highly active, ever changing image sharing community.

Don't worry though.  I will return.  For at least one post.  Maybe two?  Maybe more.  My fingers yearn to type out words that have stayed just below the surface of my mind for far too long.  I stand at the edge of misery and madness and have rediscovered these tools, these words, sitting delicately in my back pocket, waiting to be used.

These words, this methodology of expression, is my lifeline.  I need it now.

Prepare your anus, blog.  Things may get bumpy.

Fear

The other day I was driving home from work and I took a slight detour through the old neighborhood I lived in until I was 10.  It's winter-ish so the lights are all up.  Whoever currently occupies my old house has put up blue icicle lights and a gaudy 8 foot tall privacy fence surrounding the back yard.  Similar changes and decorations mark the houses of my old friends, some of whom I stay in the loosest of contact with: we're facebook friends.  The kind of facebook friends who don't talk and would delete each other if not for memories filled with rich childhood nonsense.  But most have gone their own ways.

I took a right down the street where the creepy old man with the hearse lived.  I'm under the impression every neighborhood has that man/woman.  The one who rarely leaves their house, but everyone knows they're there.  The one with the jagged wrought iron fence, caving roof in need of repair, twisted trees that never get leaves, or in my case, a hearse that never moved.  The hearse is gone now and I'm sure the man is too.  I still remembered the chill of walking by that house when I was a kid though, with its blank windows and that dusty old body-carrier, wondering if that old man was watching me.

A creek (or a stream, or a very, very small river, depending on your perspective and height) ran behind one of the further streets of the neighborhood.  I don't remember which year she moved in, but I remember the crush I fell into.  Her name was Ericka (or Erica, or Erika.  I'm not sure anymore) and she lived on that road in an orangeish house with a white rock in the front yard.

It's hard to categorize a childhoood crush when you're an adult, because during that time there is no real sexual attraction - or at least I don't remember any.  This was before things like lust were developed in my young mind and body, and so the feeling was something different.  I wouldn't call it pure, but it certainly wasn't corrupted by anything to do with procreation. It was attraction for attraction's sake - for the person and the person alone without any qualities of a sexual nature being considered.  It's a powerful thing, in other words.

I remember she had an older sister and two parents.  Possibly a dog.  These details aren't as relevant though to the point I promise I'm getting to in all this.  One day Erika (we'll just go with that spelling) asked me to skip the bus with her.  This was 4th grade and I was a good kid.  Skipping the bus on purpose was just asking for trouble in my preformed brain, and I was against it.  But she persisted, day after day.  Until one day we were going to do it.  And I chickened out.  She was so frustrated she was almost in tears.  I can't remember if she skipped without me or begrudgingly joined me on the giant yellow child mover.

This is the problem; has been, is, and will be the bane of my personality.  I was so sure that something awful would happen if I missed the bus that I was to scared to try it and find out.  Even at the beckoned of a girl who I really liked, I refused.  Looking back, the school was all of a mile from my house and it would be been easy just to walk home like so many other kids.  Why would I not take that step and take a risk?  Why not chance to get in trouble and get messy?  What the fuck did I have to lose?

I've missed more opportunities than I can ever begin to remember because of that same petrifying fear.  I'll see girls, bar, supermarket, a party, and I'll think, I should go talk to her.  I should introduce myself, get to know her.  What's the worst that could possibly happen?  


But I don't.  I would sooner stick to myself, feeling the weight and pressure of a sea of awkward loneliness sinking over me with suffocating waves of self loathing than start up one small stupid conversation.  I don't know why I do it - and that's a complete lie.  I know exactly why I do it.  A lack of self confidence.  Fear of denial.  Fear of the CHANCE for denial.  You can't be denied if you don't put your neck out in the first place, so it's safer, albeit lonelier to just blend in to the wall and hope you are just noticed without putting anything forth.

And maybe that works for pretty girls or exceptionally attractive guys with a penchant for wall-flowering, but I am neither of those.  If my personality were to be categorized and utilized for a real-time strategy game, and the game was socializing, I am best used mid to end game.  Once there is a level of comfort, a vague understanding, I'm on my A game.  I can schmooze with the best of them at that point, rile a crowd with witty nothings all night long.  But getting to that point on my own with someone I've never met?  I freeze, back away, and blend into the corner before they're ever the wiser that I had been thinking of approaching them.

And it's all fear.  Fear motivated in the want to avoid finding out something about yourself.  Fear in an attempt to avoid feeling the pain of failure.

The same thing happens with my writing.  I don't start up again because of doubt and the knowledge that if I don't start, I can't fail because I haven't tried.

But I think that's worse than failing.  Shouldn't I rather try and fail than to have cowered myself into inaction?  Shouldn't I prove to myself that I can before assuming I cannot?  If my goal is to succeed, the question becomes whether or not attempting success is worth the chance of failure.  Is the juice worth the squeeze?

NEWS!!! (and Skyrim..)

So I lost.

I got to about 37,000 words for NaNoWriMo.  It was a fun stint of flagrant wordsmithing, but in the end I couldn't quite make the big 5-O.  No matter, for next year I will try again with vigor and hopefully I'll make the goal =)  Regardless of not winning, I'm very proud of myself for the word count I was putting down day after day. To me, that's the foundation of this whole thing if I'm going to be a real writer when I grow up.  So here's to you winners out there, and to future me.  May you all prosper in your verbiage and let your inner-editor take a holiday until you're ready to use him/her.

I've been pondering which writing project to pick back up now that NaNo's over, and I'm kind of torn.  I think I'll end up having a free-writing session to see which idea sinks into my head most and then run with it.  It's been amazing how many ideas for old stories have flitted into my head while I haven't really been able to work on them.  JJ, Tylan, Jessica, and Claus.  And Trent, why not throw you in the hat too?  You've been good, you can be up for consideration again.

Saturday I beat Minecraft.  It was pretty awesome.  The dragon egg is currently hidden in a discreet location in my palace gardens until we build a dungeon to hide it in.  Not much more to say about it.  Other than I'm glad The End is filled with Endermen instead of with Creepers.  That would have been awful.  Sooooo awful.

They're like an infestation.  Of creepiness.

Later that day I went to Volkswagen of America's 2011 Christmas party down in the Grand Ballroom of the Motor City Casino in Detroit.  It.  Was.  Awesome.  After the preliminaries (get a wristband - not that  classy, complementary coatcheck - classier) I took the escalator down and saw the glory of VW's wallet.  

Pyramids of hors d'oeuvres.  Giant salad bar.  Tables designated only for fine saute'ed mushrooms.  MUSHROOMS!  And five (FIVE) open bars stocked with top shelf alcohol.  Oh and the desserts.  Mmmm they looked good, but I wasn't that brave.  And a live band!  !!!!!!!!!!

So it was awesome, I enjoyed myself tremendously, did not regret cancelling my room (I would have slept alone anyways) and headed home to enjoy a few blinks of Skyrim before bed.

Oh yes.  Skyrim.  Dear sweet Norse wet dream.  It's just as enjoyable and addicting as I had hoped.  I've already killed two dragons, been assaulted by a group of angry black men for (almost) no good reason, been named Thane of Whiterun, bought a house, and looted over ten times my weight in burial offerings.  For 10 hours of total gameplay so far, I think I'm off to a good start.  I could whine about the mechanics being buggy (which they kind of are) but I'm trying to be positive and so far I'm riding a Skyrim high, baby!  Onward, to glory!

Bonds of fellowship

Tonight a young man died.  His name was Forrest.  He was 19 years old.  He was an actor at the haunted park I help manage.  He took tickets and was an awesome zombie.  And he will be missed.

An impromptu candle-light vigil was held in his honor on the park grounds tonight after news got out.  I left, telling my dad that I was just "going out."  If I told him I was going out to mourn the death of a 19 year old who was hit by a truck on his way home from the job I do in which he (my dad) worries incessantly that I will have the same thing happen to me, I would have had an easier time passing Gandalf in Moria.

Imagine him without the beard and in his underwear.

I was one of the first there.  Because I weigh all of 40 pounds, I was given three winter coats to wear so I wouldn't die while we waited for the rest.  And steadily they came.  Some alone, some in droves, the actors, maintenance, and managers all showed up.  These people who are united once a year by the common cause of scaring small children arrived in less than an hour's notice to honor our lost actor.  Then the candles were passed out and eventually lit.

And then someone said, "Holy shit."

The northern lights are a common occurrence up north and a bit and through Canada.  But living in southeastern Michigan my entire life, I have never seen them.  Ever.  23 years of look up at stars and that was the first time.    It started as a red glow that I thought was a house on fire in the distance but then it grew and stretched eastward across the sky.  The lights danced in a way that I can't describe, drifting over the trees.

Once everyone was used to the spectacle, we moved to the fire pit, and in the open, saw the lights for the majesty they truly are.  Silver and green strands of luminescent ribbons slowly curled and shifted like dragons of the sky, or snakes on a black lake.  And the red, now more like a sharp haze, pulsing around them.

And so there we were - ghouls without makeup.  Vampires without fangs.  Scarecrows void of hay.  Monsters, all of us, mourning our fallen brother beneath a natural light show.  Extraordinary doesn't come close to describing that moment.  He was new.  Some of us had only met him last night.  But we were one around the fire in his memory.

These people are why I do what I do every autumn.  It's not the screams.  It's not the chase.  And it damn well isn't waking up feeling like I was hit by a train.  It's them.  It always has been and always will be.

Rest in peace, Forrest.

Those which bump

I need a muse.

Maybe not a muse.  Maybe a fat guy with a whip.  And a scar below his left eye.  And a computer from 1995 that won't install any program but a word processor.  And a broom closet void of external influences.

Or discipline.

NaNoWriMo is going to kick my ass and yet I am still slothfully underwriting as the days of October tick by.  Excuses, I have them, but what good are they?  What good would they do me to rattle them off like a display of ornate paper walls.  Maybe some are stronger than others, but in the end, they're useless, stupid devices built to make me feel better about a presupposed failure.  I don't want excuses.  I want drive - conviction to charge through and make writing a habit rather than a faint dream I consider on my drive home from work before dwindling the hours of my evening away with nonsense.  

I can do it.  I want to do it.  I need to do it.  Ability, desire, necessity.  What's missing?  Or is there something added on top that's spoiling the mix?   Doubt?  Angst?  Fear?  Laziness?   Perhaps it's just a matter of empowering the positive to diminish the negatives rather than attempt to remove them entirely - to quiet the imp of self-loathing in my head and press on.

I wish I could drink.

Nookage

So it's done.  I've done it.  The process has been completed.

I own an e-Reader.

I know I said I'd never get one.  I know I said it was the literal death of the written word.  I know I vowed that until the day I died I would read no book that wasn't neatly bundled in pages!  But I did it.  And I don't regret it.

My Nook.

The thing is I just don't read enough.  Who can with the instant gratification of video games, sitcoms, haunted houses, family functions, and God knows what else.  But I'm an English major, dammit!  I should be reading.  I'm too far behind my brethren as it is and it's time to get caught up.  So I will read, even it it's written in e-ink.  I will read and absorb and hope my sin will not be frowned upon by the literary gods to whom I give worship.