In Which I am Vaguely Empty

I am pretty sure... of nothing. 

Generally it's a good starting point, but I have undergone this almost catastrophic loss of what I suppose we could call faith.

I don't really feel as though there is a point in doing anything.  I mean, I work so I can pay bills and have a roof over my head, but the only things I really get into are escapes.

Video games, movie marathons, not even much reading or writing.  I don't think I'm special anymore, and the person I pretend to be languishes. 

Do people really make it through their entire lives in this state of ignorance that is so profound it is crippling to me?  I suppose so.

Here we are, coming up on thirty one, and I'm alive--whatever good that does me--and I haven't stopped being, as far as I know, except for that rough third of a day where I forget everything entirely, even consciousness.  And I am completely lost.

I understand why people look for things to believe in--and I have had too many experiences beyond the material to consider the possibility that the material is what really exists--and I think a great many things about the state of existence, but I am stuck on what it means.

What difference does it make?  What does it matter?  What does it mean?

The first time I watched the double rainbow video, I cried a little.  I laughed too, when it got beyond me, but I totally "get" the question.  What does it mean?

We assign importance to experiences in our lives, and by far, the most meaningful, the most important, and the most life affirming experiences I had were all years ago, when I believed I had a role to play in the world.

It's easy to imagine myself as some author of some books, be it fantasy or metaphysics, making a living, absorbed in the reality I was describing.  Whether it's real or not isn't really the issue as much as "does it matter?"

But I want both. I want truth and meaning.  I want my stomach's nausea and my moving across the country to be meaningful.  I want messages from inter-dimensional guardians encrypted into everything I see.  I want to feel loved and guided because I feel blind and alone.

I am like everyone else, but I can't accept things that don't make sense or concepts that are so ill fitting with my experiences that it would be delusional to attempt to subscribe to them. 

So here I am, existing and adrift.

In Which I Lack Cohesion

We're wrapping up our fourth month in Florida, and moving into a new apartment at the end of May, just my cousin and I.

I'm not surprised that we're staying longer, though I suppose I want both things kind of equally.  There's really nothing for me in Saginaw but family, and nothing for me in Florida but my cousin and opportunities I don't know how to take. They are there, though, even though I am too exhausted to seek them out.

I want to want to write.  I feel stuck, even though I know what is going to happen.  Maybe I have too much going on.  I have a timeline several thousands of years before the main line, one a couple hundred years before the present with the current characters, and the present.

There's also one character who is aware of all of the timelines simultaneously, and remains in an interdimensional state for thousands and thousands of years observing the progression of life on Phant, preserving it until it is time for it to end. 

I am at the end, where everything comes together in a bizarre crashing of times and space.  It's hard.  And I continuously doubt my abilities.  And I really need to just sit down and puzzle through everything. I want to start over again. Tighten and neaten and really get ahold of my characters again.  This was always one of the hardest of the stories to write. Smooth sailing after this

In Which I Quote A Song Almost as Old as I Am

There's this song from back in the day  about how if you love somebody, set them free. 

I puzzled over this in my pre-relationship state, because I somehow felt it was true, maybe because I am all about love and freedom, and when I've been in a relationship, I always wanted my partner to feel free to do anything whenever they liked, even if that involved leaving me behind and tralalaing with someone else.

The unintended consequences of that practice for me:  I will never fight for anyone.  I let my partner choose and step back to let them do so.  I become even more of an observer in my own life, and eventually, when I am worn down from not driving my own bus, they will say something about how I've changed and feel like their world is coming to an end because I dared voice a preference.

So I let them go, not because I don't love them, but because I do (infinitely more than I love myself), and I want them to go have their best possible lives and I'd never want to hold them back.

Also because I need to feel free too.  I really do.  I mean, I feel stifled just from living in the same place for too long.  I could chalk this up to being a mutable Gemini, but it's also because I don't want to make a living in this world, I want to live in it.  And I have no idea how to manage both simultaneously.  The mundane might be fine on auto-pilot, but I'm not on auto-pilot enough to be okay with it.

Relationships, man.  What are they all about?  I've been in a relationship for pretty much all of my adult life except for the last year or two, and I'm wondering about why people willfully get into them, even seek them out.  I've never been much of a seeker, except that I have always had my eyes open, in some hopelessly romantic fashion, thinking one day this person is going to show up, and they will know me.  On sight.  And I will know them.

I only still believe it's possible because it happened.  And it was too painful in so many ways, and too wonderful in so many others.  If it's not fate knocking at my heart, it's not enough to pique my interest.  It did happen again, but this time it wasn't immediately mutual.  Eventually we were together for many years, but I began feeling like I really shouldn't be subjecting anyone to a relationship with me.  There is a lot of subconscious programming I haven't yet figured out how to rewrite.

Truth is, I am really, truly, and intensively self absorbed.  I feel like I have to become a better person before I'd ever be ready for another relationship.  I know I'm not really that messed up, comparatively (because daaayum, people are insane), but the difference is that I know many of my faults, and while I know they're not such a big deal, I would much rather fix them without hurting anyone else.

I think one of the better relationship structures would be of a polyamorous design, mostly because I don't think I'm capable of being solely responsible for someone's heart.  I'm very much a one person at a time kind of person, but it's really just too much pressure for me to be solely responsible for someone else's feelings.

Really, any sort of expectation has become too much pressure for me outside of the workplace.  Work is a meaningless sort of cycle.  It doesn't really matter one way or the other what I do there.  Everything else seems like a crushing lot of responsibility I feel incapable of handling.

Logically, I know that I'm a pretty decent person to be in a relationship with.  I'm occasionally funny, generally kind, and I can, on occasion, be sort of sweet.  It is much easier and more fun to do things for and with someone else than it is to do for or by myself.

In Which I Get Honest About Writing

Writing is the thing for me.  It is the only thing that I have ever always wanted to do.  I went to school for it, I am tens of thousands of dollars in debt for it, I am dedicated.  It is the meaning of life for me, and I don't think I ever let myself state that in such a way and really feel the repercussions of that realization.

I have this series of stories that part of me is pretty convinced is an alternate reality (well, it would have to be) that an aspect of my soul is/has/will experienc/ing/ed/e.

It's... gosh, I don't know, nine or ten stories, maybe more.  The series follows a family of souls across various incarnations, planets and planes.  It mostly focuses on the Elder of Sight/Seer, who is just fated to be intrinsically linked to the Oracle of Laki, the Lady of Light.  S/he is plagued by the Oracle of Daki, the force of the darkness/unknown/fear/illusion, is drawn to the Elder of Fire, and sees himself in the Elder of Water, the first mirror.

It all fits with the aspect of how these things relate to sight, and it happened without my ever planning it consciously.  The subconscious is beastly with this stuff.  I've found foreshadowing for a storyline I started writing last year in a story I wrote fifteen years ago.  I mean.  Dude.

If I get this series to a state of satisfactory perfection, I can die without regrets.  Seriously, and jokingly, that is how I really think, deep down.  I don't know how I can let myself talk me out of thinking about this being the meaning of my life, because it is the visible story to my invisible journey.  This is how my spirit evolves, right along with the characters.

I do have the part of my mind that likes to dismiss all sorts of meaning into the obliterating clear light of nothingness, knowing how much my success at accomplishing this series is tied into ego satisfaction.  But you know what? So what?  It doesn't matter if my ego likes it or not, because the ego doesn't matter.

This is what I feel I came to Earth to do, and deep down, I am always going to believe that until I have done it.

In Which I Realize it's Been Months

It isn't really the case that much has happened. I did move from Michigan to Florida at the tail end of 2013, spending all of 2014 thus far sleeping on the floor again, spending an inordinate time on busses, and not realizing that time is going by because the weather goes unchanged for months in South Florida.

It's near the end of March, and it's a little terrifying how very little I've been managing to do.  They schedule me to work forty hours, which makes me want to cry, not only because it consumes my life, but also because even then I have no money. Ever. And I got a raise when I moved here.  Any additional money I'm making now goes to rent and bus passes.

I added up my bills and such, and seven hundred of what I make goes to bills.  Before rent.  Next February, I will have my loan completely paid off, and then I fully intend to get another loan, pay off the credit cards (again) and maintain a balance on them of no more than I could pay off all at once.  No more, "oh sure, friend/family member, I can swing that."  No you can't, past self.  You couldn't swing it. I still can't swing it.

Make more than ever before; have less than ever. Ha.  Especially since our stuff from Michigan hasn't made it here.  Hence my sleeping on the floor and my roommates sleeping on the sectional they bought from the bomb-ass Salvation Army across the street.  We're working on getting the rest of our stuff, methinks, soon.

Also, the man in front of me on the bus is wearing Real 3D glasses and showing fellow in-transitors a newspaper article about a play about Martin Luther King Jr. that he may think is actually about MLK Jr. I have no way of knowing.

In Which I Rant and Rave and Feel Better Afterward

Looking at rent prices in the cities where the schools I want to attend are leaves me feeling terribly, horribly, bitterly defeated.

I mean, there's seriously no longer a point in even -trying- for further academic studies. Leave that for people who aren't five years' salary in debt from an "education" that only serves to make people shake their heads in disbelief and say those awful words that I hear waaaay too often, "what are you doing here?"

Doing what I can to keep the government from filing charges, garnishing my wages, and utterly destroying my credit rating? Trying not to think about the predicament I've gotten into from trying to follow my dreams and attempting to remain free from the trap of giving up and giving in and "settling" for everything I don't even remotely want?

Seriously? Screw it. All of it, because there's no fixing this.  I don't see a way out except hope some hierarchical superior looks down at my life's work and grants me some measure of grace. And screw that too, because that is a cruelly broken, carrot-dangling way of doing things.

"Keep trying. Keep trying. Keep spending years of your precious short life waiting for someone else to validate your worthiness and judge you worthy of earning a livelihood." Why? Just... why?

I had a customer tell me I should be a chief instead of just another Indian. Know what, dude?  Fuck your metaphor, fuck your concept, and fuck you too.  What you really mean is that I should climb across others in attempt to elevate myself above them. Lead, don't rule. The moment you attempt to rule, you become something reprehensible.

People looking down on others fall as soon as the people supporting them step away. That's not power. That's not authority.  That's a system for keeping children in line, a nestled system pervading every aspect of our lives, from the way we govern ourselves to our beliefs about reality and the planet.  It's time to be self-responsible grown ups who can stand on our own, beside each other, and leave behind a world of childish models of living.

There -is- a better way to exist, even in this delusional, broken society.  I'm going to find it, and I'm writing my way out of this pit.

I am terrified of being trapped, terrified of becoming a self medicating muggle who just spends time to get through it, who doesn't see the point in doing much of anything because there's nothing to do that can truly make a difference. I think I'm only afraid of giving up because so much of me already has.

Has your heart ever ached so powerfully you can feel it in your fingertips? That's despair. That's your heart breaking.

Don't let go of the things keeping it together. Just don't let go.

In Which Amazon Gives Away my Book

After several years (fifteen or so) of writing, rewriting, refusing to look at prior drafts and making a hundred files in my Rivermist folder, my first book, Rivermist:  The Book of the Elders is available on Amazon for Kindle.

FOR FREE.  Well, only for the next two days.  Seven whole sales and almost two hundred promo units distributed so far, all over the world (surprising many in Germany).

Next week, the period of Kindle exclusivity is up, so we'll be on Barnes & Noble and other retailers as well.

And I have no idea how to promote it without feeling slimy.  I think of being all like, "hey, @wilw, @neilhimself @populartweeter you're a writer! I'm a writer! RT link to my book plz?" but it feels awful.  So I don't.  I think I'd just like to write, publish, and not really think about it, but if I'm ever going to be able to write full time, I need to think about it and do stuff!  Doing stuff! Yeah!