Blogging in the afternoon

I mean, the sun hasn’t even started to go down yet. Weird.

But I am going to be in class from 6 to 9, and so I figured I had better get my blogging done now. I imagine I will be quite tired when I get home from class tonight due to weird circadian shit, and so I am going to get as much done in this interval between getting home from therapy and heading off to class as I can.

So yeah. Thursday will be my therapy day from now on, apart from the occasional irregularity. Today’s session was not great. We didn’t really dig into anything. Plus we started fifteen minutes late. I get the feeling that my therapist is booking more work than he can handle at his age and it is starting to really catch up with him.

I mean, he told me that next Wednesday he has ten hours of therapy booked. Ten hours! . That would be too much for a young man, and he is in his late 50’s. [1]

Mostly we talked of superficial things. But that’s fine, really. I am not in the mood to go dig deep into the darkness of my soul. The return to school plus the lovely sunny days have put me in a very positive frame of mind. And I want to ride that wave of positivity for as long as I can.

The darkness will return, of course. But that’s fine too. I can handle it.

(—)

And now it’s 9:05 PM and I just got back from class.

The bus threw me a loop. [2]

So class ends and I go to the bus stop I discovered yesterday. The schedule posted there says the next bus is at 8:51 pm. This does not surprise me. The 405 runs every half hour during peak hours. It was bound to run every 45 minutes this late at night.

By the way, Tourette’s Guy (not that one) from yesterday was there again. I found that mildly freaky. I was starting to wonder if he like…. lived there. You know? Like this was the place he went because it made him feel normal.

But no, he grabbed a 430 shortly after I sat down. So I am willing to chalk it up to coincidence… for now.

Anyhow, so I wait for the bus and get on…. and I am the only passenger. Also mildly freaky. But what the hell, maybe the 405 doesn’t get a lot of customers at 8:51 at night.

Everything seems normal until we are almost at my stop. But then the bus does a right turn on Buswell, goes around the block, then stops and the bus driver says, in a South African accent, “You have to get off the bus. ”

Um, sayswhat? The 405 has dropped me off at the stop right around the corner from my apartment building many times before. Now suddenly it goes somewhere totally different?

From what I gathered from the dude, this was because I got on a 405 Brighouse Station, not a 405 Five Road. Never mind that evry 405 I have taken home has said Brighouse Station on it. The ones I take to get to Kwantlen say Cambie on them. Sure, they go to Brighouse Station. And then they keep going to my stop.

As a result of this strangeness I had to walk an extra two blocks to get home. Luckily, the stiffness in my legs has slackened enough to be no big deal, and the evening was quite pleasantly cool(as long as you were moving) , so the walk was actually kind of nice. And it’s not like I don’t need the exercise.

But still. What the fuck, dude?

The class itself was pretty cool. I am slowly getting used to the fact that every course I take has the potential to make me do group work. So far it’s simple stuff. My relatively primitive social skills can handle it.

But the more primal side to my personality still rankles at it. I am used to working alone. I have trouble letting my identity dissolve into a group identity. I prefer to do my own work.

In other words, I am one messed up beach monkey. Hopefully, going to school will let me get some of that positive social conditioning that I so desperately need in order to become a fuller, healthier, happier person.

It is a consummation devoutly to be wish’d.

I foresee possible storm cloud on the horizon between me and the prof, though. She appears to be someone who thinks writing must be concrete, which she defines in terms of the five senses.

And that is so not me. Those fo you who have read my fiction (you lucky people you) will know that it’s what is going on between people’s ears that matters to me. Emotions, ideas, perceptions, moods, attitudes, and of course, conversations are the core of my writing style. Any sensory descriptions are to support that. I am certainly not inclined to put much description in my writing. Who the fuck cares if the carpet in Adam Eden’s office is green or blue? What matters is the investigation into the Scrambled Man’s death. The color of the carpet is irrelevant, and does not serve the story.

And aren’t we supposed to avoid things which don’t move the story forward?

Worst case scenario, she is one of those people who can’t understand anything going on in a story if they don’t know what people are wearing, and I will have to write that way in order to get the best marks.

I won’t like it, but I will do it. After all, I want people with her sort of mind to be able to enjoy my work too. I guess.

But my core audience will be people who find description boring and hard to picture, and who would rather be reading about what people are thinking, saying, and doing.

And I am fine with that.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

[[2]] Bus… loop…. there’s a joke in there somewhere.

Footnotes    (↵ returns to text)

  1. In case you are wondering, it’s because next week is Rosh Hoshana and so he is not working Monday or Friday.