I am pretty scared about what happens after graduation.

And excited too. I go from one to the other. Right now it seems scary. I’ve just realized that it means I will be once more cast into the existential void of infinite possibilities. There will be no external structure keeping me held together and forcing me to focus and work and show the fuck up where I am supposed to show up.

It will all be on me. That’s why I am not going to give myself a single day of rest before starting my job search. In fact, I might not even wait till graduation to start.

If I give myself time off, I will dissolve into depression again. Not the harsh kind that makes me suicidal, just the soft grey kind where I let the days go by as I indulge and distract myself and everything seems okay as long as I don’t think about it too much.

In other words, I would go right back to how I was before Kwantlen.

And that cannot be allowed to happen. So I would have to instantly develop a daily discipline focused on something strictly quantitative, with no room for interpretation.

Like my 1000 words a day.

So it would have to be X number of jobs applied for, or the like.

I am rather worried about job interviews, though. Seeing as there is a strong possibility that all the jobs I am applying for will be in either Los Angeles or Toronto, I am really hoping that in-person interviews will not be a huge thing, at least at first.

Because how the heck would I get to them? I can’t exactly afford plane tickets. And getting there via Greyhound is time-intensive and not free.

The problem with going Greyhound is that whatever you save on the ticket by not taking the plane, you end up spending on accommodations.

Either that, or you sleep on the street somewhere, and I am way too old for that kind of adventure. Or I suppose you could try to find one of those youth hostels. Those aren’t free either but they are, I assume, way cheaper than a hotel or motel.

Or, I suppose, I could Airbnb my way there. That might be even cheaper, and I would get to meet new people and practice using my innate charm on them in preparation for using it at the interview.

Does that seem inhuman or cold? I hope not. I can’t always tell.

No matter how I economize, though, it will costs me more than zero dollars, and that’s money I will need to get somewhere. I don’t want to have to borrow still more money from Joe,. so I hope there might be some form of government funding available for that sort of thing. After all, the government has a vested interest in turning me into a taxpayer instead of a tax burden.

Then again, they have a rather spotty record when it comes to realizing that.

Got an email from the student loan people that basically said “We know you will be graduating soon, so here is how to start paying us back. ”

Hold on there, folks. I will be happy to make student loan payments once I am employed. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay?

Of course, my dream scenario would be one where I really am as amazingly talented as I sometimes think I am, and the studios will engage in a fierce bidding war to see who gets to hire me, and be falling all over themselves to pay my way, first class, to come visit their studios and be entertained by them in order to convince me to work for THEM.

Extremely unlikely, I know, but it’s a nice fantasy.

I think the prospect of employment will be the impetus I need to buckle down and make my work the best it can possibly be. I am supposed to be doing that in school, but at school I can coast and get by fine,.

But when I am competing with all the other graduates of programs like mine plus the randos from the street who think they can make it, I have got to put my very best face out there in order to stand a chance of winning the race.

I mix metaphors like Sherman-Williams mixes paint.

I have pondered what approach I should use in interviews. I am thinking that it should be me turning on the charm, but not all the way up. I can be quite overwhelming if I go with my instincts and push out all the personality power I possess.

I mean, it might work. I might charm the heck out of them and make sure that they remember me when hiring time comes, and that they are left with the impression that I am a super awesome guy to be around and it would be kickass to have me around.

But ti might fail and fail big time. Instead of being charmed, they are made intensely uncomfortable by my high volume personality, and they are left thinking that the last thing they would want is for that obnoxious, pushy guy to be around them all the time.

So I dunno. I will probably at least try the full on personality mode one time to see how it happens. It might work out fine. But I know that, unchecked, I can be pretty obnoxious, so I will have to make sure I don’t get too carried away and end up scaring people.

I am probably best off with a mix of high personality and my usual shyness and reserve. That can be a winning combo when done right.

Of course, I might get work here in the GVRD. If not in TV, then in writing for video games. There are a ton of top level video game studios in town, and I might just be able to get work writing for one of them.

It’s not what I want to be writing. I want to write TV. But it would pay the bills while I looked for something in my field.

Who knows, I might even like it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Recently, my psychiatrist upped the dosage in my two antidepressants, Paxil and Wellbutrin, and so far it’s going quite well.

I feel far ,more focused and energetic. I feel like some of the fog that clings to my mind and makes it so hard to think and remember has lifted and I can feel my own drive and will for the first time in what seems like forever, and overall, I’m feeling much better now.

jj

I feel like I can handle things now. I might still stumble now and then, but I stand a much better chance to get my poop in a group now that I am fully awake.

At least I think I am fully awake. If there’s a more awake state for me possible, I am not sure I would want to go there. I think it might be kind of scary.

I mean, I probably would be even more hyperintelligent than I am now. I might even be more competent. But I would really be riding the thin and trembling edge of mania, and mania might be fun while it lasts but it’s dangerous as hell.

Especially with a mind like mine. I might go full on supervillain. Insane cackle and all.

So I am feeling much better now, but it’s a cold kind of improvement. I don’t feel any increase in emotional warmth. As far as I can tell, this increase in dosage’s effect is mainly intellectual. The wall between me and the love of the people who care about me is still there. In fact, it feels firmer than ever.

But maybe that’s due to my highly cerebral nature. It may be that there is nothing the drugs can do about that. That will take spiritual and/or psychological growth in order to overcome that deep deep core of animal fear that keeps me from being able to let my guard down and feel comfortable in my own skin.

I want to feel comfortable in my own skin. I want to pierce the heart of my depression and melt the ice around my heart so I can let the sunshine in. I want to feel connected and whole and warm. I am tired of being frozen robot with a busted antenna and a lot of broken circuits that keep my parts from forming a full robot.

You know, that gives me a heck of an idea for an existential science fiction story. A robot that is the last of its line of products and therefore a version that was put out just to make the investors happy, and therefore his design was not given much thought and he was more or less just left on his own after activation.

And now he floats in deep space at the very edge of a solar system, getting by on what little sunlight he get from the distant star he orbits. He spends his days monitoring the broadcasts from the solar system’s one life bearing planet, and communicating with other robots via that planet’s networks, and looking at all the things he will never see in person and listening to the music of people he will never meet.

He has to do all this monitoring because when he stops, he starts feeling sad about how he has been abandoned by his makers and left alone to fend for himself when he was never even fully assembled.

But that he does not know is that he was never abandoned. The problem lies in his antenna. It was sabotaged by a cruel robot when he was fresh off the production line, and that made it incapable of picking up the signals of all the robots who care about him who have been calling for him and looking for him this whole time.

It also means that he could not receive the vital heart-signal that reassures all robots that they are connected and functioning and will be there for one another at a moment’s notice.

The busted antenna also makes it so very hard for them to find him in the deep dark expanses of space because it doesn’t respond to their signals. Many robots have sent out the strongest signal they can but still received nothing in response.

Eventually, they gave up. But others took their place.

So what will happen to our sad little robot? Will the other robots find him? Will they be able to fix his broken antenna? Can they finally finish assembling him so he can feel like a whole robot again? And what of the dark forces that broke his antenna in the first place? Are they still out there, lurking, waiting to victimize poor defenseless little robots once more? Has this happened to other robots too? 

Man, do I know how to create an allegory. Obviously, that robot is me, and his tale is mine as seen through a layer of metaphor. I could go on and on, of course, but I think I have indulged myself enough for one night.

Still, that could be the nugget of a very good short animated film. With merchandising opportunities. Imagine how many people would love to have their own sad little robot whose heart glows when you hug him.

Hmmm. I would kind of need an ending, though. A big boffo super happy ending to make up for the pathos. The robot is rescued, repaired, and assembled properly, and taken to a robot hospital where he will be cared for and loved for so he can finally be fully activated.

If only it was that simple in humans!

But no, we have to deal with neurochemistry and all that entails. It’s a little galling to find out that after all my theories blaming all kinds of different things for my miserable state, the whole thing turned out to be merely a case of bad brain chemicals.

Still, the damage remains and I am going to have to fix it or the problems will occur. I have treated the symptoms but the disease remains.

However, I feel far more equipped for that journey that ever before.

And who knows, maybe this new cold power will warm up in time. I remember when I first went on Paxil it made me very numb and disconnected and like my head was floating.

But over time, the feelings came back. And I greeted them with open arms. Even the bad ones. Because it felt so good to really feel again.

Maybe that is what is happening now, and the cold circuit power surge I am enjoying will, in time, warm me up.

Let the sunshine in.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.