And it’s pretty amazing.

First off : tou know how McDonald’s is doing the Monopoly thing right now? ^[1] Well I won something from it recently and it’s a bit more than a burger or a muffin.

It’s a gaming console, namely the Xbox One S.

Something like this, but with a different game.

And the thing is, and this speaks entire encyclopedias about me, I am have trouble believing it. I keep wating for there to be a catch, despite all evidence pointing to the fact that I won the damned thing.

When I first saw the instant-win thing, I couldn’t believe it. And trust me, that speaks an entire wing of a library about my negative tendencies. I thought it couldn’t possibly be that easy. I told myself that it must be that the little ticket just gives you the right to enter a sweepstakes for one. or some other scam.

So when I got home, I logged on to the website on the ticket and put in the code and low and behold, it looked like I had really won the darned thing.

But there was a problem. The skill-testing question^[2] had this asterisk type symbol at the beginning and I had no idea what that meant.

Oh great, I thought to myself. This must be some new mathematical symbol that i did not know. Something they are teaching the kiddies in their new new math.

So I tried to google it. But the only answers I found were part of some pretty advanced relational equation stuff, so that seemed pretty unlikely.

And of course, * means multiplication in many places because unlike an x, a * can’t be mistaken as a variable.

I didn”t know that was the reason till I was trying to solve my problem. Pretty cool, eh?

Anyhow, so I decide that my best course of action is to consult my furry friends, because almost all furries are nerds and a significant percentage of nerds are the mathy kind of nerd.

I was a mathy type nerd… until calculus.

So I copy and paste the equation to them, and they all pore over it, and eventually come to the conclusion that they don’t know WTF is going on either.

So I emailed McD’s about it. And they replied around a day later.

Turns out, that asterisk wasn’t part of the equation at all.

It was there to denote a required field on the form!

Can you imagine? I find the whole thing hilarious.

Armed with this information, I solved the question with ease, submitted the form, and now, AFAIK, I will be getting my Xbox One S at some point.

But get this : for Mysterious Reasons, it wil take them 6-8 weeks to “verify” my identity!

They could verify my identity on foot faster than that. Literally. They could send someone to walk all the way to my apartment,. knock on my door, take a DNA sample, then walk the sample to a lab and have it checked, and it still wouldn’t take 6-8 weeks.

But that’s no big deal. It’s not like I am eager to have the thing. I don’t intend to even open the box. I am a PC gamer and that’s that. I have no desire to add console gaming to my life. My PC gives me more than enough gaming.

With a console, I would have to get a TV to plug it into, then find someplace to put the TV and the console, and then use a completely different device to play games instead of the same device where I do all my work.

And speakoing of work….

Just as I am deciding that I am pretty much done with my first gig, I get a couple of nibbles of interest from others on UpWork who are interested in my comedy writing skills. I text-chat with one of them, and now he wants to Skype-meet with me tonight, and says I am really interesting.

So now I have to comehow get Skype working despite the fact that my webcam appears to have died since the last time I used it.

So now I have to try to get one of my tablets working. I’d rather have used my laptop, but it’s now a craptop because its battery is dead.

Or possibly something worse, because it doesn’t work when it’s plugged in, either.

And I have to make myself presentable, at least from the shoulders up. I am, of course, not at all keen to up the ante from text to video, but I will not let that slow me down.

The job, in and of itself, it just a punch-up of a sort of script this guy has written for a “launch video” for his startup. Pays $40 American.

But the business model is all about connecting brilliant writers with people who need them, and I hope to charm my want into being one of those writers.

So wish me luck. This might actually turn out to be my next gig.

And if not, it’s still extremely affirming. Two people so far have seen my profile and how many hours I have worked for PRasad and decided that they would like to see more from lil ol me.

Heck, I’m just happy that someone is noticing me. I’d be happty to get verbal abuse at this point because it would at least mean I had had an effect on someone.

But praise is, obviously, way better.

So it seems like things might be turning around for me.

It scared the shit out of me to even type that sentence.

And that speaks entire writing systems about me.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

[[{1]] For my American friends : here in Canada, McDonald’s does this big Monopoly themed contest where you can collect stamps or win stuff instantly. I am sure they have the same sort of thing in the USA. only with a more exciting theme. [[1]]

Moving in and out of focus
Riding a blurry line
Claiming that rules will choke us
Refusing to be defined

I guess this is who I am now
A cipher in God’s machine
Neither low or highbrow
Forever the in-between

In my head, those are lyrics to a 80’s synth-pop song in the style of Erasure or Depeche Mode. There will be a video just as soon as I learn how to turn the noises in my head into sounds in the world.

Actually learning to read and write music and thus become musically literate would probably help. I have been trying to do it without knowing that stuff and no matter what music is in my head when I start, I end up getting absorbed into the process and what ends up coming out is sort of an experiment in form and nothing like what I started out trying to bring into the world.

So yes. even in music I can’t stick to the topic.

Today’s been the same old same old same. Playing Skyrim, wasting my life, letting the days go by. Water flowing under.

There’s got to be more to life than consuming media and keeping myself distracted. The great thing about Skyrim, from the point of view of my mental illness, is that it gets me through time that would otherwise be a burden on me.

When my depression is bad, just the thought of all those hours of the day to fill fills me with dread and despair.

Like I sad, the main problem is : what the hell do I do with myself?

And I feel like that’s a question I will need outside help to answer. Someone to hold my hand as I venture into deeper waters. Someone to help build a bridge from where I am to what I want. Someone to talk me down out of my tree when I am freaking out and feeling fragile and abandoned and unfit for life.

Someone to please, please, please help me not to be so very, very alone inside. Someone who can pierce the ice around my heart and convince that scared little animal inside me that everything is going to be okay now, that we are safe and amongst loved ones who will protect us from harm.

I have been running scared inside my head for so long now.

It would be nice to be able to curl up and rest somewhere warm. and quiet and inviting.

But that unshakable core of panic is always there. It’s the trembling ground upon which I attempt to build something resembling sanity.

It’s the radioactive power core that powers my intellect and creativity and insight and general verbal overheatedness.

It’s the fire that burns within me that I hide from the world because I am so scared that I am going to burn someone or have it explode in my face in a way that will shame me for the rest of my days.

I mean, it might make me…. do something wrong!

From a systems point of view, that level of emotional repression in the service of not hurting people is a terrible waste of a very rich energy source.

Surely this energ can be harnessed and made to pull my sled forward without savaging any Iditaod spectators.

Lots of people have a fiery side and still make it in life. Instead of cutting this side off at the source, these people learn to tame it through experience, not repression.

They follow their emotions and the consequences shape their future actions.

i lock myself away from all real experiences, including the ones you are supposed to have as part of growing up.

In a way, I find it hard to imagine acting on impulse. Like how does that even work. Just letting the emotion you are experiencing at that moment dictate your actions.

To me, that is a bizarre way to live, and quite honestly it frightens me.

And sure, I “know” that life needs balance and there has to be some spontaneity and acting on impulse or we become dead inside as our impetus is destroyed by constant failure to achive a result.

There’s only so many times an impulse can be quashed before it dies.

Keep it up, and soon your soul is a graveyard of dead inspiration and you feel cold and empty inside because you have snuffed out your own pilot light.

Man,. me and my metaphors.

I really think the beginning of true recovery for a lot of us depressives begins with creating a space in which it is safe to act on impulse.

For me, I get that when I am noodling about on my synthesizer keyboard. No forethought goes into what I am playing. How could it? It all happens so fast. Too fast for sober reflection or any sort of logical consideration.

And it’s not being recorded so there can be no extrinsic motivation to come along and corce things to be serious and focused toiwards some “practicul” purpose.

That would take all the fun out of it.

True art is like fingerpainting. The only reward sought is pleasure for oneself in the here and now. The pleasure of exploring and experimenting to see what makes the biggest impact on us and then building from there.

In fact, I think part of what makes any artist great is their willingness to keep going, turning the stimulus up, and up, and up again, without flinching or stopping.

I call that “facing the fires of creation”, and it takes a very specific kind of person to do that. For most people, the intensity wpould be too high and they would stop and shrink back in fear.

But an artist of whatever form or media just keeps turning that knob up and in doing so, creates art with a loud, strong voice that can take pordinary people on a truly epic ride through art, taking people to places they could never go alone.

And what, pray tell, makes us artists capable of facing the fires of creation and coming away with something beautiful?

East. It’s because we’re all fucked up in the head.

It really is that simpke.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.