Have I talked about this already/ If so, I apologize, but I am way too messed up from sleep to look it up right now.

I realized recently that the best job in the world for me would be one where there was always another job to be done. Where once I completed one task, I could just grab another, and fo forth and so on until I was satisfied.

Evidence : back when I worked for my Uncle Sonny, the only times I hated the job was when there were no customers and there was nothing to do.

My boss, Blaine Skerry, told me “just watch TV’, which made sense because I was surrounded by TVs. But I couldn’t. TV was way too slow and passive for me. I was at WORK, god damn it, and I needed something to DO.

I am at my happiest when I am at my busiest.

Now if only I was better at busying myself.

Video games don’t count because they are not productive. They give the illusion of productivity, granted, but like all things virtual, it is nowhere near as good as the real thing. And that little shot of dopamine when I complete a tasks (or in video game terms, a quest) is nowhere near as strong.

“Achievements” don’t mean shit compared to accomplishments.

This is hitting me hard right now because as far as I know, I am sans tasks right now. I am awaiting responses from the two writing gigs and the text companion gig does not start until (hopefully) this Thursday now.

And I am actually tempted to log in to UpWork and look for yet MORE work to do in order to fill the time.

I need to work, god dammit. Working is so much better than video games and Facebook. When I am working, I am actually in a good mood for once, not just too distracted and/or absorbed in something to worry about stuff.

It feels so good to have a load to pull. The ox needs the plow. To have something productive and therefore worth doing for a change is a joy. Bliss.

And I got to visit that joyful, blissful land for all too brief a time recently, and I want more. I want to go back. I want to go there to stay.

I have seen my Narnia and it’s full of joyful productivity.

Plus, inherent in these tasks is the feeling of being useful. Of contributing. I have been an unwilling but helpless nonparticipant in the work of life for way too long a time and that can’t possibly end too soon for me.

If you can’t work, you can’t grow up. Going off to work for a living is the modern equivalent of being allowed to hunt with the hunters or gather with the gatherers. It means you have taken on adult responsibilities, and it is through them you will continue the process of maturing that you have been part of for your whole life.

That, and money is an awesome thing to have. Or so I have heard.

Come to think of it, it’s the money that confirms that you have “done good”. It’s society’s way of saying “your contribution to the collective is being rewarded with the ability to reap rewards from said society”.

And in a broad sense, the size of your paycheck is the degree of society’s appreciation. In the smaller increments and especially at the low end, that is measured in direct rewards like being able to afford small pleasures like indulging in your hobbies or being able to buy fun things with it.

But in larger doses, it buys something far more important to humans : status. That’s rwhat the fancy new car or the new swank address are really about. It getgs confusing because with said advancements in rank also come upgrades in lifestyle, including access to luxuries, so it can seem like it’s the material pleasures alone that are the reward for your contributions.

But those material pleasures would lose a lot of their joy if you didn’t associate them with successful, high status people. That’s what confirms to you that society considers you a superior kind of person.

WIth all the status baggage that entails.

That’s something we never really talk about in society. We all intuitively grasp that a rise in status, especially if accompanied by wealth, can turn a good person bad and bring out a really ugly side of previously wonderful people, but we almost never sit down and ask ourselves why that it.

I think a big piece of the reason why is that society in no way prepares us for advanced status living. Our belief in equality and the fact that we are (sort of kind of not really) a classless society leaves us entirely unprepared for what happens when we are enjoying a substantial inequality of status in our favour.

So we fall back on our instincts and our instincts are harsh. They tell us all kinds of things that are not compatible with a modern egalitarian democracy. Things like “everyone lower in status than you must show deference and respect to you at all times and you are free to punish them if they do not do it to your satisfaction. “, or even further down the rabbit hole, “if people of lower status do not do what you say or behave the way you think they should, this is a direct challenge to your authority and you must quash it immediately and harshly or you will lose status to them”.

I think we would be better off if we had some widely popular tales of regular people gaining status and dealing with the emotions that suddenly arise in them that point them down a dark and twisted path, and how they overcome that in order to both retain their friends and retain their sanity.

Is that what Entourage was all about? I never watched.

And it’s easy to say that you would never be lke that, but until you are actually dealing with the issues, you don’t really know.

I, of course, would only become more awesome.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

So today has not been great.

Today was the day I was going to dedicate my whole afternoon to getting my text story into the proper format, which happens to be an Excel spreadsheet.

Once I looked at the sample spreadsheet the company provided,. I got what the deal with the format was. It’s dead simple, two colums, one for who is speaking and one for what they are saying. Anyone could figure that out in two seconds.

But why a spreadsheet and not just a text file? My guess is that an app has a way easier time reading and interpeting a spreadsheet than a text document.

So that was my Saturday Afternoon Challenge. Making the spreadsheet was no big deal. I have LibreOffice, it does various Excel formats. I learned spreadsheets when I was in high school.

I find them quite beautiful,. to be honest. The ability to so swiftly and easily set up dynamic mathematical relationships between values rocks my freaking world.

For us system times, it’s practically porn.

So there I was plugging away at the thing when I suddenly realized three horrible things at the same time :

1. It was not nearly long enough. It was supposed to be at least 100 lines and it was 52. There goes my concision again. I have to learn to be more prolix.
2. My future at this gig was riding on this
3. It sucked.

It’s really not very good. It starts off very strong but then it veers off into stupidity fairly quickly and I just plain hate the ending.

For quick reference, we are talking about the story I wrote in this blog entry. 

And right at this moment, I haaaaaate it.

But that’s how the artistic process goes. You make it the first time, you love it, then you hate it, then you fix it, lather rinse repeat as many times as it takes, and if you are lucky, you emerge at the end with something you can stand.

Or so I am told. I am still Mister One Draft Only over here. But I feel like I am getting ready to finally evolve into being a real writer who is capable of working on something for a much longer time any day now.

Or so I hope.

For the moment, it’s still write, release, and forget. I am lucky that I have enough talent that I can get away with that kind of thing. My writing hums with life and is alternately hilarious, heartbreaking, or just plain dark.

It’s a mood thing.

I suppose my whole life has been like that, in a way. I have been coasting on raw talent and intelligence since the first day of grade 1. My life has been split between the things I do easily that others can’t do at all and the things others do easily that I can’t do at all.

Call me “differently abled”.

Or a hothouse flower. That certainly fits. In the right environment, I could bloom like crazy and light up the whole greenhouse with my dazzling display of color and form.

But those conditions are so rare as to be currently unknown to science and wisdom, and as to how to get there, well, that’s…. complicated.

What I really need is to be transplanted someplace where I can thrive by the Great Green Gardener in the Sky.

Shown here scaring the crap out of people.

Full of country goodness and green peaness.

All I can do on my own is very slowly creepy in the direction of the sun. I have no idea when I will actually get there, but the light gets brighter as I go and that is good enough for me for now.

I am not, of course, surprised that my re-entry to the world of working has been quite rough so far.

That’s to be expected. I am not used to the world and I have always had a little more optimism than forethought so I am not surprised that I am stumbling out of the gate.

But soon I will hit my stride and then, zoom!

And I mean, worst case scenario, I lose the gigs I have now. That would suck, but there is plenty of more work out there.

I mean, look at all I got with a little less than a week of trying!

And I think that the people I have been writing for will be impressed with my talent enough to be willing to work with me to get the rest of the equation up to par.

I definitely have a talent for writing good stuff. But I need help turning my rich ore into gold bricks. I need someone else being in the equation giving me feedback.

Preferably someone harsh but fair. Like my fave professor, Aaronovsky, fromk VFS. He was the only one who cared enough to be tough with us and say “Not good enough! Do it again! ” till we got it right.

To say that stood out like a rose in a bed of daisies in the don’t give a shit, do whatever is easiest for YOU atmosphere of the VFS writing department would be the understatement of the year, three years running.

As patient readers know, I have had remarkably little challenge in my life. School was always super easy and all that. So when someone gives me the feedback I need and want so bad, I don’t care if it comes via the tip of their boot.

In fact, to be honest, I would prefer that to having it come in the form of vague, hazy statements made by people who are too afraid of hurting my feelings (or of me, for that matter) to push back at all and so, to me, it’s like they are barely there.

It’s hard to convey the deep frustration of being a naturally combative person in a world where nobody is willing to spar with you.

I need opposition! Pushback! Friction! Or any other thing that would make the world feel more real to me.

I am tired of living in this crazy hazy world of dreams.

I want to wake up and get to work.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

Did not get as much done today as I had hoped, but whatever.

Success comes from telling yourself that you will keep trying no matter how badly you fail. Even if you fail so bad that the Guiness World of Records people show up and they give you multiple awards, you will keep trying. And trying. And trying, until you succeed.

This eliminates failure as way to end the tension of achievement. Once that exit route is blocked, you are free to devote all your energies to success and you will no longer be living life with one foot out the door.

Now as you are reading these words,. no doubt the part of your mind that I will affectionately dub the “loser” part of your brain is qualing at the very thought of such a commitment. “But then we’d be TRAPPED” it screams. “Nooooooo!”.

But you are not trapped. You are, in fact, freer than you have ever been before because now you know that you can totally escape feeling like a loser and hating yourself and all that crap and all you have to do is keep on trying.

That’s it. If you’re trying, you’re good. As long as you keep trying, you are doing the exact thing that you need to do to succeed. You are on the road to success. There is nothing “loser-ish” about it.

Just like that, you become a winner in the lottery of life. And all you had to do was keep buying the tickets!

Today, I finally finished my assignment for that $6 place. ^[1] Took a lot more than an hour, but what the hell, it’s my first time.

Plus, I was not having the best brain day while I was doing it. My whole “afternoons are for working” idea sounded good but neglected to factor in the fact that I am often somewhat of a zombie in the afternoon and really don’t come alive till the sun goes down and things cool off.

That confirms that I am a total night owl. Or a vampire. I’m a vampire owl.

Dear The Internet, I love you, Michael Bertrand.

You saw the result in my blog feed in the entry previous to this one. If it seems a little uneven to you, there’s a reason.

Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, there was a hard working vulpine who was very happy with the article he had written. He felt he had presented all the pertinent facts in a fun and engaging way that was also easy to understand. It was good work. He smiled.

This is an artist’s rendition of that very moment.

Then he glanced at the specifications for the article and noticed they said the article had to be “at least 850 words. ”

With a terrible sinking feeling making him feel like his heart was sinking into his stomach, he did a wordcount on his article.

It confirmed his darkest suspicions : his article was only 437 words.

When he suddenly realized he now had to somehow come up with 463 more words, he looked like this.

‘Sadder than a wet fox” should totally be a thing.

Damn his knack for being concise!

So I spend this afternoon fattening up the goddamned article. And that is something that very very much goes against the grain for this intrepid wordsmith. I said all that needed to be said in the original article.

To have to add a bunch of words to it in order to meet some arbitrary metric and thus making the content less dense goes against every writer’s instinct I have.

But whatever. This is work, not art.

I am pretty sure that it was my dislike of the activity that, combined with my mental fog, made it take so goddamned long.

So the good news is that it should be easier the next time. I will know in advance that the job requires me to be more verbose than I am normally and that is way better than finding that out at the exact moment I thought I was done.

That really sucked.

I am not sure how to be more verbose about it. I assume I will figure it out. If I could include my own thoughts it would be easy. This entire blog is proof of that.

But no, I have to stay within the confines of a normal article for normal people.

Once more, I have to stuff this massive mind of mine into a tiny cramped space. It is to sigh. But I am at least enjoying the mental challenge of adapting to and learning this interesting new system.

Once that is done, I will likely reevaluate my commitment to this gig.

Other than that, I mostly slept and played Elder Scrolls Online. The usual. Bleh. It’s not an unpleasant way to spend my time but it has so little flavour to it.

I had hoped to finish my second draft of my texting story today. You know, the one that’s actually in the form of an Excel spreadsheet, like I was supposed to do the first time.

But that’s not going to happen, so I have rescheduled it for tomorrow. Either in the afternoon or the evening, depending on the mental weather.

One thing about doing it in the form of an Excel spreadsheet is that it makes it impossible for me to write it here and make it my blog entry.

Oh no, looks like I will have to do more work. What a pity. I will have less time to be zonked out in front of a goddamned video game.

I am being sarcastic.

The important thing is to remember that I am happiest when I am busy.

I am happiest when I am busy
I am happiest when I am busy
I am happiest when I am busy.

Repeat until believed.

I will talk to you nice people agan tomorrow.

Didn’t get a chance to blog until now because I was busy all afternoon.

Working! Well, work-like activity. Mostly something for which I will not get paid, but it was kind of fun and I feel good for having contributed for once.

It was for the text companion gig. My boss needed someone to do a run-through of how the whole system was going to work and I was her chosen victim sacrifice volunteer.

So I spend most of the afternoon with her, trying stuff out and hitting stumbling blocks and getting stuck in stupid ways (mostly my fault) and generally doing all the shit you have to do to get a brand new thing up and going.

There’s always problems you did not and could not have forseen, and all you can do is keep plowing away till you have cleared all the roadblocks away.

There was the password that ended in an exclamation mark. I did not realize this. The password was presented to me, over and over, as the last thing in the sentence and I just thought my boss was being super enthusiastic.

Then there was the very finicky system that we are using to organize the chats and such that took forever and completely logging out then closing and opening the browser to make do what it was supposed to do.

By the way, check out the name of the service we are using for this project.

Trumpia?? TRUMPIA!?! What the fuck kind of name for a service like enterprise SMS management is that? It might as well be Hitleria, or Stalinadon, or Castrotown.

Actually, that last one might be an upper class gay club, so scratch that one.

When I saw the name, I said “Seriously? That’s the name of it?”. She did not reply.

And now I desperately want to know if our clients will ever see that name. It could make things very weird if they can, whether they hate the guy or are wrong. There’s no reason they should be able to see it. It’s not front-facing software, I don’t think. It’s more like a server program that handles things behind the scenes.

But even so, the name makes me nervous as hell.

That horror aside, once we got everything going, it was time for me to be put though my paces as the test pilot for the whole companion program.

And it was then that I ran up against a problem that I have come across before, and that’s the hard truth that if someone asked me if I am good at following instructions, if I was brutally truthful, I would have to say, “….kinda?”

I always seem to miss things. I try to follow them to the letter but no matter how hard I try, I end up either missing a vital step or completely misinterpreting one.

And I have no defense for that, other than saying my brain is fucked up in general and I’m lucky that I can still dress myself.

So I can be kind of frustrating to teach. I am so bright and eager and yet I keep having to be reminded of things and screwing up in eye-rollingly inane ways.

I guess this is where I say that it is a good thing that I’m cute and charming. Otherwise someone would have killed me by now!

It’s also a good thing that I know that I will be good at the actual job and that all the complications and whatnot will be a thing of the past before I know it as long as I hang in there long enough to get the hang of it.

Everything always seems too complicated and impossible at first. That’s because you are dealing with it all as unprocessed information. Given time and practice, the mind condenses the important information and boils off the rest and suddenly everything seems much clearer and easier.

And all you have to do is keep trying.

I feel like I am discovering a lot very trite truths lately.

Oh, and today I realized I actually have three gigs now. The first two – text companion and fiction in test messaging form – you already know about. But I also have this gig writing articles based on research they supply.

Sounds like a dream come true, doesn’t it? For me at least. I haaate doing research. Having someone else do that for me is boffo.

However, that gig is not as good as it sounds because it only pays USD$6 an article. And the articles are supposed to take around an hour to write.

And I ain’t workin for no $6/hour. Even with the exchange rate, that wage sucks. It’s well below minimum wage, and that’s just plain not enough for someone with my training and talent. So unless I can get good enough at them to do two an hour, I might not keep that gig at all.

After all, I have two others!

Mostly, though, it just feels good to be busy. This afternoon was somewhat exhausting, but I was glad I did it because I feel more alive and fulfilled and legitimate now.

Besides, being exhausted is awesome one you actually stop moving. You get all languid and relaxed and possibly sleepy and, with the right attitude, you can mellow the fuck out and rid yourself of some negative tensions.

With the right attitude, you can do anything. Another profound and trite truth. I’m starting to feel like the dumb guy in a comedy who take a hilariously long time to get the joke.

Being is detinitely a superior mode of existence and the obvious choice for how to move forward with my life. Fuck all that video game nonsense. That was only ever a way to pass the time and I have ways to do that which pay money now.

From now on, afternoons are for working and video games are for relaxation and entertainment, not life-killing distractions that keep me safe from reality at the cost of crushing the life out of me.

I still have the rest of my waking hours to indulge in my distractions.

And who knows, maybe some day I won’t need them at all.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

<TheAmazingShielaD> So I am watching the Dark Knight rises for the millionth time and you know that scene where Batman goes through a tunnel on a motorcycle?
<DanielTheSpaniel> Yeah.
<TheDorkKnight> Kinda.
<McLovin1990> I think so. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it.
<TheAmazingShielaD> Well if you watch closely, you can see that it’s daytime when he goes into the tunnel, and its night when he comes out!
<DanielTheSpaniel> Bullshit.
<McLovin1990> I totally would have noticed that.
<ChickKorea> Yeah, me too.
<TheAmazingShielaD> I swear it’s true! And I watch that and I’m thinking, “How long is this tunnel, anyway?
<ChickKorea> LOL
<McLovin1990> Seriously.
<DanielTheSpaniel> Only Chris Nolan cou++++*++++++**++++++++*++++++++++++
DanielTheSpaniel has left the chat. 
McLovin1990 has left the chat.
TheDorkKnight has left the chat. 
ChickKorea has left the chat. 
AlienLovechild has left the chat. 
ChickKorea has left the chat. 
<TheAmazingShielaD> What the hell? Guys? Where did everybody go?
User TheVoidThatKills has invited you to join the chatroom, “Camp Winnewauk 1994”. Do you accept the invitation? Y/N
<TheAmazingShielaD> Um, OK. I mean… yes?
Invitation accepted. You are now being transferred to the chatroom, “Camp Winnewauk 1994), user TheAmazingShiela.
<TheVoidThatKills> Hello, little She.
<TheAmazingShielaD> Um, hi there. Do I know you?
<TheVoidThatKills> Oh, we’ve known each other for a very long time.
<TheAmazingSheilaD> Well that’s nice but where do I know you from? Work?
<TheVoidThatKills> I’m so glad you accepted my friend request, little She. That makes this all voluntary. Or at least, voluntary enough.
<TheAmazingSheilaD> So like…. is it high school? Did I go to high school with you?
<TheVoidThatKills> Oh no. We met long before that. It’s so good to see you, little She.
<The AmazingSheilaD> Stop calling me that! The only person who is allowed to call me that is my Dad.
<TheVoidThatKills> Ah, yes. Your dear father. So pleasant to talk to. He’s the one who told me all about you.
<The AmazingSheilaD> Bullshit. That’s impossible.
<TheVoidThatKills> And why is that?
<The AmazingSheilaD> Because he’s been dead for over a decade, asshole.
<TheVoidThatKills> Oh, that. Well let’s just say I have known your father for a very, very long time, little She.  And I’ve known you for even longer. In fact, I have known you since the day you were born.
<The AmazingSheilaD>  Bullshit. You’re just some rando creeper who thinks he’s a big deal because he can put on this little act.
<TheVoidThatKills> Oh I am so much more. Remember your 8th birthday party, when you hugged your Uncle Stevie so hard that you peed a tiny bit, and you were so scared that everyone would notice but nobody did?
<The AmazingSheilaD> How could you…
<TheVoidThatKills> And that time you got mad at Tina Banks and stole the front tire off her bike and threw it in the river? And everyone thought it was bike thieves and you never got caught?
<The AmazingSheilaD> You can’t possibly know that. Nobody saw me.
<TheVoidThatKills> I saw you, little She. I’ve been watching you since you were very little. I know everything about you, little She.
<The AmazingSheilaD> STOP CALLING ME THAT. And you don’t know me!
<TheVoidThatKills> Don’t I? I even know about all the times you peeked inside your baby brother’s diaper to look at his penis, trying to figure out what it was.
<The AmazingSheilaD> SHUT UP. You can’t know these things. It’s impossible.
<TheVoidThatKills> Oh but I do. I know them because I have been with you. Watching you. Protecting you. Caring for you, in my own special way.
<The AmazingSheilaD> Protecting me from what?
<TheVoidThatKills> Oh, many things. Remember that time Tabitha Parker said she was going to beat you up after class, but she got sick and had to go home instead?
<The AmazingSheilaD> You’re saying that was you?
<TheVoidThatKills> Indeed. And that time you forgot your bag at school and it started raining really hard and your jacket was in your bag and just when it looked like you would have to walk home in rain, a kindly gentleman with a friendly smile gave you a ride home in his car?
<The AmazingSheilaD> It was so warm in the car. You mean that was you, too?
<TheVoidThatKills> In the flesh. Now do remember the day we met? It was a sunny summer day at Camp Winnewauk. You were mad at your parents because they made you put on a dress when you wanted to run around in just your shorts like the boys did. So you ran off when they weren’t looking, and ended up falling into the deepest part of Lake Winnewauk. Do you remember what happened then?
<The AmazingSheilaD> I felt some kind of force,  gentle and strong,  lift me into the air and carry me back to shore. It felt so warm…just like in your car, come to think of it. Not only did that force save me, but by the time I got to shore, my dress wasn’t even wet.
<TheVoidThatKills> And do you remember what happened then?
<The AmazingSheilaD> No. Wait…. yes. I heard a voice in my head say “You are one of mine now. And I will love you and protect you until the day I need you. ”
<TheVoidThatKills> And that day has come, little She. Today is the promised day when you pay me back for all my loving kindness by coming with me to be my bride. Are you ready to go?
<The AmazingSheilaD> I don’t know. This is all so sudden. How do I know any of this is real and not just some sick trick someone is playing on me.
<TheVoidThatKills> Ah yes. The demonstation. They always need a demonstration. Very well. Look to your left and tell me what you see.
<The AmazingSheilaD> Nothing. Well, my cat Tommy.
<TheVoidThatKills> That’s it. Keep watching Tommy because he just learned a new trick that he wants to show you. Are you watching? Good. Abracadabra, alakazam, 1… 2… 3… and PRESTO!
<The AmazingSheilaD> WTF DID YOU DO TO TOMMY? Where did he go??
<TheVoidThatKills> Do you like his little trick? He’s learned how to disappear! Right before your very eyes!
<The AmazingSheilaD> Bring him back, you asshole!
<TheVoidThatKills> Oh don’t worry, I haven’t hurt him. I just put him somewhere for a little while;. He’s perfectly safe.
<The AmazingSheilaD>I said BRING HIM BACK.
<TheVoidThatKills> Oh very well. 3…2…1..,poof!
<The AmazingSheilaD> Oh Tommy, Tommy…. did the bad man hurt you? I guess not, because you’re purring like crazy.
<TheVoidThatKills> See? I told you he was fine. In fact, I think he likes me.
<The AmazingSheilaD> Okay, you’ve made your point. Now what?
<TheVoidThatKills> Now you make a choice. Either give me what I am due by coming with me to be my Queen, or reject my offer and return to your current life working a job you hate and going on dates with creeps.
User TheVoidThatKills has invited you to “Depart this realm to be my Queen”. Do you accept his invitation?
TheAmazingShielaD has left the chat. 

I’d love to tell you that I landed a gig on UpWork today, but I can’t.

Because I landed two! Insert slot machine win sound effect clip here.

I got both the writing texting-based stories gig (told you my story was scary) and the gig being some lonely person’s online companion.

The companion gig pays $11\hour and that is,honestly, too little. i am pretty sure the clients will be paying a hell of a lot more than that. But it’s a startup working an entirely new business model which may well belly flop into the pit of Startups That Become Stopdowns, so I am willing to go with it.

At least until. like I said before, I build up a loyal clientele and become the most popular and beloved companion, and then it will be time to renegotiate.

It’s such a great gig for me because I feel like I have inadvertentky been training for it by being fluffy lovable Fruvous online for oh, more than 20 years.

So I am quite confident that I can rock that job if I can just make it through the awkward initial stage when I am still learning the ropes.

Then again, seeing as this is, as far as I know, a totally new business model, absolutely nobody will know what they are doing at first. It’s not like there are old veterans who cna teach me how to do it. We will all be winging it.

I can live with that. That kind of makes it more fun. I get to sort of invent the job as I go and I don’t have to worry that I am not doing it the way I am ‘supposed” to be doing it.

I like having that kind of freedom. I would rather be governed by my own sensitivity and personality than some goddamned book of rules any day.

:Like a lot of creative types,. I am not big on rules. I mean. I’m no anarchist – I believe in the necessity of rules and methods for enforcing them – but on a personal level, I am only comfortable in environments where the rules and my natural sense of manners and ethics are more or less the same.

I remember the first time I read through the list of rules for some message board and realized they all covered shit I would never do any way and therefore I did not need to think about them at all.

To me, they pretty much all boiled down to, “don’t be an asshole”. No problem.

It’s like when I first read Dale Carnegie’s “How To Win Friends And Influence People”, and realized it all boiled down to listening to people, seeing things from their point of view, and in generel being polite, sincere, and respectful.

By those terms, I am already a social genius. Or at least, I have the potential to be one if I can get rid of enough of my excess baggage from all my social damage.

The other gig, the writing in texting form gig, should not be too hard for me. Amy, the lady in charge of it, has given me till next Monday to finish it.

Which is hilarious, because I could have had it for her today if she’d wanted. As is, I am probably going to write it tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow evening at the latest. And won’t she be surprised at how fast I can work.

In fact, originally, I was going to make the job tonight’s blog entry, but my inner writer’s sense told me the ideas for it were not quite ready yet, so I punted it to tomorrow so I have more time to develop it in my mind.

But tomorrow for sure. I have a lot to prove and I intend on proving it as fast as I can, and one of the prime things I aim to prove is that I am amazingly talented and anyone who hires me should count themselves lucky to have found such a goddamned gem.

Plus, I have a lot of personality that needs to be expressed. I think in my natural state I would be one of those big guys with the big personality to match. The kind of guy everybody loves. even if he can be a little hard to take sometimes.

But like…. the arts world version of him. Hmmm.

I definitely think I would be way better at job interviews now than I was 20 years ago. I am fully aware of the power of my personality and how to use it now, and I am pretty sure I can overwhelm people with my charm and charisma if given the chance.

One of the best things about applying for things on UpWork is that it activates this other side of myself that has always been there but didnt usually see the light of day except when dealing with purely academic and/or intellectual things.

That side of me has total confidence. No self doubt at all. It’s the side of me that has caused me some trouble in my past because I state my opinions with such firmness of conviction that it tends to stifle debate.

I’ve got that under control now, more or less.

But the self-confidence it springs from is a highly valuable asset. Throw charm and charisma over it to blunt the rough edges, and you have the makings of someone who can really make a splash in the world of entertainment.

Lemme at’m, I’ll knock’em dead!

Metaphorically speaking, of course.

All I have to do is turn on the sweetness and charm and I bet I could make a lot of friends real fast because I am fun to be around. \

Funny how that works. People like to be around people who are fun to be around. Seems obvious but there’s a lot of people who do not see the connection, and go right on being unpleasant to be around while loudly complaining about how unfair it is that nobody wants to be around them.

Me, I figured it out at an early age. If anything,. I err in the opposite direction and act like I have to be super entertaining or people will leave me.

Remember, folks, that for every insanity, there is an equal and opposite insanity. And that the the opposite of insanity isn’t the opposite insanity, as tempting as it is to think so. The opposite of insanity is sanity, and that is much harder to achieve.

Because sabnity requires not only that we restrain ourselves, but that we look beyond the neurochemical landscape of conflict to see the middle road that leads away from the madness and into cool calm waters.

It’s not an easy route and it’s not a popular route, but it’s the right route.

And I do my best to follow it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

First off, some homework.

Outline and Sample Text for “Text Story #1”
Written for Amy Goodenough

Outline : A woman gets a text from a mysterious figure who called himself TheVoidThatKills and seems to know a lot about her. This entity then demonstrates its supernatural powers to by making her cat disappear and reappear. At the peak of her terror, TheVoidThatKills tells her that it’s known her a very long time, and reminds her oif a summer day when she was 4 years old and she ‘mysteriously’ survived drowning. It says she owes it her life, and now it’s collecting on that debt. At the end, we are left wondering whether she went with him or just burned her phone.

The first ten lines :

<AmazingShielaD> Um, hi there. Do I know you?
<TheVoidThatKills> Oh, we’ve known each other for a very long time.
<AmazingSheilaD> Well that’s nice but where do I know you from? Work?
<TheVoidThatKills> I’m so glad you accepted my friend request, little She. That makes this all voluntary. Or at least, voluntary enough.
<AmazingSheilaD> So like…. is it high school? Did I go to high school with you?
<TheVoidThatKills> Oh no. We met long before that. It’s so good to see you, little She.
<AmazingSheilaD> Stop calling me that! The only person who calls me that is my Dad.
<TheVoidThatKills> Ah, yes. Your dear father. He’s the one who told me all about you. Is there something about his pet name for you that bothers you?
<AmazingSheilaD> Besides the fact that he’s dead?

And voila, c’est pret. That’s my second-stage application for the job writing stories for an app that tells stories in the form of texting conversations.

Creepy, isn’t it? And I haven’t even come close to the super scary stuff I have planned. They said they wanted “thriller” stories, and that seems to be what they call horror movies these days,. so I decided to go right for the spine chilling horror that I have always wanted to write.

I could write a story without the supernatural content if I had to. It would be boring by comparison, but I have ideas for a conversation between an average citizen and someone who claims to have kidnapped their daughter. And sends pics to prove it.

That could be scary as fuck too. It’s fun trying to create terror in what is essentially a dialogue only medium.

It’s a lot like writing a radio play.  And I have listened to some of those that would scare the pubes off of you. So I am drawing on that tradition, amongst others.

Right now, the specs call for two characters only. Which is fine, I can work with that. It makes things a little clunkier than I would like. There are stories that would be a lot easier to tell if there is a third person who can help balance the tension between the two principals or add exposition or even just pop in to stir the pot.

I’d love to do other genres as well, of course. I would particularly like to tackle romance in this format. I think putting a romantic story in such an intimate context could make for a very powerful combination.

I can’t see doing my first love, science fiction, in this format. I would have to bring in so much detail from the world outside the conversation that it would end up being very clumsy, even with my talent for exposition in dialogue.

I dunno. Maybe I could write a conversation between a human and an alien who just figured out how to text with humans.

Pretty sure that would end up being comedy.

I can easily write comedy in this format. Everyone at VFS agreed that I write really funny dialogue. I could write my own little sitcom episodes in texts! I think that could work as long as I remember that I am writing for the eye, not the ear, so the timing and beats will be a bit different.

Ooh. I just thought of another possibility. Not sure if there is a market for it, but I could write intense verbal combat type scenes. Like an interrogation scene, or someone whoi is trying to coax information out of a reluctant source, or something like that.

I know I’d find that kind of thing compelling. And I know I could write it to be intensely exciting, full of twists and turns and mindblowing reveals.

And that’s pretty much what they are looking for. The sort of thing that makes people desperate to know what happens next.

I am not exactly sure how this content will be monetized. I suppose they could give free previews and then charge to read the whole thing. A nice small fee, like a buck a story, so that people feel free to read lots and lots of them.

Then again, perhaps I am too timid about such things. When Amy asked me what I would charge for one of these stories , I said $25, and she replied that they would be very happy to pay me that.

VERY happy? Damn it, I should have asked for more. Even with the best of employers you don’t want them to be VERY happy with what they are paying you.

Oh well. Perhaps my lowball offer will give me a competitive edge over other equally qualified contenders. That way, I can pretend I quoted such a low price as a hardball business tactic designed to cut the legs out from under the competition,  and not just me having no idea what my talent is worth.

There’s an advantage, when you are just starting out, in looking like someone potential employers can really exploit.

And who knows. Maybe I will become a super popular writer on that thing and that will give me the leverage I need to renegotiate.

I am pretty sure I can write one of these episodes in around an hour. So making $25 an hour ain’t so bad.

And I have lots of other irons in the fire too.

This job hunting thing is kind of fun!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

As you know, lately, I have been concerned about my sleep. Seemed like I could not stay asleep more than two and a quarter hours.

And that’s not enough for healthy sleep.

So last night I took a Trazodone for the first time in weeks. And it worked. Slept a good five hours or so. Presumably got caught up on some serious REM sleep.

But oy, is it hard for me to wake up now. I did not miss waking up in a dense mental fog that makes me want to go right back to sleep for like, a year.

Makes writing these words quite the struggle, too. I keep drifting off into semi-waking reverie. Then I have to drag myself back to full reality and get some words written before the tide takes me out to sea again.

Oh well. I will get my 500 done and then do the other 500 later.

Still somwhat depressed. That tense and irritable mood persist. I think it comes from an accumulation of background anxiety. Little anxiety prompts  get shoved out of consciousness by my overpowered superego and add to my overall agitation level and eventually the anxiety level gets too high to remain entirely unconscious so I end up feeling a low level adrenal response in the form of anxiety, irritation, agitation, and of course, good ol’ depression.

That would explain why this often feel like I am trapped. I am experiencing the urge to flee but my ennui and emotional inertia prevent that from happened and voila, trapped.

And gnawing my own leg off won’t free me. This time.

The secret, then, is to find a way to vent the pent up energies. I thik that begins when I start thinking of that emotional state as an opportunity instead of a crisis.

After all, it means I have energy to spare. In theory, I could use said energy in order to accomplish some task I am normally too lethargic to manage.

SO far I am not quite ‘there’ yet, but I am getting there. I’ve taken that tension and redirected it into something more wholesome and productive a number of times now and it has always made me feel a lot better.

I will ponder this wisdom and try to integrate it emotionally as well as intellectually.

The radio in my head seems quite loud today. That’s stressful. All the different thoughts that I suppress trying to talk to me at the same time. Thought processes never resolved babble away mindlessly. Suppressed emotions battle it out in a swirling maelstom as they jockey for position and do their best to get expressed.

I really wish that goddamned radio had an off switch. It would be so nice to be free of the babble for a while. At least long enough for me to get a good night’s sleep.

Because this shit happens when I am asleep too. No wonder I need goddamned pills in order to sleep a decent amount.

My life can be so hard.

I’ve slept 8 hours total and I am still sleepy. God damn it.

I suppose it’s possible that I need this sleep. And that fighting it is kind of pointless and I should just trust that my body knows what it’s doing and surrender to Mister Sandman.

But I can’t help it. I’m an ornery cuss. I don’t want to spend all my time sleeping. I want to do things. I want to be awake and alive. I don’t want to sleep my life away.

Not in a literal sense, anyhow.

Metaphorically, that is kind of what depression makes me do. It doesn’t (usually) make me literally sleep all the time but it keeps me away from things which will wake me up too much because that will wake up my anxiety and I will end up freaking out.

God I wish I could just go back to sleep right now. But I have things to do.

So in a sense, I sleepwalk through life. When one is afraid of one’s own adrenal response, you kind of have no choice. I would rather be able to throw open my arms and my heart and embrace life, but I can’t do that until it stops scaring me so much.

Anxiety’s a bitch.

Still, I am definitely improving. I have good periods now, where I am confident and cocky and ready to take on the world… from the comfort of my computer chair.

hey, it’s a pretty good start. Applying for various gigs via UpWork is a big deal for me. I can tell, because it scares the bejesus out of me if I think about it too much. It involves opening myself up to the world and forces beyond my control that will definitely pull me out of my hidey hole and force me to focus and concentrate and get things DONE.

On the other hand, money. Actual earned income. That’s something that, when I am feeling down like I am now, seems like a magical and unobtainable substance that is not for people like me.

Doesn’t make any sense, but that’s why they call me crazy. Mentally ill. I feel a lot of things which make no fucking sense whatsoever, and yet knowing this does not make those feelings go away.

Logic cannot always modify emotion. In fact, it almost never does. Usually emotion leads and logic stumbles after it, making up reasons for things afterwards.

Kind of makes me wish I had spent more time developing my non-logical, irrational, intuitive side instead of building a ridiculously overpowered and overbuilt logic system that often does me more harm than good.

Maybe if I wasn’t so lopsided, I would be able to simply let my mind heal itself without constant interference from the rational mind. I would not worry so much about what is True and what makes sense and I wouldn’t reject all the parts of life that do not immediately fit into that massive magnificent model of the world in my mind.

Well it’s not too late. I’m learning to relax the “smart” part of the brain now and then and just let go and enjoy myself.

It’s tough going, but I will get there. The journey may be hard but the rewards are rich.

And when I get there, I will finally be able to be a real little boy, and not the brittle robot that currently walks around in my skin.

After that, I will worry about growing up.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

So today I feel depressed.

It’s the usual combination of anger. frustration, boredom, irritability, and feeling like I am a mighty beast kept in too small of a cage, and I am pacing back and forth and plotting my ultimate revenge.

That got oddly specific.

I think I am just going through one of the phases of my recovery, namely the frustration phase. My energies have been aroused (and my arousal has been energized), and those energies want out. But there is still too much depression standing in the way.

Still, I have had enough of these phases and have achieved enough clarity about them to know that they often prove to be good in the long term. It is by the power of all that pent up emotion that new growth is forced to the surface like molten lava..

So I guess, to run with that metaphor as you know I must, right now I am experiencing the eruption. And being around the eruption sucks. It’s hot, there’s smoke and ash in the air. the air smells gross and weird, oh, and there’s a slow moving river of molten rock destroying everything in its path.

Protip : do not be in its path. It is bad.

But after the eruption, things go back to normal, more or less, but the island is just a little bit bigger.

And who knows, maybe some day it will be big enough for me to swim to the mainland and escape my little island prison forever.

Or at least make it fucking optional.

Applied for a job helping someone edit their book about an atheist learning the true meaning of Xmas. I have no problem with that. I have a lot of issues with modern atheism. I think people whom I otherwise admire and respect, like Neil Degrasse Tyson, have turned atheism into a hate group. And I have a lot to say on the subject.

And I have no problem promoting Xmas either. I adore Xmas and I am quite happy to spread its true meaning. Granted. my version of the true meaning skips the Jesus parts, which is why it’s Xmas to me. but the message of love, compassion, caring, and joy is one I will wholeheartedly endorse till the day I die.

It’s a longshot, though. I have no relevant experience and it could be said that I am qualified for the job only in theory. There are bound to be a bunch of people who can actually establish real bona fides applying too.

But what the hell. The job pays $500. So it’s worth a shot.

Wow, someone who understands that if you want top talent, you pay top dollar. I have gotten to businessmen thinking they are entitled to unlimited labour for crap wages (and then complaining that they only get low quality workers like that’s somehow the government’s fault) that seeing anyone who actually goddamned understands capitalism feels like a breath of fresh fucking air by comparison, god dammit.

Sorry. I was just watching Samanta Bee with J&J. It’s got me all riled up.

I love her show because she actually expresses the sheer rage at the insanity that is the world of today and makes no apologies for it. Neither Trevor Noah or Stephen Colbert can afford to do that. For one, they are meant for a broad audience and I am sure sheer cataclysmic rage does not “test well”.

But the more important factor is that Trevor and Stephen (sounds like a charming gay couple) have to pace themselves because they have to go out there four or five times a week. Sam’s show is weekly, so she can save it all up for the camera.

I also think her being a woman helps a little too. People expect women to express their emotions a lot more overtly than men. And more verbally. Plus, I think that because she fundamentally comes across as an average blonde white lady a lot like a ton of other blonde white ladies you know, her voice carries that special kind of authority that convinces otherwise sane police officers to investigate black people just because some white lady on the phone sounded really scared.

Not that she’d do that. It’s just an example.

The other person that benefits from only being on once a wek is John Oliver, and he does a better job of expressing the rage too. but being British and male, he is genetically unable to express it in any form except sarcasm and mockery.

And that works for him because the British have been refining and weaponizing sarcasm for hundreds of years and that’s art of his cultural inheritance.

Plus, you have to admit, sarcasm sounds best delivered in that accent. It really makes the target of the sarcasm look like an idiot.

I wonder if that connects with why so many villains in things are British. Isaac Asimov had a theory that our basic heroic storytelling model is inherently anti-intellectual, which is why the hero is always a wielder of brute force (a barbarian, a knight, an everyman figure who is good at punching, etc) and the bad guy is always a wielder of intellectual force (a wizard, an evil scientist, that asshole in the coffee shop in Good Will Hunting).

You might get something where the hero is a wizard (like Harry Potter) but you almost never see something where the bad guy is a simple wielder of brute force.

Why? Because it would feel too much like you’re punching down, I think. On some level, we understand that intellectual power beats brute force hands down. Society makes that clear. Being the stronger,. faster, better warrior means almost nothing in modern society. But being the smartest guy in the room might make you rich and assuredly gives you the potential to do the highest status jobs around, like doctor, lawyer, financier, and duck wrangler.

Seriously. Those guy get paid so well. Because ducks are assholes.

I feel somewhat better now, around three hours since I started writing this thing. That’s the thing about depression. It comes and goes, just like the weather.

Let’s hope for clearer skies ahead.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.