And I tell you why it sucks (this time) in this here vidya of mine :
I suppose it’s probably possible that some AI out there can intelligently transform a TikTok’s aspect ratio to fit properly in a YouTube window.
Any video editing program could do it the unintelligent way just by stretching each frame but the result would be me looking very short and fat.
And I’m not short.
But I dunno. I think the real content, what I am saying and how I am saying it, still comes through even with things being squished into a shoebox.
Something to ponder for the future.
Still very upset with my first video not having any sound. I have no idea what the fuck happened there. I didn’t get any error messages and the camera gets all its input via USB so that should be an all or nothing thing.
It shouldn’t be possible for it to fail selectively like that. That’s like something from the old days of patch cables and component stereos and the four track recorder.
But whatever. Drat these computers, they’re so naughty and so complex.
Otherwise having the same ol’ day as always, the same day I have lived through tens of thousands of times over the years like it’s Groundhog Day. Just another day of sitting at this computer and entertaining myself with video games and YouTube and such.
It’s no way to live a life. What am I even waiting for? I live my life like I am in the universe’s waiting room but I am, at the old age of 52, starting to think that life ain’t coming and its up to me to make alternate arrangements.
But I always feel so damned weak and scared and small.
I know something was supposed to happen inside of me that never got a chance to blossom. I can feel all my buried potential rotting in the ground because the brain in charge of it all doesn’t work too good.
All I can do is keep trying to get a signal through all the thick cold glutinous gunk in my head so that my desires can actually motivate me to do things for once.
Like I’ve said before, very little of what I do comes from wanting to do it. The desire/action/consummation cycle in me is totally fucked. Most of what I do, I do out of a combination of habit and not knowing what else to do with myself.
And it keeps me occupied. Video games keep me from getting bored, at least in the immediate sense. They feed me a safely fake sense of progress and purpose and destination in order to keep me from thinking about how my life is going nowhere while I do nothing but run on a treadmill while admiring the view.
I know that there’s a big beautiful world outside my cloistered cell and that I could totally find a place in it for myself and my outsized gifts if I just open the door and gather up the courage to go out there and find it.
But I’m too scared. Scared of that big loud bright busy world out there. Scared of being overwhelmed by the increase in stimulation levels, not to mention the feeling of being “exposed” like I’m a doe caught in the middle of a meadow or something.
I could do it all if I had the right person to hold my hand and keep me moving in the right direction and be my anchor for when I am freaking out and feel lost and scared and small as an itty bitty mouse.
Clearly, when left to my own devices, I get nowhere.
I need someone else’s devices in order to make any progress.
Because my devices suck.
More after the break.
In cold storage
For my entire life, it seems, I have been looking for a way to come in from the cold.
But at the same time, I’ve been scared to leave the soothing numbing influence of my depression because then I would have to feel all the things I’ve been keeping frozen in my soul and by now, at the age of 52, there’s an awful lot of them.
Please form an orderly line. You will be thawed and felt in seemingly random order. We appreciate your cooperation in this matthew.
So I hover at a sort of midpoint between the void and the Sun, wanting deeply and desperately to feel warm and safe but too scared to get close enough for it to happen.
I mean, I don’t think I even know how to truly connect with others. I can converse with them, I can entertain them, I can enthrall them, I can even cuddle up to them, or at least I could back in the 90’s.
But all of that keeps people at arm’s length in the end. It might seem like I am getting extremely close with someone in terms of sharing secrets and being vulnerable and offering creature comforts, but it’s all an illusion and my inner barriers don’t come down at all, I am afraid.
I can’t imagine what would need to happen for me to feel truly safe with someone. Safe enough to put away the act and just be me as I am, warts and all.
For one thing, my inner self is convinced that they would run away screaming if they got to know the “real me”, and that is rooted in a thoroughly polluted self-esteem that makes me feel like I am some kind of disgusting, horrifying, nauseating, pathetic, utterly repulsive thing to be universally despised.
I’ve repaired my self-worth quite a lot over the years. Those thoughts about myself no longer make it to the surface to influence or control me. I know I’m amazing.
But that toxic self-loathing still lies in the deep dark places of my soul where the light of my enlightenment can’t reach it, and it pollutes my every waking thought.
And my dreams too, probably.
But I try my best to heal anyway.
I’m working on it.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.