I am very glad I don’t have to go back to school till Monday.

Not because of any one thing. Just feeling drained. I will do my best to rest and relax and recharge, while also getting some homework done.

I’m getting bored of my current game anyway.

I’m going to have to fill out a relationship grid for my show, Sam. That’s where, character by character, you describe that character’s relationship to each of the other characters in the grid. And I will do it, but I find it to be very lame.

That kind of shit is far too mechanical and artificial for me. That’s the kind of thing I will keep track of in my mind far better than I could in some grid. I am sure for the bottom-up thinkers of the world, that kind of thing is a huge help, but I ain’t one of them.

In fact, it’s sort of amazing and kind of bewildering to imagine that some people can even do that. They do a bunch of research, makes character notes, do a bunch of that “creative workbook” kind of thing, and only THEN do they have an idea for story.

These people need to know what they are doing before they do it. Weird. When it comes to my creative life, I tend to jump out the window assuming I will learn to fly.

I think that leads to a more organic, natural kind of writing that makes sense in a way that a manufactured storyline usually cannot. One of the things we covered last semester was “how to make sure the events in the story follow one another in a logical, “cause and effect” way. And I was like…. how else could they happen?

Apparently, some people have story ideas that need help that way. For me, my story ideas tend to start from a point then crystallize from there. I can’t quite say the whole thing is there, because I do need to come up with a little connective tissue now and then, but for the most part, the sequence of events flows logically from one thing to another.

But we’ve been over this before. I am not a planner when it comes to writing. Plans require you to know where you are going before you go there, and to me, one of the joys of writing is finding that out as I go.

Or rather, slowly unpacking the incredibly dense info packet that is the idea. Sometimes the ideas come in pieces but other times it’s a whole story all at once.

I am not sure which way yields better results. My romantic and/or mystic side would prefer to think that the instant story ones are better because they are more organic and inspired.

But if all I wanted to do was write straight from my soul, I would be a poet. Instead, I am a storyteller, a jester, an entertainer, a prophet, a soothsayer, a hermit, and a clown.

And a human being. I sometimes forget that. The other parts are so much more interesting. The temptation is always there to follow the siren song of the ego and live ignoring the physical reality of life in favour of an entirely cerebral existence.

But no matter how deeply you get into matters of the mind (and I have been in so deep that I felt like I could die), you are still a living being in a physical world and neglecting that fact will only cause your mental world to go to pieces as the physical reality that underlies it does the same.

That’s the false promise of transcendentalism : that you can transcend the flesh and enter some mystic realm where you are only mind, or only spirit, or “pure energy”, or the like.

Pure meaning untainted by the physical, presumably. Never trust purity, that’s my motto. Reality is mixed and the purest water has no fish.

And you’re a fish in that metaphor. A living creature. Purity is poison, and purity ethics always lead to an attempt to kill the humanity in us. It is the ego trying to assassinate the id, and it’s far more dangerous than when the id tries to kill the ego.

So maybe what I really suffer from, in Freudian terms, is an overindulged ego, rather than an overpowered superego. Probably some of both, to be honest.

Of one thing I am sure : my id is in lousy shape. Poor thing has been starved, neglected, ignored, and abused for a long time. I am trying to nurse it back to life so that I can finally feel fully alive, like a real person, and have an intimate connect with The Source Of All, which is of course the id.

That’s where energy, motivation, inspiration, joy, and everything else than lives comes from, and when we deny the animal within ourselves, our souls wither away and die.

I am not exactly sure what to do to revive mine. A lot of the traditional sorts of things one does when one is indulging the id, like pursuing physical excess, require a lot more money than I will have any time soon.

Plus, I am too old to abuse my body with liquor, drugs, and other wild stuff. So while I definitely think I need a lot more pleasure/reward in my life. But it will have to come my way in a gentler form than the usual.

It would have to be in a form that means something to me as well. I would love to explore my tastes while getting that pleasure/reward. In many important ways, I have no freaking idea who I am. And I have lacked the funds, opportunities, and sanity to find out.

Hopefully, when I get work after school, I will at least have the finds to say, find out what getting drunk at a gay bar is like, or be able to afford to hang out at the baths, or make the right connections to get invited to the really fun kind of party.

Or maybe all I need is to get the fuck over myself.

One day at a time, sweet Jesus.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.