(NOTE : This is an abstract discussion of my problem, so you don’t have to worry that I am once more the victim of my own incompetence. There’s no tragedy to be told. I’ve just been thinking about it today. ) 

Been thinking about the whole “I keep screwing up” thing.

I haven’t done it lately. Knock on wood. So improvement is possible, at least for a while. But I know that it’s only a matter of time before the scintillating shimmering kaleidoscope that is my mind shifts and I stop pay attention to the right variables and lo and behold, I am an idiot once again.

It’s definitely related to my state of mental health. The more depressed I am, the thicker the fog in my mind gets, and the harder it is for me to think clearly and remember things and predict future needs, and so on.

That, of course, makes my signature brand of fuckups far more likely to happen. And what happens after? I become even more depressed.

It’s a tragic cycle. Luckily, I have learned to resist it, and thus break the cycle a bit.

It helps that I have at least some tiny bit of accomplishment now. Tahnsk to my awesome script writing capabilities, I have $140 or so sitting on my reloadable visa, waiting to be used. And that’s after making a $50 payment on my delinquent cell phone bill.

And there is nothing quite like the validation one gets for being paid for one’s work. Sure, it’s not exactly a huge amount of money…. 5 scripts a week for USD $10 a script…. but with all my living expenses already covered (and with my having lived in crushing poverty for so long, it makes a huge difference.

It’s USD $200/month. That’s around  CDN $250 a month.. Compared to an income of roughly $1000/month, it’s a 25 percent increase.

Not frigging bad! And it’s only my first gig. I am being paid WAY less than industry standard. If I was a staff writer on a TV show, I would be making around USD $2800/week, which is around $3700 Canadian.

But it’s a start. Not a lot of writers get so many webisode writing credits in so short of time after graduation. Once I have done 30 or 31 of the things, I will start looking around for opportunities further up the ladder. Something in the actual TV industry, maybe. Or at least a higher level of freelance work.

I wonder how many minutes of script I need to have written before I go from a Beginner (for people who want the lowest possible price) to Intermediate (for people looking for the best combination of experience and price)?

Maybe all you have to do is change a setting in your profile. That would suck possum taint. I want to earn it. And Upwork is too well run a website for something that sloppy. They want to assure the purchasers of freelance work that they are getting what they paid for. So it’s in their best interests to make sure that is true.

Anyhow, so for once in a very long time, I feel like I have worth. Measurable worth. For a long long time, I felt like I was a permanent liability to the world. That all I could do was suck up resources without contributing at all. That I was making the world worse just by being alive in it.

That the world would be better off without me, essentially.

Luckily, I got over that, for the most part. I still have times when I feel that way, but most of the time I can remember that those feelings are the result of transient neurochemical phenomena and do not represent anything true or real about me.

Remember, kids, just because you feel like shit doesn’t me you ARE shit!

And I bounce back fairly quickly. So I feel like I have my head above water on that issue. If I am lucky, I can keep myself together long enough for this era of basic minimal competence to become something permanent.

And I know there is a job I can do well, so that’s a plus. Yay, I’m not useless! Take that, my sister Catherine in something like 1979!

It’s very weird when you realize you are haunted by people who are not even around any more. But it’s almost as weird – and in some ways weirder – to realize you are haunted by people who are still around but are not that person any more.

And that applies to most people’s childhoods. Whoever the other kids at school were, they are probably nothing like that now. Even the bullies. We victims of bullying, for good reason, tend to cast the kids responsible as villains for life. Our hate burns eternal for them and part of us still wants revenge.

But they probably are not that angry cruel person any more. That person is, effectively, dead. That does not come within twelve parsecs of justifying what they did, of course. It was still a horrible crime, and I mean a literal crime, as in something that should have been prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

But it does put the whole thing in perspective. Everyone involved were just kids who were acting on emotions. None of us had any idea what we were doing. Would any of us want to be judged by adult standards on things we did when we were that age?

I am pretty sure we would all go to jail if that were the case. Or at least totally humiliated. There’s a solid scientific reason why we do not hold children as liable for their actions as adults, and that’s because they do not yet have the mental machinery upon which our concept of personal liability rests.

I am not claiming to be a saint myself… I still hate the people who bullied me. There’s a part of me that would be glad to watch them burn in Hell for what they did.

But I hate them less and less over time. And I am happy about that. Holding on to the past can only hurt you and there is no use in carrying all that pain around just in case you ever get your chance to return it, with interest, through revenge.

So I forgive you, Lenny Mcausland. You were a nasty little shit, but I know you did it because you were jealous of me and saw a way to take me down and make yourself feel better about the differences between you and I. Me with my huge brain finding school easy then going back to my comfortable middle class home. You struggling to even pass then going home to a working class nightmare of a home. I can see why you might take every chance to “get back” at me for that.

It doesn’t justify anything you did. But I get it.

Besides, I am not forgiving you for your sake. I am forgiving you for mine, so I can let you go and get you out of my head.

Consider your ass evicted.

I wuill talk to you nice people again tomorrow.