So I have this article open in a tab right now.
It’s a list of the top literary agencies in Canada. A great starting point for a tyro like me who is looking for someone to do the part he can’t do – promoting his work – right?
It scares the hell out of me.
Because the sick part of me can only view it as a threat. Something that requires leaving my fetid little nest to even contemplate and that, were I to succeed in getting an agent, would take me out of this stifled but “safe” existence forever.
At least part of the time.
And that’s my conflict, really. As much as the healthy part of me wants to finally spread my wings and fly, the sick part of me wants to stay hidden and forgotten in this sad little life of mine and will resist my getting anywhere as hard as it can.
And so far, it has ruled me. Very occasionally, I can overcome it long enough to put myself out there a little bit.
But for the most part, I continue to hide in video games as a way of self-medicating and my thoughts of escape stay safely abstract – a nice thing to think about, but only if there is absolutely no risk of it actually happening.
That way I can strain against the bars of my cage all I want and make myself feel better by imagining how awesome it will be when I am free without having to face the true existential terror of facing all those goddamned possibilities.
And I can keep all my escape routes.
But this time. I am going to keep going. I will return to the tab with the agencies on it, taking it in a little at a time, till I finally contact one about maybe taking me on.
It might take along time, but I will get there. I will at least try to get an agent. Someone to promote my work for me so all I have to do is write it.
That’s the part I am good at, dammit.
When i was a kid, I saw a movie called Iceman. It was about an unfrozen caveman and dealt with how they tried to make an environment for him where he would feel safe and tried to communicate with him.
There’s probably a lot more to it than that but I don’t remember it.
What I do remember is that at the end of the movie, the Iceman escapes, and you see our scary and confusing modern world through his uncomprehending eyes.
And that really fucked me up. I had to go upstairs to my bedroom and lay down until my heart stopped racing and my head stopped pounding.
Because it was so much like my own feelings of alienation and anxiety. I totally identified with how that poor caveman felt.
In fact, I am having an anxiety attack right now just thinking about it.
Of course, I am no caveman. This world freaks me out for entirely different reasons.
But the emotion is the same.
I need to go lay down now.
Bad times at Casa Del Me
My computer’s sick. So I am sick.
Funny how that works.
My computer has developed some sort of illness that makes everything load very very slowly if it loads at all.
Skyrim, for example, won’t run at all. Hence my being here blogging at 5:53 pm on a Sunday when normally I would wait until we got back from hanging with Felicity.
I can’t even get Task Manager to run so I can see what processes are taking up what resources and see if there’s anything I can monkey with there.
Luckily, Spyhunter 5 still works, so I have it doing its scan.
Unfortunately, said scan takes a very long time to complete because it scans every single damn file on my computer and I have a LOT of files.
In theory, it could scan just the executables. After all, only executables contain instructions that can be corrupted via malware.
I’m pretty sure you can’t hide a virus in an image file or a text file.
But better to be thorough than to tell the user they are malware free when they are not, I suppose. I’d rather they were over-cautious than sloppy.
If the Spyhunter scan doesn’t fix things, I will have to consider the possibility that it’s a hardware issue and I am going to have to buy something new to fix it.
That would suck.
And all this has me very stressed out, and part of the fun of being me is that stress makes me physically ill too, because really, I was born to suffer. Evidently.
Dunno if I will be going out with my friends tonight. I certainly don’t feel up to it. All Ireally want to do right now is crawl under the covers and sleep and hope he whole thing is over when I wake up.
Scan is 21 percent done. So far, it hasn’t found any serious problems.
I could skip tonight. Order my groceries online. Take that nice long nap. Maybe even long enough so that the scan is done when I wake up.
And who knows, like last time, it might reveal exactly what the problem is, and all I have to do is tell it to fix it and everything will be tickety boo all over again.
If it doesn’t find any problems, I will have to escalate to hardware diagnostic programs and other higher level stuff, and if that doesn’t work, I will have to escalate all the way to getting help.
And if that doesn’t work, I guess I will need a whole new computer.
And that would really, really, really suck.
It’s definitely a file access issue. Things that doesn’t involve file access run just fine. Like, I can type here without a problem.
But saving takes two minutes minimum. It’s insane.
One thing I have yet to try is to just turn the damned thing off for a while. Let it completely cool off.
I’ve rebooted once, and that didn’t fix it. But I haven’t done a totally cold boot.
The die is cast. I’m not going out tonight. Already ordered my groceries. . Chose a 5 pm to 7 pm delivery time just like last time.
But last time, that was the earliest time I could get. This time, I could totally have gotten my order way earlier and saved myself some time.
Oh well. At least I ordered my soft drinks in larger quantities than usual to take advantage of not having to carry them myself.
Now to order myself some supper.
It’s a fun age we live in, isn’t it?
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.