Variety Chanel

Imagine if one day you were given a choice: Become immortal and indestructible for eternity, unable to be harmed by anything ever again, and get to live forever.

However, in order to achieve that you must give up whatever your purpose in life is. Whatever it is that you were always meant to do, what you were supposed to contribute to the overall scheme and future of the life of the universe, your purpose… the whole reason you were even created, even born in the first place. You must give that up. You don’t know what that is. You’ll never know; But, regardless, you say yes.

Perhaps you assume you wouldn’t have made any sort of significant difference anyway. That butterfly effect theory or whatever they call it? Nah, you call bullshit. It doesn’t matter - you don’t matter, at least not to anything outside of your immediate connections - and it’ll all be fine, and you’ll just live forever with minimal (or maybe even no) consequences.

So, yay! You’re now immortal. You’ll never die or get hurt ever again. Wee!

But then, centuries and centuries later (not to mention that by this point you’ve gone through horrible heartbreak and misery and despair because every loved one you ever had, every friend you ever made, ever person you barely got to know, has passed away, died as you lived on long without them, helpless to do anything for them as you watched them perish, unable to ever go with them or ever see them again. But I digress), now, you learn you actually were important in the grand scheme of things. You were supposed to be a key factor in the world’s survival, long ago; but, because of the choice you made (immortality over individual purpose), you were never given the knowledge or awareness or resources or ability to save the world that you were always supposed to obtain, before you unknowingly made the wrongest choice to ever wrong.

Needless to say, you’ve fucked up big time.

The entire universe as we know it is destroyed soon after this horrifying revelation. It implodes, collapses in on itself, essentially forming a massive black hole or something. Stars, nebulae, galaxies, solar systems and planets, worlds and worlds of living people and things, and light-years of time and space and life, all sucked up into absolute, indefinite nothingness.

But you remain.

Just you. Floating amongst, spiraling around, rocketing through, suspended in… nothing. With a feeling of such unbelievable loneliness that your feeble brain can hardly perceive, can’t possibly hope to comprehend. Not only are you the only living thing left, you don’t even have one inanimate object to keep you company. You have literally. Nothing. And you are literally nowhere. I mean, technically, you are now the universe - if it would bring you petty comfort to think about it that way. You. Only you. With nothing, no one, nowhere. Forever. And ever. And ever.

All because you thought you didn’t matter. That you had no real, meaningful purpose. That you could never possibly make a difference.

But you did. And now look what you’ve gotten yourself into, you silly nugget. You’re gonna be pretty bored and lonely for that eternity, huh?

Or maybe it was out of selfishness. Maybe this wasn’t because you felt useless, but because you simply only cared about prolonging your own life and nothing else. Hm.

The moral here? Be selfless, and always know and remember that you matter.

Or else, one day, you might destroy the universe. And be left to suffer, and be tortured horribly and endlessly by the void of nothingness that has consumed you. With no way to escape. Ever.

Other moral because I got sidetracked from my initial point - all things considered, would you choose longevity over purpose? Immortality over meaning? 

OR, IDK, MAYBE SOME IDIOT JUST LAMINATED A STUPID PIECE OF PAPER TOWEL FOR NO GOOD REASON

AND MAYBE I SHOULDNT BE LOOKING FOR THE ANSWERS TO THE MEANING OF OUR SHORT, FRAGILE LIVES IN

A LAMINATED

PAPER

T OW E L

IDK MAN,

and the pages of that book

were made out of

laminated

Th Creative Writing part of my degree covered genres, styles, poetry, professional writing, articles, fiction, non-fiction, short stories, novel-writing and even some level of scripting. We also did a lot of analysis and even had an entire lecture (including workshops) on how to give and receive constructive feedback.

The Screenwriting half of my degree did none of that. We watched movies and shows and we learned how to structure scripts and how writer's rooms worked, which is all useful, but in hindsight I truly wish I could have just done all of that in a six month semester long unit in Creative Writing because that's about the amount of information that was disseminated by the screenwriting course over the 3 years.

And those people in the Screenwriting half who were NOT doing Creative Writing (doing film or drama etc.) were notably less advanced in their skills by the final year. That's not to say they were BAD writers (although some of them were, that's true of all Writing degrees, sometimes people refuse to be taught because they think they know everything already despite being at a place to learn) but they were less adept at giving feedback on other people's writing beyond "i didn't like it" or "it was clunky" without being able to verbalise why and how it was clunky. They were less able to paint a picture of the world they were creating or fine-tune character specific dialogue, which is all stuff you expect to be able to do as a screenwriter. It's not just that we should stop listening to screenwriters it's that even screenwriters should be taking more writing advice from more diverse sources like poetry or novel writers. The books people DO recommend for screenwriting (like Save the Cat, which most good writers I know have beef with) should not be seen as the blueprint but as supplement advice you can take or leave - which is what was so useful about covering so many things in the Creative Writing half of my degree.

"i'm so basic.....i just like a lot of butter or jam :(" (as though those are not god's best and most beloved condiments and his greatest gifts to mankind)

"FUCK health guidelines FUCK my cholesterol and most importantly FUCK diet culture i'll put a dumpster full of butter on my toast and not even GOD will stop me" (no notes. god would encourage this)

doxxing one's self by mention of polarizing regional delicacies (i am so curious about vegemite i must admit)

"does a grilled cheese count as toast?" (not for the purposes of this post)

"i don't like toast please don't kill me" (i appreciate the honesty but i fear this post is not for you)

people who put full ass meals on toast (based)

people who do not but eat toast as a full meal (based)

melty peanut butter (absolutely based)

"it's a guilty pleasure but...nutella 😳" (relieve yourself of fear and enjoy your dessert toast)

beans on toast defenders (i will always support beans in any diet)

really strong opinions on what counts as toast and what does not for the purposes of this post (i left it vague for a reason)

a million avocado toast recipes that sound so delicious

someone who soft announced their pregnancy in the tags (congrats!)

"do i...have POTS?"

If you don't read books: Read a book. Read any book. Read a book you loved when you were a kid. Read a book that interests you now. Read an entire collection of poetry or essays and think about why the author or editor arranged those works in that order. Read an erotic novel. Read nonfiction. Read graphic novels or manga. Read a kids' chapter book or a YA novel. Read a book digitally. Read a book on paper. Read an audiobook and really focus on it - if you notice yourself spacing out, scroll back to the last words you remember and try listening again. Read any book. And then when you finish it, celebrate for a minute (get those endorphins going!) and then read another one.