vacation calendar

I have two scenes in my mind that could take place in the world of TFL>>

Both involve an Earth Atlas (sidenote, let's pitch on more names for people today. We got Verdun earlier, and we like it, although I'm open to something more original); both involve the Atlas using his powers like a force shield.

First one: an Atlas bounty hunter of some kind, maybe a lawman. He's chased his target into the forest. The target has finally run out of steam, he's stumbled to the ground. Instead of handling him right then and there, the Atlas turns his back and crouches down. He's rubbing his finger on the ground. "What are you doing??" Pants the brigand. The Atlas replies, "Consecrating the earth. I shall be sending you on through this plane's door with my blessing. Your flesh has sinned, but here your innocent bones may finally rest." "I'm not dead yet you bastard," the brigand mutters. He produces a pistol from his vest, and fires into the unguarded Atlas' back. The bullet crumples against the skin of the Atlas and falls to the ground like a lead coin. Not even the Atlas' jacket is damaged. The brigand's eyes widen with panic. With what strength remains, he tries to scramble back to his feet. He trips and hits the ground face first. Did he trip on a tree root? He twists his torso as best he can to look behind him. His foot is buried completed underground. He can't run. He can't fight. It's over. "From earth we come, from earth we will remain" the Atlas doesn't look up from his fastidious business.

Second one: We see a crowd of people gathered near a crossroads. Some distance away is a man sat on the ground. He's resting on a bent knee, his head ducked down, face hidden by the wide brim of his hat. Is he asleep? A new onlooker stumbles across this scene, the audience pov here, and we explain to them: "This fella ain't resting, he's running from the law. Those fellas over there got him all but captured." "He doesn't look captured to me." "Sure, he ain't manacled or drawn up, but he ain't goin' nowhere. He's got no escape, that's sure some sorta capture." "I see. Well, why isn't anyone actually 'capturing' him then?" "Too dangerous. 'Fact I reckon these boys are anglin' to put him down rather 'an walk 'im back to the city. he's got a big bounty, even though he only has minor offenses (property damage, anti-crown sentiments, bullshit), because it's the only way anyone would actually bother with the ordeal of taking down an Atlas. This guy has gotten away from being caught multiple times before, people say but this one looks promising, the guy that caught him has set up a raffle of sorts. He's brought in a crowd of people to look on (and deny this Atlas a moment's rest. They intend to wait him out and wear him down. It's already been 2 days!*) The raffle is if anyone can hit the Atlas with something, rock, old fruit, idk, they will win a cash prize. He's metered out the tries to keep the stream of projectiles constant and drawn out. The Atlas is effortlessly, literally without moving, deflecting/absorbing the projectiles. He's clearly still up for the task of getting out of this jam without surrendering. He probably understands that surrender is off the table. I don't know for sure how this could resolve itself. It seems to me Cpt. Ettis could cause some chaos and give the Atlas a chance to escape (for some personal gain). Or MAYBE he just quickly claims the prize for himself by using a projectile that he knows the Atlas can't manipulate. Like he knows he has some odd seaglass marble that earth Atlas' can't move and he has Jack or whoever slingshot it at the guy and knock his hat off for the prize) And then they move on. That poor guy is definitely toast… Unless maybe we come back that way a little later and we hear that the Atlas somehow got out of that pickle. Atlases are just that good, man.

Is he actually on vacation anymore?? Buddy, up here, it's always island time. You know what I'm sayin?

I mean, like, it's patently a lie to suggest that; but you get the IDEA, right? Like it's possible. Even if it's not possible for me personally, and my diseased brain. NEVERTHELESS. WE CARRY ON. THE VACATION OF THE SOUL IS FOREVER SO TEMPTINGLY WITHIN OUR GRASP, AND WE SHALL REMAIN HERE, STRIVING TO STRETCH OUR FINGERTIPS ONWARDS AND OUTWARDS.

Ok, so now is just the blog part. Good luck (babe (Chappell Roan)):

Still getting ready for 9/11 tomorrow. It sneaks up on my EVERY YEAR I swear. And it always always always takes longer than I think to put popcorn on a string. Unrelated to the first thing I said. Just something else I thought of that sorta catches me off-guard.

this journal entry apparently didn’t make it into the actual blog, just as a notepad doc that’s been sitting on my desktop for a year... Anyway, since I’m Marie Kondo-ing everything within arms reach of me, I figured I’d place it in the proper channel now; even if it is literally over a year too late O_O ENJOY

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hokey pokey, today I've been inspired to try and actually Write something (notice the capital dubya). I'm going to write something for TFL today. And this is a fun little trick I do to constantly trip me up and prevent me from ever making anything for the book. What I do is go, I'd like to write something; and then at that point I go, but what do I write? And I look around and I'm like, I don't have the story broken yet. I don't know where these characters end up, or what I want their arcs to be (outside of their own self-actualization, I guess?). So then I go, okay well let's write in the form of DREAMING up things to happen in the story. And then I start like daydreaming, and then I drift away from the topic, because of course I do. And then it's over; you can rinse and repeat that forever. Every now and then I'll think of SOMETHING, something that would be cool to happen, it's usually a tiny beat inside a story beat that I had already decided on, but it's not nothing. But then it's so small that I don't think that I have to write it down, because again, I'm not at the sit and write it down phase; I've still got Act 3 to settle.

So here I am. It's all fucked. I was reading Lonesome Dove and so many times I noticed how many goddamn paragraphs were dedicated to just being like, "the sun hung in the air and prairie stretched out seemingly endlessly. It was crisp in the morning but now it was hot. The cattle grazed as they pleased, and the dense brush north of the Brazos had begun to grow thin." And it was 300% more detailed and it just kept going, and the book never got tired of having it's characters look up and just take in the environment around them. Everyone in the book was so fucking keen to just pick up their head and give the weather report. And I was just like, this fucking sucks. It's boring to read, it would be nightmarishly boring to write. It's like Larry McMurtry transported himself into the town and looked around and was like, okay I have to write down everything I see. And then he proceeded to do it literally hundreds of times. That sounds exhausting. Can you even imagine like, going to the library and researching what it looked like in Kansas in 1859 or whatever? Fuck. I'd give up on that so quickly. But I'm looking at that and I'm thinking, that's gonna be so important to my story, to see such beautiful scenes of nature and architecture; even if I personally don't really give a shit about that. I've got to make people feel like they're there as much as I can. I want them to sense danger. To appreciate the ocean. And that has to be a conscious effort on my part. I've got to give them enough details about Ethery that they can picture what's happening and be impressed by it.

But let"s be clear, this is my book and I will write what is true to me. I'm not going to flood pages with shit I wouldn't want to read ever. The book will never get written if that's the case. So if I'm determined to give the book the definition and detail it needs, I'm going to keep the characters eyes directed at stuff that's worth seeing. I'm going to gloss over shit they gloss over. And they're going to gloss over the small stuff. Weaver is not going to pour over every nook and cranny of the hold aboard the Franz Lion. I can see a scenario wear Weaver is bored one day, and in his boredom he kind of scans over everything in the room he's in. Because that will be boring, and you the reader will be bored a bit by it aswell. But I will be able to wield that feeling of boring to my advantage, but using it as break from exciting things. I will not do it for no reason. If Weaver's not going to remember it, I'm not going to give the audience a chance to even try.

So today, my plan is to try and get from start to finish the scene where Weaver is interrogated by Captain Ettis and subsequently invited to his crew. I'll end when I get to the part where the captain tells him that whether Weaver knows it or not, he's a Wind Etherist (gotta get a better name, man. Maybe just Ether? It's so goddamn close to Bender, it's no good. Maybe a Cloud Atlas. Is that anything already? Atlas in all honestly doesn't sound bad at all. A Wind Atlas. An Earth Atlas. A Lightning Atlas. Fire Atlas. Death Atlas, Life Atlas. Holy shit, did we just figure out our word? See, *this* is why you sit down to write. It can be messy, but it's work. And sometimes the work pays off).

So the exercise ends when Captain Ettis reveals that although Weaver might not know it, he's got the blood of a Wind Atlas. Fuck, I really like it. I don't see any problems with it. Boom! There's one more thing off the to-do list. Only infinity to go! Obviously parts of this writing exercise will differ from say, the excerpt from the actual book. This is written with only the hint of context from outside this chapter, rather than actual concrete context before and after. Certain details will be subject to change. Certain thoughts and actions from the characters may be added later to benefit the larger narrative. But we are going to write this *as though* it were extracted from the book proper. We are not writing this as though it were a standalone piece. I do like to think that when we were done, it could then be read as a standalone piece, and that the audience would be able to understand what details were being omitted because they had in theory been explained prior, and what details were meant to be expounded after the events of the, snippet? Excerpt? The individual chapter. What I'm saying is that the context that this is Chapter 7 of a 50 chapter story would be all that the reader needed to parse the story that they are being handed in this scenario. The questions they leave with should simply be good questions that the book/I have full intentions on answering. If the reader has other questions that I would have assumed were answered WITHIN the chapter they just read, that should seen a shortcoming of the piece. That right there is the only constraint I will put upon this exercise. I don't need to describe Weaver or the boat or explain how he got there, I just need to put the scene I have in my head to words.

Fuck me. This is already a lot of writing for someone who thought he'd just sit down and get started. I kinda want a break lol. Part of me is more impressed with what I've got so far, because I filled out a voice memo of this scene last night in bed already, although I didn't actually record it. That's the main reason I chose to do this this morning. I've got the dialogue fresh in my head. Or at least a version of the dialogue.

Ok so, I actually am going to take a break. But mark my words, I will not sleep until I have sat right here and finished what I set out to accomplish. This right here, is all gravy. I'm eating my gravy before I eat my vegetables. Perfectly reasonable. And this break I'm about to take is my dessert. Generally less advisable to eat that one before the vegetables. But I'm bound to a vow to eat the veggies. Vow beats veggies every time. Hell, I like veggies for the most part. And let's be honest, it wouldn't be authentic to my true self if I made progress on this book with any sense of diligence or professionalism. I'm a lazy bum, but at this point in my life, an honest one.

Just some freewrite stuff~~~

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sign up for the human zoo, we have food and the kind of environment we read that you like, and the money we pay you works outside of the zoo too

you're told most guns miss. This is to get you stop crying. This is to put you to sleep. Or it's true? Either the world is a cruel dangerous place, and I'm being lied to. Or I'll be ok and I'll be ok. But if I won't be ok, and I can't trust anyone, what land can my miserable cracked hands even carve out to claim? I am weak. I am hollow. I can't survive the miserable option I don't think. I think the liar even knows this. Unless he's scared like me, but he's not smart enough to realize that lying isn't going to move the needle for a coward. Or maybe he's trying to be nice but he's not smart enough to really understand the mechanics of how guns work. And now that I've sorted my options, I have to accept that this chart is simply to organize what I and only I know. It won't change my circumstances up until this point. I am here. I'm already being talked to by this smart or dumb or friendly or duplitous sort. But now that I'm looking around I'm sick. I can't decide what to say, and no one even asked me anything. I can say nothing. And I guess I will. But it all seems so bad. The idea of gun is thrashing in my brain whether it fires or not, whether this man is green or brown. Why can't this man be 3000 years old? Then I could know for sure what he means. He would mean to be a benevolent God that means for me to hear him. And I could gladly listen. I wouldn't need to think about what I could or could not say, if I should trust him or judge him. I would be able to stop being a man with hands or eyes. I could stop making words or thoughts. I could be an ant. I could be crushed in an instant or march until my very oldest age and it would be all the same.

I'm sitting at a computer trying to beat my first minesweeper since I played it as a child. It's harder than I remember, and I suspect my success rate in my youth has been vastly exaggerated in my own memory.

I now feel tired in a new way. I feel sick, like a disease is taking my alertness awaay from me. Like my strength is not lost, it is found. But just as I try and gather it, I see it is being sapped, by some malifluous force. It is a pile of sand, running through my fingers like a sieve; And here I am watching the grains turn to dust around me.

But I'm here. I know it. It's one of the only times I can say I feel this way. I supposed I hoped it would come better equipped, as a feeling. Like finding the keys to your car but realizing that doesn't come with it's own cannister of gasoline.

Maybe I actually am sick, though. It's a possibility. God, there's nothing more vindicating to the human spirit than the act of your body taking the controls away from you and turning off the machine for a little while. Of course that's only reassuring when the only thing you want is for someone to let you off the hook. To take the captain's hat off your head and stow it in a closet somewhere. You're not longing to survive. You already did. It's all you have a claim to, at this point. And now it's all that's asked of you. Survive. You'll be back to it soon. Keep sitting there, quiet and cold and miserable as you were previous. But for now those acts make you a soldier, not a coward. You've been allowed a brief reprieve from trying to live, all you have to do is survive.

I guess even if I don't have some sort of virus (or if that day-old pizza has sought to disagree with me in some violent way), I still am sick, aren't I? All I'm doing is surviving, it seems to me. And maybe it's time I consider that it's all that can be done. The best work a soccer player can do when they're sick isn't to go out in the rain and practice their throw-ins, it's to rest and recover. Maybe all this talk of blogging, or book-writing, dating, or performing are just little soccer drills that are only serving to make me sicker than I already was. If my eye was really on the ball, I'd stay in bed.

No, that doesn't sound right. Myopic, pessimistic even. Although, here I am trying to add some third act to this here post; some final turn into the happy ending I surely deserve. And my hands are so heavy they can scarcely leave the homekeys. My eyes feel hollow, frail- vulnerable somehow. And my stomach is empty and pissed. I just farted and it felt like I popped a balloon on my asshole. Not sure if it's related, just felt like a fun detail to throw in. I want to try and throw in more fun details. I'm fun, you should be able to tell that. Don't believe me? Just look at my wacky details.

I feel like I'm going to lay down and instead of falling asleep, I'm just going to die.

Ugh, look at me, still writing 21 at the end of my blog post titles. Get it together, Max! So, what’s new with me? hmm... nothing new, per se. But I suppose I have a renewed sense of purpose. I’ve got that carpe diem vibe I had managed to captured back in July, which in and of itself is impressive considering I’m  currently trapped in the hell that is January. I can’t do the awesome shit I was doing like going outside and basking in the sun while listening to cool jams, but I’m still like waking up and enjoying my life; so I think there might have been some improvement to my habits over time. It’s been a scary long time since I started this hiatus (and refused to admit the fact that I pretty much assumed we’d eventually get to this point. I mean, the hill I set out to crest might actually take the rest of my life to tackle, so the idea of getting meaningful progress on that, and then moving onto new pathways and careers, in just a handful of months is nothing short of deranged. And I’m not deranged; I just felt like NOT leaning forward like I some momentum would be self-defeating. And it’s not like we weren’t pacing ourselves in a matter that suggested we knew this trip would take a long time. Let’s just call it “optimistic enthusiasm.” That’s not a delusion, it’s just a vibe. And several months and several pit-stops later, we’ve not stopped traveling; we’ve just gently dropped the enthusiasm part. The optimism part, we’ll see. I have today. Kind of. lol. Oof, let’s just get out of this parenthetical aside that dwarfs the length of the blog proper while we still can), but I think now that we’ve got a large enough swath of time underneath us, we’re able to see what actual progress has been made.

If we were putting a number of traits on a line graph, with the y-axis being improvement, and the x-axis being time, we now in theory have enough data to identify trends. So what are traits we could put on the graph.....

-Quality of content -Output level of content -Quantity of content overall (this line mathematically cannot go down, but I think it would be nice to see this line move up. This is an area of progress that I think can easily get overlooked) -Health (weight, energy, ability) -Happiness(?) (can you ever actually measure this one for progress. Well, you can’t for me, I don’t think) - Calmness - Habit strength -Sense of direction (on a scale from weak to strong) -Umm... come back to this. I don’t think the list should stop there. Try thinking of things that you know would definitely have an upward trend over this last half year.*****

Today was a day that we were supposed to come over here and do our 1 hour writing session for the book. But I felt scared last night and I definitely felt fucked this morning. I may have overloaded myself on the schedule, but I think I may have been close. The spectre of keeping an exercise regimen is straining me a bit undoubtedly. But that’s the kind of thing I think will be so good for me. BECAUSE it’s January. This month will try to kill me. This is the most awfulest shittiest coldest 10% of my life. I can’t just grit my teeth and bear it. I have to actively put up a fight. I have to brace myself and lower my center of gravity and all that shit. I can’t just wake up and think I’ll write for an hour, I’ve got to stick to the plan. I’ve got to want it. I’ve got to get angry. I’ve got the engine’s roaring. I’ve got to stoke the fire or it will fizzle of die. Ok. I’m off to workout, because I can. I did have a couple ideas I wanted to get onto paper, admittedly. So even if I didn’t do a dedicated hour of bookwork, I probably could have stood to write *a little*. But I’m not going to worry about it. Later today I can do a voice memo, that would be nice.

It’s all nice.

It’s ok to be scared. You just have to keep moving forward however you can. Only once you’ve stopped have you truly failed. 

Hey loser, long time no time. So I’ve been dabbling with coming back from the brink of total annihilation these last couple days, and gave some creative writing exercises another try. I ran through an outline a blog entry I’d *like* to make, but it’s just an audio log, so I don’t think you’re going to see that one on here just yet. But then today I got to thinking about Hollywood Handbook while I was listening to it at breakfast. I was getting back in the mood to write something while I was out walking later and sure enough when I got home I ate a salad a took a crack at it. (Just wanted to give myself some credit for historical accuracy) 

This is actually the next day since I wrote this, and after sleeping on this topic I’m not sure if I succeeded in communicating my true thoughts on this subject or not. I have been down on the Pro Version and even some of the main feed for a while now; and I’m sure that’s in no small part due to the fact that I’ve abandoned my daily commute and don’t find myself plugging in the litany of podcasts I once consumed. And that’s completely reasonable; there are so many reasons a consumer can leave a producer that aren’t the producer’s fault. Our interests have simply fallen out of alignment. So in that sense the post I created feels somewhat in bad faith as a suggestion to alter the show, because it completely denies my role as a now less-than-earnest listener. And so I feel that this post functions more truthfully as a conversation rather than a bulletin. The conversation being, “I’m tired. Is there a way to reconcile this, or is this simply the reality I’ve been borne into?”

And then we proceed to hash it out. Ideally. In reality, Sean and Hayes and Kevin do not know me; and they should not talk to me. So we as a community, who ALSO do not actually know each other, are left to kind of participate in a global conversation. Where everyone gets an opportunity to make noise and an opportunity to listen. And the rules stop there. And I’m sitting here, unsatisfied. Deeply unsatisfied. Like I somehow tricked myself into thinking that there was some way down this avenue that *could* satisfy me. And I walked down here and looked around and of course there was nothing. So now I feel bad. And I don’t know what to do. ... Go home I guess.

Whine loudly like a child and proceed to fuck off. Wow, do I dislike my post THAT much? Maybe I should take another night to sleep on it.

So for now, the verdict is. I’m tired, and sad, and I looked up and all of a sudden HH isn’t hitting me like it usually does. And one of the small bright spots in my life is dimming and I didn’t think it would happen to a guy like me. So now I’m MORE tired and MORE sad, and now I’m throwing my hands up in the air as I watch the train pull out of the station like maybe, just maybe, the conductor will notice me and stop the train at great expense to everyone else just to let me hop on. Uh, yeah. Let me fucking sleep on it.

Just curious, how does everyone else feel about The Pro Version lately?

So Sean mentioned Tanks but no Tanks, a Reality Show Show segment wherein Hayes and Sean dissected clips from Shark Tank, in the latest episode with Kulap, and it got me to thinking; I'd love to see a revival of that segment on the Pro Version.

This obviously isn't a new idea, in fact The Boys may have already given it a shot. It might have been attempted and ultimately scrapped for any number of reasons.

The Pro Version being 30 minutes instead of an hour makes it a valuable space for things like high-concept content, conversations with more ancillary HH characters (Chef Kevin, non-celebrity guests, engineers/producers, etc), and segments which, as of right now, consists of only Teaser Freezer and the occasional Listener Mailbag.

And the segments are where I've noticed something that has been bothering me about the pro version. I want more. Segments put the show on rails, and that's something the show has completely discarded as it's evolved over the years. The show has dropped a lot of the artifice as it's gone on, which is perfectly fine, but all HH segments were constructed on the premise of that artifice being up front and center. This is why the segments as they've existed in the past feel like an afterthought in the current show. But that's where Tanks but no Tanks comes in.

Here's an old Teaser Freezer

Now here's an old Tanks but no Tanks

The Teaser Freezer is fantastic, but it would never fit in the show today imo. Tanks/No Tanks on the other hand, it feels like the Boys could pull out something like this without breaking a stride. In fact...

That's exactly what they do with Grey King News. Out of all the Hayes & Sean content that comes out each week, Grey King News is far and away my favorite part. If the Pro Version moved to something structured like that (not necessarily "Hollywood" news, or even Shark Tank, it can be anything that engages the hosts), it could be a real shot in the arm for the future of the show. It would potentially move more of the workload of the show to Kevin as the producer, but it would also narrow it, as well as open up the opportunity for crowdsourcing.

As for the type of content that's currently on the Pro Version, I think it can partially vacate BACK to the main feed. So so many of Pro Version episodes could have been in the main feed as full length features imo. I'm sure it has more to do with analytics, but honestly if the main feed was just two pro versions put together (ie. Teaser Freezer, ad break, dating advice with Engineer Jordan), that would be a damn fine episode of the show. And then both quotas for high-profile guests and pro version ideas would drop.

So that's basically it. Who knows if this is even a good idea or not. I've just been listening to HH for a long time now, and once I got this idea in my head this morning I couldn't stop thinking about it. I mostly just curious to hear what other Handbook Heads think about all this.

TLDR; I think The Pro Version should make an effort to move to more "on-rails" content like Grey King News, and shouldn't be afraid of moving more of it's current Pro Version content onto the main feed. Even though the show has changed, the "Pro Version" content is what made me fall in love with the show in the first place. I don't see why all that has to be behind the paywall.

Ok, so what I'm going to try to do is actually set a timer and bang out some PURE GOLD today. I don't know exactly how it's going to work and I certainly know what I'm actually going to write (aside from the fact that the writing will look and feel like 100% raw uncut gold, obviously), so I think I'm going to run up a couple parameters right now before we hit go on the stopwatch. So I'm thinking right now, since I've got my beverages lined up already. Coffee, a mimosa, water, and peptobismol. Should I get a couple more just in case? Maybe I run out a grab a cocoa and a Soilent just to cover all my bases. Nah, nevermind. That can be my reward for finishing ;D. And I'm currently sorting out some writing music (and I am currently wandering through an audio-wonderland, complete with trips to Genius to read lyrics, but NOT in a procrastinating kind of way!). So I'm really close! Right now, I'm thinking the plan will conclude like this: I poop. I finish up a playlist for the write while I'm over there. I come back over here. Ok, I wash my hands THEN I come back over here... It'll be really close to 12:00 exactly. I fuck around until we get right to noon, then I hit go on a one hour timer. I close Chrome for it. and then I just try and fucking go. I can leave my post after 1:00 and that's it. That's all the rules. Whatever I manage to banger off is what I get. And then I'll have done it. And THEN, I can watch Arcane some more or something. I doesn't matter. I'll be free and I'll have confirmed I'm a good person, and not some sniveling worm. Sound good? Ok, here I go :D

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12:00 Ok, it's 11:55. You know what they say, if you're right on time you're five minutes late. And then capitalism begin to break under the weight of its conquerors and a couple of us started realizing we probably don't need to keep oiling the gears with our blood anymore. Hey that's not what we're doing today. Dad's here to write about the Franz Lion. Capital "The", obviously, Max... So okey, 11:57, let's just roll into it

Ok, I’m coming in today with not too big of a plan; ah, but fret not! I have a plan to MAKE a plan. So I’m sitting here with you tonight (7:30, oooh blog after dark~ might get a little risque), listening to an acoustic version of Elastic Heart, and Sia is putting somehow even more on it than the original version. Like she was in the booth and was like, “oh, there’s no beat? Better give this one 11/10 just to be safe.” Love that lady. I now have a headache; I don’t know if it’s related to listening to the song or not.

I’m joking. It wasn’t related. It’s kind of a stretch on its face anyway. It’s not like Death Metal or EDM, Sia’s wiling. They’re both intense, but in clearly distinct ways. You know it, I know it. I just actually have a headache, and it seemed like that was a decent in for it. idk, you can be the judge later when you read this again, I guess. Fuck, my head hurts :(

It’s right behind my right eyeball, too. So focused, it’s nuts. And I’ll tell you what; this is the third time I’ve gotten this in about 5 days now. I’ve been under the impression that I’ve fallen ill, and the headache BETTER be related, I tell you what. If it’s a symptom of a cold (MAYBE covid? oooooh it better not!) I’ll allow it. Like, maybe it’s sinus pressure, just in a non-sinus area. I don’t know, I’m not a doctor. Maybe it’s actually a sinus area, right behind your eyeball. To me, that seems like that’s brain territory. I don’t know what an ocular migraine feels like, but let me tell ya, I think I get it. I either DO know what an ocular migraine feels like, or I’m quite close to getting the gist. Fuck me, what a miserable feeling. And for the record I’m wagering I have not actually gotten a migraine. Cuz I was NOT happy, but I was not like lights off/hard reset the router/day is over. I powered through over to the bottle of advil on the desk and found myself on the better side of a good night’s sleep under what had to be 20 minutes. And right now, I’m actually thinking I should probably just hold out on the advil so I can go right for it when I might need it later, because since I’ve started typing I’ve come back around to being ok. That was a 10 minute headache. See, that’s the kinda shit that makes me worried it’s just a part of my body getting older and just decaying instead of a seasonal illness. But like, I AM sick. So why on earth would I not rule that out before I even *worry* about this thing. Just handle it. Show up and keep it handled. Honestly, like you were going to do something else BESIDES just deal with it for the time being is pure nonsense.

Ok story time blog bogwater is over. I fucking came here for a specific reason. I am making an emm-effing plan, for tomorrow. Tomorrow is important, because it is THE moment. I am living in the moment, and guess what, that’s tomorrow. I mentioned at therapy something to the effect of my distaste for the sorry state of my life has to at some point outweigh my desire to eschew change. If I’m not at this moment *motivated* enough to do something about it, it seems to me that the FUTURE MOMENTS waiting for me in the future will not only be completely identical in terms of leaving me unsatisfied-------------

Ok, back from 20 minute break! :D What did I miss? Wait, first let me try and finish that sentence----

, but also will be harder to seize due to my increasingly withering and inert soul.

There, that was pretty much it I think. I got in my head about my therapy bit again and realised my only actual recording of it was lost on my old phone. I was thinking a couple days ago how if I went up on stage now, what from my entire catalog would I pull up to try and snag an A+ with. And now that I’m thinking about it, I guess I’d go with like: Surprise parties Therapy (untested) Andy Warhol (maybe. At this point I mostly just like the joke where I say if you don’t get these references, just go down the Chicago Art Museum, drop about 60 bucks and just spend an afternoon not enjoying yourself) Horny at the bank Eskimos (uhtested) A grizzled detective solving a missing persons case What did the guy from Split do on his birthday? Lazy Susan (maybe) Looking like Jared Goldilocks and the 3 kids Ordering one and half entrees (Killer take, have yet to nail down any great *jokes*, although I just thought of one just now. Having my mom around is such a rare treat, I can’t explain it. There’s things I can do when she’s around that I can’t do when I’m with anyone else. Like for instance, whenever my mom’s in town, I get to eat one and a half entrees. That is physically impossible to do on your own. It’s a very unique lunch experience. I normally don’t even consider eating one and half entrees when I’m at lunch. It’s just something that happens when my feeble old mother is around. And I have to tell you, one and half entrees is pretty damn good. But it sucks now that I know I like it, I can’t figure out how else to get it. You cannot order 1.5 entrees. If you ever tried, you would sound like an insane person. “Hi yes, I’ll have the burger with fries and a Miller Lite, thanks, and could I also get half of a turkey club sandwich? Two onion rings, and also just a sip, like a just shot glass of Diet Coke? *prayer hands* Oh, also I won’t be paying for this, because I’m a special little boy, and I deserve a treat. They won’t let you. The only way to do it is to order 2 entrees, and to steal half from a feeble third party. )

Hoo man, I’ve been going back over my google drive stuff for like the last hour. Remembering all these damn bits, it was so much more than I thought. Wow, really makes me want to go out there and try some of this stuff out. It’s fun. ANNNNNND (segue) I’m here right now telling you that your will to manifest a better life for yourself hinges on conquering the fear in your heart, once and for all.

Ok, no more stalling. Make a quantitative plan for tomorrow. And then follow through on those plans, no matter how scary or difficult it might be. This is the only way. Take on the habits of the person you want to be. It’s the only thing we know about him at this point, so it what we have to go off of. Makes enough sense, right? Maybe on of the plans is to actually go out to an open mic and do your emm effin’ thang. Not as the anxiety riddled child but the dead inside man, liked you always dreamed! Oh fuck I just remembered another bit that I thought was pretty good. The whole, with age comes wisdom thing. .... Ok I just voice recorded it. Much easier than writing it here. And now that ALL of the possible beans are out of the old maraca, I can finally move on to the purpose of writing this blog post. THE PLAN (editor’s note: it’s literally been exactly 3 hours since I started. Please count all of this as working without fear for your archives. Don’t let nobody tell you you didn’t start until Monday morning ;))

Ok, plan goes like this: Hmm... B-fast. Great start. And doable. B-fast, I’ll figure out what to order when I get there. Better for the habit to eliminate prep work like picking out a meal. Cuz if I don’t do the prep, I should still have enough planned to go do it the next day. That sentence sounded like word spaghetti in my head, I hope that made sense. I’m not going back to check!

Ok, more plan: Well, this one’s easy. Check out TL in the group stage. The miracle run will either happen and kick ass or it will be crushed very early on and won’t cost you too much of a time commitment. Well, we’ll factor in the possibility that this task may take much longer or shorter than anticipated. 

What else: daily crossword, a lock.

I do want to take another run at some duo lingo tests. And I want to hit it for more than the 5-10 I was doing earlier, maybe like 20-25. I think I can pull off that level of commitment, and then I get the reward of more progress. Like running instead of walking.

Ok, speaking of. Do I want to plan a walk tomorrow. OH. Here we go. This is huge. Walk to Me Dee and eat there for dinner. Hmm, do I want to eat there? I could just bike the food home and eat here... idk. Let’s think about it while we keep planning.

Ok, here’s a good one: Make Plans for TUESDAY. That’s right, this is recursive you fucking bitch. And you have solemnly vowed to do all of these tomorrow. I’ve got you right where I want you, punk.

3 minute fun write. No grand outlines. just do the 3 minuter. I reserved the right to do more.

Couple ranked League games? eh, I mean I’m kind of feeling it. I think it could be good. I do still want to hit plat this season. But now I’m thinking maybe I should have a go at some of my other games also. Meh, you know what? I’m not feeling it. So keep it off the list! League ranked play can stay but FTL can Go To Hell. Nice.

Ungh, this is not a big enough list, is it? There’s gotta be something a little more aspirational on here. Right now I’m debating between like going on a bike ride (which could transition into picking up Medee) or a walk, or like, taking a shower? I’m fucking grasping at straws man. You know what’s it’s gotta be a walk. The League games are just guaranteed time spent at the desk, and I have a huge podcast bank I can burn and a downright miniscule backlog of youtube/tv. Getting me as close to the end of the day without burning freetime is going to help me out a lot in the long run this week. 

So it’s walk. We can fucking walk to medee. What’s lunch now, I wonder? Breakfast is covered, Dinner is me dee. Both pretty substantive no doubt. Maybe a lil one? Fuck, I have no idea. I’m blank. Now I really want to lock it in. I don’t wanna be drowning in this at crunch time. Salad feels right, but where is that? It’s not in the house. I have to go get one? Where? Cancel Salad. I have a feeling we’re going to go shopping on tuesday and solving this little issue. Here’s lunch tomorrow. That fucking smoothie and that yogurt and that’s not enough I can have a spoonful of that almond butter I never eat.

MORE STUFF: Clean off desk area. That means dishes away and into dishwasher. ONE load of laundry, easy. That’ll pass some time. No shower, save that. This still feels like this can’t be enough stuff to call a day. But I have to remember I’m getting out of the house at least twice, and getting steps, it’s going to be fine. 

But I want to add one more thing. I want to get something in there that feels like an effort. Right now I’m leaning towards finish a movie, but I can’t think of one (I do want to see Dune this weekend!). OH. Ok, you have to finish Midnight Run tomorrow. Should be perfectly doable and you will be glad you got that under your belt.

That’s it. I’m legit starting to get antsy, so I am going to go. Good luck tomorrow. I’ll be right there beside you the whole time ;)

FUCK AHH OH MY GOD I WANT TO PLAY VIDEO GAMES INSTEAD OF DOING THIS SO BAD. And you know, I don’t know if I really want to play video games that much actually. I’m just looking to cope I think. I’m absolutely buzzing, but I don’t necessarily have a drive to go pursue something. Like when I wake up I’m going “let’s do something!” And I’m wide awake and I’m bouncing my legs. But then I’m not yet interested in doing something substantive. I think I can comfortably say I’m in my elusive manic phase. And I always feel like I should go absolutely nuts and do something profound while I feel like this. Do I ever? ...

I’m listening to Aesop Rock right now. I know it’s very wordy, which I generally avoid when I’m writing; but this album is so goddamn beautiful, it’s inspiring. I was listening to this at breakfast last week, and the whole time I was just thinking I want to feel like this when I create something of my own. If I said something that felt like how I feel when I hear this music, I truly think I’d be satisfied.

--------------------------

I took a ninety minute break. But in good way, I think. Ok I only have 10 minutes left before I have to go to therapy, so let’s just try to get our thoughts laid out. Homework was 15 minutes of things that make us uncomfortable per day and write about it.

So what did I do this week? Saturday, stayed out, was freaking out a bit after therapy; and I really sat in it. Let it wash over me, didn’t run. This whole entire ENTIRE week, I didn’t run from it. I just sat in it. And it really like, wired me. I didn’t sleep much this week. Like 7 or less hours per day, yeah? I think that’s true. Came into my room and napped I think, but then I woke up and faced random company (100% as a way to force myself into a uncomfortable zone. I had no qualms about doing it, or NOT doing it rather. But I knew I wasn’t interested at all in going out there) I think that might have been it.

Sunday was, hmmm. Watched My Neighbor Totoro with Bonnie. This normally works on a schedule of me just hitting the right mood, and then the day(s) after, I feel spent and uninterested in participating again, which is the uncomfortable part. Sitting and watching a movie with takeout is easy. I wish I did it more honestly. So I don’t remember what I got up to that day specifically, but that MONDAY, I showed up and didn’t hide at all, which was good. This was definitely the moment where I really felt like I had that power back. That power I felt all those years ago where I truly felt like I had nothing to lose. I’m only a prisoner of my mind; no one, nothing at all, else can claim me.

Fuck, I had a little momentum going for once, lol. I have to go now. Oh well, let’s roll into therapy with this. That’s not too shabby.

Ok, fucking hell. What did I do that made me “uncomfortable” this week. My first thought to write down would be the *reverse Catch-22* nature of this homework. I would do something that was making me uncomfortable at the thought of, but once I was in the middle of doing it, I obviously felt much much better. The things I’m balking at aren’t particularly discomforting on their own. It’s my attitude. So to change my attitude to step up and be present in my life automatically makes things less uncomfortable to be in. Because I’m not being the me that doesn’t want to be there.

Obviously if I was the one that didn’t want to be there, my skin would be crawling off my body, and I’d fucking bail. So the idea of being like “nope, I’m gonna be the one that stays in it.” Like, it’s already done, right? So I suppose that’s the lesson, huh? The guy that doesn’t want to be there doesn’t have a solid argument. He’s basing his desire to go hide off of a fictional world. We already know we don’t care THAT much what other people think of us. 

Now I’m thinking what if I purposefully made myself into someone more vulnerable (and therefore someone more prone to feeling uncomfortable), so that there were more ACTUAL things to go do that made me uncomfortable. Like if I don’t feel good, so many things make me uncomfortable; but I manifested just a teeny tiny fractional power of will and those things no longer made me feel uncomfortable. The goalposts moved. And while that’s great, I’ve in a sense failed at the original task of doing something consistently that makes me uncomfortable. Like it only *appeared* to be a simple as existing in my house without hiding from my roommates/roommates’ friends. Once I actually stood up and stretched and perceived the road ahead of me did I realize that what’s really making me uncomfortable is much further away than that.

I would be very uncomfortable taking a picture of myself. I would be very uncomfortable looking a dating app. Merely entertaining the notion of socializing. And then socializing itself would be even MORE uncomfortable. Hmm, what else? 

Ok, here we are. Over a month later. Woof. I’ve been trying to think of something to write here all day today, and I still don’t have anything. So this might be short. But basically I’m putting journaling back on the menu as part of my therapy, which I am back in the swing of. Thank goodness. It’s about the only thing I’m taking a swing at, and even this much is making me sweat right now. Showing up and doing my “homework” for therapy is making me feel like I’m overclocked. Which I think sucks, but that has to mean that I’ve got some room to really improve here in the near future. If I’m stressed and uncomfortable and I can stay in here and show up at least a couple times a week, I might be able to actually build some muscle mass. We’ll have to see.

That all being said, I feel good today. I just don’t feel great writing this. I’ve been procrastinating my entire waking day so far, and now it’s 5pm. But I had a great grocery trip, that was checkout worthy (We all know that I categorize trips based on whether or not I feel too much shame from my purchases to use a regular checkout or if I have to hide my cart and bury everything in the corner of the self checkout and sprint out of the building without making eye contact with anyone). I was feeling pretty uncomfortable to start it out, all things told. I used a coffee/donut trip and incentive to get out of the house and start myself up. Someone mentioned a flat white earlier this week and that reminded me that I’d probably really like that. I think I’ve only ever had it one time and I don’t remember how it was, but it should be everything I like in a latte, but more my speed. But then neither Dunkin’ nor Starbucks would make it. Since I had my heart set on the Flat White, and wasn’t particularly jonesing for coffee, I just completely bailed. I wasn’t happy with that. Plan too narrow, set up for failure. Sad. But I pulled it together. I think moving the legs is so so so much more impactful than anything else I’ve been trying to do to help me feel good. Maybe this is the plan from now on. I go to La Colombe in the morning and just fucking schlepp around with the coffee and then I come home once I’ve drunk it all. THEN I take a crack at my day. It worked today. And it’s still so nice out. Fuck it, it’s worth a shot. Then I don’t have to worry about coming right down to my desk the moment I feel good to try and bang out some writing.

I don’t want to do this SO BAD. My day is going so fine w/o this fucking task on  my plate. I had a great Slay the Spire game. I had a sick crossword go today. 4 super strong Ranked LoL games. Threw back just the most coffee, not regrets. So now it’s just this. And i’m not up for it, sorry. I want to play a couple more ranked games. I want to set up my Killer dinner of Mariano’s meatloaf, mashed potatoes and brussel sprouts. Finish watching No Country for Old Men, and go to bed. As far as I see it, this can feel a little unfinished and the Max of tomorrow morning should be absolutely pumped to come in a bang this out. Don’t wanna clear the whole plate and then future Max has nothing to write about tomorrow. That’s not fair. I can barely think straight. Now that I mentioned it, it might have been too much coffee.... OH WELL.

Hey dad, I’m back. Like I said I would be. I had a good day. I think I’m back. Back from the precipice; back from the cave. I’m having a hard time writing but I think that’s just a fatal flaw in the act of writing itself, not with me. I even had that thing today where I looked up and was like, there’s *how much* day left?? Like I had somehow “done it all.” 

I had in fact done almost nothing, but I felt accomplished. I felt weightless. That’s good. I worked hard to manifest that, let’s not forget. I begrudgingly came back to the blog on back-to-back days when I said I would, which is miles better than the state of mind I’ve been trapped in for so many days there. A state of mind I may find myself trapped in again in the future. This is my fate it would seem. I am perpetually poisoned by sloth and will suffer ill effects periodically, not of my choosing. Poisonous blood, perhaps. A sobering thought, ironically enough.

Hmm. We’re getting close. Close to something, maybe. I don’t know what. I clearly have one pattern on this blog that I’m realizing. I can’t start seemingly without putting one in the win column, by any stretch of logic I can muster. “June 21st, 2021: Good to have you with us. Today’s a dub, as far as I can tell, so that’s nice.”

This seems like to me, if I CAN’T produce some sort of good strike of victory, this is the time I decide to eschew my writerly duties. But I think that might be a case of correlation not causation. It more looks like I find the act of sitting down and *trying* to be an act of triumph in and of itself. So it’s always without fail the first thing I am thinking of when I pull up the blog thing[sic].

Anyways, I opened this tab literally an hour ago. So even though the content is short, the effort was real. You know what they say: sometimes writing is just sitting down in front of the computer and failing to put anything down. The results vary from moment to moment; but the act is the same. And I personally am proud of me for sitting down and trying. So, a little more, let’s say, exciting one tomorrow, yeah? Maybe some cool book notes. You love those, remember?

Ok, be good. Go prep some coffee ahead of time for the morning maybe!

Hey boyfriend, I’m back, and I only barely still have shingles, so... Hurray!!

Holy fucking shit what a time to be alive. I hate all of this. I am coming to you today having stayed up the entire night in a bold attempt to depart from this depressive state these past few days have left me in. So far so good, actually! POUNDED coffee like I’m a detective cracking a time sensitive case, but the only case in this instance is the case of why I feel like shit all the time and can’t seem to do anything ever! This mystery will remain unsolved for now, but I’ve still got a couple leads to follow up on.

Oof, BIIIIG Break from the last section to now. Just daydreaming mostly. I don’t think I’m quite right for this yet. I’m close, I think. Just not quite there. The real goal is to finish the hard reset tonight and hit tomorrow with some oomph. Come in and properly write to see what’s good. This is more of a “I’m carrying some manic energy over from last night and Idk I might as well write I’ve got like 6 hours left in this day and I’ve gotten almost all the shit I needed to do done.”

What else, what else? Housekeeping: I broke my phone :I

I pulled a grade A bonehead move two days ago. I was wondering over to a pizzeria for dinner. I was picking up a carryout order at like 6pm. I had checked the weather channel earlier that afternoon and it had said *maybe* storms from like 7-9 or something so I didn’t think anything of it. But when I went outside I noticed that it was already spitting. I worried a little bit, Like, erg, if only I had gotten it together and picked this thing up 30 minutes ago. But I didn’t really want the pizza thirty minutes ago, so sue me. But I see it’s spitting, and I had already committed to walking and I thought I’m not going to carry this pizza AND hold an umbrella, the logistics are too fraught for me in that moment. So I grab my weatherproof jacket. Perfect. Foolproof. I desperately needed a shower anyways, if I catch a little drizzle, no biggie. So I leave the house with all my shit like I usually do. Wallet, headphones. phone, keys, mask, that stuff. And about 100 steps from my house it starts to come down. Raining for real, not spitting. Oof, good thing I don’t give a shit about rain, I’ve got the jacket and a hat; get fucked rain. I actually kind of like it. Another hundred steps, it’s pouring. It’s REAL bad. Sheets. I remember distinctly thinking, “I can and maybe should bail on this pizza. I didn’t actually pay yet, these suckers allowed me to *bring in a credit card*”. But I thought, that’s not nice, they’ve definitely already made the pizza, or at the very least it’ll be ready in like 8 minutes, which is too late still. So I hung in there, but now I knew this wasn’t going to be a pretty walk. I had to bank on it lightening up by the time I was leaving with the pizza. I needed it to be one of those flashes where it rained like crazy but only for like 4 minutes then it went back to normal. It didn’t. Then part of me realized that it was actually get so rainy that my phone and headphones might actually not be safe in these conditions. Aha! Not to fear! The weatherproof jacket provides. I has a single pocket just for such an occasion. One back pocket that zips closed, right above the butt. Bingo, phone and headphone case in there. Everything else is gonna have to take a little soak unfortunately. 

I make it 75% of the way there. My podcast I’m listening to cuts out. “Signal lost” says the headphones in my ear. I check my back pocket. It is still weatherproof, but I come to find that the zipper part at the top of the pocket.... is absolutely NOT. The entire pocket has filled with water, and since it’s weatherproof, the water never found its way out the bottom. It formed a miniature pool right above my ass, and the only two members were the two items that absolutely could not afford to be there. Now the headphones were completely fine. They are advertised as waterproof, not that I factored that into my orignal purchase, but hey, we’re here and I have to practice a teensy tiny bit of gratitude for that. But the phone is, well, buh-bye. As I type here it’s currently sitting in some special phone repair studio or some shit and I’ll be receiving an email within the next 16 hours telling me it’s either fixed for a modest sum of cash, or fucked and will be replaced for a slightly less modest sum of cash. Se la vie

Honestly the only thing I really want to survive this whole incident is my voice recordings I had left on that thing. Everything else I’m almost positive is internet based. Podcasts, banking, my Wendy’s points. But I don’t know about the voice recordings. It’s probably the only place I have a lot of that material saved. And if it’s gone, I’ll probably have to just admit that it’s gone for good. And that sucks. I’m not mentally prepared to do that. But who knows? Maybe that’s based on my google account or something that I didn’t even know? It seems possible. Yeah ok, I just looked it up, and it is literally “Google recorder” So it might be “cloud based.” Ugh. Either way, it’s just a little more financial pain in a time where I am just sitting around and poking myself with a financial pain swtichblade just to see if it hurts me. A morbid curiosity to see if I can break the skin with how sharp the pain of watching my bank account shrink is, while I try to find my purpose on the nasty blue marble. So far I’m like, whoah, I’m bleeding, that’s crazy; but it doesn’t actually hurt. It’s weird. I 100% have less of an idea of what the fuck any of this is supposed to be than when I started, which is.... Idk. Surely this is what I was afraid of at the start of all this? I’m not a fucking idiot. I had to know that through all the ups and downs, across all the bullshit variables (trip, getting sick), I would potentially burn the fuck out. Say what you want about work, it gets you out of bed in the morning (or eventually). But I have to remember that getting out of bed most of those days fucking sucked. The feeling of leaving the house filled me with dread. I’m sparing myself that feeling every day that I keep this hiatus. And no matter how unproductive or sad I feel on these days, I am completely unburdened with the feeling of dread. I am spared that singular burden. I don’t know what that means ultimately, but that’s a pretty meaty truth to hang my cross up on.

Ok, I’m spiralling. My hands are heavy as hell on the desk, the meat under my palms is aching from sinking into the desk in front of the keyboard. I’ve got a pretty tricky few hours left to pull off here so wish me luck. I’m going to KFC to get a chicken sandwich! :D

Sandwich and a PINCH more caffeine just because I can. I can have caffeine bitch. Today is mine. I guarantee I will see you tomorrow even if only for a moment. We are back and our journey to finding out what on fucking earth will keep us from lying awake at night wondering what the fuck am I doing here continues forever onward!

It was Shingles. The Shingles Virus. Today is the first day that the disease has ameliorated (thx spellcheck...). It went up and up and up and up for SO LONG HOLY SHIT. I mean I talked to you what, 5 days ago? And I was like, what the hell is this, I’m concerned. So just take that initial premise there, and exacerbate (thx again spellcheck...) it for five days in a row. I was straight up losing my mind 2 days ago, it was so bad. I lost the ability to sleep, my head hurt so much. Now like I said, I’m looking at the situation this morning and it looks like I’m coming down from the worst of it now (thanks to medicine). 

God it was so much worse than I could have been hoping. The hives I was noticing forming behind my ear were in fact budding sores. I learned this week that Shingles is a type of herpes, so these bumps became painful, open, oozing, CONTAGIOUS sores. And now I’m statistically likely to get Shingles again at some point in my life. So now I have to go get a Shingles vaccine at some point. You know, of all the maladies the human body can undergo, at least Shingles only runs you about $180.00. Could have been a kidney stone or something involving in-patient care and I’d REALLY be complaining right now. I’m still bitter. The whole time I was anxiously pondering what this illness could be, I kept weighing the pros and cons of getting it sorted out by a professional. I just kept thinking, “it’s bad, but is it bad enough to cost me a couple hundred dollars too?”

Like, when I think of it like that, it’s like I’m getting paid to NOT treat it. Like a penny saved is a penny earned. Not having a doctor tell me to go buy medicine will essentially net me a couple hundred bucks. But then I thought, if someone offered me $200 to get a mysterious malady and suffer through it for an indiscriminate amount of time, with the potential for it to be a legit big deal (which it was), I’d turn that down 10 times out of 10. What a shit way to go through life. Pinching pennies completely regardless of my quality of living? It’s antithetical to my goals, surely.

But yeah, anyways, I go to the clinic. The physician diagnoses me within like 30 seconds. They were literally like, “Oh, this is Shingles. You have shingles. Here your ‘script. Take care!” And in that moment all I felt was relief. Like, I’m not crazy. I’m allowed to feel this poorly. I’ve earned it. For once I’ve earned feeling like I can’t do anything right now. But quickly I felt like a fucking idiot for not just pulling this trigger. Or at the very least, not setting up my lifestyle to be prone to pulling the doctor visit trigger. Like, I don’t pull the doctor trigger BECAUSE I’m not set up to do that. Every time you go to one of these places they go, “what your insurance?” And then they look at you like a leper when you tell them you don’t have any. And then the pharmacy does the same exact thing. You say “no insurance” and they immediately start panicking. Like they never hear this, and now it’s time to use their emergency training they thought they’d never need.

Idk, I’m not going to change just yet. I got dental, that’s working well so far, but the medicare line still feels like it’ll cost more than it saves. I know it’s better safe than sorry, but I’m not old enough to hit “sorry” yet, I feel. Whatever, I don’t want to talk about this anymore, it’s boring. 

I don’t know what to write about right now, I’m fucking tired. I might be able to sleep tonight if these symptoms keep coming down, but as it stands now I’ve got a low tank. God I’m pissed. I’m watching the sand fall out of my hourglass and I’m not doing anything about it. Ok, how about this? Read 30 pages today. Start by practicing some faster reading, and slow yourself down naturally. I still can’t fully appreciate fast reading. I have to act out the sentences. I don’t know how people don’t do that. That’s the point, I feel like. You have to embody the characters. Like do other people not work in a line read when they read dialogue? Or do alternate takes when they feel like their initial line read didn’t quite play? That’s insane.

I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m too tired. I feel good about tomorrow, but not today. I’ll do the reading thing. That’ll be nice. We’re coming back, baby.

Missed another day. Felt sickly, bailed on everything. God, I really hope I’m sick, in the traditional sense. I’ve unfortunately begun to invite the idea that I’ve got cancer or something, and that’s why I feel this way. So I hope I’m sick, for my sake. Because if this thing ends up being a big deal, my “wait it out until it goes away or I die” approach is gonna feel a little foolish.

It’s a couple things. It’s that sickly energy. That lethargy that feels unexpected, that 10 hours of sleep without making some big plan for that. Like, I feel like if I’m feeling gassed (I can’t think of the word I’m looking for here. Crushed? Fucked? Tuckered? no. Goosed? It might actually be goosed, even though I’m looking at it right now, and that can’t be the right word. It might just be the one I’m thinking of. Oh well) and I acquiesce to sleep real early, and then I STILL sleep til like 9:45; I take that as my body needed sleep and was using it well. Like, if I was just indulging my bored impulses to bail on life and wait for something interesting to happen, I’d find myself becoming restless at some point. I’d cap out on my sleep bucks. But since I’m not, I’m inclined to trust my instincts here. So that’s a point for “sick.”

I’ve also got some sneezing happening. And the general malaise. And instead of cramming liquids and fruit, I have instead done absolutely nothing. So these are all good signs actually. I WANT to be sick. The alternative at this point is that something is seriously wrong with me, and that would fucking suck. That’s not the Fun-employed I signed up for. The point I’m referring to that isn’t pointing directly towards sick is extremely obvious to the me writing this right now, but for posterity’s sake, allow me to describe it. It’s a certain sensitivity on my skin on only the right side of my head. Not my face, my head. It starts at the right side of my face and ends at nearly the center of the back of my head. And on the Y-axis it starts at right around the top of my ear and all the way to halfway down my neck. That sector of my body is EXTREMELY sensitive. Sensitive to the point of feeling pain like a sunburn or rug burn from seemingly any form of contact. Craning my neck around actually is enough to irritate it. You can only imagine that some of my more “intense” activities of wearing headphones and lying down on my side on a pillow are causing me the most concern right now. 

Actually I just scratched the side of my head right now just to see, and it was so extreme of a sensation that I could tell my brain partially blocked it out. This is so weird. I am constantly checking every inch of the affected area for some sort of bump or abnormality, like maybe a spider bit the side of my head and this is my body’s reaction to that. I keep thinking, wow I wonder if anti-histamines would instantly solve this, and then in a week’s time it will subside. But I don’t have anti-histamines, I’ve never needed them. That circumstance has never happened to me in my life. So why would it come into play out of nowhere right now? Also, a quarter of my head? Really? I got some allergic reaction just on a 4″ by 4″ section on one side of my head? Where did that part of my head go that would have suffered some sort of rash that the rest of my body would manage to avoid? (My pillow is literally the only answer, why tf would it be my pillow?) Also, it’s not a rash. I can’t see ANYTHING different on my head. Wouldn’t a rash look at least a little different than the rest of my skin. This is so weird.

Ok, I just looked it up to confirm. It’s literally just an allergic reaction, hypersensitivity. So since I have no allergies, it’s gotta be a bug bite or something. God, this is so weird. It varies in it’s obnoxiousness to be clear. And it sounds like a benadryll would help. Maybe I’ll see if Bonnie has any. Then I can know for sure. But since it’s not getting WORSE, in either scope or intensity, I’m going to stick with my plan to fucking ignore this fucking thing. 

Sorry, this is basically pointless to write about. But I realized this morning something. I’m slowly moving towards proliferation in my writing. I’m writing at such a higher volume, and comfortability, than when I started. I’m defaulting towards writing so much more easily than before, it’s great. I tell myself, I don’t want to do the blog, then I see a post about Voyboy, and I just sit down and write something to him. And that’s an idea I’ve had in the past but balked at. I saw it as writing for it’s own sake;  it wouldn’t be a big deal to him or me to actually do it. But two days ago I just sat and hammered it out. And I didn’t slave over creating it. I mean, I cared about how it looked and what it said, but I never got jammed up on its creation. It just came together, and I was inclined to sit here and make it come together. I’ve crossed a clear threshold, and it feels great. And then! After I wrote it, I thought, “Ok, that’s my creative writing done for the day. Let me post that on the blog and be done.” I sat down to post it, and in my attempt to quickly preface it for clarity, I ended working through what I was feeling at the time. I ended up blogging anyway. I didn’t worry about it. I didn’t sit down and make myself get to work, like I had been doing for MANY of these posts up to this point. And I’m doing that very thing again today. This should be noted and celebrated Max. You can in fact write and you are not an impostor. Congrats!

I noticed it while I was out at breakfast, when I had an idea listening to How Did This Get Played?. I feel like I’ll often have an opinion or a curiosity occur after hearing them discuss a topic about video games, but this time I paused the podcast and pull out my notes app and started writing it out. And after a minute or so of writing, I found that I had A LOT more to write out than my initial question for the podcast. I wanted to record my thoughts and observations about something. I have evolved from listening to, I don’t know, listening+. I’m listening and taking things in and instead of silently absorbing them I’m absorbing out loud. I’m learning things in my own company and unpacking things as they come my way. This “active rumination” functions a lot like chewing in the food sense, better digestion. I’m thinking so much more by making myself explain my own thoughts out loud before I allow them to disappear back into my memory.

I honestly can’t believe I didn’t think this would be helpful for expanding my own ability to generate thoughts. I mean, I suppose I did. I assumed that diligently sitting here and working on this would make this easier to do. I just didn’t specifically think about HOW it make writing easier. It’s easier because I think of things in terms of articulating them. I mean, duh. Oh man, even right now, I’m thinking of so many things at once, and my impulse is to write them all out here. Although my biggest impulse is to consider this amount I’ve already shown up (and the part I worked out on my notes app earlier) a job well done, and I can clock out and go back to checking out and watching LCS. It’s TL vs TSM in Winner’s 2nd round. Winner get’s a guaranteed World’s spot, and the loser will have to go through EG or C9 to punch their ticket. So yeah, this is banger city. I honestly consider these World’s implication games to be more hype than the championship itself. I mean the championship is going to be between two teams that no matter who wins, instantly go into preparing for World’s. And the success of the year is going to be impacted so much more on that stage than on this one. We will remember who won the NA trophy EVENTUALLY. Come Spring next season. But this whole thing is so much smaller once you consider that beating a team from Korea would instantly outshine any accomplishment achieved on American soil. Like, how can you even get excited for the Championship here when it takes place at the foot of the mountain that is a World Championship? Like the Australian Basketball League surely gets excited for their Final for the season. But if afterward, BOTH teams got invited to play in the play-in round of the NBA playoffs? It would actively steal excitement from the original final, by way of siphoning some of the exciting for the Semi-Final. Hype is a zero sum game. If I’m getting EXTRA hype during the semis because of the implications it presents for the future, I think I have to by definition be less hype for the final after that.

I mean, imagine only ONE team from NA gets to go to World’s each year. Holy shit people would tune in for that final like no other. That would be PEAK hype. It wouldn’t be shared with anything else, and the stake’s wouldn’t be split up. It wouldn’t be one team looking for a chance to qualify, and a separate team looking for the Domestic Title. It would be everything. The Title would BE the qualifying act. It would be the end-all be-all, like every other sport. Your victory parade would be a parade TO THE AIRPORT, as you left for the big enchilada. There’s no, “Aww, they lost NA, but that might actually give them a better vantage point going into Worlds. They have a better idea of what to work on in the interim.” I think that’s kinda weak. And now I realize this means I have to grapple with the idea that my dream World’s tournament is only like 6 teams big. Only the champs from each region. Now World’s can’t take like 2 weeks. The coolest event the sport can have would be over in a flash. That is the price we all pay for the true glory of being the REAL NA CHAMP. The chance to be THE ambassador of our region. I guess that’s about all there really is there. 

I’m tuning in and out now. I think I will actually call it there for right now. Maybe I come back later in the day? That could be kinda fun. Who knows? I mean, c’mon. No way right? It’s literally never happened. Eh, whatever. You keep doing you, man. You’re killin’ it (sunglasses emoji)