Fuck the beach
She sighed. "But.. I still reminisce sometimes. We probably should have dated back then. Then maybe we wouldn't have just played cards all day. If we had built a healthy relationship, then maybe you wouldn't have turned into such a hikikomori. Besides..."
He gulped and realized she still believed in it. "It's all due to conspiracies."
"I see. We were right all along."
---
It's funny how most of my lj friends haven't seen me in over a year now. And when I say funny, I really mean sad and depressing. On one side, I can write about things and people that my lj friends are never going to care to know about, but on the other side, I've lost a sort of bond and purpose with this journal. I feel a need to communicate with my old friends, but anything meaningful I try to contribute to a friend's entry seems too personal. I mean, we haven't talked in a year or so, and we don't see each other, so why bother writing a personal response for someone who would just shrug it off? Or rather, I shouldn't blame the other person, so I convince myself that since I haven't said anything in a year, saying anything personal would come off as just being inappropriate. Sometimes I wanna just say screw it and post something, but I also wanna just say screw it and keep staying in my hole. So here is my entry for the day, take it or leave it. These are my thoughts of the now, creeping around in my hole by myself. I offer rewards for people who make it to the second to last paragraph.
Vy texted me sometime in March with one of her usual random quips. This one read: "Ask me any question and I'll answer truthfully" or something like that. Being the weirdo I am, I somehow came up with "Will you come with me to Sacramento this summer?". She replied "yes" and I was elated for a moment. It seemed like such a great idea at the time, until about 20 seconds later I realized I trapped myself. Anyway, I brought it up once after that, then I heard she brought it up with one of my friends, and I ended up never doing anything about it. Summer's almost over and we still haven't talked about it since. At first I had planned it to be a solitary trip of self-healing after I got fired from Jungle Video, but school was in the way so I pushed it back to summer. Suddenly Vy was coming too, so it would have been better if I invited like 2 other people as well. Otherwise, I'd think it to be awkward the entire trip, while Vy would realize it's awkward halfway though and we'd never be the same. The solution would be just to ask her out already, which is the point of this whole backstory.
You can avoid time consuming explanations by simply lying when making small chat. "How are you?" "I'm fine." "That's good." The end. This is also effective when you don't want to fully explain yourself. In many cases, the entire truth is not what people want to hear. Sure, they'll listen, but they won't be happy about it. Thus, it would be better for both parties if one just lies or cuts the truth when explaining things. This is one of the reasons I don't enjoy talking much. But here on livejournal, nobody's listening. If someone wants to read my walls of text, they are free to do so. If not, they can skip the entry and move to the next friend. It's that simple. No time is wasted by the receiving end because of long explanations. Regardless, there are still some things I hold back for personal reasons, mainly because it's the internets after all, and I don't like locking my entries. Still, I say things here that I would never reveal talking to you in real life.
I absolutely loathe the beach. I hate everything it stands for and I hate being there. People prancing around half nude, the blazing hot fire that fills southern California, the absence of anything fun to do; it's none of these things I have a problem with. The reason I hate the beach is because I have zero self esteem. I can try to help others with their life problems, but every piece of advice that comes out of my mouth is mostly hypocritical. But the point is I'm a failure when it comes to being social, and especially at the beach. Well, I guess people prancing around half nude actually does intimidate me.
I am currently working on a website our company is planning to use to revolutionize the mobile gaming industry. We offer unlimited game downloads for $10 a month. The website is a portal to host games and play them on the computer for free. It also contains basically everything a regular community hub would. It will be the place for individual developers and private teams to get their mobile game out into the world. We provide the tools to create and port, the developers provide the code and art, then we sell the game worldwide for dirt cheap. Myself and one other tester are responsible for bugging the shit out of the site, and with tons of functionalities, we have successfully reported so many problems that the site launch has been pushed back a month. No problem on our side, we're just doing our job. Oh yeah, our company is also developing a store front application to download games for free from your phone, and also a hand-full of applications to be put in place in the popular community hubs like Facebook and Myspace and tons more I haven't even heard of.
Today is Friday, and I'm supposed to be attending the "mandatory fun meeting" at the beach with my co-workers. Fuck that. But we're getting paid for it, so we have to go. Here's how the schedule was planned for today: Morning crew (that's me) works from 6am to 10:30am, then night crew works from 10:30am to 3pm, and finally everybody goes to the party from 3pm to like 7pm or something. I was making my daily reports at 10:30 when Sid walks up and asks if anything new was added to the site. I was surprised to see him because for some reason I thought night crew would work after the party. We talk for a bit then I tell him I'll see him later at the party. "Oh, you're not gonna hang around here?" Of course not. It's four hours until the party. I'm going back home, even if Dana Point is in the other direction. Besides, who would I hang out with here at the company? I'm not gonna bum around with nothing to do. I don't even want to carpool with anyone. "Naw," I reply. "I'm gonna take a nap first." I smirked inside. "Alright, see ya man." Sid looked tired. Maybe he wasn't used to getting up so early after working until midnight last night. Whoops, did I make him feel bad? Poor guy. I drive home. I watch 7 episodes of That 70s Show, among other things. I leave the house at 2pm. I drive past Irvine, exit on PCH at Dana Point, and drive around for 30 minutes realizing I have no clue where we were meeting. No worries. I called my lead. No answer.. no worries. I called my other lead.. no answer. I called my mom to have her look at the invitation online. Turns out she took the kids swimming. No worries.. I wander around the wharf. I drive back and forth, back and forth. I called the senior tester, hey, I got directions now. So I pull up the the correct beach parking lot, tell the guy I'm here with Javaground, and he tells me I need a ticket. Javaground should have given everyone a ticket, he says. Well, what am I supposed to do? He let me go in and mumbled something about the first driveway. I pull into the first parking lot and park. Maybe I can get a ticket from the secretary once I find the damn place. I walk around for about 15 minutes and find no one. Sure, there are private parties everywhere, but where's the big sign that says Javaground? Am I supposed to just walk along the beach looking at every person seeing if I recognize anyone? Fuck that. Oh hey look, the beach ends here anyway. Let's walk in the other direction and make a fool of yourself in front of all the people you just passed, looking like a lost idiot. Oh hey look, the beach ends over here too. Where the fuck is everyone? Fuck this. I made it back to my car and composed a very angry text to the senior tester. I was back on the freeway in that blazing fire that surrounds southern California.
I give credit to Orson Scott Card for this line of thinking. There are three kinds of fear: despair, terror, and horror. Horror, the weakest, is the afterimage of something scary, like the hacked up corpse someone finds in the back seat of an abandoned car. The scene is rejected and denied its humanity, and the on-looker is filled with nausea and disgust. Terror comes when you initially see the thing you're afraid of. Your girlfriend is raging toward you and you know she knows you cheated on her. The headlights have caught you and you know that car is coming. With terror comes climactic power of release. You know the face of the thing you fear. Dread is the strongest kind of fear. It is that tension, that waiting that you know there is something to fear, but you haven't quite determined what it is yet. It's the fear you feel when you come back to your car after an hour or two of classes and realize you unlock it without it being locked in the first place. It's the fear that comes to you when you know you didn't study for that final even though your grade depends so much on it.
I've recently let my life be led by my thoughts of dread, or more specifically, despair. I'm trapped here at the End of the World with no way out. Why did I come here? and, why am I still here? Every day I dread finding out what people really think of me. Sorry, but I really do care about things like self-image and what people perceive me to be. If I've said otherwise in the past, I probably didn't realize it back then, or I was just trying to look good, which only proves my point. Self-esteem is gained mostly through the thoughts of other people. For someone who spends most of his time alone, or sometimes doesn't believe in reality, like me, self-esteem is hard to come by. Every moment with another person then becomes meaningful and dramatic. Every moment becomes another way to impress my image and ideas onto another person to be judged by them. If they explicitly praise me, it generates electric signals of content and acceptance inside. Otherwise, even if they don't mean to, I'm hurt. And people wonder why I'm so serious all the time.
I wrote in my text to the senior tester that I really don't care what they do to me at work. I hate the beach, and it was a stupid idea anyway with the site being behind schedule as much as it is. I don't go to work to have fun. Sure, it's nice, but I'd like to work and learn and gain experience, not hang out at a beach with people I don't care to hang out with. I don't care that this'll be my 8th unexcused absence this year. I don't expect to get paid for this time anyway. So let my manager fire me for not going to the beach with everyone else. As I was driving along the freeway, considering my wasted 2 hours and half a tank of gas, apathy was replaced by dread, then came despair as usual. Fear that my entire world is going to come crashing down upon me very soon. I cried that night in my car after I got fired from Jungle Video, and I would have today if I wasn't driving around in plain daylight. I swear to god if i get fired on monday, I'm going to kill myself.