So here I am
Another year or so since my last real post.
What's changed? I met a woman last year who turned my world upside down, made me feel like a man for the first time in my life. I'd never felt so...normal. Loved. Capable.
It was a great three months.
After the implosion of our relationship, I spent a lot of time doubting myself. I channeled that energy into my writing, but the rest of me slipped. I gained weight again, lost track of career goals. The promotion I expected by September turned into a transfer to another shitty hotel. That lasted a month. Now I was unmployeed. My sister gets married.
I signed on with a labor company to do arena shows. I went on unemployment for the second time in my life. I played a LOT of world of warcraft. I didn't get much writing done.
My old job called me back. I got moved to a division that set me up as an area coordinator. That sounds fancy, but all it really meant is I had no home in the company anymore. I am the part-time roaming AV monkey for hire. Send me anywhere, work me any hours, and I do it all for bananas.
The labor company pays better, but doesn't have any work. A friend and I join a free dating site, mainly to cheer me up. He meets the woman he's gong to marry and is carrying his first child, I can't even get a date.
I have a strange dream about being trapped on an alien world. I turn it into a short story. That turns into a long story. As I grind my way through the huge work rush in early 2009, I eat, sleep, and write. I finish my story. It's pulp. It has some faults, but I'm pleased overall.
I send it to friends to read, a couple do read it. They help me revise and refine it, but I don't get a lot of useful feedback. Work slows down again. Weeks at a time pass with no hours. I am still making my bills. The rush in January paid off my credit card. I start to consider putting my own company together again. My current job institutes hiring freezes, demotions and work furloughs to prevent layoffs.
My sister has a baby. I buy her books as a gift. All the children's books we read together when we were kids. I find a copy of "Where the Sidewalk Ends" that was signed with a note to my sister by our father, three months before he died of cancer. When I return it to her, she's reduced to tears. I cry too. I love my sister.
I join another dating site. A paid one. I send email after email. I get one response. We talk. She is about to celebrate the anniversary of the deaths of her twin boys, who died during childbirth the previous year. Her husband left her for his girlfriend while she recovered. She started using drugs to stay off the ones prescribed by doctors.
Against my better judgement, I offer to meet her anyway, but she never calls back. Women don't want to date me, just dump their shit on me so they can feel better about themselves.
I write another story. For a contest. It's erotic fiction, something I've never tried. I complete most of it while sititng in the back of a dark room populated by hydrogen plant engineers. Once again, I submit it to my friends. Only one reads it this time.
I spend some time in California with family and friends. Start playing roleplaying games again. I crave the social interaction, even if all it really amounts to is bludgeoning my commrades with imaginary monsters.
A profile comes up on the dating site. 26. Employed, Single. No kids. Loves to draw. Loves to read. Plays world of warcraft. I send her an email. It still hasn't even been read, either because she's already found someone, or has given up on the same broken internet scam that I'm about to.
I try to stay positive. A family member offers to gift me an absurd amount of money for my birthday so I can finally buy the camera I need. A friend gives me a new laptop that's five times better than the rebuilt desktop I have been using for four years.
I don't know how to tell them that despite my talk, I have no idea how to make my buisness start. Even if I start it, how long will it live in an economy that is no longer placing value on the skills I trained for because they are more worried about keeping their homes and their retirements?
Tonight, the server that held the wiki containing compiled notes from over two years of world building and collaboration, barfed up its SQL database. Our "backups" might not have the information needed to restore the lost data. I want to cry. Two years of work, despite assurances that we can rebuild, is not an easy thing to lose.
I want to tell stories. It's the only real skill I have, the only true thing I know how to do. I made choice, five years ago, to give up a career teaching people how to kill each other so that I could entertain instead. I want to be loved. I want a family of my own. I want to be able to get up in the morning and work at a job I enjoy.
Instead, I live alone, surrounded by the memoirs of better times in my life. I feed on promises of things to come from people who are more concerned with their own lives to consider the effects of such promises on mine. I write stories, and build worlds, but can't get anyone to look at them, not even my friends, without constant badgering or threats.
I'm not as low as I was on the night of November 5th, 2007. But since that time nothing has really gone my way either. I'm on cruise control to old age and dissatisfaction. Loved, but unremarkable, acknowleged but unoticed by the world.
In the grand scheme, maybe it's not my place to be something more than what I am, but if that's the case, then maybe I should have stepped off that bridge, and saved my space for someone else.
What's changed? I met a woman last year who turned my world upside down, made me feel like a man for the first time in my life. I'd never felt so...normal. Loved. Capable.
It was a great three months.
After the implosion of our relationship, I spent a lot of time doubting myself. I channeled that energy into my writing, but the rest of me slipped. I gained weight again, lost track of career goals. The promotion I expected by September turned into a transfer to another shitty hotel. That lasted a month. Now I was unmployeed. My sister gets married.
I signed on with a labor company to do arena shows. I went on unemployment for the second time in my life. I played a LOT of world of warcraft. I didn't get much writing done.
My old job called me back. I got moved to a division that set me up as an area coordinator. That sounds fancy, but all it really meant is I had no home in the company anymore. I am the part-time roaming AV monkey for hire. Send me anywhere, work me any hours, and I do it all for bananas.
The labor company pays better, but doesn't have any work. A friend and I join a free dating site, mainly to cheer me up. He meets the woman he's gong to marry and is carrying his first child, I can't even get a date.
I have a strange dream about being trapped on an alien world. I turn it into a short story. That turns into a long story. As I grind my way through the huge work rush in early 2009, I eat, sleep, and write. I finish my story. It's pulp. It has some faults, but I'm pleased overall.
I send it to friends to read, a couple do read it. They help me revise and refine it, but I don't get a lot of useful feedback. Work slows down again. Weeks at a time pass with no hours. I am still making my bills. The rush in January paid off my credit card. I start to consider putting my own company together again. My current job institutes hiring freezes, demotions and work furloughs to prevent layoffs.
My sister has a baby. I buy her books as a gift. All the children's books we read together when we were kids. I find a copy of "Where the Sidewalk Ends" that was signed with a note to my sister by our father, three months before he died of cancer. When I return it to her, she's reduced to tears. I cry too. I love my sister.
I join another dating site. A paid one. I send email after email. I get one response. We talk. She is about to celebrate the anniversary of the deaths of her twin boys, who died during childbirth the previous year. Her husband left her for his girlfriend while she recovered. She started using drugs to stay off the ones prescribed by doctors.
Against my better judgement, I offer to meet her anyway, but she never calls back. Women don't want to date me, just dump their shit on me so they can feel better about themselves.
I write another story. For a contest. It's erotic fiction, something I've never tried. I complete most of it while sititng in the back of a dark room populated by hydrogen plant engineers. Once again, I submit it to my friends. Only one reads it this time.
I spend some time in California with family and friends. Start playing roleplaying games again. I crave the social interaction, even if all it really amounts to is bludgeoning my commrades with imaginary monsters.
A profile comes up on the dating site. 26. Employed, Single. No kids. Loves to draw. Loves to read. Plays world of warcraft. I send her an email. It still hasn't even been read, either because she's already found someone, or has given up on the same broken internet scam that I'm about to.
I try to stay positive. A family member offers to gift me an absurd amount of money for my birthday so I can finally buy the camera I need. A friend gives me a new laptop that's five times better than the rebuilt desktop I have been using for four years.
I don't know how to tell them that despite my talk, I have no idea how to make my buisness start. Even if I start it, how long will it live in an economy that is no longer placing value on the skills I trained for because they are more worried about keeping their homes and their retirements?
Tonight, the server that held the wiki containing compiled notes from over two years of world building and collaboration, barfed up its SQL database. Our "backups" might not have the information needed to restore the lost data. I want to cry. Two years of work, despite assurances that we can rebuild, is not an easy thing to lose.
I want to tell stories. It's the only real skill I have, the only true thing I know how to do. I made choice, five years ago, to give up a career teaching people how to kill each other so that I could entertain instead. I want to be loved. I want a family of my own. I want to be able to get up in the morning and work at a job I enjoy.
Instead, I live alone, surrounded by the memoirs of better times in my life. I feed on promises of things to come from people who are more concerned with their own lives to consider the effects of such promises on mine. I write stories, and build worlds, but can't get anyone to look at them, not even my friends, without constant badgering or threats.
I'm not as low as I was on the night of November 5th, 2007. But since that time nothing has really gone my way either. I'm on cruise control to old age and dissatisfaction. Loved, but unremarkable, acknowleged but unoticed by the world.
In the grand scheme, maybe it's not my place to be something more than what I am, but if that's the case, then maybe I should have stepped off that bridge, and saved my space for someone else.