Not tonight
I am inexplicably pissed off.
I've gone back to lying a lot in this journal, because God knows people don't need to hear the exacting details of my life. Life is no longer as interesting now that I am not in school, where there were wacky hijinx waiting around every corner, or at least a soul-crushing amount of work I needed to be doing at any given time that I could bitch about to get away from. These days it's all accidentally sleeping in, staying at work late because I slept in, coming home and eating whatever's in arm's reach, killing time on the internet, watching TV, forgetting to pay a couple of bills and going to bed. And tonight I am inexplicably pissed off.
I want to buy a tablet computer, write a ray tracer and a stock tracker, start a webcomic, write a book, appear in a TV show, take a vacation to California, New Zealand, Las Vegas, and assorted points in Ontario, start a company and sell novelty t-shirts, open a bar and franchise the hell out of it, get back in shape, get paid to make video games.
In the last year of school, a bunch of people got really, really into climbing, to the point where they never spoke about anything but the new shoes they bought and how much I would love it if I would just agree to go with them. We were sitting around talking one day, by which I mean we were sitting around, they were talking about climbing, and I was listening to them talk about climbing and surreptitiously rolling my eyes.
"You know," Keith said, "it's a pain in the ass to have to drive to Guelph to climb. Half the people at that club are based in Waterloo and nobody likes driving out there. We should open a climbing gym out here."
There was general agreement that that would kick ass.
"I saw a building on the other side of town with available space, I'm pretty sure I can get the money for a couple months' rent, and..."
"Whoa, whoa, hang on," I said, suddenly shaken from my reverie by his apparent intent to actually follow through on what was, to me, clearly an insane fucking plan. "You can't actually do that."
"Why not?" he asked, looking at me with that look people get on their face when they're totally convinced that they've come up with an awesome plan. You know the one. I'm sure you can recall plenty of times you've seen it on me.
"Be...because..." I realized that I had no good answer and was going to have to wing it. "Because shit like that doesn't happen in real life. You're describing the plot of a fucking daytime TV movie. I bet there will even be an evil corporate bastard that wants to turn the climbing gym run by the kids with a spunky can-do attitude into a McDonalds knockoff, and they'll nearly succeed until you stage a huge climb-a-thon and the citizens of the city all rally behind you, and you win, only without an evil corporate bastard to rally against, public interest eventually wanes and your gym is forced to take out loan after loan until finally it's reposessed by the bank and then it sits empty for a year until it burns to the ground and nobody bothers rebuilding it, and you're forced to take a job bussing tables in the Evil Corporate Bastard headquarters cafeteria to pay off your horrific debt load. That last part never makes it into the movie but that's how it happens in real life."
By this point I had everybody's attention. I had gone a little red in the face and was speaking a little frantically. "Uh, are you okay?" Keith asked.
"I'm fine," I insisted. "But that's why you shouldn't open a climbing gym."
"Well, that's a stupid reason," he said with his trademark directness.
I have spent every waking moment of my life since that day trying to answer the question "If you want to do something, why the hell shouldn't you?" There's always a reason to do it: because you want to. The reason not to usually boils down to answers like "Because that's insane," or "Because life doesn't work that way." I either have to come up with a better answer or start shopping, coding, drawing, writing, acting, planning, designing, scouting locations, working out, and...making a video game (that one's hard to verb).
I've gone back to lying a lot in this journal, because God knows people don't need to hear the exacting details of my life. Life is no longer as interesting now that I am not in school, where there were wacky hijinx waiting around every corner, or at least a soul-crushing amount of work I needed to be doing at any given time that I could bitch about to get away from. These days it's all accidentally sleeping in, staying at work late because I slept in, coming home and eating whatever's in arm's reach, killing time on the internet, watching TV, forgetting to pay a couple of bills and going to bed. And tonight I am inexplicably pissed off.
I want to buy a tablet computer, write a ray tracer and a stock tracker, start a webcomic, write a book, appear in a TV show, take a vacation to California, New Zealand, Las Vegas, and assorted points in Ontario, start a company and sell novelty t-shirts, open a bar and franchise the hell out of it, get back in shape, get paid to make video games.
In the last year of school, a bunch of people got really, really into climbing, to the point where they never spoke about anything but the new shoes they bought and how much I would love it if I would just agree to go with them. We were sitting around talking one day, by which I mean we were sitting around, they were talking about climbing, and I was listening to them talk about climbing and surreptitiously rolling my eyes.
"You know," Keith said, "it's a pain in the ass to have to drive to Guelph to climb. Half the people at that club are based in Waterloo and nobody likes driving out there. We should open a climbing gym out here."
There was general agreement that that would kick ass.
"I saw a building on the other side of town with available space, I'm pretty sure I can get the money for a couple months' rent, and..."
"Whoa, whoa, hang on," I said, suddenly shaken from my reverie by his apparent intent to actually follow through on what was, to me, clearly an insane fucking plan. "You can't actually do that."
"Why not?" he asked, looking at me with that look people get on their face when they're totally convinced that they've come up with an awesome plan. You know the one. I'm sure you can recall plenty of times you've seen it on me.
"Be...because..." I realized that I had no good answer and was going to have to wing it. "Because shit like that doesn't happen in real life. You're describing the plot of a fucking daytime TV movie. I bet there will even be an evil corporate bastard that wants to turn the climbing gym run by the kids with a spunky can-do attitude into a McDonalds knockoff, and they'll nearly succeed until you stage a huge climb-a-thon and the citizens of the city all rally behind you, and you win, only without an evil corporate bastard to rally against, public interest eventually wanes and your gym is forced to take out loan after loan until finally it's reposessed by the bank and then it sits empty for a year until it burns to the ground and nobody bothers rebuilding it, and you're forced to take a job bussing tables in the Evil Corporate Bastard headquarters cafeteria to pay off your horrific debt load. That last part never makes it into the movie but that's how it happens in real life."
By this point I had everybody's attention. I had gone a little red in the face and was speaking a little frantically. "Uh, are you okay?" Keith asked.
"I'm fine," I insisted. "But that's why you shouldn't open a climbing gym."
"Well, that's a stupid reason," he said with his trademark directness.
I have spent every waking moment of my life since that day trying to answer the question "If you want to do something, why the hell shouldn't you?" There's always a reason to do it: because you want to. The reason not to usually boils down to answers like "Because that's insane," or "Because life doesn't work that way." I either have to come up with a better answer or start shopping, coding, drawing, writing, acting, planning, designing, scouting locations, working out, and...making a video game (that one's hard to verb).