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As I approach thirty, I’ve learned some things. Things like hard work doesn’t pay off where it should. If you work good then you just get given more work or maybe you don’t get anything despite giving it your all. Saving money won’t buy you a house, university no longer guarantees a career, being good at your job doesn’t mean a raise. It’s pretty disheartening, especially being in a generation that grew up being told hard work pays off. You know where that saying is true though regardless of the state of the world? Fortnite.
I never played first person shooter games until this year. Hell, I didn’t play video games until Baldur’s Gate came out. The former has always intimidated me though. I figured my brain was too slow to play such things since my noggin likes to buffer. Fortnite always intrigued me but only recently did I delve in it. Lemme tell you I was very bad. In fact I’m still not great. That said, despite not playing every day or even close, my abysmal aim has improved, my fear of close combat has lessened, and my reflexes have sharpened. I can see myself improving after each round. Beyond that though, you get rewarded in-game. You get prizes, points, customizable little something-somethings that spruce up your life. Fortnite is such a silly game because it’s a battle royal, but with goofy pizzazz. You acquire characters that you like or think are funny, not ones that blend into the background well. You get emotes, dances, music that makes no difference to how you play beyond adding some amusement. I know there are die-hard players who take this shit seriously but I cannot take them seriously whatsoever because this game is just congealed nonsense. And it’s great. I like being able to get stuff with the points I earn by improving how I play. Maybe I’m simpleminded but after having little to no reward for what I do in real life, it’s nice to make that up through a video game. It’s not a continuous story either, just pretty quick rounds that you can quit whenever. It’s an easy way to give yourself that little victory boost. Listen man, I know that plenty of people think violent video games make violent people. I’m here to say “nah”. I hate guns, I hate conflict, all my murderous rage stays suppressed and dormant. I have a grand ol’ time getting better at killing folks in game but you have to be a very specific type of person to want to then do that in real life. Real life is permanent, video games aren’t, if you can’t differentiate that, you have other problems that need addressing. I’m not saying that everyone should get on their ass and dedicate their lives to strange games like Fortnite. Going outside and touching grass is necessary, having friends online and/or off is good, participating in a variety of hobbies is healthy. That said, with the world being so bleak, maybe we shouldn’t demonize a source of instant accomplishment. Like everything, just do it in moderation.
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Hi. It's been awhile. A lot has happened in the time of my absence, I got some good future news, some neutral present news, and some disappointing past news.
Before you get too comfortable with my being here, let me forewarn ye, I am returning as a trickle, not a tsunami. Bits and pieces will show up here and there, and, having an un-thrilling life, maybe just some thoughts that can’t be spread into a whole blog. Slivers of bark rather than the entire log so to speak. So, what have I been up to of late? THE DISAPPOINTING PAST I reached as much of a breaking point as I could afford to reach. My body and brain have been in shambles and I needed to do something asap. I was going to apply again for disability earlier than planned –it was going to be summer, when I didn’t have dance classes to worry about– but I couldn’t keep waiting. So, I dropped dance as step one. It was a devastating decision that really threw me into the gutter. For a while I felt the same as I had when someone died. It broke me but I had to keep reminding myself that unlike death, this was temporary. I just needed to get accepted and then I could get back to feeding my soul. THE NEUTRAL PRESENT In the event of murdering my future savings plan, I was able to go down to working one day a week right away. I’m just going to predominantly live off my retirement fund until it’s low enough to go whine to the government about paying me poverty funds. I can’t go back to dance yet though, since I can’t risk that showing up in my bank statements until after I get accepted, which sucks and probably belongs in the disappointing past news but narratively it wouldn’t flow. So let’s all agree to ignore that. Cutting down work is why I am tentatively writing again because I have more time to replenish my brain cells. I’m hoping to get back to writing book two as well soon and pulling myself out of my couch potato funk. THE GOOD FUTURE I don’t want to say much about this yet, for so much has already gone sideways and I still find this unbelievable. Such good things don’t typically happen to me. But without saying much, there is a place for me to live that isn’t my murder building and won’t take more than half of my income and can be a safe haven to heal and grow. It’s so close, yet so far and I’m afraid that if I tell anyone then it will be ripped away so I’m going to wait until I’m somewhat settled and the universe can’t hurt me as easily. There are some other updates too that will all probably appear in future logs that I can’t easily hint about here yet so—woooo anticipation! I do miss writing, which is a good sign, it means I might resort to that rather than another youtube video. I’m also reading a good book which is helpful in getting the creative juices flowing. There’s just so much stuff happening at once and it’s kinda wild, like all these aspects of my life are colliding right now, some good, some less good. But yeah, without my dance community, I don’t really have anyone to talk to outside my friend group and my little logs felt like a way to connect to others so I wanna get back into that. Also, hopefully as things further develop, my life also might get a little more interesting and I’ll have stuff to chat about. I still work Thursdays which is when all the insane old people come in so there’s constant content with that, but I’m looking forward to having new things to ponder on or observe in this coming chapter of my life. Sometimes it feels like moments in life aren’t real. Not specifically the tragic moments, when someone dies or you encounter a traumatizing experience. Just random days, interactions, conversations. Sometimes it feels like I’m an actor or a character in a video game, if things go sideways, you can always yell “cut” or reload to a previous save. But I’m not an actor, nor am I a video game avatar. A small part of my brain always knows this, I think, which is why I still can’t act like a dick or believe that consequences won’t matter, but it’s not always the majority of my brain having this knowledge. Which is spooky. I don’t know if I’ve just removed myself so far from life that it feels like fiction or what, but it’s weird, to say the least, when the memories of these moments hit and I’m forced to fully realize that they happened in real life.
Maybe I can put some blame on my dreams, for they come across so often as reality, especially when based in this world and in my life. When they’re so outside what I’m used to, I typically know that it’s a dream. But the ones where I’m just working a shift, of having a regular conversation with friends, doing something I’ve done plenty of times before, that’s when it gets confusing around what really happened. So maybe that’s my problem. Or maybe only part of the problem. Perhaps another part is my chronic headaches and migraines. A lot of the time I feel like I’m not fully here, like I’m at a distance from the world. I’m currently sitting on my couch, but I don’t feel like all of me is sitting here. My head is more separate, more behind me, floating a bit, in the room. It’s partially paying attention, partially understanding it’s here, but not entirely. I often have this strange floating sensation so would that be contributing? I don’t know. There’s a possibility though, I suppose. Plenty of times I don’t want to be in my body. The thing aches and malfunctions far too often so am I just constantly separating my conscience from my body to such an extent that I don’t always know what’s real? Am I just going insane? I wouldn’t be surprised. How can I not go insane at this point? After spending so much of my life trying to do what’s right by others, by myself, by my future, only for everything to shatter into a thousand pieces anyway, how might I stay sane? Plenty of the impacting lessons I learned as a child have turned out to be lies. So much of my energy is spent being a decent person, but failing in life nonetheless whilst cruel bigots thrive despite being the worst of people. I know it takes approximately the same amount of energy to be a decent person as it does to be an awful person, one you notice the strain earlier and the other you learn much later. But gods, do I hate that plenty of people haven’t yet been forced to face the consequence of screwing everyone else over while I get to be exhausted every day. Like, what even is life anymore? Have you noticed the utter madness that is this timeline? It feels like a farce, a practical joke. It’s every ridiculous thing that could happen, happening at once. If reality doesn’t feel real, how am I to tell the difference? Sometimes I remember that I’m not far from thirty and that ageing exists and I just want to flee to my mind palace and never return because of how bleak those two reminders are. Thirty isn’t old, however, I always thought I’d be more than a shell of a person by then. I thought that by working hard to maintain my body and soul as a youngling, then I would flourish all the more as I aged and grew into myself and experienced life and learned who I was. But that doesn't seem to be happening. I wouldn’t call myself “fake”, I guess it’s really just the definition of “masking”. Appearing to the world as a regular functioning human. It just gets foggy in my brain whether or not I was humaning at one point or another. I can’t say I’m a ghost because others see me, expect things of me. I exist. Maybe I exist too much. I’m not oblivious to what’s around me or in my head and I overthink everything too much. This is why therapy should be free for fucks sakes, so people like me aren’t left to just yap away in their blog about existential nonsense. This is also what happens when I’ve broken down so many times nearly back to back and have grown too close to my couch. I need to get out of the house. I’ll do that tomorrow. Delivery should be convenient, no? Ordering stuff to your door so you needn’t venture into the world is the whole point of mailpeople. That’s why mailboxes sit in the front yard or as slots in doors. Online shopping, online delivery, the likes invoke imagery of someone knocking, or notifying in some way, that you have something on your doorstep.
When I went to have my eyes checked for an annual exam, they told me they could order my contacts and ship them to me all easy peasy. I even asked how big the box would be because I know what with me living in an apartment building, and a sketchy-ass murder building at that, people don’t like to deliver to my wee mailbox. Most of the time, I can’t blame them. It’s a tiny-ass box. But the vessel for my seeing discs was also said to be small, small enough to fit. So that’s what we settled on, I would have my contacts shipped directly to me to save me from bussing to the optometrist. Yippee. Super simple. Except not actually. I got a notice on my mailbox one day, it was the “sorry we missed you,” notice. It was annoying but maybe the box was awkwardly big. No matter, there’s a Shopper’s, London Drugs, and random wee postal outlet all nearby, a quick stroll. Was my package at any of those places? Nah. It was a forty minute bus ride away. I messaged the one friend who has a car, asking her the favor of driving me there perchance. She agreed. Crisis averted. Except not actually. The place had weird fucking hours. It opened somewhat late, which worked for my friend since she would take me there, take me back and keep on heading to work right after. I checked the notice so many times because it took me forever to figure out the location of the place and because I wanted to quadruple check the hours so as to not inconvenience my friend. I think it said something like 9am-1pm, 2pm-5pm. I assumed only one person worked and had an hour break halfway. Well, we get there and the place is closed. The hours on the door stated, 10am-12pm, 1pm-4pm. That sucks. So we head back, friend with car assures me, since the place is super close to her house, she’ll just pick them up on my behalf the next day or day following. After I ranted about this in our groupchat, my pink coworker friend searched up the place again–she helped find the address–and on their cursed website it stated their hours were, 11am-1pm, 2pm-3pm or something stupid like that. Whatever it was, know this: the times on the notice, front door, and website were all different. Now, whilst my body thinks I’m eighty-seven, I am still more able than other decrepit folk when it comes to getting around. But what if I wasn’t? I had those contacts ordered to me directly to save me a fifteen minute bus ride and it turned into a two day, strategically timed, wild-with-rabies-goose-chase. I was upset, to say the least. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to bus somewhere far from home to pick something up, even when I ship things to my friend’s houses, my packages don’t always make it there. I went two days in a row to this other post office that said they were open seven days a week online but in fact were not open on Sundays according to the locked door. So I have to ask, straight up, what is the point of delivery if delivery so often fails to deliver in every way? I read semi-recently that Canada Post is gonna try stopping door to door and instead do the batch of mailboxes at the end of the street kind of thing to save on drivers and money or whatever. So have fun, anyone disabled, or old, or both. Have fun trying to make your way a block from your house in the winter over black ice and slush, or in the pouring rain, or while you have covid or the flu and don’t want to leave your bed but you live alone so you have no choice. It’s ableist and ageist as shit! I am so sick of important suit people making decisions that actively fuck us over so they can save a million dollars and buy another yacht whilst refusing to pay their employees a livable wage! My knees hurt dammit! It shouldn’t be a two day excursion to get stuff I need! Or want! I’m not particularly fond of people, let alone old people, but this is shitty behaviour and we all deserve better! GIVE US OUR MAILPEOPLE! |
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