Starting Starchildren 2 (Definitely won't be the actual name)

      Started writing the sequel to Starchildren this past weekend. I only got about two pages in, but two pages can be a mountains worth when you’re beginning a new project. One thing I’ve noticed this time around is that the words are coming a little bit more confidently. The first book was one thing, and even though it was only about 173 pages, it was a huge one thing! I’m planning for this second one to be even longer
      Unlike what most people say, it’s not all about the length though right? I don’t think this one will be longer for the sake of pleasure though, but more so as a result of my newest goals. One of the glaringly obvious facts of the first Starchildren, let’s just call it SC, is that it’s plot driven.  Being plot driven isn’t a bad thing, oh not at all, there are only 50k words after all! It just is what it is. I had two goals in writing SC:
1.) Communicate a point to important people in my life.
2.) Finish the book.
Mission accomplished… and a damn good read too.
Goals for SC 2:
1.) Continue telling my story.
2.) Use more detail as well as continue with excellent & true plot to drive the story.
3.) Finish the book.
This is doable, totally doable.

Necessary Evils

      When I sit down to think about what necessary evils are, the first member to the mental party is always work. Work takes blunt force blame because for most of us, it is inescapable! Unless you’re rich, even those who love their job are stuck with a sucking reality of not having a choice in the matter. Yes it’s true, we can always find new jobs to up our level of happiness. But, to me, the level of happiness does not make it any less necessary nor any less evil.

      To dwell over lost time spent at work is akin to beating oneself up over 7 hour nights of sleep. Pointless acts. We have to work, we have to sleep, and we have to eat. Unfortunately, the necessary evils do not stop at the obvious; necessary evils run especially deep through vague tunnels of obscure meaning yet unpredictable consequence.

      If you’re not careful, it can be easy to mislead yourself into thinking that some necessaries are unnecessary.

     “If I could just be alone all the time, I could finally get some things done that I want to get done.”

      It’s a trap. And yes, this is where the levels of happiness marry the necessary evils, because keeping people in your life is very much both of these things. People are evil not just because they are unpredictable and unwieldy, but because they provide layers of unique inspiration that simply cannot be duplicated in any other way. And even if I could, EVEN IF, I could get by without them, my personality type is such that I’d never get any of my real goals accomplished anyway. Why?  Because I’d be too concerned about my people.

      This may sound like a blatantly obvious description of the self-actualization pyramid, and maybe it is. What I can say for sure is that I have spent more time than I’d like to admit, thinking that I don’t need a lot of the necessary evils in life, when the truth is, I literally cannot succeed without them.

Before you can publish a book you have to edit it.

Before you can edit a book, you have to write it.

Before you can write a book, you have to feel it.

Before you can feel anything, you have live it.

Time Management

 

The feeling is very similar to one we have throughout our lives. When you're busy, or not doing what you'd rather be doing, you wish you had more time.  When "free" time does finally present itself, you don't do that thing you were thinking about earlier, choosing to instead put it off for another time when you will really be able to focus. 

Merry-go-rounds are fun, don't get me wrong, but to stay on one for years at a time is nauseating.  Our world is full of distraction, the necessary evils as well as the pointless.  For the better part of what feels like forever, I've been using necessary evils as the primary excuse for not having any time, when the reality of the situation is that there is plenty of time.  "Plenty of time" is relative of course. 

One of the trickiest parts of this equation is figuring out what's necessary, what's pointless, and what's the otherwise.    

Fresh Water Sea Shells

     And just as mysteriously as it left, it comes back again.  There is nothing and there is no one, that can be done or to be told.  A return of this feeling I had roughly 13 years ago.  I want to listen to all of the voices, to see all of the signs.  If nothing is random, then this one could be mine.

The Cold Blue

     It's just the skin we wear around the world, it should be tougher than this.  The term "scar tissue" is used often when describing old wounds that just won't seem to heal, can't heal, or we won't let heal.  I'm left wondering if this is an accurate term for the cuts that we keep digging at so that they never get a chance to heal.  There is a scar on my left elbow from a disastrous roll over car accident I caused and lived through when I was sixteen.  Even then, I didn't think much about it, and I certainly don't scratch my nails deep into the flesh and tare it open now.  There is no unrelenting desire to never forget.  Scar tissue feels like something you can forget, and maybe even surgically repair.
     What is the word for losing part of yourself that can never be gotten back?  We build memories and stories that each of us recall in different ways, or sometimes not at all.  So when the only person who remembers an event, is no longer here, what is that called?  What nonsensical word is there to describe the feeling that nothing you ever did made a good bit of difference?  Maybe even worse than that, there is the distinct possibility that meeting YOU and being your BEST FRIEND may have been the worst thing that ever happened to them.  Running the numbers in my head, the math seems fairly absolute in saying that almost any other path would have led him to a longer life than this.
    If I could go back in time, a la The Butterfly Effect, would I have tried harder to change the path he was on in the end, or would it have just been better to let him go in the very beginning?  I do blame myself.  And it's not out of self pity, it's out of honesty.  When I looked into Robert's eyes, and no words were spoken, it was the cold blue of what I hadn't considered looking straight in the face.  I wish he had hit me.  I wish he had hit me so hard that my flesh broke open and needed stitches to heal.  At least then I would have some scar tissue from all of this.

Unforgivable Curses

It's shameful, it's unforgivable, it's purely selfish, it's evil.

     How do you explain that something so taboo is starting to make real sense now.I don't know that you can, unless that person or those people have already begun thinking through those same thoughts as well.  We go through life, learning and experiencing all of these thing, and sometimes we forget that not everyone is on the same timeline.  There are those far wiser, and have been where we are.  There are those so young to the world that they haven't even had a chance to properly live yet.  It's funny, I can't remember the exact day I realized that my feelings on the right or wrongness of a subject didn't actually make it so.

     For all of the failings of interpretive people, God truly is the one answer that makes any sense.  I tried to tell him that he was making too many fragile concepts into the deities that they were not.  God should not be money, intelligence, love, or any other finite things that slip so easily between our fingers.  This conversation becomes even more difficult to relive after I have realized that he had become an unintentional demigod of my own; even the self-aware make mistakes.  For all of my conscious effort not to latch onto things that are finite, it had happened before I had even known enough to consider the consequences.

     In this time, with these people, what do we have?  Do I now find myself surrounded by mortal demigods of my own creation?  Why couldn't I have just put my faith into the benevolent Christian God we were taught of in our youth?  That God does not die.  I think that, in the end, when the black curtain falls over our eyes for the last time, we breathe our last breath... it's probably invaluably more comforting to have that faith in a God that probably doesn't exist.

    So I think I finally get why some people ever come around to casting one of the unforgivable curses on themselves.  There are those that the word depressed doesn't accurately describe.  The better word, I believe, is "hopeless".  It never made sense to me before, but it now seems so much more clear: a person can have no desire to die, yet still manage to intentionally kill themself.  This world is too much madness, this world is too much hate, this world is too much selfishness, this world just isn't worth it.  Maybe mental illness isn't a precursor for suicide, maybe mental illness is the Darwinian explanation for why we have such a hard time with it.

The Normal Process

     Waking up in the morning and feeling this way is always a challenge.  You can jump out of the bed and attack the day, but a distracted mind always catches up in the end.  I'm left wondering, 8 months later, why I still feel this way.  Am I dramatizing my feelings in the hopes for external validation?  Am I still going through the "normal process"?  Why does it affect me so much?
     The repetitive existence of the above asked questions makes me feel like I need help from a professional psychiatrist.  There have been many times that I've been sitting with my love, my co-workers, my friends, and I just wanted to blurt out "I need help!".  The best I've been able to do is send it out as text messages, hoping that one of those people would be feeling the same way and know how I'm feeling without actually having to explain myself.  I'm not looking to be given a business card or a website, I'd really just like to receive a message back that says something like "me too".
    It's exhausting.  Feeling terrible almost all of the time, then feeling guilty for the time spent thinking about all of the bad things; the cycle is viscous.  If given the chance, one would probably make the argument that I'm dwelling and need to just move on.  Maybe at some point in the "normal process" I'll figure out where "on" is, and I'll be able to move there, but right now it feels like I'm on a tiny island that is surrounded by the bluest of blue waters; though the horizon is beautiful, it is also damning.
     I know that I'm not the billionth person to feel this way, and it's all very dramatic.  I want to reach out to a group or a person for help, but I also know that what I've lost probably doesn't compare to the tragedies that have rocked other people's lives.  I don't want to be that guy.
     So, here we are, back where we started.