Interview With A Gryphon

I can barely recognize this manuscript after this many remakes. It's interesting that what started out as a couple of amateur novels would end up spawning what may be my most intriguing story yet, and still have so little in common with the rewritten result. I basically just took the elements I enjoyed from the originals, refined them, fleshed it out, and created a new world. A few of the characters have remained, but even they are not the same. I wonder if this is what it feels like for "real", published writers, as they go through edit after edit, seeing their story grow and come to life. I guess that's where I'm struggling at the moment - I have a lively, populated world; and I suppose in a way, I have breathed life into it - but the characters are still a mystery to me. Even with a plot structure and assigned character drives it's hard for me to actually sit down and type up the narrative itself. It feels like it just won't be as easy as just creating the scenery... like this is where the real challenge lies. I have begun drafting the opening scene, but it lacks the Ooomph! that I feel it should have. In fact, every time I try to write any of the story itself, I kind of lock down; convinced it won't come out the way it looks in my mind. I have to work through and around this writer's block somehow. Even though this isn't my absolute favorite work, the work that I will never stop honing - that would be Chasing Ella - this is still a story that I began years ago, and it's a bit daunting to take it on. I have so many scenes in my head, so many images of the world... I want to do it justice.

On the other hand, the reason I changed so much of the world and story, and the reason I restructured the story to fit in an interactive project, was so that I wouldn't be too attached to the original ideas. It was so that I could cut down on the scope, rid the loose ends, and write something that might actually be thorough, from beginning to end.

And so, I am not hastening the project. I'm letting it sit there, in the back of my mind, as I keep polishing the details, as I wait for my muse to come to me, as I wait for my muse to point me in the right direction. To show me the characters, the people, of the world, not just the scenery. My muse has already shown me the tone and setting of the opening scene, and has even allowed Belleforte to speak, clearly, so I would hear him. Belleforte remains the only character that I have written of so far. He's the only character that already has a finished scene down; and that scene is still far off in the story. But since he is the one I can hear, since he is the voice that has spoken to me - I thought he would be the best character to start off with, as I go through an exercise I read about just earlier today.

The writing tip basically encouraged writers to type up a dialogue with their character, asking them questions, and then see how they would reply. It wouldn't be part of the story itself, but it might help a writer see his characters in a different light, and relate to them. Basically you could ask them anything. So, here goes... my first direct talk, to Belleforte, a wonderful, wonderful creature of wisdom and pain.

Character interview
With: Belleforte

Q: Who are you?
A: I am Belleforte. I am a Gryphon of the Mountains, and a scribe.
Q: Where are you from?
A: I am of another world.
Q: Not the Inlands?
A: Not of this continent.
Q: Can you tell me of your homeworld?
A: The Inlands is my homeworld... It is where I have lived, and where I have served. Though I do not stem from this continent... there is no other world I know that I could call home.
Q: Do you remember where you come from?
A: (pauses) I... do not speak of this.
Q: Why is that?
A: It is dimmed to me. Dim, and painful.
Q: Are there any other Gryphons?
A: I would like to believe so.
Q: But you can't be sure?
A: I have yet to meet my Gryphon brothers. In the scriptures of the Peak, there are many depictions of us - of my brethren. They were drawn, and collected, before I came into being, suggesting that from the beginning, I was not alone. But the very same scriptures speak of war, and atrocities performed against us... The scholars agree that the last of my brothers fell to the sword, used as pawns in the wars of angels, and men; hundreds, and hundreds of years ago.
Q: What else can the scholars say about your kind?
A: They say we preceded angels. They call us their distant cousins; in their raw, primitive form.
Q: You don't seem raw, or primitive.
A: This is what the scholars believe. I... (pauses) I came late, into this world. I am not my brothers.
Q: You don't want to be compared to them?
A: I would rather say I am not an elder, like those who came before me. I am different. I may very well be a deviant.
Q: Could the elder Gryphons speak, the way you can?
A: It is not mentioned in history. I have no theories of this.
Q: All right. Let's say you are the only Gryphon that we know of, in the Inlands. What is your purpose? What's your job?
A: (pause) I can not say my purpose. This is something every sentience contemplates. It is a question without answers. It can only be answered by finding yourself where you need not formulate the question.
Q: Very well. What about your job?
A: I serve the angel I travel with. We search for someone we have lost. We will search until we have found him, or until we die.
Q: Why do you need to find this person?
A: We have a debt to pay.
Q: You're traveling the entire continent, for someone who has disappeared, just to pay off some old debt?
A: (pauses) It is an important debt.
Q: Who is it that you're looking for?
A: (pauses) A friend.
Q: All right. Last question. What do you hope for the most, right now?
A: (looks off into the distance) That our search will not be meaningless.

Well, that was a new experience. I really felt like Belleforte came through as his own person in this passage. He's rather mysterious, isn't he? And he talks very formally, probably because he's a scribe. Belleforte is one of the most shrouded characters, while being so distinct, all at once... He is my personal favorite.

We'll see if I dare to try this exercise again soon, as my muse points me to the hearts of the others...
POET IN THE JAR

Back To Brittle Balance

It took me most of the week to get myself balanced again after visiting my folks and family back home. It was an emotional trip in many ways, and over just two days, I went through feelings of anger, helplessness, joy, pride, frustration, love and anxiety. I don't think I had quite realized how bad things were at home, what with my sister being pregnant and now left alone, and my folks having to work more and help more, as a result of that. One thing I often forget when I go home, is that I'm an adult now - I may be a dysfunctional and struggling such, but I have integrity. I try to look at things from afar, to get a scope of things, I try to put myself in other's shoes, to be aware of the nature of their pain. I want to help, but there isn't a hell of a lot I can do from here. There wasn't a hell of a lot I could do while I was down there, either, really. Mainly because I was a bit of a wreck. I played with and looked after my niece, and that was the best part of the trip, I love that brilliant, smart little kid. Although perhaps not the most productive part. That was something else entirely.

I don't exactly remember the last entry I wrote about the ADHD/ADD thing, but let me just mention that for a bit. While I was home I finally worked up the courage to go talk to my mom about it, and ask her to help me with some of the forms I got to fill out. I had carefully rehearsed what to say during my six hour drive down there, a perfect speech, honest and from the heart, rational and motivated by fact and observation. But of course, when it was time to actually say this to my mom I forgot every word of it, and something like this went down instead:

"What was that form you needed help with?"
"Here, it's a... I'm going to this psychologist and I need to fill this out..."
"Why are you going to a psychologist?"
"I'm being investigated for ADHD..."
"Why would you?"
"Because... I think that's why everything was always so hard for me."

This was nowhere near the speech I had so carefully prepared, and thus I felt like I wasn't making myself justice. But I still rather wanted to tell her face to face, than on the phone, and I pulled that off, at least. She was skeptical at first but eventually started asking me questions about it and as I answered those best I could, I felt like she began to connect the dots together. What seemed to be the deciding factor in this was when she asked me if Johan thought the same as I did and I said yes. Yes because he is the one person who sees me daily, and he knows my behavior like the back of his hand. Then I pretty quickly detoured from the subject again, because I didn't wanna make this visit all about me, it was, and ought to be, about them, my sister and niece in particular.

The day before we had this conversation my mom was very angry with me, saying I had no idea how hard it's been on them, and many other things. I'm usually able to act very controlled and calm during arguments with her because I know that's the best way to make her rationalize, but she chose a bad time to argue and I couldn't control myself. I said that I knew it's been hard, I realize it's been hard, that's why I'm here, I'm here to help and to make everyone feel a little better. It's pretty much always been my job to do this, until I... until I moved away to develop my own life. I had been driving for 6 hours during a heatwave to get there and I wasn't happy to get yelled at for asking how I could help. But I managed not to say anything about how I'd been feeling. Anyway, all I'm saying is that although they think I have no idea how their lives have been (which I do, I can't stop thinking about them, worrying for them, I've called and texted twice as frequently, even, just to make sure they feel like someone cares), they have no idea how my life has been, either. With my family, it's always been OK to be upset or stirred up by external influences; but internal influences, like my ADHD, well that's just a struggle you pull through, that's just something you bite into and endure. I don't think they realize how much introspection can fuck you up, even if they all do introspection, they rarely turn the radar onto themselves. It's simply hard to try and justify any kind of mental instability to them without any concrete reason to point at. I guess what they're going through right now might be an exception from that, though. It's hard to believe one person's wrongdoing can affect several others, so severely; it's even harder to understand how this one person doesn't see this extent of those actions. There are no words for that betrayal. It's the kind of letdown that would spark a war in Game of Thrones. Luckily, our House has a saying, just like the Houses in the books, and it's a saying wise to remember, if you ever decide to cross us:

We are strong. We stick together. We never give up.

Seems like suitable words to close this entry with. See ya around.
POET IN THE JAR

Allow Me To, Briefly, Elaborate

Oh. Hi. Right. Like so many times before, I shouldn't actually be doing this right now. I should be lying in bed in my pyjamas wandering off to dreamland to the tunes of sad Swedish pop rock bands by about an hour ago. Otherwise I'm gonna be a wandering zombie going to work tomorrow morning. But I feel like today was a bit of an achievement, and I did say I was gonna follow up somehow to the whole situation with my suspected ADD/ADHD condition. God, suddenly I wish nobody will be reading this. I haven't even been very frequent on the blog. I've started another blog, revived a visual novel project and drafted out it's whole plot since I was last frequent in the Jar. I've even had time to work at my new job for over a month now. It's awesome, by the way. The thing is though, I have been writing. I have been writing like fucking crazy since I started working. I have time to write on the train, all of a sudden. It's like having tiny writing workshops with yourself every day on the way home from work. Anyway, I haven't written much of any creative value; it's all just been venting my frustrations into an analog notebook and none of it is ever meant to be read by anyone. It's not like this blog. I feel safe writing here, but there are always limits to how exposing I dare to be, no matter who did or didn't visit this blog for the past six months or whatever. Hell, even just a while back now, I discovered I hadn't written on this blog for over a year, and I thought it had been like, two months, tops. Sometimes I'm good with math, and sometimes I'm completely oblivious.

I can sense your awareness that I am stalling. And yeah, you're right. So, to the point.

About two weeks ago, I found out that instead of going through the general healthcare, you can call directly to the psychiatric ward of the hospital and thereby submit yourself for treatment, or something along those lines. I'm not sure how to explain all this in English. Then the doctors and psychiatrists and whatever look over the notes from the phone call and then they decide whether they should call you in, or if this is an issue worth adressing, or whatever. So today I finally gave them a call, a week after I saved the phone number in my contact book. It took fortyfive minutes to talk the nurse, she was really nice and sweet though. So now I have to wait until they go over my notes and wait for them to call me in. Hopefully they will, and then maybe I can finally move on with my life in the right direction.

Anyway, that's pretty much everything I had to spill, unless you will allow me to, briefly, elaborate on an idea that I actually did make something creative out of, or at least, I'm planning to do so, soon. I'm writing on a story that I'm dedicating solely to the small online magazine SPARV, who has published my stories in each of their issues thus far (Visionären in Summer 2013 & Ornamentexpressen in Winter 2013/2014), a support I truly appreciate in an otherwise narrowminded and outdated publishing industry. Editor of the magazine and the creator of the writing tip site Författartips, Christian Wåhlander, recently announced they will be accepting entries for an autumn issue. I already had a vague idea of a short story and I decided I'd write it out fully fledged and not submit the story to any other magazine or publication than SPARV for the forementioned autumn issue. It'll essentially be a surreal drama, with sci-fi element, and account for what might happen when an ordinary man discovers electrical panels and robotic reinforcements in his body.

Sleep tight now, I'm off to dreamland where I'll always belong.
POET IN THE ALIAS-GENERATING JAR

Bounty Hunters

I'm chasing a monster, a legendary beast
The solid form of fear and failure
Like a shadow, like a wisp of smoke
It teleports, it manifests
Deep in the dark roots
Of my thoughts

You're chasing another monster
The one who passes for success and ambition
The one who passes your time
And keeps you occupied
It's easier, easier than our common enemy
Easier than chasing the inevitability of time

While you have the tools to fight your battles through,
I'm still wondering how to kill my monster, too
Because I'm not trained in your ways
I've only just identified my beast
I wasn't taught how to turn my weaknesses into strengths
The way you were

Somehow I'd like to think I've got the advantage over you
I've seen my monster many times
I've encountered it my entire life
And I don't delude myself I can defeat him
We share some kind of symbiosis, him and I
He taunts me and mocks me,
Relentlessly disregards me,
But he lets me ride on his highs,
And at rare occasions rewards me,
Encourages me

I don't think you've ever seen your monster
You're tracking him down blindly,
Driven by reasons you don't understand
I can see it so clearly,
I can see it in your eyes,
I see everything there is to see,
That's how I was trained,
That's how I am,
That's me

I could list a million ways we were different from eachother
Everyone chases monsters,
That doesn't make either of us unique
But your target, and mine,
were once brothers in arms
And that doesn't make us unique
But it makes us united

Maybe if I taught you how to see
How to live with a monkey on your back
You could teach me your ways too
We don't have to chase monsters alone
We can go together through the darkness
We can bargain with beasts
And learn how to use magic
Until we've reached a state of ease and order

I'm chasing a monster, different from yours,
And you're chasing a monster, different from mine,
But you and I, we're not really that different from eachother
You and I are both bounty hunters
In a world of unseeing eyes
And unsympathetic hearts
If we're ever going to claim our rewards
Joining forces is where we should start
Our diversity will strengthen us, if we let it
And give us peace, if we let it
Together, we can adapt to the harshness
And laugh at life again
Laughing with the monkeys still clinging to our backs
We'll respect them, and make use of them
We'll adapt to them
We'll take the money
We'll take the magic
We'll take the laughter
And we'll let our monsters live

_________________________________

I found this poem unpublished and unfinished among my drafts. It seems like it needs more work, less repetition, more polish... but something about it still speaks to me in some primitive way, and I doubt I'll ever do more work on it, so here goes. Whoever interprets this the way it was intended wins a mystery prize of my own devising.

POET IN THE CONFUSED AND BROKEN JAR

You Hate Me Until I Hate Me More - Is That Your Idea Of Karma?

I'm getting really tired of the online negativity surrounding ADHD. I've been to a wide variety of Swedish blogs on the topic lately. It's the second stage of trying to understand the condition I suspect I have. First I just read research and general overview information, and now I've moved on to reading people's personal experiences and debates. The general feeling I've gotten out of it so far is that there is this widespread notion of ADHD persons not really being "sick". There isn't a single blog I've been to that hasn't encountered this notion during their history of either being diagnosed or being close to someone with a diagnose.  And that tells me many things.

I'm not an expert. The more I learn about this illness, the more questions I want to ask. Still, a single search on Wikipedia or Google and a quick five minutes of reading gave me a general overview of it, enough to make me realize many myths about ADHD are unmotivated. If I could learn that in five minutes I don't understand why anyone else couldn't bother to check their facts before wasting everyone's time on uncalled-for hate comments (and by anyone, I mean those who keep the myths alive, online and irl). It would literally take me longer and use more of my energy to write a comment of their hateful calibre than it took me to initially research the topic to begin with. I don't really get what anyone who doesn't have ADHD gains from pretending they know what ADHD is - and how to deal with it. I'm up to my ears in these stereotypical comments to the extent that I feel I need to take a breather so as not to start tracking down IP adresses and barging in to people's houses. I'll be armed with some compassion to try and hammer into their heads.

However, as real life goes, I'm gonna blog about my frustration instead.

Here's the main fact I want to underline: if you don't have ADHD, you don't know what it's like to be us. You're not our doctors and you're not gods. STOP ACTING LIKE YOU KNOW WHAT'S BEST. We know that we're terrible at things. We can have a hard time sitting still, distract you, talk way too much or jump between topics. We can miss appointments, misplace objects, or lash out at you over a petty detail. Is this why you hate us? Are we all that one annoying kid in class to you? How do you think it feels to BE that annoying kid? To do and say and forget things even when you really try to focus; and then spend hours every night beating ourselves up about it because we feel out of place, we feel dumb and failed and, yes, hated. Even when we're only surrounded by people who love us!

Let's sort some things out and illustrate:

1. ADHD isn't one single diagnosis. It's an umbrella term for three different types of disorders falling under attention and concentration problems. Two people with different types of ADHD can be as different as night and day. One could be that annoying kid in class never sitting down, always running around. Another could be restless inwardly, racing thoughts with resulting migraines. Hating on ADHD because you've encountered one type of it is like hating on worms because a snake once bit you.

2. ADHD is believed to be caused by a chemical disturbance in the brain. The substances and bloodflow in the brain are abnormal, which causes forced behavior. Blaming ADHD on bad parenting during childhood is like saying a worm could have been a bird, if only its worm mom and dad had taught it how to fly.

3. ADHD is not all bad, and isn't only about restlessness or forgetfulness or disorganization. High intelligence, ability to multitask, curiosity and creativity are all positive traits associated with ADHD. Just because someone can't fit into the 'norm' of paying attention over time, listening patiently or just not fiddle with things, they are dumb? Viewing all ADHD as stupidity is like Einstein said, judge a fish's ability to swim by how well it climbs an oak (something like that).

I could go on, but I'm growing weary. My main point was just this. There is general hatred and distrust in ADHD afflicted persons in society today. It is often questioned as a legitimate condition despite originating from a chemical brain malfunction. It frustrates us because we know we are capable people, high achieving, we just need to feel accepted and encouraged. With this common notion against us, we can never feel accepted and encouraged. The more we fail, the more of the "bad" sides of ADHD will come out, and we'll feel bad for THAT, and feel like failures again; and it's repeated again and escalates, and no one who ever "has to" deal with us benefits from that. Not you, either. By badmouthing us and hating on us you are only fuelling us to hate ourselves. (Is that what your goal is? Because that's psychopathic).

That was a rant, and not even in my native tongue as I'd planned; but I'm a little scared to show my face publicly anywhere near those comments on the Swedish blogs. Anyone know any not so hateful blog in English about this topic, please share. I need some encouragement.

I'll be blogging about this myself for a  while now, so I can deal with everything I'm feeling.
YOURS TRULY,
POET in the BRAIN TRAIN CART

Of Angels & Men - A Glimpse Of A Draft

It's funny how once I decide to truly commit to something, everything happens at once and delays the process. I've lost track by now of how many projects I've started and abandoned over the years. But there are a few, who never really leave my mind; projects that I connect especially with, and though months pass by without anything being done, they are always in my mind. One of those is the project I'm recently using as my kind of 'relaxation' project: the text game I'm developing during April's Camp Nanowrimo. It goes under the project name, "Of Angels & Men". Most of the material is from previous Nanowrimo novels, that I've already written tons about on this blog (the concept being to write a novel in 30 days). Writing a novel in such a short time has its benefits, like forcing you to forget your inner editor, and coming up with vast amounts of material for later editing and polishing. But it has its downfalls too - like losing track of the main story, writing various passages that have no purpose or are written poorly. The process I'm focusing on now right now is finetuning some of that old material into a new and modernized format - the text game.

For anyone who hasn't already tried it, the narration tool Twine is a true gem for experimental writers. It doesn't matter if you're an author or a game developer, if you know how to write text and move around blocks of it, you can make a narrative with Twine. Some people have made advanced narratives like RPG's, yet others have made their first attempts at creating interactive narratives. As for me, I find the tool convenient for the modernization of my old texts that I have in mind. The result of my work will hopefully be a text-based game told in 2nd person (a terrible choice for someone who's never done it before, I've found), allowing for player choices and at the same time including more traditional passages.

To help with my process, I decided to do two things at once when pursuing this project (surprised? I'm not. Even when I tell myself to keep it simple my ambitions overshadow my performance) and joined Camp Nanowrimo for the first draft of the massive text material I will need to compile. For the first few days I did well and wrote ahead of my schedule, but then the everyday life got the better of me. I kind of crashed, hit the wall, call it what you will. It has been tearing on my mind to be unemployed and the uncertainty about whether I will ever have a future has made it difficult to find my muse. I'm hoping throwing this blog post together will help me get started again after a week or so of no writing. It can be hard to get back into the game. I've deserted too many stories not to know this. But there is a key point to writing during a Nanowrimo event, such as Camp Nano - you write, even if you fall behind; you push on, so that on the last allotted day of writing you can look back and be amazed. I remember what it felt like when I finished those novels that I'm now trying to cleanse and refine - I want to go there again, experience what it's like to pull something off. Something of a greater scope than just the short stories I usually entertain myself with.

So, without further ado, I'll throw myself back in the game, no matter what it takes - I am not waiting another year to join another Camp Nano, even if I don't have any time limit on my game project. This will take time, blood, sweat and tears - and it will be beautiful.

That is the nature of writing.

Yours truly,
POET IN THE JAR OF METAPHORICAL INK

Tangible, And Terrifying

They're back again, you know. The nightmares. They had been oh so beautifully rare for such a long time; I had almost forgotten how lengthy, intricate and absolutely terrifying they can be. It's not that I dream of monsters, although I do - I suppose they are the brain's metaphor for things we're worrying about - it's that these dreams are so REAL. So tangible, like I could touch them. Sometimes I dream something that's perfectly safe, and maybe it isn't technically a nightmare; but it becomes one as I try to reason with myself in the dream. I've tried lucid dreaming and the techniques for achieving that, it doesn't work. The only time I consciously managed to effect what I see and experience on a deep sleep level of dreaming was when I was sick and tired of being chased by spiders in my dreams (one of those metaphorical monsters...). I repeatedly told myself while awake that if a spider showed up in my dreams again I would automatically be able to materialize a weapon and blast it to pieces. That worked for a while and I can still somehow get my hands on weapons in my dreams by using this "rule", but I guess I was never persistent enough in any of the other changes I tried to make to my dreams. Either way, does it matter? There's just no way that I could make up enough rules to cover it all, anyway. 

The problem, the nightmare feel, as I said, doesn't come with the fact that I dream of unimaginable evils. It comes when I try to reason with myself and it's not linked with lucid dreaming. It comes when everything in the dream, that seems so incredibly real to me - so real that I accept it as real without ever questioning it, no matter how wacky it gets - is too bizarre to be possible. When that happens, I can hear my brain tinkering with the unsolvable logic of it. I can feel it. When that happens, I reason thus. Since the dream events instinctively feel real and I can not question any of it while I'm dreaming, I have to assume the next logic step. That I am insane. I am bat-shit crazy, wack in the head, I am lightyears from normality. The realization that I am insane becomes bizarre in itself, the whole dream world shivers, as if it felt me caving in under it and is about to seek me out to deal the final blow. The dream, the world, the whole universe is out to annihilate me, masking it in surrealism so I won't see it coming. THAT'S when the dream ceases to be a dream and becomes a nightmare.

And if you set this whole reasoning aside, I'm left with the fact that when I recall the dream, it IS bizarre, or deceivingly simple. It's often a long and intricate series of separated events that have nothing to do with one another. I rarely dream that I'm being me. I rarely dream something that can be summed up in a single sentence. In my dreams, I've been a man, a woman, a mother, a father, I've been children, I've been inanimate objects. Once I had a terrifying nightmare that had me waking up bathing in sweat and shivers. The dream? I was a chunk of meat lying in a blazing frying pan, looking up at a giant chef cooking me, and I was boiling. 

You might attribute it to the fact that I have a very vivid imagination, but in that case, where does this imagination come from? Why does it take the form of nightmares? Why does it make the nightmares take the form that they do? 

You might attribute it to the fact that when you're in a life crisis or pondering something in particular, your mind needs to sort it out while you sleep, but in that case, what is the crisis? What is it that I'm not willing to think about when I'm awake? I have met with much suffering in my days, but I attribute them all, I see them as pieces of the puzzle that is my self-awareness. I acknowledge them all, and even the things I don't write or talk about, I think over in my head. So what is it? What's the missing piece?

You might attribute it to current or recent events, my feeling of a doomed Earth and constant notions of being a failure of a person; but in that case, how do you explain that they started as I was a kid? How do you explain that my mom, after hearing me recount my dreams, wanted to force me to go to a shrink?

Is that the answer? Either something happened in my childhood that I didn't process - and believe me, I have heard all the tales, and I have processed all there is to process - or I am simply insane? Just see a shrink and I'll be fine? The dreams will stop?

I believe the nightmares are a sign from my mind that I'm miserable. But what does that help, really? I'm taking every step that I can to become somewhat happy again, I know this is a work in progress, and I know I'll manage somehow, eventually - so why do I need reminders from the dormant parts of my brain, when I already ponder all of this while I'm awake?

Do people in general have these periods of nightmares, and periods when they have calmer dreams? Do they have times in their lives when they do not dream at all? I can't remember the last time I had a dreamless night. It doesn't happen. Even if I forget the dream as I'm waking up I can always remember the fragments. My dreams have such an impact on me that I remember dreams I had as a child. When I dream I sometimes revisit known places. It's like my dream world is a complicated network of places and people that are seemingly unconnected or the events are impossible, but when I'm in the dream I know that they are meant to exist like this. When I'm in the dream I believe it all and don't question anything. It's as if my dream world was a videogame, a created universe where nothing is unthinkable, a universe that has its own made up world laws, rather than the workings of the real world.

I'm tired of dreaming. You could say the dreams are a muse. That they inspire me to write or create or think. I'm sure they do, to some extent, but there are many dreams I'd rather have done without. Why let me dream of a boy who fell naked down a drain pipe and is forced to live there forever, naked and alone? So I can paint it, and then feel terrible and grieve for him whenever I see the painting? That happened a few years back. The painting is in my room the very moment I'm writing this. Thanks, dreams. What the hell was the purpose of that specific creative outburst?

I could spend the rest of the week recounting dreams and still never finish. I might tell you everything I've ever dreamed and achieve nothing but giving you nightmares, too. There's really no use in passing on every graphic detail. If that's what you want, if you want me to point to examples, because when I say "crazy and very real" it doesn't tell you anything specific; go ahead and read about that time I dreamt about a city made of quilts (click here!).

I guess I've got a lot of sleepless nights to look forward to. Cheers,
POET IN THE JAR OF DREAMS

Errands, Camp Nanowrimo & Narratives

Well, today was unusually productive. Managed to do a ton of errands. Made some calls, paid some bills, got some paperwork out of the way. Applied for a job. Finally handed in that late book to the library. Mailed some letters, threw out some trash. Topped it off with a couple of hours of browsing for good tutorials and figuring out some scaling standards in Blender. I recently rejoined a project that I've been away from due to all the things I've been writing about earlier and this time I feel like I am actually up for the task. The scope of the project scared me off a little last time, and as soon as I ran into problems in Blender I just gave up. Then everything just crashed down around me in my personal life and it just got worse. It feels good to be back on a project again.

Somewhere in between all these things I had time for a Skype meeting and a coffee at a friend's house. He proposed something interesting - that we spend an hour a day learning something/studying something. At first he wanted it to be maths but I wasn't too thrilled about that, so we compromised and said one hour of studies of your own choosing. I'm gonna let my Blender studies cover that one hour for today, and probably tomorrow as well.

Anyway, joining Camp Nanowrimo for the second time and hoping to achieve something this time around. I have the lowest word count goal and will be working with converting old novels into a text game, for which I'm also making all the code and assets, so the scope of words is mostly for show. I just want some support and motivation from the fellow cabin people to get any writing done at all. I will probably join some writing prompts during the next few days even though what I'll jot down will most likely be drafts and notes. Who cares? I gotta have some kind of main script anyway. It seems bulky to write it all in Twine directly (an amazing tool, by the way; I'm going to blog about it later). 

So yeah, now for some writing and gaming to top this Tuesday off. I'm a little sad that nothing ever seems to change for me, for us, so I've decided to start making changes to my life. Blogging regularly again is one of those things. Cross your fingers for me.
POET IN THE JAR

Disorder In The Cosmos

I wish everything didn't have to be about money. There are so many places I still wanna go, there's so many people I haven't met. I don't think people are meant to be unemployed. For every day that passes I feel more recluse and shut myself in my room so I won't have to talk to people. Friends come over and go again but I still feel lonely, lonely, lonely. I have the best partner anyone could ever ask for; so I'm not sure why I'm experiencing this heartbreak. I feel scared and alone and I long to go home. I miss the mountains and the rivers and the forest where I ran around on adventures as a child. I miss it so much sometimes, it feels like my heart is bleeding. I'm going there in a few weeks but it won't be the same. I'll miss my Loved One a little too much for my own liking. A lot of the time I forget that he is younger than me, he's so mature and reasonable, I love him for that. But sometimes I just feel like I'm growing old while he isn't, as if the distance of time between us is an untrespassable gap that will lead to our demise. My thoughts of doom and the ending of the world are increasing lately. I think about dying and what ways would be the worst or the best. I think about what'll happen when the universe collapses, when none of us will still be here. I think that I can't handle thinking of all these things, but if there's one thing I hold on to even while going through a creative stalemate, it's thinking about the mysteries of life. The universe and the cosmos is one of those, right? One of those mysteries that you can conceptually understand, but when actually imagining it happening... that's when your mind really runs free and roams wild, out of your control. Isn't that so?

It feels typical of me to begin thinking about the cosmos with a mention of money. But hey, money makes the world go round. And that's the main part I hate about it.

I really miss having my own place, my own apartment, where I can have everything in my way and where I can be safe and alone, or invite people as I wish and nobody would have any say about it. I miss being an independent spirit. I don't know how much longer I can take living the way we do, we just don't have the privacy needed to lead a serious and adult life. My time with Loved One feels as though it's borrowed, and as if I had stolen it. It can't be allowed to exist in a more permanent form, or I would be struck out of the deal, and all of our time just taken away. It's possible that it's surreal to think this way, but come on. We're all going to die eventually, my problem is just that I can't seem to stop obsessing over when and how. I'm terrified of dying. Probably because I don't believe in being reborn or there being an afterlife. It makes it feel as though I have to really LIVE every moment that I have the chance to and really spend it while I can. But still day after day passes and I've never been more passive. All I want to do is submerge myself in games or films and I don't want to have to be subjected to the real world. I want to work, but I've given up on finding any job. Even if I got something I would be too angsty to enjoy it and I would end up screwing it for myself much as I have done at every job, I've ever had. This is saddening, and I feel like a complete failure. It's not as easy as it used to be to just snap out of it and force myself to do this or that. Nowadays when I'm sad I'm mind-numbing sad. When I'm restless I am so restless I can't sit down or be still for a second. When I'm angry, I throw things and yell. I'm so unbalanced. People think they know me, people think they know what signs to look for in someone depressed. When I let my feelings take over this fully, then know, I'm deep down, and deeply troubled. But no one seems to bother. Since there are no particular outer factors to point out, I must be fine, right? Those people must never have struggled with their inner worlds.

Why can't I just get help? Was I so wrong to ask for it?

POET IN THE JAR

Unanswered Call

The world couldn't be responding any slower. Even when you wave your arms around and shout from the top of your lungs, screaming "Help me!"; they don't seem to hear or care. That's how it works in this country. I recently read an article saying that while there is a drastic increase in mental illnesses in young people, the availability of psychological care decreases. A few weeks ago I went to my doctor to try and determine whether I might be diagnosed with ADHD (essentially a hyperactivity and concentration problems diagnosis). The doctor seemed less educated than me on the matter, and kept asking me about family and home relations as if he was going to diagnose me with a wreck of a past (not a diagnosis last time I checked). He was right to conclude I need further evaluation though. He told me their therapist was an expert on cognitive problems and that I should be pre evaluated by her before moving on. The problem is, this was weeks ago and I still didn't get an appointment. This despite calling them and leaving a message twice. The therapist is apparently on sick leave for an undefined amount of time. So why couldn't they send me on to the hospital instead? I'm supposed to wait until this person gets back to work? These evaluations take long as it is without this so called, unfortunate delay. I need help today. Hell, yesterday.  Hell, years ago! Now that I am finally making myself ask for help I feel like I am being ignored completely.

Did I mention that people with ADHD are particularly prone to depression?

In Sweden, we like to brag about our welfare and we pay 30 percent of our salary each month so that we can access free health care.  The truth is that many health care institutions are run like businesses, aiming for a high profit while the remaining live off tax money and suffer constant cutbacks. The truth is despite paying taxes we still have to pay for our medical care, our doctor's appointments and our medications. I can't find it in me to blame the doctors and nurses when the problem lies in the system as a whole. I know they don't have enough staff or money, and risk their mental health working long hours for no appreciation.  Health care should be without fees. It should be a fundamental human right. In another life, perhaps.

With a diagnosis I could explain my whole life. I could pinpoint why I act and react the ways I do. I could let other people know what to think about when they're around me. It would simplify everything. It would explain to the world why I was always perceived as different, and why I always felt that way. It would be a tool for me if I could get help drawing strength from it. If I wasn't knocked down by it. I feel like I'm currently being hindered from functioning. I always thought this was just the way I was. That someone made up what was normal and that maybe I was the normal one while everyone else had it wrong. A bizarre deduction, almost. There is a difference between adjusting to norms in society and adjusting to a completely haywire chemical balance in your body that makes your life an endless emotional roller coaster, always swinging back and forth between hyperactive restlessness and mind-numbing apathy. Perhaps my notion of normality could be applied to my school years. But it doesn't explain my childhood or my inability to function as an adult. I owe my family an explanation for my behavior, I owe it to them to let them know why they could never quite get me.

People have this notion that they know what ADHD is all about. When I told my friends I was seeking help for it, a lot of them didn't believe me or take me seriously. They seemed to think I had read about it online and then imagined I had the same symptoms. What people normally associate with ADHD is the characteristic of being hyped up and "all over the place". Although this is true there are different types of ADHD, and you can be diagnosed without even showing a sign of physical hyperactivity. The diagnosis can also include subtler restlessness, like always fiddling with things, having racing thoughts and getting bored quickly. The idea that I would just apply a diagnosis on myself because I went online is almost laughable considering how many different diseases I've looked up without applying them (many of these moments caused by forementioned boredom). No, this goes back further; this is something coming from my heart and intuition; only recently backed up by the general research and talks with afflicted friends. It seems strange that I could always intuitively understand and relate to other people with the diagnosis. Or is it?

It's time to get to the bottom of this, and I'm not willing to wait for the system to work this one out for me. I've waited long enough.

I've waited my whole life.
POET IN THE FRUSTRATED JAR

Hands In The Water

I watch from my island, made of stone.

Pillar-like, it rises from a raging sea.

The waves are silent, but monstrous in proportion,

in their ancient war, beneath of me.

I'm seated on a withered, powerless throne.

Once meaningful as a core defense.

But it lost its magic eons ago,

And left me alone with its lens.

I see hands in the water, I see shivering arms and skin.

I see faces of chaos, and their torture within.

I see beckoning eyes and jagged lies,

cloaked behind distorted grins.

They are lost now, and beyond me.

They haven't always been.

I'm chained to a tower, that splits the sky.

The remnant of a monument, a mighty cage.

I've been depleted, every last restortion

weakened by the untamed waves.

I see hands in the water, I see shivering arms and skin.

I see faces of chaos, and their torture within.

I see beckoning eyes and jagged lies,

cloaked behind distorted grins.

They are lost now, and beyond me.

They haven't always been.

Beast-like, they manifested, one after one,

until their creations could not be undone.

With claws and nails and teeth they spun,

until their world was an ocean.

And I, I see them scream and pray,

their silent pain, directed at me.

I, who see them struggle and fade,

I grieve for their decay.

You must understand, when the world began,

these beings were not beasts in agony.

They were ideas, inventions, and ideologies.

They were spoken words, impulses, promises, and pleas.

They were harmless, before they were spoken.

They were beautiful, before they were broken.

I see their hands in the water. I see their shivering arms, and skin.

Their faces of chaos, and torture, within.

They beckon to me, with jagged lies,

treacherous tales and thwarted grins.

They are all lost now, and beyond me.

I, perpetual guardian, carved in stone,

watch over them until they end.
I'm untouchable.
Invulnerable.

Alone.

Failure

I am such a failure. Such a wreck. A real train wreck. I didn't pass school. I have no job, no income. I have no apartment, starting August. I have no car. And everyone I'm friends with keep letting me down, they just keep letting me down, I keep helping friends in need, they keep ignoring my problems, they keep not helping me back.

Sometimes it's not what you do, it's what you don't do.

I don't know what to fucking do, I just don't know what to do. I'm so blank and so torn. I'm so sad and so angry. I have no outlet.

I have no creativity.
I have no words.
I have no skills.
I have no talent.

I'm just pestering this Earth with the burden of my existence.
Everything just totally fucking sucks.
POET IN THE JAR

Repairman

I was a castle, made of sand,
Made of millions of grains.
I stood guard, proud and tall,
Until I was washed away.
The grains spread out and separated,
My castle walls torn down.
The rooms that I had decorated,
Sent to sea to drown.
Then, planlessly I drifted,
Undesired and ungifted,
Until the ocean shifted,
And a single grain was found.
Then, you rebuilt my castle walls,
And brought me back from sea.
And you sought out to find them all,
The grains that once were me.
Now every time I feel despair,
When I remember washing away,
I know that I can be repaired,
And time can still be made.
So should your castle ever fall,
I'll fix up your broken walls,
And collect your scattered pieces all.
If I have to search the entire sea,
I'll do it for you,
Like you did it for me:
Unconditionally.

A Tiny Sketchbook

So I just wrote a poem. Or rather forced it out of me. I quite dislike it. It's just missing something, that I'm sure my old poems used to have when I was still feeling creative and ached to write. But then again, maybe that depends on how you look at it. Maybe I used to be able to write better poems because I didn't give a fuck about how it turned out. Instead of what I was doing now, weighing words against eachother, changing sentences, rearranging, staring at the page, wondering what it was that I wanted to say.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a sketchbook. A tiny one, the kind of pad that you can shove down your jeans pocket. I thought that if I started writing things down in it when they came to me I wouldn't have to spend so much time posting on Facebook and Twitter. That maybe if I wrote them down by hand they would have to mean something. That I might find my way back to the words that way. I don't know if it's been working yet. I've written a few things down in it in crazy spurts of racing thoughts, but when I look at it, well. It feels like it wants to be more than it is. I guess I should just let go of trying to make it anything else than what it is. And not beat myself up about not filling the pages with masterpieces of poems or profound thoughts and ideas (not to mention excellent drawings and yes, no less than excellent). I think I still have to get used to having a physical book to write things in. I still have to make myself used to the idea that whenever I think about something I should want to grab that little book and jot it down. It seems like I have no particular thoughts to jot down. No particular ideas. I feel rather strangely blank after everything's that's happened for these past couple of days. The good thing about writing in a physical sketchbook is that you don't have to share it with the world. Which means you can write down things that are really personal and private.

Things I couldn't even share here.

I wonder if all my obsessiveness with medias and with my own trainwreck of a mind is making me appear heartless. If maybe people don't really get how my mind works. When I worry sick about something, like now; I just rather preoccupy myself with anything I can think of rather than deal with it. Perhaps a sickness, but then, at least I'm aware of it. At least I could do something about it (if I ever felt like it). I wonder if other people also contemplate how their minds work or if they just sorta go with it.

Can I entitle myself a poet when I hate my own words?
Can I exist when I don't struggle to write?
POET IN THE JAR

Where Do You Wander?

Where do you wander?

When every second feels like an hour

When every moment is eternal

When you're lost in thoughts,

Lost in contemplation

In concern

When you burn

Where do you wander?

When you've emptied yourself of everything

When you've looked for yourself everywhere

When you can't breathe,

Can't oppose desperation

When you're inconsolable

When you're uncontrollable

I wandered the world, observed it in words

I trusted my eyes, and the whispers I heard

I dismissed what I learned,

I spent what I earned,

I lost myself

Until you returned

Where did you wander?

Incompetence

Seemingly, late night rants is what I'm capable of these days.

As usual I can't sleep and this time it's for... different reasons. I've hit this period of weird insomnia. I'm just not friends with sleeping, from time to time. I don't know. Or well, I do know. My head is just too busy THINKING, that I can't possibly focus on DOING, and making anything actually HAPPEN. Instead I stay awake over every piece of dread I can possibly collect from my own head and heart, and maybe if I ponder them just ENOUGH, it might not just keep me awake for the night; it might just keep me awake for the rest of the WEEK. And yes, this CAPS use is necessary to convey my point.

I don't even know why coming here soothes me. It's just what I do whenever I'm going through a... crisis, or what to call it. I don't know a lot of things, these days. Everything feels unplanned. The future should be shining brightly ahead of me. Instead it's like this massive, poet-eating void of non-knowing. I've lived my whole life with a plan. Even when I thought I didn't have a plan; I definitely had SOME kind of plan; this time, everything is out there, everything is open, everything is closed. Geez, I fucking worry about everything. If I was a friend of mine, instead of being me, I might slap myself in the face and tell me to get off my high horses and stop feeling so goddamn fucking sorry for myself. What can I say? I can't help it. It's my "weak and sensitive nature". No, seriously, I can't relax until I've just SOLVED everything. And if that's your current main goal in life, imagine not being able to solve ANYTHING. Imagine not being able to solve your unemployment; your fear of abandonment, your family issues, what to do with your pets. Not being able to solve school, not being able to solve your writer's block, not being able to solve your insomnia. Not being able to solve the fact that you're considered a bad friend. Not being able to solve your recent passive obsessiveness with TV series that you can't quite explain except that it gives you a temporary moment of RELIEF. Relief from the guilt you feel about your inability to solve your given situation. Relief from all the chores you put off and all the achievements you couldn't accomplish. I'm in the middle of some weird fucking age crisis, or something, bloody hell knows what it is. I feel weak. I feel exposed. I feel disliked. I feel unloved. I feel alone. I feel completely, utterly, fucking INCOMPETENT and POWERLESS.

I guess the only reason I feel soothed by spilling this out into a blank text box online is that the written word doesn't judge me. Doesn't call me cowardly. Doesn't mock me. If, you don't count the fact that I've been dying to write something more CREATIVE without it ever spilling into this blank, empty, text box online. Let's say we don't count that. Let's say those veins of creativity are still flowing and are going to just pop open when they're ready. Because I swear to no particular deity, if those veins don't pop open soon, I'm going to have to resign my calling as a self-appointed world observer a.k.a. verbal describer of personal, subjective emotion and thought.

4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. Yep, I'm watching LOST. I can't even write a bloody blog post without the comforting background sound of the TV, assuring me that there are voices in the room, presence in the room, that the room isn't empty, that it's not just me, it's not just my voices.

The sun's up. I've got to be in university in... 3 hours. We'll see if I've got it in me to wrestle my own arch nemesis, called Sleep.

POET IN THE CHIPPED GLASS JAR

I Provided For Myself

Hell, I'm such a wreck. Can't sleep, can't sleep, can't sleep. Funny how stress can make you feel so catatonic. There's a hell of a lot of things I could spend my time doing that would be more productive than how I've spent the last week. Games. Comics. TV shows. They all seem more important than straightening out my own life. How is that? How did this happen? I want to get my old energy back. I wonder where it went.

I was going to do Camp Nano for April, hell, I was looking forward to it. Haven't written a single word and won't write one. I feel so frustrated when I can't write. I have so many ideas, but every time I try to put it in words it's like I've lost my magic. Lost my touch. Words just come out wrong, sound cliché, every line is tired old crap. It's become somewhat... achievement-focused, my writing, and when I feel I can't achieve, I am blank. Out of words. It's like that time I used to spend thinking has gone haywire and I'm instead filling it with fictional universes, fictional characters, delving deep into plots behind make-believe stories. I guess this would be a good thing, if I was actually using it for something; but it's become a replacement for writing. Don't get me wrong... not looking for sympathy or for writing tips. Heck, if I wanted writing tips I could just follow my own. Heck knows I've got a lot of them. Doesn't help. I've fallen into a black hole of creativity. When I want to do something, everything else that I have to do piles up on me, and kills that little joy of creating that once flourished.

I mean, I could do so many things, I don't even need to write. I could draw or animate, whatever. But I just don't DO any of these things. I just feel so emptied. And what bugs me the most is, that I feel like I'm wasting every minute of every day. I have no idea what the future looks like for me. I don't know what the NEAREST future looks like for me. I'm trying to decide whether or not to give up this apartment, and I have to decide before May. It's risky trying to keep it, seeing as I don't even know if I'll be able to provide for myself after I graduate. Everything... not just school... my future... my summer... my life... my family... everything, everything, weighs on me. Maybe I shouldn't trouble myself... but I do.

I've been up all night, my sense of day and night is so fucked up. When I couldn't sleep at like 5.30 because I kept crying; I decided I might as well stay up all morning. Fuck sleep. Who needs to sleep? I'll try to get as much done today as possible and hopefully I'll fall down into bed exhausted tonight. Hopefully. Today I still have to finish my laundry, work on my thesis, clean up the apartment, prepare and host a work session for my extracurricular group and spend a few hours doing that. I need to apply for a couple of jobs and make a couple calls. This is what I plan to do and still I know I won't do them all. I'm always avoiding some chore or task. I've had enough, I don't even feel like an adult the way I'm living my life right now. I feel especially guilty that I haven't been to the office for over a week. But what can you do, right? I had to wait for my grade, so there wasn't much I could do really; but I should still have gone. Without a place to be each day it feels like my life has just been slipping away. And still I'd love to do what I choose with my life. I just want to get a steady income, doesn't have to be much, from a job that I don't hate and that doesn't bore me to death. I just want to feel good about life and enjoy living it. I don't want to be entangled this way. I don't want to be this far away from people I love. I don't want to keep looking back at memories because they make me feel better than the present moment does. I don't want to become frozen every time I even think of straightening out my life.

Funny, huh. Straightening out my life. There are people who would say I've got everything going for me, you know. About to graduate, the whole future ahead. Some kind of talent for some kind of creativity somewhere deep, deep down inside. Able to talk to people. Able to make people listen. Steady boyfriend. All that jazz. They say I'll work things out because I'm ambitious, things will work out. But they won't. I don't mean to be a cynic. They just won't. Things have never just "worked out" for me, at any point, in my life; the times they have worked out it's been because I made them work out. I made it work. It wasn't divine in any way. No one provided for me. I provided for me. And that's where the shoe fits, isn't it. I'm tired of making things work out. I feel bad when my projects and plans fall through; even when I've known from the beginning it'd be impossible to do it all. I feel bad when I don't spend my time doing chores, studying, applying for jobs or working on my portfolio. Thing is school is occupying my mind like HELL. And at the same time I just can't focus on it. It seems so trivial. What does it matter if I get a diploma in my hand in June? It doesn't. It's not gonna get me a job. A portfolio is going to get me a job. It's not gonna pat me on the back saying, Hey, you did GOOD! And it's certainly not going to pay off three years of studying loans. People just don't get that you can be completely broken, under a polished, seemingly alright surface. Why is this? Why don't people get that they're not the only ones who are more complex than a box of cereal?

Oh, I don't know. It felt like the right thing to do to come here, and I've learned so, so much. I thought three years spent at a fun education would be better than five years at an education I hated. I thought that if I spent three years here and then still didn't get a job, I could take any job, I'd still have those three years to remember. This just didn't happen. Now I'm panicking because I can't sort out what's going to happen. I'm unable to look past even a day at a time. I'm going to lose my apartment. My independence. Stuff is going on with friends and family. I worry to BITS. I've told myself to focus on my thesis for now, but I can't even do THAT.

To top it off this may very well be the most disorganized post I've ever made here. I apologize, or rather, I don't. I'm shit tired and I've gotta stay up for the rest of the day too. Yay. Yay!
POET IN THE BREAKING JAR

Emotion Explosion!

I'm having one of the strangest surges of emotion in my life. I'm bursting with pride, with sadness, with frustration, a glimpse of hope, a pinch of anger, and with an overwhelming topping of happiness and self-confidence. I wonder if other people are like this sometimes, or if it's just me. Seems to me that if a normal person had all these emotions at once they would explode. And I also feel as if I might explode any second - but I'm trying to keep it back, because I don't know if this explosion would take the form of laughter or choking tears. Life stretches out ahead of me, and it beckons with its inviting fingers, beckons me to better times and greener fields; but the road is lined with fear, fear of death, fear of age, fear of worse times, and withered fields. The future is a treacherous term. It should be treated with care and respect. Instead it has been hailed to the skies. "The future" is always something positive, something we should work towards and want for ourselves; but what is it really? Seconds that tick by counting down to the day we leave our bodies and this existence; seconds that fly by the older you get, seconds that are grains in the hourglass of human life and not even worthy of mention in the greater perspective of the universe.

Recently I applied for an animator's position at a local, rather successful, game development studio. I passed the first round, and got asked to do a work sample. Passing the first round was an achievement for me, seeing as it proved somebody had seen potential in my showreel, even though the reel had older material and wasn't optimally or professionally presented. With full time in school, I spent as much time on the work sample as I could, yet I told myself I wouldn't put any more time into it than I felt that I could afford. A decision thereby followed by an all-nighter before the deadline, creating animations in as little as four hours per animation. When I handed in a quarter before the deadline and stumbled exhaustedly into bed, I didn't feel achieved. What I did feel was a hunch that handing in despite the quality of the material, didn't mean I had wasted my time. And it turns out I hadn't. I didn't get the position, but I didn't expect to. What I did get, and what I didn't expect; was a written feedback on what was good in my material, and what I could have improved. Somewhere among the lines there was one line that seemed to stand out to me. The line was something like this: "It's clear that you have a good sense for animation". And this is when this email becomes good news - despite the fact that I didn't pass the second round.

Here's why.

A simple "You didn't make it" would have been convenient for the studio, but useless to me. I would know I wasn't good enough for their standards, but I would have no idea of what to improve or what to learn. A written feedback proving they have evaluated my content is generous for the studio, and useful for me. Now I know what I need to work on, and which my strengths are. Hearing this outside of a study environment, is extremely educational for me.

So I'm quite relieved my work wasn't hated, proud that they gave me positive feedback among the negative, happy that I took the chance to hand in and learning something, frustrated that I didn't put more time and effort into the sample, and finally I'm hopeful, because I know that I'll eventually learn these things, and eventually work with what I dream of working with - when I'm ready, and when I'll be needed.

I bet you couldn't guess this simple email was what caused my introductory philosophical stanza about life and the universe, now could you?
POET IN THE JAR

Do I Write Because I'm A Wreck Or Am I A Wreck Because I Write?

What could be said that hasn't already been said? What could be done that hasn't already been done? Welcome inside my head, it's a pinball machine, it's a storm of chaos and rage. I can't stop to think or I'll break. I can't stop to feel or I'll break.

There's a million things I should be doing right this moment, rather than typing this. A million things all weighing on my heart together with questions asked, questions unanswered, questions with answers I never wanted. Everything blurs together, races, is limitless. It's like my head is a ticking time bomb and sooner or later it's going to explode.

I can't stop to think.
I can't stop to feel.

The only thing I feel like doing creatively is writing and yet I haven't touched any of the stories I've been dying to write. There's so many options as to what I could spend my time doing, so many areas in which I need improving, so many things to practice, so many things to learn. It's all too much, too heavy. It's fucking with my head. I don't know what to think anymore, don't know what to do.

Today I read a passage from Stephen King's masterpiece handbook of how to write fiction. It said remember your character's back story. It felt like a whole world opened up to me. It felt like I could see all the lives of the characters I've created, each life as jagged as mine, each life so unruly, spreading out in multiple branches. It felt like I could just reach out and touch their darkness. Touch my own darkness.

I recognize these feelings, recognize the dark well of potential they are opening. It's like I'm being revisited by my muse. The one that used to burn so bright. The one that spread throughout my mind as if it was cancer but instead seemed to grant me an unlimited supply of words.

This is what I do when that happens. This is where I turn. The only craft I ever felt like I was close to mastering. The only craft so subjective, so persuasive, so tempting. The only craft that was ever fully mine. That felt like the area where I belonged.

Writing is an addiction to me. I've abandoned it and returned to it more times than I could possibly account for. When I'm not writing, my fingers are itching, my mind is racing. I feel like a traitor for not maintaining the only thing in the world that ever made me feel like I was immortal. I fight writer's block. I fight my own hubris. Most of all I fight life. With the attitude I've seemingly been gaining lately - the idea that life sucks, and is always going to work against you.

Why is it that when the world seems the most pointless, the words appear; why is it so easy to fall into the fantasy of my own head when life doesn't play out like I expected? Can you call it a muse, can you call it a craft? Can you call it the downside of any creative work? Are all writers like me? Is everyone who appreciates the work of written words a self-doubting wreck? Or do I write, BECAUSE I'm a self-doubting wreck?

I think I turn to art when I feel lost in the world. When the way of things seem meaningless. When there are things going on out there that I don't understand. When the world saddens me. When I feel like I'm miles behind everyone else. When my life makes no sense.

I feel like I'm not in control of my own life. I feel like it's spinning ahead without my consent. Like I couldn't affect it even if I wanted to or if I tried. I have to rewrite parts of my report for my thesis in order to get a passing grade. My practical work is fun and teaches me so much, but what I create is hardly state of the art. I've defined to myself the kind of artist I would want to be, but how does that help, when I've realized there's no way I'll ever become that artist?

Good news pour in with the bad news. If I go into any detail about the bad news I'll break. I feel so confused, so split in half. I'm doing great at the same time as I'm doing terrible. I feel more and more distanced from the world at the same time as I feel more and more connected to it. I think this might just drive me crazy. The only way I know how to deal with it is this. Writing. Again. Maybe if I pour my racing thoughts onto paper they'll stop haunting me inside my head. Maybe if I leave the real world long enough to enter a fantasy world... things will stop sucking. Or at least provide me with some kind of concrete escape. Something more tangible, something more respected, something more valuable, than escaping into a game world for hours on end. I have to do something with my time. I have to create.

I have to create or I'm going to burst.

See you at Camp Nanowrimo.
POET IN THE JAR

Everything Starts Out Chaotic And Fumbling

Honestly I'm more than exhausted. Everything I see on the screen in front of me is literally blurring and skewing my eyes. But I promised myself I'd be back behind the wheel again soon, and frankly I have missed writing. Even spontaneous thoughts like now. I have missed being able to spill everything out onto pages, into words. Maybe it's just easier to write everything down instead of locking it up in your head, or tiring all your friends with the same old stories and same old problems. Maybe. Or, maybe I just missed the craft.

I have been writing all day, in fact, but on a considerably duller text - my thesis. Things are going rather well at the studio, I really like it there. Everyone's cool, talented and hard-working, and still there always seems to be small talk and break time going on everywhere. People dart between eachothers' offices asking for files and delegating work and fetching fresh coffee. I'm essentially getting an exclusive sneak peek into the daily life of real game developers. Wow, sounds so amazing when I put it like that. Me and Lotta are the lowlives of the food chain, currently. The closest verbal description to what we're doing would be that we're "interns", but we're not really interns. The actual interns are there pitching in to the workload wherever possible. We're just there to get an insight into the worklife, and to write our thesis in cooperation with the company. As soon as the first, theoretical report has been written, though, we'll begin our practical work; and I'm hoping that'll make us feel like we're not taking up all their space. (I don't feel like that now either, but it's going to be nice to actually be helpful.) My thesis investigates the possibility of applying typical human movement patterns to non-human creatures, and how this affects player perception of character personality. It's a really interesting starting point, and I'm slowly getting somewhere with my report, but there's still a long way to go. Either way I'll just keep on pushing throughout the week. The first draft is due to my tutor on Tuesday. Hopefully he can tell me whether or not I'm going in the right direction with this whole thing. I thought writing academically would be easy, or well, usually it is. It's just that the whole essay is looming up over me like the exaggerated shadow cast by a comic book villain in a dark back alley. Whenever I start writing and referencing, I tangle myself up in my own arguments that I completely lose myself among all the words. But hey, that's okay. I just read today in a book on research methodology that a finished report may look very polished and perfect, but that it started out chaotic and fumbling; which made me feel a lot better.

I've heard our grades from our individual projects are going to be announced next week, by the way. I'm nervous to get the results. I think I did a huge job on both the practical and the theoretical level, but it all depends on what grade I get on my final report. So let's, let's just drop that for now.

Here's another thing that may look polished and perfect but started out chaotic and fumbling: my life. Nah, except for the perfect part. And the polished part. My point is, my life has been messy from time to time, messy as hell. There have been so many times when I've just seen no way out, and I've been convinced that I'm never going to be happy or be able to fulfil any of my dreams. On paper, things are looking up for me right now. But mentally, I am a shipwreck, an utter and complete shipwreck. The only time I don't feel like that is when Dear One is near. Or here.

This is depressing me. Signing off,
POET IN THE JAR