I’ve had two very weird days. <\/p>\n
Nothing actually happened. I didn’t wake up on…Thursday, was it? Go with Thursday. I didn’t wake up on Thursday to find my house full of alien clowns that were also ghosts, who then took me on a magical adventure to a land where everything is delicious and glittery, and there are also very fat unicorns. <\/p>\n
If you’d like to pretend that’s what happened, you can just ignore the rest of this post. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Thursday was bad. <\/p>\n
There wasn’t anything that actually happened that was bad. The house is still standing. The water heater didn’t explode. Nobody died. The IRS didn’t come over and beat me up for no reason. It wasn’t a series of events, it was all just…internal. Everything was bad. Everything was hopeless and terrible and pointless, and I couldn’t see anything beyond that. <\/p>\n
That’s where I was in my previous post. <\/p>\n
Friday was…different. Weird. Unexpected.<\/p>\n
I woke up, went downstairs, and continued the waking-up process. <\/p>\n
Then, I felt…restless? Like I should be doing something. It was weird. <\/p>\n
I sat there for a while, waiting to see what that feeling would do. Maybe it’d wander off on its own. Maybe it’d attract something else, and I’d work on something. If I went for it too soon, though, I might scare it off. <\/p>\n
Fucker sank its fangs into my brain and demanded that I do the most pointless thing possible — sort my videogames, and type the titles into a Google Docs spreadsheet.<\/p>\n
And yes, that is the most pointless thing ever. In a house that’s a complete mess, deciding to sort the one thing that’s contained [but not ordered, and not always in the right case, or in the case at all] is like deciding to plant flowers to improve the resale value of a house that’s on fire. <\/p>\n
But I got it all done, and I was pretty pleased with myself. <\/p>\n
While I was sitting there, though, I noticed that I wasn’t happy with the way everything else was arranged. I really wanted the central speaker for the sound system to be on top of the TV, instead of in front of it. <\/p>\n
Problem: while the TV isn’t some amazing, impossibly thin new model, it IS pretty damned thin. <\/p>\n
But wait, there’s these little bracket\/hole things, probably for wall mounting. Hey, I bet I have some bolts that’ll fit perfectly. <\/p>\n
Solution! I’ll build a shelf. Out of whatever I have<\/i>. Because I am the result of a really incompetent mad scientist who wanted see what happened when he merged a five year old and a college student. <\/p>\n
If that’s unclear: I built the shelf out of rejected tongue depressors [and a couple of popsicle sticks] and duct tape’s bigger, meaner brother — Gorilla Tape. <\/p>\n
I lined up twelve or thirteen of the tongue depressors, used the others to brace the underside [to keep it from folding], coated the entire thing in strips of Gorilla tape, and then shittily-measured to see where the little bracket\/hole thingies were. Because I had to mount it somehow. <\/p>\n
Some cardboard cut at the right angle, then mark the spot where the hole needs to be by jamming the scissors through, more tape, and then I just screwed it in using some conveniently-exact-sized bolts from one of my ‘why have I got this shit’ boxes. <\/p>\n
And you can’t even tell it’s there, which is good.<\/p>\n
I sat around for a bit, and started to worry. Really worry. Because the day before had been so terrible, and now I’m being something like productive. <\/p>\n
What if this was a bad side effect. What if this is something I’m supposed to call my doctor about? <\/p>\n
I spent a while being twitchy about that, right up until Gremlin mentioned that he was on his way back from wherever he was. <\/p>\n
Like an insane person, I suddenly decided, I’m going to walk out and meet him on the way back. Just to see if I can.<\/i><\/p>\n
I made it most of the way to the bike path before I started to get nervous about the whole thing. Why am I doing this? What the hell? This wasn’t a good idea.<\/i><\/p>\n
Then I ate, declared it medtime, and went to sleep.<\/p>\n
I skipped something, though. The part where, both days, Gremlin tried to talk to me about writing. <\/p>\n
Specifically, he was talking to me about me<\/i> writing something. One of the story ideas I’ve managed to have. <\/p>\n
Writing is…intimidating. Not this sort, because, obviously, I’m doing it right now. Not very well, I’m sure, but I’m doing it. <\/p>\n
This isn’t coming up with characters and situations, though. This is just…stuff that happened. Opinions. Things like that. <\/p>\n
It’s hard to explain, so let’s just do it all crazy-person like. Starting something like that — getting an idea and facing the concept of crafting a story around it — is like trying to summit Everest. In a bikini. And Everest is full of machine guns and surprise dragons. <\/p>\n
And that’s just starting out. I don’t know what comes after. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve had two very weird days. Nothing actually happened. I didn’t wake up on…Thursday, was it? Go with Thursday. I didn’t wake up on Thursday to find my house full of alien clowns that were also ghosts, who then took … Continue reading