This is not a Blog, but...

I want this to be a space for ‘creative writing’ whatever form that may take, but as you might noticed, there are long lulls between me having anything I want to post. And I have posted stuff I am not particularly proud of because I don’t like having nothing posted on here for months. Given that, I thought I’d do a ‘blog” sort of post. As you might notice if you follow the link in the last post, my attempt to write 31 short stories in 31 days in the month of December did not go as planned. Phrasing it that way makes it sound like some act of God happened, but it was entirely my fault. I could have done it and I didn’t. As you can notice in some of those posts, as they became meta, there were many times I really did not want to write. And I forced myself to on some of those days as evidenced by the posts. But when it made me miserable and when the end result was genuinely terrible (like the times when I just wrote a short poem so I could be done), it really made it hard to justify forcing myself to do it just to have kept it up. I probably should try to get better at writing poetry, but those weren’t really attempts to improve my poetry skills, they were just whatever I was capable of coming out. I don’t remember if I posted it or not and I am not revisiting any of the writing before writing this, but there was one poem - I think the last one I wrote - where I actually tried to do something and realized writing poems was hard. That’s not to say I wasn’t aware, but it was the only time writing a poem instead of something else for a post that I actually was going back in and trying to change lines to get a rhythm or whatever and going “holy shit, this is difficult.” It also wasn’t a time I tried to write a poem to avoiding writing something time-consuming. I was just genuinely trying to write a poem.

The main other thing than laziness or whatever you want to call it that happened is that my friend reached out to me on short notice to write something for his zine. There wasn’t enough space for a short story so I reverted back to more of the short form non-fiction stuff I had previously been writing and actually managed to be able to get back into that writing space and style that I thought I had mostly lost from not writing much the past few years so that was nice to find out. But I am hoping to improve my story writing so it was a bit of a distraction. But as you can see from the bursts of activity, it sort of inspired me. I wrote a few posts in quick succession per day. That also gave me an “out” to skip days in my mind. Which really is where things fell apart. As I wrote at some point, I hate to give credit to capitalism, but I had several days off work in December and I quickly realized how much harder it was to force myself to write on those days and weekends than hyped up on caffeinated tea and full of daydreams from my bullshit job. Yes, it is hard to come home from an entire day wasted working at a job that doesn’t matter and having a limited window of free time and choosing to spend it “working” on writing. But it was much harder to pry myself away from watching TV after sleeping into the afternoon. But trying to write something for my friend’s zine, got me both inspired and off track and then after a few days off I kind of just figured ‘fuck it.’ I’m not one of those “I have 3 months” sober types of people, I haven’t had a drink since shortly before everything shutdown because of the pandemic, but I don’t remember when that was exactly. I actually called out sick two days in a row - a Friday and a Monday - because I felt myself getting a tiny bit sick in February and I had a shitload of concerts I wanted to go to the upcoming week and then the week or two after that I wanted to go to a film festival so I was not about to go down hard sick. I went and saw Sudan Archives that weekend, then called out Monday after going out on I think Saturday night. I could look up when that show was. I drank a little at it, but I was also kind of sick so not much. But then there were the upcoming shows. I don’t remember who all I saw. I went and saw Tove Lo and it was one of the best times I’ve had a show. I drank a decent amount pregaming I think. I know it was a pain in the ass to get a drink at the show itself. I don’t know if that was the last drink I had. I think there might have been another show the day after. Then the following week I think was the start of the film festival. And I tried to go to as much as I could while going to work when I wasn’t watching movies. And the last few days of the second week (?) got cancelled. I think that it got cancelled on a Wednesday and I remember feeling lucky I wasn’t going to anything that day because I didn’t have a smart phone at the time and I was going straight to the theaters from work so I wouldn’t have known. But anyway, with the film festival cancelled because things were getting serious with the pandemic, I went to that shitty ass movie The Hunt because Ike Barinholtz was in the trailer and I had let bad reviews convince me to not go see the Oath which I liked when I finally saw it on home video so I decided fuck the bad reviews and went and saw that terrible movie in theaters during a pandemic. And then maybe the week after, my job started sending people to work from home and stuff. But when I came back from calling out sick those two days, a co-worker jokingly asked me if I had the Coronavirus so it was on people’s minds at that point, but not something taken super seriously. And back to the point, whenever that Tove Lo show was might have been my last drink or maybe the day after or two days later depending on what all shows I went to see. I saw Frances from Hop Along’s solo show. She referenced how we were risking our lives to see her. Nobody in the audience really took her that seriously. Once more a bit of a disconnect of the pandemic being on people’s minds, but also not something some people were worrying about yet. But this isn’t actually literally about my sobriety - which I am still not sure whether or not is an actual sobriety or just what I have been doing for several years which is just not drinking alone - it’s about how I am not concerned with the sort of mentality where you are keeping track of that sort of thing. I don’t know when I became vegan exactly. I have slipped up at times and I don’t care. I am not trying to steal valor and will happily never call myself vegan again if people prefer I don’t. I use the term so people don’t give me stuff I don’t want to eat. I try to buy shoes that aren’t vegan too which isn’t something some people do because they are vegan for “health” reasons. So I don’t know if I am more or less vegan than health vegans. But I don’t “break vedge” as I like to refer to it in my head. I had this job with a lot of people from suburbs who were pretty conservative and they brought in cake or pizza once or twice and I got them to get pizza without meat on it. And I think once or twice I just didn’t go get anything, but on occasions I figured fuck it and ate some. I sort of believe in the whole “freegan” thing. It makes the most sense to me. If the animal is dead or sexually abused or whatever, then throwing meat in the garbage isn’t better than a “vegan” just eating the animal byproduct. But I have an easier time staying vegan by abstaining entirely so I am not “freegan.” If I were I think I would genuinely start making excuses to get other people to buy non-vegan food so I could eat some under that mentality. This probably sounds psychotic. Maybe it is. But anyway I also accidentally grabbed some gluten-free Oreos at Trader Joe’’s (so…not Oreos, but you know…) and when I looked at the package when I got home they had egg in them. But I am not going back to the store during a fucking pandemic to get my money back especially over something where i am the dumbass. If I bought moldy bread or something, then I would want them to give me my money back for selling me garbage. But this was my mistake for buying something I didn’t want. So I wasn’t going to go back to the store to return them during a pandemic. So I ate them. And out of shame, I ate them extremely fast like an entire box in one night to get rid of them so they would be out-of-sight and nobody would see and know. It hurt my stomach. But anyway, that’s the most recent time I knowingly “broke vedge.” But I am not starting the count over. But also I don’t know when the count started. So this is all an extremely long way to explain to you the the mentality that I missed a day of writing doesn’t matter to me much. If I miss a day then I just move on. But I guess in a weird way I gave myself permission not to write every day of December by giving myself permission to skip a day. And, in part, this was a trial run for my plan to write every day of 2021. I mean, the actual plan was literally just write every day of December because i came up with the plan right before December, knew I had several days off work and thought that would be good, and thought that would be a fun little way to frame it. But then given the idea that it was going to then be immediately followed by a new year when people typically have resolutions, it naturally turned into the entire of writing every day in the new year. So the plan was legitimately write every day of December. It wasn’t really a trial run.

I have gotten to the point, if I am being honest, where I know that I am completely rambling and going overly long and the slim possibility of anyone ever reading this has now decreased to zero chance because even if someone was interested, they would not read it given the length AND nature so now it had changed the way I am writing where I am being intentionally obtuse and such. Just letting it be known. Anyway, the point is the idea of writing every day of the new year was a second plan, not the main plan. But the reality is that I knew writing something every day of December wasn’t going to do much for me. I was kind of hoping it would force me to create a bunch of stories I might be able to fix later before I realized how hard it was to write an entire story that went anywhere in the time I wanted to put into writing each night. So I did create the base of a few stories that maybe I can revisit. But if I had written every day of December and not then continued on to writing at least semi-regularly in the future, it would not have gotten me anywhere, not that writing every day of 2021 will get me somewhere. But I think you understand. So the plan will be to write every day of 2021. I still don’t have a better plan - I am subscribed to a patreon where it was explained how to make a more detailed plan so one can follow through better, but as of this writing, I haven’t gone back and done that so I don’t know when I will do that given that it is technically already 2021. But it is possible I won’t post writing every day because I have realized it would benefit me more to write every day for a greater overall end result (i.e. write a short story across, for instance, 3 days). Maybe I’ll just post each portion as I write it (for accountability). And this is probably not the way to head into it, but I am fully aware there is no way I will write something every day as much I would like to think I would. That is an entire year. Even if I am dedicated, I am bound to have a genuine reason to miss at least one day. So I am not going to be too hard on myself. Although like I said, I don’t know if I should admit that to myself already or wait until it happens and then forgive myself at that time. I also don’t want this entire main page to be shitty writing so I will probably create a secondary page like I did for the December writing (although I have purchased a smart phone since the film festival was canceled and tried to see if I could write on my phone during my breaks at work and couldn’t access the subsection so that might not be worth it if it hinders my ability to access it on the go - all things I should have figured out prior to the new year in the time I wasn’t even bothering to write.)

I was thinking a couple days ago (or maybe a day ago… it was Wednesday on the bus, riding to go rent some movies listening to Chuck) about writing some sort of essay-ish type of thing about the albums I think really fucked me up and ruined my live by giving me politics contrary to the mainstream. And then I thought that’s good, I should save it until the new year in case I need content. So that’s how these sort of things make things worse. I should just write when I am inspired. But I wanted to note it down so I could maybe find this reference again if I happen to forget about that idea (not that I am ever going to re-read this and find this part.) The other thing, and the actual inspiration to write all of this is that I came across this list of slow burning movies that included this Korean movie called the Wailing like a month ago and I rented it (because I forgot to check if I could get it for free from the library) and it kicked a lot of ass. Not so much ass that I instantly felt that I had to consume the entire rest of the director’s filmography, but it was definitely a very fantastic movie so I went and rented the entire rest of the director’s filmography (only two movies - and, yes, neither of them was available from the library) and I decided to watch his first film Chaser because I assumed he has gotten better at filmmaking so I thought it would be better to watch his first film and then his second film instead of watching his third film, then his second film, then his first film and ending on a sour note by watching something where you can see the beginning of him becoming a great filmmaker, but the movie isn’t ultimately that good. But Chaser kicked so much ass. I’m not superstitious, but starting the new year by watching such a kickass movie and discovering my new favorite director seems like a good sign. So wanted to put those good vibes out into the world and it also got me thinking about all the movies I have been watching during the pandemic - which is weird because I haven’t lost my job and can’t even work remotely so my life hasn’t even changed that much, but I have suddenly been watching all these random movies that hold some weird cultural significance in my head. Like I just watched that movie The Number 23. I knew it was going to be stupid, but I’ve been thinking about that movie for like a decade. I haven’t brought myself to watch Swimfan yet because I can’t get it for free from the library. I haven’t watched Osmosis Jones yet either. They aren’t all stupid movies either. I’ve been going back and watching a lot of Scorsese’s films. I watched a couple De Palma movies I haven’t seen - and I have been watching a lot of Nic Cage movies so I think mostly I just watched Snake Eyes. I watched some Albert Brooks movies. I watched some William Friedkin movies though I still haven’t seen The Exorcist or the French Connection. Sorcerer kicks ass though. I watched the Godfather. trilogy. I am sort of watching some Jonathan Demme movies. And Michael Mann movies. I had already seen Silence of the Lambs. I think the only Demme movie I watched was Something Wild. But I loved it. But I saw Manhunter and just watched Collateral. I watched Red Dragon, but just because it was on Netflix ‘cause I am definitely not going through Brett Ratner’s filmography. So I don’t know if all of this is worth some sort of essay type of thing and I also have the issue that some movies I watched just go right out of my head the second they are over and some stick around so I don’t know if I would be able to reference exactly what I watched, but I was thinking about writing about watching these movies from all these great directors (and actors like Albert Brooks and Nic Cage). The truth is I was going to write about these movies in a Facebook status, but I am trying to stop using it and I didn’t want to post this manic shit about how great the movie Chaser was at 1 AM on New Years Eve like a weirdo.

In conclusion, I am going to try to write every day of 2021, but I don’t know if anyone following me online will be able to tell or not and I also don’t know if I will manage to actually write most days. Starting things off with a holiday away from work means the first official day of doing it is going to require me to stop my vacation day of watching movies and eating garbage to write so it should be a great test. Although given the fact it’s the very first day, I will probably succeed in guilting myself into it. But then needing to do that two more day of weekend is really going to be a struggle. Then it’s back to the grind at work and just thinking about stupid shit all day so I don’t think about what I am doing and hopefully that makes it easier for those five days, but then I struggle to get myself to write on the weekend and we repeat that over and over until it’s 2022 and then I stop writing entirely because my New Year’s resolution is done, right?