Author and Columnist
Know, please, that I am writing this entire entry under considerable physical pain. Were I to lie down, all would be eased. Instead, I write to you.
That is our nature. When you have all your wisdom teeth taken out, you refuse to take Vicodin because you worry it will stop you from writing.
You, dear journal readers, are impersonal scavengers. You feed off what has died inside of me and pick at that which I still have use for, causing every sensation to be heightened to the nth degree so a passing zephyr can chill me to the core.
Yeah, they don't exist. Your friends and family read this occasionally, but strangers do not discuss it at water coolers.
The effect they give you is closer to shouting in an empty room and questioning if the echo is another person.
Also, stop writing in so affected a manner.
Aside from an increasing hit meter and the Collective Unconscious' stomach bloating ever so much more slightly with the knowledge of me, I have no proof anyone sees this.
They don't. Why would they? You are not living some extraordinary life. You are not describing your commonplace one with deft poetry. Your insights are tepid at best. What exactly do you think the hook is for anyone you do not personally know?
Yet, I continue to filter my soul here, because it is a need. I have to release these things to see where I am.
That is the best use for this site: It gives you a place to unburden yourself of these stories within you.
A secondary but no less valuable one is that it proves it happened. My wife pointed out a few times that how I saw an event did not match how she remembered it. I maintain it is good enough and is as honest as I can make it. You will deal with people who want to gaslight and retcon your relationship. Your best defense is, "I wrote this at the time, and you agreed. I wrote dozens of entries over the years, and you didn't protest. So, if you must lie, know that my testimony has been available for the better part of a decade and weigh that accordingly." It is reassuring, at least for you. To the people listening to the lie, they have more loyalty to the speaker than to fifty thousand words from a sure scoundrel.
A tertiary value is that writing this hones your ability to be creative without the shackles of bad habits accrued from well-meaning teachers. You get half a million words on the internet, and then you are ready to have people read the next hundred thousand.
I am trying to get my life back on track. It wasn't precisely derailed, but I was in despair. I didn't, and most don't, like where my life was and where it was headed. I was floating through classes, fairly apathetic, making full use of the internet for information about book and poems rather than thoroughly reading them as I once would have.
Anhedonia is a symptom of mental illness.
However, yes, you could reorient yourself toward healthier options.
I am paying a lot for this education and I will damned well be educated even if my teachers are lazy and ultimately useless (it should be noted that this is the same man I have for Shakespeare who does nothing more than pop a video into the VCR).
College professors are not implicitly qualified to teach, and the old saw about the laziness of tenured faculties exists for a reason.
I am trying to be a good student because that was once an aspect of my identity.
One day, we will discuss the importance of shedding -- or at least reevaluating -- the labels you apply to your identity.
Lack of a job (and I do keep calling the library) and wondering where I stand with my friends, girlfriend, and core self added quite a bit to this.
I say this with love: Try to be less neurotic when mind-reading friends. They are not expending these mental resources and are just as self-oriented as you are.
I certainly didn't think I was in the right place, socially and academically.
You aren't, but the pain it would take to change that dissuades you.
Again, details that you are not currently privy to.
Do not tease your readers. They do not care that much, but I do. It is bad manners.
I like deluding myself into believing I have a moderate degree of self-sufficiency, despite the fact that I live at home and eat my parents' food. See, that isn't mooching, really, to me. Give me a year or two more and I guarantee that concept will change.
The news is not good, though you are usually employed in some fashion.
If it helps, once I was getting regular paychecks again, I would delude myself into believing that I would secretly pay these unknown debts back.
You don't, but I cannot imagine your parents expect differently.
New Paltz has yet to pay me for my five weeks of being a computer proctor for them.
I recall the computer job, specifically your supervisor Nancy seeming to be frustrated by you even when you were demonstrably doing the right thing (she criticized you for not refilling the paper tray, though there was photographic proof you did, for instance). I do not recall why you stopped having that job. I don't think you were fired. You didn't mention it, at least, and I hope you would.
The only answer I wish for in all due haste is who will hire me and how may I contact them.
The next job is at a public library, which you keep until one of your fellow clerks gets you fired because her friend wants a job. The stated reason is that you renewed a book for Zack so he wouldn't accrue late fees, but the vicious smile on her face when you were dismissed told the true story.
A year later, working at a different library, the step-daughter of the man who fired you will tell you her father regretted doing it.
A girl with exceedingly long blonde hair sat in front of me in Spanish a few days ago. Who she may be is of little consequence or importance at the moment. Should she end up playing a part in this journal, she will be introduced.
Describe people better. Stop this coyness.
I imagine without intention that she is Sarah.
Must I list young women I want you to knock off those pedestals?
My very own, virginal but wise, innocent but jaded Sarah. The Duchess of Folk.
Oh, my dear, stupid boy. You don't know Sarah at all, do you?
It inflames me because I crave Sarah more than I ever gave myself or her credit.
You have a girlfriend! One who can and does read the things you write!
I detest -- honestly and thoroughly -- how eager you are for infidelity if anyone would give you the chance.
And Sarah! Sarah, who you barely know in fact, only in fantasy! That's where you want to shove this ardor?
If you cheat with someone, make it a person who exists. You might as well be salivating over fan art of Tara MaClay.
I thought that, after a three year banishment, our fingertips would again touch.
If she had wanted it, they would have. Red Hook is thirty-five minutes from New Paltz -- I know, as I live in Red Hook, a fifteen-minute walk from where Sarah lived then. In the flesh, you are immediately put off that Sarah cannot match the demigoddess you collectively built. You aren't attracted to her when you see her and cannot parse why this is.
Sarah better resembles an overlap of Melissa and Kate than some angel worthy of your faithless devotion.
I am not going to point you as a better contender. You cannot be trusted.
I want to grab the lithe blonde creature before me by the shoulder and spin her to be greeted by my wild rose's blushing, soft visage.
I hate the way you write at times, particularly the purple mush that issue from you when a woman is involved.
And do it then. You are complaining that you want a change in your life? Be merciful to Emily and get on with it. Stop using your desire as a threat.
I will be shown the mousy, upturned, vacant face of this girl.
You are a misogynist while thinking otherwise, which is weasely. This stranger has done nothing to you, but she isn't of immediately romantic or sexual value to you, so you imply she is a dullard.
Be better.
I don't know that I can endure much more of life outside my divine Sarah's presence.
You've "endured" it well and will in the future. The Sarah you imagine does not exist and never did.
You are a better man when you lance this lust into fiction.
So I desire my Sarah's company.
She isn't your Sarah. At times, she is not even her own.