The lows are low, but the highs are home
Month
The point of that long explanation (last time, on my tumblr…) was to lead into my discussion of “worth” or “value” in terms of how free time is spent. As much as I try to do things like “relax” or “have fun,” the efficiency that has ruled my life so far can’t help but extend into my free time. It’s always a to do list of accomplishments, things to finish and then things to start after that. The two contributing factors to this are that the list grows far faster than I can work on it (12, 25, 40, 60, etc. hour games coming out before I’ve finished the last) and I’ve always been able to afford the next shiny game to release. Even then, I’ve looked for ways to make my money go further - efficient to the last - so that I can now download games for every system I own save the PS3. Well, and the Wii. So, theoretically, I have access to infinite video games, infinite books (assuming someone has uploaded them online), infinite amounts of manga, infinite episodes of anime to watch, infinite amounts of data and ideas to mentally digest… Never will I lack for entertainment, surely, but rarely am I truly entertained. The calculation of where to spend my time drains all of the fun from the media I consume voraciously, incessantly.
I try to see the world, and especially all the digital worlds I experience, with a little sense of wonder to keep from getting too jaded. It’s difficult to do that when I’m rushing from one game to the next, almost always picking the game to play based on how guilty I feel over not finishing it yet, and secondarily how much is left to play. When I finished Portal a month or two ago, when it was free for a couple of weeks on Steam, all I could think was “finally, I can say I’ve done it.” Most people will tell you it’s something you “have” to play, and I’d gone a long time without playing it simply out of indifference. I’d already absorbed most of its content through osmosis anyway, it was just a technicality that I hadn’t actually put my hand on the mouse and done it myself. I did it, though, but for me it just wasn’t the amazing, joyous experience I know many others have had with it. It was just one thing crossed off an endless to-do list, another example that I’m eternally catching up on gaming history. I think the fact that I saw two or three hours invested in Portal as practically a waste because there would be nothing new there for me is bad enough, but the fact that I played it and didn’t enjoy doing so says everything about the problem I have with my free time.
Portal is pretty much a sacred lamb of gaming at this point, but perhaps the worst offence I’ve committed as a gamer, in my mind, is to not like multiplayer gaming. Party games, yes. Local co-op with friends, yes. But competition against faceless strangers? Count me out. Not in an RTS, not in an FPS, not in an MMO, not in a flash game, not even in a browser-based game. Yet all of the most hardcore gamers thrive on these kinds of games. Final Fantasy XIII and Dragon Quest IX may be huge, expansive games, but when I finish them, that’s pretty much it. It might take 60 hours, or it might take 100. But StarCraft II, Modern Warfare 2, Team Fortress 2 - funny how they’re all sequels - as well as World of Warcraft and all the other MMOs, they’ll consume countless hours far beyond the sixty or one hundred hour mark. When the vast majority of the medium lives on the crushing - or being crushed by - your opponent, how could I possibly be allowed to simply “not like” multiplayer? It doesn’t help that I see very few people saying the same thing. It seems as though I must be wrong, spending my time finishing Persona 4 or actually playing through Final Fantasy X when I could be shooting people in the face day after day.
Yet this ties into my problem with having too much media available, and the question of what it’s worth to spend my time on something. Perhaps some people will get far more time out of their $60 purchase of StarCraft II or Modern Warfare 2 than I ever could out of the games I buy. Perhaps they only had $60 and had to find a game that wouldn’t just end. It’s hard for me, with my rather large collection of games, to imagine playing a game because I have nothing else to play. But then, would I really want to spend all of that time just to feel as though I accept the largest portion of gaming today? Would it be “worth” my time to be a master of unscoped headshots, or would I just be “wasting” my time when there are so many other things to experience? I wanted to write this as a way to find the answer to that, and yet I still don’t know. It seems almost rude to dismiss something as a “waste,” to say that a form of entertainment is completely invalid because I don’t enjoy it or don’t partake in it. In theory, to spend my time doing the same thing over and over again would be inefficient when I could be working on something shiny and new. In practice, fun is fun, and there’s really nothing wrong about finding fun in a different place.
If I hadn’t just rediscovered some small measure of why I love single player games and why I love playing through the beautifully crafted environments and stories that my $60 unlocked for me, I might still be worried about all of that. But now I’ve got things to do, and I have a stack of games in front of me that I could, if I’m lucky, finish before going back to university. It’ll take some dedication to righting my wrongs - how could I stop playing Persona 4 in the middle of the last dungeon in the entire game?! - but I don’t know when I’ll find the time again. So I’m going to use it properly and remind myself why I go hunting for PS2 games in the bargain bins in the first place. Why, you might ask? They’re games I can’t imagine I’d regret playing, and I want to give my money to anyone who will take it in exchange for them. I want more of these games to exist, and so even if I never even play this instalment, perhaps I’ll play the next. It would be a shame if we ever lost Atlus or Grasshopper Manufacture, or even Insomniac, so I will gladly throw my money at them. And I will gladly throw my time into their churning machines of glorious entertainment.
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On an entirely different level, but loosely related by the main “theme” of this post is the matter of writing, and this tumblr itself. Its value. The time I spend on it. I’m above a hundred posts now, at least a dozen of those long, rambling trains of thought much like this one. I’ve spent hours writing for a few close friends and a handful of their friends. Yet I don’t feel that it’s been wasted time. Perhaps it’s a legacy of my ADHD, but I don’t often sustain trains of thought as long as posts like this would have you believe. Writing makes the foundation solid enough for me to keep building, to keep writing and communicating and thinking instead of running in circles all the time. If I forget where I was going, I just scroll up. If that doesn’t help, either I stop or I forge ahead and let the words take their own course. But the act of sharing all of this, making it public and available for anyone who cares to read it, is a marked improvement in transparency for me. It used to be that I had few close friends, only as many as necessary to stave off loneliness and disappointment, and only they could know what really went on inside my head. Even then, I couldn’t always force myself to express what I wanted to tell them, and plenty of half-formed conversations went forgotten because I wasn’t satisfied that they would be… well, good enough. That by starting them in truth I would end up exposing something wrong or displeasing about myself and sour my few solid relationships.
So to write and share everything about myself is thrilling, terrifying, and satisfying all at the same time. I feel perfectly content saying that this tumblr is all of what I am. That it’s available to all, if they want to read it. I used to hide behind a plethora of personas, and now they’re unified across all of the content I put here. All of the facets of me, converging in one little part of the internet. If I try to put on an act of being “just” a gamer, or “just” a metalhead, or otherwise put the spotlight on any one of those facets - all it takes is this tumblr to shatter that illusion. I like the idea of forcing myself to change for the better. I like the idea of bringing more people into my Precious Little Life. If they don’t deserve to be here, chances are they won’t bother to read any of this, and the point is moot in the end.
I would bring up the matter of writing fiction, but then I do it so rarely that it would be… yes, a waste of time. I’ve only written two letters so far, and I’m supposed to be writing again, but I have yet to start. I haven’t been able to figure out what time in my schedule to dedicate to it. Soon, I’ll start. When I run out of things to write about for my tumblr, I think. But then I won’t have anything to put into the letter, so it may have to wait until the excitement level rises a little here in my new home. But then I already know that’s a worth investment of time, so long as I have something to write about.
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Like most of my posts, this one would be “selfish” if I believed you would all feel compelled to actually read it. Thankfully, I know that you’re a human being and will happily stop reading if you find it too long and boring. Like every other post I’ve written for my own benefit and shared for yours (at least if you want to learn more about me), I’m glad that I’ve written it. It comes as a result of several conversations with vael about multiplayer gaming (something he enjoys a lot), which tended to go in circles as he stated his case and I proceeded to ignore it and say what I really wanted to say. For the benefit of us all, then, I hope that I’ve managed to put that to rest for now. If you’ll excuse me, I have some beautiful ruins to explore.
On the 26th of January, 2010, No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle was released in North America for the Wii. I purchased it with glee, and played it for around ten hours before realizing that I simply could not complete the strength training minigames near the end of the game with the basic Wiimote. It didn’t feel smooth enough, the buttons were awkward. So I stopped playing the game and waited for the release of the black Classic Controller Pro on April 20th, the release date of Monster Hunter Tri. This I also purchased gladly, an investment perhaps. Yet I never picked up No More Heroes 2 until this afternoon. August 17th, 2010, I managed to finish No More Heroes 2 in a matter of hours. An hour, or more, of that was spent collecting money to pay for strength training, and then practising constantly in 30 second bouts of painful 8-bit torture. When I finally maxed out my strength, the remaining bosses fell in quick succession. The second form of the final boss was brutally irritating, but not difficult. Certainly nothing compared to the true final boss of the first game. Thus, with sore biceps from hours of frantic waggling, I’ve finished a game I’ve owned for nearly eight months.
Next step is to read the four Destructoid articles I bookmarked analyzing the metaphors in the game.
After that? Looks like I might be exploring the abandoned ruins of an advanced civilization in Final Fantasy XIII. Last night, I thought I was done with the game, and felt that another dozen hours of grinding on top of the sixty I’d already spent on the core storyline might simply be a waste. Sure, there were missions and bits of flavour text to collect, but why would I spend time increasing numbers in a digital world I hardly care about? Trophies aside, there would simply be no reward. Not to mention the guilt over time wasted. Yes, I know I haven’t unlocked any of the ultimate weapons. I haven’t even killed a nigh-on immortal dinosaur whose little toe is twice my height. Fighting ten random battles to gain one stat boost, one out of some two dozen left, would be such a huge waste of time in exchange for being able to say that I had nothing better to do than collect digital trinkets. There are, to my knowledge, no flashy, secret bosses in Final Fantasy XIII. At least not like the secret bosses of old. There are enemies with obscene amounts of health, and there are missions that require you to defeat enemies with obscenely high stats, but aside from the correct choice of party members there is rarely any preparation involved. The fact is that these things aren’t difficult; they don’t require any amount of skill. Just an investment of time, so that your numbers are big enough to take on the numbers of the enemy.
Thinking of the endgame in such a negative way was depressing for me, especially because I really liked the rest of the game. Fully prepared to hate it and shut the game off for good, I looked up a guide to the endgame content to see what I had left to do. I knew there was a mission that unlocked chocobo riding, so I tried to look for that. Only it was in an area I had never heard of. Wait a second - in an almost exclusively linear game, I missed an area? It must just be that it was so unimpressive that I forgot its name. So I set out to find this area and complete the couple of missions I actually wanted to do.
Imagine my surprise when I walk over the top of a hill and see the sun rising over the cracked and shifted concrete remains of a Gran Pulsian city. Imagine New York City after a devastating, cataclysmic earthquake. Roads thrown upwards to create cliffs, buildings toppled, street signs sticking out randomly from the ground. Flying above it all, giant birds, larger than a full grown man. If you’ve seen Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, take some of the ruins of Midgar, mix it with the desolation and industrial look of Edge, and then craft a playable area out of that. That’s what I would have missed if I had quit Final Fantasy XIII without giving it another chance.
I didn’t even go in to complete my mission. I back out, saved my game, and turned off the system and went to go run errands. I’m saving it for tomorrow when I have more time.
I don’t believe I’ll grind my way through all of the post-game content, but I will do what I can at my current power level. When I run into an enemy that’s just too powerful for me, I’m done. If I’m lucky, I’ll get enough experience points from the missions up to that point to pull through without having to spend time grinding.
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Yesterday, I planned for this to lead into a discussion of “worth” and “value” in terms of how free time is spent, but a bit of work on that topic has led me to believe that this is better split up so it isn’t excessively long. I will work on posting that tonight, or sometime tomorrow. It’s all very meta because then the worth of time spent on writing for tumblr comes into play and stuff. See you next time, folks.
Oh, and I read those articles about No More Heroes 2 and that was cool but there were supposed to be seven and only four were finished. Oh well. I know what that’s like. I also read about comorbid depression in children with ADHD, which will get its own post after I post fewer giant posts, and about the impossibility of “converting” homosexual into heterosexuals. Also has a sentence about the belief that homosexual relationships are somehow different from heterosexual ones. Article from Psychiatric Times here.
Oh, and if you actually read what I wrote about essays a few days ago - note the passive voice. Note it and notice how hard it can be to figure out what they’re saying, how you may feel tempted to skip through the fluffy bits that don’t actually present or evaluate any actual information.
I had that post set to private so I could double check stuff and have people read it to correct some of its fault (I got very tired while writing it, and started to write it lazily) so I’m linking to it now like a lazy bastard. Rather than just reposting the updated version. Perhaps if no one notices, I will do that.
Title quote courtesy of a Penny Arcade strip I have loved forever and ever. Link here.
Hey there kids! It’s Demi, back again for writing tips! It’s almost time for school to start, so you know what that means - essays! Oh boy! Here are my very own notes on writing essays, for my own reference while writing and compiled through experience and by express instruction of my amazing AP English teacher. You can look at them and try to keep them in mind, or alternatively print them out and keep them around for reference while writing and editing. I have more for my own reference in my handy-dandy file folder, like essay rubrics and commentary on other essays so I wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. Most of the key elements from those things have been used in my essay writing tips. Moving on, first the tips if you’re confident in your method, and then I’ll outline some steps for writing a literary essay. If you’re writing a research paper, you’ll want to do things a little differently, but that’s not too hard when you know your way around a good essay.
- Start with a strong thesis. Don’t use something obvious; try to have a little creativity and insight. Don’t go overboard (Ross from MacBeth is secretly a witch!) but look for a way to make your own interesting conclusions. Your thesis should also be very clear and extremely well written. Your thesis should be the strongest sentence of your entire essay. It is the most important one, so pay attention to it. Rewrite it as many times as necessary.
- Start your paragraphs with topic sentences. These are basically a mini-thesis that introduce the subject of your paragraph. To test your topic sentences, combine them with your thesis to create a small paragraph. If this paragraph works well and sums up the major points of your essay, congrats! You’ve got nice, strong arguments to support your original thesis.
Example from a short essay I wrote comparing Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennet, from Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice respectively: While the author’s styles of writing may differ, the protagonists of Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice share many common features. First and foremost, Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennet are strong female characters, both self-assured and determined to be the equal of the men in their lives. After initially rejecting the advances of their future soul mates, Jane and Elizabeth are unable to forget the chances they were given. When they are finally married to their respective husbands, both characters are sublimely happy.
There’s a slight jump between the second topic sentence and the third, but overall I think that’s a pretty decent paragraph to sum up the main points of my essay. It flows well enough, and it establishes what I’m going to write about, and then elaborates my key arguments. If you have something like this, you know for sure that you’ve got good topic sentences. Then you just need to add good paragraphs onto them!
- Have textual support for your arguments - plainly put, use direct quotes to prove you aren’t pulling things out of your butt. You can use quotes from your source material (book, play, whatever you may be writing about) or quotes from things you’ve researched - as long as it’s related to what you’re trying to prove. Being able to back up your argument with real references will make you look smart, and smart people are sexy.
- Analyze the quotes you’ve sprinkled throughout your essay. Don’t just throw them in there - explain why you picked them, or what they mean and whether or not you agree with them. That’s a little secret - you can quote someone making the opposite argument that you are, and then proceed to prove them wrong. You don’t need to, and in fact shouldn’t, just research things that go along with your argument. Providing a counterpoint, and why it’s wrong, will improve the overall argument of your essay. It’s very easy to make a biased essay, so researching the opposite point of view will help tie things together. You’ll be able to refer to every other point you’ve made, and then make a few new ones.
Secret PROTIP: You don’t need to quote an entire block of text, or even an entire sentence. You can grab pieces of a quote and integrate them into a sentence just to avoid having to think and sound like you know your stuff.
Example from the introduction of my Animal Farm essay: The other animals believe that “with their superior knowledge it was natural that the pigs assume leadership” (17), yet they never question the decisions made by the pigs. By following the pigs like figurative (and literal) sheep, the residents of Animal Farm allow the totalitarian regime to flourish unquestioned and unopposed.
First sentence: Quote integration. See how I got out of actually writing a sentence by quoting the novel? Shows I know the book well enough to incorporate it, and just sounds nicer than whatever I would have written. Also sets up an argument for later.
Second sentence: Thesis. The topic was the importance of questioning leadership. Important things to note: literary devices. Always a plus for making a shiny thesis statement. Your thesis statement should be catchy and flashy, enough to stand out in your reader’s mind. They should know it’s your thesis, and remember it too.
- Use transitions. Don’t just go straight into a new topic without any kind of obvious connection between the two. This will also help your essay’s organization - if you can’t connect two topics, don’t put them beside one another. Your essay should flow naturally from one thing to another. The final sentence of your paragraph should end things in a way that brings it into the first of your next paragraph. Sentences should also have transitions - however, yet, honestly, moving on, things like that. Google it if you don’t know what they are. Don’t overuse the same transitions repeatedly - every second sentence shouldn’t start with “however, …”, so have a bit of variation. Google a list of transitions if you want to add some variety.
- There are two components to the “sound” of your essay: the style, and the voice. The voice is simple enough, and something to be determined by the purpose of your essay: there is the academic voice, the jovial voice, the sarcastic voice, etc. Your audience determines your voice. This should stay the same throughout your entire essay, and you’ll notice that any time you stray from that it will be very strange for your readers. If you’re writing a serious, academic paper, don’t try to make a joke like you would with your friends. If you’re writing a funny internet article for your funny internet friends, don’t try to sound like a genius.
Style, however, is something that can vary from sentence to sentence. A short sentence with simple words, or a long, overly wordy sentence. You can use both in your essays, and in fact, you should, because if you have a three page essay with only twenty sentences, you’ve done something wrong. Likewise, you shouldn’t split each of your sentences into three tiny ones because you think it looks cooler to have that many periods. Mix it up and show that you’re capable of writing the way you need to, rather than just the way you want to. Sometimes, a long, flowery sentence is perfectly called for. Other times, tiny, choppy sentences are the way to go. Experiment enough and you’ll find the proper times for both.
- Avoid hyperbole. Should be pretty obvious; don’t exaggerate. Don’t claim that the book you’re writing about is the best book ever, or that Shakespeare is the “most famous playwright of all time” (actually Shakespeare I’m really happy for you and Imma let you finish but x was greatest playwright of all time - OF ALL TIME) or whatever. This is something most people do by default to kiss their teacher’s bum and try to get a good grade, or at least increase their word count. But it sounds better if you rewrite it realistically, I swear.
- Avoid clichés. You may think that it sounds cool to say something your dad says, like “it’s better than a kick in the butt with a frozen boot, you know!” but it doesn’t really add anything to your essay. Usually you can take them out and replace them with something shorter and clearer, which will be better for your essay in the long run. Trust me on this one.
- Take out extra adjectives/adverbs. You don’t need to fully describe the darkness of Grimdark Depthless Land of Eternally Black and Sunless Darkness. Something is not both large and huge. Few things are hugely large. See what I’m getting at? Don’t repeat yourself for the sake of word count or emphasis, at least in this way. Repetition is still a literary device and you can use it that way if you want. But extra adjectives aren’t really a good way to write and make a point, rather you’re over-emphasizing a point you’ve already made.
- Take out extra prepositions. At, under, on, in, of, in the, etc. “In the bedroom under the bed that’s on the floor in the house of the murder.” It makes it very hard to understand what exactly is going on, so try to rewrite your sentence and avoid having multiple prepositions unless you absolutely have to.
- Avoid using a “passive voice.” Try not to use words such as: am, are, was, were, be, been, being. Typically, words like that are used to make a sentence overly formal and make your point sound weak. “The poetry of the 18th century was typically written by aristocrats, but now it is being written by people who are far less well off, many of whom have never even been waited on hand and foot.” What, exactly, am I trying to say there? Who knows? You may not want to go to this level of nitpicking over your vocabulary, but removing these words and rewriting the sentence will be a rewarding challenge if you can find a better way. It makes your arguments tighter and just… it’s something you only notice as a complete overhaul. Entirely passive to none at all.
- Some word nitpicking. Much like passive voice, these are words to avoid using if you can. Much like passive voice, you can use them if you can’t possibly rewrite the sentence. Much like passive voice, your entire essay will sound better if you can avoid using them. Words to avoid forever: is, has, there, it, this, thing, have, had. It can be really hard to avoid them, and especially at first you will find them EVERYWHERE. But the more you work at removing them the less they’ll even work their way in. You will, in all honesty, become a better writer in the course of a few essays if you can rewrite your sentences to avoid them. Much like passive voice. Compare your passive, it this thing have had, essays to your ultra essays and you’ll be so happy inside.
- Something you can always add is literary devices. Some choice ones that won’t be out of place are parallel syntax (that whole “much like passive voice” thing up there), metaphors, allusions. Actually that’s pretty much it on the list of literary devices that aren’t too literary for an essay. So use those if you can.
1. Pick a topic without being too broad or too narrow in your focus. If you aren’t very particular on your subject, you’ll get too much useless information. if you’re too specific, you won’t find enough information to make good arguments. Use your own judgement.
2. Do a small amount of preliminary research, enough to have a slight idea of your subject. Chances are you already know something about it. Use this to create a very rough initial outline. First, create a basic thesis, with a little originality. Then give three example supporting arguments you could use for that thesis. Having an idea of what you can write about will help you pick out key information when you do your research.
3. Armed with your outline, do in-depth research on your topic. There are two strategies here, depending on your time management skills and how early you’ve started to work on your essay. The long-term strategy is to find a lot of sources of information, without reading them until you believe you have enough to pull you through your essay. The short-term strategy is to check out each source and then find another as soon as you’ve finished with what you’ve found. With the long-term strategy, you won’t actually look like you’ve accomplished much until you start working on your information. With the short-term strategy, you know exactly how much information you have and how much you’ve accomplished at any given point in time. The main difference is that with the long-term strategy your essay will come together all at once, while the short-term essay will be a work-in-progress at all times.
Regardless of what order you plan to gather your information in, when you do start looking into your sources, you will have to take extremely good notes so that you can actually use them to write with. Read through the article (or section in a book, or whatever) and jot down some small notes, then on your second pass write down everything that could possibly be useful in your essay. Copy down quotes that could be useful in your essay, and small phrases that could fit easily into what you write. Repeat the process with all the sources you’ve found. The basic structure of your essay should revolve around these notes. You will be relaying and explaining the information you find, so look at it like a painted Easter egg or something. The squishy insides are the information you’ve found, while the pretty shell around it is what you’ve written using that information. Nothing in your essay should come without information to back it up, and there should be some sort of reference to your research quite frequently. You didn’t make this stuff up, so your writing shouldn’t be the most important part of the essay. All you’re doing is collecting it and putting it in a nice little package, so make sure you wrap it up nice and neat.
If you’re writing an essay about a book, your process should be slightly different. You probably won’t have time to read the book twice, and even if you do you probably won’t feel like writing afterwards. Your goal then should be to identify and isolate as much useful information as possible on your first read. Use highlighters, post-it notes, write chapter summaries, whatever works for you, so long as you can find the information you need. The more you identify as being useful, the easier it will be to write your essay. So take your time reading, and even if you don’t know what your essay will be about, pick out things that could be useful. You may end up needing it, or you may not. But the more attention you pay, the better your essay will be.
4. After you’ve finished your research, you will likely have several pages filled with notes and scribbles on your various sources. That’s good. Now, you should have all the information you’ll need for your essay. All that’s left is to put it together. So, now that you have all your information, go back to your outline and evaluate the information you found. If you have a better thesis, start with that. Then look at your arguments and build as many as you need, based on the information you have to work with. If you can’t prove a point, don’t make it. This may not be your final outline, because you may start writing and find it doesn’t make sense, or you can’t argue a point as well as you might like. If you do decide to change your outline again, congrats, you know what you’re doing. Don’t try to fluff up a paragraph just because you need to write a certain amount, because it’s only going to bring your mark down. If 5% of your essay is based on having x paragraphs, you’d be better off losing some of those marks than writing a crappy essay. Of course, you shouldn’t need to worry about that, but what I’m trying to say is that you should write a good essay, whether it’s too short or too long. If it’s good enough, your teacher shouldn’t care whether you met the proper criteria.
5. Now that you know what you’re going to write, it’s time to decide how you like to write. There are two different strategies here, and I would suggest trying them both to see what works for you, but if you have a gut feeling about it, go for what you like best. One strategy is to write your body paragraphs first, and then complete an introduction and conclusion afterwards. The other is to start with your introduction and write your essay in the order it will be read. I’ve done both, and each has its own benefits and drawbacks. I’ve had good and bad essays with each: waiting to write your introduction and conclusion can mean you have a really strong intro and conclusion that go well with your body paragraphs, or it can mean you have amazing body paragraphs but no strong thesis or conclusion to tie them together. If you get tired when you finish writing your essay, or run out of time, you don’t really want your intro and conclusion to suffer for it. If you write your introduction first and your conclusion last, you may end up having to change your introduction or having a weak conclusion that doesn’t fit what you’ve written. On the other hand, it may help to direct you when you’re writing your body paragraphs. It’s honestly up to you based on your writing style, so try them both and see what you like.
6. When writing your introduction, your thesis should be absolutely clear to the reader as it should make an obvious point and establish the goal of your essay. The rest of your introduction should briefly outline your body paragraphs, and make a few observation that you’ll revisit in your conclusion. You want to get people interested in what you’re writing, so be interesting.
The basic format for your body paragraphs should be: topic sentence, lead in to some kind of proof or example, your proof/example, then an explanation and analysis of your quote or reference. Add more proof as needed. The analysis is important, because it’s what your essay is really about; it’s you explaining what you’re actually talking about, and why you included the information you’ve included. Organize your body paragraphs in a way so that they flow nicely into eachother.
Your conclusion is like a modified version of the introduction, now that you’ve tried to prove your point. Restate your thesis in a slightly different format, and explain the observations you’ve drawn from the information presented. This is where you make everything click, if it hasn’t explained itself yet. By reading your intro and conclusion, someone should get the key points even if they don’t really have all the information. If you think it’s incredibly important, mention it in both the introduction and conclusion.
7. Now, your essay is done! This final step is optional, but highly recommended. You could just call it a day and hand it in, but I would recommend reading through it yourself and editing it as you see fit, then passing it around to anyone you know who might be able to help you proof-read it before handing it in. If your teacher will do this for you, get them to do so as well before you finalize your essay. The more input you get on your essay, the better it will be. When you have a finished product, the heavy lifting is basically done. Edit and revise as you see fit. Then hand it in and wait for the good news!
Some other things you could research to improve your arguments in your essays are logical fallacies, annotation strategies (for writing essays on books or other long material), poetic devices (for literary essays), writing style problems (for adjusting your style based on your needs; one example is that passive voice is good for writing lab reports, while not so good for an english essay) and, well, anything you find your lose marks for repeatedly. Your goal should be to identify problems in your writing and correct them in the future. That’s why I’ve kept all my essays from this past year, to compare my original, less-than-stellar attempts to my later essays. Examining my older essays shows the problems with my writing style and mistakes I make repeatedly, so now I know to avoid them in the future. When you can do the same, well, you no longer need anyone else’s help to improve your writing.
I almost bought a shirt last night saying BE EXCELLENT TO EACH OTHER, and nothing else. Either a black shirt or a red shirt, with white text on both. But the text was the ugly “metal” kind so I didn’t end up wasting $25 on it.
I do agree with the sentiment, though.
Today was pretty good day. I felt better this morning, after yesterday stopped existing, and even got to sleep in a little. When I got out of bed, I had sausages and a bagel and it was pretty good. Then I had some pizza and leftover cake (from someone else’s party, even) for lunch and that was pretty good too. Then I played some more Scott Pilgrim with my brother, or occasionally without him because I was able to pwn everything by myself. That was pretty good.
Shortly after four, I left home to get to the club (or bar? how do we distinguish between the two?) where I’d be seeing The Holly Springs Disaster along with Architects and Structures. I was led to believe the doors opened at 5 pm, so I arrived around 4:30 pm. There was a small group of people waiting outside, but they were clearly not getting in soon. So I sat outside for an hour, before deciding I should probably get in line. It had doubled in size at this point, but that wasn’t saying much. I proceeded to wait in line for another hour and a half, until they started letting people in a bit before 7 pm. That was pretty not good, actually, but apparently things were going according to schedule so I just had the wrong schedule. In the end, the line stretched around the corner and down a fair ways on the next street, so it was pretty good that I got there when I did.
Once inside, I waited for half an hour while Structures got their stuff together. They’re from Toronto, so I’m willing to bet most of the people in the building had seen them six times before, and nobody was all that excited just yet. They played, oh, four or five songs before leaving the stage. Less than half an hour in total. They tried to encourage a circle pit at one point, but that was quickly ruined by hardcore dancers. There were plenty of people already wearing their shirts, but that didn’t equate to interest I guess. Their vocalist was pretty ok live.
Another half hour of setup before Architects started to play. Hailing from Brighton, UK, their vocalist was pretty good live. Many people were excited for them, so I guess they’re decently well known. So in their little British accent, they encouraged everyone to sing along and get excited. And they did. At one point, the entire basement of the place was shaking from the music and everyone jumping almost magically in unison. Again, they called for a circle pit, which once again quickly dissolved under the assault of windmilling arms and floor punches. While they also only played for a little over half an hour, it was still pretty good.
Shortly before 9 pm, The Holly Springs Disaster began their setup. Everyone chanted their name, and because we’re Canadian, we said “eh” instead of “oi” to space things out a little. This was pretty good. When they started to play, the crowd took over singing duties and this was pretty good. I ended up beside a huge guy with enough enthusiasm to match his size, and he basically used up all the space available. If someone was in front of him, he’d lean backwards to headbang and pump his fists over the shoulder of whichever random person was unfortunate enough to be ahead of him. But this was still pretty good. They basically played every song they ever wrote, if you count a medley of their original EP as multiple songs. They did a cover of My Hero by Foo Fighters, a couple more songs, and then pretended to leave the stage. The crowd called for one more song, so they finished the night with Up In Smoke, which I’m pretty sure was literally the only other song they had to play. They did play one of their unreleased songs, Godzilla, which may once have been named King Kong, or could be something entirely different. But the moral of the story is that it was pretty damn good.
I bought shirts for Structures and Architects that are pretty good.
Pretty good kind of day.
This is an important article and if you haven’t read it or heard of the concept it would behoove your monkey brain to have this idea stored away. You’d be surprised how often it makes sense.
I didn’t get around to it last night, but I meant to write a post about my day yesterday including the dream I had that morning. Seeing as I probably didn’t go to bed until after midnight, although I forget when it was. So read on while I tell you of the amazing dream that I had, and don’t forget that as cool as it sounds with me writing out what I remember, it was ten times as cool originally.
The basis of the dream was that an extremely advanced alien race was slowly abducting random humans, and most of us didn’t remember anything about it. So who knows what kind of experiments they were running. However, every person they abducted gained at least a basic telepathic power, depending on their natural aptitudes. We all became connected to a telepathic sort of hive mind, allowing us to communicate with eachother by thought as well as hear eachother’s thoughts. Not many people knew about it, though, because they were too absorbed in their own thoughts to listen in on the thoughts of others. For most people, we would need to consciously tune out of ourselves in order to hear other people’s thoughts. People who don’t tend to think much, though, spent all of their time unconsciously listening in on the thoughts of anyone and everyone who happened to get abducted.
So in my dream, I was unaware of what powers I might have because I didn’t know I had been abducted. I’d heard stories about it, though, so it wasn’t a crazy abstract concept that would make me go crazy if someone sent me a telepathic message. So the start of what I remember about my dream is that I was laying in bed, and apparently fantasizing about someone or another. Then, in my head, I hear my brother’s voice telling me that T-Snap (a stupid guy I used to know) was enjoying my thoughts. So I was like damn, I don’t want him hearing my thoughts! I hate that guy! So then I started trying to censor my thoughts and think about unimportant stuff, though I don’t remember anymore what I was thinking about. My brother sent me some more messages to explain why I hadn’t seen him in a long time, and somehow managed to communicate to me that he had gained the ability to teleport to places the alien race had set up thought harvesting devices for their own teleportation, including their grand library of infinite knowledge. So he went there and learned all kinds of crazy stuff and developed, like, every telekinetic power ever.
At some point during all of that I actually woke up and continued laying in bed trying to censor my thoughts and seriously debating the idea of speaking all of my thoughts out loud. While anyone nearby would be able to hear them, that would probably mean fewer people than all the people who could listen to it if I thought it in my head.
Then eventually I rolled over or something and realized I was no longer dreaming.
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My grandparents brought our dog to us this past weekend, and so far she’s working on settling in. Because I’ve been outside working with my grandfather, and she loves him to bits, and because I hang out with her a lot (I leave blankets or clothes on the floor, and she makes herself a nice little bed out of them) she loves me a little less than him, so when we’re outside working she wants to be outside with us. Unfortunately, this means that she’s barked at and scared a few people who got too closer to our property. First it was our neighbour, as he was going into his house, and the thing about my dog is that she sounds like an attack dog twice her size in terms of weight. So he was pretty much terrified and didn’t stick around long enough for me to apologize after I brought her back home. This was her first act as the new Neighbourhood Menace.
Yesterday, though, she was even worse. Back home, we left her out front on her leash for a couple of months when we were at school, and she was bestest buddies with the lady who delivered our mail. When we moved her leash out back, our mail lady asked us where she went, lol. So I know she’s not a vicious beast, you just have to acknowledge her as opposed to running off in fear. If you stop and say hi, she’ll warm up to you. If you run away as fast as you can, she’ll think she did a good job of defending her family and mark you as a target for the future.
Unfortunately for our new mailman, he chose the second option. I had her on her leash under the carport, where we were hiding from the sun, and he walked by on the way to our neighbour’s house. She started barking and made a mad dash for him, and I pulled her back. Then she tried to go under the table we were sitting beside and nearly knocked it over, nearly pulling me over it in the process, which probably only scared the mailman more. So we’re definitely going on his mental list of crappy houses to deliver to, and if it happens again we might end up on the list of houses with dogs to look out for. But we’re working on fencing the back yard (it already has a hedge and a fence around most of it, so we just need to close it off) so she’ll be pretty harmless when we finish with that. Either she’ll be inside or have no way to get out of the back yard, so she shouldn’t scare anyone too badly.
So that’s how my dog has become the Neighbourhood Menace within less than a week. Nobody around here has a big scary dog, so it’s somewhat new to these people to have her around. At least we’ll be protected from the big scary criminals here in the big scary city. Ain’t nobody gonna mess with something that sounds like her.
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So the basic thing you need to understand about my grandfather is that he does whatever the hell he wants. If he doesn’t know how to do it, he’ll learn. He’s an electrician by trade, and he’s been working since he was six years old. He’s now 73. Skills I can confirm that he has: carpentry, car mechanic, boat mechanic, plumbing. Who knows what else he’s taught himself to do. I have stories to confirm all of those things, like how he built the house he and my grandmother STILL live in to convince her to marry him, or how he helped build a $400,000 modified hydraulic dump truck out of $30,000 worth of parts. But the moral of the story is that he’s basically the handiest handyman ever, and he’ll drop by to fix whatever problems you might have without any question of repayment. They live in New Brunswick, but he plans on coming back here (a 12 hour drive) after he collects some supplies back home, so he can redo a lot of our ancient and terrible electrical work. Chances are he won’t be back as soon as he thinks he will be, but I expect next time I see him I’ll learn how to install a new circuit in my house and which tools to use to drill through a concrete foundation.
Yesterday, after finishing the construction of a handmade sliding gate for our deck, he began work on new handrails for the steps going off the back of the deck. Underneath one of the old rotted ones was a small hornet’s nest. Rather than think “bleh hornets better work around those” like a mere mortal, he smashed it open with a hammer and crushed three of the hornets that were inside one by one. There may have been a fourth, but again, it was a small nest. Then he wiped the dead hornets off the deck and got to work putting that new handrail on.
This is the man who inspired my middle name, and I’d feel like such a badass if I built a house to convince a girl to marry me. If only it was the late 1950’s and there was land basically everywhere for people to spontaneously build on.
This post has several pre-requisite knowledges that you must have in order to find it remotely funny. Number 1: Watch anime, or at least know what it is. Number 2: Know what a “bad dub” is, whether you’ve watched it yourself or watched youtube clips of particularly embarrassing shows.
Now, on average, most immigrants will continue speaking their original language after they move. If the children were born in Canada or the US or wherever, usually their parents will teach them their language (even if they speak english themselves) and they’ll speak that to eachother. Apparently, not everyone does that. Some of them try to improve their english by speaking it all the time. As with most people learning a second language, they don’t speak it as easily as someone who’s been speaking it all of their life. Engrish, lolol, etc.
Now, the thing about learning another language is that not everything translates perfectly. If you’ve watched a bad dub, you know what I’m talking about. In Japan, they have a thing for using sounds rather than words. Rather than yell “Oh my god, Jason! Nooo! Jason! Oh my god!” they will instead yell “AAAAAAAAAAAH” for a minute and a half. While things like “ugh” and “meh” are relatively common in english, we don’t have an easy equivalent to a lot of their exclamations.
So, this all comes together in one hilarious incident when I was in Home Depot today. An asian girl was standing near the entrance to the store, alongside a very disinterested asian girl fiddling with an MP3 player. A slightly older asian guy brings a huge cart in the door, and the first girl yells (what I assume was) his name, surprising everyone in the vicinity. Then she runs towards him and jumps on the cart, plonks herself down and sits cross-legged on the cart. Then she yells “eeeeeeehhhhh I wanna go for a cart ride!!!!!” at which point everyone is like wtf r u doin? Even the cashiers were leaning around their stall things to take a look. Then she looks at the second girl and yells “sister! join me! we’re going for a cart ride eeeeeeeee!!!”
It was just such a perfect moment. My grandfather and I looked at eachother and he just shook his head, a little dismissive shake along the lines of “I have no time for this foolishness.” I didn’t want to laugh because it would just ruin it. But like, just hearing her speak with the right words in the wrong way like any crappy dub, and the other girl’s expression, and the whole spectacle of it. I swear if someone dubbed real life it would be the greatest thing ever.
PS: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: The Game is a fun side-scrolling brawler like any you may (or may not) have played before, with a lot of neat little features that are probably pilfered compiled from all over video game history. Also it’s really great as a co-op game. You can revive and heal your teammates, or pick them up and use them as weapons. You can work together for super attacks and combos, and you can lend eachother money to purchase power-ups and healing items. Should your teammates suck and fail to help you, you come back as a ghost and can steal their extra lives to revive yourself. They don’t get to say no!
Also as a word on how awesome this game is, Scott’s late-fees are an actual thing in the game. As in you go to the video store and there’s a $500 item called “Scott’s Late Fees.” I don’t know what paying them off does, but it has to be awesome. Also I bought a game called Speedy the Porcupine and it gave me +50 speed so I’m awesome now. I was $8 short of buying Never-Ending Fantasy :(
Nice Night for a Neck Injury (Suck Brick Kid) by The Holly Springs Disaster
It occurs to me that I have never, before my post yesterday, mentioned the existence of The Holly Springs Disaster. Well now. Ordinarily, they fall into a category of bands I would normally hate - the kind that spend most of their songs singing about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll with unnecessary cursing and references to “getting fucked up” or drug addictions. Unfortunately, these are basically the only things they cover. Oddly enough, I like them despite that. I just really enjoy listening to them, and somehow they’re one of my favourite bands to listen to merely for the sound and the style. They’ve got a southern metal style to them, despite being Canadian.
The story behind me knowing they exist is that they played a show on PEI and partied with a number of my friends afterwards. Wherever I was, nobody thought I’d want to go or something I guess. Even though the guy who was living in my basement at the time knew I’d like them enough to let me rip their CD, because he happened to be there for that show. You know, without me. The guy providing his bed. And food.
So yeah now I get to see them next Saturday! I live in Ottawa now, where things happen and people come to make things happen. So I shall make the best of it and embark on a quest to see bands I like and appreciate music and stuff. Or something. I dunno here’s a quote from the lyrics.
I have uncovered a new gem, in a bed of rocks.
And I’ve uncovered a gem, and learned a new way of polishing.
Could be set in a wedding band,
Or placed in that necklace around your neck.
I swear I have seen that place before,
It hangs around your neck.
I know this isn’t set in stone.
For whatever odd reason, I want to misinterpret these lyrics to be related to a relationship somehow. Say the gem represents a girl, the necklace represents a relationship, not being set in stone is relationships not working out and “seen that place before” is having felt the same way before.
But that’s just wishful thinking. Likely they don’t mean a whole lot.
ALSO OMG EDIT 100 POSTS GEE WHIZ CAN’T BELIEVE I’M STILL POSTING FOR YOU GUYS
also fashion edit I have bought this as a birthday present for me from my mom
Things I learned at my orientation today:
Things I experienced worth noting:
Yeah so I dunno that’s what I did today. I’m not trying to promote stuff or say my university is better than yours, like I’m not some super excited school spirit guy or anything. I guess I accidentally promised (more like sarcastically humoured the request) to go do Fall Orientation, for a cost of $75, which is called C U (Carleton University, get it) At The Circus and I have zero interest in that, especially since I live off-campus. And so my mom paid for that already and now I feel guiltily obligated to go and not enjoy myself. Allegedly it’s all non-drinking, which is to say they won’t be providing drinks, but that’s not much of a guarantee that nobody will be drunk. As far as I can tell I accidentally made my mom pay $75 for these things (go to the events thing) and like I might go see a good movie if they were going to something good. I don’t really want to go to the beach and not be with anybody or go to a concert if there’s nobody I want to see, and the rest is so un-noteworthy to my mind I won’t even declare my non-interest in them.
Academic orientation will be useful, although I would have assumed that was for everyone? Carleton Complete may or may not also be informative, likewise with Expo Carleton. According to their “why should I bother” section of the FAQ Carleton Complete will make me a brilliant success so it had better be worth $75 alongside the academic orientation. Actually, I don’t care about the money even if I have to give my own money to my mom. Expo Carleton could possibly be a showcase of thing people from the university have done, as I know for example that we have our own art gallery somewhere.
I’m not hellbent on being boring and not meeting anyone, don’t get me wrong, I just look at this list of events and feel very disinterested. Turned off, even, and I’m sure I don’t need to explain that. Of course I’ll go out and do things that interest me, if I know they exist and can find my way there. That’s why I’m going to go see The Holly Springs Disaster next saturday. I’m not worried about being awkward and out of place there, because I’ll enjoy the event regardless of my locally friendless state. I can only hope that my charmingly polite attitude and witty banter will charm people taking the same classes as I am, though they may not necessarily share all of my classes because of my wonky degree. Thus far, this is the only way I know how to meet people. Its effectiveness is yet to be determined.
Oh, slight caveat: each of our classes seems to have a discussion board or something for the students in the class to get information from their teacher and make plans to study together and discuss material and whatever, where I know all kinds of things about being awesome and befriending people. I knew my years of lurking would be good for something in university!
I’ve only barely started reading this but I already know I want you to read it. So read it. It is worth reading, I know this already. I may return to write something long about it. More on this if Rogers decides they like the websites I want to visit.
Before me, gears and cogs and parts for which I have no name turn and click into place as they have every day since I stumbled onto this abandoned warehouse. I haven’t explored every nook and cranny of my newfound sanctuary, but every day I find myself drawn to this room simply to observe this strange machine. I haven’t figured out what it does yet, but so far it’s the only… “living” thing I’ve found here. No people, no animals, nothing but this tireless machine. Maybe the people who live here are hiding in one of the rooms I haven’t found yet. There are supplies enough for a dozen people to live here for months, so it must have been inhabited once. The layer of dust covering those cartons of food and bottled water makes me think it’s been a while since anything in this building ate or drank, but I’m holding out hope to find some survivors. It’s been a very long time since I last lived with sane human beings.
It was purely luck that I found this place at all, and damned good luck at that. In the middle of a sandstorm, halfway to dead already, I saw a shape out of the corner of my eye and ran for it. The building has held up pretty well over the years since it was built, and I haven’t found anything that needs repair. Most buildings I find are little more than boards nailed together, shelters built hastily in the last few years since the weather got worse. This place is pre-war, maybe even older. Older than I am, at any rate. No one in my lifetime could possibly have found this much food and water. Nobody I’ve met could built a building this sturdy, since anyone with access to concrete and steel would have to be incredibly rich. Not really my social circle. Not to mention that machine. Few people bother creating actual machines now. Creating tools and re-inventing things to make life easier, sure, but never a machine that works on its own. Such machines are too complicated and time-consuming, and the resources too hard to find. Not to mention that many pre-war machines were designed to take the place of good, old-fashioned human beings. We do most of our own labour now.
The more I think on it, the more I dislike that machine. Whoever once lived here seems to be long gone, and yet it’s still working for whatever unknown purpose. It has outlived its original purpose, outlived its true masters. Outlived the people who knew what it really did. I wonder if it might be the last of its kind, even more alone than I am. At least I know there are others somewhere. Does it find comfort knowing that it may still have brethren elsewhere, working towards the same strange goal? Or does it relish being one of a kind? Perhaps it doesn’t think at all. Perhaps it was built before thinking machines, or maybe it was built afterwards and specifically designed to avoid the pitfalls of those unholy creations. At any rate, it tolerates my presence here, and for that I’m grudgingly thankful. Or perhaps it can do nothing to stop the only intruder it has seen in years. Maybe the defense mechanisms only start when I steal from the supplies. My own supplies have held up so far, but if I stay here much longer I will have to take from the unused supplies of whoever once lived here.
The sun is going down now, so I’ve returning to the machine room to see if I can understand it with closer examination. Looking around now, there’s a large wrench behind the machine itself. None of the parts I can see signify any particular purpose, and in fact the machine is contained solely in this room. If it were important for the survival of whoever lived here, there would be pipes connecting it to the other rooms to transfer whatever it was creating. If there had been pipes, I might have thought it was a furnace or a carbon dioxide processor for maintaining the air supply. As far as I can tell, whatever it does is limited to this room. Except there’s nothing else in this room. Not even a power supply. What makes it run? There’s no electricity in this building that I can see, and it emits nothing to suggest fossil fuels or steam as its power source. The more I examine it, the more I think there’s no reason for this machine to run at all. I’ve never seen anything similar, and I don’t believe I’ve ever needed one. Whatever it once did must have been a luxury affordable only by someone who could afford all the food stored here.
As I pick up the wrench from the far corner, I’m looking for obvious weak points in the machine. Places vulnerable enough to be smashed or cracked. One glass or plastic tube in particular loops from the crown of the machine to its base, and this is my first target. After a couple of swings, it shatters. Nothing comes from the broken end of the tube, as if nothing circulated through it at all. There was small burst of light when it broke, but nothing else. Looking around the machine now, the exposed gears seem to be the most vulnerable places. An old phrase my father heard from his grandfather comes to mind, and yes, I will be placing a literal wrench in the gears. I’m hoping to pry one loose or perhaps stop it long enough for pressure to build and destroy one of the many parts depending on its motion. After fitting the head of the wrench around an appropriately sized gear, I use all of my weight to try to dislodge the gear. With a grinding, sickening crack, the gear comes flying into the room and only narrowly avoids taking off my right ear. The flash of light nearly blind me this time, but somehow the machine seems to function without that piece. The walls around me look alien and strange in the flickering light that must be coming from within the machine, but I don’t feel threatened by it. I don’t think this is a fragile machine about to self-destruct. Circling the machine again, I see a plume of smoke rising from a crack in the side. It looks vulnerable enough to smash with my wrench.
Upon breaking through the outer shell of the machine, there was a flash of light so bright that I was blinded for over a minute. When I open my eyes, I’m no longer in a room on the left side of a warehouse. The walls, so strange a moment ago, have disappeared completely. I’m in a bare room with white-washed walls, and before me is a ruined machine nothing like the one I just destroyed. I leave the room, but the warehouse is no longer a sturdy sanctuary. It’s much smaller than what I remember, and rather than concrete and steel, I see only white-washed wooden walls. The crates of food and water have been replaced by empty cardboard boxes. In many of the rooms dead bodies lie abandoned, dead from starvation or thirst. The other victims of this cruel oasis. It would seem that machine was integral to the building I saw after all. As if it provides any comfort, no other travellers will fall prey to this holographic stronghold. Perhaps my damned luck will help others more than it helped me, when they pass this building in search of better shelter.
After a while, I found a room with no other unfortunate fools inside. I closed the door and sat down to finish off my supplies of food and water and wait for the inevitable.
So I realize that perhaps I’ve barely mentioned my current real life status here on tumblr. Since people I talk to all the time were unaware of why I was absent. Perhaps those of you who know nothing but what I post on my tumblr worried that I was dead, or that I had abandoned you. No, I was just in the middle of moving fifteen hours away from the city (more like overblown town) in which I was born and raised. From peaceful little Summerside, Prince Edward Island, where you could have found my house if I told you the slightest bit about me, I have just finished moving to Ottawa, Ontario, where I could give you my full name and you could never find me. Prince Edward Island had a provincial phone book. Ottawa has two, or maybe three, phone books to itself. And each of those is at least twice the size of the PEI phone book. Yep, it’s a change of pace.
We’ve been all moved in and everything for a little over a week now, and it’s kinda weird taking all of the *stuff* from your house and putting it into a new building, where you will be living from now on. We didn’t get internet because we were trying to find a good deal, and we ended up with Rogers because Bell was hardly an option. Their good service wasn’t available here, and we wanted good. So Rogers it was, and so far I’m not exactly happy. But I’ll live. Life goes on. I have a lot of catching up to do, but I’m alive! Hooray! And I’m so bored that I could post every day if I felt like it! I even have posts pre-written to post, but I’ll try to space things out. Honest. I’m going to post one now, and then another tomorrow or the day after. Sound like a plan? Yes? Great!
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If Serial Experiments Lain, Welcome to the N.H.K, and Inception had a threesome, Chaos;Head would be born. I can’t speak for the visual novel it’s based on because I didn’t want to change my language settings just to play it, but holy crap, what an entertaining show. Those of you who don’t like subs (hi vael) won’t be able to watch it for a little while yet, but it has been licensed, so yay.
It starts with a series of unexplained events dubbed the New Generation Madness by @Chan (it’s full of less-than subtle references like that, but some are funny), starting with a group suicide and a man becoming pregnant. The hero of our story, Takumi Nishijou, lives in a storage container on top of a tall building, where he spends his time watching anime, being the best at an archaic MMO (why would the data for his character be stored on his harddrive, and furthermore, how could he play in an internet cafe that way…) and jerking off to plastic figurines. Takumi has no friends, goes to school only as often as he needs to graduate, and hallucinates that one of his figurines is alive and talks to him. His sister occasionally comes to his “base” to make sure he’s still alive.
Then he stumbles upon the third event of the New Generation Madness, the slaying of a professor studying a phenomenon called GE-Rate. The killer is… a cute high school girl. Who suddenly appears at Takumi’s school the next day and claims to be one of his only friends. The plot thickens!
Takumi’s pretty much nuts and the whole idea is that half the time you don’t know if anything is actually happening. He hallucinates pretty frequently, often erotically, only to hear someone say his name and realize it wasn’t real. Then these hallucinations start becoming reality, simply because he imagined them. Then girls with swords no one else can see start paying a whole lot of attention to him. Then he becomes a suspect in the murder of the professor, and then stuff gets really crazy.
It’s only twelve episodes long, and honestly it’s pretty well paced. There really aren’t any boring sections where nothing really happens. It’s one mystery after another, and as the pieces start to come together it all works pretty well. Off the top of my head, I don’t think there are any loose plot threads. It just clicks in a really satisfying way, and I think it would be as interesting to watch in one sitting as it would be to watch it slowly and give yourself time to think about it. In the last few episodes, there were a few times where I stopped for a second to connect little details and figure things out. One thing it doesn’t do is patronize you - no big villainous reveal followed by “yes indeed, I AM the villain!” Rather, you’ll see a chat screen left open, and then a confrontation. No need to tell you what you already know. So I like that about it.
One of the characters was tortured as a young child and developed some serious psychological issues, as well as her special powers. She sees the world through mystical fantasy terms, like Black Nights and Demon Kings rather than people with special powers and mind control machines. She makes several references to Cocytus, the River of Grief in Hades, only one of several horrible and depressing rivers to be crossed. At the end of the series, she realizes that the rivers past Cocytus don’t make passing it meaningless; rather, they validate the effort as a proof of strength to surpass further trials. Having passed one challenge, one can clearly pass the next, and the next, if only through willpower alone.
Meanwhile, in Synthetic Worlds, the author compares the endless grind in an MMO to the trial of Sisyphus, who was sentenced to roll a boulder up the side of an impossibly tall mountain. Only at the end of the day, as he neared the top, his strength would fail and the boulder would fall to the base of the mountain. The reason people enjoy the grind in an MMO, however, is because they aren’t simply crawling up one large mountain. They’re crossing an entire mountain range, getting the reward for each milestone they pass rather than only being rewarded at the very end.
Greek mythology aside, the two philosophies are similar at their core. Having climbed one mountain, you don’t admit defeat because there’s a taller mountain ahead. Nor should you expect a grassy plain on the other side, because there will always be challenges to be met and problems to be solved. No amount of success will guarantee a worry-free life forevermore. However, we need to take pride in our accomplishments and relish the joy of success to get us over the next mountain. If you disregard what you’ve accomplished, then every further challenge will be a source of despair, one more reason to be miserable.
That’s the way I see my life when I look back. With every challenge I’ve overcome, I’ve become a better, stronger person. In the face of every challenge to come, I’ll take what I’ve learned and I’ll work until I succeed. Forward motion. Constant progress. I’m not looking for a grand reward at the end of the road to validate my efforts. The results are validation enough. It’s just a question of how you measure progress. Every little step is worth something, even if you need to take a thousand more. Don’t stop moving just because you aren’t there yet. Run faster if you’re that anxious to arrive.
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Hey there kids! Are you really tired of writing, and completely forget the point you were originally trying to make? Don’t worry about it! Here’s a fool-proof guide to making nice fluffy arguments that barely form a cohesive thesis but give you an opportunity to mention all kinds of neato things.
1. Think of something that, in some small way, relate whatever your last paragraph was about.
2. Mix far too many metaphors and sound fancy without being completely clear what you mean. Don’t worry, nobody will notice except your english teacher.
3. Repeat steps one and two until you run out of neato things to bring in.
4. Repeat yourself, either with the same or different metaphors, and maybe add something personal. Just to make sure people reading the rest of what you wrote think of the things you wanted them to think about. Also, if you get a little lost yourself while writing this part, that’s ok. It’s all about the personal discovery they have reading what you’ve written. Let them draw their own conclusions! It’s like Writing 2.0 - involve your readers!
I’ve done it before, and I’ll do it again, because I start writing late or I just get frustrated with what I’ve written but plow ahead because I want to get it out. I’m not going to rewrite this, and I totally want to plug Choas;Head, and I’ve acknowledged the failure so now it’s a learning experience for everyone. Also, plan your essays. Having a thesis is important. Having supporting points is a nice touch.
Now it’s time for the bonus quote, yay! From Dust of Dreams by Steven Erikson, the ninth book of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series. It’s a completely ridiculous series, and not for the faint of heart. I started when book 6 was new, and they only get longer. I think the entire series reaches my hip or higher now. I wouldn’t know, because I donated them to my high school library because I knew I wouldn’t have enough space to take them with me to Ottawa. Sad, because now I don’t know what to do with this book and the next, which will be the final volume. I can’t just keep volumes 9 and 10 on the shelf, but who could I ever give them to? They’re basically useless on their own T.T
Also as for the quote specifically I absolutely love it and it was like the most amazing thing ever to read and it makes so much sense in context and the reference is obvious (in the book I mean) but it still makes me think of a badass person going around fixing everything and knowing the world is horrible and they can’t change that, but doing their own small part rather than giving up. Kinda like Scott Shelby in Heavy Rain appearing out of nowhere to solve problems and then just disappearing without needing any thanks. Kinda like what I aspire to be too. I want a fist full of tears T.T
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Somewhere, out there, you will find the purest essence of that philosophy. Perhaps in one person, perhaps in ten thousand. Looking to no other entity, no other force, no other will. Bound solely in comradeship, in loyalty honed absolute. Yet devoid of all arrogance. Wise in humility. And that one, or ten thousand, is on a path. Unerring, it readies itself, not to shake a fist at the heavens. But to lift a lone hand, a hand filled with tears. You want a faith? You want someone or something to believe in? No, do not worship the one or the ten thousand. Worship the sacrifice they will make, for they make it in the name of compassion - the only cause worth fighting and dying for.
I remember the other thing I’d noticed about Ottawa now. Air conditioning. In PEI, nobody has air conditioning in their homes. Businesses have it to at least keep things at a decent temperature. Here, everything is COLD. Way, way too much AC. Everywhere. Houses, hotels, everything is air conditioned to death. It’s terrible.
Also, slight correction: the burka is just the kind that completely covers the face. I haven’t seen any of those. Sorry for my failure at Islam.
Now that I’ve been here for something like 30 hours, there are a few things I’ve noticed about Ottawa that are different from Summerside, Prince Edward Island. They aren’t exactly pros and cons, they’re just things that have stood out since I’ve been here. Not so much culture shock, as I’ve spent a week here and a week in Toronto before now, and there are things I knew to expect. Just interesting things to note.
Ok I had more to say but I forgot because I started trying to plan stuff out. We found a comic book/board games/card games shop nearby, and an anime shop in the same little plaza thing. That’s pretty cool. I purchased All You Need Is Kill which is about a guy fighting an impossible battle against an alien swarm, but being reborn repeatedly and slowly getting better and better each time. I also purchased Harmony (I think that was the title) about some future Utopia in which no one wants or needs for anything and some people try to kill themselves by starvation and simply aren’t allowed to do so. It seems really awesome and interesting and when I’m done reading it I’ll recommend it if it’s worth reading.
First of all, I’ve had dreams before where Vael and I sneak into a guarded compound and he murders all the guards until we finally come to an vault in which Jhonen Vasquez lives and works in what is essentially a prison cell. Except it’s his house and he just does that for kicks or something. The first time this happened Vael was using a silenced pistol and went in and introduced himself, and I didn’t post anything about it because I completely forgot about it. There were a few more afterwards, and as far as I can tell we may have received some kind of missions to embark on and were returning to report or something.
After having another one of these dreams last night, I somehow remember all of the others up to the point of speaking with Jhonen. I remember the infiltration and what weapon Vael was using, and if there was anything specifically noteworthy about what he was wearing. Because I can’t remember why we were sneaking in there at all, or what happened when we got there, that’s pretty much all worthless. Except I remember some of why we did it last night because I woke up not long ago so here I am typing it.
This time, he was wearing a skull mask like the guys in The Town (it’s a movie I saw the trailer for, the name is worthless but go ahead and look it up if you want) and was using throwing knives. The mask had night-vision as well as lights, and while Vael mainly used the night-vision to snipe people in the head with the throwing knives, there were a few times he blinded them with the lights and surprised them.
We get into the vault thing where Jhonen lives, and Vael removes his mask, and he greets us like he knows us well and is particularly excited to see us. Vael suggests something to Jhonen, who gestures towards his computer and asks why he would ever do such a thing, when he has everything he needs in front of him. Vael answers that the Jhonen he knew would never think that way, and leans over to calmly slit his throat.
And then we leave, and everyone is dead, and I don’t know what my role was aside from being a passive spectator to a conversation without context thanks to my selective amnesia. I did not sneak, I did not kill, and I did not say a word. I was merely a silent witness.
There hasn’t been much to talk about at my grandparents’ cottage, and I’m not sure the drive to Ottawa will be crazy and exciting either, so this will probably be my only tumblr post until we get settled in sometime on tuesday. We’ll have the keys on monday, but we won’t have any furniture or pillows or anything - so we’re just going to stay in a hotel again that night.
The only really interesting thing is that I worked on writing a letter last night, by which I mean an actual letter that will be mailed with stamps and everything. I know that must seem ridiculous, so rather than explain that to every single one of you individually, I’ll just tumbl the story and save myself some time.
Two years ago, I had two jobs and a girlfriend during the summer between tenth grade and eleventh. One job was a year-round part time job at a convenience store down the street, which I kept for two years straight. Generally I worked every saturday and sunday, with occasional shifts during the week. The second job was a summer job, working part-time at a summer camp for Canadian Parents for French. I had worked there the year before, and it was lots of fun, so I figured it would be alright this year as well. I had to work 7:30-12:30 every weekday, which meant going to bed early so I wouldn’t be tired. I ended up staying late most of the time to make sure none of the kids mysteriously disappeared, but that’s neither here nor there.
Thanks to my two jobs, I had plenty of money that summer. I ordered a ton of crap online, namely a bunch of t-shirts and a dozen PS2 games I got on eBay for around $20 each. Having to wait a few weeks to get any of it kinda sucked, but then knowing it could arrive soon was always exciting and I was always really happy when I got stuff in the mail. After getting a particularly large bundle of stuff (I think I got a package of shirts and four games on the same day - they had arrived over the weekend or something and were all delivered on monday) and being super excited about it, my girlfriend at the time said that she wished she could get stuff in the mail, because nothing ever arrives in the mail for her. Simple solution for that: I would write her a letter! I ended up writing a second one afterwards, and that was all well and good because she got something in the mail and everyone won forever at mailboxes.
Skipping forward about two years (minus a couple of weeks, probably), here I am again writing a letter to her. First of all, I have no reliable internet until we get everything hooked up at the new house, so writing a letter and mailing it is a fine way to keep busy and stay in touch. Second of all, it’s slightly more personal than writing an e-mail, so it’s a good way to let someone know you haven’t forgotten about them. I’m throwing a sheet of stamps in with this first letter to make sure I get letters back, so I can guarantee we’re both still alive for at least ten letters worth of time. I’m not sure how often we’ll write to eachother, really; I wouldn’t want to run through my initial stamp investment before the end of the summer. On the other hand, it’s not 1708 anymore, so it’s not like it will take months for our letters to arrive. Maybe we’ll send them when they’re a specific length, so if life has been terribly exciting it won’t cover much time, but if it’s been horribly boring it might cover a couple of weeks.
Would you like me to write you a letter!? I can probably do that, but I make no guarantees about sending them regularly. It does take a bit of time to write a proper letter, and if I’m writing seven letters every week, I may run out of things to talk about because I’m spending all of my time writing letters. I can probably send you one or two, though, but only if you send one back! I have to know it got there, and I have to know I didn’t waste my time writing a letter to someone who doesn’t care enough to reciprocate D:
I’d like to conduct a really detailed study of people doing distance courses for university vs people doing their courses on campus. Motivation, work ethic, performance, time spent studying, anything relevant really. There’s likely a very different group of people doing courses online compared to the usual university crowd, so I know grades don’t prove much, but it’s possible that online courses are just the way of the future. The people who seriously want to learn can, and will, continue to succeed while hopefully eliminating the less dedicated students.
It’s quite possible that a study has already been done on this, but I’m not as interested in the results as I am in the idea of researching something like that o.0 Still, if you google up something relevant, send it to me!
Spoils by Protest the Hero, from their album Fortress. A phrase from the lyrics jumped out at me today, which is why I’m posting this song specifically. It’s still an amazing song, but either way, words!
Every word ever written will fall short of its intent,
Even sung, or spoke, or screamed, they will betray what they have meant.
Language is the heart’s lament, a weak attempt to circumvent the
loneliness inherent in the search for permanence.
All the future ghosts who scratch their names in wet cement,
Demeaning meaning as they shout out at the emptiness.
What say ye? Is your tumblr a series of shouts into the emptiness of the inter-tubes? Do your words perfectly convey the thoughts and feelings they’re meant to represent? Does it make you feel better to write your thoughts publicly, with the assumption that anyone who really cares about you will actually read them?
(kinda, hopefully, yes - in that order)
Destructoid likes people to introduce themselves, so I’ve now done mine. You can see it there. Do you like it? Let me know!
I don’t know how much of it you can watch on there, but good luck finding a torrent for an episode of Regis and Kelly. If you find a better link, let me know.
Update on drunk party: They didn’t get kicked out, and think they got the guy they were talking to fired. They were quite proud of that.
Just watched twenty drunk people get kicked out of our hotel. When we came in to park, they were all partying out by the pool. Then they started leaving that area and taking the tables and chairs with them XD So either they were snagging the hotel stuff or they brought their own to have a party there, either of which is hilarious. Then we go into the main lobby and many of them are there, and two drunk frat boys are arguing with the staff. Then as we went to the elevator to go up to our floor, a Mountie - not a police officer, oh no, this was a real Mountie with his little hat and vest and everything - came into the building. Presumably to eject the loud partygoers, who apparently were disturbing a pregnant woman badly enough that she complained.
It’s fun reading a book with an unreliable narrator, right? Makes the whole experience that much more intellectual. Some games have used a modified version of the idea and intentionally misled the player, and when it works, it works incredibly well. Couldn’t hurt to see more of that.
I pasted a short bit from a Z-Day story written by myself. The result I got was that I write like Stephen King.
Apparently my depression post is like Dan Brown. Somehow.
My modern neurasthenia post is like Jonathan Swift, and I’m ok with that.
My post about future orientedness is also like Dan Brown… Uh oh.
My valedictorian speech is like Stephen King o.0
I don’t have any fiction I’ve written with me, so I guess that’s all the analysis I’m going to get. *bookmarks for later*
Incinerated Wishes by Division By Zero.Click the above link to listen to the song, because tumblr doesn’t allow songs over 10 mb. Click the link to the side for lyrics.
Division by Zero is a great example of actually progressive metal, and particularly these guys have crazy range. I think True Peak is a little more varied, but I like the lyrics of this song better.
They’ve just released a new album as well, and they’re actually somewhat easy to track down now, so yay! They deserve to be more well known.
Asking sky,
Asking deep,
Asking painter of light, where is the way I should go?
Hey, wait, don’t you want to know?
For you, I lost my mind!
For you, I lost my soul!
Hooray! The one key event in my trip to the United States to meet Vael!
Woke up an hour in advance of our alarm like usual, which was good because it didn’t go off. Left here at 8 am, arrived at 10 am. Got in and spent about three hours in the dealer’s room examining many fine wares, as well as dropping by the booth manned by the creator of Billy vs Snakeman to score me some free stuffs and chat about the game long enough to lose Vael’s interest and learn he recognized me by my character name for being awesome. Later, we split up - basically twenty feet between us - while he bought something and I went back to BvS man’s anime booth and talked about the game long enough to lose Vael himself. So then we meandered around looking for eachother, and after a while I recognized him from afar and bounded over to catch up with him.
At that point we realized we had spent three hours buying crap and hadn’t even seen the rest of the con yet, so we went to a local tavern (complete with sticky floors) before running back to see stuff. We went in to a panel only to realize the thing we were looking for was actually on Sunday (today was Saturday for those not keeping track at home) and quietly excused ourselves after attracting attention by being obviously disinterested. Then we went looking for a the Steampunk Music Experience thing only to find out it had been cancelled and replaced by a Rock Band tournament. Great, but not good enough.
I think at this point we had a bit of time before the next interesting panel, so we went back to the dealer’s room and looked at more stuff (including some awesome but inconvenient steampunk goggles) before watching a Super Art Fight featuring, among others, Yuko Ota, Garth Graham and Lar deSouza. Then we saw a panel about Why You Can’t Move To Japan and Instantly Be Famous. Then we went to a Secret Webcomic Panel, which was so secret nobody showed up. So we went to see the guys behind Atomic Robo and 8-Bit Theatre, which was fun. Then we went absolutely nowhere and waited for Cyanide & Happiness to come to us, and while only one C&H guy was there, it was funny and great. We eventually began giving standing ovations to anyone entering the room late. We got some stickers from one of the stand-ins for his own webcomic so that was good.
After that, we ran by the artist alley (which seemed to be closing down anyway) because we hadn’t been there and checked out stuff and talked to people at booths because we learned from the Cyanide & Happiness panel that it’s weird when people totally ignore you. I snagged a shirt for $10 which was great and then we took off.
I acquired:
Total: $152, proving we did in fact spend money so we could spend more money
1. My history of depression
I don’t know when I became depressed, but it likely had something to do with taking Ritalin to help with my ADHD. I also forget exactly when I began that, but it was at least before third grade. So I was very young. My parents had done a good job of educating me before I began school, so my early years in school were extremely boring. I already knew everything except cursive writing, except I was shy and afraid of looking like a nerd, so I didn’t speak up in class or show off how smart I was. Yet people still teased me, and over the course of few years their bullying paid off as I began to hate myself and blame myself for everything, rather than blaming others.
It peaked when I was ten years old, in fourth grade, after my parents decided I was mature enough to stay home by myself. One day, while home alone, I decided that I was tired of ruining everything, and I was going to make the world a better place by removing myself from it. I went downstairs and grabbed the biggest, sharpest, knife that we owned, and brought it upstairs to my bed. Psychologists will tell you a ten year old brain hasn’t developed enough to think in the way I did that day, but apparently there are exceptions. I stared at my reflection in the knife and thought about my life, all the people I knew, and all of the things that bothered me. I realized that most of what I blamed on myself had nothing to do with me, but most importantly, I realized that as miserable as I was, removing my pain and misery from the world would create even more pain and misery to take its place. The pain I would create in the people who cared about me by killing myself would be greater than what I was removing. This is almost universally true. You may or may not care about them, but there will always be people who are glad that you are alive. Remember that.
I decided I couldn’t kill myself until the day I was completely and totally alone, but I was still depressed. Nothing changed for about four years, until I met a girl who made me feel good for the first time in a long time. To make a long story short, I cared about her, and that was a new experience for me. We became close, eventually dated on and off for a little over two years, and along the way I became happy and realized I wasn’t as terrible as I always thought. It’s been a little over a year and a half since we broke up, but we’re still friends. She helped me overcome my depression, likely for good, and having done it myself I know it’s entirely possible.
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2. The purpose of this post
My goal here is to explain what it’s like to be depressed to people who haven’t been depressed, or who are so used to living with their depression that they’ve never recognized it for what it is. For those who are depressed, or who have been in the past, I also hope to offer some kind of solace.
Depression is a touchy issue, so I’m going to end up subdividing and classifying things all over the place, but I’m only trying to include everyone and alienate as few people as possible. I don’t want a poor choice of words or absent-minded exclusion to hurt anyone, or disregard their experiences. Depression is an extremely personal thing, and something many people keep to themselves and talk about only with their closest friends. I’ll never be able to cover every single possibility. There are things I simply have no experience with. If you understand what I’ve said, but it doesn’t apply to you or someone you know, then the best way to understand their situation is to ask them.
I also want to stress that this isn’t an instruction manual or a how-to guide for curing depression. I am not equipped to say “if you are depressed because of x, then do y”. Professional help is very easy to find, and if the situation calls for it, you would be foolish not to seek it out.
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3. What is depression, and why does it happen?
Some people think depression is simply a feeling, a way of feeling sad. That’s true, and most people get that from time to time, and it might last for a few days but eventually it goes away. That sucks, but it’s not really what I’m talking about. I’m more interested in the psychological disorder kind of depression, which sounds scary, but it’s an easy choice of words to distinguish between the two. This is the depression that stays for months, years, even decades. It’s a constant state of that depressed mood, and even when things are going well, it doesn’t magically disappear. You might cheer up for a week or two, but then it slams you back down. This kind of depression sticks around until your life improves drastically, to the point where you’ve solved the initial issue and many more. That’s important, because depression doesn’t just happen; something has to set it off.
Generally, everyone who becomes depressed has a problem in their life. These are extremely varied, but essentially, depression won’t go away unless that problem is solved. It doesn’t just disappear. If insecurities and poor self-esteem caused the depression, then fixing those will be the only way to get rid of the depression. If abuse or relationship troubles are the issue, then that needs to be taken care of. Basically, you can’t fix the effect while ignoring the cause.
There is the possibility that depression runs in the family, as it runs in mine through my maternal grandmother, but I don’t believe that means you’re doomed to be depressed forever. My mother told me that it’s just an imbalance of chemicals, and there’s nothing wrong with taking pills to correct that, and to a certain degree that is true. There’s nothing wrong with someone taking anti-depressants. There is everything wrong with the belief that pills and prescriptions will solve everyone’s problems. Again, the most important thing involved in overcoming depression is eliminating the catalyst. Anti-depressants will not help someone in an abusive relationship improve their life. Leaving the abuser and dealing with the emotional scars must have priority. I cannot make this any clearer.
The other key thing is that depression cannot be cured like a fever or a cold, and it can’t be removed with a good pep talk. You can’t force it out of someone simply by caring about them and supporting them. A personal impetus to be happy and have a better life is the only way to completely overcome it. Maybe that comes from an inspiring event in your life, maybe it comes from an inspiring person who comes along to save the day. I know that simply meeting a wonderful girl did not cure my depression, because I was still depressed for a time when we were together. It was through the gradual process of deciding I wanted to be happy and accept myself that I got through it, and I couldn’t have done it without her. I also know that it didn’t depend entirely on her, because it hasn’t come back now that things have changed between us. Of course, I get sad and “depressed” every once in a while, and that’s a legacy of my years of depression that will never stop completely. Now, however, I know how to cope, and I know that it will pass. For a day or two I might isolate myself and alienate a few friends, but inevitably I cheer myself up and life goes on.
The reason I’m addressing the idea of treating depression like a normal is twofold: first, if you are depressed, you must know how to deal with it. It’s hard, and I would honestly put anyone who overcomes their depression far above the average in terms of emotional strength, but you will have to want it and work for it to get there. Second, if you know someone who is depressed, you have to choose between helping them cope and helping them get better. I’ve learned first hand that you can’t compliment someone so much that they gain self-esteem, nor can you cheer them up to the point where their depression goes away. A depressed person in a good mood is still depressed, and they will be depressed when you aren’t there to cheer them up. You have to support anything they do to contribute towards getting better and give them as much solid advice as you can to solve the problems in their life. It comes to a point where you must accept that no amount of love and care will lead someone to change their life, and if you can’t convince them by yourself, you have to find some other strategy to work with. I can’t tell you what you will have to do, but it falls to your best judgment to decide how to proceed.
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4. Why is depression such a problem?
The main problem with recognizing depression is that it’s not like “woe is me, I am so depressed and miserable and sad!” It’s not as direct as that, and you don’t really tell yourself that you’re depressed. If it’s something that comes and goes, maybe you recognize it, but if it’s something you’ve had persistently, it’s not often that our brains identify it for what it is. You just don’t feel things properly, but if you’re used to it, you’ll never know the difference. Your joy is muted, your excitement for things you would otherwise care about disappears, and life becomes a chore as all pleasure seems to disappear. It becomes hard to care about anything positive, and very easy to care too much about everything negative. The worst part is that you don’t care that things aren’t right in your life, and it’s extremely hard to want to change and to work steadily towards helping yourself. With most types of depression, people feel as though THEY are the problem in their life, so it makes it even harder to care about helping themselves.
To be clear, this is not fun. There’s no pleasure involved in being depressed. It doesn’t make you feel any better that people who want to help you are frustrated by the fact that you won’t help yourself. I don’t really need to list the symptoms of depression, but they all work together to create a constant mental, physical, and emotional fatigue. Overcoming all of that is one of the most emotionally strenuous tasks many people will ever undertake.
The difficulties people face such as the loss of family and loved ones, dealing with illness, and other emotionally painful things, require a different kind of strength to surpass. Other people can help you deal with grief, but no one can give you the strength to feel genuine happiness again. After you’ve survived depression, there’s not much that can bring you down as low as you once were. After you learn to cope with minor setbacks, and figure out the things that help you preemptively stop bouts of depression - sleeping well, exercising, listening to upbeat music, writing, whatever works for you really - you’re basically set. Even when things go bad, it’s business as usual rather than the end of the world.
Not only do people who are already depressed have a hard time wanting to work towards helping themselves, but they don’t usually feel like doing a whole lot of other things either. By procrastinating and spending time thinking about everything that’s wrong with your life, things inevitably pile up or don’t get done and make everything worse. It’s a bad cycle to get caught in. Just like overcoming depression, overcoming this cycle means not only taking care of all the work you didn’t do, but going ahead and doing the work you’re supposed to be doing right now so you don’t get stuck in it again. It’s a big productivity waster, and with extreme depression it’s a struggle to get anything done at all. You simply don’t care.
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5. What’s it like to be depressed?
You may know the symptoms in theory, but that really doesn’t tell you anything about what it’s like to be depressed. You’ll hardly ever feel happy and you won’t enjoy much, you’ll sleep too little (or too much), you won’t eat enough (or you’ll each too much), you might have inexplicable headaches and you’ll spend most of your time tired. Sure, none of those things sound pleasant, but the broad symptoms like that are the least of your worries. Most of those symptoms are physical, and the only emotional ones (no joy or pleasure) doesn’t sound very intimidating. Basically, reading that doesn’t give you any idea of the mental and emotional effect it has when it becomes a “normal” part of your life.
When I was in junior high, one of the ways I visualized my depression was a filter separating me from everything and everyone else. When life was going well, it was a light grey filter. When the depression got worse, it was a darker grey. The filter coloured my perception of everything in life, from my interactions with others to my thoughts and emotions. A dark grey filter led to pessimism and paranoia, and I would assume the worst of everyone. I felt emotionless, like a robot or a psychopath. Things I used to love became soulless routines, and things I should have enjoyed meant nothing to me.
Being depressed was the emotional equivalent of needing glasses to see or a hearing aid to hear. Things that should be there are nowhere to be found, and it’s very difficult to function normally with the kind of dampening you get from not seeing, hearing, or feeling everything you should. If you continue the charade and act like nothing is wrong, you’ll only aggravate the symptoms and make the problem worse. Lying and acting adds further stress to your life as you try to convince others that nothing is wrong.
Imagine, then, looking out at a beautiful sunset. It’s amazing, it’s beautiful, and to simply experience it once would be to live a better life. Except when you look out, the sun is colourless and drained of any potential beauty. Birds are chirping and the radio in your car is playing your favourite song, but these sounds are far away and distorted as if your head were submerged in a foot of water. That’s a bleak version of an incredibly beautiful moment, which is sad on its own, but it doesn’t stop there. Apply that same dampening effect to daily tasks, which are far less beautiful than a gorgeous sunset, and imagine living with that every single day. Nobody really enjoys those things, so imagine being depressed and having to force yourself through them. Sounds… depressing, doesn’t it?
This is an article proposing that depression has not evolved itself away because it inspires a cycle of improvement to prevent depression in the future. vossk tumbl’d it ages ago, then vael reblogged it not long after I started my tumblr, and I didn’t want to re-reblog it so soon. So I decided to wait until later. And now it’s later!
However, over the many months that I’ve been planning out a giant post about depression, it no longer has anything to do with that article. It is absolutely worth reading, and many of the things it proposes (rumination being used to help you avoid the same problem in the future, depressed people having a hard time caring about things they deem as unimportant because they’re too fixated on their own pain, thinking analytically when depressed) are brilliant and should feel familiar to anyone who has been depressed. I just don’t really have anything to add to it, and I want my post to stand on its own. There are two quotes I would like to draw particular attention to, though:
“I remember one patient who came in and said she needed to reduce her dosage,” he says. “I asked her if the antidepressants were working, and she said something I’ll never forget. ‘Yes, they’re working great,’ she told me. ‘I feel so much better. But I’m still married to the same alcoholic son of a bitch. It’s just now he’s tolerable.’ ”
And also:
"We end up having to keep people on the drugs forever. It was as if these people have a bodily infection, and modern psychiatry is just treating their fever.”
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I would also ask you not to reblog or otherwise share my post until you fully believe it’s complete. I won’t call it finished until I’ve incorporated the input of everyone who has anything to say about it. If you’re going to reblog it and write about it, I would instead like to talk to you about it and improve it first. If I forgot to mention something, or simply didn’t know about something you have personal experience with, I would love your input. Questions and concerns, constructive criticism, hate mail, love and adoration… I will accept all of these things and more! I have MSN, AIM, and xfire listed at the bottom of my tumblr. Whether you use Yahoo or ICQ, send me an e-mail at my hotmail address and I’ll get a hold of you somehow.
The post should be up shortly, I just thought I’d take this part off because it doesn’t really belong with the main post anyway. It feels awesome to actually sit down and write for once.
I didn’t feel like writing at all yesterday afternoon, so I played Lost Planet instead. After watching Letters to Juliet and Eclipse last night, both of which are love stories, I feel like writing! I’ll discuss them briefly here, so that they don’t get in the way of the post I’m going to write about being depressed. If you see this before I finish writing it and would like to proof-read/review/discuss/whatever it with me, I have xfire, MSN, and AIM listed at the bottom of my tumblr. If you don’t use any of those, well, tumbl your alternative or e-mail either the hotmail or AOL account.
So, Letters to Juliet. Startling similarities, such as the main character being a perfectionist about her writing and dealing with a fiancé who eventually chooses his work over her. Notable only for a conversation where the girl admits to being a perfectionist about her writing, and her future-fiancé-replacement accuses her of simply being afraid to be imperfect. It’s not far from the truth, and it’s a noble sentiment (your writing is great, stop worrying about it), but I would instead say that perfectionism comes from insecurity rather than fear. Fear would mean fear of failure, fear of being imperfect or not good enough. You would look at what you’ve accomplished and think “I hope this is good, I hope people like it, I worked so hard on this so it had better do well.”
Unfortunately, perfectionists don’t really think about that. Rather, they tend to look at what they’ve accomplished and think “this is nothing, this is terrible, I worked so hard on this and it was a complete waste of time.” It’s not so much a fear of anything as it is not believing in yourself. You NEED those perfect marks/job/whatever you happen to be working for, but you don’t think you’re good enough, and ultimately time runs out or you get frustrated and you take something you aren’t personally happy with and hand it in anyway. Maybe it goes well, maybe it doesn’t. Even worse, when it’s something without a deadline, is when it goes unfinished because you simply don’t believe the finished product will be any good. I’ve got so many half-formed ideas for writing floating around, it’s more about deciding which to write about than actually writing. I wouldn’t be writing a number of posts I’m going to make if I wasn’t relaxing and avoiding “real life” at all costs.
One huge caveat: This is simply the kind of perfectionism I see often in myself and others in my academic classes. The people who take Advanced English and every science course available. I accept the existence of positive perfectionism, in the sense of someone who simply does their best all of the time and makes sure everything is perfect. There’s also neurotic forms of perfectionism, where there’s an obsessive compulsion towards working far too hard and never thinking anything is done. I’m simply writing based on personal experience, and likely for everyone person who feels perfectionism differently there will be several who nod and recognize the feelings I’ve described.
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Now, Eclispe is a complicated monster simply because it has a complicated place in an already complicated history of my complicated relationship. Essentially, it was chock full of similarities to myself and others, both in terms of character and situations. It’s not as clear cut as I’m x character and they’re y character, though, as there are bits of each of us in all of them. At any rate, these similarities were present situations rather than old-ish history when my girlfriend at the time was reading the books, and this created all sorts of depressing experiences. It was just a bad coincidence that the books came to her attention at the absolute worst time possible. Though I suppose reading them beforehand, or afterwards, would have been just as bad… It was just entirely unfortunate.
Oh, and as far as the characters in Eclipse go… I feel no empathy towards the horrifically beautiful things presented on that screen. They’ve taken humans and air brushed and sparkled them to nearly disgusting levels. Maybe that’s how some people imagined the characters in the books (I doubt it?) but it certainly doesn’t evoke anything in me.
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Anyway, I’m going to go work on that post about being depressed. It probably won’t be finished tonight, so you have plenty of time to contact me and offer your editing services or whatever help you feel you can give. Oh, and I suppose I should be clear, it’s based on being depressed in the past. It’s not meant to be my life’s story, either, but instead some exposition on something people either understand too little or understand far too well. For those who do not understand it, I’ll try to explain.
I can’t help but quote As I Am by Dream Theater here, because it’s basically what I would have said anyway, only I can attribute it to someone else and sound snazzy. Ho ho ho.
To those who understand, I extend my hand
I really can’t define it better than the article itself did, thus: “George Miller Beard diagnosed ‘neurasthenia’ as an ailment caused by modern civilization’s taxing effect on the nervous system, with sufferers experiencing headaches, fatigue, depression, insomnia, and more.” Essentially, the core feeling is one of restlessness. On a wide scale, I do often feel restless about my life and what I’m going to do. On a smaller scale, I’ll often sit uncomfortably in front of the computer and try to decide which of many things I will do, or get up and pace around without any idea of what I meant to do when I got up. I definitely think the idea is very relevant, and I also think it’s a deeper, more complex problem than the handful of symptoms described in the article. The list of symptoms there almost reads like an infomercial (“do you feel lost, restless, or shiftless?” Then our product is for you!) but I can definitely see the basic idea in myself and others. More important is the cause, and how to get rid of it. Let’s try and figure that out, shall we?
The article says that “Neurasthenia is back for the same reason it plagued our forbearers; our expectations have not kept pace with changing technology and culture.” Think about that - we have so many things at our fingertips that were once impossible, and yet most teenagers and young adults only have the dated wisdom of their parents to rely on. So they’re told to go to university, get a degree in something useful enough to land a job and interesting enough to go to work on time. We’re living 20th-century style in the 21st century, and it isn’t working all that great. With all the wonderful things out there, from governments that ensure everyone is healthy to guaranteed internet access, we get bogged down by timeless “necessities” like working to pay for our food, our homes, etc. and trying to find a proper girl/boy to bring home to Ma and Pa so we can be happy. It’s not that those things are no longer necessary, but that there are options these days that fit a lot better with our new way of life than many of the dated systems still upheld by tradition. By holding onto these old expectations and trying to make them fit with a modern life, we end up feeling empty and restless, waiting to fit the ideal our parents had for themselves, which they passed on to us.
“It is the gap between our expectations about the world and how we really experience it that causes our modern 'neurasthenia.' New media and technology has seemingly brought the whole world just within our reach. But we can never seem to grasp it.” We expect the “real world” of our adulthood to be exactly as our parents told us it would be, so we’re looking for that when it no longer exists. The world we really live in requires a different kind of thinking from what we’ve been taught, and it’s very individual. No longer do we need to follow the crowd to be “successful.” Taking positive steps forward and never stagnating due to uncertainty will, eventually, lead us all to our own ways of life. When we eliminate the internal conflict between our burgeoning ideals and the expected way of life, restlessness will gradually disappear.
On the smaller scale, uncertainty is the only cause for feeling restless. “Our anxiousness comes from standing in the middle of a decision. We know we don’t really want to do something but we feel bad letting it go.” Maybe you were told to keep your options open, maybe you have a broad range of interests but no dedicated hobby. Either way, not being able to decide on what you want to do right this second is a problem when you’re spread too thin, and that’s something that happens a lot these days thanks to the power of the internet. It really is better to restrict your options some and hope it doesn’t come back to haunt you than to flounder in the middle of everything and tell yourself it’s the most efficient way to live. By focusing on the things you really like to do and forgetting about the things you “should” do or “should” experience, you’ll have more time and enjoy yourself more.
I wish it was a simple matter of 'do this, then do that’, to solve this problem. Unfortunately, thinking that everyone can follow the exact same route to success is part of what caused the problem in the first place. So I look forward to seeing your definition of success, or at the very least watching you work towards achieving it or discovering it. I’m still trying to reconcile my own ideals with the need to make money and maintain a roof over my head, but slowly and surely I’m pruning the unnecessary extremities of my life and focusing on the things that matter. I just have to figure out what all of those things are. I’ve got some, but it’s not perfect yet. And that’s just how life is!
Early morning: My teeth were stolen from under my nose last night, as well as my watch. I returned, frantically, to the house I found yesterday, and found them only after half an hour spent searching. Thankfully, it was not compromised before I left. The watch wasn’t worth nearly as much. Once that was done, I was on the road again, all by my lonesome. I thought as I walked, to help pass the time. I thought that maybe some people are just destined to be alone, because of the truths they think no one will believe… when, in fact, we all have similar things to hide. It’s fairly common to open up to someone, only to find they’ve had a similar experience or can relate for one reason or another. I walked for a few hours, and stopped in a diner around noon.
Noon: As I ate my lunch, an old man came to sit with me. I had never met this man before in my life, yet instantly I felt as though I should trust him. He watched me silently for nearly twenty minutes as I ate, looking into my eyes and seeming to read deep into my soul. When I finished, he reached out and took hold of my wrist. He put his index and middle fingers there, as though feeling for a pulse. Then he nodded, folding his hands on his lap.
“Young man,” he said, “I don’t pretend to know what you’ve been through. I don’t know who, or what, you’ve lost in your incredibly short life. Nor do I know the extent of your pain. Nor do I have some mystical reason for such unjust things happening to perfectly good people. The one thing I do know is that your heart yet beats. It is wounded, but strong. You’ll live.”
He smiled as if this was all I needed to hear, and nothing else he could say would be of any further use to me. Then he left the diner entirely, and when I followed him to watch him leave, he was already gone. I returned inside and paid for my meal before returning to the lonely road.
Late evening: A young man, clearly wealthy and with fabulous hair, drove me the rest of the way to my destination. We spoke about life, and I told him about my encounter with the old man. He told me he’d use that line for sure when trying to get a girl on rebound. I nodded absently and spent the rest of the long drive watching the grass fly by.
After arriving at my destination, I watched my contact conduct a symphony of destruction. It was equal parts the most beautiful and terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. The sounds and sights were glorious, and the screams of fear and pain seemed to only amplify the beauty of the song. Yet as he played, tears streamed down his cheeks. I wanted to touch his shoulder, to comfort him, but I was afraid I would throw off the music. What he was doing would wound his soul, and no one can talk that hurt away. Yet it was necessary. Entirely necessary. For the greater good, fitting sacrifices must be made. A sheep is born a sheep because it is not meant to be a wolf, and like the wolf, it must play its parts in the food chain.
Finally, the symphony ended. Our work was finished for the night. Good. The future won’t plan itself, after all.
(italics courtesy of Mortal Coils by Eric Nylund, a book I would totally recommend as a fun read)
10:23 PM: Stuck in the primitive wilderness, with only my dog and mosquitoes for company. My Friend Peggy is also nearby, but her loyalty is dubious. My family members, certainly, can no longer be trusted. My grandfather, my grandmother, my brother, and even my own mother… Surely they conspired together to trap me here. There is no internet, and the only functioning television needs rabbit ears to get any kind of signal. The water has yet to be tested, but assume it is not fit to drink. Washing is safe. Game is plentiful, but there are no hookups available. Food is also freely available, but I glance nervously at the oversized oven from time to time. No one would buy such a thing simply for ornamentation.
10:34 PM: A wild dog tried to breach the front door. I snuck as close as I dared and whispered that it should escape while it can, and it clearly misunderstood. Behind me, a seemingly benign voice called out and gently told it to shoo, calling it “Chester.” Then I was led back to the living room. I am glad someone managed to escape.
5:45 AM: Light streams aggressively through the window near my makeshift bed. Without doubt a bad omen. My head aches, and I wonder about the water I used last night. I took the time to shave as an excuse to be alone, but perhaps the water is worse than I thought… At any rate, the mosquitoes and the dog are ever vigilant by my side.
6:10 AM: My brother is complaining of an ear-infection, or some other such nonesense. Perhaps he drank some of the water as well. Yet this emergency could be to my advantage…
6:25 AM: I escaped the vehicle and ran. I just ran. My legs collapsed as I reached a large, abandoned looking house. A large boat sits outside, proof that no one has been here since the beginning of the summer, else they would have taken it with them. The first door was unlocked, but the second had to be broken in. I managed to guess the code for the alarm on my second try.
6:53 AM: I found an antique computer. Stained white CRT monitor matches aging mouse and keyboard. No USB ports, so my suite of portable tools is useless. I bring you this message at great danger to myself.
7:19 AM: The show must go on. All efforts shall be made to adhere to the agreed upon course of action. Arrival may be slightly delayed as hitchhiking and bartering will be needed to traverse such a great distance. However, I have faith in our plan. It is glorious.
It sucks trying to prioritize everything I want to do, or even think about doing. I have x hours today in between doing chores and etc. before we leave to go to Rhode Island (woo yeah) and I would like to finish Heavy Rain at some point (disconcerting), see a friend of mine (kinda important to me), write for tumblr (nice, but…), among however many other things… Tumblr just falls to the bottom of the list. I’ve got at least one post I want to write for the interest/benefit of everyone I’m aware of that reads this (you may or may not know it, but that does include you!) and I do intend to write them all. Writing just takes a lot more time out of my schedule than thinking about writing does. In fact, I do that all the time. I can’t help it. Keeps me up at night, gets me up early in the morning, keeps my mind busy during boring drives… So I’ve got a treasure trove of wonderful things to say, but no time to get them out.
Anyway, gotta go drive my mom to work and then go pick up our mail. Brb.
(edit: also I wrote this post in my head while driving to do errands yesterday)
I found this thing, seems pretty cool :3
(btw this is on Destructoid’s front page)
Written by Donnie Kicklighter, illustrated by me.
Damn that was awesome. I read it out loud for good measure.
I haven’t posted in a while! I’ve been busy! I shall walk you through what has happened! First, my family, the lady we’re staying with, my mom’s grandparents, and my dad’s mother went out to dinner before my graduation on tuesday. Then my high school graduation started at 7, and ended around like 11 pm or something. After graduation, at 11:30 pm, I went to Safe Grad - basically a big overnight party for all the graduates to make sure we don’t die. I arrived at home around 7 am on wednesday dehydrated, full of junk food, and deprived of sleep, but chose to tough it out and sleep at 10 pm that night. I slept for twelve hours, waking up at 10 am on thursday. Around 4 pm on thursday, my family and my grandmother went out for chinese food to celebrate my brother’s grade 9 graduation. This may seem weird, because in most of the world, 9th grade is the start of high school. Not so where I come from. Junior high starts in 7th grade, and ends in 9th, which makes more sense than 7-8 and 9-12.
Anyhow, pictures and descriptions of pictures follow. Oh, about my outfit for my graduation - I meant to have a plain black, button-down shirt and my standard black/red tie, only they got lost or sent away or something. So I had to wear the bow tie. When I told people I had no choice but to wear it, most of them assumed my mom had forced me to. It looks alright I guess, but the tuxedo shirt wasn’t exactly my favourite option.
My diploma being awarded, with two awards within - $100 for high academic standing (I think 90%+?) and $35 for top mark in sociology. Still have to get thank you notes for the people who donated those…
My father and a woman he grew up with, plus me and her daughter.
A friend of mine who often lived in our basement so he could get to work on the weekends.
My prom date and I, but now without any distinguishing characteristics. Graduation gowns make everyone equal!
The Matt Squared conglomerate, now with fewer essays to write.
AHA NO GOWNS FOR US - off to Safe Grad!
My dad wanted to get a picture of me with his friend’s daughter. We’ve been in various french classes together, and we had a study period together last year, but we hadn’t spoken much in a long time.
My excellent calculus teacher, and while I could try to make a math joke about him, I would only bring shame and dishonour to his good name and hit or miss sense of humour.
To replace the picture that never survived prom, we now have a picture of my english teacher and I for posterity. Huzzah!
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Here’s a run-down of what we do for Safe Grad: the teachers take in $25 (or $40 for late people) per person to cover costs, and put out a call for volunteers and food donations from parents to help out with stuff. After graduation, everyone gets a name tag and gets checked onto a bus, then the list is checked to see if anyone who was signed up hasn’t shown up. If they aren’t there, their parents are called. We go on a half-hour bus ride out to a lobster supper place, from which there is no escape until it’s time to leave in the morning. Also, no students are allowed to drive themselves there - buses only. Anyhow, we get there and eat subs and pizza, as well as drink way too much pop and not enough water. Chips and assorted goodies are also available.
After about an hour, a casino is set up in the lower level with poker, blackjack, a couple kinds of roulette, and maybe some other stuff I didn’t notice? Anyway, you get ten $100 things to start off with, and at the end of the night, whoever has the most money won a TV. Whoever came in second got an iPod speaker station thing. If you run out of money, you can get $1000 more, but are no longer allowed to win anything. This means that you can get more money multiple times and funnel it towards the greater good, as long as one person in your group doesn’t go back again. I didn’t play anything, but other people did and I lent them money and scouted out the competition and generally just tried to stay busy.
Casino is closed for about an hour around 3 am for karaoke with randomly drawn prizes given out in between songs. We continue to gorge ourselves on junk food and drink pop, again no easy access to water for some strange reason. Casino opens again, and shortly before 4:30 am coffee is brought out. Then we collect all our stuff and hop on the bus to go to a local amusement park for an hour and a half.
There’s not much there - one small rollercoaster, bumper cars, bumper boats, a ferris wheel, some spinning stuff to make you sick, and go carts. There were only a few people working because it was 5 am, so if you wanted to go on a ride, you had to get people to line up so they would shut down attraction X to open attraction Y. Go karts were popular and I didn’t do it because the lineups were long and I lost people so I didn’t really want to compete with strangers because that’s less fun. I went on the rollercoaster once, bumper cars once, didn’t want to get soaking wet on the bumper boats, and aside from that just talked to people and debated what we felt like doing.
We got on the buses from there and went back to the school, where we had a continental breakfast. My grandfather and my mom were waiting for me, so I grabbed a croissant - it was awesome - and left because I knew I wasn’t hungry, just dehydrated.
Then I spent the rest of the day working at getting 100% on Rathcet & Clank: A Crack in Time. I really love those games, and I had completely missed out on the optional mega puzzles the first time through. They’re really neat and excellent, and I had a lot of fun doing that.
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So my brother’s graduation, he was meant to wear his own pants and jacket with the black shirt and tie I was supposed to wear to MY graduation - but since they were lost, he also wore my tuxedo shirt and bow tie. I got a black t-shirt with minimal stuff in the chest area and threw on my own jacket and called it a day.
My brother and I after exiting the intensely hot gym of his (and previously my) junior high. Traditionally, the graduation was held in the gym of the high school, using the same set up used for the high school graduation - however, since ours was done at the local sports arena place, that wasn’t an option.
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Anyway yeah that’s what I’ve been up to. I’m not dead!
I didn’t sleep last night, but I’m hoping things will be better tonight. It’s muggy out, and I’m sticky and sweaty, and that’s terrible. I’m more tired than I was last night, but not as much as you’d expect after not sleeping. At least, I don’t think I slept - I felt like I was up all night thinking. Maybe I fell asleep at some point without noticing. When I had nothing to think about, I couldn’t close my eyes. When I started to think about something, I got tired again. It was brutal.
The main thing is being conscious tomorrow night, as I’ll be up all night and stuff. I’ll probably have some pictures of myself in my graduating gown and whatnot, and possibly pictures I was subjected to from people I haven’t known for years. Ah well. Won’t see them again after tomorrow. Little bit too late for them to decide we’re friends.
After several weeks, I’m finally typing up my thoughts about the RSA Animate video The Secret Powers of Time about time perspective. I sent myself an e-mail with some notes so I’d remember what I wanted to say, and I think I’m good to go. Now that school’s over, I’ve got plenty of time :D
Speaking of school, yes, I am graduating from high school next tuesday. My last exam was yesterday. Of my friends on facebook, 24 of them are in my graduating class. One girl, intelligent and likely with plenty of great things ahead of her, made a status update about being glad to be done. A middle aged man commented to say that she may change her mind about that in a few years.
Really? I mean, seriously? Being a teenager and being in high school is lame. There’s nothing about that anyone sensible wants back. You can hang out with friends, relax, and have fun at any age. The fact that you’re a sad old man whose life peaked after winning the big football game is not a fact of life, it is a fact of your life. It is so simple and so essential that we refuse to accept the idea that the future is a terrible place where we will all be miserable, because it will become a reality if we don’t. If we allow ourselves to go to waste, jump into marriages we’ll regret, and generally just wait for happiness to magically come to us, yes, high school will in fact be “the best years of our lives.” If your life is on a downhill slope from the minute you accept the responsibility of being an adult and taking care of yourself, you have failed. I’m not going to sugarcoat that because I take for a given that anyone who reads this is not going to accept defeat and intends to go places with their life.
After seeing that message, I went looking for similar comments by similarly downtrodden people. I was scared that everyone would have a sad old man (or woman, but it’s typically a male sentiment) telling them not to be happy, and that they’d better get used to pain and suffering because nothing they do will amount to anything. Surprisingly, very few people had even mentioned being done of school, and there were no other comments spouting “the best years of your life” bullshit. That’s pretty good, and I didn’t really expect it. It is a pleasant surprise, at any rate.
Now, the RSA Animate video mentions two forms of past oriented people: past positive, and past negative. The man who tells his children that high school will be “the best years of their life” could be nostalgic for his past, or fixated on what went wrong in his life to bring him to the terrible miserable life he lives now. Neither of those is particularly healthy, when taken to the extreme that any possibility of progress is ignored and the thought of improving one’s own life is impossible. An appreciation for what your past has taught you is good, and paying attention to your mistakes so you can avoid them in the future is also good. If you spend your life living in the past, you will never find your way to the future. Then you’ll be forty, maybe fifty, years old, you’ll be well on your way to losing the metabolism that kept you fit and attractive as a young man, and you’ll drink beer and watch football and blubber about the good old days. You don’t want that.
From the age of five, I have been raised to always be oriented towards the future. At the age of five, parents in Canada have the choice to put their children into french immersion (or english immersion, in places where french is dominant) or leave them in regular classes. Basically, if you are an english speaking family, your child will learn french for free and gain access to the bilingual jobs you wish you could have had. At the age of five, we don’t make these decisions on our own. Our parents, looking to give us the best life possible, have the choice to unlock a very large number of opportunities for us. Of our graduating class of roughly three hundred, only fifty or so are in french immersion. There were perhaps 60-70 in the very beginning, but that essentially tells you who looks out for the future of their children and who doesn’t.
That sounds unfair, but the effect becomes more profound as you get older. The people in french immersion mostly keep to themselves as kids, so I know most of “us.” Later on, of course we made friends with people who shared our interests regardless of whether they were in french, but that didn’t happen much when our classes were almost exclusively in french. When we got to junior high and only 3/7 of our courses were in french, we went out and made friends with plenty of people. In high school, where only ¼ of our classes each semester were in french, you would think we would almost lose the tightly knit groups of purely french immersion people. This was not the case. In junior high, there was no choice of classes. You were shuffled randomly into the required courses and went on with your life, hoping you happened to land in a class with a group of friends. In high school, suddenly we got to pick our courses, and if we wanted to be with our friends, we could make it happen. As frightened young teenagers, picking courses was something we had no experience with. So we turned to our parents for guidance once again.
What do you think the wise future oriented parents of french immersion children said? “Keep your options open. Take all the science classes, take the extra math classes, just in case you need them or find you really love them.” The “english kids,” who never actually thought of themselves that way, are a mixed bag. There are perfectly intelligent individuals whose parents never forced them to learn french, and likewise there are individuals who made poor choices after their parents chose to give them a chance at awesome bilingual jobs and ended up being not as intelligent. I can name each individual in french immersion who didn’t follow the model path their parents set out, yet I can also name the individuals outside of french immersion who took every science course, calculus, advanced english, etc. without giving up.
Taking advanced english is a very good indicator of just how hard you’re willing to work for future benefit. Further, taking Advanced Placement English for university credit is the epitome of being future oriented. To put it bluntly, none of the thirty or so people who signed up for it were intelligent enough to survive advanced english. The twenty four people exiting that classroom, after much effort and an admirable amount of mental breakdowns, are finally intelligent enough for advanced english. Those who couldn’t handle the prospect of improving upon their failures (or couldn’t be bothered to read books) dropped the class, and instead took an easier english course where they might have received better marks. I’ve got a photograph of our class and those who elected to take AP English, and here’s the breakdown:
Nine out of 24 in french immersion doesn’t sound like much, but that’s nearly 1/5 of the french immersion students. However, seven of those nine students took at least 2/3 science courses this year and last year, as well as advanced math and calculus. There are, of course, students in french immersion who also did the science and math but not advanced english, and off the top of my head there’s… nine or ten people who did all the science but not advanced english in our french classes. That makes 16 of 50 french immersion students “keeping their options open” and overloading themselves with work for future benefit.
Yet the RSA Animate video even says that a future oriented person must be able to trust that their decisions will benefit them in the future. Some people can’t trust that future benefit will follow their decisions because they are ignorant of the possibilities, and those are the people who never become future oriented. Of those who are, when we become disillusioned with the life of a model citizen, we crash. When we no longer trust that taking all the hard courses in high school, then university, will give us the perfectly happy (and also rich) lives we were promised, we doubt ourselves. We doubt the system itself. Will the degree I signed up for today be worth $20,000, even $50,000+, in the future? Will I be able to pay for getting it in the first place? Will it land me a good job so I can provide for the little munchkins who will one day follow in my footsteps?
This is where I am now. I don’t know if I can run off to spend an exorbitant amount of money on learning about a field that I can’t guarantee will bring me either the joy I want or the money (and thus freedom) to find it. So I’m thinking about skipping that whole process. It’s possible that I will go to university to take something practical and tell people I’m smart so they’ll hire me, but that’s to be determined by my financial situation. If I either have far too much money or far too little, I’ll go. Maybe I’ll become a teacher and inspire a future group of kids much like those of us who took smarty pants classes like Advanced Placement English… Looking at this picture of us with Ms. Barrett, I can almost see it happening. I’ve never wanted to be a teacher, because it’s a mediocre job and I’m not very good at teaching people things, but I mean, I’ve got the perfect name for it. Sure, they’d laugh at first, but it’d be endearing after they realize how awesome I clearly am.
Now I’m off to run through my daily routine of browser based games for future oriented mice like me who crave some immediate reward with their long-term plans. A character I’ve been playing for something like two years is almost the strongest among his class :’) He’s all growed up, and soon I’ll get to turn him into an immortal powerhouse. Aww yeah.
Four page article, so it’s not super important to read, but I thought it was worth the time. Essentially, one of the designers for Red Faction: Guerrilla talks about how they built the game to take advantage of player freedom rather than worrying that the player might destroy something important or kill someone before they’ve served their purpose.
One of the interesting things was the cost/return ratio of time spent building missions compared to building things for the player to do. Building a mission is expensive - you have to have dialogue, an intro part, an end part, an objective, etc. Players sit down and blow up that building because they have to. On the other hand, creating a building, marking it as an important enemy base or something, and rewarding the player for blowing it up costs a fraction of what a mission would cost. Rather than doing a mission because they have to, if someone wants to blow up a building, they’ll go for it and enjoy it a lot more.
So instead of saying “this is what you’re doing, this is why you’re doing it, now go do it” you say “here’s some stuff you can do, I’ll pay you if you do it” and they run around to their heart’s content keeping themselves busy without any need for writing a big script and stuff. It’s a smart idea, and I know it works, because nobody wants to spend an hour collecting widgets because they have to - if you say collecting widgets will get you a cool ability, they’ll spend as much time or more doing it.
I feel like I haven’t said much recently, so here’s how the week has been:
Presented our sociology project on monday, did pretty well. I was going to write up a post discussing all the stuff we said, then I realized that this article has all the information of all our sources combined, so you may as well just read it instead. Monday was also my brother’s birthday, so in addition to the books I bought him we went out to lunch.
We got out yearbooks wednesday, so I signed those and got mine signed by people and the cool teachers I’ve had over the years. They’re really nice, which explains why they cost $50. I also went to check my mark in english, and found out that I got 95% on the final exam. Not sure what my overall mark is, but I expect I’ll be proud of it. I worked pretty hard to earn it.
Thursday was the real exam day for sociology, so I sat there and listened to the last of the presentations while doing calculus review. Later, I took up half a page of my friend’s yearbook telling her how much she means to me, her friends were confused and a little bored because they had to wait for me to finish writing it. We all went to a buffet for lunch, and I paid for most of it, but it wasn’t too bad. Afterwards, I bought BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad and some headphones, because I’d heard nothing but good things about both. I also accidentally stole a birthday cake because it was forgotten in my van.
Friday I bought Settlers of Catan and the 5-6 player expansion for $60 and as a gift to the intended recipient of the cake, and delivered both along with a couple of friends. When the four of us got sick of the cake, I traded it for half a bag of Sunchips and confused the hell out of everyone nearby. Then they realized the cake kinda sucked.
Today, I let my brother spend $40 on Pokémon cards because people are starting to play it here. In a bit I’m going to study chemistry with a couple of guys, then after that I’ll probably keep playing The Last Remnant for PC. It seems pretty cool so far. Before today, the last (and only) time I had played it was july of last year. That’s how long it’s been since I had time to sit down and fully devote myself to a PC game, which is a bit more of an investment than a console game because it cuts off my ability to talk to people.
Are you now satisfied!?! Good! I shall now commence preparing the studying subroutine and hopefully do an alright job of helping review chemistry. I’m notoriously bad at explaining things.