It’s a good thing my dad doesn’t drive a DeLorean.

He’s got a shiny red American sports car, so the speedometer reads in mph with km/h underneath. We get onto the 100 km/h highway, and he goes 100 mph. This is equivalent to 160 km/h, which is like an instant loss of your license if you get caught plus a huge fine.

        Neato!

        It’s also time for the Sunday Something! I have two somethings for you this sunday. Both are from Art of Manliness, and this is basically the end of my reading list. I have yet to post the comorbid ADHD and depression article, but all in due time.

        Our Disembodied Selves and the Decline of Empathy: Kids these days are assholes and don’t connect very well to other people. Once upon a time, kids were not like that. In those days, they had to interact with people in person rather than over the internet and that probably has a lot to do with it. Know anybody who forgets sometimes that the Internet has different social rules from meatspace?

        How to Firmly Say No Without Coming Off Like a Jerk: Don’t be the person who says yes when they’re secretly screaming no on the inside. It’ll be useful eventually, and everyone can do with some good manners.

        Also goddamnit vossk’s Sadurday. Goddamnit.

        It did, however, add to the realization that few people probably want all the details on how my dog died. So I won’t detail the whole story here on tumblr, because putting it into words will probably only make it worse for me. At any rate, here’s the basic version.

        Our six-year old black lab, Shadow, loved going for rides in the car. She also didn’t get much exercise, and so when she got outside and hadn’t had much exercise recently, she would make us chase her around until she felt like going back inside. The easy solution to this was to unlock the car and let her in, then go inside to grab her leash so she would come inside. It literally never failed, she knew she was about to be brought inside but she still held out hope that we’d go for a drive anyway.

        Yesterday, we were cleaning the house (vacuuming the dog hair, cleaning nose prints off of the windows, etc.) and she got out the front door when I was bringing something out to the garbage. I let her into the van like I’d done a hundred times before, and she hopped right in to wait for a drive. This was sometime before lunch. I even put her leash on the seat so it would be right there for me to bring her in. I threw out the garbage, then went back inside and got distracted cleaning the house.

        Sometime after 4 pm, my mom asked my brother and I if she was with us. We said no, and that we thought she’d been with her. I joked to my brother that she was probably hiding in his closet again, because I spent fifteen minutes scouring the house for her the other day only to find her in there. A few minutes later, my mom yelled down “did you get her out of the car?”

        It was a hot day. Probably 30+ Celsius. You don’t leave anything that can’t get out on its own (babies, pets) in cars in the summer. But we did, because we all assumed she was hanging out inside somewhere.

        It was far too late at that point. The body is to be cremated, and the ashes will be spread in a pet cemetery. We kept her collar. My dad, who hasn’t seen her a whole lot in the past year since he accepted the new job in Ottawa, agreed to gather up her things from our house and take them to his. Hopefully it isn’t painful for him to see her blankets and her food dishes.

        In a weird way, I’m glad that all I had to do was sweep some corners in the basement to finalize it all. You’d be surprised where you find dog hair when you own a dog that sheds.

        She destroyed the blind and drapes for our living room window, which spans the wall there. Something like a thousand dollars worth of damages. That was… Monday.

        While in the van, she chewed through the three seatbelts on the driver’s side, so it’s illegal to drive until we spend at least $300 on the driver’s side seatbelt. $200 for the middle seatbelt, and $100 for the back seatbelt. However all we need are the belts themselves, which could easily be found at a junkyard. So the installation could be far cheaper, or it’s possible we could even do it ourselves. I don’t know what other damage there might be on the inside.

        We were going to spend about $1500 on completing the fencing around our yard so she’d be able to enjoy the backyard without having to be on a leash or a chain. We never finalized the details, and it’s possible we may not bother now.

        But the money doesn’t even matter. She lived with us from six weeks through to six years. She had easily that many more left to go. I still expect her to come running to the door when I come back into the house. I still expect her to lick my face and get me out of bed so she can go out to pee.

        I loved that dog.

I killed the family dog.

My mom says she doesn’t blame me, but I’ll never know for sure.

I’m crying, and I’m shaking.

You ought to know that’s a big deal.

Did you hear about the man with five peckers?

Apparently his underwear fit like a glove.

        That’s pretty much the best thing I have to say about my white water rafting trip today. Literally I went white water rafting today and I’m just like yeah cool that happened. I went last year, and it was the same then.

        Get up for 6 am, pick up the other people who are going with us, drive an hour and a half over to where we’re meeting our guides and everyone else going rafting today. Hop on a bus with a guy from Switzerland named Martin, who has an amazing beard. Have a long bus ride to where we’re getting into the river. Sleep on bus, fake it for the camera and get myself a moment of glory in our $55 DVD of the day. I’ll share when I get it.

        Our guide, Matthew, was a pretty cool guy from South Africa. For the record, last year I was with a man named Kelly. He was here this year, according to our video, but I didn’t remember his name until it was too late. Anyway, our guide this year. He was the guy in charge of everything. So we left last, because he had to make sure everything was good to go.

        Then we had to be FIRST in line, meaning we had to paddle hard all the way up to the front. I forgot how to paddle over the last year, so my biceps were sore when we got there. Then he taught us how to paddle (leaning backwards as you paddle to use your weight) and it was all good.

        We went down some rapids, wee, we get wet, yay. It was supposedly 20 degrees (though at 9 am when we started, maybe not) but it was so cloudy you wouldn’t know it. The threat of rain has been very aggressive for the past few days, and it’s going to be bad when it finally starts. Not a very good choice of weekend, I guess. But by the time lunch time came around, my brother and I were freezing because we didn’t have wet suits or magic waterproof clothing like our father. We cultivated a fire, had hot chocolate and warm soup (as well as wraps and some other food stuffs) and just barely started to feel our fingers again and get dry when the call came to leave.

        Probably around 12:30, we have a 45 minute bus ride back to the beginning so that we can run a different channel of the river now that the water levels have risen a little. We make a tour of the bus, shouting out our name, where we’re from, and a joke/embarrassing story (can be about anyone on the bus!)/whatever. Many people had nothing. I spoke my name and location loudly, and shared a story about a bus full of awkward people who couldn’t come up with anything funny off the tops of their heads. Some awkward chuckles were had and then we moved on. Eventually people started yelling out jokes, and that’s where that gem comes from.

        Early in the afternoon, we begin the hard rapids. The ones where you have to paddle instead of hide in the boat. The ones where one side of the river is a bunch of pointy rocks and you don’t want to go over there. Starts off with one to get us nice and wet (great, now we’re cold again) and then a little bit later we get to The Butcher’s Knife. Inside The Butcher’s Knife is a wave called The Chopping Block. There are three options for proximity to The Chopping Block: far, medium, or close. My dad volunteered us for close. We went straight for it.

        The wave “hit [him] like a literal punch to the chest,” and the left side of the boat plus the guy in the front on the right were all pushed off of the raft. I was nearly pushed, from the middle right side, off of the left side. I caught myself on the side of the raft and managed to stay in, leaving myself, our guide, and an incredibly tiny, incredibly frightened woman from our group behind to manage a rapid aptly named The Butcher’s Knife. He handles it like a pro, while I react instantly and rescue people as they appear. My brother pops up first, then my father, then another from our group, then the guy from the front right is rescued by my dad as I rescue the third person. Scared woman, not so much on the reaction times. We managed to keep all of our paddles and recovered quite well. Life went on.

        The part where 4/7 passengers (guide included) fall out of our raft is on video, so you can see that in a couple of weeks. The rescue, not so much, because rescues are ugly and not good on film. But I’m proud of myself at least, both for staying in and being useful to the rescue. I paddled until there was no longer water beneath my paddle, and then I was almost dying and then I was rescuing. In the span of a few seconds. Some people might have been terrified, or felt an awesome adrenaline rush, or whatever. Nah, not me. I just liked the rescue part, from a strategic point of view.

        We did some more rafting in the afternoon and went back and I didn’t have a beer even though I’d be old enough there, so one was available for me. It was across the border of Quebec, not that most of you will understand that, but the important thing is that I was in another province and the drinking age is 18 there. I drove us home because my dad figured, sweet, I can have some since we have another driver.

        I drove us home, we had two bits of difficulty, but we got home safe and sound. White water rafting: completed. I’ve done my duty. The end.

        It’s not that I’m a boring person, but that I’m not a physical, adrenaline person. I don’t need something more exciting than rafting to get my blood pumping. It just doesn’t pump that way. I could jump out of an airplane, or go bungee jumping, or go on a crazy hiking trip. I could do all kinds of crazy adventurous things, I’m not afraid of it, because I’ve faced my fears before and I have yet to regret it. These people are mega safe. That’s their job. It would not be an option for you if there were any serious danger. I just wouldn’t enjoy it enough to justify the cost, or even the time. I wish I could go adventuring for a living (as some of the raft guides do, and I’m not kidding) but it’s just not my life. Mother Nature won’t keep me company at night, unlike some of those dudes.

        I’d love to do that stuff with a friend though. It’d be fun with someone else, especially if we’re both terrified. Or in the case of week long expeditions, starving and cold and devoured by tiny, tiny predators. Someone to keep me company, right? That’s more like my life.

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        So with a move to a place with actual facilities comes the questions about why I don’t take advantage of them. Why not come to the gym with me? Why don’t you go bungee jumping? Why don’t you go ride the public transit around, as if that’s important when I’m not going anywhere? The problem is that I would rather be me, than go out of my way to please other people.

        This is something that’s been on my mind recently, as my dad revs his Be Like Me Machine, and even more so the gym thing. My dad used to be tiny like I am. Then he gained a hundred pounds of muscle. Then his metabolism got old and he suddenly had a hundred and fifty pounds of fat instead. I don’t want that. I’m underweight, but I’m fit enough and I work on that in my own way. If I start going to the gym, and try to beef up like he did about ten years ago, I do fear that I’ll end up old and fat. My main issue comes back to preferring a leaner body for myself, and not feeling the need to go out and beef up at all. I don’t need fifty more pounds of muscle on my frame. I’ll do definition, so I look pretty, but I (me, as a person, Matt, Demi, the core of what is me) do not need to have muscles like my father, or even like a friend of mine with a similar build. He’s tall and lanky, but from all the physical labour and sports he’s done over the years, he’s lean and wiry. He doesn’t have bulging muscles, because of his height, but he has the strength. I’d be alright with that, but it’s not me. It’s not who I am. It’s not even something I need to be.

        I’ve just come off of an argument with my friend Max about whether or not I’m fit, where he judged me to be unfit because I’m underweight and my ribs stick out. Instead, I should be doing those triangle push-ups and gaining weight/muscle mass enough to cover all (most) of my protruding bones (har har), in his opinion. He’s an adventure guy. He’ll go biking for hours and just love it. Run so long and far that he pukes, and just shiver from excitement. Or dehydration, but don’t tell him the difference. The thing is, that’s not me. That’s who he is. His definition of fit is someone who feels fat if they sit around playing video games all day, and gets so sick after doing that for a while that they NEED physical activity.

        That’s not me. I will never, in my entire life, be able to cultivate a feeling like that in the core of my essence. I forget about not dong my crunches (didn’t have time for those today, but I don’t like to do it right before bed either because I have a hard enough time settling in to sleep as it is) far easier than I forget about all of the things I haven’t done yet when it comes to video games/anime/articles to read/whatever. Of course an hour or two each day, or even most days, is a paltry amount to dedicate to physical activity. Seven hours a week or something? There are plenty more in there. But how high is it on the priority scale? Do I sacrifice my workout (or gym time, which could be the same thing) or do I sacrifice whatever else I need the time for?

        For me, it’s quite low. Low enough that making a dedicated routine would be pointless as it wouldn’t last. Not because I’m incapable of getting off of my fat ass to do it, because I did it for a long time, every single day, when I wanted to impress a special someone. Eventually I slowed down because I realized I wasn’t even doing it for my benefit, and she wasn’t really looking anymore to begin with. I just end up doing other things that I value and it’s like eh I’ll write a nice tumblr post tonight instead of doing crunches and flicks. Even though the tumblr post takes longer. To illustrate what I mean about the priority thing: I couldn’t convert tumblr time into workout time. I couldn’t dedicate the same amount of time to it. I’d just end up doing other things with most of it.

        I spend, oh, half an hour to 45 minutes on the computer in the morning running through a routine of daily browser based games and a few news sites. Nothing super disruptive, and I can do it later in the day obviously. But if I stopped doing that, I doubt I’d convert the time into early morning workouts instead. I value the games for different reasons and I like to know stuff, but I value those on different levels than I value being fit when no one will even see nor will I need to apply the fitness. I can get by a day or two without working out. But how could I possibly miss a day in my daily games! That would be inefficient!

        Anyway I hope I made my point. I already knew what my point was. But I wanted to think out loud a little so I can respond better to the inevitable returns to this subject. The basic idea (me trying to be me) was there, but I hadn’t needed it yet so I never really expanded on it.

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        Also I just quit Opus Deorum (probably only took a minute per day, but I wasn’t getting anything out of it - just grinding stats) and Freewar (idle grinding a passive skill in a game I don’t care for - simply because I could) but I can’t bear to part with any others. Billy Vs SNAKEMAN, Dragon Tavern, and The Ruins Of are all games I spent money on for a damn good reason. I’m about to spend $50 more on Billy Vs SNAKEMAN to get myself 17 months worth of tiny bonuses. Nearly three bucks a month. Nothing wrong with that, and the guy deserves my money. I love the game and I have a friend who loves the game and we spend twice as much time talking about it as we do playing it, if not more. The Ruins Of is just a cool little thing, and for that the money spent on it is far lower ($10 so far, and probably forever - I doubt the future involves spending on it) but the guy deserves that too. Dragon Tavern is raking in the cash, and it’s also the heaviest time investment, and it’s also where I’ve spent the most money. Jeez. More than a hundred and fifty dollars, for sure, but I have no definite number. It sounds really bad as a lump sum, but at one point it was 2x the credits, and in general I’ve built up bit by bit. I don’t regret it, though. Psychological tricks though they may be, I’m ok with spending that money. It is nothing when you consider all of the money I have held and spent in the last two years-ish of playing it?

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        Also my backspace and space bar keys are getting a little squeaky on my laptop already. Space bar, not sure about that one, probably just hitting it badly or something but it’s not like it’s been receiving heavy use. Backspace, though… Well… Just how I write, and this includes instant messaging.

        edit: also I included the square brackets thing like a proper journalist because I realized what they mean. It’s when you’re rephrasing someone to put the sentence into proper context. If they say it, you quote “[the wave] was like” instead of using something unspecified, or in the wrong person if they say I or whatever.

In Which I Debate The Use Of Free Time, or, a long post that ultimately goes nowhere

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.

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:

Depression

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?

GRADUATION TIME

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!

Towards the future!

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:

• 9/24 were in french immersion
• Half of us (12/24) chose to take the AP English exam
• Five of those students were in french immersion

        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.

My valedictorian speech is almost done. I just need to finish my current paragraph about how anyone who really tries can succeed and conclude it decently, and we’re good to go. I’ll post it up if/when I get it done tomorrow, because it won’t be perfect, and I’d totally appreciate help looking for things you wouldn’t say in a casual conversation. Things you wouldn’t say colloquially, which is not nearly common enough to be colloquial. I don’t use if I can avoid it.

        It’s been making me think, though. Finally, with two weeks left of school, I’m actually confident. I know exactly what I need to do: finish this speech, prepare my razzle-dazzle for my propaganda presentation on monday, and study. Certainty and predictability are very good for me. When I know what needs to be done, I can plan for it. If I knew that x amount of research could fill y amount of words, and would take z hours to write, I could pump out papers and projects like you wouldn’t believe. It’s the uncertainty that kills me, that makes me panic and stress out until I’m nearly done, and then when I’m done I get stressed about the things yet to come. With two weeks left, I’m now safe from that, because I’ve worked at it, and done so early. I’d probably be done already if it wasn’t for this damn moving thing. Not nearly enough space for us at my mom’s friend’s house, but oh well.

        Going to university is predictable. I’m afraid of the stress and the misery that will likely come with it, but I’m far too stubborn to lay down and die. As much as I might want to, I’m sorry to say that I probably couldn’t give up, no matter how bad it gets. I’ve made it this far, anyway, and I’ve managed to swim by trying not to drown. Once you learn, you don’t usually forget. I told Ms. Barrett that she’d taught me how to study and do research properly, which is true, and I know I’d make my way through whether it took four years or fourteen.

        The question remains as to why I would do that, though. What do I gain? A good salary, of course, but… what else?

        Not going to university, however, leads directly to that uncertainty I fear so much more than unhappiness. I don’t know how to make myself a life, I don’t know any of the things you need to be a responsible adult. Well, I can fend for myself as far as sustenance goes. I don’t know. I’d keep going, but my rambling has been interrupted, and I need to vacate the vicinity so someone can sleep here. Will continue later if I’m still feeling vulnerable, maybe.