I don’t know how to really start the first post on a blog. There are a lot of options laid out ahead of me, none are really calling to me. There is a significant allure to do something ‘normal.’ Drop a brief biography, summarize my personality, etc. Maybe sprinkle in some funny anecdotes. But I am not normal, and I don’t want to give off the impression that I am, or that what I am doing here is normal either. Because nobody has ever made me feel like I was normal, so why not return the courtesy?

My entire life I have felt like an outsider. A weirdo. A stranger. Etc. You know the story, I’m not unique in this. Nor is my expressing it. My whole life I have felt extremely unseen and unliked. I understand, I think, perfectly well why. I am uncategorizable for most people. I am very strange. I don’t behave the way people expect me to, apparently. And this frustrates them. It makes them dislike me because my mere existence requires them to expend vastly more effort than a normal person. Their conception of me necessitates that they have almost no mental shortcuts or precategorizations of me and my behavior because it simply will not square.

(I know that what I’m saying sounds vaguely unhinged, and perhaps it really is, but my hope is that by the end of my project, whatever it entails, at least a few of you will understand well enough what I mean not to think me totally insane. So please, my friends, bare with me.)

All of that is to say, I am not a normal, inside the box type person, and neither will this whole thing/blog/journal/project. This first one is going to be really exciting, because it has to be. But I promise you, I am going to write SO much boring stuff, you might not be able to get through it all. But I assure you, as a whole, that if this blog becomes easily categorizable, it is because I have been incapacitated and replaced by an automaton.

So there’s an unhinged word-vomit of an introduction. You know I spent about an hour walking around my neighborhood trying to figure a way to get that all out of my head and it’s not even a half of a page. This business may turn out to be trickier than I thought. Ah well, it’s too late to back out now. I already paid for the website.

I know you aren’t really asking it yet, but it’s a handy framing device anyway, so I’ll go ahead an ask the question so I can answer it, and you can start wondering about it on your own as well if you like: Why am I writing this. Let me be cliched and easily categorized and say: a couple reasons. First, and most basically, because I told myself that I would. I’ve been thinking about and meaning to start publishing my work somewhere for a long time now. I have had a few aborted attempts at this kind of thing before, but those ended in a much more morning-after-pill way than the pushing-through-a-sign-laden-crowd-to-get-to-the-clinic-and-put-a-stop-to-this-whole-endeavor-before-it’s-really-really-too-late-to-stop way that it’s going to take this time. I’m going to make some very bad mistakes here, and I’m going to have to live with them because I simply can not continue the way things have been going(Perhaps the first mistake is comparing stopping a blog to having an abortion. Well, I’m sure that’ll be fine.).

Before we start really tugging that thread though (the not continuing, not the very poorly received abortion comments), let’s stay in the realm of predictable and normal for a while longer. It is, as I’m writing this, roughly October 21st. About three months ago, for my birthday, I told myself that I was going to kickstart my dream of being a writer by publishing 100,000 words before my next birthday. In those three months, I’ve published exactly 0 words. Or at least, within the margin of error. I don’t think I should count forum posts, discord arguments, and twitter jokes, but it’s possible I’m at around 5-10 thousand, and not nearly as behind as I feel. Either way though, I’ve got a lot of ground to cover. I definitely think it’s doable, and probably not even at a ridiculous pace, but better to start now than in June.

But now we come to the real meat and potatoes, the real reason I’m doing this at all. I am a man in crisis. It’s not mid-life, (unless stuff starts going real downhill real fast) it’s more like pre-life. As in, I haven’t been living my life until maybe a month and a half ago. I’ve been coasting for the past 13 years at least. That’s all the way back to middle school. I might have given up even earlier than that, but it was at least right around then that I more or less decided that I didn’t like the noise inside my skull and I was just going to drown it out with video games and porn and tv, more often than not, all at the same time. And from middle school, all the way through high school, up to my 26th birthday, and a few months after, that was the basic, zoomed out picture of my life.

Don’t misunderstand me. It’s not that I wasn’t aware that this was a disaster. As a teenager, I was in a basically constant state of panic and dread, as I imagine most people were. Over the years, I had many weeks and months where I would make changes, work my ass off, get on a good path, etc., only for something to roll over me and press me back into that same mold. Sometimes it was a good reason. More than once it was falling in love and getting my heart broken. But much, much more often it was on the level of not being able to get a widget that would make getting better easier. And more often even than that it was just not feeling like it today.

Alright, I’m gonna stop there before it turns into the whole “Goggins backstory fanfic but I’m actually way cooler and smarter and way, way more badass than him” story that’s in my head (Don’t worry, that’ll definitely come sooner or later (I’ve gotta find some way to fill that 100,000 words)). The point is, my life was pretty sad for something like 26.1 years. Since then it’s been .1 years and I gotta tell ya, I’m not really any happier than I was before. I guess it still is kinda sad, but now it’s for different reasons. So now I’m sad for different reasons. And I know what you’re thinking, because I’m thinking the same thing, except you probably have a way more concrete picture than I do right now, being that you’re from the future: it’s pretty fucking bold to come out and say ‘it’s gonna be different this time’ right after confessing to thinking that a bunch of times before and giving up every time. Yeah, it really is.

A few months ago, a friend and roommate of mine got a new job. This was big-ish news because him and his girlfriend hate working, they’d both gotten jobs at the same place, one got fired and the other quit, etc etc. Before this, they’d moved to the same city as me and another of our mutual friends and we all rented a big house together. They spent a few months coasting on savings. Eventually, my friend, we’ll call him Tommy got a gig in a kitchen, his girlfriend remained barely technically employed (starving artist stereotype(people payed her to draw things every now and then)). This was working out for like, a year and a half. Eventually shit went down, and Tommy quit his job and coasted on savings for another like 2 months while looking increasingly stressed about the logistics of the lease ending and us all going our separate ways. So then like maybe two months ago he literally runs out of money, has to ask his parents to cover their rent, and he just HAS to get a job, so he starts The Hunt. He gets a new kitchen gig that he seems reasonably happy with, and then one night about a month and a half ago he came home and told me a story. After being there for just a few days, they stopped ‘training’ him and just started giving him tasks like you would any normal schmuck. They gave him a recipe and said, ‘make this for prep for tonight.’ Long story short, instead of communicating with the head chef, or more than one coworker, he proceeded to take his entire shift to make one thing for prep, before getting yelled at by the chef for taking their entire prep time to make literally one like stock or whatever. So then he came home that night and started bitching at me about everyone else in the kitchen for not telling him how to do it the right way, and I literally just could not take it anymore. This dude is incredibly smart and resourceful. He remains, to this day, probably the deepest thinker I know. I looked up to him for years. And then he told me a story where he was acting like a caricature of the most brain dead, impossible to work with moron that I’ve ever heard of and expecting me to have his back. And that was the moment that it completely crystalized for me that I had to get the fuck away from all of my loser friends if I was ever going to make shit actually better for myself. I simply can not keep hanging out with and being influenced by people who are so unwilling to see not only the big picture fuckups that they are in the midst of, happening around them in slow-motion, but also unwilling to examine even the instantaneous moments of probably just accidental stupidity.

And I know how that all sounds after everything else I’ve written tonight. I have been exactly in his shoes several times. Hating my job so much I have to quit before I get fired is like, the way that every single job I’ve ever had has ended. Coasting on savings until I run out of money and having to scramble to find a new job is, again, the way I act every time. But every time, I knew what I was doing. I went into it saying, ‘I’m going to coast on my savings and spend all day gaming, watching porn, and watching the Sopranos until I run out of money because I do not want anything deeper out of life than to not have to listen to the noise inside my own skull’. And I thought that Tommy was at least as self aware as that. Maybe I’m the delusional one, but I’m pretty sure that if I had done something so violently stupid I would at least be able to understand that I was the one in the wrong, even if I had to cook up some weird way where it’s still technically not all on me.

And listen, Tommy, I know you’re gonna read this eventually, so let me stop being mean for just a second: I don’t think that you’re irredeemably stupid. I still think that you are the smartest person I know, and I even think that if we sat down and talked about it all for long enough, we could get to an agreement that we’re just differing on philosophy in the big picture, and that the small picture makes sense too somehow. I still think that you’re a person (iykyk). But I would be lying if I said that that moment, and the larger context around it, didn’t make it crystal clear for me that I just have to remove myself from patterns that I don’t want to follow anymore. And also, while we’re still aside and it’s just the two of us, I know that I am incapable of writing heartfelt and genuine sounding apologies and thank yous and etc, so please understand that even if this sounds like I’m still being an indignant smug twerp, I am trying my best. I am not trying to put you on blast, or name you as my thirteenth reason, or anything at all like that. There were a LOT of other things that had just as good a chance at tipping me over the edge as that. It was just the straw, camel, etc.

So that was the moment I stopped talking to all of my friends. Since then I’ve been mostly weening off of gaming and porn. I’m still listening to podcasts at work because there isn’t really much else to do, and I’m still not ready to face the noise alone 24/7. I’ve been slowly mixing in audiobooks in place of racist news recap ‘comedy’ podcasts (sic). So that’s nice. I’m back on the working out grind. Just recently got all the way back to every day (alternating cardio/freeweights). So that’s nice. I think I’m gonna get back to tracking my diet again too, soon. Just as soon as I get this wonderful widget that will make it easier.

I still have a lot to say. But I’ve been writing for far too long, and now it’s far too late and I’m barely even awake, let alone coherent. I’m gonna come back to this, because I have to. Before I go though, I want to add a like, part two to this part one. This is a journal entry I wrote several months ago. I found it just now while I was looking for something mostly unrelated. I changed the names, because there’s no reason that my friends need to be publicly humiliated. But there’s a lot of powerful stuff in here that I still think about today. I mean big whoop, it was only a few months ago, but still.

–

it’s me again. sending more nonsense into the void. How are you today, darkness, my old friend? This is not some kind of villainous catharsis. Some momentary burst of deciding that things are going to be better from here on out, so now I don’t need to actually do anything. Well, it is also that. But I’m hoping saying it this time will help me keep my head a little bit better on my head.

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking lately. A dangerous thing, I know. But I’ve been thinking a lot about myself, the world, my place in it, etc. Novelty, basically. Flexing my creative muscles, you see. I’ve been noticing a few things. The first thing, why not start there, is a part of the pathology that’s been nagging at me from the fringes but I’ve never really been able to put a name to. You see, my friend, that I’ve been all my life steering myself away from things. Away from pain, mostly but also from minor inconvenience. I suspect that this is a natural response for the human animal. Nonetheless, it seems to be a real problem these days. There’s basically nothing in my life that forces me to any positive action. I don’t have a wife and kids to take care of. I don’t have a nation depending on me. I don’t even have a fucking pet that I have to keep alive and not miserable. Aside, of course, from myself. And I used to have one. She was obnoxious. And needy. And permanently broken. And frustrating incapable of any kind of genuine self-care that didn’t involve ordering Chipotle to her house ten times a week.

I’ve just had a thought, and this is a stream of consciousness diary entry type thing anyway so you’ll just have to accept this little diversion: is this all about Mia? this like total aimlessness and lack of drive to do anything, is it because of some bizarre pathology that I picked up from having to take care of her? is it some kind of resentment towards people that are incapable of taking care of themeselves because it forces me into some kind of positive action?

basically: is the root of my aversion to positive action (my compulsion to always steer away from things, and never toward anything) my adolescent relationship with Mia, or is it the other way around? do I resent Mia for forcing me to get over my utterly bizarre pathology of avoidance?

I think it’s actually pretty clear that my pathology of avoidance goes back much much further than the trans girl i briefly fell in love with in my early twenties. I had zero friends or interests other than videogames long, long before I ever met that good witch of the north. I think I might be a bad person doomed to some genuine tragedy shortly before my own untimely demise. Well now who’s being dramatic? this guy, right here. V . That’s not a letter V, that’s an arrow pointing down the screen to my hands as they type this. In case you were wondering what that was supposed to be.

I’m much less depressed now than I used to be. I think the reduction in stress has done a lot for me lately. Not constantly worrying that my friends are going to kill themselves actually might be good for me. Not that I’m not worried that Mia is going to kill herself, I think it’s still one of the biggest concerns I have. That’s a lie. the sad, sad truth is that I am basically unconcerned because i’ve washed my hands of the problem. I set her on a good path as well as I could and let it be from there. A part of me genuinely believes that this is for the best but I don’t know anymore, genuinely. I think that my assessment that I was the wrong person to be presenting myself as a guide to a better, happier was correct. But I also know the pain of being abandoned and that she knows much, much more than I do. For a while, she was ruining my life. just devouring hours and hours of my day, depriving me of sleep, of socializing with my friends, all kinds of things. but she needed someone to ruin, because she was carrying far too much for her to handle already. And I wasn’t getting the job done as far as teaching her how to carry that weight. Ultimately, I believe that people have to come to their own philosophical conclusions. It’s very, very hard to change the actual fundamental, bottom-level thinking of another person that does not want you to. And she didn’t want to change. As much as she was hurt by the way that she was living, she didn’t want to live another way. Maybe that’s because of me. Who knows. I know that I wasn’t doing what she needed done. I can only hope and pray that she’s stayed on her better path now. But so be it. We are where we are because of the mountain of shit that we carry around behind us. Everyone has an infinite bindle of shit they heave over their shoulders every morning when they wake up. It never gets any lighter, you just get better at carrying it. My friends are all losers. It’s not really their fault. They’re the way the world made them. I don’t want to be anymore. I’m sad that i’m so smallminded that I have to reject friendship to be able to take care of myself, but I know that’s what I have to do. That’s what I did before, and sadly that’s what I’m going to have to do again.

A long time ago, not really that long, but a lot of stuff has changed since then. but anyway a long time ago someone else that I fell in love with and broke my heart said something to me that I decided was going to be this anchor point in my life. It’s clunky, and crude, and half-baked, but all the same I believe in my heart-of-hearts that it came from a place of love, and that the sentiment behind it is truly as powerful as I want it to be. He said to me, among other things, ‘I pray that you will see what you are worth’. For the past year, I’ve been carrying that around with me as a kind of like talisman of hurt to torture myself with whenever I got the chance. I would think about that, about him, about the love that he showed even when he was breaking my heart into a million tiny pieces I’ve still yet to find all of again, and about all the good things I stopped doing when he said those words to me. Times were very dark there for a while. Things have been getting better now, but not a ton better. My life is still shitty, but now I have a better outlook. Now look at me. I’m rambling and just about completely lost in the fields.

Suffice it to say, I’m trying. I’m going to put myself through a lot of hurt here very soon, but this is the way that it has to be. My loser friends are going to have to be priority number two for a few months until I’m really truly back on my feet.

I think I’m going to really start blogging. Like I said a few years ago: stuff gets more real when you put it in the public. I think social media is pretty shitty on the whole, but I suspect that accountability is going to be good for me. Get back into the groove of flexing the ‘if i don’t do it i am a failure’ mental. Anywho. If you’re reading this, maybe not all of this, but at least the part that I’m going to put up into a blog with something like my name on it, then you know that I’m not a liar. If you’re reading this because you cracked my hard drive after I died and decided to read through the random word documents that I left on here, you’ll know that I am one.

I know that I’m not a very compelling guy, but I need to start putting some damned writing out sooner or later if i’m gonna ever really accomplish my dream of being a successful writer..

–

So anyway, yeah. That’s it. That’s how this is gonna start. I’m going to wear my fucking heart on my sleeve for the first time in my entire God damned life, and I am going to publish an honest-to-God real life diary entry on a blog with more or less my name on it.

ps. I hope you can forgive me for being so presumptuous as to kind of call myself ‘the river.’ my name is just river, I don’t need to be ‘the’ anything. it just fit better as the multi-entendre for the name of the blog, ‘by the river, by himself.’ you know what I mean. anyway, I just wanted to say that I hope you don’t think I’m snobby, because I’m not. I’m just strange.