conflict

It makes a good plot device, and in real life, is entirely unavoidable. As much as we’d like to eliminate conflict, the best I think we can do is minimize its impact on us, which means learning how best to handle it.

I’m filled with conflict these days – my desire to fight oppression, my desire to avoid people who suck, my own internal resistance to doing what it will take to actually take all these thoughts and dreams in my head and start shaping the world to them, instead of the other way around.

Then again, the Tao teaches doing-not-doing, so forcing the world into a shape it cannot be may be counterproductive.

Would that those would not listen break, and find the plugs in their mind falling free.

Would that we all fall free.

Would that we all love.

Would that, would that.

Target: 1100 words
Written: 1733 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Proof Of Collusion, Seth Abramson
Comics: Shadownhawk 0, Shadowhawk v4 13-15
Music: In God We Trust, Dead Kennedys

comfort

I miss the comfort in being sad, as Kurt Cobain once opined.

Being sad is bad. But it’s better than in a constant of conflict. One can accept sadness as it is, live in it, find one’s way through it.

Conflict for the sake of conflict?

It’s going to be a tough go while I’m working at Bad Neighbours and it’s the constant contemplation of the incompatibility of viewpoints, left and right, and the futility of anger.

The inability of consequence. The pure rage of missing justice.

The absence of karma, or rather, its lethargic, procrastinating nature.

It may come around, but when? And how fucking long?

Quite frankly, too many assholes have died peacefully in their sleep on top of their piles of money, surrounded by a beautiful wife, successful children and a mistress with glittery fake boobs.

Karma does not reward waiting.

Justice is not automatic.

Target: 1100 words
Written: 920 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Amatka, Karin Tidbeck
Comics: The Maxx 20-22, Gen13/Maxx 1
Music: II, Presidents Of The United States Of America

spiralling again

I’m doing it again. I feel like giving up, starting over, losing more time, more years, more precious life force, precious focus.

Christ, at this point, maybe heaven’s a better option. Or would be, if I believed in an afterlife.

In any just afterlife, we’d spend eternity finding out all the things we’d ever wanted to know, to experience all the things we ever wanted to experience, to be all the people we ever wanted to be, to relive moments of our lives in as many permutations as we choose, to see what it really would have felt like to take that stand, to try that thing, to make that move on someone special.

Much of it would be unpleasant, but without the endless self-deception, with the ability to try again and learn and grow and be better, what would there be to lose?

Lifetimes lived in an instant. Fantastical trips beyond imagination. Relationships won and lost, friendships gained, battles fought, tyrants brought low by our actions. Our dedication.

Of course, that’s speculation.

But to attempt to live life as it is, good and bad, filled with glory and tragedy, joy and pain, fully engaged with it, stripping away all our blinders?

We may have a limited amount of time to do it in, but it’s still worth the trip.

Target: 1100 words
Written: 1581 words, novel: Bad Neighbours

Read: Ready Player One, Ernest Cline
Comics: The Maxx 8-11
Music: If I Should Fall From Grace With God, The Pogues

back in the office

It’s been five weeks since I was there, and it still sucks.

Man, do I ever prefer my cozy home office. One can practically feel the stress melting away when I think of it. Plus, I can get more done on breaks and lunches; I don’t have to try and jam it all in before I leave for work or after I get home. It’s like gaining an hour a day.

My writing only takes roughly that; it’s a great time to do laundry or dishes or prep a meal.

Why anyone would ever want to be in an office in this day and age, if they didn’t absolutely have to…

Fucking ridiculous.

(Plus, I’m actually more productive at home; I’ve too much social anxiety to like sitting in a crowd all day).

Target: 1000 words
Written: 370 words, comic: Western Cradle #4

Read: Tropic Of Kansas, Christopher Brown
Comics: Preacher 45-48
Music: I Have A Pony, Steven Wright

my annual dose of ptsd

The Christmas party of my former place of employment, which drove me to the brink, out of my mind, and into crippling debt in trying to think there was a way out of it all.

My wife still works there. It’s still awful.

On the plus side, they fired a bunch of people, so it looks like they’re paring down to sell.

So, maybe ten years of this annual reminder of workplace PTSD can be fucking done.

But not yet.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 242 words, comic: Western Cradle #4

Read: Tropic Of Kansas, Christopher Brown
Comics: Preacher 41-44
Music: I Fought The Law, Green Day

happy fuckin’ new year

I can’t complain. We had a good time last night. I stayed sober enough to drive, which was fun.

We played the Game of Death, which is always a good time. Nobody got radiAIDS this time, so I suppose that was a win.

(RadiAIDS = AIDS + radiation poisoning. I mean, come on. You have to laugh.)

I feel like I need to go into full retreat now that the holidays are ended.

New Year’s resolution? Sell a book, write a book.

Keep on keepin’ on.

Do better today than yesterday. Start cutting out the toxic bullshit.

No more evil in my life, by my action or another’s, sanctioned by my silence.

Write. Write more. Read. Read more.

Fuck. Fuck more.

Lose some goddamned weight.

You know, the usual.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 263 words, comic: Western Cradle #1

Read: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, Malcolm X (like it would be written by anyone else)
Comics: Preacher 5-8
Music: Nothing's Shocking, Jane's Addiction (what an album)

i get it; i’m late

For all the things I wanted to do with my life, I probably would have had to have started as a teenager.

Unfortunately, the lessons I needed to learn, the skills I had to grow (and am still growing), the mindset, the life experience, all that stuff… it unfolded a little slower than it probably should have.

Maybe I could have gone a more traditional route, and maybe I could have been content with that, but when have I ever been content with anything? In the moment, I can be, in the midst of a good meal or a great book or great sex, a nice moment in the sun while walking the dogs.

But isn’t that the only time ever?

I know it will take me probably until I’m a hundred and no longer able to function physically or mentally to do the work that I want to do, to see the places I wanted to see, to have all the experiences I’ve desired.

I probably won’t make it, barring terrific medical advances. Of course, I could live that long but the growing spectre of fascism, the threat of climate change, bigotry and hatred, the complete breakdown of both civility and the willingness to stand up for what is right, in action more than words, is likely to end this planet (or at least my life or the ability to do the things I desire to do), all that pretty well guarantees that this is a fool’s errand.

But what’s the alternative?

Giving up?

I know I’m a late bloomer, but hell. Fuck it.

There’s no do-overs, so it’s now or never, and if I die in the attempt, without making the impact I would have liked, well, there’s no shame in trying.

Only in giving up.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 1479 words, short story: Late Riser

Read: The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho (also, this has nothing to do with this book, it was garbage, like Eckhart Tolle fucked Hans Christian Andersen and their baby read The Secret on the way out - stuff like this is why people get stuck in their own heads thinking they just have think things into existence, or that all skill is just natural, instead doing the fucking work.)
Comics: Chew 42-44, Chew: Warrior Chicken Poyo (POYO!) 1
Music: No!, They Might Be Giants

early risin’

I’m up earlier than I wanted to be, but so is everyone else, which kills my time to meditate and read and put on headphones and plow through a random selection of music on my way to the second coffee of the day.

And I’m thinking about time.

I’m thinking about how frozen I am; how stuck; how the only barrier to me getting what I want and being the thing I want to be is myself and this mental block, this block behind the tires of the trailer that is my mine.

My wheels are spinnin’.

Moving beyond is terrifying; there’s so many bad things going on in the world right now to stop it from ever happening, but I cannot control those. I can only control what I need to do to get what’s in my head out of my head.

It’s getting it past that that’s the real trick.

How does the world find it? Can I get it done before I die?

Geez. I guess there really was a theme to all this.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 1273 words, short story: Late Riser

Read: The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
Comics: Chew 39-41, Chew/Revival 1
Music: No, Virginia, The Dresden Dolls

the pushpull

It tears at me. This urge to drive myself forward, to drive myself into something better, while simultaneously fighting not to give in to all the shit people of the world (and there are many).

It’s the dream of free people everywhere; it’s the slavering desire of every monster to put a stop to it.

It’s those close to us who behave in ways that benefit only themselves; who’d screw over their own blood for their own sick self-interest; who are so lost in their own little world that they fail to see that other people are not simply NPCs in the game of their lives, to be slaughtered or ignored as needed (or at a whim).

My biggest concern is that I’m one of them; my biggest fear is that I’m not serving myself by consistently taking myself out of the equation.

I know I need to help more. I know I barely have enough energy to hold my insides in. It’s a virtual certainty that if I stop holding it together, my body will burst and disintegrate, spilling my entrails to the floor.

Is it too much to ask for wings to emerge from the viscera?

I don’t believe in God or heaven, in no small part because it sounds fucking tedious and hypocritical, but I’d like to think peace is the end result, rather than an eternity of regret.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 432 words, poem: Feathers Falling

Read: Constellation Games, Leonard Richardson
Comics: Chew 20-23
Music: No Security, The Rolling Stones

hopeful

I’m trying to be more hopeful in the face of a rising tide.

The forces that have colluded since Reagan to undermine freedom, integrity and basic human rights (AKA fascists, bigots and corporations) are peaking, and threatening to drag us all back to the fucking Stone Age.

I am trying to find the inner hope that says, this too shall pass.

We shall rise again, as we inevitably do.

As long as they don’t kill us all first.

Motherfuckers.

Target: 1000 words
Written: 108 words, poem: Feathers Falling

Read: Constellation Games, Leonard Richardson
Comics: Chew 17, 18, 27, 19 (what?  I swear it's right)
Music: No Reason To Complain, Patton Oswalt