Looking Forward Looking Backward

It occurs to the present author that, for many years, the weekend was something to look forward to. It meant, during early school years, freedom from homework and classwork. It meant, during later school years, freedom from bullying and difficult tests and projects. It meant, during college, freedom from a violent, criminal roommate.

Given that the present author strongly detests the current employment maintained by said author, it stands to reason that weekend would still be something to look forward to. Instead, due to an ever-present strain of ennui, weekends have actually become something to not look forward to, as angst, boredom, and loneliness often conspire to render them even more unpleasant than an already unpleasant week. The weekends, then, become a 48+  hour ordeal of survival, of trying to maintain some sort of activity and avoid the mental traps that render one both habitually depressed and hopeless. That these ordeals have been survived, albeit extremely poorly so far, is a condemnation of the present author's ability to both maintain a decent life and to find enjoyment and pleasure in things. That today is also a Friday, and the last day before the weekend really kicks off, is not something that the author has lost sight of. Let the anxiety and pernicious waiting game begin.

No K Cupid

The present author, over the last year and a half, has taken, as previously mentioned, some small steps towards enhancing a social life that is completely bereft of any actual face-to-face contact. These small attempts involved signing up for sites such as OkCupid, Tinder, and POF, under the pretense of meeting both men and women. It occurs to the present author, however, that not many people use these sites under that pretense, as, even with the small amount of likes the author's profile has received, less than 5% of them are by men, none of whom replied to further inquiry. This, perhaps, isn't too surprising, as the sites are marketed, ultimately, as dating sites, not friend sites.

What is perhaps most striking, though, is the present author's prolificacy at both failing to attract interest, and scaring away what little interest there is in the space of just a few days of sending messages. But perhaps foremost, some boundaries should be explained. It just goes to happen that the present author did not include religion, drug use, size, ethnicity, income, or relationship status as deal breakers in the veritable onslaught of questions and characteristics allowed to be chosen, but did name the act of already having a child as being the one and only thing that would prevent any sort of "dating" to transpire. The present author could certainly befriend one with a child, but never anything more. That 14 of the 22 likes over the last 18 months on OkCupid have been by single mothers is a source of cynical humour to the present author.

But, to wit, even when interest is given in the present author by non-single mothers, of which 6 people have evolved into the stage of "regular messaging," (4 on OkCupid, 1 on POF, 1 on Tinder) it has taken, at most, only a week of exchanging said messages for the other party to lose all interest in the author and cease all communications. This is, of course, not unexpected, but still creates a sort of mental proclivity towards assuming that the present author is both boring and ugly (both of which are undoubtedly true). Even when the author attempts to extend an interesting olive branch, by asking questions of the other person which may be considered courteous or showing some sense of intrigue into the person's life, the conversation eventually fizzles out. This demonstrates that the present author's limited and awkward social skills definitely translate even worse to written messages than they already do to verbal ones.  That the messages come off as stiff and unnecessarily formal is also a strike against them.

So it goes that after 6 dried out conversations, several other failed attempts, and months spent without a single face-to-face meeting, the present author is resigned to the fact that he is both; uninteresting, and un-dateable. This is not new knowledge to the author, and indeed, has been known for some time, but the veritable failure of anything even remotely close to friendship transpiring from the triumvirate of websites being used to ascertain just as much is, ultimately, a self-damning reality. That the author should seek to change themselves in order to perhaps appear more desirable as a friend or social contact or romantic interest is not something that is lost on the present author. It is simply something that is unattainable.

Holden Caulfield Hates This Place

Phonies. Everywhere, really, office is inundated with fake laughter - you can easily tell when it's happening - fake greetings. One co-worker lies so often that he'll change his story multiple times in the same day, he's the same one who steals food and toilet paper. I don't think anyone here cares about anyone. There's enough talking behind of everyone's backs, makes you wonder what they say about me, so I just try to keep my head down. So many phonies. Everyone puts on a face. Maybe that's the nature of being a salesperson, shoveling fake trends and facts to try to market yourself, or your product, to try to make money, put on a smile and tell someone how great the bullshit really smells. Can't help but think, though, the profession here makes it all worse.

Summer Weekends

They drone on like all weekends, really, but now sweaty and dousing out rising body temperature with endless glasses of water. Still enjoy the heat way more than the cold, it's easy enough to drink water and take a walk, much easier than bundling up and shoveling, and glasses fogging up, and black ice. Still, the weekend can become a sort of tepid thing; all boredom and longing and futile attempts at writing, or reading, or playing a game, or watching a movie, anything to keep the mind active and busy, off of things, off of frequent disappointments and loneliness. It's been said fear is the mind killer but I think dullness is perhaps even more so, fear heightens the senses at the very least, fear can be a motivator, boredom just dulls the senses and creates and endless malaise. The cicadas outside clash with the sound of a running fan, loud and steady, pulsating, occasionally accentuated by the laughter or talking of people down the street hanging out on their front porch, having some drinks and some food, and then there are the lawn mowers too, archetypal human inventions that consecrate a relatively painless job to the altar of fossil fuels. At least if I sleep through the weekend, the nightmares will make sure something intense happens.

To Be a Good Writer

It occurs to the present author, having spent a prodigious amount of hours over the course of existence consuming literature, that many famous and worldly authors write in ways distinctly frowned upon by teachers, critics, and literary types. And while it's easy and, perhaps, lazy to find people to say something to the effect that 50 Shades of Gray is "trash," it is harder to find someone say that, CS Lewis, for instance, is often very religiously heavy-handed and preachy, something that would not be considered a positive writing trait if one were to contribute such to a story in the pursuit of a creative writing degree. And yet, CS Lewis is rather often considered a landmark fantasy and science-fiction writer. Or take the case of one Robert Heinlein, a man who wrote about women deserving to be raped, a man who wrote positively about the Vietnam War and of nuclear war, and a man who delineated entire political thought into dialogue scenes between two characters, one who was often a foil for Heinlein's beliefs. While Heinlein is criticized much more today than in yesteryear, he enjoyed decades of being both financially rewarded and critically esteemed for his work.

This is not, of course, a phenomenon strictly held by the literary world. What it is, however, is a product of two distinctly uncontrollable things. One of those things is your birth. To say that the "Golden Age" of sci-fi took place in the mid 20th century - which many people do - is to say that a golden age can occur without any contributions from marginalized people; women, people of colour, LGBT, religious minorities, etc. Sci-fi was, at that point in time, strictly a white man's endeavor. And so, your chances of getting published and selling were at times a direct result of how you were born.

It is also a product, entirely, of luck. That an uncountable multitude of works that have been published and sold lavishly go against what is considered "good writing" is something that gets to the heart of whether or not writing can ever be considered good in the first place, or whether or not generally perceived ideas of "good" are true in the first place.

That Heinlein said that women deserve to be raped, and that E.L. James at times ignored ideas of consent or failed to use accurate, modern depictions of sexual slang, likely mattered little to each of them, respectively. Laughing all the way to the bank does not require one to read the critique of a supposed literary critic. The people have already spoken.