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blarg
a year ago
It's been almost a year since my last journal; three years since my last uploaded art piece. Many would rightfully assume I was dead. Unfortunately, I live still.
Word of warning: You've been here before. This journal is going to read a lot like all the others I've posted over the years. Just worse.
Life balance is a strangely complicated thing. It's like a web. A web that is on fire. I focus too much on putting out the fires in one sector, even if it helps in some other spots, I'm still getting burned in others. I spent the past three(?) years trying to figure out my fursona, which is the crux of my ability to enjoy any furry stuff-- even if it's got nothing to do with my fursona. Because, hey, if I can't even imagine myself in my own escapist fantasy, how am I going to enjoy playing the role of other characters in it? Still, sometime around mid-April, I managed to settle on something that doesn't make me want to pull my hair out. Yet. There's a scratching in the back of my mind, a worry that this won't last and I'll be back to fussing over it again. But at least for now it's kind of opened the floodgates. Or, at least, it was supposed to.
Even under ideal circumstances, I haven't been able to get back into RPing. It's still a frustrating process, coming up with what to write for a given scene. I last about three posts before I just feel so burnt out and out-of-ideas that I have to throw in the towel. And that's, again, under ideal circumstances. Less ideal circumstances? I've not managed to even start an RP. It's not just circumstances in terms of how my day has been, my health, and whatnot-- but the characters, the scene, the premise, the intent. People tell me "You're just rusty, you'll get it figured out in time," but, even if they're right (which I highly doubt), that requires me to be willing to keep beating my FUCKING head against the wall until something breaks, either my head or the wall.
And then there's drawing. To recap: my hay-day was about... 2013 to 2016, I think, and then things slowed down as I got more heavily invested in RP and grew increasingly unable to cope with the frustration of art. I had a brief resurgence sometime around 2018 or 2019, I think, and it was pretty alright, but then I crashed again. Drawing became-- and still is-- this... masochistic ritual I undertake in the hopes of conjuring a picture I'll be happy with. I was never happy with them. I WANT to draw. I just fucking hate drawing because it's grueling, frustrating, and there's nothing to give me a push or incentive or second wind when I get fed up. My friends, counselor, and psychiatrist haven't been very helpful with advice in that regard. I mean, yeah, they try their best and I want to acknowledge that. But I guess I'm just too impatient. I get angry and discouraged too quickly.
I can't just "quit" though. It's a compulsion, an obsession. I NEED to draw, I NEED to write or RP. It's how I escape this world. This horrible, wretched, rapidly-decaying world.
Speaking of the real world, there's the whole... job situation. Jobs, life, being a functioning adult, that whole thing. Yeah, that's still gone nowhere. How can it? I have no skills, no useful experience, I'm infirm, I crack under stress immediately, I'm terrified of driving. That's eliminated like 99 percent of jobs in the world. Certain people, well-intentioned though they may be, have been badgering me to just "take the risk". "You have nothing to lose anyways," they say. Well, I'd say I have a lot to lose if I have a freakout on the job and either get blacklisted, sued for money I don't have, arrested, or fucking *dead*. It's not anxiety talking if I'm speaking from experience. Experience is what leads to prediction. It's why people believe in themselves or, inversely, don't believe in themselves. If I've never gotten a basket ball into the hoop in my life, why would I believe I should play basketball? But nobody gets that, I guess. People think I'm just doomsaying, being overly dramatic.
Well, fine. I'll take your bet. It's true that if I keep waiting, trying to "fix my mind" or get well, I'll be waiting forever until I'm on the streets, penniless, eventually in prison or dead. So I might as well speed up the fucking process by taking these leaps that I know, for a fact, I can't make. At least then there's an astronomically small chance I'll actually manage to get something to work and those people can pat themselves on the goddamn back. But what will most likely happen is everything I've described, everything I've been afraid of, will come to pass. So let this journal serve as a testament, to any who will actually bother looking at my profile, as the a shining "I told you so".
And for those of you saying "Well, if you go in believing you'll fail, of course you'll fail," let me say this: What is belief? From whence does it come? Experience. Like I said before: you experience something, good or bad, enough times and it becomes a belief. You accomplish something or you fail enough times and it becomes belief.
Speaking of belief, let's talk about my faith.
I haven't been talking like a Christian much, have I? The truth is I've not really been much of a Christian, either. And before members of the Church snap their fingers and point at what, to them, looks like the obvious problem, let me make it crystal-clear to you: I can't be a good Christian if I don't even know what's true anymore. You ever stop and look at the sheer number of denominations of Christianity? If their differences were insignificant then why did they split up? I'm not just talking about Calvinists, Baptists, or Lutherans, but even in a macro-scale like Catholicism, Protestantism, East Orthodox, and the other lads. It's almost funny, really, how the severe differences within Christianity are like a microcosm of religion in the world: everyone thinks they're right. Everyone has evidence as to why they're right.
If this sounds like the talk of an apostate, then I agree: it does. And that scares me. I still hold the devout belief in our Father in Heaven and I acknowledge that His Son died for our sins... but after that it gets sketchy. Some churches say "you just have to believe," while others say "believe and try to follow his teachings," or "believe and follow his teachings-- and do a good job of it or else you'll go to Hell anyways". Okay, what even DID Jesus teach? Most versions of the Bible are at least vaguely similar with the teachings, though I wouldn't bet my eternal soul on it. Like a friggin' roulette wheel. And this lends me to another concern: how do we even know the books of the Bible have been preserved? Some people say "We have the manuscripts and they match," while others say "Just trust God to preserve His Word". Yeah, how do we know these are the manuscripts? And if God really has preserved His word, *which version?* And even if we all had one Bible that was totally preserved, how do we interpret the texts? News flash: Ancient Greek and Hebrew do NOT match up well with English.
I care too deeply about staying right with God to just... take a blind guess. To guess on what's sin or not, what saves a man from eternal torment, what the duties of the saints are, et cetera. I don't want to commit myself, daily, throughout my life to an interpretation or church and sacrifice so much, only to arrive at Judgment and be condemned alongside murderers, rapists, and the like because I pulled the short straw. If there was some way to find the undeniable, unfalsifiable truth... no sacrifice would be too great, no amount of enemies or broken friendships, no amount of chores or duties. I would give it my all or die trying.
....
Is it any wonder, then, if you've somehow read all of that ranting, that I'm going crazy? I'm one missed rent payment from going homeless and having my life be over because we live in a society where the homeless are marginalized and swept under the rug. I can't even land a fucking job because I'm too unstable and I have no skills. My attempts to garner some sense of happiness and mental stability through drawing, writing, and RP have backfired spectacularly to the point where they are a burden, a demand I must suffer through to meet or else I will suffer still. And my faith is in shambles, despite the fact that I care about it more than anything. It's like... every time I try to change fate and turn my life around, I fail.
And now I'm marching headlong into what is likely going to be my end. I'll end up in a car crash and get sued into oblivion or I'll have a meltdown at whichever job I actually manage to land and get fired, or I'll have a violent outburst that gets me arrested or shot dead. That's what the predictions show. That's what past experience is telling me is what will happen. But nobody will believe me until it happens, so I might as well head out there, get my license, and find a job.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
Word of warning: You've been here before. This journal is going to read a lot like all the others I've posted over the years. Just worse.
Life balance is a strangely complicated thing. It's like a web. A web that is on fire. I focus too much on putting out the fires in one sector, even if it helps in some other spots, I'm still getting burned in others. I spent the past three(?) years trying to figure out my fursona, which is the crux of my ability to enjoy any furry stuff-- even if it's got nothing to do with my fursona. Because, hey, if I can't even imagine myself in my own escapist fantasy, how am I going to enjoy playing the role of other characters in it? Still, sometime around mid-April, I managed to settle on something that doesn't make me want to pull my hair out. Yet. There's a scratching in the back of my mind, a worry that this won't last and I'll be back to fussing over it again. But at least for now it's kind of opened the floodgates. Or, at least, it was supposed to.
Even under ideal circumstances, I haven't been able to get back into RPing. It's still a frustrating process, coming up with what to write for a given scene. I last about three posts before I just feel so burnt out and out-of-ideas that I have to throw in the towel. And that's, again, under ideal circumstances. Less ideal circumstances? I've not managed to even start an RP. It's not just circumstances in terms of how my day has been, my health, and whatnot-- but the characters, the scene, the premise, the intent. People tell me "You're just rusty, you'll get it figured out in time," but, even if they're right (which I highly doubt), that requires me to be willing to keep beating my FUCKING head against the wall until something breaks, either my head or the wall.
And then there's drawing. To recap: my hay-day was about... 2013 to 2016, I think, and then things slowed down as I got more heavily invested in RP and grew increasingly unable to cope with the frustration of art. I had a brief resurgence sometime around 2018 or 2019, I think, and it was pretty alright, but then I crashed again. Drawing became-- and still is-- this... masochistic ritual I undertake in the hopes of conjuring a picture I'll be happy with. I was never happy with them. I WANT to draw. I just fucking hate drawing because it's grueling, frustrating, and there's nothing to give me a push or incentive or second wind when I get fed up. My friends, counselor, and psychiatrist haven't been very helpful with advice in that regard. I mean, yeah, they try their best and I want to acknowledge that. But I guess I'm just too impatient. I get angry and discouraged too quickly.
I can't just "quit" though. It's a compulsion, an obsession. I NEED to draw, I NEED to write or RP. It's how I escape this world. This horrible, wretched, rapidly-decaying world.
Speaking of the real world, there's the whole... job situation. Jobs, life, being a functioning adult, that whole thing. Yeah, that's still gone nowhere. How can it? I have no skills, no useful experience, I'm infirm, I crack under stress immediately, I'm terrified of driving. That's eliminated like 99 percent of jobs in the world. Certain people, well-intentioned though they may be, have been badgering me to just "take the risk". "You have nothing to lose anyways," they say. Well, I'd say I have a lot to lose if I have a freakout on the job and either get blacklisted, sued for money I don't have, arrested, or fucking *dead*. It's not anxiety talking if I'm speaking from experience. Experience is what leads to prediction. It's why people believe in themselves or, inversely, don't believe in themselves. If I've never gotten a basket ball into the hoop in my life, why would I believe I should play basketball? But nobody gets that, I guess. People think I'm just doomsaying, being overly dramatic.
Well, fine. I'll take your bet. It's true that if I keep waiting, trying to "fix my mind" or get well, I'll be waiting forever until I'm on the streets, penniless, eventually in prison or dead. So I might as well speed up the fucking process by taking these leaps that I know, for a fact, I can't make. At least then there's an astronomically small chance I'll actually manage to get something to work and those people can pat themselves on the goddamn back. But what will most likely happen is everything I've described, everything I've been afraid of, will come to pass. So let this journal serve as a testament, to any who will actually bother looking at my profile, as the a shining "I told you so".
And for those of you saying "Well, if you go in believing you'll fail, of course you'll fail," let me say this: What is belief? From whence does it come? Experience. Like I said before: you experience something, good or bad, enough times and it becomes a belief. You accomplish something or you fail enough times and it becomes belief.
Speaking of belief, let's talk about my faith.
I haven't been talking like a Christian much, have I? The truth is I've not really been much of a Christian, either. And before members of the Church snap their fingers and point at what, to them, looks like the obvious problem, let me make it crystal-clear to you: I can't be a good Christian if I don't even know what's true anymore. You ever stop and look at the sheer number of denominations of Christianity? If their differences were insignificant then why did they split up? I'm not just talking about Calvinists, Baptists, or Lutherans, but even in a macro-scale like Catholicism, Protestantism, East Orthodox, and the other lads. It's almost funny, really, how the severe differences within Christianity are like a microcosm of religion in the world: everyone thinks they're right. Everyone has evidence as to why they're right.
If this sounds like the talk of an apostate, then I agree: it does. And that scares me. I still hold the devout belief in our Father in Heaven and I acknowledge that His Son died for our sins... but after that it gets sketchy. Some churches say "you just have to believe," while others say "believe and try to follow his teachings," or "believe and follow his teachings-- and do a good job of it or else you'll go to Hell anyways". Okay, what even DID Jesus teach? Most versions of the Bible are at least vaguely similar with the teachings, though I wouldn't bet my eternal soul on it. Like a friggin' roulette wheel. And this lends me to another concern: how do we even know the books of the Bible have been preserved? Some people say "We have the manuscripts and they match," while others say "Just trust God to preserve His Word". Yeah, how do we know these are the manuscripts? And if God really has preserved His word, *which version?* And even if we all had one Bible that was totally preserved, how do we interpret the texts? News flash: Ancient Greek and Hebrew do NOT match up well with English.
I care too deeply about staying right with God to just... take a blind guess. To guess on what's sin or not, what saves a man from eternal torment, what the duties of the saints are, et cetera. I don't want to commit myself, daily, throughout my life to an interpretation or church and sacrifice so much, only to arrive at Judgment and be condemned alongside murderers, rapists, and the like because I pulled the short straw. If there was some way to find the undeniable, unfalsifiable truth... no sacrifice would be too great, no amount of enemies or broken friendships, no amount of chores or duties. I would give it my all or die trying.
....
Is it any wonder, then, if you've somehow read all of that ranting, that I'm going crazy? I'm one missed rent payment from going homeless and having my life be over because we live in a society where the homeless are marginalized and swept under the rug. I can't even land a fucking job because I'm too unstable and I have no skills. My attempts to garner some sense of happiness and mental stability through drawing, writing, and RP have backfired spectacularly to the point where they are a burden, a demand I must suffer through to meet or else I will suffer still. And my faith is in shambles, despite the fact that I care about it more than anything. It's like... every time I try to change fate and turn my life around, I fail.
And now I'm marching headlong into what is likely going to be my end. I'll end up in a car crash and get sued into oblivion or I'll have a meltdown at whichever job I actually manage to land and get fired, or I'll have a violent outburst that gets me arrested or shot dead. That's what the predictions show. That's what past experience is telling me is what will happen. But nobody will believe me until it happens, so I might as well head out there, get my license, and find a job.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
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