I think it'll get easier.

I hope it gets easier. God, I hope it gets easier.

Rejection, I mean.

Another contest entered, another loss exited.

I should be used to it by now. But I'm not. It still stings. It still stings.

But now I've gotten to a point where I'm not so much upset as having lost/been rejected, that I'm upset about not getting a chance to tell the stories I want to tell. And the more I thought about it, the more I got fed up with the idea that in this business of writing, a lot of us are at the mercy of what sells and what doesn't, what can make money for a publisher and what can't.

Because that's what it amount to, right? It isn't always about quality. Lord knows it isn't always about that. Its not about ability or about a recognizable name or a catchy hook. Its about what sells.

And that sucks. It sucks that so many of us, who work so goddamn hard at our craft, are always just simply waiting to be told, to be given permission, to tell our stories.

So I finally decided to say...NAH.

Forget that. I'm telling my stories. And I'm telling them how I want to tell them. I'm not waiting anymore.

That's not to say I've entirely given up on "traditional" means of publication, it just means that I've decided to embrace other avenues in a way I haven't before.

My levels of frustration and anxiety are at an all time high. I'm tired of all the "no"s. I am. Every single rejection makes me second guess my ability and the viability of this career choice. I ain't getting any younger, and the thought of not being able to do this before its too late...It eats at me.

So I have to do something. And that something is utterly insane.

I love comics. I love to draw. For a long time, I wanted to be an artist. While I do have some modest ability in that field, I have never been able to reach the heights that I wish I could reach.

But that doesn't matter anymore. The art isn't going to be pretty. I know that. But it will exist. It will be out there. And that's all that matters. My story will be out there. No more "no"s.

All of that is to say that I'm working on some comics stories that I hope to put up very soon. It won't be here, but for those of you who read comics and manga, I'll be sure to send a link your way.

I'm scared as hell. I don't know what will come out of my pencil. I don't know how much the image on the page will match the image in my mind. I don't know. But I can't wait to find out.

Panic

and the mind dies

or

Under static pressure

resist the urge

to crack

Pressed beyond kinetic stress

refuse to diffuse back

to nothingness

To be is to desire to be?

No.

To be is to be.

I desire to be

electrified,

alive and wired,

Lightning mind!

Still,

Rebirth

relies on stillness.

I rely on pure potential energy

Reality flips the switch

And truth tears through

nerves like arteries,

only: Wisdom

rushes in like oxygen

Trust enlivened mind

for the love of Guru

Hear her hum? The words

like blood

The thrumming heart

and pumping lungs

the cry that builds

from stillness

and only this

Full-blown mind

bursts forth

A hero sworn,

not by battle horn

to be,

but to be,

nonetheless

To be

is not the choice

The choice is peace

Photo by Sunguk Kim on Unsplash

#Peace #Meditation #StreamofConsciousness #Mind

I desire to honor and recognize those who support me on my creative journey, so I fashioned up a little article in my project's world page. I truly, sincerely thank each and every person who has showed me support monetarily, verbally, and even by reading my works. Words cannot express how grateful I am. The Outstanding Operative award is canon in the Secret Agent Someone universe. I wanted my paying supporters to become agents in-world, so I figured, what better to do than put them in the WILLOWISP wall of fame?

https://www.worldanvil.com/w/secret-agent-someone/a/outstanding-operatives

If you're already a supporter, I thank you from the bottom of my heart! <3 If you would like to become one, simply follow my world! Or, if you desire to do a bit more, check out my website's support page which features all the different ways you can donate. Absolutely anything given is greatly appreciated. <3

https://www.thepeculiarjeweler.com/support

There are lots of updates and fun things to come, but, realistically, it can be a strain on my pocketbook. Still, more wonderful content is coming, so stay tuned for it!!! If you can help to make it possible, I will be forever grateful. God bless, and I love you all immensely.

You ever try to comprehend anything before coffee and 7am? Fight Club said we work to buy our useless shit, rinse, and repeat. She said she was worried about me. Maybe we’re all just in a simulation. Somewhere I am someone who doesn’t lose. One day, every star will go out in the universe. One star will be the last to light the darkness. That’s what keeps me going. The thought that one celestial being will be a random torch to life, remaining until it doesn’t.

You: "Get something off your chest."

Me: *pulls squid/octopus off my chest like that one Spongebob episode where that happens*

That has been on my mind, just getting it off my chest. So, anyway...

It would be nice if I could get my crush off my mind. He's living in my head rent free, and it's nice sometimes but becoming frustrating. All I want to do is be around him and talk to him and get to know him. I haven't crushed on a guy this strongly in a long time, and I'm concerned it's unhealthy. The good is that I'm more on top of washing my clothes and bathing and taking care of my hygiene because I want to be clean and smell nice knowing I'll get to see him.

The bad is that it's another thing that is negatively affecting my spiritual life, and I don't really feel ready to give it up yet. There's other factors involved like how I'm choosing not to read my Bible or pray or anything, and I just, haven't had the energy for it and I have had very little desire for it, and I'm not trying to grow that desire. I have not wanted to try and be more like Christ, and if I have, I have no strength to keep going. I think I can see the hardness that is in my heart, but I am too weak to try and fight it, and I know I'm playing a dangerous game with my soul. I'm playing with the souls of others.

So yeah. That's something I wanted to get off my chest.

These invulnerable thoughts drift aimlessly

i have yet to drain myself of them.

Their receding tide pulls at my heart,

tightly encompassing the small garden that resides within me.

i am quickly inundated.

Now cold bones break from under dead skin, memories have been wiped clean.

the corpse of a once pained being is left to wander

a pale afterlife

I am all gold, flowing.

though not unsinkable, my legs seep into bark.

my body engulfed in stone and dirt.

Iam all gold, flowing.

one with the earth and her jadedness.

I now lay and kiss raw ground, and relish

in this blissful wake.

Flowers lace and choke in my throat.

vines entranced by the layers of my heart,

so obliviously enthralled they become lost in themselves

The warm blood pumps and oozes around them,

in the thicket of a buried garden

pooling at the bottom of my lungs.

I am this candle,

and I am burning myself

at both ends.

I am allowing the consumption of me by everyone else,

so I don't consume myself.

My wax is stubborn and resistant,

My flame is self igniting,

And rises theatrically and comically,

Again and again, like one of those joke candles that cannot be put out by rain or wind or exhaustion or insurmountable odds,

But rises furiously to claim the bait it is taunted by, the means to its end just out of comprehensive reach.

My limits are tangled and tattered and still yet, undivisable,

unquenchable, this thirst for the dissolution of my waning wax.

I respect these flames and know their power intentionally means no harm.

It is just doing what fire does,

and I am melting for it like the wax that I am.

Until one day I realize that I am formless until I choose to exercise my power over the fire,

and form myself beneath its beholden command.

it wasn’t my intention to sleep through another morning/day/weekend/opportunity. i feel terrible heading into monday. again. maybe it’s always been this way.

scratch that, start again.

it wasn’t my intention to sleep through another…

*eye twitch*

*the pages are empty*

i have a list of goals for the year, pinned in the corner of the whiteboard above my desk with small square magnets. i thought that, maybe, some focus would stop the muffled taunts in my head.

+sulfur+

i’ve come a long way. you could say that i have absolutely nothing to worry or complain about anymore. that’s true in some ways. but in all the ways that matter, i’m a complete mess.

i’ve prayed a few times in my life. in 2011, to get on a graduate scheme. at airports. drunk and alone on an abandoned plot of land at 3am. i think they are turning that land into offices now.

i don’t drink anymore. it’s been 103 days.

my asks were ‘small’, and generally, granted. get the job. don’t die in a plane crash. other things i’d rather not go into.

recently i woke up dead. again.

in the background i can hear sparse, slowed piano keys__-___—_

the constant headaches make me go cross-eyed.

i’ve been on my own my whole life. even when i’ve been with others. i can never relax.

xx

i think i’ll give it another go. i’m really not sure how many more goes i have left in me. 1 more at least. for old times’ sake.

i’ll summon something from within, instead of spinning the wheel with an unknown entity.

if/when you pray, don’t make it about you all the time. it’s best to not ask for selfish things from something you can’t see or understand.

there’s a price. and you always pay. 1 way or another.

always.

My breasts have grown large

they were not always this way

nice 34Bs forever

now this

I didn't even know it could happen.

I planed to have them reduced

but it is costly with much downtime

but found out I am ill

awaiting necessary surgery

so I carry these burdens

on my small frame

that make my back ache

pitting my shoulders

stooping my posture

at least one more year.

“There’s actually a great Netflix documentary that talks about this…”.

May it please the devil to learn that this overture is the sum total of intellectual life in a time when man who’s never had so much information, knows so little.

An innocent looking enough phrase, which never happens to escape the mention of some well-intentioned individual dealing in earnest his share of what he believes to be thoughtful, meaning conversation. In fact, most of such a consideration even amounts to ‘discourse’ among those unaware of how unoriginal they are and loath to do anything about. So is the genius of this crudest variety of speech: it is almost a carnal flattery to speak and hear it, like a feather to tickle as intelligent all who lift their shirts and expose their bellies.

What after all is so terrible about Netflix documentaries that they should earn our scorn in their hearing and shame in their mention? Is it not enough that the popular mind has taken to a form of television that is meant to be informative and educational? The whole platform is a sensational buffet of pablum and mindless programing, at least (should we not celebrate it?) there’s still a taste for the non-fiction.

In truth, it would be unfair to single out Netflix. Equally accused are any of the high-speed gratification mills that pump their informational tranquilizer into the mass of absent minds looking at once to be sedated and educated. YouTube fits the bill nicely here. So do podcasts and social media apps.

With documentaries, learning has never been so fun, you might have noticed. Displayed like so many flavours of ice cream, behind that glass screen of Deleuze’s desiring machine, the docuseries are ordered into scrollable tiles to excite the eye and wet the slavish glands—and after you’ve dipped your spoon into every sample comes the outpour of pleasure in finally pressing play.

Indeed, what an irresistible ether learning has become.

I might be giving myself away as being possessed of an older fashion, but I am more than a little concerned to see at scale the violation of a most historical precedent: there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Before the improbability of Netflix as educator, perhaps the first place to seek out issue is in the present estimation of the genre itself, ‘non-fiction’, since there is much to be said on this score of a literary type which has flown too large in the popular opinion. A danger for the low-lying minds which bear it.

***

Non-fiction. What a weighty word it is nowadays, seeming at all points to carry an unearned distinction gotten by its nearness to a supposedly lesser, ‘fiction’, and affording too large a credit to anyone who mouths it in the course of their high-sounding blathering. Why? Because everyone knows there is nothing to be learned from fiction: it is make-believe; the stuff of stories; even worse, fantasy, and cannot be expected for it the repute of serious things, nor especially the subject for serious thinkers. Apparently, the tragedy of fiction is that it is not ‘real’—the very point of it, and one which makes it all the more important. But to the literal-minded, it does not give an account of what is ‘real’ (in which case they often take to mean ‘factual’) and because of this irrecoverable deficiency is cursed as being impractical—particularly for appearing smarter than you are.

Thus goes something like today’s epistemological prejudice on what type of knowledge is worth keeping and for what reasons; all the better for the kinds of informational engorgement that lead onto the extremes of a docuseries petite mort. And so, to carry the point to its natural conclusion, unlike fiction, which excises an unfavourable labour before the humblest learning can be had, non-fiction de-facto educates, and its study is gained by default, by the mere act of exposing yourself to it. Seemingly, from the way people talk so proudly of their Netflix voyages, non-fiction never derives its usage purely from an aim to amuse. There is, however, the uncomfortable reality—since it is such a salient word—that most of it is exactly that, simple, deadened entertainment.

***

Leaving the state of fiction, and by extension, art, in the life and thoughts of everyday man, I should like to deal more specifically with the subject of multi-media educational programming as a means for learning. Yet the recent side-track earned us an important insight into the primacy of information in the common attitudes and of the imperative for being informed in place of intelligent.

It may be the single greatest fallacy of our age that information on its own is informative.

The confusion occurs at the point of its use; that data devoured in quick drafts turns to insight and the mind gorged on these readymade citations becomes thoughtful. Facts binged and strange anecdotes crammed between the seams, for the ambitious raconteur these quantities are his purchase for impressing strangers and amazing himself all at once. His credo is “know the reported facts and recite from the dictionary of received ideas.” To him, non-fiction is the root of his erudition, and when he hobbles his statistical items together half-wittedly, with the fraudulence that becomes a charlatan, does he incite the source of his supposed cultivation.

Here, among a few, is one of the main contentions I’d like to make. That a hundred facts remembered, or a thousand explanations retained is nothing learned. They are instead amounts which sum to false and empty talk, the Wildean posturing we’ve come to know in Dorian Grey, Bouvard and Pecuchet, Swann hearing Vinteuil’s sonata…

This is not a question of better, fiction or non-fiction, but of correcting a popular error in estimation. Supported almost by the strength in assumption, do people accord the concentrated imbibing of digital information as a legitimate heuristic, and by that same accordance judge themselves to benefit in the bargain for smarts and vainglory. But where their discernment fails them is in their over qualifying the mental sates of watching as those of active learning; in their confusing of reciting for knowing.

Mass media documentaries and videos are educational strictly by content, but they are designed and curated for consumption first, for the maximization of amusement and visceral appeasement; explaining why the average person can binge them in straight succession on the order of whole afternoons, where he is incapable of even an hour’s honest learning without break. Watching these info-concentrates is chiefly an occurrence of insensate viewing, belied by a temporary gain of some arbitrary and stray quasi-knowledge. I say temporary generously, as almost no sooner than they are heard do these loose articles fall out of mind from not having a proper foothold in the intellectual curiosity or persistence necessary to sustain them. Passive absorbance of visual and oratory stimuli is not cognition and the satiated exposure to educational videocasts is no greater a thing than motivational hedonism.

Does this suggest Netflix documentaries are utterly useless for one’s learning; that they do not provide informational value whatsoever? No. But in the general case of their use, do they admit in their audience the limp and palsy states of sensory delectation? Yes.

Ratiocination is scarcely involved in the Netflix process, only its appearance and allegation. Most people, most of the time, merely observe information in whatever form, exciting that limbic response to consumption and curiosity, two compulsions which are their own rewards. There is a euthymic enjoyment about things that are interesting, and the novelty of unseen material is quite to this purpose, apt for overuse and dependency, and rapidly turning from consequence to need. Put in no uncertain terms, pleasure, in whichever way it is had best, is the governing principle behind most forms of mass media use.

The problem then with commercialized information-videos is that they do not incite the mental strain necessary to bear forth a longstanding intelligence.

For information to be informing to us, a connection must be drawn from within a place of foundational understanding; a pre-existing mental architecture that can inhabit and store it in relation to not just what one knows, but also to what one does not. Knowledge is a wholesome acquisition, in the sense that it employs the whole of the faculties for its subsistence, in the intaking and retaining, but also for the comprehending. And still after the affair is set, there is no guarantee of its permanence, as is the ticklish nature of intelligence in even the smartest people. To remain well-kept in your understanding, whatever has been successfully adapted in the mind must be used at frequent intervals of meaningful trial and thought, and not simply in pompous parlour room talk.

As a rule, learning is not an unconscious process, and certainly not as easy as that which can be done from a couch. It is a capricious struggle, requiring its portion of all-around care, whose efforts in maintaining far exceed the ones in growing.

When high-minded reference is made to the newest Netflix documentary or podcast episode, let it be looked upon with the same esteem as if it were a cartoon or marvel movie. For all of them are kindred forms of paltry entertainment which do a poor job disguising the essential ignorance of their spokesmen on subjects that outpace their natural competencies. The imbecile who boasts perjured facts and forged opinions from online videos betrays himself as being nothing more than an uninspired mimicry, looking to pay his boyish ego a lazy compliment. And how eager it seems we all are to oblige him.