Go build yourself another dream/ this choice isn’t mine

Hey.  How y’all doing?

I do owe my 2.6 remaining readers some kind of… well, explanation I guess.  Or at least an entertaining view into the creaking, barely operating clockwork of my id.

Some of you may know, and some may not, that I have been able to enjoy extra-happy-making stressful time in Yet Another Fucking Year On This TurdBall with another lovely financially bereft holiday season, compounded by the twin Good/Bad specters of deadlines for the FIRST Robotics season, and wonder of wonders, an actual ARCHITECTURAL PROJECT.  That may even result in ACTUAL FEES. But all of it HAS TO BE DONE AT THE SAME TIME. Because the universe loves to see zombies under stress, of course.

It may be mentioned that in this time of Economic Adventure Roller Coasterism That Benefits The Very Rich Quite A Bit And The Rest Not At All, financial matters have spiked in an amusing manner as a contributory factor in familial stress. It may also be mentioned that my fucking career has been fucking gasping for remnants of life for several years now. You (yes, all 1.8 of you left) can do the math (oh shit, nobody said there would be math; now we’re down to 1.2 readers).

Well, fuck, I digress so easily. Am I to be faulted if I hope it is the onset of senility?  Pissing myself doesn’t seem to be such a horrible fate, if the pain of memory is diminished….

In the midst of this emotional wreckage, I, of course, turned from time to time to the Imaginary Digital Realm, and my Imaginary Digital Friends.  But…

Things there are not looking much better.  Misunderstandings.  Anger.  Regression, apathy, apprehension…. I found that the corner taverns of my internet were drying up, changing, serving a different clientele (just like it did in my neighborhood in Milwaukee).  It didn’t-doesn’t- always feel like I was welcome anymore.

Look, I know this is a me-thing.  There is no obligation for the Internet to conform to my twisted wishes, and I wouldn’t want it to.  You, as my last .85 readers, need to just accept this as a description of my own feelings.

And without that relief valve, I felt…disgruntled.  No, that’s not the word.  Un-neighborly is better; but certainly resistant to entering into conversation.  Yeah, I know, pretty much the bloggy version of “Get Offa my Lawn”.

OK, so why was I posting anything?  Good question, my .4 remaining reader-partial.  One I asked myself EVERY FUCKING TIME I pushed the ‘publish’ button.  All I can say is that it felt better to do it than to not.

Someone said, somewhere, recently, that “zombie is complex”.  And I recently said that “sometimes it’s too easy to strike at the persona and hit the actual person”.  I suspect that I erred in throwing so all-in on a zombie persona; it seems to make it so easy to be casually vicious.  Zombie or not, I am only a somewhat-human-seeming analogue, and sometimes the last thing I need is more chainsaw or lawnmower references.  Intellectually, I know they are (mostly) meant in jest, but sometimes it just gets tiresome. Often, of late, I suspect Jennifer has the right approach, dissolving the barriers between pseudonym and reality. The only thing slowing me down is that “Real-life architect” seems to fare little better than “pretend zombie” in harshness, so maybe it’s pointless.

Life is hard.  It’s FUCKING hard.  I grew up in a not-especially-privileged family, as did Wife Sublime; we never  grew up expecting a magical life. It is very lucky that we both learned to work our asses off in demeaning, low wage jobs.  Even after we managed white-collar careers, it seems the parts about working your ass off and demeaning are still valid; I will be the FUCKING FIRST to admit that it has worked out much better for Wife Sublime than it has for me.

Whew.  I am one whiny, self-pitying son of a zombie, aren’t I?  So, the more rational among my .15 remaining readers may ask, why the fuck would you bother?

…well, yeah, I ask myself.  And in the past, I responded by starting new blogs, unannounced.

Writing has always helped me focus. I have always written well, when I put my mind to it; in high school, I could get a B+ on a first draft essay.  And when I opened the first crappy version of the Empire, I wrote because it felt worse not to, not because I had any readers. Which I didn’t, at least judging from the comments, for like a year and a half.

I also like writing.  I like reading.  I wish I had a fucking life that allowed me to do both with abandon.

Hey, there goes that digression again.

So, why bother?  Why not just shut down the Empire (again)?

The simplest reason, and the most complex.  I LIKE all you fucking twisted jerk wads. OK, I mean that in a much better way than it sounded.  Fuck, no wonder I am down to .08 readers at this point.

But what happened after I started blogging was kind of unexpected.  I happened upon a twisted spiral of like-minded oddballs who kind of congealed (lousy choice of words, but I am on a roll, kids, stick with me here.  Assuming I still have a non-zero readership).  And in several locales, and situations, I met these Imaginary Digital Friends face to face, not always involving heroic alcohol consumption, and discovered….they were good friends.

It has always struck me as amusing; meeting these folks for the first time, there always seems to be a time of adjustment, where your mind channels voices and faces into your files, already filled with arguments and jokes and common references.  and then ten minutes later, they are like your oldest friends.  It’s a remarkable experience.And it is remarkably amusing to always have Imaginary Digital Friends on hand whenever Wife Sublime wants to visit another city.

So; these Imaginary digital Friends: we have shared dinners, and drinks, and gossip and drinks and advice and chocolate skittles and loss and beer and plans and insights and local news and music.

And, dammit, that’s good stuff.  These days, I start to suspect it’s the only thing that’s worth anything; friends, family, food, music, drink.