[JOURNAL-ENTRY-006]
terminal\user\jem\journal
I’m writing this entry a day earlier than usual in anticipation of a rare, fully planned weekend ahead of me. On one hand, this could break my perfect submission streak that will no longer look nice and neatly separated on a weekly basis (by the same weird and obsessive brain that thinks any given volume slider should only be on an even number or multiple of two or five). On the other hand, perhaps breaking these chains now means an opportunity to embrace what feels uncomfortable and inconsistent. Perhaps there’s a rhyme or reason to the fact that there is none. I’m not sure if this’ll go out a day early, but I’ll see.1
At this point, now one month in, I feel I’ve gotten over the one-inch-tall mental barrier of caring too much about my entry lengths. I’d instead write as much as I want than appeal to an invisible weekly quota I invent for myself. Looking back, it sounds ridiculous that I didn’t realise this sooner. Admittedly, I always had the thought peeping at me from the bushes, snivelling and quietly remarking that a weak entry length was entirely representative of a week’s worth of my existence and value as a human being. This is objectively bullshit, so I suppose now’s a better time than ever to take a whipper snipper to those bushes. I love the words whipper snipper.
When I look back at the past week, I can’t help but feel a little fuller than usual, because:
- I saw my family for a weekend and ate dinner prepared by a twelve-year-old who has a phone now,
- I took my sister’s dog for an hour-long walk around a town that still looks the same, dry shades of beige,
- On the bus, I started reading one of the two books I purchased on impulse from the week before,
- I got a haircut, which wasn’t in fact an April Fool’s but resembled something I actually more than sort-of like,
- I bought my first new pair of jeans in years,
- I caught up with friends I hadn’t seen in a while to watch a new bad movie and suited up for the occasion (by “suit-up” I mean I got to wear a tie, which I loved despite it not being a real tie but a flimsy work of now broken craft borrowed from an ebay’d Spike Spiegel costume),
- I bought another pair of the same type of jeans in a different colour,
- I got more than halfway through a five-week course I remember dreading,
- I made frosting for half a cake my mother had baked for me and got some of the powder on a shirt I’m still wearing,
And today, as I write, I took the time to listen to a few newly released albums I wasn’t able to make time for.
It’s been a quaint amalgam of events for me, but lined with so much innate humanity in spots I’ll look back on fondly because they’re in writing. I’m not overly pressed by the pissy little ghouls that used to plague my mind. The species may have evolved to coordinate attacks less frequently and in smaller groups, but these days I can more or less see them dawdling from miles away behind a two-block-high wall. A huge improvement from times passed.
Unlike a world I’ll usually stay in for two weeks a year before giving up on finding The End, this nice digital world I get to occupy (now with colour!) has become a long-term project I look forward to watering and putting out in the limited sunlight for as long as I can.
entry\footnotes
You didn't.↩