The birth of an artist

 Somewhere right now
A young woman is writing her first story.
In her mind lives a person doing great things,
Loved by all,
Who's only wish is to earn the love of their childhood sweet heart.

This story will never leave her mind
Or the pages of a notebook worn with use and time.
This story is but a seed
Planted in her mind,
Soon to grow into a story she will always love
Though she'll never know why.

When she gets older
And is overcome with the desire to share 
Her inner self with the world,
Will she remember this story?
Will she remember how it felt to walk the world arm and arm
With her best friend
As they fought monsters and beat up bullies,
All so they could save that which they loved most?
Will she remember how much she loved it
And how it made her feel powerful and strong?
Will she decide to pursue her passion and share who she is
With the world she wants to join?

Or will it be shut away,
Forgotten about,
Written off as a mistake of youthful passion?
Will this merely be another story written
That was never meant to see the light of day? 

Thoughts

    One nice thing about writing a blog no one reads is that I don’t have to worry about editing my posts. I have spell check to make sure the grammar is (mostly) correct and the spelling is good unless I decide it shouldn’t be, and if it’s unprofessional, well, I’m not making money anyway so it doesn’t matter. Because of this, I’ve been writing a lot of “short” stories, or rather long stories split up into several sections. I’m enjoying the challenge, and it’s nice to know that someday somebody will read them and think “I could write better than this”. 

   I do hope to publish a novel someday, through a for real publisher. I just think that would be so cool, and I think I could manage it. I spend so much time writing out stories in my head that I think I could manage it through shear practice. I don’t think I’m there yet though. It’s possible I could get something published, but I don’t think my self esteem could take constant rejection at this point. That’s most of why I’m writing for this blog. It’s a way of reminding myself that even if my writings bad, people still read it so maybe I’m doing something right. Or maybe I’m delusional. 

All about me

    I know a lot of people don’t like the internet, but I think it’s awesome that I live in a world where more people then ever can speak and know that their voice is being heard. Maybe not by a lot of people, but even if only a small number of people know you and what you’re saying, you can still leave an impact. The flipside is that it’s all too easy for all of you’re mistakes to be immortalized, and I agree that it’s not a great thing that people who got famous for something stupid often can’t escape their mistakes.

     I don’t really have a good solution for that. I just know that I’m enjoying writing things and being able to pretend that someday people will want to read this. I’ve spent my entire life wishing I didn’t have to please people, and now I get to do what I want, and it feels amazing. I post a lot, and most of it isn’t that good, but it’s my writing, and I can stand by it. I’m not a smart writer, I’m not eloquent, I’m just me, and I’m so happy I finally took the plunge.

Big Book of Enchantments, Chapter 8, Jessica's Story

      The closer we get to the citadel, the less real the world seems to get. I don’t have any other way of putting it. They say that reality, the way we see it, is a recent event. Most of our history happened in a time where there were no rules, nothing to unify the bits of the universe. Now, they say, you wouldn’t know that unless you were a mage. 

     I didn’t appreciate that until I left the citadel. Coming back, I’m amazed at how easy it is to take the world for granted, especially if you don’t see the way it really moves. I thought that things stayed how they were in the Citadel, but I can’t help but feel I was wrong.

    It could just be the increasing number of Illusions that’s making me feel this way. My mother is a powerful illusionist, you would think I’d be able to spot one instantly. But one side effect of being completely unable to cast a spell is that I’m almost completely unable to resist spells. I keep putting up shields, but most aren’t designed to absorb the full impact of spells. I’m not the only one having issues. Johnathon and Zac seem to be alright, but Julia, Rachel and Michael seem to be flagging. 

    There’s nothing to do but remember how the world should work. Up is up, down is down, the grass is green, and the sky is blue. That only goes so far when you’re dealing with a mage who knows that the sky can also be cloudy and that no field is ever perfectly grassy. The rapid shifts are difficult to manage. It doesn’t help that I don’t really remember what the outside of the Citadel looks like. I ran through this place as fast as I could when I left. 

    “You shouldn’t be here. You need to leave now.”

     Why does she keep trying to scare us away? She won’t have enough power to stop us once we get there at this rate. Is she scared that she can’t stop us? I don’t know, and honestly, I don’t care. I’m tired and I just want to get this over with.

    “Stop it. Stop trying to hurt us. Stop trying to convince us to leave you alone. I know you’re weak. I know you’re scared. But I don’t care. I’m tired of having to pretend you’re a good person. I don’t want to be on the run my whole life. Either skip to the part where we fight you or kill us off and be done with it.”

     Sometimes I forget that the enchantress is watching us. She’s not much of a fighter, but diss her and you’ll regret it instantly. 

     I flip through the Big Book of Enchantments to my strongest shield spell. I just barely get the spell up in time. Unfortunately, I forgot I was traveling with five other people, and when I look around, there’s nobody but me. 

     I never wanted to fight the enchantress. Until now I’ve spent my life avoiding her. But now, I have to stop her. Even if I don’t know these people all that well, even If I know they don’t like me at all, this isn’t okay. Even if I can’t stop her, I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t try.

    “You shouldn’t have done that.” I say, not sure if she’s even listening. “But it’s nice to know I’m allowed to try and stop you.”

Living for a fantasy

      The best part about blogging, for me at least, is that every time I write a post or a story or a poem, I can dream of the day when everyone knows about it and talks about how they love it and how it made their lives better. I don’t know if it’ll happen, there’s every likelihood it won’t, but when I imagine it, it makes me feel like my opinion is worth something, like even if no one hears me, my words still matter. 

    I know that everyone is different but one thing that I think all of us have in common is the dream of being important, the dream of mattering to somebody, somewhere. Why else would so many teenagers dream of becoming YouTube stars? We may have it easier than our ancestors in almost every way, but so many of us struggle with feeling like nobody cares about us. 

    I’m single, live with my mother, and have never had a job. I’m the textbook definition of failure in the United States. And yet I’m luckier than just about everyone else because I have the ability to live out, in some small way, my fantasies. That feels wrong to me. Shouldn’t I be able to look at people who have jobs, friends, and hobbies and think “God I wish I were them”? But I don’t. I don’t because all you need to do is spend five seconds online to see how miserable things are for them. I may not have a good life, but I chose to be who I am today, and I can’t help but look at normal people and see people who didn’t really get a say in who they are as a person. I know that’s just a thing we need to deal with, but not everyone needs to deal with it, and those who do have to deal with it often aren’t even allowed to complain. 

    I know you can’t give people everything they want, but I don’t think most people want much. They just want lives that help them stay happy and fulfilled. My view is that what it comes down to is that society builds boxes for people to occupy, but these boxes aren’t built around what people really want to do. They tend to leave things out. Most people accept that, because they have enough to survive, and they get by pretending to be somebody else. But what if there isn’t a box you can occupy? What if you look at society and think “I just don’t want this”? Is it really necessary to sacrifice who we are to keep everyone else happy? 

The Big Book of Enchantments, Chapter 8, Zac's story

     In the four years I’ve been on the road, I’ve never felt this uneasy. We’ve been walking for days, trying to reach the citadel, and the closer we get, the angrier everyone seems to be. 

     I think it all started when I asked Jessica why we didn’t just start by going to the Citadel. Everyone knew that Mildred Stonebridge was planning something, everyone knew the only way to stop her was to go to the citadel and show her what’s what. When I mentioned this to her, she just said, “You can’t defeat her. Even if you prove she can’t beat you, she’ll never let you win. She won’t admit defeat, she’ll keep fighting until you either kill her or decide it’s easier to just give up. Once she invited an assassin over and the two got into a fight. He injured her badly, but she kept fighting until he agreed to do what she wanted. It doesn’t matter that we’re stronger than her. We’ll never win.”

    I think she’s crazy. Everyone has a moment where they give in, and if you keep pushing, you’ll go past it eventually. But the closer we get to the citadel, the more nervous she seems to be. We keep asking her for tips, and she’ll either say nothing or say, “I don’t know.” 

    We’re about a day away from reaching the Citadel, and I can’t stop this horrible feeling that we’re being watched by someone. I don’t know who would have a scrying orb this far away from anywhere, or know why they’d be using it on us, but I’ve been on the run long enough to know one when it’s being used on me. 

    Is Mildred Stonebridge watching us? Does she know that we’re coming? Is she trying to stop us? Why does Jessica seem so afraid of her? 

    It’s late now. This orb spell Jessica uses keeps the rain off but doesn’t keep out the noise. I’ve slept outside to long to be afraid of the dark. The stars are beautiful tonight. I remember hearing that back in the days when mages ruled Altra some would look into the sky to see the future. If they were looking into the sky, would they see us succeeding?

    “Well, well, well, Someone’s up past their bedtime.”

     Okay, who is talking to me? I look around to see that everyone else is asleep. “There’s no point in looking, you won’t see me.”

     I stand up suddenly and shout, “Who are you?” 

     “Zac?”

     I turn to see Jessica waking up. “Sorry, I thought I heard someone talking.”

    “This close to the citadel, you probably did. Mages try to keep in practice with illusion spells of all sorts.”

    “Why would they want to talk to me though?”

     “If I had to guess they’ve been watching us ever since we entered the citadel’s zone of influence. They don’t get many visitors.”

    “Why didn’t you say anything?” I ask.

    “They’re mages. I don’t know why you thought they wouldn’t be watching us.” 

    I guess she’s right. I don’t know what mages would normally do. They aren’t very common anymore. “Do you think Mrs. Stonebridge is watching us?” I ask.

     “Yes. Even if she’s asleep, she’ll have someone watching our behavior.”

     “Do you think she’ll attack us?” 

      “Once she knows what we want, she’ll go all out. But we have a while to go until then.” 

Rushed Rhyming Regrets

    I’ve been writing a bunch of rhyming poetry lately, and I have to say I find it extremely fiddly. There are a lot of poets who can write really good poems with rhyme and meter and whatnot, but I’m just not one of them. Most of the problem is that when I’m trying to rhyme something, I’m not focused on what emotion I’m trying to aim for, which is my normal goal when writing poetry, I’m trying to figure out what my next rhyme should be. 

     It doesn’t help that English doesn’t have a lot to work with. I’m grateful for google because I keep forgetting what rhymes words even have. I know I’m not the only person who has this problem, one of the things I do when listening to music that has lyrics is trying to guess the next line by what rhymes the end of the current line has. If you’ve listened to enough songs, you’ll learn the rhymes fairly quickly. It says something that one of the reasons Hamilton became so famous is because Lin-Manuel Miranda was able to rhyme at not just the end of a line but in the middle of lines as well. He was so good that the “bad” songs in musical were better than a lot of “good” songs other songwriters produce. 

     I can’t complain about the difficulty, it’s a nice change from writing free verse poetry, but I do wish there was a middle ground between the difficulty of rhyming poetry and the openness that free verse has. I know there are other forms, like Haiku and cinquain, and a lot of poetry that focuses on meter rather then rhyming, but I honestly find keeping track of stress in lines very tricky. And a lot of other forms just feel more like gimmicks than something designed to provide challenge. 

    Sometimes I feel like everyone knows how to write poetry, but nobody knows how to do it well. You can find a lot of style guides on the internet, and stuff on metaphor and simile, but the only way to know you’re doing it right is to stand in front of an audience and pray they don’t laugh when you don’t want them to. Or throw tomatoes at you. I don’t even know what I think makes a poem good or bad, I just know that I like some poems a lot and there are some poems I don’t like but I know other people like. I’m not even trying to write good poetry; I’m just trying to express myself in a way that makes sense. The rhyming is just because I want to be able to say I could write a good rhyming poem if I wanted to, even though I doubt I will.  

Aim for the top

 Aim for the top
She was told all her life, 
Leap high and nobody can stop you.

She read books, She wrote papers,
She got an A on every assignment. 
Her parents and teachers beamed with pride
"There's our little girl."

The bar got higher,
So she jumped to greater and greater heights
And tried to ignore the pain when she landed.
Elementary, Middle and high school,
She dazzled all she met
But a voice inside her kept saying,
"You're not smart, and it won't be long before everyone knows that."

College was hard,
Work was harder.
She learned math,
But her heart had things it wanted to say.

She kept quiet
For nobody wants their child to be an artist.
She became an engineer,
Not the kind anyone remembers,
She was good enough to be valued, that was all.

All her life, through marriage and children,
She felt like something was missing.
When she retired, it felt like a relief, 
At last she could do what she liked.
So she became an painter,
And when she saw her painting in a gallery
All she could think was,
"All my life I aimed for the top, and what did it get me?"

A weird thought I have

   Sometimes I’ll see someone express a thought I’ve held privately. I know they don’t know me, and I’m certain they couldn’t have read my blog, but there will be my words, written not in my voice but using a thought I’ve held for a long time. I don’t get angry or jealous, but I think something that honestly doesn’t make sense. I think, “Maybe I have more influence than I thought I did.” 

    I know it’s silly. I know I’m not the only person affected by way the world moves, and it’s not improbable that I’m merely absorbing thoughts from others around me, but when you move alone these thoughts and fantasies tend to be important to you, especially if you know that the moment you told someone else, they will laugh and dismiss you. 

   I keep writing because I think that if I write something, even if nobody ever reads it, it will still change the world in some way. I know that’s not possible; how can I change someone’s mind if they never speak to me at all? But I keep believing it because in this world power comes not in what we have, but what we want to have someday. I don’t want to be famous, but I want to be allowed to believe that I could be famous if I wanted to be. I think that’s true for everyone to an extent. It’s why so many stories end with someone becoming successful. I’ve always thought that most of us don’t want to reach the top. We say we do, because we think that’s what we’re supposed to say, but if all of us wanted to reach the top society would look very different than it does. What most of us want is the dream that we could reach the top, be famous or rich or powerful in one way or another. Shows about rich people screwing up are popular not because they make rich people relatable, but because they feed into a fear that we all have, the fear that we could have everything we want, but we still won’t be happy. 

    I do think we take that too far sometimes. There’s nothing wrong with not wanting to be successful, but I still think we should all want something. Not something more or better than what we have now, but something that’s meaningful to us in a way that if we were to tell anybody else, it wouldn’t make any sense to them. One of my strongest beliefs is that our universe is built from the belief that we want to matter in some way. I don’t really know if it’s true, I don’t really care either. I just think that we want to matter, to leave a mark that can be seen when we’re gone. 

Society's fatal flaw

   Society isn’t real. We made up the rules we live under, we decide what happens to those who break them, we decide when something needs to change. But society depends on us never figuring out that it isn’t real, that we never wake up wondering why things are the way they are and conclude that there isn’t a good reason. In order for society to survive, we have to believe that those in charge represent our best interest, that people are doing the jobs they’re best suited for, and nobody is punished needlessly. The worth of society depends on how many believe they are better off participating instead of going alone. 

    This means that unless you’ve experienced a problem firsthand, you won’t realize there’s a problem in society. People within society live under the illusion that society is perfect, or that it only has very minor problems, or that problems can be ironed out with hard work and love. Unless your society is actively failing, you probably can’t see that it needs to be fixed. And so long as people aren’t able to see how a society doesn’t work until it can’t be fixed, society will always be doomed. 

     I’ve talked before about how every big issue began as someone being unhappy with the status quo, living life feeling like something just wasn’t right. Every society has to deal with the fact that most of the people living in it aren’t perfectly happy. They could be annoyed with their neighbors, they could hate their jobs, they could dislike the people in government, but most people just grudgingly tolerate these annoyances because they were taught from a young age not to make a big deal over small things. So long as these issues stay small, then people will still be happy, and society will continue on. But when small issues escalate, when the neighbor complains too much or the job asks too much from them or the government does something truly outrageous, they will rebel, and if they’re lucky their rebellion will be enough for people to take notice and change things to that everyone will be, if not happy, at least content. But if people stop listening, or if the proposed resolution doesn’t leave everyone satisfied, people will start questioning how good society actually is. 

    The higher your status is the harder it is to see how society faulters. Status is gained by proving yourself worthy, and when you’ve proved yourself worthy, people aren’t easily able to admit that you aren’t worthy anymore. This means that you’re shielded from problems to an extent. The issue with that is that the people in charge, the ones most equipped to change things, are the ones who are least likely to do that, even if they’d be willing to sacrifice their power if it was necessary. 

    When you put that all together society is doomed to have people who are unhappy with no good way to fix it. A lot of people say that that’s life, but the people who say that are people who don’t feel that society is broken because even if they can’t be successful, they can still dream of success. Unhappy people are the bane of a society because they will be the first to ask why society has problems and why they can’t seem to fix them. I want to stress that this isn’t a problem with the elite, it’s a problem that everyone has. No one in charge really gets to chose whether they’re in charge, any more than someone in poverty chooses poverty. The only difference between rich and poor is that you’re supposed to do things that will increase your chances at wealth. The problem with society is that in order for it to work, people have to be able to ignore problems until it’s too late to fix them. So long as that’s true, society will always be doomed. 

The Big Book of Enchantments, Chapter 7, Jessica's Story

     Julia’s just announced that she and Rachel aren’t going to go to Brook’s Hallow. Julia promised her aunt that they wouldn’t go back until Rachel was safe, and she won’t be safe until the assassin gives up. When I found out the Assassin was sent by Mildred Stonebridge, my heart sank.

    “You’ll never be safe.” I told them, “If she wants something, she won’t stop until she gets it. She wanted a child, and she wouldn’t stop pestering her husband until he got her pregnant. When that child didn’t satisfy her, she made him give her another one. Everyone at the citadel gave her everything she wanted, not because they were scared, but to save themselves the annoyance.”

   Then, as I was getting packed to head into the city, Zac walked up to me.

   “It seems to me,” He said, “That you’re very good at identifying problems but very bad at doing anything to stop them.”

    “What am I supposed to do?” I shot back

    “I don’t know.” He admitted. “But you know the Citadel, and you know who this woman is. It seems to me you would have some way that would stop her.”

    “Short of killing her, nothing would.” I said.

    “Then kill her.” He told me.

     I stared at him. “Why would you want me to kill her?”

    “She’s putting everyone’s life in danger. She told the king and queen they can’t accept their son back or else she’s turning the kingdom against them. She’s set an assassin after Rachel and Julia so they can’t rest safely anymore. What else does she need to do to convince you that you need to do something about this.”

    I didn’t say anything to that. What could I say? When I left the Citadel, I promised myself that I would never go back. I was done for good. But now it seems the world will be in trouble unless I go back. And what would I do? I don’t know how to kill people. I destroy buildings, cause panic and mayhem, and cause things to catch fire, I don’t kill people.

   But I know Zac’s right. If I don’t kill her, this will only get worse.

   So I’m going back to the Citadel. The one place I never wanted to return to.

   I’ve never been more scared.

My views on society

      One of the unchangeable truths about the world is that humans are social creatures. If a bunch of humans were put onto a desert island with very few natural resources, those humans would form a society in an instant. It’s baked into our DNA to be friendly and to do what we need to do to keep everyone happy. No matter who you are, a truth that unites us is that we want to form societies. Or so I’ve been told at least.

    I’m not socially gifted, nor do I want to be socially gifted. I’ve been told by many people that choosing not to socialize is bad for you, that I should try and find a social group and make more friends, but in my experience, it just isn’t worth it for me. What makes friendship worth it for most people is they don’t have to spend a lot of time thinking about it. They have an at least decent intuition of what will make their friends happy and help everyone else at least tolerate them. I don’t have that. On an intellectual level, I know how it works in general, but it doesn’t feel natural to me, and I’m aware that it’s only a matter of time before I screw up. 

   As a result of me neither having the skills to be social nor the desire to be social, I’ve developed an odd view of how society works, one that I’m not sure is even real. I just know that when I look at the world through that lens, life makes a lot more sense to me. I know that I’m not the only person who is, by choice or circumstance, not a member of society, so I refuse to believe I’m the only person who thinks that the world doesn’t work the way we think it does. But I’ve been trying to write about it, and one thought keeps coming up: what if I’m wrong? What if this isn’t just wrong, but the kind of wrong that everyone else but me knows is wrong? I don’t think it is, but I’ve never told anyone about this before. Not helping this is that, if I’m honest, I don’t think society is the naturally great thing we were led to believe. I don’t agree with people who say we’re in our best state in nature, or with the people who say we’re at our best in society. My issue is that everyone knows the problems living outside of society poses, but nobody seems to be able to acknowledge that society, at least the way we’ve always done it, has serious drawbacks. I don’t like that, given that society has always been, at best, deeply flawed, everyone is born under the expectation that we will want to live in society. Even if you really don’t want to live in society, you’re told your entire live you should want it. The way things are going, I don’t think we have much longer before we don’t have a choice but to live in society and given that society has always been somewhat invisible to the people living in it, that means we’re going to have to deal with the problems of society without any good ways to fix them. 

     I don’t think we should stop living in societies. I don’t like living in society because I’m not good at dealing with people, but even I still have a human in me that wishes she could just go out and make friends like everyone else can. What we need to do is turn society from something we just do automatically on a gut level into something that has hard rules to it that we all agree on. Not that long ago, people argued that we should have paper money instead of commodity money, saying that turning money from something that was tied to rarity to something that existed because we believe it exists would allow us to control the economy more effectively. It took a while, but now every country in the world uses paper money whose value only exists because we believe that it exists. I think we need to apply this idea more broadly. The reason we have so many laws is that as society grew larger, more and more of our rules needed to be written down so that people know what the final verdict is. So why not write down all our unwritten rules and talk about what would make sense on a societal level? Why not discuss with other nations what morals we have versus what morals they have? I firmly believe that what makes us human isn’t our capabilities, but our wants and needs. I think our future will have to involve what our desires are if we wish to grow and change the way we say we do. 

Big Book of Enchantments, Chapter 7, Julia's Story

    I’ve been keeping my pocket mirror a secret from the others. I’m a little worried that if they see it, they’ll try and steal it from me. But I have to take it out now. There’s something I need to talk to my aunt about. 

    I flip it open and ask to speak to my aunt. It’s so late I’m sure I’ll have to leave a message, but to my surprise she answers. 

     “What is it, Julia?” She asks me.

     I tell her everything that’s going on, how we met Johnathon, then Jessica, Zac, and Michael, how we went to the capital and couldn’t get any help, and how Jessica now wants to go to Brook’s Hallow because she thinks someone might help Mike. “I don’t know why she thinks that, the only people who know any magic live in the place she just left.”

      “Maybe she just doesn’t want to go back. People like to put off unpleasant things.” My aunt says.

      “I don’t know. I don’t want to go back to the city until Rachel is safe.” I say.

      “Then don’t. Just say you don’t think it’s safe, then leave” She says.

      I look over at where Jessica is sleeping. “She’s not going to be happy about that.” I say.

     “That doesn’t matter. Rachel’s safety comes first.” My aunt says.  

An Artificial Future

 

    A fairly common talking point these days is about the possibility that AI will make it impossible for humans to find work, with opinions ranging from “We’re doomed” to “We’ll find something humans can do”. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. I don’t know a lot about Artificial Intelligence, but I’m certain its capabilities are limited by our view of the world and whether or not it takes over the world will come down to how willing we are to let that happen.

     Take artificial flavors in food. Most food has them these days, most of them are tested and for the most part they have been deemed safe for human consumption, but a lot of people find the idea of buying food with artificial flavors in them deeply uncomfortable, and it’s hard to find solid agreement on how safe it really is for people.

    Now what about stuff that’s written by AI. Not long ago, I saw an ad on Facebook for Artificial Intelligence that could write blog posts. That reminded me of a question I’ve had ever since I heard of AI that could compose music; Would people ever want to consume media produced by AI? I don’t know if AI produced music is better or worse, I haven’t heard enough of it to make a solid judgement, but artificial flavors have been around for a lot longer and we still aren’t willing to accept them, so how would artificial media be any different.

   I can see AI replacing grocers to a point, that’s a job very few people want to do, and most people are fine buying things from stores that use self-checkout stands. I’m skeptical when it comes to the doctors because in a time of need people will want a person to comfort them and help them feel safe, and computers can’t do that at the moment.  I don’t see any future where computers could take over the jobs of artists. Even if it gets to the point where one could say they’re better, too many people will want to make art, and they’ll come up with new ideas that computers can’t manage, and if it gets to a point where no artist could ever surpass a computer, that won’t stop people from wanting to make art.

     My biggest question is can we make a computer that is capable of surpassing us socially? I know there are people working on doing that, and while I think it’s possible, I don’t know if we know enough to make it happen. The way society has always worked is that people work out the rules based on what upsets the smallest number of people, and most if it is done based on what feels right to people. The rules aren’t written in stone, they get tweaked as people bump up against invisible lines and question whether or not something is right. Would a computer ever be able to understand that? How would it be able to learn about the rules that we don’t know about until somebody breaks them?

     I may not know the answer, but I think the answer to this will determine what kind of relationship we have with AI going forward.

Turn back the clock

 All we need to do is go back in time,
Back to when things were better,
Back to when we all had that we needed to live.

All we need to do is go back to a time
Before most of us were born.
Before most of us were allowed to live
The life that was promised to everyone
Who mattered.

All we need to do
Is forget all that’s happened,
All the sacrifices we made,
All that we hoped to do.

All we need to do is go back to our youths,
Our infancy,
When nothing mattered and none of our choices had any impact.

All we need to do is to let go of who we truly are
And who we really want to be. 

I just want to be happy

    I want to be happy. I know, that’s not something people usually want or expect out of life, but when I say I want to be happy, I mean that I want to live in a world where I know my happiness is important. I don’t think I live in that world right now. 

    My entire life I was taught to do what was right, to think about others before thinking about my own happiness, to work to make the world a better place. I went to college not because I wanted a degree, but because my mother expected me to work to get a high paying job. I looked for work not because I wanted to enter the workforce, but because my mother thought I needed to pay rent. I live with my mother at the moment not because I’m happy to have her support me, but because going out into the world would require me to spend all my time working just to get by, and I don’t want to do that. I hear people complaining all the time that in America we prioritize short term happiness over long term success, but I see no evidence of that. Everyday millions of people get out of bed earlier than they want to so they can go to jobs they don’t like so they don’t have to sleep on the streets or in their parents’ basement. It wasn’t that long ago where a job could support a family, but now people are lucky if two jobs can support their whole family.  They aren’t working for happiness, their working to survive, because society expects them to, because they don’t want to be a burden on their family members. Most of us aren’t going through life demanding that everything be given to us. We’re going through life hoping we don’t have to rely on handouts to get by. But we’ve built an entire society out of the idea that if we don’t put a lid on people’s worst impulses, society will fall apart. No, I don’t think all of us are saints who will help people out of the goodness of their hearts, but most of us aren’t monsters. We want to do the right thing. But a society built out of the expectation that everyone is evil will turn into a society where only evil people can live. 

   We’ve tried to build a society that encourages people to be successful. That led to a society where those who can’t succeed are pitied and those who don’t want to succeed are despised. You aren’t supposed to want to live on just enough. You’re supposed to want to aim higher, to reach the top, to not be happy until you have the most you could possibly get. We talk about gratefulness and gratitude, to be happy that we aren’t at the bottom of society, but every generation continues to teach their kids to aim for the jobs society views as the most valuable. The worst part is that there isn’t an endpoint, there isn’t a point where you can say that you’ve truly succeeded. Once you reach the top, you’re supposed to look for the next point to aim for. Society won’t reward complacency. That’s fine for CEOs and politicians, but it’s a little hard on the rest of us.

      I may be wrong, but I think society should aim to make sure that everyone has what they need to be happy. There are people who dream of being President of course, but there are also people who dream of being a sport star, or internet personality, or a famous writer. But many, many more just want to have enough that they don’t feel trapped or scared. They don’t want to be a famous writer, but they’d like to be able to make a living writing stories. They don’t want to be head of their department, but they’d like to know they have job security. They don’t want to work full time, but they’d like to know that if their parent’s die then they won’t starve. We don’t have that society. We keep saying that we don’t want it, but societies with these protections are much happier than we are. 

    The problem is that from the time we’re born we’re told that our happiness isn’t important. We have to work to make sure that our parents don’t get upset, our teachers don’t punish us, our friends don’t decide to abandon us. Our goal from the time we first learn how to talk is to not upset anyone. That works so long as we have people who can take care of us if things go wrong, but that isn’t a guarantee. I’m glad that we’re trying to grow past this as a society, trying to teach our children to speak their mind if something goes wrong. But this goes beyond parents teaching their children how to ask for help or tell an adult if somethings wrong. This is something we need to build into our schools, businesses, and governmental bodies. We need to make sure that however bad things get, we don’t feel like the world is abandoning us. We can’t aim for a world where we only speak when we feel something needs to be said, because we will never be sure if that’s true or not. We can’t keep silent unless we’re sure something’s wrong because most of us won’t know if something’s wrong until we speak up. We can’t aim for happily ever after until we know for sure that happily ever after is possible. 

Opinions

     I’ve been Blogging regularly for a little over a month now, and I was trying to come up with something for my next post when something began to bother me. 

     I live on the internet. Many, many people have written articles telling me and people like me that we should not do this, and that if we do live on the internet, we should log off and spend time outdoors or with our family. At least they did before 2020, and presumably once the pandemic is over, they’ll resume telling us that our homebound ways are shortening our lifespans and limiting our perspectives, making us poorer members of society. Evidently, they didn’t think that the entire point of our lifestyle was to avoid being members of society.  In spite of what people I don’t know and will probably never meet think of what I do all day, I do it, mostly because I’ve done it for years and it feels comfortable and safe.

     What I mostly do is look at other people’s opinion on things, mostly things I’ve never watched, read, or played. This is because whenever I look for opinions, I look for people who I’ve heard give decent opinions in the past, regardless of if I know what their talking about or not. I think the best opinions can be applied not just to one thing, but to a lot of things. If you have an opinion about a book, you likely have opinions about literature in general, and those opinions are going to be fairly consistent. So if you look for a large number of opinions on a lot of different books, that tells you a lot about what people want in literature. I don’t even think you need to be an “expert” to do this. Experts gain that label because they mostly read what society considers to be great literature. Most people don’t read great literature. They read books that are fun. So, if you look at what people like and what they say about what they like, that will tell you a lot about what people expect and how, if you were to create something in that medium, how to subvert that expectation.

     One opinion I see occasionally is that people shouldn’t talk if they have nothing to say. This is a good idea in theory. If you don’t have anything to say, then why are you going on about it? Shouldn’t you keep quiet and let the people with more to say have the floor? But let me tell you what hearing this said can do to a person.

     I run a one-person blog. At the moment, it has no followers and over its lifetime has had ninety views among about 77 published posts. It’s a mediocre blog that nobody cares about, I know it, everyone who reads it probably knows it, and I write material that fits that mold. I don’t have the best opinions because I don’t need to have the best opinions. Yet when I’m writing, I find myself asking, “What if this is a stupid opinion? What if people don’t think it’s interesting?” And that line of thinking makes me pause. 

     I try to avoid hurting people. I don’t have much of a filter, and I’m not good at reading non-verbal cues, but I put in as much effort as possible to avoid hurting people because it’s not their fault I don’t have any social skills, and even if I don’t have any friends, I don’t want to be the person who ruined someone’s life because I wasn’t thinking. Maybe it’s just because I’ve never found social skills easy, but I think we need to normalize the idea that someday, you’re going to hurt someone’s feelings. You may not realize it, but if someone tells you that you did something wrong, don’t make a big deal out of it. Apologize and move on, not every social pairing was destined to be. People who hurt others aren’t necessarily bad, it’s only if they hurt people constantly and without remorse that it becomes a problem. 

     The thing about telling people who “Have nothing to say” that they should keep quiet, or saying some variant of that, is that only works on people who have decent social skills, people who have a good instinctive sense of when they should say something and when they should keep quiet. Most people either have that or can develop it, but there are a lot of people who can’t. Should these people be expected to keep their mouth shut all the time, because they’re never sure if something they want to say is worth saying?

      In my eyes, the end result of telling people to keep quiet unless they have something to say is that already quiet people end up saying nothing at all and those who are prone to saying things that aren’t relevant to conversation will have more room to hog the conversation. No quiet person is going to want to say something that makes them look stupid, no person without a filter will care. It accomplishes the opposite of what they set out to do. 

    I think that we should be encouraging people to talk about their feelings from a young age. If they say something hurtful, we take them aside, tell them what they did wrong, show them how to apologize for their transgressions, and move on unless we see them making the same or a similar mistake. Not everyone learns social skills at the same rate, but one thing that’s more or less true for everyone is that until they cross a social line, they won’t know it’s there. Its why little kids are known for saying dumb or rude things, they haven’t learned where the lines are yet. And in a world where we are interacting with new people constantly, we always run the risk of crossing that line and hurting someone’s feelings without meaning to. It’s why I think we need to get together and agree on what the basic social rules are in a forum where everyone can have input, that way people who are prone to making mistakes will be able to avoid messing up, and when people get in a fight, they have a good metric to find out who’s right and who’s wrong. 

     I might not feel this way if I wasn’t very prone to messing up and didn’t have a massive fear of making someone angry because I didn’t think before I spoke. I have firsthand experience with what can happen when you don’t know what the rules are. I agree that we should avoid hurting others, but I think we forget just how easy it is to do that without meaning to, and under current social rules people who are prone to hurting others are told to just keep quiet, even if they would be better off saying things and just apologizing when making mistakes, so they can learn how to function in society. The goal of society is to be a place where we can express ourselves without fear of punishment or ridicule, but a lot of rules make it so that people with certain restrictions never get that choice. And the people making these rules aren’t cruel or petty, they’re just not thinking of those who get affected by this because they aren’t a part of that group. That’s just not right. Every single big issue in this world started as someone who was upset about something, someone who was told that they’re problem wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t until they saw that other people were dealing with similar problems that they realized that maybe they had a point. We know that racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism are big issues because people complain about them constantly. Does that mean they are the only big issues we’re facing? Or are they just the big issues people are willing to complain about?  

Big Book of Enchantments, Chapter 6, Jessica's Story

      It feels like I’ve been traveling for years, though if Julia’s phone is correct, I’ve only been traveling for a month and a half.

   All six of us are travelling to Brooks Hallow. Michael needs help learning how to control his magic, Zac is looking for people to steal from, I don’t want Michael traveling by himself, and Rachel, Julia, and Johnathon want to ask the leader of Magitronics Inc for help. They don’t know what else to do.

     If it wasn’t for The Enchantress, I’d be excited about going to Brook’s Hallow. From what Rachel tells me, it’s on the cutting edge of technology. Not only do they have Magitronics Inc building computers that can use magic, but they also have new artifacts that can sense the amount of magic in an area, project images into your brain, and write down your thoughts for later retrieval. To say nothing about advancements in medicine, engineering, and entertainment. I asked Rachel if it was a big as Portland and she said, “It’s much bigger.”

    I don’t know that much about Brooks Hallow. People at the Citadel didn’t talk much about life outside and almost nobody ever came to visit. What I do know is that, in addition to being a big city, it’s the oldest city in Altra other than the capital. According to Rachel, you wouldn’t know that if you went to visit, because they keep tearing down and rebuilding old buildings. There are a few buildings that are more than a hundred years old, but only because they bring in a lot of tourists.

    I suppose it’s a good thing the Citadel isn’t part of Brook’s Hallow then.

   I’ve been thinking, if we can’t find anyone to help Michael learn how to do magic in Brook’s Hallow, I’ll teach him magic myself. I don’t think going back to the citadel would be a good idea, for either of us.

   I knew magic had moved on, but until I left, I hadn’t realized how far behind we were at the citadel compared to everyone else. It’s not just that, outside of certain niche fields, nobody practices magic as magic anymore, or that even magic artifacts have fallen out of favor, it’s that spells are a lot more complicated, so keeping them balanced is beyond what a mage could hope to do. If Michael had been born five hundred years ago, I would take him to the Citadel instantly to see that he was properly trained for his calling. But everywhere I look, there are spells that could be unbalanced by a stiff breeze, let alone the kind of magic a human can do. I think he’d be better off learning how not to do magic, so that he wouldn’t destroy anything by accident.

    I have to say, as someone who had a lot of trouble learning how not to destroy things, I’m a little worried at the direction the world seems to be going. I know there are benefits to having so many complicated spells, but if someone like me lost control, a city could be shut down instantly. I can’t see how that could be sustainable unless you measured everyone for channeling potential and magic resistance and told everyone who couldn’t manage to control their magic to leave and not come back. Portland had a lot of spells like that, and the capital had quite a few as well. If every city is like this, my only hope is to find a village I can live in or go back to the citadel.

    If I get the chance, I’ll ask Rachel’s mother what she plans to do about this. Surely, she’s aware that this is a problem, and maybe I can convince her that it isn’t fair to force people like me to live in the middle of nowhere. If I can’t do that, then I think our future is very bleak indeed.

Thoughts on normal

    I’ve mentioned before that I don’t think we can go back to normal. What normal would we even want to go back to? The nineties? I was born in 1995. I have no memories of the nineties. And assuming that the birthrate in the United States hasn’t changed and that people live to be, on average, 77, about 27 percent of the population was born after the year 2000. I’ll grant you, that’s making a lot of assumptions, but the math seems right to me. More importantly, the nineties weren’t perfect. Many people think they were better, but they had massive structural problems that directly lead to the issue we’re facing today. I’ve been watching people asking to go back to normal ever since the start of 2021, and I keep thinking, do you really want to just turn back the clock? 

    Life wasn’t better before the pandemic. We thought it was better, because we were able to go out and do things and participate in what was viewed as normal life, but that life was mostly just an illusion. At the bottom of that life was the idea that if you worked hard and pushed yourself and did everything you could to prove to everyone that you were special and worthy of praise and your place in society. That idea consumed us. We’ve reached the point where just being normal, just doing enough to get by, isn’t allowed anymore. Because everyone knows you could be doing so much better if you sacrificed your family, your free time, your secret passions, the things that society doesn’t care about but that makes us who we are. That’s not living. That’s struggling just to get by. The way I see it, even before the pandemic we were trapped by the society we lived in, because no one wanted to be the first to say, “This sucks and I would do anything to get away from this.” And they stayed silent until it was too late for things to change peacefully. So why do we keep insisting we want to go back to “normal”? Do we really want things to go back to the way they were, when most of us just scraped by and prayed we wouldn’t lose everything? Do we just say that because we think we’re supposed to say that? Do we mean that we want things to get better, and we don’t have a frame of reference for a world that doesn’t make most of us miserable?

      Whatever the answer, we can’t go back, even if we really wanted to which frankly, I don’t think most of us do. What we need to do now is try to figure out what kind of world we want to live in instead. People keep making suggestions, but nobody wants to commit. I know that the world is a scary place right now but hiding from responsibility won’t fix our problems. The truth is most of us aren’t happy, and we have an idea of what we want, we just aren’t sure how to get it. 

     What I want is a world where I can live happily without having to get a job. I realize that sounds crazy, but getting a job requires jumping through so many hoops that I honestly don’t think it’s worth it, especially since I have better options. Failing that, I at least want a world where I could feasibly get a job. As it is, even though I went to college for six years, I have next to no chance at getting a job because every job has experience requirements. And more and more jobs are automating the hiring process because it’s cheaper than having someone look through resumes. I honestly think that if that’s the route companies think we should go, we need to have a fail safe in place for people like me who can’t live in our current system, so that if things go wrong I don’t have to spend my days on the streets begging because I don’t have anywhere else to go. 

      I also want a world where our plans for the future go beyond just stopping the earth from warming. Just pushing pause on climate change isn’t enough. We need to have a plan in place to make sure we don’t make the same mistakes again. When World War One ended, everyone assumed that it was so big and awful that no one would ever try to go to war again. That turned out to be very wrong. We can’t assume that if we stop climate change than our descendants will never want to undo our progress in the name of progress. We need to have a plan in place to either stop people from warming the earth or make it so that it’s as hard as possible to change the climate. 

     But for me, there’s a big question that I don’t honestly have a good answer to; what happens after we stop climate change? I know there’s next to no chance of us meeting our climate goals at this point, but I think that it’s only a matter of time before we could, at least in theory, act in such a way that we could consciously control earth’s climate patterns. So, what do we do when that happens? Turn earth into the kind of planet only humans could inhabit? Leave earth and start turning planets into earthlike planets? What if we encounter other species of life forms? I know it’s not relevant, but these questions get brought up by science fiction writers all the time because, like me, they assume that someday they will be relevant. I also suspect they will be relevant a lot sooner than most of us think they will be. 

     The twentieth century took us from a world where almost nobody had cars to a world where high speed travel to almost anyplace on the planet was possible and phones no longer needed to be plugged into walls. I honestly think the twentieth century is shaping up to do something similar. We aren’t noticing this because we’re in the middle of these changes and everything seems normal. But it’s happening, and I think we’ve reached a point where we need to start thinking about what we want from our societies. It’s been an abstract concept that only a few of us thought about in any serious way, but in a world where we have almost seven and half billion people, all of whom have their own thoughts about what the world should look like, we can’t just stumble around blindly and hope we don’t run into anyone. We need a long-term plan. We need to be more vocal about what we need from society. We need to be more willing to talk about not just what’s normal, but what should be normal and what shouldn’t be normal. And we need to be more willing to let the world change. Everyone in America is all too aware of what happens if you don’t. 

Big Book of Enchantments, Chapter 6, Michael's Story

     “So you’re telling me that The Enchantress thinks you stole the thing that gives her power and is trying to capture you to take you back to the Citadel?”

   “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

    “Then why did my parents kick me out of the palace? Were they lying when they said she was going to turn the kingdom against them?”

    “I don’t know. I don’t know why she does anything or what she hopes to accomplish. All I know is that she wants power and respect for herself.”

   “Then why did she go after the kid. Does he have some sort of power she can use or something?”

   “No.” I say, “I don’t.”

   Everyone turns to look at me. I gulp. 

   “Didn’t you say that she came to your village shortly before you were chased out?” Jessica asks. 

    “I don’t know. All I remember is the local kids ganging up on me and saying a strange woman came to town asking about me.”

   “Did you see her?”

    “No.” I say, holding back tears. “They tried to beat me up, so I asked Colonel Jones for help, and he came and beat them up. Then later that night, Papa said the Great warrior had been stolen and tried to take him away from me. Then he kicked me out.”

    The others look confused. Johnathon walks up to me and says, “Michael, who is this Great Warrior? Who is Colonel Jones?” 

    Everyone is staring at me. I’m scared. 

   “My Papa said that long ago, when the first Artifacts were being made, A mage gave us an Idol that could be used to summon the Great Warrior. The mage said that as long as we paid our respects to the Citadel, we would be protected.”

    Jessica nods, “That’s sounds like something We’d do.”

   “Did you steal it?” Johnathon asks, in the same tone Papa used whenever he was about to yell at me. 

   “I’ve never even seen it.” I yell, and then burst into tears.

    Johnathon looks at me and says, “Alright then. Can you tell me who Colonel Jones is then?”

   I pull him from my pocket. “He doesn’t look like much, but when you’re in trouble he’ll come to you and save you.” I say.

    Johnathon reaches out, but then Julia stops him, saying, “Don’t touch that, Johnathon. It may have been a kid’s toy at some point, but it looks like it’s absorbed enough magic to become dangerous.”

    Johnathon turns to her. “It’s an Artifact.”

   “I don’t think so. But it isn’t to far away from being one.” She kneels down to look at Colonel Jones more closely, “I wonder if that mage came to warn about unstable magic being used in the area. I don’t know why they didn’t think to track where the magic was coming from.”

   “If they were from the citadel, they may not have thought of that.” Jessica says, “Artifacts didn’t catch on in the Citadel the way they did everywhere else. Anything that made it there was old and horribly out of date. It could also be that they knew someone was doing unregulated magic and didn’t think it posed much of a problem. Items at the Citadel become infused with magic all the time. Unless they blow up, nobody cares.”

   Everyone looks at her. “You’re saying the citadel has Unregistered Artifacts?” Julia says.

   “I suppose you could say that. We bribe off any government inspectors who come by and we denature everything once someone dies or leaves, so it’s no big deal.”

    “It’s a very big deal.” Rachel says, “People get killed when they deal with unregistered artifacts. Sometimes without even touching them.”

    “Does that an anyway justify kicking someone who made one without meaning to out from his village?” Jessica says, looking at me.

    The group goes silent. “Look, I realize what he did was dangerous, but young mages put people in danger all the time. You don’t punish them for it, you keep them under watchful eyes and teach them how to use their powers safely.”

    “Nobody learns magic on their own. Everyone has to learn it from watching somebody else.” Julia says.

   Jessica glares at her. “Not if they’re naturally gifted. Some people have so much magic, it can go off and hurt others. If you don’t teach them how to control their powers, you’re dooming them and anyone who goes near them. Since nobody thought to do that in Michael’s case, he put his power towards this.” She says, pointing at Colonel Jones. “The only thing to do now is for someone to teach him how not to do powers, then he can go back to his family once his action figure has been denatured.”

    I sniffle, “What if the other kids try to hurt me?”

    “I’m sure whoever decides to teach you can show you some basic spells to throw them off. You won’t need his help anymore.” Jessica says.

    “Who’s going to teach him?” Johnathon says, “I don’t think anyone in the palace would, and most people don’t know how to perform magic.”

   “We’ll find someone in the Citadel to do it. After all, they are the one’s who provided the Idol in his village. If they won’t help, then I’ll teach him.” Jessica says.

    “Are you heading back to the Citadel then?” Zac says.

    Jessica looks at him. “Not until I know why The Enchantress is trying to take me back.”

    Zac shakes his head. “Why offer if you won’t actually help?”

    “I’m going to help.” Jessica says, “But The Enchantress is dangerous. I’ve been on her bad side my entire life. I fully expected her to welcome me the same way Johnathon’s parents welcomed him. I have no idea why she wants me back so badly, and I don’t want to go near her until I figure out why.”

    “And how are you going to figure that out?” Zac Asks.

    “I don’t know.” Jessica admits.

   “We have experts back home.” Julia says, “Maybe they can help.” 

   Jessica looks at Julia and says, “Do you think they can teach Michael how to do magic?”

  “Probably not. They should be able to determine if he can control himself or not and come up for a plan if he can’t.”

   Jessica looks at me, “What do you think Michael?”

   “I don’t care. I just want to go home.”

   “Then it’s settled. Our next stop is Brook’s Hallow.” 

My dreams

     I’m a lazy person. What I mean by that is that I like doing things, but I hate doing things for other people. It’s why most of my day is spent playing video games. 

      So, one of the nice things about blogging is that it’s just a me thing. I can post whatever I want to post. Mind you, if I decide I want to try grabbing an audience that changes slightly, but I don’t have to care one way or the other. It’s really refreshing. 

   The best and worst part about this, as you can probably tell, is seeing my view count go up. I don’t know for sure how many views are other people versus me just reading my own posts, but my stats tell me that some people are reading my posts. Mind you, the number is only in the double digits, across every post I’ve ever written, so maybe it’s stupid to be as excited/scared as I genuinely am. But the truth is, I’m not that far off from some of my favorite Youtube creators. I can’t tell you how cool I think it would be to have a small fanbase. The kind of fanbase where everyone loves you for you and doesn’t ask a lot from you as a creator. I don’t think I’m that far away from my dream, and that’s genuinely exciting.

    I wonder, how many people out there write hoping to find that small group of people who love their own brand of bad writing. They don’t want success; they just want people who like them. Put it like that, I expect many creators want that at the end of the day. 

     What scares me is that, however unlikely it is, there’s always the possibility that I could wind up being mega successful. I’m human, and it’s more or less human nature to envy the celebrities of the world, but everyone who knows about the world celebrities live in knows that it doesn’t come with an off switch. You don’t get to choose fame. You can increase the chances of fame, but fame is always thrust upon you. There’s a reason why many stories show people unhappy with fame. I don’t want that. I know I probably won’t get that. But my brain keeps telling me that it’s going to happen and that I won’t be able to deal with it. 

    It’s silly. But my brain isn’t very smart most of the time. For now, I’m happy that, in a way, I’ve achieved my dream. It’s nice to have people reading your work, even if you know that it’s not that good. I’m a little worried it sounds like I want attention, because frankly this is more attention than I ever thought I would get. I guess it’s a good thing I never wanted to be a celebrity. I’d probably go a bit nuts. 

Now

 Once upon a time, 
In a far off distant land,
People lived in giant castles
And magnificent temples.
All that remains are empty, crumbling edifices
Silhouetted against the sky,
Attracting thousands, hungry to know
What the past was like. 
When they look upon these great relics,
Looking at a world long gone, 
Everything looks simple and still.

At home, nothing is simple.
The world moves, pushed by forces we can neither see
Nor understand.
Pushed by others, trapped by society,
We long for the past,
For in the past nothing can ever change.
In the past, all was simple
Everything made sense.
But try though we might,
We can't turn back the clock.

So we walk forward, going from moment to moment
In a panic, trying to make our slice of eternity
Last for as long as we can.
But time has a way of wearing us down
Until nothing is left of us.
Nothing but small remains of the role we once played.
If we're lucky, someone will remember us
As they go through our belongings.
All they see is a life that was simple
Empty but for the meaning we gave to it.
And as they look through the past,
They too will feel a longing to return to it.  

Thoughts on writing a novel

     I have to say, now that I’m about halfway through the first draft of Big Book of Enchantments, writing novels is oddly fun. I don’t think this first novel will really be good, mind you, but it’s fun to try to keep writing the same story day in and day out.

     It’s also very exhausting. I leave writing sessions feeling tired, even though I haven’t done anything physical. 

    I have high hopes though. I feel like I’m proving to myself that I can write something like a novel. I didn’t really think I could. I think we should push more people to take on big projects they’d enjoy, especially if they don’t think they’d do a good job. Even if I suspect people won’t like Big Book of Enchantments now, it still feels like a huge deal just to write this thing. 

     So go out there and do something that you want to do. Even if you don’t do a good job, you’ll feel good about yourself. 

Plans for The Big Book of Enchantments

    I know all my readers are eagerly waiting to learn what will happen next in the Big Book of Enchantments. Okay, that’s not really true. As of right now, nobody’s reading my blog. But I decided I should plan out what I want to do next with this story, since I’ve been mostly winging it up until this point, and since I don’t have any readers, why not turn it into a post.

     Chapter six will start with the group agreeing to go to Brook’s Hallow, followed by the group learning about each other’s past and what their goals are. It will end with Jessica agreeing to help Michael learn real magic so that he can go home safely. Chapter seven will start with the group arriving in Brooks hallow and learning that Julia’s aunt has been taken over by The Enchantress, and once Julia saves her, we learn that the only way to stop her is to go to the Citadel and destroy the Book of Knowledge for good. Chapter eight sees the group stopping at a town on their way to the Citadel and Zachary sees the man who was the owner of the ring he’s carrying guarding a prison. After giving the man his ring back, he promises to repent once he goes back home. Chapter Nine finally sees us at the Citadel, where we learn that The Enchantress has trapped everyone in an illusion and is using their magic to take over Altra. Jessica manages to prove that the Book of Knowledge is a fake, freeing everyone. The spells collapse causes the Citadel to Collapse, destroying it for good. The story ends with our hero’s unsure of what to do next.

     That’s roughly the plan, but that’s not how the story will end up. I plan on rewriting the whole thing once I’m done and then self-Publishing it somewhere. That’s probably going to be a while though.

The Big Book of Enchantments, Chapter 5, Jessica's story

    As I watch Johnathon enter the palace with Julia and Rachel in tow, I can’t help but wonder about what it would be like to live there. I don’t feel all that jealous, since it’s in bad repair and even I know the King and Queen don’t have much power these days, but it would be nice to live in a place where you felt like you were a part of something, not just a girl who no one wanted to be around.

    I sit down in front of the palace walls. I should be getting up and hustling but to be honest I find charm selling to be deeply demoralizing. Back at the citadel, the only thing I was ever praised for was my charm making skills. Out here, nobody seems to care. That could be because I’m mostly using what I can find in garbage cans, but I worry I’m doing something else wrong. I don’t know what to do.

    Michael sits down next to me. “Do you want to go in?” I ask.

    “No. I don’t think the King and Queen would care about a common boy.”

    “Well, when Johnathon gets done with his errand, we’ll see about finding a library. I’m sure there’s some explanation for what happened.”

    “Shouldn’t you be selling charms?” Michael asks.

    I sigh and stand back up. He’s right. I may hate doing this, but it’s better than the Citadel. Or so I keep telling myself anyway.

    I feel somebody grab my shoulder. “Are you related to Mildred Stonebridge by chance?”

   I jerk out their grasp. “Absolutely not.” I say. Then I see who grabbed me. Mr. Jones, one of my mother’s goons from the Citadel.

    “Do you really think I believe you?” he says, then he points behind me. I look and see a wanted poster materialize. I don’t quite see what’s written, but I recognize the portrait anywhere. “Lady Mildred is offering quite a large reward to anyone who brings you back to the Citadel.”

    I open the Big Book of Enchantments and start flipping madly. “Why would she want me back?” I ask, knowing Mr. Jones is dumb enough to explain why.

    “Apparently you took something very important to her. Without it, she can’t run the Citadel.”

   I find a spell that causes disorientation. I center it on him and cast it. One advantage to being unable to cast spells yourself is that you can find a center for magic very easily. Unfortunately, I see a cop starting towards me. He apparently thinks the Big Book of Enchantments is some sort of unregistered artefact. I cast the spell on the cop as well and then bolt as fast as I can, pausing only to grab Michael and drag him up.

   “What’s going on?” Michael yelps.

   I don’t bother answering until we’re several streets away. “The enchantress is after me. One of her goons just tried to kidnap me.”

    Michael gasps for breath. “Look, lets find a place to lay low for a bit. Then we’ll go find Zac. He should be able to help.”

    “Bit late for that.”

   I turn to see Zac behind me. “Oh, thank goodness,” I say, for the first time in my life grateful to see someone I know breaks the law, “I think we’d better leave the city while we can.”

   “What about Michael?” He asks.

   He’s right. The whole reason we came here was to help Mike. But I’m scared to go to the palace with The Enchantress’ goon so nearby. I flip through the Big Book of Enchantments. I don’t have an invisibility spell on me, but a good illusion spell should work.

   “Wait.” Michael says suddenly. “Let’s find Johnathon first. He was going inside to help Rachel, right? Maybe he could help me.”

    “That’s a good point, why don’t we watch the palace to see when he comes out? Then we can talk to him.”

    “And what if he can’t help?” Zac says.

    “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” I say. “For now, let’s lie low. I don’t want to get caught again.”

Life of a Writer Part 3

    A lot of people Blog hoping that they’ll become famous one day. I started feeling a lot better about blogging once I realized that Google counts you clicking on your blog posts as views, so there wasn’t really a good way to know if I was getting traffic or not, meaning that even if I become famous, I won’t be able to figure it out quickly.

   I’ve got a really large buffer at this point, mostly because I enjoy writing so much. I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was ten, and I’ve been daydreaming for basically my entire life. I don’t know how this will be my future, but I know that I want to do this. 

     I think the thing I’ve been enjoying the most is writing The Big Book of Enchantments. It’s not good, but it’s still a lot of work, most of it just getting myself to sit down and write. I feel like I’m learning a lot from writing it though. Just trying to keep everything straight is a massive challenge. I will admit, I really should have planned better.

    The other thing I’m enjoying is having a place where I can post poetry. I don’t consider myself a poet, but I like trying to figure out how to say what I need to say in as short a time as possible in a way that most people will get what I want to say. 

     The thing I most appreciate is the feeling that, for the first time in my life, I truly have some sort of voice. I know nobody cares, but as someone who thinks a lot but doesn’t know anyone willing to listen to me, it’s nice to be able to talk to someone who can’t complain. 

    I confess, one of the reasons I want Universal Basic Income is so that more people are free to pursue the art they want to make. If they don’t have to worry about making money, they’ll be better able to produce what matters to them. I wonder how many great art pieces we’d have if more people were able to make things. I hope we learn that at some point. 

The Big Book of Enchantments, Chapter 5, Johnathon's story

     I must say, after being away from home for so long, I’m struck by how shabby the Capital looks. I have to wonder if giving the public so many tax cuts was wise. Michael and Zac don’t seem to notice it, but I’m sure Julia and Rachel have. Jessica is so absorbed in writing in her diary all the time, I have to wonder if she notices anything at all. 

   We’ve been waiting at the palace gates since dawn. Zac wandered off somewhere a while ago, Michael and Jessica are looking for people willing to buy charms. I don’t know why anyone would want charms in this day and age, though I must say that Jessica is exceptional at making them. I wonder where she learned.

     Jessica walks up to me and asks, “Do you know how late the palace is going to be open?”

     “They usually close a couple of hours before dusk. Why?”

     “Michael got kicked out of his home a few weeks after someone from the Citadel paid a visit. I would like to ask if anyone knows what’s going on.”

    “Are you going to ask the king and queen?” 

    “I don’t see why I would need to. Servants tend to know a lot of secrets.”

    “What makes you think they would know this?” I ask.

    “If someone from the citadel is going around casting enchantments, I’d be willing to bet that The Enchantress is involved somehow. She hates having people ignore her, and that’s all anyone’s been doing since she took power at the Citadel. I think she’s looking for a way to take over the country and make everyone do what she says.” 

     “Who’s this enchantress?” I ask. The terms so archaic I don’t know anyone who uses it anymore.

    “It’s what I call Lady Mildred. She doesn’t deserve any respect.”

     I sit and think. I don’t know a lot about the citadel. I know that it was once The Place you went to for any magical advice, but that was over five hundred years ago. Once magic artefacts became cheap enough, the need for people who knew how to cast a spell went away completely. 

    “Does she really think she can take over the kingdom?” I ask, “We have armies of people ready to fight her if she tries.”

   Jessica frowns, “I know it’s unlikely, but when I lived in the Citadel the first thing they taught us is never underestimate another mage. Even if they can’t cast as well as you or channel any magic, a good mage always has a plan. Don’t assume you can beat them easily, even if you came prepared.”

    “So, in short, a mage is like an assassin.” I say, chuckling. 

    “Didn’t you learn any magic? I know the castle has a library with more books on magic than anywhere else in the Kingdom of Altra.” Jessica says.

    “Only spells that work well with swordplay. Magic on its own isn’t that helpful. How’s the charm making going, by the way”

     “Not well. I’m beginning to think I’ll need to try something else.” Jessica says

     “Zac seems to be making enough money.” I say.

      “Well, he’s been stealing for years. I hope I don’t have to, but I’m not sure I’ll have a choice.” Jessica says.

     I have to sit for a while and absorb this. I knew Zac didn’t live on his own, but for some reason I didn’t think he was a thief. “Zac’s a thief? And you’re still willing to travel with him?” 

    “I don’t like it either. My parents taught me the value of personal property. But he doesn’t have any other way to survive, and I don’t want to force him to go back to his parents.”

    “Why not?” I ask.

    “Because I know what it’s like when your parents don’t love you and your forced to live with them anyway. I don’t know if that’s why he left, but Michael hasn’t stopped talking to me about how much he wants to see his family and Zac never brings his parents up at all. Besides, if I left him, I’d have to be on my own again. I could probably do alright, but it’s nice to have someone who knows what he’s doing with me.” 

  At that moment the palace gates open. I say good by to Jessica, and motion to Julia and Rachel to follow me. It doesn’t take long for me to notice that something is wrong. Nobody’s stopping me, of course, but everyone keeps staring at me in an uncomfortable fashion. 

    I stop before the throne room and ask the guard for permission to approach. I fully expect to be turned away, my parents are always busy, but the guards open the doors and announce, “The prince of Altra has returned, your majesties.”

    I walk forward slowly. My father seems deeply annoyed, while my mother wrings her hands. “I hope you aren’t going to try to stake your claim to the throne.” My father says gruffly.

    “No, your Majesties.” I say, trying to keep my voice from shaking too much. “I come here to plead on behalf of Rachel. She is being unjustly pursued by an assassin.”

    “Who is Rachel?” My father asks.

      Rachel steps forward and does a small twirl. You can tell she doesn’t spend a lot of time with royalty. 

     “I don’t seem to recall meeting you or your family. It’s not my job to look after common folk.” Father says.

    “She’s not common!” Julia shouts.

    Father looks like he’s about to have her thrown out. I step up and say “With all due respect, she’s the daughter of the owner of the Magitronics Corporation. I understand that the assassin who’s after her was sent after by none other than Mildred Stonebridge herself.” 

    I feel the air leave the room. My mother doesn’t talk about her family much, but I get the sense they must have history. 

    “Get out.” My father growls. 

    “Hang on a minute. I was told you could help. Are you going to tell me that you’re just going to let an assassin kill a little girl? Don’t think you could handle the PR, buster.” Julia says, glaring at father.

    “Young lady, we would help you if we could, but we can’t. My sister put a spell on this place. If we go against her, she’ll turn everyone in court against us. We could die. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to find someone else to help your sister.” My mother says, sighing.

    “Now get out.” My father yells. “And son, don’t come back. I don’t know why you thought you could just leave, but as far as I’m concerned, you forfeit your right to the throne. If I see you again, you’ll be treated as a commoner.” 

   We leave the throne room in disgust. “What kind of spell could just turn everyone against you?” Rachel asks. 

    “I don’t think such a thing exists.” Julia says, “I’ll bet you anything they just wanted to get rid of us.”

    “Mother wasn’t lying.” I say, “She knows magic well. If she thinks it’s a threat, it’s serious.”

The future of the internet

     I can’t remember a time before the internet. What I can remember, at least a little, was the internet of the early 2000’s. Not the early 2000’s internet everyone else remembers, I mostly just went online to play games on websites hosted by my favorite tv channels. I don’t remember the games being good, I just remember them being fun.

    Fun is what I remember the internet being for most of the time I’ve used it. I wasn’t going online to talk to other people or make friends. I was going to read what other people wrote, watch other people’s videos and play games made by people who only barely knew what they were doing. It wasn’t good, whenever I try to play the games, I enjoyed in 2010-2015 I’m struck by how bad they were, but it was fun. I don’t think I need to justify it, I liked it and that’s all I care about, but I can’t help but wonder what changed that made these games such a chore to revisit.

    I can’t deny that I miss them though. Not so much the games themselves so much as being able to go to a website and see what they had to play. I stopped doing that around 2016, mostly because with free phone games the old flash games felt a little barren. I kind of wonder if flash would be around if it wasn’t for the rise of free phone apps.

     I don’t know what the internet of the future will look like. It’s lost a lot of it’s unregulated “whatever you say is fine” nature, and overall, I think that’s a good thing. Saying whatever you want isn’t okay if what you’re saying hurts people. But I do hope we can find some way to bring back the simple joy I remember feeling. The sense that even if you don’t feel like you fit in in the real world, you can still find your place here. So many people don’t have a place online anymore, and as someone who went online a lot to cope with not fitting in in the real world, I don’t think that’s acceptable.

    I hope that in the future, the internet once again becomes a place where who you are doesn’t matter. You can still find a place for you. I worry that that won’t be the case.

The sea of Chaos

 I've always admired
The way the ocean moves.
Wind rushes over water,
Pushing it every which way
Until it reaches the shore
Where it breaks, crashing
Into anything in its way.
 
Nothing can stop the movement of the water
Rushing in land.
It can only be pushed aside.
Until, at last, it's energy is spent.
Then the water returns to the ocean,
Taking with it anything that was caught in its grasp. 
 
Everything sits within a sea of chaos,
Pushing and being pushed by everything else,
Until, at last, 
We crash into the shore. 
Speeding over land
We push small things out of our way, 
While larger things slow us down. 
 
Nothing can stop the waves of chaos
As they flow across time.
Nothing can stop a tsunami of change
Brought about by an earthquake of anger and fear.
One can only try, as the sea rushes in 
And the water consumes all in its path,
To move out of the way. 

The tome of society

      I keep thinking about the future. Specifically, what do I want society to look like in twenty years. And I keep thinking that we can’t let society be some abstract concept anymore. Most of us move through society without thinking. When we interact with others, we don’t think a lot about what we say, we act according to our instincts, honed from years of interacting with friends, siblings, parents, and teachers. For most of us, most of the time, that’s Okay. The people we interact with either know us or are enough like us that their rules of social interaction are mostly the same. More and more though, that’s not the case. 

      A common figure quoted in newspaper articles recently is that roughly a quarter of adult children are estranged from their parents. The phrase “Okay, Boomer” has become a meme. More and more people are complaining the people complaining about their Racist, Sexist, Homophobic and Transphobic comments. I think that the problem is that for people who aren’t affected by systemic oppression, knowing the rules without first breaking them is hard. It’s doable, but I keep seeing people who should know better screw it up. And I keep thinking “We can’t just let people guess what the rules are. We have to decide them.” And I don’t know how to do that in a way that won’t hurt the very people I want to help.

    In a perfect world, what we would have is a Wiki with strict moderation that everyone who wants to contribute to it can. There would be people spending what time they can going over social rules and common blunders, looking for rules that could be applied to anyone. Moderators would be chosen to be as representative of society as possible. Not only that, but they would be detail oriented so they could find an answer to any issue no matter how small. Most importantly, it would be understood that these rules aren’t meant to be enforced anywhere. They aren’t laws, and shouldn’t be used as a substitution, but the rules would, if possible, take real world laws into account. But there would be an understanding that what the law says and what people actually believe society should be don’t always overlap. 

    That’s the idea. The issue is the people moderating it would have most of the power on said sight, and however carefully chosen, they would only ever be able to approximate society’s wants and needs. There’s the issue that although in theory the people in power are given power by the will of the people, in reality they are usually chosen as part of a system that the people allow to stay in place because changing it would be difficult. Then there’s what happens if society is split between those who want things to change and those who want things to stay the same. 

    Most importantly though, it would be hard to implement a system like this without it putting more pressure on those who are already disadvantaged by society. Groups like the disabled, homeless, mentally ill and those who were formerly incarcerated. The groups that often don’t have a place in society. If we want to help them, we have to change society so that they can live and move about safely. It would be better for them, and it would be better for us. 

   In truth, I don’t think making the rules of society obvious changes the fact that society in general, and American society in particular, needs to change for everyone’s sake. We keep letting those with the most power make all our decisions, and we can’t do that anymore. We need things like universal healthcare, sick pay, help for those who’ve been released from prison, lower drug penalties, universal basic income, and so much more than that. It’s honestly difficult to keep track of how many things we need to make better in this country. But when we do that, because things will only get worse until we do, we need to work on building a society that all of us want to live in. We need to find a normal where all of us can be genuinely happy, no one has to succeed, and no one needs to worry about failure. Until we do that, we won’t be able to fix the world. 

A new year

    I’m writing this the week before Christmas, but I’m scheduling this to go up on the first of January 2022. Happy New Year! Or perhaps, a slightly less than miserable new year. 

     I remember everyone being so excited for the 2020’s. We were so tired of how awful things had been that anything we could hope for, we did. To say nothing of the fact that we were all told how amazing the 1920s were, it had been thirty years since the nineties, and in school we learned that the great decades were spaced about 30 years apart from one another, give or take.

   I don’t need to explain why that didn’t happen. 

   I remember the excitement when 2020 ended. It had been awful, but things had to get better now. How could any year possibly be worse than 2020?

    Six days after the new year started, the capital was overrun, and fascist attempted to take over the United States.

   I can’t think of any particular events that made 2021 awful after that, but I think we can all agree that it failed the moment it started. The pandemic is still going strong, republicans get stupider with each passing day, and every right we thought we’d won is being taken from us, bit at a time. 

     I don’t think it’s unreasonable to feel like this year won’t be any better than last year was. 

    I hope it is. I want so badly for all this madness to end. But I keep hearing people talk about going back to normal, and I have to ask, what normal do you want to go back to? The 2010’s sucked. They were better than now, but we still elected a monster to the white house. The 2000’s were mostly okay, apart from declaring war and Iraq and Afghanistan and the recession close to the end. I know everyone talks about how great the nineties were, but I don’t remember the nineties at all. No one born during or after 1995 would be. There’s an entire generation of people for whom the only normal that’s even appealing is a normal they don’t remember at all. That normal was before gay marriage was legal, before high speed internet, before most social media. They were better, but they weren’t great. 

    We can’t try to go back to normal. Even if the pandemic ended tomorrow, that wouldn’t be possible. I will never condone the choices that got Trump into the white house, but his election should have been a wake-up call. It was a sign that we were deeply unhappy and nobody who could fix things wanted to fix them, or even seemed to be aware that there were problems. 

     I don’t have any solutions. I don’t think anyone does. We’ve only dealt with a situation like this once in human history, as far as I know, and as soon as it was over, we tried to forget about it. We can’t do that again when this is over. We need to learn as much as possible. I don’t want this to happen again.