Work

 Song by Ellen Thompson

First a paper, then a staple
Keep on working for as long as you're able
No matter the time, don't look at the clock
You're here for all the time you've got

If you feel tired, remember the boss
If he sees you snoozing, you're time is a loss
Grab one more coffee, don't stop to talk
You've got to keep working or you'll have to walk

Hours become days, the work never ends
You forget what it feels like to talk to your friends
Against better judgment you write down your thoughts
Because you don't think anyone cares what you want

You don't get off until long after dark
Outside the world looks empty and stark
Throughout the late hours you feel lonely and sad
Nobody ever told you life would get this bad

It's late at night, and now you can't sleep
Thinking of work makes you want to weep
No matter what you do, it never gets better
This is what your life is, now and forever

The world according to Kristen

    Have you ever thought about how the villains in stories never choose to be villains? How many of us wake up and think, "God, I want to be a villain today"? I'm guessing the answer is mostly no.

    I keep looking at the ultra-wealthy, those who have more than enough to, if not fix the worlds problems, at least lessen their impact, and don't, and I think about how, in a strange way, one almost can't blame them. After all, they never need to see those problems directly, they never need to think about how their actions affect others, so they never see any reason to help. 

    Time and again this happens, and time and again we keep building the same system. Nobody likes it, most of us know it doesn't work, yet we cling to it, because we don't know how to make a better world. 

    When I was younger, I used to think the world was a story written by somebody who knew how it would all end, and was writing the best story they could. When I got older, I realized that the story doesn't just have one author, it has billions of authors, each with their own ideas of what makes a happy ending. All of us are writers, trying to write the best story we can based on what we see others writing. We keep writing assuming everyone wants the same ending we do, that everyone wants to make money or go to heaven. We don't realize that some people want the story to have a different ending. In a lot of ways, we can't know that. 

    I don't know the solution. All I know is that everyone wants the world to change, but those who run society don't see why it needs to. They keep pushing this idea that the world would be better if we went back in time. I don't know how many people agree with them, all I know is that I wouldn't do any better in the past than I'm doing at the present moment. All I know is that the past wasn't better than today. I know things could be better, but the way to fix our world isn't to push for a return to the past. The past was based on ideas we no longer believe in, from a time where we knew much less than we know now. We chose to eat the forbidden fruit, and now we can't un learn what we know, if we even wanted to. Improving the world means admitting that the problem isn't that we know to much, it's that we don't know enough. We need to accept that we aren't even close to knowing everything there is to know about our universe, and that we in all likelihood will never know everything there is to know. Only by accepting and working within our limitations can we hope to be who we really want to be. 

    

On Recent Events

     I'm writing this post the week Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, an act that I, like most people, feel is reprehensible.

     This is one of those things where not only can I not solve it, but even if I was in a position to be able to solve it, I don't think I could come up with a solution. 

    I know next to nothing about this. I'm not from either Russia or Ukraine, and I don't have relative in either. I haven't been keeping close tabs on developments in either country, both because I don't see how my knowing would be of value, but also because trying to keep track of American politics is draining enough as it is. 

    But I can't stop thinking about it. 

    There's this poem I wrote but haven't released yet. I wrote it in August of 2020, mainly to get my feelings about the world onto the paper. When I wrote it, I was writing about what I thought was an American issue. I don't think that's the case any more. 

   Basically, before Wednesday I thought that the problem America was facing, the issue where our society is being built by people who don't live in it anymore, was something contained to America. I know that sounds stupid, most countries are built by those who don't live in their societies, but I didn't think it was as bad everywhere else. Now, I think we're all dealing with this issue on at least some level. I have to wonder, is this endemic to society? Or is it just a mistake we keep making because we don't know any better? 

    I don't know the answer. I wish I knew of a way to stop society from turning rotten. Part of me still wants to be a member of it, in spite of everything I've seen. 

    Something I strongly believe in is that society belongs to the rich, culture belongs to the poor. America is one of the richest countries in the world, does that mean any of us is really a part of the world most people have to live in? We try to connect with the world, to see it and help as best we can, but I keep wondering if at the bottom of that we're trying to avoid looking at our own lives too closely. Do we really care about the world? Do we really think we can help it? Should we try? Who among us can answer these questions, and how would they know they're right? 

Life

    It's probably a bad sign that a college dropout with no social life can come up with things to talk about on a day to day basis. Not interesting things, mind you, but still. 

    

Thoughts on life

    Life's been feeling a little boring lately. It says something about the past few years that the news is talking about Putin invading Ukraine and all I can manage to think is "that's all?" I'm grateful that things are boring, believe me. The past two years have made it clear that boredom is the greatest luxury known to mankind. 

     That doesn't stop me from wanting more though. I keep hoping that someday we'll have a functioning government, the billionaires will all die without heirs, and a locally owned stationary store will open within walking distance of my house. When I dream, I dream big. 

   It also doesn't stop the voice in my head that's saying, "Yeah, things are alright now, but how long will this last." I hope things aren't going to get worse, but most people aren't feeling hopeful right now. I think all of us are asking the same question; how long before we have the right to dream again? 

All the World's a Stage, Chapter 3

   According to the clock on the wall behind me, I’ve only been at work for an hour. According to my sense of exhaustion, I’ve been here for twelve.

    I worked until one in the morning last night, and still didn’t manage to get finish everything I needed to get done, which would be fine if this wasn’t the third time this month it had happened. I’m sure the boss would fire me if it wasn’t for the fact that he can’t find anyone to replace the people we’ve already lost, and he’s not eager to lose more.

    When I first started this job in the beginning of 2020, we had twelve people in the office. I didn’t talk to them a lot, but they seemed to know that they were doing. Then the pandemic hit, and they sent us all home in March. There were some growing pains when they were putting the virtual infrastructure in, but most of us were glad to not have to commute. Then schools went remote, and we lost two people when they had to quit to help their kids through school. We had to take on a bit more work, but it was going to be fine once we got more people in.

    Then we had to go back to work, before they’d made vaccines, and four more people left because they didn’t want to risk their lives for a job when they had other options. Over 2021 we lost two more people, which wouldn’t have sucked so much except that they don’t seem eager to replace them. My boss says they can’t find anyone who’s willing to work for what they’re willing to pay. Frankly, if I wasn’t already working here, I wouldn’t be willing to apply either.

   Aside from me, the other people working here are Maryann Williams, Lucy Nguyen, and Nina Cravitz. Lucy’s the best in the department, despite being as overworked as the rest of us, she never falls behind like I do, complain like Maryann, or fall asleep at her desk like Nina does. I don’t know if I find that impressive or infuriating, but I get the feeling that if she was floundering, our boss might get the hint and start employing more people. As it is, this is the third day in a row I can’t keep my eyes open despite drinking three cups of coffee. I know from experience that if I drink any more, I won’t be able to sleep even if I don’t have to bring work home.

    I send off an email, then get up to get a drink of water, mostly because I’m hoping that movement will magically instill a desire to do something more productive than stare at my screen in frustration. On my way to the water cooler, I notice that Nina has, once again, fallen asleep at her desk. She didn’t do this when we had enough people for all the work in the department, she’s just overworked and sleep deprived like I am. I reach down and tap her shoulder, and she leaps up and says, “Sorry sir,” before noticing it’s me.

    “Looks like you haven’t had coffee yet.” I say.

    She sighs and says, “I’ve already had a cup.”

    I scoff and say, “That’s weak. I’ve had three, and I’ve only been here for an hour.”

    “Really?” she says, sounding dubious.

     “I was up until one last night.” I say

     She says, “No wonder you look so tired.” Then she gets a look on her face like she realizes what she just said.

     “Don’t worry, it’s not your fault I was working long after I should have been in bed.” I say, glaring at the boss’ door. “I’m sure it’ll be over once they hire more people.” I say, with the biggest smile I can muster. We’ve been joking about how they aren’t hiring anyone to help us, but that stopped being funny about three months ago.

      I grab water and then head back to my cubicle, and on the way am met by our boss. By some miracle, I don’t grumble “What the hell do you want?” at him, like I really, really want to right now.

    “Ellen,” He says pleasantly, having gotten a decent night’s sleep, “Do you have the report I asked for yesterday?”

    “Which one?” I ask, trying not to sound sullen and annoyed.

   He frowns at me, “The one I sent you home with” he says.

   I try to remember. Last night already seems like a bad dream, the kind I’ve been having way to often lately. I go to my desk to check and realize I didn’t manage to finish it. “Sorry sir, it’s not ready.”

  He frowns and says, “Why can’t you finish your work on time? I know we’re a little short staffed at the moment, but that’s no excuse for not giving your all and pulling your weight. We need you to do all you can for us, and you’re letting us down Ellen, especially after I let you leave work early yesterday. I’m so disappointed in you.”

     I don’t say anything, because I can’t think of anything to say that isn’t some variation of, “I’m giving my all you monster. It’s not my fault you refuse to hire someone or help us out in any way, and I’m tired of getting yelled at for not wanting to work overtime.” He eventually leaves, looking disgusted, and for a moment I’m tempted to send a letter to HR about his behavior. Unfortunately, HR is notoriously useless here.

    I go back to work. Work seems to drag on forever, especially since we’re all so swamped that we can’t talk to each other or share gossip. To pass the time, I put a check mark on a sticky note every time the thought “I want to quit” crosses my mind. I’ve been doing this ever since May of last year when I only put one or two marks on a sticky note per day. Now there’s rarely a day I don’t think this at least twenty times.

     The only highlight of my day is when I go past Nina’s desk on my way to the bathroom and see that her desktop background is a picture of Julius Corvin. I can’t suppress a flash of rage, but I ask her, “You a fan?”

    She flinches, then says, “No, I’ve just had the same desktop background since college. I don’t like his music anymore, but I like this picture anyway.”

    I think about it for a bit, then say, “I was a fan in high school. I used to pretend I was his girlfriend.”

    Nina gets a weird look on her face, “Wasn’t he, like, forty or something?” She asks.

   I shrug and say, “Teenage girls get crushes on older guys all the time, it’s not a problem unless he asks her out, and he was thousands of miles from me in a giant mansion filled to the brim with security, there’s no way I could get even close enough for that to be a problem.”

    Nina looks at her computer screen and says, “I never liked him much, but my brother’s and I would listen to his music on road trips. We live far enough away now that we don’t travel together anymore. I found that his music doesn’t sound as good when you’re not in a car.”

     “You’re smarter than I am. I thought he was god until about a month ago.” I say.

     “Why?” Nina asks.

     “Why did I think he was a god, or why do I not think he’s a god anymore?” I ask.

     “Both I guess.” She says.

     “I thought he was a god because I liked the sound of his voice. I never actually checked to see if he was a good person. I stopped thinking he was a god when I learned he was producing NFTs.”

     Nina looks disgusted. “I didn’t know he was doing that.” She tells me.

     I sigh. “From what I can tell, every famous person is evil. If they aren’t evil when they start out, they will be by the end of it.”

     She laughs, and we both go about our day until she leaves at eight. I stay for another hour more because I feel like I should than because I want to please our boss, who, as usual, left at five.

     I can’t help but think about Julius Corvin for the rest of the day, even on my drive home. I hate him, but at the same time I feel kind of sad. The part of me that wanted to date him in high school, that used a picture I took of him when I was in the backrow of one of his concerts as my desktop until I went to college, wants to think that he turned out the way he did because he didn’t have anyone who was willing to stop him. But that reasoning falls apart when I think about the fact that no one in my family would stop me if I got into NFTs, and I still wouldn’t do it even if I was told I had to do it or else I would die.

    I never liked him as a person. I didn’t follow him obsessively on social media like all my friends did, because I knew from reading tabloid headlines in the checkout lane that every famous person is a monster once you know enough about them. But that doesn’t mean I was happy when I found out it was true.

   The problem is that for as long as I’ve listened to his music, Julius Corvin has lived in my head rent free, as a man who wanted to date a much younger woman when I was in high school, and now as a man willing to do anything, no matter how scummy, for easy money. When I was young and read a story about a little boy who loved a soldier more than anything, only to learn that the soldier had faked all his accomplishments, I promised myself that I would never meet any of my idols in real life, lest I learn just how evil they really were. I plan on keeping that promise, but I wish there were some way I could meet up with Julius Corvin and tell him exactly what I think of him, and where I hope he ends up when he dies.

       

My future

   It's 2027. I live in a small, cheap apartment somewhere in western Washington. Thanks to tech the cost of living is going up everywhere, and thanks to global warming the temperatures keep going up. But for now, I can still live here, and I'll stay for as long as I can. 

    I don't see my family that often. Sometimes I send them Christmas gifts, but beyond that I don't talk to them at all. Many see estrangement as a tragedy, but for me it's a blessing. It means I don't have to rely on my relatives to take care of me. 

   There's talk of implementing universal basic income, but that hasn't happened yet. I'm glad the blog has become successful enough that I can live off of the money I make from it. Health insurance is a problem, but fortunately my mother still helps me with that. Since I rent, I don't have to worry about too many home expenses, although taking my laundry down the hall kind of sucks. 

    When I'm not writing for my blog, I'm practicing drawing or taking photo's. None of it is great, but it helps take my mind off of my fear of the future. The people who love my blog love it, but it's always going to be a bit niche. Sometimes I hear people saying things similar to what I write, but I don't know if it's because they heard it from someone who follows my blog, or if it's because I'm able to see what people are thinking before they think it. 

    I've self published some stuff on amazon, but now I'm working on getting my first traditionally published book out. It's a story I've wanted to tell for years. My followers keep begging for me to publish an anthology of poetry, but I want to wait until I've come up with a poem that's better than the one I wrote in the middle of 2020. It's not my most famous poem, but it's still the one I think is the best. I keep trying to write something better, but my brain can't seem to come up with anything good. 

   The world at large is trying to put the pandemic behind it, but if you ask me the scars are very visible. The country hasn't collapsed yet, but everyone is still worried that it could happen any day now. Companies still can't find workers, workers aren't able to find jobs, everything's still a mess. We've come to accept that this is our life now. We don't like it, but nobody can seem to come up with something better. Everyone agrees this state of things won't last forever, but all anyone can do is take it day by day and hope that when things fall apart, they'll have enough warning to run as fast as they can. 

    One piece of good news is that NFTs have fallen into obscurity, to the point where I forget they exist until I see video's of them. The bad news is they were replaced by Bit Books, which are sort of like NFTs except that they don't aim to turn everything into a stock market, they aim to turn everything into obscure tech that's impossible for anyone but a special few to understand. Every author seems to have had their work stolen to turn into these things, to the point where congress is now looking into creating a law to ban them. I for one am all for it, but I don't think it'll pass. 

    Sometimes I look back at the stuff I wrote during the pandemic and think about all the people who insisted we would go back to normal. In some ways we did, in some ways we didn't. People are going back to concerts and bars, many went back to the office, and school has gone back to being what it mostly was before the pandemic. But snow days are now mostly a thing of the past. More and more people are getting to work from home. Students in schools all across the country are doing most of their work on computers. 

   What I find most striking is how many people seem to have given up on getting the things they were fighting for not that long ago. People still push, but most seem to have forgotten how, not that long ago, we saw the system fail. I do hope that someday, we'll live in a true land of dreams instead of a land of lies. For now, all I can do is take life one day at a time. 

A Search for Hope

We watch as our world burns.
We sit as the earth turns
We look on as the ocean churns.
We listen and try to learn
How to save a dying world.

They say we shouldn't sit around and mope.
We need to stand and yell and have hope.
Walking,
Moving, Running,
Speeding, whirling, Crying,
Holding, Watching, Begging, Hoping,
Alone.

We speak as though others will listen,
We laugh as the tears on our cheeks glisten,
They tell us we need to put our leaders in prison,
But our leaders plead with us to have reason.

Watching and waiting
For a sign that we won’t see
Should we even hold on? 

The Social Narrative

    The United States of America has long promoted itself as a country that is united where everyone is free to do more or less what they want (So long as they aren't breaking the law of course). This has proven to be a very bad idea. All countries have to be more or less unified, and no society can exist unless there are rules in place telling people what is and isn't acceptable. 

    I suggest we change our cultural narrative to be that we are a place that welcomes diversity, and where we have boundaries but not barriers. It needs to acknowledge that, historically, we've been terrible at both, while allowing for the fact that we're working to improve. 

My version of normal

     My entire life has been built around one goal; to be normal. Normal, to me, is an environment where I don't stand out, where I'm not different. Which, if you're me, isn't always easy. First off, I don't even have a good idea of what normal is. The idea of normal, in America at least, is that you're never satisfied with what you have and are always looking for the next big thing. Our cultural narrative is built around chasing after the richest, even when you're drowning in debt. I know it's common, but is it really normal? How many of us are living solely to buy as much stuff as we can? I may not know people who are chasing after designer handbags, but does that mean I'm weird, or does that mean that we don't know as much about normal as we think we do?

    Secondly, normal requires that you fit into a box of some sort, that you're something. You can't be normal if you want to be a bunch of different things at once. It's never stated, but how many people pursue more than two or three interest. If what you want to learn about changes from day to day, what does that make you. The thing about normal is that it has to be simple, something that people can understand instantly so they aren't always trying to categorize you. I have a lot of interests, most of them fairly niche, I'm not a person who's easily categorized. Or maybe I am. Maybe everyone has a lot of interests, it's just that their biggest one is being a person who can fit into their group of friends easily, so they only focus on the things their friends say their interested in. So many people only see their friends at work, or at school, or at club meetings. They don't see their friends doing other things in their down time. Could it be that we all have a lot of interests, we just ignore most of them because our social groups wouldn't approve?

    Thirdly, most people say that society is wonderful and has enabled people to do wonderful things. I don't agree with that anymore. With the pandemic, I've learned that there's a lot about society, in America at least, that I just don't like. I don't like that you have to be one thing, and only one thing, for most of your life, and if you change your mind later then you basically have to start over. I don't like that if you're a member of society, you have to think that it's flawless, or that any flaws it does have are easily fixable. If you want to be a member of society, you can't question its worth, nor can you ask if it's enabling greatness or trapping people in a system they'll never escape from. I don't like that, for these reasons, it's now broken and nobody can fix it. 

     Most of me knows that these flaws will be fixed eventually, I don't think we're far away from admitting that we just don't know how society works. Someone, I don't know who, is going to come up with a theory that will revolutionize how we think of society the same way Isaac Newton revolutionized physics. Heck, I expect multiple people will come up with the same idea at the same time and fight over who should get credit. All the pieces are there, all it'll take is someone with enough background to see where they all fit together. It wouldn't even surprise me if the person who figures this out has a background in physics, it seems to me like it's a problem based on how physics works.

    Maybe I'm crazy, but this is how I see the world. But I have seen people say things that reflect what I think, so I don't think I'm that far off. All I know is that someday, I'm sure, I'll be seen as normal. 

My Worries

      Have you ever had a moment where you have a lot of things you could do, but nothing seems interesting? I've been struggling with that feeling for a few months now. From what I hear, most of the world is right now. So much is wrong with the world right now that everyone has something they could be worried about. That was technically true before 2016, but the problems the world was facing seemed much farther away. Our cruddy health care system? Not a problem if you could find a job. No free childcare? Only a problem if you wanted to work and raise kids at the same time. Trapped in an oppressive system? Not a problem so long as your bills are paid and food's on the table. 

    But now all these problems are being shoved in our faces, constantly. Worse, everyone in charge is going along pretending that everything is okay, when I think most of us know it isn't. We keep seeing people die. We can't leave the house. We can't do anything fun. All any of us is allowed to do is sit and stew in our misery and loneliness. Unless we're rich of course. Then we're allowed to do anything we want to and nobody can meaningfully punish us. 

    I remember it being a headline in 2016 that a third of the US population thought that we were headed for a civil war, with the point being that it was mostly only the right that thought this was a problem. Recently, I saw the same thing on CNBC. Not long ago, I saw PBS News Hour talking about the potential collapse of the United States. I won't pretend I know what the future holds, I'm not an expert on this, but I don't like this feeling that there's something wrong that we aren't addressing, something that we don't even know is wrong, something that will decide what kind of country we are when this ends. 

    What I'm certain of is that we can't fix this problem by insisting on unity. We aren't the United States anymore, frankly I don't think we ever really were. That's why we put so much focus on patriotism, love for our country is the only thing holding us together. I do think we could live peacefully, if we're careful and work hard on building a society where we are allowed to be who we want to be. But I honestly think that if we want to save our country, we have to let go of the idea that we are, or ever wanted to be, the united states. 

My goals

     I don't plan on being famous. I'm not beautiful or charming enough for that. But as a millennial with a blog, the idea that I could someday become famous is always in the back of my mind. Like most people, I have a very distinct picture of what fame is supposed to look like. Fame is the person you know nothing about whose face is always in the news in some way. And like most people, I've had it drilled into me that the only way to really change the world is to become famous or powerful. 

     I could be totally wrong, but on at least some level I don't think that's true. The rich are only rich because they keep insisting they should be rich and we let them keep their money. One thing we forget is that the only thing stopping the rich from not being rich is our collective decision to let them live. 

    For me, the problem is that I don't want to be famous, so why do I keep posting things online? I keep dreaming about being famous, but every author knows that there's a difference between what you make up in your head and what happens out in the real world. So if I don't really want to be famous, then what should my goal be? 

    I know the obvious answer is personal fulfillment, but if I wanted to write just for my own amusement, I could just write in a notebook or not publish any of what I write. But I want to do more than that. I know life sucks right now and I want to do something to change it. 

    So that's my goal with this blog; change the world. I know people talk about how art alone can't change the world, that you need to do more concrete things, but here's how I see it. We talk about society and culture as being one and the same, but they aren't. Society, our rules, enforcement, and morals, belong to the rich. They are the people who decide what we are allowed to do and when we are allowed to do it. Culture, arts, music, literature and the like, belong to the masses, people living their day to day lives trying to get by with what they have. People talk about how the rich have more influence over culture than any of us could ever hope to have, but that isn't true. That's never been true. It is true that the stuff rich people like is the stuff that gets preserved, but there's a lot of art that the rich never see but people read every day. The rich can tell us what it's okay to like, but they can't force us to like it. 

     More and more, people talk about being trapped in a world that doesn't care about them. We've forgotten that nothing is forcing us to follow the rules but our goodwill towards our fellow citizens. If we don't want to do something, all we have to do is stop doing it and eventually the rules will change. I don't know this for certain, but I think the problem is that the rich, the people who decide what rules society will follow, are too far removed from the people who's lives they control. That's become more and more obvious to everyone, but because they don't have to leave their mansions, they don't notice that they're decisions are causing huge problems. We need to remind them that they only have power because we let them have power. The moment they push us too far will be the moment they and the wealth they covet disappear forever.  

All the Worlds a Stage, Chapter 2

   I’m at the house my parents bought when they married, on the table in front of me is a half-eaten cake that had the words “Happy Birthday Lisa” written on it. On my right side sits my older sister Janine, on the left is my father, and across from us is my mother and my younger sister Lisa. 

     My father is going on about how his coworkers keep inviting him to do things, but he has to turn them down because he’s worried about missing time with Lisa. Funny, he didn’t worry about missing time with me and Janine. My mother is just nodding. She works to, but it’s always been her job raise us, so work was never a big thing with her the way it was with dad. 

    “Has work been busy lately?” I ask, mostly because I’m sick of hearing him go on about how important Lisa is to him. 

    “It’s been about normal. Everyone at my office knows that you can’t quit work just because you’re a little upset about something. How about you, have things been overly busy at your workplace lately?” 

    “No,” I lie. I’m worried that if I say too much, I’ll start going on a rant about how much of an idiot my boss is, how frustrated I am to be in a department that used to have twelve people in it but now only has four, not counting the person who’s supposed to be running it, and stating just how much I wish I could just quit and go back to my old bedroom and pretend life hadn’t changed since I turned eighteen. But I’m a grown up, and grown ups know better than to complain about how awful their life is, no matter how much they really wish they could. 

   “Lucky you. Schools been awful. It’s bad enough that we had to go back to virtual learning, now all the teachers keep pushing so much homework on us. I can’t go to bed before midnight, it’s so bad, and I’ve still got all these clubs I have to manage, ugh, it’s unbearable.” 

    I try not to look at Lisa. I don’t want to be the one to tell her that as bad as she thinks high school is, it’s only going to get worse. And really, it’s not like she’s doing anything that me and Janine didn’t manage to do, so what’s the big deal. 

     “Are you writing everything down in your planner?” Mother asks. 

      “Of course, I am Mom but there’s so much I can’t possibly do it all. I’m getting at least an hours’ worth of homework from each class, and with clubs and community service, I’m just swamped. I feel like I should just give up being able to pass anything right now.” Lisa whines.

      “Maybe you should spend less time on that blog of yours.” Janine says, crisply. 

      The table goes silent. Every family has that one thing they don’t talk about, in my family it’s the blog that Lisa supposedly runs in her spare time, but in reality, has devoted her entire life to. That and Facebook and Instagram. She’s convinced that someday somebody is going to see her and be moved to make her famous, then she can stop pretending she’s trying to pass her classes or putting any effort into her extracurricular work, and she can cost on by without doing any real work. My parents were quick to point out that my plans for the future were stupid, but don’t seem to be doing anything to remind Lisa of the fact that in the real world, her looks won’t get her anywhere, and she doesn’t have enough of a personality to become a star. 

    I’ve never read her blog. I don’t plan on reading it either. She’s annoying enough to listen to in real life.

    Mom stands up and starts putting dishes away. Dad goes to the living room to watch TV, Lisa goes of to her room, and Janine says she has to get going. That leaves me and mom to work on dishes and put the food away.  

    “I do wish Janine hadn’t said that.” Mom says.

    “Said what?” I ask

   “Said that Lisa should cut back on writing her blog. This pandemic’s been awful for her, and we just can’t be there the way she needs us to be. I’ve been grateful she has an outlet for her pain, and I’m worried she’ll give that up if she listens to her.”

    “How is writing random garbage and throwing it up on the internet supposed to help anyone? She’s got to focus on school, otherwise she’ll just end up living in a slum hole with no friends and nobody to talk to except you and dad. This is her future you’re talking about, and from where I’m standing, you’re just letting her throw it away.” I say.

     “We’re not letting that happen. We’ve been pushing her; you just haven’t been around to see it.” She puts the final dishes in the dishwasher and says, “Can you tell Lisa to get the garbage before she goes to bed?”

   “I can get it.” I say.

   “I know that, but I want to teach Lisa responsibility.” Mom says, smiling.

   I walk down the hallway to Lisa’s room. On the walls are pictures of me and Janine when we little, when all we had to do to impress people was win a trophy in soccer or math club. Lisa didn’t get a lot of pictures; she was born nine and a half years after I was, and mom and dad weren’t planning for another child. Looking back, I don’t remember her doing much worth memorializing, probably why there isn’t a lot on the walls aside from her school pictures.

      I knock on her bedroom door. “Go away,” She yells, “I’m trying to study.”

     On her birthday? Yeah, right. I open the door to see her on her laptop, opened up to Tumblr. “Mom, says you have to take out the trash.” I say.

   “Right now? I’m busy!” Lisa yells.

   “With this?” I say, gesturing to her laptop. “You know if you don’t focus on school, you won’t be able to get into college, right?”

     “Who cares about college? Everyone knows it’s a waste of money anyways.”

     “The only way to get a job that pays well is through college, Lisa. Surely you know that by now.”

    “Yes, I do, that’s why you and Janine have beautiful five story mansions and Mom and Dad are planning to travel the world when they retire.”

   I can’t help but wince. “Well, at least I make more than I would have made if I hadn’t gone to college.” I reply.

    “Really? From what I hear, you can get a certificate in IT support online and make more money than you’re making now.”

    “So why aren’t you doing that instead of focusing all of your mental energy on social media?” I yell. “You know Mom and Dad can’t support you forever, and deep down I’m pretty sure you know that all this writing you’re doing isn’t going to lead you anywhere. You aren’t a good writer, you can’t even manage to get anything above a C in language arts, and I know you don’t have the personality you need to be an influencer.”

    Lisa turns away from me. “Go Away.” She growls.

   “Aren’t you going to get the trash?” I ask.

   “I said go away!” She says, throwing a pillow at me.

   I back away and close the door. I walk back to the kitchen and tell mom, “She’ll be out to get it soon.”

  “I hope she doesn’t forget it this time.” Mom grumbles.

  I don’t have high hopes there. Lisa never remembers to do chores if she can at all help it. “She’ll remember to do it eventually.” I reassure her, though I don’t think it’s true. “I have to go, it’s getting late.” 

   “Okay, have a safe drive sweetie.” Mom says, giving me a hug.

   The drive home is long, especially since it’s dark. I love my family, but sometimes I wish Mom and Dad didn’t insist on inviting me over to dinner so often. It was alright when I lived less than an hour from them and the pandemic hadn’t hit yet, but now it almost feels like a chore. Not helping the issue is that they keep harping on me every time I turn an invitation down, and I keep having to do that because work’s been so crazy lately. I didn’t even want to come today, but Dad said this is Lisa’s last birthday before she turns eighteen, and I don’t want to miss out on my baby sister growing up. And I didn’t have the heart to tell him that if I could have missed all of it, I would have.

     The apartment’s dead quiet, or at least it would be if I could afford one with quiet neighbors, but I can’t even afford an apartment with decent heating. I open up The Future’s soundtrack file, thinking that if I work on it today won’t be a complete waste, but then I remember that I have a lot of stuff I need to do and because I had to leave work early to be at my sister’s birthday party, I didn’t finish it, so I start on that instead.

    Why did I have to go again? I told Mom and Dad I didn’t have the money to get Lisa a birthday present, and they still said I had to come. I love them, but I can’t keep going to their house if I want to keep my job, and if I lose my job, they’ll be angry at me, but if I don’t go to their house, they’ll be upset with me for not fulfilling familial obligations. I just can’t win. 

    I can’t help but think about what Lisa said, that people with just a certificate in IT support make more money than I do. I remember looking into it when I got my first stimulus check in May 2020 but decided that I didn’t want to go back to school, the sixteen years of it I’d had already was more than enough. Looking back, part of me wishes I’d gotten a certificate in something, so I had something else to do other than go to work in a job I don’t like. Frankly though, I don’t think another job would be any better. From what I hear, any job in any industry is designed to take as much as it can from you and give you as little as possible in return. Workers have gotten better at fighting back, so the employers retaliated by sending our jobs as far away as possible. Now we live in a world where nobody has money, so nobody can buy anything, and as a result there isn’t anything around to buy. And everyone expects it to get worse before it gets better. 

    Well, at least I’m still fairly certain it will get better, at least eventually. Many people don’t think it will anymore. I don’t even think they’re entirely wrong. I remember growing up and being told that things would only get better, that we would be smarter, kinder, and wealthier than our parents ever were. Instead, we ended up being fooled by misinformation, yelling at strangers online for no reason, and bogged down by student loans. Why would anyone think that things would get better? The only reason I think things will get better eventually is that, deep down, I’m still a little kid who dressed up and pretended she was destined to marry a prince one day. 

    But I’m twenty-six years old now and haven’t dated anyone since I left college, let alone formed a serious long-term relationship. My apartment’s about as far from a castle as you could get, and if it wasn’t for stimulus money, there would be nothing in my bank account. I keep making music, not because I think I have a future, but I want to pretend I do. But how is me posting songs on YouTube any different from Lisa writing stuff on Tumblr? Nobody follows either of us, and work’s so busy I can’t write any music, let alone post it.

     I remember Dad saying that the reason communism failed, and capitalism succeeded was that under communism, you couldn’t dream of a future that was better than your present. You had everything you were ever going to have, there was no reason to aim higher. If that’s true, then somewhere along the way capitalism lost sight of what it was supposed to do, because somewhere along the way me and everyone I know was hit in the face with the reality that not only would we never achieve our dreams, but we’d also be lucky to eke out a decent living. Now people dream of being Youtubers or influencers, and it’s not for fame, it’s because they want something to hope for again, something their parents and bosses can’t take from them.

   Lisa hasn’t reached that point yet, and Janine makes more money than I do. I’m the only person in my family who’s lost her right to dream. I wish my parents, and the world, would understand that. 

New Normal

   My mother just told me she canceled the vacation she was planning on taking with me in May. A normal person would be really bummed about it, I honestly feel guilty. See, I wasn't excited about taking a vacation when the pandemic was going on, especially when I don't feel that enough people are taking it seriously anymore. But I still wanted her to be able to go. She get's really depressed when she doesn't leave the house for months. I also don't she's healthy enough to travel by herself. With the pandemic, we just haven't been able to go anywhere, and as a result she's super depressed. 

     I've been thinking a lot about the "New Normal" people keep talking about. I know people are sick of pandemic life, but I've made it clear that I don't think normal is coming back, at least not in the way we want it to. But I do want to live in a world where people can cruise without worrying about Covid surges or invasions by Tyrants. 

     I don't want to go back to the way things were in 2019, or even 2012. I did enjoy the 2000's, but I was young enough to not know a lot about the issues we were facing. But I don't want people to be stuck inside all day except for when they leave for work. I don't want people to have to worry about other's not wearing their masks. I don't want to live in a world where racists with podcast get a deal with a major platform and everyone just shrugs their shoulders, and I certainly don't want NFT's to become a part of our lives just because the people with money say it's the future. I don't want the old world back, but I don't want everyone stuck in the world we've got either. 

Society

 If we want to be a society,
We must all work together
And do our part. 
I will be a thinker,
You will build my house,
Someone will be paid to keep it clean.
If we want society to work,
We must cast out those who will take advantage of us,
Those who can't, or won't, do anything for our benefit.
The dim,
The slow,
Those who hate the rules we make.
They may live on their own terms,
But they will never live in our world.
Our children must be taught when they're young,
And constantly reminded,
That someone will always make the rules,
That even if you don't like them, they must be followed.
Even the bad, evil rules, 
That only benefit a select few.
We can't be responsible for society's ills,
So we will select someone to look after it for us. 
Even if we didn't choose them, we must not complain,
For it's not like we could do better. 
Society is a paradise,
No matter how many say that it isn't.
It can be cruel, evil and heartless,
But it can, sometimes, be amazing. 
So ignore those who are starving,
Ignore those who are scared,
Ignore those who can't speak, or cry so loud you can't hear them.
Society may be unfair,
But to go against it is unthinkable. 

It takes all kinds

         One of my core philosophies is that in order for society to work properly, you need as many different types of people as possible. People who want a lot of different things and who have many different core values. Well built societies should be places where people who want different things can still grow and thrive. And I don't think we have that in the United States.

     The problem in the United States is we prioritize financial success over everything else and we believe that everyone is equally able to attain it. Do you want to be a stay at home mom? A noble cause, but it will never bring about financial success so we don't need to make sure you have enough to eat. Are you a working mother trying to balance work with raising your kids? Well, you need to pick one or the other. Are you somebody who's encountered barriers based on your race or sexual orientation? We don't believe in barriers, therefore they don't exist, therefore you must be lying about your experiences. Are you disabled? Well then you'll never be successful, so we'll pretend you don't even exist. 

    These are the problems people always bring up when they talk about the issues America has, but the issue I've always had with the way the United States does things is that if you don't want to be successful, too bad, you still have to work just as hard as those who dream of being Bill Gates. 

    I could be wrong about this, but I've always thought that most people don't dream of being at the top. In Pokémon, there's a lot of strategy to playing the game, and a lot of mechanics you could use to bring out the best in your team, but most of the people who play Pokémon don't care about competitive play. They just want to raise a team of their favorites and beat the big bad. In real life, there are a lot of rules and exploits you can use to become rich, but most people don't care. They want enough money to not worry about starving and being thrown out on the streets, and a job that leaves them with enough free time to pursue other hobbies. 

   But in the United States, that isn't enough. The story is that everyone born in the United States has the same opportunities regardless of if their parents are the owners of the largest company in the world or the people who work the cash registers of one of that companies stores. I don't think I need to explain why that isn't true. Worse, our society is built on the idea that everyone dreams of being president, or CEO, or someone who's name is everywhere. The truth is that most of us don't want that. We want to be valued, but we don't want to be on top. But here, if you aren't on top, nobody cares about you. And if you are on top, that doesn't mean you've won. You're still expected to work hard and make even more money, to prove that you aren't satisfied with what you have in life. 

    Anti-Capitalism has been growing recently, but what I think people are fighting against is this feeling that Capitalism leaves us with; no matter how much you have, you can never really be happy. Are you a cashier at a grocery store? You should be working on getting a better job that makes more money. Can't find a better job you're qualified for? Well then you should work on getting a college degree. Not skilled in something like math or science? That just means you need to work extra hard. Would you honestly be happy if you're current job paid enough to live on and customers appreciated what you did? Heck no, you're not supposed to be happy doing the bare minimum. This is America, hardship is how you know you need to work harder to make it. So does that mean that if you make it, you don't need to worry anymore? Of course not. Making means you need to push yourself to the next level and work even harder because you've proven yourself to be better than those you left behind. 

    Not even our Billionaires are safe from this relentless push for success. It's why they flaunt their wealth so much and put so little effort into doing things that would fix our societies problem. In their eyes, they don't have any responsibility for making sure everything's okay, their responsibility is to please their shareholders. To do that, their stock prices have to go up. To keep their stock prices up, they have to lower costs as much as possible, which includes paying their employees as little as they can get away with. 

    What this means is we have a society that values success where almost nobody can actually be successful and where everyone has to keep trying even if they know they can't make it. Is it any wonder everyone's miserable? This means that only professions that have been deemed successful professions are ever shown as options for people in high school. That isn't a good thing. I don't think we should push everyone to be an engineer or a scientist when many would be a lot happier studying philosophy or history. I don't think it should be normal for everyone to work constantly when that's not what we want. I know we've been one of the richest nations for centuries now, but I honestly don't think it's worth what we're doing to ourselves. Societies need to have multiple paths to happiness, but it's become apparent we don't have any paths to happiness.  

What I want

     I hope that in the future it will be easier to get a job. None of this "three years experience for an entry level job" nonsense. I don't think I should be able to go into Bill Gates' office and be granted control of Microsoft, but it would be nice if I was able to find a job close enough to where I live that I didn't have to drive where I didn't have to send a bunch of applications out praying I wouldn't be rejected.

     I hope that in the future we don't have to put in forty hours a week to make a living. I know a lot of people love their jobs, but I'm not a person who can find one thing and focus on it endlessly. I need variety. The current work environment is too stressful for me. 

    I hope there are more political parties at some point. I've come to the conclusion that two just isn't enough, especially if one group wants massive change while the other doesn't want things to change at all. Well, it's more complicated then that of course, but our current system doesn't reflect the way people actually think about things. That's a huge problem in any society. 

Thoughts on society

    I keep trying to come up with something that would fix our problems. I realize I'm not qualified, but since nobody's talking about the issues I feel are important, I feel like I have to try. 

The problem with society

    There are many opinions on what the greatest problem in society is. Mine is that the greatest problem in society is that we don't know enough about society to fix the problems society has. 

All The world's a Stage, Chapter 1

      I don’t know what I wanted, and I don’t remember why I wanted it. I only know I didn’t want to live in a cheap studio apartment an hour away from work, with no friends and no one to talk to aside from my parents and sisters. 

    I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Greatness is reserved for people with names like Julius Caesar or Queen Elizabeth. Nobody remembers people like Ellen Thompson, someone who once had grand ambitions, or at least ambitions of doing something grand. Then the student loans came due and real life came crashing down. Now all I can do is try to remember what it was like to believe I could be great someday. 

      When I was in high school, I dreamed of being a professional singer. The kind who walks into the audition room and the next day they’re on a giant stage in front of a crowd of millions singing about how the modern world sucks and things would be better if we just listened to each other. My parents told me that was stupid. I’m pretty and my voice is decent, but if you want to be a singer, you can’t just be decent, you need to be amazing. 

      So I gave on singing and went to college. I got a degree in business, because nothing else interested me, and I got a job. Then I got another job. Then the pandemic hit, and I ended up stuck in my house trying my best to work from home. Then I had to go back to work because my boss was convinced that the only way to motivate us to work hard was to make us face death. Then, adding insult to injury, my favorite singer since high school, Julius Corvin, decided to get involved in NFTs. I was enraged, but nobody else seemed to mind. 

     The only real joy I have any more is the hours I get to myself in my apartment. Even for cheap apartments, it’s awful. There’s no soundproofing, the plumbing’s always breaking, there’s no insulation, and the landlord never answers the phone. But it’s mine, and I put up some foam pads to turn it into a studio of a sort to live out my dreams of being a singer. 

      I don’t have many hits yet. Okay, I don’t have any hits at all. I don’t think any of my videos has gotten above a double-digit view count. I keep telling myself it’s alright, everyone starts small, the next one could be a hit, but then the next rent check comes and I calculate how much I spent on gas, and I get another bill from my student loan provider, and I look around at my apartment, with it’s cheap paint job and ugly ceiling and furniture from my parents and thrift stores, and wish that I had just a little bit more money, just enough to not feel like I’m on the edge of failure. 

    I’m trying to write my big break now. It’s a song called “The Future”,  based on the line from Julius Corvin’s song “Memories”, “My past was bleak, but the future is bright and free”. I was listening to it the other day and thinking about how wrong he was. I know the song was written in 2012 but looking back I’m not sure why I thought the future was bright. I saw my parents both lose their jobs in the recession. I saw my older sister lose her soul to the law office she worked at. I saw my younger sister demonstrate, time and again, that she had no dreams and ambitions and was determined to waste her life away. And I know hindsight is 20-20 but looking back I’m not sure why I thought He Who Must Not Be Named would lose the election, and I’m not sure why I thought Biden could do any better. 

     My parents keep saying that the worst is behind us. We’ve got a decent president again, the world’s opening back up, and we can resume our normal lives at last. Soon the republican party will wake up from this awful nightmare and become a sensible party again, and we can put all this awfulness behind us and pretend it never happened. I don’t believe them. Hearing them talk about how things will go back to normal is like hearing them insist that Santa Claus is real despite the fact that I’m an adult. The news keeps talking about how Covid isn’t going away, that it’s just going to end up being endemic and we’ll eventually forget it’s there. I keep hearing think pieces about how what happened last January wasn’t a fluke, that the monsters who made it happened still have enough power to make it happen again, and it’s only a matter of time until they do. I go into work every day, and I look up at a giant building built by people who have so much more money than I will ever make, let alone have at one time, and I wonder why people don’t understand the increasing calls for change, by any means necessary. My boss keeps talking about how to revolutionize the business, talking about how technology will make us grow and help us become more profitable, and he keeps saying his boss will invest in things that honestly turn my stomach, but I don’t think I can leave because aside from leftover stimulus money I have no savings, and there’s no way my parents will support me. They’ve got enough on their plates trying to keep my sister studying enough to not flunk her junior year of high school. 

    I wonder if I should stream myself singing. I don’t know if anyone would watch it, but it sounds like fun, and I badly need fun right now. It feels like everything else is trying to rip itself apart as fast as possible. But I don’t want to stream until I’ve finished “The Future”. It’s the best song I’ve ever written, I’m sure it is, but right now all I’ve got written is the chorus:

Is this my present, or is it a prison?

I keep belting out my thoughts, but nobody wants to listen.

Have I committed a cardinal sin? Will I ever be forgiven?

Because this isn’t the life I was planning on living.

     I’ll be the first to admit the lyrics aren’t great. I can’t seem to write anything good no matter how hard I try. The music isn’t any better. I mostly just want to get my thoughts out there where people can hear me, even if nobody does. 

     People keep talking about how there isn’t any community anymore. Is that why it feels like I can never talk about things that are bothering me? I remember having a huge group of friends in both high school and college, but now it just feels like I’m living my life parelel to everyone else. I can see them, they can see me, but we never interact. I keep thinking that once my schedule clears up, I’ll leave my apartment and make the friends I badly wish I had, but I never seem to have the energy. And with Covid, I don’t even know if it would be safe to try. 

    The only time I see anyone is when my parents invite me over for dinner, and I only go because I feel awful every time I refuse, and there’s so much going on at work I usually have to. I know that we’re all vaccinated, and both my parents work from home anyway, but I just don’t feel safe going over to their place. I don’t know why. 

      Maybe it’s because I have to go into the office every day and most weekends. I don’t know how many of my coworkers are vaccinated, though we all wear masks so I’m sure that it’s safe, in theory at least. But we don’t talk to each other except in meetings, and nobody seems to want to be there anyway. We’re losing people and we can’t seem to get new ones in, so I keep having more and more work piled on me, but I haven’t seen a pay raise. I keep working overtime, because I don’t want to tell my parents that I didn’t try my hardest to keep my job. 

     I wish I wasn’t such a good person sometimes. My younger sister gets away with all kinds of awful behavior because she’s done it so long nobody expects her to be any better. If I screwed up more often, swore at my parents, yelled at my sisters, told my boss where he can stick his attitude, then I would be free to be who I want to be, instead of somebody my parents wanted me to be when I was a child. 

     But it’s too late. I can’t change who I am. And life isn’t going to get better, no matter what my parents say. 

An honest question

 I'm almost to the end of my buffer, so I figured I'd write something to make sure the daily publishing keeps up. I confess, I keep worrying about the state of the world, so it's hard to find things to write about. I've thought for a while now that people wanted things to change, but couldn't figure out how to get things to change. I realized recently that it's more complicated then that. Everyone wants things to change, but what they have in mind is in direct opposition to what someone else wants in most cases. Nobody seems to be bringing this up either. Honest question; is there a version of society where everyone in America at this present moment could be happy and live together peacefully?  

Living for a dream

 A song by Ellen Thompson

You step out of bed every morning
Hoping the sun will shine bright.
You may notice that there are clouds forming
With no sign of sunshine in sight.

But that's alright, with love and hope
Soon everything will be better
Just don't fall down the slick slope
That's happened because of the weather.

I don't want much in this world,
I don't hope for peaches and cream,
I don't wish to be more than a girl
Who is living for a dream.

My family says I'm amazing
My boss says I'm painfully normal
My sister's say I'm slightly endearing
When I'm not trying to be formal

But that's alright, when the clouds clear away
And the sun once again shine's bright
I'll celebrate my successes that day
Though my chances of fame are slight

I don't need much in the world,
I know I'm more than I seem,
I just need to be more than a girl
Living only for a dream

The people who guided once
Have turned to darkness and wrong
I can't do anything about this affront
So I express my feelings in song

I work for my parents 
I work for my boss
But it's more and more apparent
That my social life's a loss

I need more in this world
Than to be the member of a team
I don't want to be merely a girl
Who is living for a dream

Story announcement

    I’ve got a new story on the way soon. Well, less a story and more me expressing my worries and fears about the world through the persona of a woman who, unlike me, actually lives in it. I confess, it was fun to write. Cathartic I guess.

   It’ll start this Wednesday if all goes well. So look forward to that.

The Big Book of Enchantments, The end of the beginning

    Well, the rough draft of The Big Book of Enchantments is finished. I plan on revisiting it, I keep coming with issues I need to fix, but for now I can put it aside and focus on other things. 

   I must say, I don’t think it’s good, but I’m still happy I finished it, or at least finished the first step. It sucks, but it’s still my own work. To me, this is massive. 

    I have lots of plans for the future. I want to make writing my career, especially if I find out I’m not great at it. I’ve lived on the internet for long enough to know that the works that change us the most aren’t the works with deep meaning and lots of symbolism, they’re the works we can build and change ourselves and build shared experiences around. I hope that I’m remembered as the writer who built something people love, no matter how good it is. 

The big book of Enchantments, Chapter 9, Jessica's Story

     I’m not a hero. Heroes don’t get this frightened of people who can’t hurt them. Heroes don’t let their companions get taken by someone who should never have been a threat to them. Heroes save the day before anyone else knows that it needs to be saved. I didn’t stop her, even though I knew the spell was coming, and because of that, I now have to save my friends. 

    If they were in the Citadel somewhere, it would be easy to save them. We can’t afford new books for the library, let alone fancy prison cells. Sadly, the Enchantress is aware of that fact and probably has them in one of the Citadel’s dimensional rooms, built by our founders to keep ruffians in check. No one but the head of the Citadel or one of their chosen favorites is supposed to get in, but the way we check involves measuring somebody’s resistances, so maybe I can get in.

     The spell is complicated, though not as complicated as some of the ones I remember from the capital. One more way we’re way behind everyone else I suppose. It’s still more complicated than what I’m used to. I’m about to give up on finding an entrance when I notice the part of the spell that’s supposed to detect intruders isn’t catching on me at all. I don’t know if that’s because I don’t have any resistance, but it seems like someone should have checked for that at some point. 

    I come into a hallway that looks just like the rest of the Citadel, the same way my room still looks like my room in dreams. I keep seeing bits where it’s clear whoever made this knew something had to go there but didn’t remember what should go there. I can hear the Enchantress talking, presumably the others are nearby. I continue walking down the hall, before I notice that everything seems a bit, off. I poke the wall, and I notice there’s no resistance. This isn’t real, it’s an illusion. 

     The Enchantress can’t do much magic. She can do more than most, but that’s only because magic users are exceedingly rare these days. What she can do is create illusions good enough to fool almost everyone who gets trapped in them. I can sometimes see through them, because the illusion spell she likes to use doesn’t always notice that I’m there.

     I open the Big Book of Enchantments to find a way to dispel the illusion, but then remember my father telling me that the dimensional rooms have no true form. It could be the illusion is the only thing keeping me here. I move down the hall until I notice the book at the end. I look at it, and I notice the seal on the front. No doubt about it, this is the Book of Knowledge, the only thing stopping the Enchantress from being totally powerless. 

     I could try and take it, but from what I’ve heard it’s one of those artifacts that hurts you if you aren’t it’s chosen wielder. I don’t know how that works, but I’m not going to test it. I do have to wonder how it got here though; I don’t think the Enchantress would let it out of her sight. 

     Suddenly I get an idea. This book is old, older than the Citadel is. Or at least that’s what they say in the history of artifacts class I had to take. If it breaks apart, it could destabilize the illusion spell and allow everyone to break free. I open the Big Book of enchantments, find a spell, and cast it. 

     The book breaks apart instantly. At first nothing happens, then the spell starts to loosen up. I see Johnathon poke his head out.

    “Jessica, what are you doing here?” He asks

     “Rescuing you, of course.” 

    I see the others looking confused and yell, “Follow me. You don’t want to be here when the spell fails.” 

    I run back the way I came. Finding one’s way out of an illusion is difficult, but in this case the spell is failing so quickly that all I have to do is follow the backbone of it to get out. In the distance I hear the Enchantress cry out. I think she just discovered she’s now powerless. 

    We make it out just as the spell fails. I look around at everyone and say, “Sorry, I didn’t get the shield up in time, are you alright?”

    Everyone nods. I look back and notice we’re back in the middle of the field. 

    “I think it’s over. She can’t do anything without the Book of Knowledge.” I say.

    “What happened to it?” Zac asks. 

    “I found it in the illusion and destroyed it.”

    Zac nods. “So, what now?” He asks

   I don’t know. I had no plans. “I guess we just go about our lives.” I say.

  I mean it to. This adventure is over. Or at least, over until the next time we meet up. 

 

The End? 

I hate NFTs

     I hate NFTs. They’re the kind of thing that is so stupid it’s almost completely unfathomable. Everyone’s been talking about them, most agree they make no sense and are a threat to the very media they’re trying to conquer, but because they’re so stupid nobody takes them seriously. Because of this, I’m worried that those who pedal them will succeed in taking over the world. 

     If NFTs had become relevant back in 2016, I wouldn’t have been as scared of them as I am now. I would have made note of their stupidity, then moved onto other things, because something this stupid couldn’t possibly be a threat. Just as somebody as stupid as Donald Trump could never have become president. But of course, in spite of, or perhaps because of, his stupidity, he won the election in 2016. And now I watch in horror as NFTs do the same. I know nobody likes them; I know they aren’t popular in the mainstream at all. The problem is that those who do like them have enough wealth and connections to push them onto the rest of us whether we want them or not, and if we’re unlucky we could be forced to use them regardless of our feelings. I could absolutely be wrong about this. I so badly hope that I am. But in 2016 a stupid man won an election, in no small part due to the fact that nobody took him seriously except the people who wanted to vote for him. In 2020, a virus brought the world to its knees, and it hit the United States badly because we didn’t take it seriously, it was just a virus not to different from the flu after all, and nobody had enough money to make staying home a viable option except for those who saw no benefit from putting things on pause. What chance do we have against NFTs, in some ways stupider than both, built by people who don’t realize how out of touch with the rest of the world they are? 

    I know a lot of people are very vocal about their dislike of NFTs. But for most of them, I suspect, it’s not just about NFTs. It’s about what they represent. NFTs are the playground of those who are both wealthy and stupid. They are the domain of those who believe that if the world did whatever they said it should do, the world would be a better place. This is not a fault contained within those who bet their money on the nonexistent, it is a fault we all share, but most of us know that we have to share a world with others, they seem not to be aware of this simple fact. NFTs are the latest product of a system we all hate but that none of us could hope to change on our own. They are a reminder that all to often the best ideas that everyone wants don’t gain traction and bad ideas we hate gain prominence around the globe, to the point where we can’t fix the damage it caused. NFTs are so awful that many simply don’t want to talk about them and want to get to a point where they aren’t mentioned. They’re so stupid they couldn’t possibly hurt anyone. That isn’t true. Many people will fight, but even now I fear they’re being shouted into silence, while those who want NFTs to become mainstream will only grow louder and more demanding. 

    If there is hope, it’s that eventually NFTs and the systems that allow them to exist come crashing down to the degree that they can never be rebuilt. I realize that’s a high bar, and the truth is that so long as we have machines capable of using them, NFTs and blockchain and cryptocurrency will always exist and will forever haunt us. They came about out of human greed and blindness and so long as humans retain their old faults and fail to learn their lesson, we will always have people who shill for them. So perhaps the real hope is that people like me won’t lose the will to fight against this. We may never win, but if we keep fighting, maybe they won’t either. 

The big book of enchantments, Chapter 9, Johnathon's story

   Long ago the great mages of Altra built the citadel of magic as a barrier between us and infinity. They built it out of stone brick and filled it with every book of magic and physics they could, to keep us from ever having to glimpse that which humanity should ever see.

     Or so I was told when I was a small boy. 

     I’ve never seen the citadel up close before. Any relevance it has was destroyed by the passage of time. First artifacts came and made it pointless to learn spells, then Magitech came and made artifacts irrelevant. Yet the citadel still stands as it did almost 1000 years ago, looking almost exactly the same, as if time passing made no difference to the way magic works and things still are the way they were back then. 

   Looking at it, I’m struck by how worn down it is. It looks like it’s being maintained, but only as much as is necessary to keep the building from falling down. Bits of it are crumbling all over, vines are creeping over every surface that isn’t covered with moss. There don’t seem to be any windows. I know that was the way buildings were built long ago but combined with the cracked stone I can’t help but get the impression the people living here don’t want anyone to know how bad things have really gotten. It’s like they’re hiding until we decide to go away on our own. 

    “I hate to say it, but this place is a dump.” I say to no one in particular. 

    “How did we get here?” Someone asks.

     I think for a minute. I don’t actually know. I seem to recall we were walking through a field that went on for miles when Jessica started shouting at something, then the next thing I know we were here. 

    “Didn’t you want to come here?”

     I turn, but I don’t see anyone. “There’s no point looking for me, you won’t find me.”

    Suddenly I’m in a circular room with Julia, Rachel, Zachary, and Michael. In the center of the room is a woman I’ve never seen before, but who looks oddly familiar. “Now that you’re all here, why did you decide to enter my domain?”

    That voice is Jessica’s voice, I’m certain of it. I’m transfixed. My entire body is screaming at me to run, but there’s nowhere to run to, and I’m not sure what I’d be running from. “Jessica, is that you?” I ask.

    The woman glares at me. “I’m not Jessica. I’m not sure how you know her, but she and I are far from the same person. My name is Mildred Stonebridge. You may call me the enchantress.” 

    I don’t believe it. She’s the enchantress. I know Jessica said she was an unimpressive woman, but no enchantress would be this short, stocky, or old. She doesn’t look like she could command a dog to sit, let alone the respect and fear of everyone in the citadel. 

     “Ma’am, with all due respect, you turned my family against me, set assassins on Julia and Rachel’s tail for no reason, and have been trying to frighten the people of Altra all because you don’t want to admit that both you and your citadel are well past your prime and would be better off leaving everyone alone.”

     Everything goes black. I feel the world spinning. Then I’m back, as if nothing had happened. “I may not be as strong as my ancestors were.” Mrs. Stonebridge says, calmly, “But I’m still a mage, and everyone knows that even a weak mage can wreak havoc if enough magic is present, and she knows her opponent’s weakness. And do keep in mind your majesty, your weaknesses are know by everyone in the entire kingdom.” She turns to catch all of us in her gaze, “All of you would do well to remember that I have access to the best scrying equipment in all of Altra, and I have been watching you since you enter the Citadel’s radius of power. I know what I need to do to keep you in line.”

     “Then why are there only five of us here?” Zachary asks. “You did see we had another person with us, didn’t you?”

   “Of course I did! But mages are so very slippery.” She waves her hand at us. “Don’t worry, she’ll be here in due time.” 

     The room dissolves and turns into another room, this time with almost nothing in it. It’s a prison cell, I guess. I look around the room for anything I could use to get out, but I have no luck. Strange, given how obvious it was that the building was falling apart outside, it should be easy to find a way out. Yet I can’t find anything. 

    Suddenly I hear a loud crash. I turn and see a small bit of paper on the floor. I pick it up and see what looks like spell writing on it. I try reading it out loud, but nothing happens. Then I look up and see that the room looks like it’s melting. I push my hand on the door and realize I can go right through it. 

     Well, I guess my time in this prison cell is over. Time to escape. 

The state of the world

     An unfortunate thing about blogging, for me at least, is that it’s a lot harder for me to come up with things to write about when I’m in a good mood than when I’m in a bad mood. I realize that I’m writing for an audience of zero, so I don’t really NEED to keep up with daily posts, but it’s best to get in the habit before some poor soul decides to read what I’m writing. 

    It’s not like I feel good about the state of the world. Like everyone else with even small amounts of observation skills I expect the United States to collapse soon, but for now everything seems, almost calm. Like the speed at which we’re hurtling to destruction has slowed down. I could be wrong, but at the moment I’ll settle for the feeling that things aren’t getting worse. 

    I think everyone’s expecting 2022 to be another bad year like 2020 and 2021 were. That’s certainly a possibility, but I don’t know that it’ll be as bad as everyone thinks it will be. Back in 2020, when the year was just starting, I remember thinking that 2020 would have to work very hard to be worse than 2016 was. Sure enough, it delivered. I don’t think that 2022 would have to work hard at all to be a worse year than 2020 and 2021 were. It’s been so bad for so long that it would only take a very minor disaster to ruin everyone’s year. 

    I also think that if 2022 wanted to be a good year, it couldn’t just be a year where nothing interesting happened. It would need to be a year where something truly amazing happened that everyone on earth agreed makes our lives materially better. That’s not that unlikely either. The James Webb telescope’s been launched recently after all. 

   I don’t really know if this year will be a good year or a bad one. I was one of those people who was really hopeful for 2020, and I was convinced that 2021 couldn’t possibly be worse. I’m sure if I made a prediction one way or another, the universe would set out to prove me wrong. I’m just happy that, for now, the biggest issue we have to worry about is NFTs, which have the nice advantage of weeding out all the scum. Well, the republican party’s been doing a lot of shady things lately, and the Alt-right is going nuts, and the democrats aren’t as equipped to save democracy as one might hope. Yeah, we’ve got a lot to worry about now, and a lot that needs to be fixed. I’m just happy to see people who are doing their best to fix it, in whatever way they can. If the past decade or so has taught me anything, it’s that sometimes the little victories are the hardest ones to earn.