You're Not You

Maybe one day you'll stop punishing me for liking you as much as I do.

-You're Not You

A Bad Place:

If you're in a bad place, doing the right thing may not be the way to survive.

Can't Sleep:

When you can't sleep, it's because you're awake in another person's dream. And if a person dreams of someone that has passed away, that's when you get ghosts.

It Doesn't Count:

    Part of you is always traveling faster, always traveling ahead. Even when you are moving, it is never fast enough to satisfy that part of you. You enter the walls of the city early in the evening, when the cobblestones are a mottled pink with reflected light, and cold beneath the slap of your bare, bloody feet. You ask the man who is guarding the gate to recommend a place to stay the night, and even as you are falling into bed at the inn, the bed, which is piled high with quilts and scented with lavender, perhaps alone, perhaps with another traveler, perhaps with the guardsman who had such brown eyes, and a mustached that curled up on either side of his nose like two waxed black laces, even as this guardsman, whose name you didn’t ask calls out a name in his sleep that is not your name, you are dreaming about the road again. When you sleep, you dream about the long white distances that still lie before you. When you wake up, the guardsman is back at his post, and the place between your legs aches pleasantly, your legs sore as if you had continued walking all night in your sleep. While you were sleeping, your feet have healed again. You were careful not to kiss the guardsman on the lips, so it doesn’t really count, does it.

    -Kelly Link, Travels with the Snow Queen

Waiting:

Aren’t we all waiting for someone to listen to us, hoping that they’ll tell us we make sense? Isn't that why we spend so much time in a virtual world, stumbling from place to place?

The Girl Wall All The Gifts:

Would you like to be the girl with all the gifts? That's the title of the last book I read. It was the question implied in the title that first drew me in, how could one girl have all the gifts? She didn't have all the gifts though, just a couple of important ones, and not every gift is a blessing.

It's an Ender's Game with a female protagonist, and the stakes are high: the fate of humanity. The girl is only ten years old, but she's an important clue in finding a cure to a deadly disease that has swept the planet.

Is it possible to save the world and the girl? The book will keep you engrossed until its final stunning conclusion.

It's the Women:

Do you think it's possible

that some people

are born to give

more love

than they will ever

get back

in return?

-Tyler Knott Gregson

It's always been the women in my life that gave more love than they ever got back.

The End:

He saw her across the bin of oranges and started to push his cart around the aisle toward her. She waited, watching him approach.

When he reached her, she said, "it's been a long time mister. How have you been?"

"Haven't you learned by now to never ask me a question like that?" he said. "We both know I'm far from fine or even okay, but I'm a lot better."

"I'm sorry I hurt you."

"Don't be," he said. "I should thank you. You took a piece of my heart and now's there's forever a hole in it. But at the same time, it will always be open."

An ending to a story I'll never write.

Don't Smoke:

"You shouldn't smoke. It'll kill you," she said as I pulled a pack of cigarettes from my jacket.

I extracted a cigarette and said, "I smoke to keep something alive."

"What?"

"A memory of a girl. She always smoked. Everything around her smelled like a camp. Especially her car. I loved it. I loved her."

"What happened to her?"

"She died. Actually, that's not true. She was murdered."

Why Bother:

Why go to bed at a decent hour when you can stay up late wasting time in SL and being sad and feel even worse the next day.

Self-Improvement:

Things to improve on:

1) Less crying.

2) Not being terrified all the time.

3) Being more positive.

My Life:

My life feels like a do-it-yourself home improvement project that has taken way longer than expected in which the attempted improvement is making things worse and will probably never be finished.

Don't Compare:

Don't compare. You write differently because you are different.

Charles Dickens in 2014:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of smart devices, it was the age of stupid hicks, it was the epoch of miracle drugs, it was the epoch of Ebola, it was the season of enlightened disbelievers, it was the season of beheadings, it was the spring of electric vehicles, it was the winter of global warming, we had obesity everywhere, we had poor becoming poorer, we were returning Earth to a pristine garden, we were destroying the Earth--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of political correctness only.

Prehistoric Humans:

Do you think prehistoric humans ever tired of their career choices? Do you think a gatherer in hunter-gather society ever said, "I hate digging up roots and collecting firewood . I just can't take another day of digging. My nails are a horrible mess and my back is killing me. I'm throwing myself off this cliff."

Or a hunter ever thought "I am so tired of running after great bison. Everyday it's chase the great bison and then haul big pieces of great bison back to the tribe. I'm too exhausted to run anymore and my feet are killing me. I can't take another day of this. I'm going to sit down right here and let a dire wolf bite my head off. "

Doing It Wrong:

The other day a cop stopped me and says, "You're doing it wrong."

"Doing what wrong? I said. "I'm just walking down the sidewalk."

"Life. You're doing life wrong."

"How is that possible? There's no right way to live life."

"There may be no right way, but there are definitely wrong ways, and you're doing it wrong."

"Like, what specifically?"

"Where you are going?"

"Nowhere, I'm just going for a walk."

"No, I mean where are you going in life. Do you have any goals?"

"Well, not really."

"Do you have any passions?"

"I like to have an iced coffee now and then."

"This is what I mean."