And though I had slain a thousand foes less one,
The thousandth knife found my liver;
The thousandth enemy said to me,
'Now you shall die,
Now none shall know.'
And the fool, looking down, believed this,
Not seeing, above his shoulders, the naked stars,
Each one remembering.
--John M. Ford, The Final Reflection

The Asylum Director

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"The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any." - Russel Baker

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Gripe#3 Lack Of Support At Home

Another day, another failed application. Daksh this time. You’d think I’d be steering clear of the god-damned call center industry after what happened the first time around but no. I just had to stick it out and go for another one – and another. Doubtful that I’ll get anywhere though. Unlike most of my peers who’ve failed or have been rejected, I was demoralized long before I got fired. Home environment, you see.

About the only support structure I have is from my friends. My brother continually calls me an idiot, stupid and other such. I know better than to take him seriously but there are times when you hear something so often you begin to wonder if it’s right and you’re wrong. And of course, there’s my parents. Some support structure I’ve got there. It’s always been the same with them: they’re right, I’m wrong. Even when I’m right. Everything is my fault. Everything is my mistake. Everything is my screw-up. They pull me down faster than anything else I can imagine. I’ve been demoralized from an early age and frankly, no amount of rejections or failures can really get to me any more than the sheer amount of psychological trauma and demoralization I get from my parents.

Not once in my life did I get any acknowledgement for anything I’ve done. I graduate from high school. They say it’s because of the low standards of the school and that I should have gone to UST. I graduate college. They’re not proud of that fact, they’re disappointed because I had to move from one school to another and that my previous school had a better reputation. I write a short story that gets praise from some scriptwriter on ABS-CBN. They tell him it’s a fluke, that I have no talent. I write fiction. They tell me I’m wasting my time and that I’m never going to write anything worth reading or even worth all the effort I put to it. I show them test results on my I.Q. test that show I’ve got a (supposedly) superior intellect. They immediately react by saying something’s wrong with the test.

No support, no help, not even the slightest hint of encouragement. Not even once did I hear them say ‘I could do it’ or even lie about me being right and them being wrong. Just a single lie along those lines and I’ll be happy. But no. The cold reality is that they think I’m useless, worthless and if I manage to land a job it’ll be because I got lucky and not because I’m actually qualified for the job.

Tough thing, being a ‘dependent’ without anyone to depend on. Sure, materially speaking they provide but the lack of encouragement, the lack of any real, concrete faith in me and my skills isn’t there. It never will be there, not even when I do something that even they can’t find a way to dispute or put down or pin down to circumstance and luck. They’ll never stop nagging me about how it’s taking me a month or a month and a half to get a job, not factoring in that there are thousands of other applicants and so few openings that I’ll be lucky just to get called in for an interview, let alone make it to the final interview (which I’ve pulled off every single time I got called in). No way, it’s always something wrong with me because, to them, the circumstances are perfect. I’m just a big screw-up.

Can’t really live with them. Can’t live without them either. Sucks to be me.

[gripe ends here]

Moving on then, because I don’t want to linger on the negative even if everything in my life is pretty negative, save for a few rare bright spots.

Project Updates:

Charity, A Vampire’s City – going along nicely. Finishing up second section, moving on to third. Still lacking any over-all sense of the theme but it’s still early, still got time to work it in. Considering using third scene to expand on another character, rather than keep it to Regina, Constance and Trish.

The Da Benjie Code – first part completed. Working on second part now. That should be done a lot faster than the first, since the second is filled with things I’m good at. I have no plans of making it really long. Keep this one short, clean, precise.

Requiem – a still not fully developed idea. Hammering out the details of how it’s going to work is proving difficult but a few things I’m certain of are: 1) the lead is a succubus [for those of you who don’t know what a succubus is, it is a type of demon associated with taking on the form of a beautiful young woman, seducing men and stealing their souls, though older Christian myths claim that they also have sex with sleeping men to steal their sperm, then transform into a male form, known as an incubus, and use the stolen sperm to fertilize a woman and spawn a half-demon child] 2) there will be heavily implied but never graphically described sex, considering the nature of the lead 3) there’s going to be violence 4) the lead is most definitely going to be bisexual, though her main preference is for men and finally 5) she’s going to own a bookstore that specializes in finding translated copies of rare tomes on demons, the occult and sorcery that supposedly don’t exist. Bad thing is that I’m not sure what to make it about yet and I don’t even know what the lead’s name is going to be yet.

And finally, my mouse still insists on double-clicking by itself.

Late Edit: Maia Lee (from Singapore Idol) is really attractive, in that bad-but-good girl sort of way. Must find pictures of her. Or buy FHM Singapore's May 2005 issue and just take pictures of them. Yes.

Yes.

For No Good Reason, I Give You This:

Major Pain: Godzilla is rising up out of the ocean and you think they should do something besides evacuating the cities?
BBC: Of course. You must mobilize the army and get your ineffective armor units to the front. Once they have proved useless you advance your electro ray gun tanks which only piss Godzilla off. After that you send in the air force to allow the big guy to use his radioactive fire breath. Once Godzilla has made it past the final set of high tension electrical lines you start evacuating. Not one second before.

And now, I leave you with this quote:

"The Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast appoaching." - Assyrian Tablet, c. 2800 BCE

Sound kinda familiar, folks?

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