i wish i was done with rain world. unfortunately, i am not.
i don’t know how else to say it, or if there is an else to the it. i can’t throw it out of my head and properly move on with my life. it’s an intrusive thought, a higher order echo of sunk cost fallacy, a groundhogdaydream. the work, not the people. i’m done with the people. the work is a crusted up cyst halfway to healing that itches so much i can’t help but pick at it. a viscerally underwhelming summary, a track record so profoundly mediocre it makes me want to to to
lu wilson did blogposts where they pretended they did not have a backspace key as a sort of artistic device. unlike lu wilson, i have a self preservation drive, but i can still try.
sooooooooooooooooo the work is the work is the work is the work i never liked. i did a lot of things. i got people to switch modloaders (a phrase that’s been repeated an unnerving number of times in various spontaneous dms). i wrote documentation (good documentation). i wrote wiki articles. i helped people pick up programming to add their goofy ass custom chars, i maintained the most boring backend mods no one else cared to, i debugged random transient fucking assholes’ stupid tech issues. i did like a dozen other things i can’t even remember at this point, and enjoyed approximately none of it. the work was a consequence of a social model built over a deep gaping feeling of worthlessness. the work was dry and technical and impersonal because if it can claim to be objective there’s no way it’ll be written off as worthless right? if someone would be inconvenienced by absence of my labor it means i’m wanted right?? if i am what i do that means i’m real right???
the underlying issue is gone, i think. mud and blood and cement and and planks over the pit. i learned to give half a shit about myself and enjoying what i do. maybe even more than half a shit. maybe i learned to be genuinely deeply and unfixably fucking selfish just so that i could enjoy myself. either way i won’t fall into that pit again, but the last time has left splinters all across my back and try as i might my grotesque fucking vertebrate hands cannot reach them no matter how many times i break my shoulderssssssss
plague of a problem that no longer exists. eager to fix a dynamic that no longer exists. thirsty to revisit a space that no longer exists. try again being something that no longer exists. i’ve been reborn so so so so so so so many times since then. every iteration is a degree of separation. word of mouth with no second party. am i sad about a myth? am i frustrated about a myth? fucking fairy tale with no author?
the answer to these questions is usually no. if you perceive it, it is real. if you feel it, it is real. you are the one knowing best the curves of your lakebed. no one else has been there. there is no valid contestant but the crustaceans in the silt, and they don’t care much for arguments.
but, brief self-gaslighting aside, it is still a problem. a parasite in my memory. that i’d be happy to get rid of. the naive approach (trying to get back into the same circle and do a different kind of thing) is not just ineffective, it is actively harmful. there is a narrative of me and about me and around me. implicit, unspoken, unbreakable. trrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyy as i might try as i might is not enough to not become what everyone already knows. everyone already knows everything about me who was and who forever there will
so i can’t do it together. i can’t succeed in a room full of things that already know i’ve failed. i can’t bring back a context with participants who don’t want or need it.
i have to do it alone. every codebase is an eyestalk. every document is a tripwire. every link is a mouth. vectors of taint. vectors of placid familiarity. if i am to remove this leech, i will do it alone. i will not have help. i will not put it to dialogue. i will do it for myself, and i will do it for no one else, and i will make dead fucking sure i enjoy as much of it as i can, before i either give up or tear this festering thing wide open and pour a liter of pure ethanol over where it used to torture all the mes that were and are and will be