(from an audio log presented as evidence in the paper, “effects of MDMA on hyperspace visualization”)
take two of these tablets and press them firmly underneath your tongue. wait thirty seconds for them to start dissolving. you should start to feel the effects within five minutes or so. during your wait just meditate and try to clear your mind of all qualifying thoughts, negative or positive. focus on your breathing. if you don’t feel anything within five minutes, let me know and i’ll up your dosage. the max we can go is four tablets, any more than that and it’ll wreak havoc on your stomach and liver. but don’t worry. two tablets is fine. i’m sorry, i shouldn’t have told you that, i need you to be calm during your transcendence.
you should be fully within the trip in about a half an hour, which is plenty of time for us to start the hyperspace jump. please just meditate and focus on your breathing during the trip. we would like your mind to be as clear as possible. remember to keep your eyes closed during the meditation, even after we begin the jump. we’ve reported varying degrees of success with blindfolds, and would like to try this experiment with just your eyes closed.
do not open your eyes until we tell you to. once we tell you, open your eyes and try to describe what you see out of the window. be as descriptive as possible. we will have a camera positioned outside, one positioned inside, facing the window, and three positioned facing you. the window can only be open for a maximum of thirty seconds before the radiation begins to deteriorate the shielding of the ship, so it is very important that you describe everything you can in as much detail as possible.
i recommend meditating for five or ten minutes before taking the tablets, so that your mind and body will be at ease before we begin the process. it is important that you are as calm as possible while the experiment is taking place. also remember the safeword, “albatross,” in case anything goes wrong. myself and dr broker will be in a separate room for this experiment.
we thank you for your time and patience with this experiment. are you ready? good. here, take this comm and press the green button twice when you are ready. thank you again. i’ll be in the next room. thank you.
the, ahem, science of calling black holes in hyperspace “black balls” was started by, of course, male hyperphysicists about a hundred years ago. it was an inside joke sort of thing, you see, in the strangely machismo world of science, but then the media got hold of it and suddenly everyone in the arm knew them as “black balls,” once again treating science like with a particular disdain the general populace always seems to have about it. strange, how they sit in enormous hyperspace ships capable of traversing enormous distances within a few hours, talking to their friends and loved ones on vidcoms thanks to subspace node technology, and yet when they describe it, they sound almost like stupid children, or, if they don’t understand it, they make fun of it. they make fun of the very ship they sit inside, whose hulls and engine and life support keeps them alive. funny how that works.
in hyperspace, a black ball inflates. as the black hole in realspace sucks up matter, the black ball expels matter. but it doesn’t go anywhere. if you were to enter a black ball and continued traveling forward, in front of you you would see the matter of hyperspace–which, by the way, is white to human perception, not black, defeating the purpose of the colloquialism–you would see the matter grow and grow and grow until it looked like you were fully inside of it. your perception would be that you had traveled for an hour, two hours, four hours, however long you thought you traveled forward. but then, if you turned around, you would see that you have not moved at all. you could travel forward in a black ball for eternity and you would remain in the same spot, once you turned around. the ball seems to “inflate” around you, like a balloon, but for all intents and purposes you are stationary. in a way it’s like the opposite of a black hole–rather than sucking you in, it’s keeping you out. we suspect that it’s where the matter from the black hole goes, but we’re still working on that. the important part is that time and energy in hyperspace is limited, and so if you ever make a jump into hyperspace and your sensors indicate increasing hyperspace matter, you should take a look out the back and see if you’ve even moved. luckily if you’re stuck in a black ball, it’s not hard to get out–you just turn around or back up. the problem is, the longer you stay in hyperspace, the more deteriorated your shielding becomes, until it breaks down and then your ship breaks down, and then you’re dead. and none of us want you dead! so it’s important to pay attention to black holes in hyperspace.
it didn’t hit me until i came in to work this morning. this is it. this is the end, this is my life from now on. i’m a creature of habit, abby, my life is dictated by the ebb and flow of the tides, and now there’s no out anymore. i’m stuck. i have an apartment, i have a full time job, and i have no time for anything else. i’m excited and absolutely terrified to be living alone. i’ve spent so much of my life having other people around to support me, whether directly or indirectly, and now … well now i’m going to be alone in gresham. i guess my cat counts as another being but it’s not the same. this is the true test of my character, abby, the test of my determination. out there, on my own, working hard, doing whatever the hell i want, and then, when the loneliness comes, because it will, it always does, will i wallow in it, or will i use it as motivation to leave my apartment? i mean, i don’t do that now, but i could! i could very well!
it’s just, exciting, you know? exciting and scary. what if all of my friends fall of the face of the earth, and i’m trapped in gresham with the white trash and the mexicans? er, i know that sounds racist, but i mean it more like “i don’t know anyone out here” than “i hate these people.” i don’t hate them! i just, it’s hard to make friends, that’s what i’m trying to say. and you abby, what if i never see you again? this is my lot in life, isn’t it? it’s the path i’ve been meandering down for years. the introverted creative guy. the loner. the guy who’s pale as a sheet but wrote a decent sonnet. fuck. i’m turning into jd salinger, aren’t i?
so, thank you for all coming to this meeting, i know it’s impromptu but you all seem clueless to what i’m about to reveal, so it was important for us to hash this out. but first i just want to speak, so please, you know, let me speak.
five minutes ago i went into the kitchen to make myself a sandwich. i opened up the fridge to get the mayonnaise, and inside the fridge, on the center shelf, is a huge pile of shit. a literal pile of feces. it looks human. i mean, it looks big enough to be human. i haven’t been in the kitchen until just now so i don’t know where it came from or who shat it or how long it’s been in there. but it looks … solid. like whoever shat it looks like they ate some fiber recently, okay? that’s good. i applaud the mystery shitter for that. now, before anyone says anything, i just want to note that as of this meeting, this is the fifth time i have found shit in a weird part of the house. you’ll remember the first time was in the washer. i found this out the hard way, after i washed my clothes and they came back covered in shit water. the second time, in the garbage bin, the third time was in the mailbox, the fucking mailbox, after the mailman dropped off the mail, and then the fourth time, the most absurd, was in the top toilet bowl water containment thing. the tank. now jeremy has told me that this is called an “upper decker” and that’s disgusting that it has a name. but now the fridge. the precious fridge.
five random shits in this house. and four people in this house. this is unacceptable, we all know this. it’s gross. especially in the fridge! that’s where the food is! why would anyone shit in the fridge? or more likely, shit somewhere else and put it in the fridge–this is my point, people. it wasn’t just sleep-shitting. it was a directed attack. a shit happened somewhere and then was placed in the mailbox, placed in the fridge. the garbage and the toilet tank, you could’ve just crapped right in there, but those others were premeditated. but why? and which one of you would stoop that low? jeremy you’re a frontrunner because you’re basically an alcoholic, and i wouldn’t put it past you to shit in a drunken haze. and yet … drunk shits are usually kind of runny. alice you’re vegan so i assume your shits are like perfectly preserved cylinders of waste devoid of all water, and these, these shits are kind of messy, like, kind of … wet. ugh. gwen … gwen you’re barely in the house. so that leaves lorenzo. lorenzo, are you the mystery shitter? before you answer please understand that we will never hold this against you. things happen. maybe not five different times, but they happen.
and lastly i know what you’re thinking–“what about julie? maybe julie took shits in five different places?” well i didn’t want to make this public but i have IBS and it would be impossible for me to make shits that good looking. i’m genuinely impressed by them. i almost want to rethink alice in this because i don’t know maybe she has slightly moist shits. the important thing is it is not me because every time i use the toilet it’s like a hurricane blew through when i’m done. i’m sorry. i’m sorry i had to provide that mental image to you. but it’s important that we cut out all the innocent people from this accusation. lorenzo, i think everyone in here wants to know: what does your shit look like.
i just want you to know that i have serious impostor syndrome issues with this relationship. i’m waiting for the moment when you realize i’m a sham. you wake up one morning and see me there snoring loudly with my dumpy body and my stupid face and you’re just like, “damn, holy shit, this guy is a turd,” and you get up and leave. i’m waiting for that. because if there’s one thing that modern day feminism has slowly taught me, it’s that men are expendable. they are! they really are. this is classically the case with males of the species, with a few exceptions. peacocks. i’m thinking of peacocks. but otherwise, men, eaten, die, go off to battle, whatever … we’re all drones. it’s why we all dress the same and don’t care about fashion. we’re drones! we are here to procreate and then die. my point being that when you’re a woman in a field of drones, who do you pick? a drone? or do you find a nice man who rises above that? you’ll probably say the latter, right? but what if, all along, i was pretending to be something special, when in reality i’ve been a drone all along? that’s what i’m worried about. i’m worried that i hyped myself into something but in reality i’m just a dumb drone.
i took the bus out to the new apartment. i’m moving 100 blocks east of where i currently live. everyone around me is surprised, but, i think i want this. the ability to have my own apartment has intrigued me since i could live on my own, but it’s always been a pipe dream, due to finances or lack of transportation or other issues. my own fear of being able to afford to live. there’s something empowering about living in a city where a large chunk of people are living in tents or on the street. it really makes you appreciate what you have and realize what you can get. there are so many people in portland who sleep on sidewalks and have tremendous issues with drugs, people who are careening toward, or have surpassed, a point of no return, between self-reliance and self-destruction. it’s not necessarily that they’ve given up, it’s that they live in a society which, for the most part, ignores them, and as for portland, doesn’t have the resources to help them. and in a way, what’s there to help? what is the point in helping someone who is a late-stage alcoholic? how do you get them better? do they even want to get better? what do these things mean to people, and how do we better their lives? it’s sad to think of a human life as something that’s only important when it benefits society as a whole, but on the other hand, despite our massive brains and our advanced intelligence, we are still animals, and animals are cold, mean creatures, who see defect in their own kind and let those members of the tribe die off or be eaten by predators. in a way, leaving the homeless alone is a society’s secret way of saying, “you are our shield between raw nature. you are the weak and injured, and by letting you go, we can focus on ourselves.”
that’s not the kind of person i want to be. i made sacrifices to keep myself afloat–namely, not doing theatre and entrenching myself in my work. i showed my boss that i was great at my job, so he would give me raises. i worked hard to get to this point, and i don’t want it to slip away. i think this is where conservatism comes from, this idea that for decades you work to keep yourself afloat, and then you see someone your age go get a welfare check or something. it makes sense because that kind of system of thinking (anecdotal, basically) is endemic of conservative people. so i understand it, i get the pride of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. but those less fortunate than you, remember, they are a constant reminder that life is hard, that you’re so close to being a feral beast in the forest, that your higher brain functions literally required a much larger brain in order to, i think, overcome your natural instinctual brain. higher functions and reasoning are important, but you are so close to being an ape running around in the forest. takes a lot of energy to fight that urge, i think.
anyway. i think it’s good. i think it’s progress. i think it’s a continuation of what i consider being an adult looks like. now all i need is a wife and like two kids, and i’ll be set. one-hundred percent adult.
it’s my birthday, and i am being kicked out of my house. not a fault of mine or my other roommates, simply the nature of the rental market in portland lately. not feasible to rent for the price we were getting, in this part of town. we’re on the cusp between portland and “east portland,” aka the boonies or the hundreds, the part of town separated by i-205, sandwiched between the portland everyone wants and gresham, the town nobody wants. (until portland swallows it up, like it swallowed up east portland.)
i am single. i am always single. lately it has been a self-appointed quarantine as my mind mellows out from a couple years of particularly nasty depression, the kind that solidifies you to your seat in dark rooms, that injects your brain with novocaine until the only thing that brings you joy is base vices–sex, food, alcohol. now that my feelings are returning i have surges of desire for love and companionship, coupled with regret at turning away loves in the past, because i was afraid, because i was tired, because i was numb. at various moments i tried to explain it through the internet, but it never was the same, and it felt embarrassing, and i felt broken, damaged goods, a burden to mankind. so i just kept quiet.
i feel better, if you’re wondering. i have a therapist that i finally had the guts to talk about it to, and i started taking vitamin d supplements, which, though i am not convinced work beyond a placebo effect. but sometimes that’s all you need, just the secret mental agreement that you are going to take care of yourself. your body will thank you for it, trust me.
so, it’s my birthday, and i’m at home alone, the home that i will not live in by the end of the month. things are happening with friends tonight but lately my greatest joy is the ability to spend some time writing, organizing thoughts, getting projects set up. 2016 has been a shit year but i’ve met it with more optimism than i’ve felt since i was going to graduate school. i’m glad to move forward, upward, onward. (and outward, because i’m probably moving to east portland.)
in love, every day, like two gooey piles of love mush. that’s what we were. until she died. cancer, in her ovaries. it’s fine, i’m fine, it happens. now i’m just this old guy in a cabin. just like the prophecies foretold, right? you’d crest a hill and there, in front of the giant waterfall, an old cabin, and inside … me. the fucking tom bombadil of hood river county. well i’m just an old man who ran away from the world after his wife died. that’s it. no big prophecies, no words of wisdom. hell, my pantry is full of ramen and baked beans. you’d think in twenty years i’da figured out how to cook more than that, but you’d be wrong. now, whoever sent you here probably said you were the first to make it. wrong. i’m slightly less touristy than multnomah falls, but still, i get some young star-crossed lovers once every couple of weeks. just come knocking on my door like i’m a four star hotel. since i got nothing better to do i let ’em in, show ’em around. show them this photo. because you’re all looking for love from a guy who hasn’t been in love for twenty years. you think, “well what about his wife?” yeah, what about her? she’s dead. she’s worm feed in the ground. yeah i loved her, i still do, very much, but that feeling is permanent in a world of impermanence. doesn’t matter much anymore, is my point. you’re welcome to stay for a bit, have a ramen, take a shit, whatever you need to do, but if you’re looking for enlightenment, you’ve come to the wrong place.
(Note: I wrote this nearly a year ago and for some reason left it sitting on my hard drive. I think I was going to post it to my blog. Good thing movies take a long time to make!)
Michael Fassbender as Aguilar de Nerha. You know, 20th Century Fox, that those blades are supposed to be … hidden, right?
On August 27, 2015, Yahoo released a promotional photo of Michael Fassbender dressed in the iconic Assassin garb for the new Assassin’s Creed movie, based on the popular video game franchise. (And more recently, new photos!) While the costume looks great and authentic to the series, I and many video game nerds like me couldn’t help but shudder at the prospect of yet another video game franchise getting a shitty movie adaptation. Super Mario Bros.DOOM. Anything directed by Ewe Boll. Hell, even Pixel. These movies are abominations to gamers, and not just because they are poorly made. It’s even worse than that: video game movies deprive you of the very reason you played those video games in the first place — interactivity — nor do they replace the deprivation of interactivity with anything the video game didn’t already have, resulting in, at best, a worthless shell of a movie, and at worst, Double Dragon.
Dramatic writing is a tricky business. Here you are, presenting a story about a protagonist, and your contract with the audience implies, in part, that you will give them something or someone to invest in, from beginning to end, in exchange for their hard-earned time and money. That’s a hard bargain these days, especially with dwindling attention spans and rising ticket prices. The good news is, mankind has been creating dramatic art for thousands of years, and finding fundamental character investment for an audience is formulaic; give any protagonist an underdoggish desire to achieve something and a few obstacles and you’ve got a story; all that matters now is writing it down. Hell, at this point in human history an audience is so used to dramatic structure that they can bypass simple needs and goals automatically, which is why dramatic writing theory tends to shift from why a character does something to how the character does it.
Video games have exploited narrative since their inception, whether it be implicit narrative (games without an obvious story but which have a story that can be implied, e.g. Space Invaders or Missile Command), or explicit narrative (games that intentionally tell you a story, e.g. the Final Fantasy games, Mass Effect, most RPGs). In the beginning, video game narratives were largely implicit due to the technological limits of the game itself, giving programmers little room for exposition within the game — oftentimes, narrative was written into instruction booklets, or even implied by the name of the game (Space Invaders is a game about … space … invaders). As technology improved, story improved, and the art of constructing a game with a storyline began.
Pac-Man is an example if implied narrative — the narrative being, “A spheroid being needs to get suuuper high to kill some ghosts chasing it.”
In dramatic art, the production team always faces the challenge of making the main character or characters enjoyable to the audience. That is, they need to make the audience invest in the character, otherwise they’ll be bored, or worse, they’ll throw rotten fruit or vegetables at the actors onstage or at the movie screen. Making an audience member invest in a character is an inherently difficult task, as every human being is different and might not be able to see aspects of themselves in, say, a white man who works in accounting, or an Asian woman who is a professional parkourist. This is why the universal baseline for audience investment centers around basic wants and needs that usually require the assistance of another character, as it makes the protagonist both active and need to get something from someone else, which is a pretty common experience for everyone. Watching a character struggle and overcome obstacles to get what they want or need is the most structure of Aristotelian plot structure. Everything else is flavoring, and as I said above, audiences are so attuned to storytelling these days (and writers are very, very talented, moreso than you realize) that they tend to focus on the nuance of character than on the plot, as the plot tends to write itself, once the pieces are in place.
Video games can bypass the challenge of character investment in a way, and oftentimes do, with one simple-yet-fundamental addition, a thing that is wholly unique to video games as a medium: the player controls the character. They are, for all intents and purposes, the character. They have automatic investment because if they don’t push the control stick forward, the character doesn’t move, the story doesn’t progress, and the player, then, has created an inactive protagonist, which is boring. If Mario never moved toward those question blocks in the first Super Mario Bros game, he would never save the princess. In movies, we have to watch the character begin their journey, often predicated by some inciting incident (i.e., a little fire lit under their butts to get them moving), but in video games, we ultimately make the decision to move the character, or to engage in the action ourselves.*
*There is a second aspect to this: namely, whether the player knows that a story exists within the game. This is obvious in film and television— 99% of the time you’re going to a movie to watch a story unfold— but in video games it’s a relatively recent invention. In early, implicit narratives, such as Space Invaders, there is no exposited story and thus no investment to pursue one; instead, the player plays for the numerous other long-cemented reasons one plays a game in the first place. But with more modern explicit narratives, the player is playing with the idea that they will be presented a story with game elements, or vice versa. Thus, their decision to move a character can also be motivated by this knowledge — that the only way we can experience the story is to be involved in it. (To be fair though, games like Grand Theft Auto have explicit narratives but also let you do whatever you want, so it’s not a hard-and-fast rule.
I nabbed this photo from this great article about video game theory! Mario’s future is all right. (Get it? It’s a pun.)
When a movie is turned into a video game, it is often met with mixed or bad reviews. You’ll note on that Wikipedia article that the movie with the highest percentage on Rotten Tomatoes (and thus the most favorably reviewed) is Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. I’d argue this is because of the CGI, not the story. Several movies on that list — Super Mario Bros, Mortal Kombat, Final Fantasy, etc — are based on highly successful video game franchises, or games that are critically acclaimed, or both. Alone in the Dark, for example, has a 90% approval rating on GameRankings.com*. What we have seen time and time again by movies made from video games is a lessening of the art form, a compression, if you will. Book lovers will already know this feeling, as their beloved books become highly compressed versions of themselves on screen, often omitting characters and key scenes for the sake of plot structure.
*Though, to be fair, that’s based on three reviews, all of which were a few years after the game was released. The wiki article itself explains the game’s popularity and critical acclaim in more detail.
On the other hand, when movies get turned into video games, for the most part they are good, sometimes excellent. Aladdin for the SNES/Genesis is often lauded as a great video game, and it follows the story of the movie while also presenting a fun and challenging side-scrolling platformer. The X-Wing/TIE Fighter series for the PC is also often praised for its gameplay. Goldeneye for the N64 is practically a god in the pantheon of first-person shooters. There are always exceptions (Atari’s ET: The Extra Terrestrial game has reached mythological levels of badness), but for the most part, game developers do a decent job of making video games based on movies something a player wants to play, whether the story follows the movie exactly, or diverges completely. Additionally, when a movie becomes a video game, it receives the added pleasure of becoming interactive on a level a movie cannot be by nature of the medium. With Aladdin, the player is doubly invested in Aladdin the character because they know his story via the movie, and because they get to control his actions, which gives the player immediate investment in the game. Movies can become good or great video games because their core structure is storytelling, which can then have a video game elements added to it to enhance it.*
*So why don’t we turn all movies into video games? Because as of yet there is not a video game that can tell a story as good as Godfather II, period.
Wolfenstein: The New Order is one of the few games that actually felt cinematic to me. It has an excellent balance of quality FPS gameplay and well-acted narrative from BJ Blazkowitz.
Turning a video game into a movie has the opposite effect of stripping away the aspects of the video game that made it interesting in the first place. Video games exist primarily as a medium of art wherein the player is the agent of action. Video games are more akin in this respect to being an actor in a play than a movie to be watched. When you think of Assassin’s Creed, for example, you don’t think of Ezio as a third-person character, you think of him as you — in other words, you don’t think of game missions as things Ezio did, but as things you did, because you really did them. You were playing the part. By making a video game into a movie, then, you deprive the audience of that critical different between the mediums; instead of being the character and making the choice to act yourself, you have to watch someone else do it. Where once was active agency, is now a passive viewing experience. Even if the movie is great, then, it lacks the essential aspect of being a video game. Making a movie into a video game adds a template of interactivity to the core of plot structure, but making a video game into a movie removes interactivity from game structure, and part of game structure is narrative. Moreover, the narrative of a video game necessarily requires video game aspects to proceed. Mario needs to jump and squash goombas and climb a flagpole in order to reach the next level, but if that was the only thing that happened in a Mario Bros movie, it would be boring and a waste of your time.
(Hell, even movies within video games — cutscenes — get bashed by players for their length and the fact that they deprive the player of actually being able to play the game. But that’s a topic for another essay.)
Video game movies will always have an enormous challenge ahead of them: make the movie as entertaining as the video game from where it came. Early incarnations of video game movies, like the progenitor Super Mario Bros, attempt to achieve this by being something almost entirely different from the game itself. Sure, there’s a Luigi and a Mario and Dennis Hopper’s cocaine-fueled performance as Bowser, and there are some weird-as-shit giant monsters called “goombas,” but in no way is Super Mario Bros the movie anywhere near the game stylistically. (Plus technically they use Princess Daisy rather than Princess Peach; Daisy was the princess of Super Mario Land. Get it together, Hollywood!) Other movies, like DOOM and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, try to recreate the feeling of the original video game, and while they may succeed on some level, they are still ultimately a passive experience. No matter what producers do, they cannot recreate the active experience of playing a video game. The closest they have come is the 1989 movie The Wizard, starring everyone’s favorite Fred Savage, but that movie A) wasn’t very good, and B) only works because we are invested in the character of Corey playing games because we have been in his shoes, i.e., we have played Super Mario Bros 3 before, and we know it’s one of the best games ever so we want Corey to win. (Okay, maybe I’m biased in that sentiment but SMB3 is the best game ever.)
Fun Fact: You’ll never be as cool as this kid.
Even with that tremendous hurdle ahead of them, video game movies also tend to lack basic Storytelling 101 elements anyway, leaving viewers to wonder why they even get made. In fact, we don’t have a legitimately good video game movie to serve as a litmus test for what makes a good video game movie. We could use Mortal Kombat, since its storyline is basically Enter the Dragon, but even then it is a pale imitation of the Bruce Lee classic, and only enjoyable if you’re one of those 30-something adults (like myself) who likes to wax nostalgic about the 90s (remember Skip-It? blurggghhhh). Instead, we’re left with turds of varying sizes and shapes, each unable to hold a candle to their video game predecessors, and who are effectively outcasts in the medium of film, movies whose only goal is to extract a profit from an audience they think is eager to see B-list actors battle the same forces of evil we battled and defeated (…barely) when we played the game ourselves.
Perhaps Assassin’s Creed can buck the trend of terrible video game movies. Ubisoft has control over the storyline and they don’t plan to rehash any of the games, but instead focus on a new protagonist, Callum Lynch, played by Fassbender, which means the movie won’t focus on people we’ve already played before. This could be good, like a supplement to the ever-expanding AC franchise. Michael Fassbender himself is an A-list actor who has strong roles (and, despite being an android, was the only character in Prometheus that I gave a shit about). This movie has the potential to make video game movies a legitimate force in the movie industry, so long as it provides a good storyline, a solid plot structure, and believable character progression. But even if it’s good, even if it’s great, it will only lead gamers like myself to wonder when the video game adaptation is going to come out, because we’ve already experienced a lot of AC’s story ourselves, first hand, and no matter how good Callum Lynch or his ancestor are at killing Templars, we know we’re better.
it’s like i’m cheating. i just glanced. you know. pulled up craigslist, just took a peek. i like where i am but i wanted to see what else was out there. so i peeked. scrolled through the job listings. nothing was like my current job. that’s when it hit me: this job is too specialized. there’s nothing like it out there. how do i get another job when there are no other jobs like this one? i’m trapped, i’m stuck doing this incredibly particular thing. people will say, at job interviews, they’ll say, “do you know how to do x?” and i can only say, “no, i only know how to do y.” so that’s why i’m here. i want you to teach me how to do y. i know you can help me and i’d be happy to pay you for your time. but i need to learn a new skill, something that could benefit me if i ever decide to move on. i’m a one trick pony right now and that scares me. i gotta learn something new. i gotta hustle, or i’ll die sitting in this cubicle, staring at a computer screen. two computer screens. i have dual monitors. but i felt so bad, looking for work, because i like this place, i want to stay here, i like the people and the environment. i like that everyone leaves me alone, that they trust me. i like that. i like helping people. but one of those people is me. help me get out of here. or at least give me an avenue, a branch to hold on to. otherwise i’ll feel stuck forever.
