Yes, LaidbackMarco is also an angry piece of poo. I’m toxic and my rage made me throw my keyboard.
One nice thing about having a blog that no one reads is I can put whatever I want on it and not worry about people seeing it. Lately, I’ve been seeing an online therapist who’s making me Journal my life and track it. I thought I’d put this here for my own sake. . .because I don’t really want to pay for Office 365 although I should. Here’s real insight into my life.
I’ll Start On Monday
After the session on Friday, I did some self-reflection. There was a lot to take in and process. Although I had known I was on the spectrum, it was one of the few times someone had cared enough to notice some of the tendencies. I felt ashamed about my talking spiraling into further and further topics, a lot of time had passed before I’d realized I’d been talking for so long.
It’s the same thing that happens when people talk about something I’m interested in. . .I just go through a torrent of ideas, thoughts, and opinions and seem to jump from one topic to another with no logical connection. Perhaps I don’t say the train of thought out loud, but it seems cohesive and makes sense internally.
For some reason, a memory of my college freshman English class where I had to give a presentation popped up in my mind. I remember being so nervous to share my essay on something that I enjoyed which was anime. My legs locked up and my whole essence was shaking.
Side tangent, but sometimes I’ll be playing games with my friends and I don’t talk, but I feel like I was talking in my head. . .maybe when I use in-game communication tools I consider that communication.
Mirror Image
After the last session, I had a hard time dealing with inspecting myself. Like Micheal Jackson’s “Man in the mirror” I was being asked to look at my own reflection. In a way studying someone’s surroundings is a way of studying them indirectly. I was looking into the glass and didn’t like what I saw. My apartment had gotten a little more presentable as a result, but my rental car looked like I lived in it, and my computer was a mess of files.
My therapist was now asking me to take that image I didn’t see in the mirror and put it under a microscope. Taking notes about what I did at every hour of the day. . .it felt like the observer in my mind was being observed. . .but who was observing who? I sound like a schizophrenic, but there never really is just one me in my head is there. . .the different personalities we dawn. The different suits and masks we dawn, are we all acting?
The Daily Grind
After my session, I joined the call with my Apex Legends friends. We chatted a bit before they got tired and headed to sleep. I didn’t want to play Apex that day, I felt like a Jaded Athlete, but I wanted to “git gud” so I decided to play one or two games (30min-1hr). I started doing my warmup routine and let the craft take over, aim training, shooting range, and then I was in “game mode” before I knew it it was done. . . the two games had gone by in an instant. The results weren’t good or bad. . .just average, I headed off to bed and watched Netflix till I passed out.
I have always admired people in the military, in fact, I had done ROTC in High-School and was set to apply for the military academy before I tore my ACL and my life changed course. I wanted to be a fighter pilot, I doubt I could have done it fighter pilots are the top 2% of pilots, I can’t even get the top percentage in a game I play. Being any sort of pilot would be a win though, the pay is great, the freedom of movement in 3d space, and the views from planes is phenomenal. I think the closest experience I’d get to flying a fighter get would be to pilot a first-person drone or realistic flight simulator, but I digress.
The reason I bring this up is that in the military they teach you to love the process. I’ve read stories about boot camp recruits making a bed with hospital corners, spit shining their boots, or ironing their dress uniform only for their superiors to always find something to nitpick. The recruits are then forced to repeat the same task at noseeum. Despite my respect for the military, I had always found this odd. Recently I listened to a podcast that made it click for me though, the podcast guest said the reason for the repetitive activities is to teach recruits the value of the process. In a tangent to this tangent, the coach John Wooden would start every year teaching his players how to tie their shoes properly because The Basics Matter. I don’t think there’s anyway I can even come close to my goals just winging it . . . I need structure and if I can’t get the basic day-to-day right. There is no way I even get close.
Saturday
09:00 Wake up, shower, get dressed
10:00 Distracted by random things, YouTube, Etc.
10:30 Leave for Anime Event Kamiesai
11:00 Arrive at Kamiesai, Check-In
14:00 Leave Kamiesai
15:00 Lunch
16:00 Nap
19:00 Edit video of event upload to youtube
20:00 Work on stream improvements
22:00 Begin Live Stream
24:00 Sleep
Journal backlog
It was the weekend and I was hoping to start the daily journaling thing and time-tracker thing on Monday, but looking back on this day it was great. . . and filled me with anxiety and dread, and I didn’t get as much done as I wanted.
Even though we had talked about not spending money before making a budget plan, I have been wanting to go to this anime event for over a month. I didn’t even know what kind of event it was, but I knew some of the illustrators I’ve been following for years on Twitter before even coming to Japan would have works displayed there. Despite it being a difficult pain in the ass to live in Japan, one of the things that always makes me happy is seeing little touches of anime here and there. At the convenience store, on tv, around Tokyo, and at events like this. I just want to say although the culture is bigger here in Weeb homeland, it’s still not common for adults to like animation as they grow up. Seeing the banners decorating the front of the event space made me happy on a deep level. Just as it was cool to see the collection of original illustrations that the artists had drawn for the welcome to the event.
After passing through the front doors I was greeted by a collection of artist goods, it was nothing that you couldn’t really see in an anime store. I had realized it was sort of like the gift shop area, the real event was down a hallway to the right. It was another moment of my life that kinda shattered my world. When I rounded that corner I saw anime art, but it was beautifully mounted on canvases, framed, and also put behind glass. Going to an art event and seeing the works blown up and in person was an experience, it was far different from seeing them on a screen. As I inspected each piece more closely, I noticed they only got more beautiful. Most of them were mixed media, some parts of the painting digital, and other parts were traditional media, but every piece had a painstaking amount of love and detail poured into them. I was floating.
As high as I was the crash came just as fast. It was like Icarus flying too close to the sun. “How will I ever reach that level?” bounced off the inside of my skull turning it into a mush of self-doubt and pity. I hadn’t made a piece of art I was proud of in a long ass time. It didn’t seem to matter how much work or practice I performed, I just didn’t have “it”. I then noticed that under each piece was a price, it was my first art exhibition where I realized the things I was looking at were being sold. $3000-$4000 a painting. . . it was bittersweet because on one hand, I thought it was cool that anime artists could sell their works for this much, I doubted my paintings were worth .01% of that, it also made me realize that I was a little out of place here. The only thing that was missing was suits, wine, and crackers. As I rounded the corner to look at more pieces one of those things was there. Salesmen and women wearing suits, and gloves, and talking to prospective customers. That also filled me with dread. . . even if I was able to make my art God Level(Kami means god in Japanese, E(Ayy) means painting) I would still have to build skills in networking, marketing myself, and talking to people. I’m not sure if any of the artists were there, but they probably had to do some of those things I dread in order to get those works placed here in the first place.
As the salesmen/saleswomen saw me enter they obviously realized that I couldn’t afford to buy a painting. My whole life I’d been the poor outsider that didn’t quite belong, it wasn’t long before I became invisible. That feeling was a feeling I was used to. Even in my own communities online people hardly noticed what I did ever . . .except for my aunt, she liked everything to the point where her encouragement meant little now. Even when I made a bad piece she would send me love and praise which felt unearned causing me to feel worse about even trying. I walked around the room and tried to read the artist’s notes, not only was I out of place but here I was an illiterate idiot, despite trying to learn the language that never quite clicked either. I stopped on Momoko Haru’s work, I was able to understand maybe 20% of the japanese written in front of me, before I gave up and used google translate on my phone.
I was able to get the diluted, passable English translation of the message, but there were always things lost in translation. A little voice taunted me from the back of my mind what are you doing here? You don’t belong here, You tried to achieve your dreams only to fail, just give up.
After staying in the little exhibition for almost two hours I decided to go home and eat lunch. When I got home I was so emotionally drained I just lie on the floor. I crawled to my bed. . . I felt guilty for napping, but I couldn’t bring myself to do anything else. . .the weekend was the only time that I could keep my dream that was already on life support alive, and I had wasted part of it sleeping. I worked on youtube, twitch, and streamed for a little, but I had the feeling I missed out on time I could never get back.
Sunday
11:00 Wake up, shower, get dressed
12:00 Distracted by random things, YouTube, Etc.
15:30 Call with parents
16:00 Dry Cleaners
16:30 Thrift Store Shopping
18:00 Eating Out
19:00 Setting Up Desk Cleaning Home
20:00 Work on stream improvements
21:00 Begin Live Stream
24:00 Sleep
I hate getting up in the mornings, it has always been a struggle for me. . . well it was barely even morning when I did wake up. I don’t know what it is about leaving the warm bed and getting up to face the day. . . another day filled with more tasks and shit I gotta do.
“Can we call you tonight” The message that from my mom that I left unread on purpose. I got better about responding, but recently she had been a bit clingy. Although having your mom say that she loves you too much is a good problem to have, I felt she was being emotionally needy and I was more concerned for her wellbeing than anything else. I called my mom expecting her to be sitting on her bed watching T.V as normal.
She greeted me yelling too loud on the phone as she always does, but she was in a kitchen that definitely wasn’t ours.
“Hello” I said as a bunch of background noise could be heard from her end.
“Guess who I’m with right now?” – She asked as a bunch of laughter and noise could be heard throughout the room.
“Hey Marco” my dad said before appearing on the camera.
This caught me by surprise considering what my parents were going through, the stranger thing was he was acting like everything was normal and not out of the ordinary.
I came to learn that they were both at my uncle’s house for one of my cousin’s birthdays. My mom had been drinking. There’s always a weird ritual of being passed around the room, it was nice to see my uncle, who had just recovered from an open heart surgery, then one cousin, and then the next. I had missed so many events like this over the past four years. . .and for what? I was no closer to becoming an artist, to finding where I belong, to self-realization. It’s not like my parents are going to last on the planet forever.
I think my uncle going through his struggle made me realize my dad is around the same age. After getting off the phone I realized I needed to take care of some adult things that are annoying. I needed some furniture, dry cleaning, and new clothes for work as I had gotten a warning about the dress code in the office. Not wanting to spend a lot of money I did the Macklemore and hit up a thrift shop for a couple of dress shirts, a tie, and two suits.
I came home and worked on my side hustles that were going about as fast as our mission to colonize mars.
Monday
05:45 Wake Up Snooze
06:00 Wake up for real, shower, change
06:45 Begin drive to work
07:30 Conveince Store Stop
8:00 Work Starts, responding to emails, looking at notes, writing journal, setting tasks
09:00 Sorting through procurement items
12:35 Lunch
13:45 Researching and creating timeline draft for overseas teacher arrivals
16:27 Reasearching and responding to emails about the headmaster’s car search
17:00 Going HOme
18:30 Dinner
18:00 Nap that turned into sleeping until 24:00
I hate Mondays
Again I was so inexplicably tired that my plan to take a short nap turned into sleeping for 6 hours.
I felt guilty and like I was falling behind in a race that I was already lagging behind the competition.
I went to the gym at around 12:00 and Exercised Until 1:00 AM
I watched some anime in only Japanese and practiced the game I wanted to improve at for a couple of hours before returning to sleep.
I got so angry at myself, and then the world.
While I was playing the game there were opportunities for me to do well, but I choked. I got so angry at myself that I almost punched my monitor. I threw my keyboard to the ground. I was angry about a lot of things, I felt like I’d always put in my time and effort into the game and it not panning out and although I have improved a bunch, it never felt like it. Man I love the game, but when the game doesn’t love you it hurts. I got even angrier when I logged into Facebook and saw that a friend of mine was DJing at a party. . . that’s always something I wanted to do. All around me it felt like everyone was winning and achieving their goals. . .and even at the thing I put a lot of effort into or sacrificed so much for I just didn’t have “it”
I remembered sitting behind my computer in college and going through so many tutorials and making so much music. And my music still sounds subpar. I turned off Facebook and scrolled through Instagram to see my favorite DJ play at EDC, the amazing work of the artists I follow online, it made me think about the podcast guest on Tim Ferris earlier, he was the CEO of lulu lemon. It seemed everyone had those moments where everything clicked and they had success even after their failures. I should have been happy but I was jealous. Earlier on Sunday I told my sister I was happy for her that she went to Harvard and is accomplishing her goal of doing that and I genuinely was, why couldn’t I feel like that for other people. The only part I had similar with everyone else was the fuck ups. . the success never followed for me.
Also I was still looking around in life for my purpose. I lie and bed and look up at the ceiling. . .the only future I saw was working a job where I couldn’t be myself, or explore my creativity or ideas and dying.
