_I did what I wanted to do and that's get out of the house before 10, get some writing done, and even if I had some distractions I still didn't default to playing video games again. That's a success in my book. Despite this there was still a moment near the end when I was falling back on a defeatist mentality. The old and familiar everything's fucked, why bother? But seeing my mother who's in town helped get me out of it and there was the realization that facilitates this fightback against my current situation.

Putting aside the angle of being a NSFW artist, there's still a lot of people before me who've suffered just to get their kids and grandkids to a better spot in life and I'm letting more than myself down by staying up my own ass about things. As my case worker once told me, it's ok to visit the negative side of things but it's not okay to settle there. And besides, moving forward with the NSFW path, it's infinitely better to be someone who can take care of themselves, you know?

So many people my age are missing milestones in life. That's how I'd put it. I remember making the conscious decision to not pursue the conventional path as dictated by western standards. Whatever choices I made in the past five years have lead me to this point whether that's based on factors I could or could not control. I'm right here and this is what I'm supposed to work with. Just play the ball as it lies, Happy Gilmore. I've seen a lot of people who are more or less in the same spot than I am and I think they just become embittered by it. I don't know if it's because they process it differently or they don't have the same support network or if they're something I could easily become under the wrong circumstance. I don't want to be bitter anymore and I let more people than myself down if I keep up that pace.

I call it the fightback for a reason and not only am I done with being bitter but I'm done with being toothless. Again, the soft-talk, the abstraction. The fightback is more than resistance to what's preventing change but also resistance against what I don't like about myself. The ability to self-analyze is not only for looking at an area that needs improvement it's also about realizing what you're doing right so you can stay on that course. The self-pitying lotus eaters spin in place like a canoe only paddling on one side and a lot of them get together to spin in place getting no where. Likewise the image applies to doomers.

I'm grateful for the chance to talk to my mom. My ancestors did not settle in the new world after fleeing the home country just for their descendant to quit at the beginning. Again, this applies to more than lewd drawings. Me and my work will be better off if I get to a place where I want to be in life and that place is not here in my dad's house with a cousin who smells like shit.

No longer can I entertain these ideas of hopelessness because it's not sustainable, never was.

On the topic of writing, I think sitting at the top of the bell curve has made me realize that I have to be my own lifeline first and foremost. I've always been too this for that, too that for this and self-reliance is my takeaway. Of course, I have people in my life who are willing to support me and I'm grateful for it. But I can't be dependent on them because they have their own baggage and I'd rather not burden them. But as far as creative direction goes it feels right to aim for authenticity even if that means creating self-indulgent trash. That's the fulcrum of this identity. I started the year thinking that I needed to be part of the main crowd, somehow work towards their acceptance. And as nice as that seems it's ultimately not my journey.

Now that I've got all that down, the upcoming steps will be to refine my vision for the works I want to create and activate that drive to write without thinking too much about it. Everything else tomorrow may come and go as they please but I want to find the time to create the thing I want no matter how vulgar or obscene. The ones who get stuck running loops around their ideas, over and over and over, are familiar breed of lotus eater.

More to follow.

—Errant out.