3/9/24
Hi again. It's a cool Saturday night at the end of a mild winter. The sky continues to turn overhead. I'm alive to see it, and I hope you are too. I named this site "imnotsad" as a tongue-in-cheek joke. I hope it's not cheapened by getting better. I write less, sure, but it's only because there's not much to write about. White-hot pain and special kinds of sadness are just shapes in the rear-view now. It's not all roses, but it's pretty good. I've got friends. A rhythm. A place to call my own. I feel planted, steady. I hope this continues for a long time. I hope you find a similar place. You, who maybe related a little with the ramblings of another college burnout. You, standing in the center of an impossible gulf of agony. I want you to know that this, too, shall pass. Somewhere, out there, is a life, waiting for you to live it. All you have to do is get there. Every second is a second closer to the future, a second further from the past. That's the beauty of it. I know I don't know you, but if you know you and you know this place, then maybe we're kindred souls. So in that way, I love you. I love you.
3/3/23
Still kicking. It's funny, updates get less frequent here as I get in a better state generally. I thought a lot about my last post and y'know, I can't really say whether or not it's true, but I hope it's true for other people. That as they disappear it's off to greener pastures, and not off the face of the earth. In any case, I'm still around, and I plan to be around for a long while, but I think maybe it's time to put a cap on the 'imnotsad' thing. It was sarcastic when I made this but that was like, four years ago, and guess what? I'm not sad. Not anymore. Took a lot of work. Good people. Being gentler, kinder to myself. And a lot of luck. I spent a while trying to push back a lot of instincts, but really that meant I had a habit of just indulging the worst ones. Now, I indulge my better side too. It's a constantly changing thing, but I think it's changing for the better. I don't think anyone reads this, but I hope things change for the better for you. Just remember to be kind to yourself. Like, honestly, actually, kind. It's not an easy habit to get into (or at least, it wasn't for me) but it makes not wanting to kill yourself a lot, lot easier.
I might come back here, might not. It's got a lot of baggage. I thought about deleting everything but maybe this site could be useful to someone, somewhere. Wishful thinking, but y'know. In any case, if you're reading this, I hope you find your greener pastures, and I'll see you on the other side.
2/16/22
The internet is full of ghosts. Faces, names, voices that were at one point alive and filled with emotion, energy, and warmth suddenly... Aren't. It's the nature of the medium. You're not reading my words. My words never left my head. You're reading a series of glyphs put onto a server by a computer with the right credentials to access that specific plot of memory. I, as a person, am nowhere in that process. In that way, you're already seeing ghosts. This website is a ghost, an imprint left by a living thing that will persist after that living thing is dead. When the human who typed these words ends up on a morgue tray, the words will remain.
So what happens when that living thing stops typing the words, but continues to live? What happens when that living thing goes out and does the living thing, lives a whole life where suddenly typing words becomes so much less of a priority? What happens when the living thing is no longer the thing that typed these words? Is it still a ghost, or something else? Is that thing still alive? Did I die, and did someone else who knows everything I do take my place?
Anyway, I graduated. Got a job. I'm not a college burnout anymore. No more college and honestly? Not much burnout either. It's weird. So much of my life rotated around being a student that once it ended I felt like something died. Things tend to die at the end of stories. Monsters die at the end of happy stories, people die at the end of sad ones. Not sure which died last spring, but it's dead now and we're alive so we keep going.
At least the suicidal ideation stopped for the most part, so there's at least one good thing to come of it. Money, too. Independence. Quiet. Lots of good things, actually. I think I lost a lot, too. Access to the dark basement of my own head, where I'd go to wax poetic and bang my metaphorical head against the metaphorical wall. Maybe it's better I don't go there anymore, but when you're so used to feeling so shitty that you feel like a completely different person when you stop feeling like shit, I can't help but think I'm not who I am anymore. Like I abandoned myself in favor of some other, less interesting self. Life is boring, I remind myself. Life is complicated and boring, and I guess that means that the more of it we decide to live the more complicated and boring we become.