I’m Jealous Of Another Part Of My Brain

One of the other hobbies I have is creating YouTube videos out of videogame clips and various discussions based around nerd culture, and I’ve always done that for fun with very minimal success. In recent months, however, the channel has been gaining thousands of views and steadily climbing in subscribers, which has brought me no small amount of joy. I can do it! I can do the video thing. I can make people laugh.

I am jealous.

Of myself.

Which is so stupid and absurd, but ultimately nobody is just one person and two things can be true. On the one hand, something I’ve wanted since I was a teenager is finally coming to pass, and I legitimately could not be happier about it. On the other hand, I can’t help but recontextualise my writing efforts and compare it against the channel. While I may pour a lot of effort and time into one project, I pour equal measures of deep thought and vulnerability into the other on top of a similar amount of effort and time. Like yeah, I can make people laugh, but can I make people think? Can I make people read a life experience and relate it to their own and have a humdinger of a brain poking session?

I am an idiot because I see people read my stuff and I am as thankful for it as I have always been, and now I am comparing it to an entirely different medium with an entirely different tone and having a crisis because it doesn’t get as much attention.

I think the thing I struggle with, even still, is having attended university to find a bunch of likeminded deep thinking writey-folk to bounce ideas off and feel validated existing alongside, only to leave university and be thrust back into the isolated void that is writing for oneself in an uncaring universe. A writer’s journey is often a lonely one, as it’s just me and this sheet of virtual paper, hashing it out until I arbitrarily come to a stop. I’m my own editor, so I have no idea if my garbled thoughts make sense to the outside world or if I’m just amusing my own tangle of nerves in the meat soup inside my skull. And then when I do hit publish, having absolutely no idea how many people these words reach. There are analytics, sure, but what is a view? A cursory glance or a fully comprehended ten-minute sit-down with a coffee and an open mind?

Actually, I don’t really check the analytics because I’m sure I won’t like what I see. So that probably doesn’t help.

Whinging about views is cringe, I know! But the goal of this blog is to be as open and honest as possible about my journey through life, and in my continuing attempts to portray myself with accuracy I have to acknowledge the parts of me that you’re not supposed to have. Like being jealous of the other part of your brain that can make people laugh, and comparing yourself against more successful people who are doing what you want to be doing but better.

“Making things is like deciding to spend your life playing a rigged demented slot machine, except instead of quarters you’re gambling everything that’s ever made you feel something and like, your childhood trauma.” – Savannah Brown

For those of you that do read what I have to say, thank you so much. I hope you don’t feel overlooked by my self-obsessive neuroticism in this post. If you’re fellow writers then maybe you can simply relate.

Year to Year: A Journal Through Time #12 – A Renewed Perspective (8/4/19)

Recent headlines

World: Brexit: Cross-party talks continue amid impasse (Yup, still going on)

Gaming: Randy Pitchford praises move to Epic Store after Borderlands 2 review bombing (Look kids, consequences for your actions!)

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I read an article yesterday about Emilia Clarke suffering two brain injuries during the course of Game of Thrones, recovering in time to continue shooting, and subsequently starting a charity called Same You to improve aftercare for victims of brain injury. That is goddamn incredible. I bring it up because a few weeks ago a friend of mine told me about their own journey through a bout of critical health, and it’s renewed my appreciation for my own health and instilled me with a new level of respect for anyone who’s been through something like that. I talk about mental health a lot, and how absolutely vital it is to be good to yourself and to respect the health of others. I’m fortunate enough to know some very strong people who have kept me educated about these matters. But physical health is absolutely something I take for granted and only consider when it’s brought up. One absolutely does not cancel out the other, and I’m grateful for both of these things: that I am as aware of mental health as I need to be, and that I haven’t had to worry about my physical health on a day to day basis.

I often fret about my weight or my eating habits, but as someone who’s only physical concern is that they’ve grown a bit of a gut, I’m now aware of how little I have to worry about compared to someone who can’t be certain of their own brain continuing to function as required. My task now is to keep this perspective in mind the next time I give myself a hard time over my lack of self-control. As someone who is very much an introvert, it’s easy for me to become wrapped up in my own self-devouring narratives, and I have to constantly check my sense of reality before falling down a well of my own making. I suspect many people live similarly, and I fear that such a lifestyle is often what leads people down dark roads and into warped thought patterns. It’s why I’m so grateful to be surrounded by the people in my life, and why it’s no exaggeration when I say they light my way.

Speaking of informed life choices, I just spent seventy pounds on cardboard that I won’t even own for five days! For those of you who don’t know, the Nintendo Switch has these kits you can buy called Labo, which are sort of… ah heck, how do I describe Labo? They’re like DIY cardboard peripherals which work ingeniously with the system’s joycon controllers. Skim down to the further reading section if you’re curious, but the fourth kit is VR, and VR is something I’ve always wanted to try, so I’ve taken the plunge. I don’t know how well it will work; it’s certainly not capable of what PSVR and the Vive can do. Nevertheless, the trailer captured me, and news that Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will be VR compatible by the end of the month has me very intrigued. It’s a third person game, for starters. It runs at 30fps in handheld mode, which is sure to cause nausea in VR. I’ve basically spent seventy quid in disbelief that this thing will be worth seventy quid. I’m sure it’s gathering dust somewhere in future Kristian’s bedroom, but I sure hope it’s not.

While we’re talking about entertainment – and why not, this’ll all be more interesting when it publishes a year later – we are one week away from Game of Thrones Season 8 premiering. I’ll find another platform to discuss overt spoilers closer to the time (maybe this very blog, via site pages), but suffice to say that at this point in my life I am full of anticipation. I finished my Game of Thrones rewatch early, and now I’m stuck trawling the internet for behind the scenes clips to sate my Westerosi thirst. The show’s Youtube channel just uploaded a bunch of videos where actors remember their time on the show, so that marks two times Emilia Clarke has brought me close to crying this week. And let me tell you, I don’t cry easy! I’m getting better at it, but it is still quite the accomplishment to make me well up. This show, their books and the world of A Song of Ice and Fire is unique in its scope and success, and I will be immeasurably sad when it is over. Hopefully HBO can pull off their prequel series with half as much expertise. In the meantime, future Kristian: maybe it’s time for that full series 1-8 rewatch you’ve been considering. Winky face.

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Further reading:

Emilia Clarke on ‘Game of Thrones’ – Not my typical vehicle for information, but hey, this is where I heard about her brain injury scares.

The Cast Remembers: Emilia Clarke on Playing Daenaerys Targaryen – Crying emoji. Crying emoji. Bawling emoji.

Nintendo Labo: Toy-Con 4: VR Kit – Nintendo are not doing me any favours with that voice-over.

The Weekly Deathmatch #50 – Cube 2: Sauerbraten – Expensive Cardboard – Yeah I discuss Labo in this video too, but I’m cutting myself some slack because this was published a year ago from your POV!

The Other Side of Narcissism

Before I say anything, I’ll just say that this honestly isn’t a criticism I’m levelling at anyone I know in my life. Nor is this post against those with problems of self-imagery, or other mental health concerns. I’m discussing mostly myself and the music I listen to in this blog post.

Narcissism is something that most of us harbour to an extent in today’s world of selfies, but it’s generally something that we strive to keep to a minimum. But when you think of narcissism – of self-obsession – you always tend to think of people who are self-complimentary, or who spend an unhealthy amount of time on their appearance and trying to manage how others perceive them. But something that’s been on the edge of my mind for the last few years – and something that’s only fully hit me as I’ve revisited some heavier music that I’ve enjoyed over the years – is that hating yourself can be just as narcissistic as loving yourself.

So I’m listening to this Beartooth song for the first time. It’s called Loser. And for the most part, it’s a good song. But there’s this one lyric that stands out to me: “I was born just a little bit different.” And it gets under my skin.

Now, to be fair, I don’t know the context behind this lyric. It might be referring to a medical condition of the singer’s (or songwriter’s) that has affected their life for the worse. It may be referring to a situational disadvantage in their upbringing. But on a personal level, it reminds me painfully of my teenage self. Not to delve into too much detail, whilst I was never born into disadvantage or apathy, I lived through a personal tragedy at a young age, and was – and still am – actively aware of how it shaped me as a person going forwards. Which is fine. But I also became obsessed with comparing myself to others and discussing, at length, my emotions and how I was different to others in my fledgling literary works growing up. If I could go ten years back in time to give myself some advice, it’d be that going through a tragedy doesn’t make you any wiser, any more intelligent, or any more complex than those that you condemn as being “normal”.

I’ll be honest. I don’t entirely regret those years of self-evaluation. It was therapeutic, and laying down the metaphorical geography of my mind was probably essential to my development as a human being. But it was also an exercise in narcissism. A man who studies himself in the mirror for hours, whether he is practising his smile or spitting on himself, is still a man who studies himself in the mirror for hours. And, as with anything else that becomes the sole focus of your attention for an extended period of time, you lose the ability to view it from a fresh perspective, thereby blinding you to many issues that you’re spending hours of your life looking for.

I feel like a lot of people don’t realise that self-hatred can still be a self-obsession, if not moderated and managed. I know that a lot of the songwriters of my favourite music have analysed themselves in as much unhealthy scrutiny that I have. And whilst self-criticism and evaluation is always important, the point of obsession is as unhealthy to those around you as it is to yourself. Not just by voicing your self-remarks, but by thinking about them for hours and hours.

One more thing. I’m not saying that self-hatred or issues of self-image are a choice or a product of a changeable attitude, or anything remotely like that. To think such things would be to blatantly disregard the complexity and seriousness of mental health. I speak more directly of those whose self-evaluation is more about reasons of a selfish nature, as mine was. I’m nowhere near qualified or educated enough to speak intimately of such matters, but I believe there is a fundamental difference between issues of mental health, and issues of personality and attitude. But that’s a whole other blog post.

Well… this unasked-for blog post of commentary on self-obsession all came about when I decided to simply change my Twitter bio. I realised that I’d spent eight and a half years trying to sum myself up in less than 160 characters, growing more uncomfortable with each attempt; it is now suitably unspecific. But then, this mere self-analysis of the dangers of self-analysis only goes to show that following your own advice is as difficult as ignoring the face in the mirror.

Revisiting Harry Potter

Kindle Unlimited is a service that’s been interesting me for some time now, and as my reading habits have been slipping more and more, I decided to claim my free month trial. Rather than using this trial to read new and interesting books, as was the plan, I was instead distracted by the fact that the Harry Potter books were on there, and thus set about re-reading Rowling’s famous series.

Now, whilst I’m comfortably familiar with the series thanks to the movies (which I’ve seen on multiple occasions), I’ve only read the actually book series once, and that was when I was around fourteen. Whilst it was enjoyable, I don’t remember being particularly blown away by the novels, and apart from filling in some of the gaps from the movies, they soon fell into obscurity. However, reading through the series a second time round has proven to be a splendid idea. I’m now positively entranced by the wizarding world that Rowling has created, and rather than taking the story at face value, my mind now reels with the possibilities of further stories told within that some world (perpetuated, of course, by the recent release of Magical Beasts and Where to Find Them, which I have yet to see). I’m enthralled by the idea of apparition; intrigued by the consequences of living in a world where things such as the polyjuice potion, the pensieve and invisibility cloaks exist; excited at the prospect of what other Dark wizards get up to and the potential narratives behind that; curious as to the magical governing of other countries; and, of course, tickled by the idea of the wizarding world existing alongside a 2016 world, where there are smartphones (and therefore cameras) everywhere.

There’s also a rich vein of rediscovery to be found from having foreknowledge of the series. Knowing the perspectives and plans of certain characters can be invigorating, enticing and exciting; the ability to understand why Dumbledore’s eyes light up “triumphantly” at a particular spot of bad news at the end of Goblet of Fire, for example, allows you to see the story from a whole other angle as it unfolds. Furthermore, reading this from an adult perspective offers even further insights into the behaviours of some characters, such as why information is withheld rather than shared, and what some unheard conversations between teachers and adult characters might sound like. And finally, I found myself taken off guard by the amount of comedic moments found in the series; some of them, like Fred and George bouncing snowballs off the back of Professor Quirrel’s turban, are even funnier with foreknowledge.

Finally, as somebody who was once caught up in the popular idea that J.K Rowling’s actual writing is overrated based on her popularity, I have this to say: that is incorrect. I’ve found her writing to be easy to read, excellently descriptive, accurately characteristic through applications of free indirect style, to contain very slight and clever foreshadowing, and most impressively, to be thoroughly well-plotted and consistent throughout a myriad of fully-constructed characters, events and in an extensively designed world. There are some minor plotholes that I’d raise, such as why Harry doesn’t see Thestrals pulling the magical carriages at the end of Goblet of Fire, but none of these compromise the story when pulled up for closer inspection, which is a rare trait to find in a lot of fiction nowadays.

A Perfect World

Full disclosure: This blog post is an unplanned, badly structured ramble. Make of it what you will.

In my short twenty-one years of life, I’ve experienced nothing so astonishing, terrifying and frustrating as the machinations of the human brain. Depending on who you ask, the brain is either a bundle of nerves and synapses that muddle together to make a being, a house of memories and emotions too complex for science to grasp, or the ship within which the soul resides. Or all three. Or something else. It may be the most abstract and fascinating physical object within our reach. Everyone has one, and we hardly give it thought. Well, without further ado, here is my brain, examining others.

Looking at the world from a different perspective, we might be a conglomerate of brains piloting sacks of meat that have managed to communicate with each other, and form the illusion of a society. Not only have we ascended from our ancestral tribal qualities (allegedly), we’ve also convinced ourselves that we’ve evolved past the fall of civilisations and live by a strict moral code. Most of us know rights from wrongs, days from nights, self defense from murder. In fact, we’re brought up under the hypothetical wings of our parents who teach us that the world as they see it is the way the world is, full stop, and it’s not for a decade or two that we might begin to question this notion. And we begin to ask ourselves the difference between right and wrong, capitalism and communism, justified war and uneasy peace. The lines become blurred. We begin listening to other sources and slowly, we begin to shape our own opinions on the state of the world and people’s places inside of it.

Now here’s the problem. Somewhere along the way, whilst we were evolving into this society into which we’re born like it’s normality, people’s codes of morals began to divert, or had begun diverted, and led to a string of complicated different spheres of opinion. People on Side A believe that people on Side B are wrong and maybe evil for their opinions, whereas people on Side B think the same of those on Side A. Perhaps they’re both good people. But with each passing generation, the children that are born into the normality of either side’s opinion being true fact believes perhaps more strongly that the opposing side is inherently ill-willed. Those who want immigrants to seek safe haven in this country are clearly fools who have no concept of the wider implications. Those who bar immigrants from entering the country are ruthless human beings with no regard for human life. And so they cook up plots against each other, telling themselves that the means justify the ends because they are right. Those opposing them don’t see that right now, but they are right.

Nobody will ever see the whole picture for what it is. I pride myself on objective thinking where possible, but I often fall to bias and limited perspective, as much as anyone else. People far more learned and intelligent than I may try to think objectively, and fail all the same. Because we weren’t born into neutrality. We were born into a pre-existing world of opinion and lies, and hatred and the greater good, and it’s gotten to the point where this tangled web we weave no longer has a beginning, a starting point to return to and figure the whole thing out, and we’re trapped in it. You can’t please everyone, there’s no such thing as perfection and in a perfect world, there’d be no conflict. But I suppose that’s the price of individuality.

This greatest of moral problems, I think, can be best personified in the World War 2 example. Hitler’s rise to power was catastrophic for millions of lives, and no child even 70 years later grows up without hearing of his malice. And yet he was human, and without his despicable conquest we wouldn’t have many of the advances in technology and medicine that we now do; we wouldn’t have swayed to the philosophy that those alien to our nationality are good, and that the Aryan race is a hideous concept. So having seen the (admittedly, currently clouded) promising future that was left after the downfall of the Nazis, would you go back in time to kill Hitler? It’s the same sort of problem with individuality. With differing opinions and philosophies comes hatred, pain, war, death, but if we were all one, and if we all agreed on every outcome, we’d surely lose our identities, our hopes and dreams, our loves, our souls.

So I ask you: Is a suffering world the only one in which love and laughter can exist?

Dark Days

The other night I was curled up in bed with a book from the past, and a cat snuggled beside me, on the cusp of sleep. It was at this moment that my mind flashed forwards to consider this image from ten years down the line, when I’d be sleeping in a different bed in a different room under a different roof, with no cat. I didn’t see but instead felt the longing to return to a past which was currently the present, and it upset me.

This premonition of sorts was most likely brought on by my considering of the difference in setting from when I’d first read this book, and was unsettling. Nobody likes to be reminded that somebody lived in their house before them, and that somebody will surely live in their house afterwards. What ghosts walk your rooms, bound to their own realms by only the constraints of time? Who will be sat where you are now, decades down the line? And where will you be then?

We all have chapters in our lives, some contrasting most potently than others. It’d be presumptuous of me to assume the same template of memories for everyone, but I’m sure I speak for many when I say that while some ghosts are strangers of time, others surface in the mind, not from speculative afterthought but personal experience; some with regret, some with anger, and some with no new perspective but the unbiased film grain of the past. Some people we choose never to talk to again, and fall out of their lives as quietly as we fall out of theirs. But they’ve left an impression upon us, and the world cannot be viewed from the same perspective as before that meeting, be they a bittersweet presence in the mind, or a blemish gazing distastefully back.

These are the blog posts I do not write; they are the statuses and tweets I do not post. Once, perhaps, but no longer. I find them self-pitying, self-obsessed, needlessly morose; there is enough misery in the world without me contributing to it. And whilst all the optimism I preach is of genuine conviction, I feel in equal parts this doom. Doom from the ignorance of politicians; doom from the forecast of society; doom, most of all, from the rigors of the mind and the personal wars I wage within myself. But look, I’m already adopting the starved poet’s mirror with that line.

One of my greatest fears is becoming, or being perceived as pretentious. But to be pretentious is to be without conviction, and a person without conviction is a painted picture of themselves that they maraud around the place as a photograph. My aim of changing the world to have even one less shadow in it is defunct, should I neglect to acknowledge the darkness myself. So this blog post is an experiment, written in one of my bleaker hours; it is an attempt to be truly oneself. And you can be certain that this was not some hastened scrawling of bad temper, for these words were written a full four days before they were published, leaving plenty of room to write something else.

But know this: Just because the world inside of you is engulfed in darkness, it doesn’t mean that the world outside deserves to be the same. This, I think, is where the wagers of war are fundamentally flawed, and it remains to be seen as to whether the human race is capable of getting the better of its temper.

Prospective Retrospective Perspective

The other day, I realised that I could lose myself for hours in r/AskReddit, reading people’s stories on various things. It’s actually a pretty great place to go for writing prompts, I’d wager. But it’s also great for some perspective, at times. The other day on the website, for example, somebody asked users over fifty what the greatest decade of their life had been so far.

Hardly any of them said it was their twenties.

I mean, obviously I know that life goes on after university, but the wall of uncertainty is, at least for me, so large that it’s hard to see into the future. Job interviewers will often ask you where you see yourself in ten years, to which I’m sure many people’s honest answer would be “You think I’d be here if I knew?” Depending, of course, on whether it was their dream job or not.

The thing is that many young people, like me, don’t typically dedicate much thought to old age. And I suppose that by the time I’m in my twilight years, I’ll have either forgotten all about this blog or have no means of access to it; if I do, I may have great intrigue on discovering what twenty year old me thought of the world with such great naivete. I’d be tempted to put a silly message to my future self here, but that kind of stuff usually never ends up being read, anyway.

I find that Reddit thread greatly inspiring. It’s reminded me that even if I screw up now, I have an entire lifetime to put things right, no matter how wrong, and to readjust. I also find it somewhat worrying, however, to find the odd comment saying “Life has been a downhill spiral since my twenties”. Obviously, life is a different experience for everyone, but I’d desperately like not to be that person. So I guess that I’d better make that the challenge of the present before it becomes a lament of the past.

Oh, and sorry for the blog title. I couldn’t resist.

Ancients as Moderns, Moderns as Ancients

Sometimes, when I’m staring out into the grey abyss of rainy Britain from the confines of an overcrowded bus, I think to myself… Romans stood here.

I stare into the sea of black umbrellas and people gazing eagerly into their smartphones, latecomers scurrying into their bus stops and think, Romans, real Romans with real swords and shields stood here. The only barrier between these two outstandingly different realities is the passage of time.

I think that when we think about Romans or Greeks, or Vikings, we consider them in a kind of fictional way. We don’t doubt that these peoples existed and that they did what they did, but how often do you stop to think about the fact that it happened in this place? From this race? The brave and the foolhardy lived by codes of honour and conviction of faith. The King reigned over all and, let’s be honest, those times aren’t exactly missed. Democracy may not be exactly what it says on the tin as of late but there’s certainly no preferable alternative, at least not that I can see.

It never ceases to interest me how we view our ancient history. We are of the same race, of the same lineage. Humans were and are capable of that kind of cruelty. But civilisation and technology, evolving in the ways it has, has encouraged communication above all else. In this regard, I believe the Internet to be one of the most revolutionary inventions in the whole of human history to date. In the wider perspective of time as a species it’s still very much a new phenomenon, and I think we’ve yet to see just how it will effect humanity in the long run; for better or for worse.

What really gets me intrigued is when I hear little things that the history books don’t tell you, things you’d never have expected of a Roman that ties them to contemporary cultures. For instance, ancient graffiti, rife with colloquialisms and rid of the stuffy conventions of high society we’re so often presented with. “Aufidius was here. Goodbye.” Smiffy woz ere 08, anyone? The presentation of the message may seem absurdly different to us, but it’s essentially the same; two human beings wishing to make their mark on the world by painting messages on walls confirming their presence. It is a small link, I’ll grant that, but for me I was immediately that apart from that infernal passage of time, the ancient and the modern are closer than we think.

A thousand years from now, how will we be viewed? For us British, will we be viewed as Elizabethans again? Will we be confused with the earlier era of Elizabethans in textbooks – should they still use textbooks – and cause frustration? Will our ways be considered barbaric, our lifestyles unhealthy, our society archaic? We like to think that the emergence of digital databases and the like will document this period of history better than before, but I’m sure the Egyptians thought the same about writing and books, and look how mythical they are in our eyes. Or my eyes. I cannot see through your eyes and I think you’d be rather annoyed if I stole them to give it a try.

I wonder what elements of our lifestyle that we take for granted will be treated as old and deeply flawed? I personally believe – or hope – that the idea of growing up educated for the purposes of working for a pittance until death will, by then, be viewed as a horrific treatment of human life, one which bred existentialism and quashed creativity and freedom. Of course, one can never estimate what such a large passage of time will hold for humanity. Perhaps we’ll all be dead. Perhaps we’ll have dispersed among the stars and races, and the idea of “humanity” as a collective will vanish. Perhaps this will be the peak of our evolution and a thousand years from now we’ll all be Romans again.

When presented with the question as to whether you’d visit the past or the future when given a TARDIS, most people seem to choose the past. I believe I’ve detailed my reason for choosing the future.

Small Steps Shape Grand Schemes

Please read Infinite Butterflies first, for this blog post builds upon what I discussed there.

I always feel somewhat silly discussing theories regarding the building blocks of the universe, given that I’m a twenty year old student writing on a laptop in his bedroom in 2015. But hey, the mind is a universe in and of itself. Think outside the planetary box.

One thing that always bugs me is when people decide to harp on about how “small and insignificant” we are. This is usually preceded by some reminder as to the grand scale of the universe, our planet’s size versus the sun, the sun versus larger stars, galaxies, so on and so forth. People like to look up at the stars and think, “Damn, I am nothing compared to this.” And it’s always fanciful, too. Is it just a way of rationalising your own mistakes or previous wrongdoings? Is it a genuine statement of sorrow and existentialism? I don’t know.

But I know that I don’t agree.

Look at ants. They’re tiny. They’re not as intelligent. To us, they’re nothing. Step on an ant and you’re not going to hold a little funeral with its little ant friends, weeping and discussing its little ant life. And perhaps this isn’t the most sensible comparison to make, since ants aren’t sentient beings. But they live their lives on their own scale. To them, we’re giants, but so long as they can avoid us they go on with their own ant lives. Maybe they even hold little ant funerals, heck I don’t know, I’m not an expert.

Look at mayflies. They typically live for less than a day. Many of us may look at them (or squint in their general direction) and think, what’s the point? Why live for a day? But maybe they perceive time differently to us. What is a day for us is a lifetime for them, and maybe they perceive it for as long as we perceive our seventy our eighty years (should we be so lucky).

So why am I rambling about ants and mayflies? Because if you look a little closer, there’s a lot more to them. Like I said, I’m no expert, but they have intricacies that many people will say can’t be random chance and have to be design. We are just as intricate, just on a different scale. Size means nothing. You may think we mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, but maybe that’s simply because we can’t see the influence we exert in our own personal time frames.

Even more importantly, why the heck are you worried about the grand scheme of things anyway? We do not live our lives in the grand scheme of things. We live in a focal point, in social circles, and that is where you matter. You exist in the hearts of others, in their laughter and smiles and hopefully not in their tears. That may be a poetic way of putting it, but it’s damn true. And if you’re worried about the grand scheme of things, hold on to your seats, because there’s a reason I referred back to the Infinite Butterflies post.

Everyone you know knows somebody you don’t. And that somebody you don’t know knows somebody else your friend doesn’t. We’re all linked in this way, and I’d be shocked if there was a single group of humans on this planet that wasn’t, barring undiscovered tribes in woods or something. But if you make people happy, then they’re likely to make somebody else happy. You can inspire people in ways that change lives. Your presence on Earth is a footprint that cannot be erased by anybody, as every action you make has consequences, no matter how little, that ripple through time. The Butterfly Effect.

That sounds an awful lot like I’m trying to rationalise a reason for life, but I’m honestly trying to think about this logically. What was the process of events that inspired somebody to create that TV show Scrubs? Because, despite it being a comedy, that’s where I first learned about the Butterfly Effect. And that sat in the back of my mind for a few years until it matured into the thought processes you’re reading now. And if you take something away from this blog post, then it’s continuing the chain. If you don’t? It’s still continuing the chain. The time you spent reading this may delay you a few minutes to miss a tragic event, or meet somebody you otherwise wouldn’t, way down the line.

Self-Reflection

For as long as I can remember, I’ve believed that the key to becoming a better person lies in one’s ability to see the world and themselves from many different perspectives. This way, they can avoid ignorance, unnecessary offense, and generally be kinder to others.

Sometimes, we don’t follow our own rules. I had to remind myself this morning that no matter your philosophies or beliefs, self-reflection and re-adjustment are always necessary, or you’ll find yourself slipping into another person who you might not entirely like. On Twitter this morning, I came close to creating a game, which, should it have taken off (which I’m sure it wouldn’t have), could have potentially offended many authors.

The premise of the game was to tweet the hashtag, conjure up the name of a pretentious-sounding novel, and then search for it in Google. If it was a real novel, you gained a point. If it was also a movie, you gained two. I rather quickly deleted these tweets after realising that creating a game that is literally about judging a book based on its cover is one of the dumbest and most ignorant things I could do.

The concept of being pretentious is, from my understanding, the act of claiming to have a high standard of morals and acting like you support charities and movements, but only so that you can gain some sort of moral upper-hand over your friends and be revered and admired by the people around you; so that they can call themselves a better person than you.

Basing an author’s ideals on the name of their book, therefore, is a rather dense thing to do. It could be a lovely book; it could be good, and simply not my cup of tea. It could even be autobiographical and highly self-critical. And that is why continual self-reflection is important, else I would not have realised this.

Sorry this blog post has been rather self-centric today. Coming up I hope to be making some blog posts about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and writing comedically, and the rise of storytelling in videogames such as those found in Telltale Games’ creations. Also, maybe a thing or two about cats, and why they shall become transcendent beings.