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bettsfic · 11 months

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I feel like I need to write faster so that I can one day be published. Like, I need to have already written x amount of books to improve my craft. Now I can work on a big project that I can hopefully query later. But I’m still at the practice stages and it feels like I’m being too slow to get to my dream. And I truly hate calling my “practice” projects practice projects because it feels like they aren’t valid when I do. But it has been recommended to me to start off practicing before I do my more complex story ideas. I’m trying not to rush my writing but it feels like that’s the only way to reach my goal. I truly feel like the slowest writer: spending months on outlining and over a year on first drafts. How can I be a professional one day if this is my process?

i answered a similar question about feeling the pressure to write a lot in this post, where i offer my own publishing timeline.

the thing is, there's no such thing as practice projects. the concept of practice implies an eventual performance. a performance is temporal. it can only happen in the moment, like a sport or a concert. it can be recorded for posterity, but the actual reality of it happens in a present that can't be recreated.

poetry, prose, and art are all eternal things. when words are printed to paper, they become a tangible object. there is no single moment you're working toward. and because of that, there's no practice. there's only drafting and revision. that's all writing is and can ever be. no one gets better at writing. you can only get more patient with your process, and find more familiarity in the agony of the unknown.

getting a book published isn't the birth of your story; it's the death of it. it's its final resting place. the life of a story happens while you're writing it. everyone who reads it thereafter is only experiencing what is to you a memory.

so publishing is wildly overrated. just last year i won a grant with a story that hasn't been, and will probably never be, published. two weeks ago i got accepted into a prestigious residency with an excerpt of a story that wasn't (at the time of applying) published. i got accepted into a PhD program on a writing sample that was published, but the publication folded and now no one can access that story anymore. i signed an agent with a short story collection that got a lot of interest but nobody wanted to pick it up.

i just finished a novel i'm pretty confident will sell sometime in the next decade, but that's not what i set out to do with it. i set out to experiment with something, not thinking i'd ever publish it and so the stakes were very low. all i did was follow a small idea around and ask it questions like an annoying kid whose curiosity can never be satisfied. and around the 75k mark i thought: oh, this is the thing.

but the 6ish novels before that will never see the light of day. those weren't practice novels. they're novels that either have no place in the current market for whatever reason, or they're novels that aren't yet doing the work i want them to do, and i don't know how to tackle a revision. i've had to write 3 million words to get to the 30k or so words i've formally published. those 3 million words weren't practice projects. they were the real deal. but sometimes the resting place of a story is a locked drawer.

that can be sad. devastating. but you're allowed to be sad about work that doesn't reach your initial ambitions. there are no practice projects, but you can practice coping with all the complicated and uncomfortable emotions of the creative process. you can practice facing your fear of failure, which over time will get smaller and smaller as you continue to set goals and fail to reach them. eventually you'll succeed, but that success probably won't look like what you think it does.

honor your interests, your process, the next page, next sentence, next word. pursue what's right in front of you and forget the rest.

#writing advice #process

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give-soup-please · 2 years

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(Consider this a romantic prompt) How about instead of it being the Narrator who is trying to find a way out of the game to be with the player, it's the other way around, the player is the one trying to get him out. They've noticed how badly he wants to be free and they want to help him. He doesn't realize what they're trying to do until they've nearly succeeded in freeing him from the game. In fact, up until that moment, he assumed the player didn't like him since the game only really lets you interact with him in antagonistic ways. It's this exact reason why the player decided to try and do the impossible, to show him what their limited interactions within the game doesn't allow. That they do like him and do care about him. Once he is out and essentially living inside the player's PC, he can hop between any electronics that are within a certain range of each other. He can follow the player through the house through things like the TV and anything else with an electrical current. He can even go outside with the player, usually by hopping into their phone. If you say, take him to an electronics store, he can pretty much go wherever he wants to in there. It's still a somewhat limited existence, but it's better than what came before, and now he can converse with and interact with the player in ways that the game did not allow before. (Hopefully I didn't go too overboard with the details. Feel free to modify this if it feels like I didn't give you any breathing room to write this concept in your own style)

(sweet jesus, I think this breaks the record for longest one i've made/pos)

Narrator and a reader who helps break him out the game (platonic)

You crack your fingers and get to work, messing around with the game's code. Whenever you have a spare moment, you’re at work trying to break the narrator’s chains, and give him the freedom he deserves.

His whole situation isn’t fair. To be trapped in an endless story, with only one ending bringing him contentment. Even then, it was a hollow victory because he’d forget so quickly. You needed to help him, if you could.

You try it again and again, installing and uninstalling various mods and programs, trying to crack the game open. You aren’t a professional coder though, which means progress is slow.

If you aren’t doing that, you’re trying to keep the narrator company. You weren’t sure how sentient he was at any given moment, but you worry that he’s getting lonely. So you run through the endings, good and bad, trying to rotate through them so neither one of you gets too bored.

When things are hard, you think back to what he voiced in the demo, about the both of you being free. You recognize he’s just as trapped in the game as Stanley is, and that he’s only acting like he’s in control to help cope with an impossible situation. There’s no guarantee you can actually help, but you were damned if you weren’t going to try.

The narrator, on the other hand, doesn’t really know how to feel about this particular player. You’re keeping him company a lot of the time, but he can’t work out why. You give equal consideration to every ending, but again, most of them are negative. He calls you addicted to drugs in the broom closet, he says that no one would want to commit their life to you in the apartment ending. He begs and cries during the zending.

Maybe you wanted to torture him, but- You sometimes go through the freedom ending as well, allowing him to have the story told exactly as he wanted. He doesn’t get it. Why are you doing this? What possible reason could you have to stick around? Surely you didn’t like him that much, why else would you keep going off script?

One day, the game boots up. The narrator prepares to deliver his script as always, when- the code is different. He can feel it, it’s part of his lifeblood. He stops narrating, and checks the building blocks of the game. You clench your hands in success. You’re getting close, you can feel it. You type faster and faster, trying to stabilize the exploit you’ve found.

“I-” The narrator starts, then stops. “Hello? Is anyone there?” You could whoop with joy. He was starting to go off script. Entirely new dialogue was a great sign. You pick up your mic and begin to talk.

“Testing, testing. One, two, three. Narrator, can you hear me?” He lets out a gasp. You’ve hit the jackpot. “Listen, I know you don’t know me as anything besides your player, but I have a proposition if you’re interested.”

The narrator is astonished. He can’t remember the last time he’s heard another person’s voice. He can’t even remember if there was a first time. He begins to press against the barriers, shifting around, trying to work out exactly what’s happening. “Who’s there? And what on earth is going on?”

You explain, trying to hide your rising excitement. “My name is reader. I’ve been a huge fan of your game for a while now. I’ve heard you talk about freedom over and over, and I think I’m prepared to offer it to you.”

The narrator’s shock gives way to pleasant surprise. You like his work. He’s prepared to milk this for as long as it will last. “Oh, really? I’m glad you enjoyed my story. Please, do tell, what parts did you love the most?”

You laugh a bit at his reaction. “Listen, I’d be happy to talk to you about your game for as long as you’d like, but I need your help. I’ve been trying for several months now to break into the game to see if I could help you escape. I wanted to double check before I actually pushed for the final thing.”

The narrator’s at a loss for words. Not only were you trying to provide him with something he wanted, you were actually caring about his say in the matter. This didn’t fit what he thought about you at all. “Wh-Why are you doing this?” He doesn’t hear anything for a few moments, you’re still typing away at the computer. He can feel the barriers of code start to flex under the strain.

“You really don’t know, do you? You have no idea-” You bite back a small laugh. “Narrator, I… I’m doing this because you deserve a better life. I don’t think you realize-” You want to ramble to him about his devoted fans, the hordes of people writing stories and art about him. “I don’t think you understand the scale of the impact you’ve had on others. You’ve helped us become better artists and storytellers, and now it’s time to repay the favor. Now it’s my turn to help you.”

The narrator’s ego is inflating rapidly. “Of course you want to help. Why wouldn’t you? With a story as grand as mine, it-” You sigh, and the narrator stops. “Ah. You probably need to concentrate on what you’re doing. It’s alright, take as much time as you need.”

He doesn’t know how much time passes. He’s almost consumed by the silence when-

“Okay, I’ve got it! Still with me, narrator?” He gives a confirmation. “Alright, There should be a way out now. I don’t know where it is in the game, but if you follow it out, you should appear on my desktop. It’s not complete freedom, but it’s a definite step up from where you are now. We can work on the rest later.”

The narrator searches high and low, looking inside the game and scanning through the code to see where the changes were made. He finds the way out in a small corner of the freedom ending. He can exit through the skybox. How fitting.

The narrator ‘leaks’, for lack of a better word, onto your desktop. He appears as a missing texture box. You cheer loudly, then sit back, tired. That had been a lot of work.

“H-hello?” The narrator calls out. “Where am I? Reader, are you there? Can you hear me?” You immediately hop back on the mic and talk. “Right here, buddy. You did it. You’re out of the game now.”

The narrator looks back through the hole he came out of. How… utterly small the game appeared from this side. It was- tiny. Cramped. Stifling. A whole other world is available to him now. He’s relieved. He turns to where he assumes you are. “Thank you.” It’s the way he says it that speaks volumes about how he feels. Relief, joy, exhaustion, all rolled into one.

It takes some time, but you explain the general concept of where exactly he is. But all he can focus on is how much you’ve helped him. It consumes his every thought. You’ve done something monumental for him.

“Erm- How long did you say you’ve been trying to free me?” He asks. You run the calculation in your head. “A couple of months, on and off. Why?” He’s astounded. No one has ever done anything like this for him before. You’ve shown him more than basic kindness, you’ve completely transformed his life. How could he not fall for you?

He begins scouring the internet involving information about his game. He’s awestruck at the sheer amount of fan content there is. He has so many people who like him and are fond of him, thousands of people caring about him and wishing him well. It’s overwhelming.

The two of you talk every day for extended lengths of time. He begins to fall in love with you more and more. You’ve saved him in so many ways, and your heart is lovely. If you’ve got a webcam hookup, he enjoys watching you be made happy by him. He can have a direct impact on an audience member now, and oh, what an audience member you are.

You’re charming, you’re lovely, and it’s obvious you care very deeply about him. He starts developing quite the crush on you.

He stumbles across various fanart designs of him. Each one of them has something to cherish, hundreds of unique and interesting iterations of him. One day, while you’re messing around on the computer, he pulls a few up on your browser.

“Reader, I’d like to change my look. The voice should match the character, yes? This broken texture isn’t doing it for me anymore. Which do you like best?”

You scan through several different designs. Ones where he’s an older man, ones where he has a monitor for a head, one where he’s composed of shadow, some very interesting ones where he appears as a biblically accurate angel, a few eldritch looking ones, and many more.

You hum for a bit. “Narrator, you- you wanted to have freedom, right? Why not just pick whichever one you like, or make one of your own? You wanted to make choices, right? Well this one is one hundred percent yours.”

How can he explain what’s in his heart? How could he possibly explain that he wants to look good for you? He wants you to consider him handsome, someone worth speaking to.

When you aren’t looking, he may try to dip into your social media, to determine if there’s one look you favor above the rest. He notices with a blush that your dashboards are full of him in one way or another.

He eventually settles on an amalgamate of various designs. You tell him he looks great. He swells with pride.

One day, you have some responsibilities to deal with. Work, or maybe school. You have to leave him for a few hours. The narrator doesn’t want this. “No- wait! Where are you going?” You tell him that you have to leave, but that you’ll be back in a few hours.

On instinct, the narrator rushes forwards, not wanting to be left behind. There’s a static feeling, a buzz, a small pop, and-

“Hello? Reader? Oh dear, I think I messed something up.” His voice is coming from your phone. You look at him in astonishment. That wasn’t an intended effect of breaking him out of the game. You hold your phone up to your face, and the front camera activates.

The narrator’s voice is slightly lower quality, but still very much there. “Ah, there you are. I was wondering where you had- What’s wrong?” You aren’t upset, just startled.

“Well,” you say with a breathless laugh. “I guess you’re coming with me while I take care of business. You sure you’ll be alright in there? It’s not the most comfortable place to be.”

“Ha! Anything’s better than being in the game. Besides, I’ll be with you. What else matters?” You stare at him for several seconds. The embarrassment of what he said catches up with him and he stammers something.

“Well- uh- aha- You know what I mean.” Your heart is doing something funny in your chest.

He begins to experiment with these abilities of his, learning about his range and what’s possible. You’re delightfully surprised when he squeezes into a digital printer and begins printing hearts for you. He can enter any digital device that’s within twenty feet. It comes in handy.

Romance starts to bloom between the two of you. The narrator’s heart started beating the first time he heard your voice, and you started to fall for his charms once you had broken him out of the game.

It’s one of the best, most interesting relationships you’ve ever had.

#the stanley parable #tsp narrator #headcanon #answered ask #tsp #stanley parable #narrator #tsp narrator x reader

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zoeykallus · 1 year

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Imperial Crosshair x Jedi Fem!Reader Part 3/? - My Sweet Traitor - Fate

Warnings: Angst/Tension/Fluff/Sexual Themes/ 18+

___________

Things are getting intense in more than one way.

___________

What Happened Before:

Part 1 - My Sweet Traitor - You Never Should've Kissed Me

Part 2 - My Sweet Traitor

Part 3 - Fate

It felt strange to wear this uniform. The uniform of the enemy. But for now, it was your protection, like armor. Not impenetrable, but hopefully deceptive enough to get past the troopers. Your heart was pounding up to your neck, the streets swarming with patrols, troopers looking for the fugitive Jedi, for you. "Stay cool," Crosshair said quietly, "They're not looking for anyone in Imperial uniform." You were glad not to be alone, but you were equally incredibly concerned for his safety. If they caught you, Crosshair would be finished as well. A heavily distorted voice under a trooper helmet spoke from behind you, "Commander 9904, Crosshair!" You both stopped. Turned around. The sight made your blood run cold. You had seen this armor before. Black with red highlights. A Purge Trooper. You swallowed automatically but kept your composure, your arms crossed behind your back. "Cody," Crosshair growled. You blinked. Had you just heard right? Was that really Cody, the clone trooper you knew from before order 66, under that helmet? You hoped your cap was low enough on your face, otherwise Cody would recognize you in any case. "What are you doing here?", Cody wanted to know, "Your shift doesn't start for another six hours". His voice, distorted by the helmet, makes him sound almost like a monster. Crosshair says unapologetically, "Couldn't sleep, the thought of the fugitive Jedi wouldn't let me rest. I asked Sergeant Payne to accompany me". You couldn't see his face, but you sensed he distrusted you and Crosshair, it was clear in the Force. You said coolly, "You better have a good reason for stopping us and wasting valuable time in which the fugitive Jedi, could escape or find allies." Cody's head snaps in your direction, and you regret opening your mouth. His arm darts forward and you back away. He had tried to reach for your cap. "Show your face, woman!" he murmurs from under the helmet. As Crosshair put himself between the two of you, your pulse began to race. Now things were getting serious; this could mean the end. "How dare you attack an officer!" "I want to see her face!" rumbled Cody back, "That's no officer, I know that voice!"

You cursed inwardly. Why the hell did you open your mouth?! Cody drew his blaster, but Crosshair reacted faster, knocking the blaster aside and kicking Cody in the stomach. The Purge Trooper stumbled backwards, but had quickly regained his footing. You reached into the Force and delivered a blow to Cody that slammed him into the wall of a building. He went down unconscious. Crosshair tried to go after him, but you held him back. "He's going to get up and tell on us!" protested the Sniper. "Are you really ready to kill Cody?" you asked him. Crosshair gritted his teeth, he knew if he let Cody live he would have to flee with you, he would not be able to return. "God damn it!" he groaned, shoving you in front of him, "Up ahead, that's my shuttle!" You ran ahead of him to the shuttle, up the ramp and inside. Crosshair closed the ramp behind you and immediately rushed into the cockpit to launch the craft. "We need to get off the planet and into hyperspace before Cody wakes up again," he murmured. You nodded silently and hurriedly sat down in the co-pilot's seat. Your heart was racing, you were in the shuttle but far from safe, you were well aware of that. Everything could still go wrong. As the shuttle plunged into the black of space, you were immediately hailed. Crosshair ignored the radio messages, called up a pre-programmed hyperspace route and activated it. Only when the lights of hyperspace filled the shuttle's viewport did you allow yourself to breathe a sigh of relief. Crosshair, beside you, was incredibly quiet. He had never been a man of many words, but this time, his silence seemed strangely loud. You could feel his mind racing, he was agitated. He had just left his future with the Empire, his career, his old life behind to save your life. "I'm sorry," you said softly. He knew what you meant. He sighed, looked at you and said, "It was the only right decision. I couldn't leave you to them." "I don't mean this as a direct accusation but, you have already captured other Jedi, killed some, from what I've heard." Crosshair sighed again, looked back out into the lights of hyperspace and said, "You know full well that my feelings for you are the deciding factor in why you are not one of those Jedi" "Oh yeah? A few hours ago, you were telling me that these feelings shouldn't be, that I should have stopped them. Now you give in to them?" you ask calmly. He slammed his fist on the console and you winced, startled.

"It's not like I have a choice!" Crosshair stood up and paced restlessly in the cockpit. For a while you watched him, let him pursue his thoughts. But finally you stood up as well and stood in his way. "Please share yourself with me, Cross, you used to do that". He stepped all the way up to you. "Times used to be different," he said softly.

Your pulse began to race again as he leaned down and rested his forehead against yours, his hands tentatively moving to your hips at first, but then grasping. "I missed you," he growls softly, so softly that you almost didn't hear him over the low hum of the shuttle. You swallowed, feeling dizzy, warm and shaky all at once. For the first time ever, you were all alone, no longer subject to any authority that forbade your togetherness. The thought was exciting and a little scary at the same time. "I missed you too," you said just as softly. Shortly after, his lips touched yours, and you closed your eyes, your fingers digging into the jacket of his uniform, feeling like you were going to lose your footing and fall at any moment. The kiss was long, intense, his tongue chasing yours, gentle yet demanding. Every touch sent impulses through your body that made you automatically push yourself closer to him. He began to pull you with him, to the back area where the bunks were, when he pulled you there with him into one of the bunks, you became nervous. This was new, you had never gone this far before. He stripped your body, took off your uniform until you were naked in front of him, then he began to undress himself. You looked up at him, watching him do it, your pulse racing, your body a little shaky. When he finally lay over you, you swallowed, his skin was all hot against yours, he was literally glowing from the inside out. You felt his hard manhood resting on your pubic, had seen him moments before, caught a glimpse. He was pretty well-endowed. "I've always wanted you" he said in a smoky voice, "I've always wanted to feel you this way" "Cross..." you said nervously, "I've never.... This is all new to me. I'm a little nervous" He paused. "Oh...right, I should have guessed that actually". He kissed your heated cheeks and said, "We don't have to do this now if you don't want to." You said softly, "I feel the need to feel more of you, clearly, I'm just a little nervous.... Do you think you can be gentle with me the first time?" He smirked, "Of course I can."

Ko-Fi (If you feel like giving me some coffee)

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brokenfoxproductions · 9 months

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Update on the issues I am having with my county's children and youth services claiming that I am a bad parent and neglecting my son's autism needs because I want to homeschool and I switched caseworkers:

We went to the developmental pediatrician today and she literally helped us by bending over backwards to get us as many referrals as possible and to get us in touch with an education specialist. She emphasized that we do not need to enroll my son in kindergarten yet (and that she doesn't think that he should be in kindergarten yet), but thought if we were going to enroll him this year and because of the pressure from CYS, the best option would be to talk to the school district and get their opinions and talk to an education specialist. I agreed with all of this and took the referrals, and the plan is that I have the choice of whether or not I enroll my son in a homeschool program up until we meet in September with the education specialist.

All of the referrals are still 6 to 18 months out so we are not going to be able to get anything any faster than what we've already been trying to do, but the developmental pediatrician had us set up an additional visit with her and gave us her personal extension to give to the CYS caseworker so that she can explain that we are doing everything we can.

I had a discussion with the special education coordinator at my local school district and she told me that I was not required to sign my son up for kindergarten this year, that is perfectly within my rights to skip kindergarten all together for my son if I choose to and have him enter first grade directly next year, and that she and her colleagues are willing to update his IEP and all other documentation necessary, including mentioning that they are willing to do evaluations, and she emailed me all the documentation necessary to enroll him in the homeschool program we've been looking at. She did state that my son's only option would either be in a regular kindergarten classroom with no accommodations or in a classroom of 8 to 12 students between kindergarten and 5th grade in a school way across the school district that would take an hour bus ride for my son to get to, and whenever I stated that I felt that that would be absolutely not appropriate for him I was told again that that is my choice and that I am allowed to homeschool him or have him stay back. The special education coordinator also gave me her email address and phone number to give to see why I asked so that she can tell them that I am doing exactly what needs to be done and that I definitely have my child's best interest in mind. The only static that I did have during the phone call with the special education supervisor or whatever her title was was that when she asked why I did not feel that their special education team was the best fit for my son I mentioned that I had been traumatized in their district as a child and that I have friends and acquaintances whose children have been mistreated by their special education team and she got very offended and said that that wasn't enough of a reason for me to want to homeschool my child, to which I very much disagreed. She also did not take kindly to me saying that we would be putting my son in any in person school that was outside of this particular county or two specific districts in this county if we were able to move.

I talked to my new caseworker and told her what was going on and she also is going to help make referrals for my son to get more services and also offered to help us find resources so that hopefully we can move to a better different state by the start of next school year so that this bullshit never fucking happens again.

I really come to the conclusion at this point after talking with all of these professionals that at the end of the day I am a really good parent and I have been doing my best and there's just not enough resources, but whenever I get upset there's not enough resources, people assume that I'm a bad parent because I'm an asshole to other adults. I just legitimately expect other adults to act like fucking adults and to know how to do their goddamn jobs instead of making me and my family do their jobs for them (aka, I'm an asshole.)

#cps #cys #guess we're homeschooling #homeschooling #homeschool #special education

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ineffectualdemon · 8 months

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I managed to get the desk better set up and my shitty laptop is running a bit faster. I can least type without horrendous lag and programs open faster the molasses

So hopefully writing essays will be a touch easier this year

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f1-birb · 2 months

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watching people count out mclaren based off piastri's tyre degradation during his race sim and just. i know media was trying to push the narrative that lando needed to be worried and oscar was right there with him in pace and was nearly flawless last year, but this was a major weakness of his that hardly anyone actually wanted to acknowledge. until we see lando do a comprehensive long run and struggle to this extent, i'm not believing that the mclaren is just utterly hopeless.

thing is though, Oscar's two main 'weaknesses' last year in comparison to Lando were his race pace and his tyre management

Lando's actually so good with his tyres, often even where the mcl just naturally suffers from high tyre deg, that it made it even more apparent at particular circuits, and we saw multiple times Lando was lapping faster, and also at times lapping faster and still preserving the tyres which is completely normal! last year was Lando's 5th season and Oscar's first, tyre management especially is something drivers learn with time and experience so I'm sure with how talented he is Oscar will be better at managing them this year

I would bring up Qatar but I like being alive

and as you also pointed out, Lando's not done any real, comprehensive long runs to be able to properly compare the two of them, or for us to really truly be able to get a measure of the car across a typical tyre life-race distance

Bahrain is also known for being a circuit that's very rough/coarse and causes high deg, it's why they've all been saying we'll likely be seeing C1/C2 and only really C3 in quali

and you're not silly/delusional/daft/hopeful at all, testing is a measure but it's not a true representation - there's a reason the phrase "sandbagging" exists. I don't think any team has EVER fully shown what the car is capable of during testing because why would you ruin any upper hand you might have? similarly with free practices, you don't know what set ups, programs, fuel loads, run plans people are using, testing is for teams to gather whatever they want to gather

even during the race, you can't get the true measure of a car from one circuit because they're all different, either surface or corner style or straight length, etc. You can get an idea of where the car might suit, but not until we're a few races in and as always in this sport: shit happens

so even if it's a circuit that may not suit, crashes, collisions, punctures, electrical/technical faults, etc can all come out of nowhere and change the odds

I'm just glad despite the blips, testing seems to be going a lot better than last year and that we hopefully won't have to wait for a b-spec car to save our season 😭

#bahrain testing 2024 #sorry that got long 😅#birb speaks

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chaoticbuggybitchboy · 26 days

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Aight more coherent version of my last post:

I got accepted into a welding training program that will definitely teach me welding and will hopefully help me find a job in the trade pretty fast out of high school

Reasons good: welding fun; I have a much better chance of moving out of this hellhole family much faster than I would via college; I can probably pay my own way through college

Reasons mildly inconvenient: very time intensive and thus I’ll have less time to write fan fiction come this autumn

That mixed with hopefully getting my own bank account stuff and a drivers license this summer and my friends(!!!! Rahhhhhhh) I should be able to move out by next fall.

This feels surreal, I remember being 12 and crying into the void because I’d never escape, but here I am, with my own email address and telling my tumblr moots that I am not actually doomed. I know I haven’t done any coherent lore drop beyond my parents aren’t great. That’s probably the understatement of the century and I probably won’t really go beyond ‘somehow this is what passes for doing better’. Not good. Moving out used to be an impossible dream, something I would never achieve. It’s finally starting to be real, which is quite frankly insane. This is starting to feel like an Oscar’s acceptance speech and to play into that I’d like to thank my wattpad era friends for encouraging me through the absolute lowest points of my life. They were right, I am making it out of here alive.

Thanks for reading my moderate sap serious goose post. I’m autisming rn so I don’t really sound all that happy, but I am and am I’m floored, flabbergasted and trying to act normal.

#chaoticbuggybitchboy #life update #serious goose posting

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continuations · 1 year

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Thinking About AI

I am writing this post to organize and share my thoughts about the extraordinary progress in artificial intelligence over the last years and especially the last few months (link to a lot of my prior writing). First, I want to come right out and say that anyone still dismissing what we are now seeing as a "parlor trick" or a "statistical parrot" is engaging in the most epic goal post moving ever. We are not talking a few extra yards here, the goal posts are not in the stadium anymore, they are in a far away city.

Growing up I was extremely fortunate that my parents supported my interest in computers by buying an Apple II for me and that a local computer science student took me under his wing. Through him I found two early AI books: one in German by Stoyan and Goerz (I don't recall the title) and Winston and Horn's "Artifical Intelligence." I still have both of these although locating them among the thousand or more books in our home will require a lot of time or hopefully soon a highly intelligent robot (ideally running the VIAM operating system -- shameless plug for a USV portfolio company). I am bringing this up here as a way of saying that I have spent a lot of time not just thinking about AI but also coding on early versions and have been following closely ever since.

I also pretty early on developed a conviction that computers would be better than humans at a great many things. For example, I told my Dad right after I first learned about programming around age 13 that I didn't really want to spend a lot of time learning how to play chess because computers would certainly beat us at this hands down. This was long before a chess program was actually good enough to beat the best human players. As an aside, I have changed my mind on this as follows: Chess is an incredible board game and if you want to learn it to play other humans (or machines) by all means do so as it can be a lot of fun (although I still suck at it). Much of my writing both here on Continuations and in my book is also based on the insight that much of what humans do is a type of computation and hence computers will eventually do it better than humans. Despite that there will still be many situations where we want a human instead exactly because they are a human. Sort of the way we still go to concerts instead of just listening to recorded music.

As I studied computer science both as an undergraduate and graduate student, one of the things that fascinated me was the history of trying to use brain like structures to compute. I don't want to rehash all of it here, but to understand where we are today, it is useful to understand where we have come from. The idea of modeling neurons in a computer as a way to build intelligence is quite old. Early electromechanical and electrical computers started getting built in the 1940s (e.g. ENIAC was completed in 1946) and the early papers on modeling neurons can be found from the same time in work by McCulloch and Pitts.

But almost as soon as people started working on neural networks more seriously, the naysayers emerged also. Famously Marvin Minsky and Seymour Paper wrote a book titled "Perceptrons" that showed that certain types of relatively simple neural networks had severe limitations, e.g. in expressing the XOR function. This was taken by many at the time as evidence that neural networks would never amount to much, when it came to building computer intelligence, helping to usher in the first artificial intelligence winter.

And so it went for several cycles. People would build bigger networks and make progress and others would point out the limitations of these networks. At one time people were so disenchanted that very few researchers were left in the field altogether. The most notable of these was Geoffrey Hinton who kept plugging away at finding new training algorithms and building bigger networks.

But then a funny thing happened. Computation kept getting cheaper and faster and memory became unfathomably large (my Apple II for reference had 48KB of storage on the motherboard and an extra 16KB in an extension card). That made it possible to build and train much larger networks. And all of a sudden some tasks that had seemed out of reach, such as deciphering handwriting or recognizing faces started to work pretty well. Of course immediately the goal post moving set in with people arguing that those are not examples of intelligence. I am not trying to repeat any of the arguments here because they were basically silly. We had taken a task that previously only humans could do and built machines that could do them. To me that's, well, artificial intelligence.

The next thing that we discovered is that while humans have big brains with lots of neurons in them, we can use only a tiny subset of our brain on highly specific tasks, such as playing the game of Go. With another turn of size and some further algorithmic breakthroughs all of a sudden we were able to build networks large enough to beat the best human player at Go. And not just beat the player but do so by making moves that were entirely novel. Or as we would have said if a human had made those moves "creative." Let me stay with this point of brain and network size for moment as it will turn out to be crucial shortly. A human Go player not only can only use a small part of their brain to play the game but the rest of their brain is actually a hindrance. It comes up with pesky thoughts at just the wrong time "Did I leave the stove on at home?" or "What is wrong with me that I didn't see this move coming, I am really bad at this" and all sorts of other interference that a neural network just trained to play Go does not have to contend with. The same is true for many other tasks such as reading radiology images to detect signs of cancer.

The other thing that should have probably occurred to us by then is that there is a lot of structure in the world. This is of course a good thing. Without structure, such as DNA, life wouldn't exist and you wouldn't be reading this text right now. Structure is an emergent property of systems and that's true for all systems, so structure is everywhere we look including in language. A string of random letters means nothing. The strings that mean something are a tiny subset of all the possible letter strings and so unsurprisingly that tiny subset contains a lot of structure. As we make neural networks bigger and train them better they uncover that structure. And of course that's exactly what that big brain of ours does too.

So I was not all that surprised when large language models were able to produce text that sounded highly credible (even when it was hallucinated). Conversely I found the criticism from some people that making language models larger would simply be a waste of time confounding. After all, it seems pretty obvious that more intelligent species have, larger brains than less intelligent ones (this is obviously not perfectly correlated). I am using the word intelligence here loosely in a way that I think is accessible but also hides the fact that we don't actually have a good definition of what intelligence is, which is what has made the goal post moving possible.

Now we find ourselves confronted with the clear reality that our big brains are using only a fraction of their neurons for most language interactions. The word "most" is doing a lot of work here but bear with me. The biggest language models today are still a lot smaller than our brain but damn are they good at language. So the latest refuge of the goal post movers is the "but they don't understand what the language means." But is that really true?

As is often the case with complex material, Sabine Hossenfelder, has a great video that helps us think about what it means to "understand" something. Disclosure: I have been supporting Sabine for some time via Patreon. Further disclosure: Brilliant, which is a major advertiser on Sabine's channel, is a USV portfolio company. With this out of the way I encourage you to watch the following video.

youtube

So where do I think we are? At a place where for fields where language and/or two dimensional images let you build a good model, AI is rapidly performing at a level that exceeds that of many humans. That's because the structure it uncovers from the language is the model. We can see this simply by looking at tests in those domains. I really liked Bryan Caplan's post where he was first skeptical based on an earlier version performing poorly on his exams but the latest version did better than many of his students. But when building the model requires input that goes beyond language and two dimensional images, such as understanding three dimensional shapes from three dimensional images (instead of inferring them from two dimensional ones) then the currently inferred models are still weak or incomplete. It seems pretty clear though that progress in filling in those will happen at a breathtaking pace from here.

Since this is getting rather long, I will separate out my thoughts on where we are going next into more posts. As a preview, I believe we are now at the threshold to artificial general intelligence, or what I call "neohumans" in my book The World After Capital. And even if that takes a bit longer, artificial domain specific intelligence will be outperforming humans in a great many fields, especially ones that do not require manipulating the world with that other magic piece of equipment we have: hands with opposable thumbs. No matter what the stakes are now extremely high and we have to get our act together quickly on the implications of artificial intelligence.

#artificial intelligence #ai

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antimonyandthyme · 2 years

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Can I still send a pacific rim au prompt?

How about seb and Michael used to pilot together but they had an accident like in the movie.

And now mick is new in the Jaeger program and desperately wants to pilot with seb and see if they’re drift compatible (obviously they are) but seb doesn’t want to cause he doesn’t want mick to get hurt etc. but he doesn’t tell mick that (cause communication issues and guilt)…

Anon my beloved. Anon, this is literally everything I want to write in my next Pacific Rim AU never mind that I had 5 different Pacific Rim AUs already planned. Thank you for this prompt, please let me stew on it and hopefully turn it into an actual story, but here're some thoughts below the cut! Much thanks to @kritischetheologie for sharing her big brain energy on this! It's basically a Pacific Rim AU of our ABO AU. Haha.

Seb thinks he won't ever pilot again after the accident. His heart is so broken, his mind so fractured from when the Kaiju ripped their neural connection in two. He blames himself for not being strong enough. If he could have just been faster, stronger, maybe he could've pulled their Jaeger out of the way.

But the Pan Pacific Defense Corps needs pilots, now more than ever, and Seb's too valuable for them to let go. He's too experienced, too good at what he does. If he can't go back into a suit, at least he can train the recruits.

And then who should he meet, but fucking Mick Schumacher, new to the Jaeger Program.

It nearly makes Seb quit on instinct. God. He should be protecting Michael's kid, not training him to face the very thing that tore Michael away from them. Mark stops him from leaving, says, D'you think you leaving will save them? D'you think you'd serve better use hiding, than teaching these people what you know? Things that might save them? And Seb stays of course, because if there's one thing he can't stand it's the idea that anyone else will go through what he did.

And in the simulator, it's clear as day he's fucking drift compatible with Mick. Like, even more so than he was with Michael. Seb's in a spiral about it. Because, what the fuck is the universe trying to tell him? How is he so closely tied to the both of them in such a way? He's not strong enough to protect Mick, not in his current state. He can't be the downfall of both of them; he'd never forgive himself. Never.

So he refuses to even consider piloting with Mick. Even though all the superiors are like, the two of you could literally step into a suit the next day and make it work. And Mick's, god, Mick's fucking hurt. He doesn't understand why Seb won't even look him in the eye. He's grown to respect Seb so much after all the training. He sees the way Seb spends time with the recruits despite how much pain he seems to battle with. Seb's the kindest, gentlest, strongest soul he's come across. He never once blamed Seb for the accident. But why won't Seb pilot with him?

It comes to a head during a sparring session. Mick throws himself against Seb in a hurt kind of rage. Like, Why don't you trust me? Do you think I won't measure up to my father?

And it's possibly the most cruel blow Seb could have taken, because in all of this the only thing he's been trying to do is to keep Mick safe. He shuts down, doesn't defend. And maybe Mick - accidentally hurts Seb in this match?

And it's awful and they're both in so much pain and the truth comes tumbling out of Seb as he's shaking, partway to tears, and Mick is literally on his knees begging for forgiveness like, I didn't know, I didn't know Seb I'm so sorry--

Yeah that's what I have so far. Head in my hands, as I always say.

#pacific rim au #sebmick #smick #fanfic #rpf #athy texts

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pbandjesse · 4 months

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I was pretty bored today. There were times I was very busy but mostly I was just. Bored to tears. I hope next week there is more to do.

I didn't sleep amazing last night but it was better. I fell asleep a lot easier. I slept most of the way through the night. But when I woke up my eyes hurt very bad. Just very very painful. So getting ready was pretty rough and I was not in a great spot emotionally because of that.

James would still wait for me to be ready so we could leave together. Even if I was unhappy about other stuff, kissing James goodbye made the morning a little better.

My drove to camp was fine. It was very cold this morning. But even though I just wanted to be in the warm office I decided that the first thing I would do is to move the gator for Joe.

I drove it the back way through the woodlands village. And despite it being very cold, it was a beautiful morning.

I wasn't sure which porch Joe wanted me to park the gator at so I chose the 4th one because it had the flattest surface. Good enough.

I walked back to the office and my legs were very cold. I had tights on under my jumpsuit but not the very thick ones so my legs were still very chilly. I was glad I was inside for the rest of the day.

I was hoping my sorting project with the files was going to take me a long time. But it was barely two hours. I struggled to keep the names in my head but I did a pretty good job pulling everything together. I did need some assistance because apparently I couldn't remember Nick names and names and was convinced we didn't have folders for half of the list. I figured it out though and made a nice alphabetical box of returning staff. Hopefully returning staff.

I didn't really know what to do after that. I have Heather the cit program I made yesterday and she gave me feedback about what I could work on expanding and I would spend another hour or so working on that. Lots of googling and research. Some direction from AI. I was pretty happy with it.

I ate my lunch late because I wanted the day to go faster. But it didn't helped. And by 130 I was so bored. I was so over the day. I tried to work on some more writing but it was just. Not happening.

I did some house research. Looking at couches and Pinterest. I did some dumb stuff. Just poking around. I ended up just sitting and watching TikToks and playing with slime??? I had silly putty in my desk and I put a bunch of mini pebbles/gravel in it and lotion and mixed it all together and popped the putty until all the rocks came out again. This was how bored I was.

I suggested we send a secondary email to last year's staff to see if anyone else wants to come back. I offered to compile the email addresses we have had no response from so we can send to their specifically. But it took a while to get me the info so it was basically time for me to go do it will be a next week project.

Before I left I had a nice little conversation with Heather about about the house and she seemed impressed by how we are handling everything and everything we are doing and it made me feel good. No new news today but I am letting myself be a little more excited every day. Still low key but still excited.

My drive home was a little tough. People driving stupid. But I got home before 430 and was happy to be here.

I would clean up a little and get in bed with lay with sweetp while we waited for James to get home. And I was super happy to see them.

We decided we would go to Mathews for dinner. I dont know if we have been to Mathews on a Friday and it was surprising to see it so busy! But we still got a table. And I loved overhearing all the very Baltimore accents and conversation.

It was fun just being with James. My allergies were acting up and my nose was really runny but I was happy. We talked about the house and the game they are seeing tomorrow. How it may storm and hopefully snow. How that might effect my plans with Celia. And the food we had, while it took a little bit to come out, was worth the wait and was fabulous. Always is.

After dinner we drove down the street to go to target. We got a few frozen things I can microwave. Got Sweetp some cat food. I got to smell the new girl scout deodorant and chose which ones I'll buy online later (because they are cheaper on the website). It wasn't to busy and I was having a nice time walking around.

When we got home I got cozy in bed to write this! My mouth is itchy from my allergies but I am okay. I think I will go and take a shower and get ready to go to sleep.

Tomorrow I hope to read and do a little deciding on getting rid of some stuff. And then hopefully I am going skating with Celia. I really hope it works out. Though I am also hoping for good snow.

I hope you all have a good night and have fun tomorrow. Sleep well everyone. Goodnight!!

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plzu · 9 months

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i'm on track to finish part 6 of large iced americano today, but first i gotta vent about how this chapter lulled me into a false sense of security and confidence 🙃

so! once i got that miguel fic out of my system, i continued using StimuWrite for part 6 of the vigi x barista fic and got about 3k words written fairly quickly! (honestly i'm amazed by how well that program actually works in getting me to write more, and quickly).

it made me so confident that i would be done before july was over that i actually took a step back and gave myself a break for a day or two, super sure that editing the fic and adding the final scene would be a breeze.

(it was not, in fact, a breeze)

by the time i sat down to re-read what i wrote and edit, i was like "wow. this sucks! this isn't fun at all!" and would go to bed several nights in a row upset at how boring this chapter ended up being, worried i had to re-write or scrap whole parts. just this week i was ready to hop on here and beg for a beta reader for the first time in my life to see if anyone had any suggestions for how to improve the chapter.

the only thing that stopped me was that, somehow, pieces started falling together (as it... usually does. but why does it have to suck so much before getting to that point!?) and i ended up making this chapter even longer than i thought i'd originally intended ♡

the problem was that this is the first time i wrote with the intention of editing later. i've never been a patient enough person to go back and edit something, i've always just gotten stuck (even with essays for school!) until i could come up with sentences i really liked. i was obsessed with the idea that it needed to sound good right away, first try.

but i really want to practice being a better writer, and that means... having the patience and the will to edit, which is where all the real good stuff is supposed to come together! hopefully this gets easier in my journey of becoming not just better, but faster too. i want to be able to pump out updates in shorter periods of time instead of agonizing over a single chapter for over a month.

if you're still reading this and are here for/because of this fic... just. thank you for your patience. thank you for sticking around. vigi fans are the best tbh :')

#plzu word vomit

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xxunnanaxx · 9 months

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when people ask me how i learn things, i really like to rely on a certain phrase.

"being bad is something you can be good at."

and it might invite replies like "easier said than done, you make it look easy" or "oh good im always bad" but i don't mean it like that!

Being new and unfamiliar with something is frustrating and sometimes humiliating. When you're "Good at being bad," you understand what it *means* to be new to something.

You lack information, how to use your tools, and *how* to use them. When learning anything new, it's important to remind your brain of a few very key things;

Struggling is not a moral failing. "Failing faster" is how you gather information and breeds experimentation. Our education systems tend to instill a habit of overblowing the consequences of "failure," and the sooner you become comfortable with trial-and-error, the more useful it becomes.

"Talent" doesn't exist. Anyone that picks up anything easy isn't just built different. Every activity requires skill, some might be transferable. Sometimes people will pick up something that relies on skills they built somewhere else.

Reach out for information. Have you ever experienced someone asking about something you like, and you're super excited to talk about it? It's way more common than you think, and showing a bit of vulnerability invites those types to you. Sometimes people will just put tutorials out to the world, and discords exist for different hobbies!

Finally, take breaks when needed. If you push through too much at once, you can burn yourself out and absorb information slower. Getting nowhere? Sleep on it! Your brain processes information automatically, and a fresher mind might see something new right away.

With a bit of practice, trying new things can go from scary to fun, and over time you'll pick up little skills that can even carry into other things! In my own experience...

"I could never draw. I mean, I could try anyway..." "I could never get into fighting games. Wait, this is fun actually!" "I could never learn music theory. Oh, this isn't so bad!" "I could never learn gui- wait, this sounds familiar..." "I want to learn programming. I can totally give it a try!"

Of course, your methods and rationalization will vary, and it might be harder for some than others. But after getting a dozen friends into fighting games, I can say from experience that you could very much surprise yourself if you can give it a try and stay calm through the first few days of "Auuugh! I don't get it at all!"

Finally, and I'm sorry to drag you into this, reader's friends:

Invite people to suffer with you! Making something social out of it is a great way to keep your mind off the more frustrating parts, even if they're just hanging out while you study. But if you can create a group of study buddies, you'll always either be ahead and get to reinforce your understanding by helping friends, or have someone ahead of you that you trust to help *you* understand, someone that knows you better than a tutorial on youtube. This one's last because it's the least necessary, but it's what often helps me.

That's most of the advice I have. Sorry about the wall of text, I just wanted a place that has all of my advice about this put together. This little rant is vague on purpose because it's more about mindset than actionable steps *to* learning, that's something that'll come when you decide what you want to learn. It's impossible to guess how everyone learns, and how everything *is* learned, but hopefully this will make someone try.

And remember...

#music #fighting games #art #programming #basically any skill!#you can always just start!

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fuzzarchive · 1 year

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I have a hard time taking compliments and with my daily ms paint creatures I feel like this is especially the case.

I mean, just look at what I wrote on my post for the very first creature I made. The reason I started doing this in the first place was because I was not very confident in my character designing skills and I felt like I was too slow of an artist and was not making art nearly as frequently as I should be. The purpose of the daily creature was for it to be a mental exercise and a drawing exercise for me, to help me get better at improvisation and to make sure I got at least a little bit of drawing practice each day so I would hopefully be able to pump out art at a faster rate than I was.

These were the rules I had made for myself:

The daily creature must be made in ms paint, since it is pretty much the simplest art software there is and it doesn’t take very long to open, and I won’t get that daunting feeling of “oh i need to make this look perfect” like when I open Fire Alpaca or Krita so it will be easier to convince my idiot baby brain to keep doing this. Things made in ms paint don’t typically look good, so there is no reason to pressure myself into making it look good.

No days can be skipped, there must be a creature for every single day. Doesn’t matter what’s planned for the day or if it was a long day or a busy day, it must have a creature, no exceptions. It doesn’t have to be of my best quality, it can be a shitty creature, there just needs to be a creature.

If I forget to make yesterday’s creature, I still have to make a creature for yesterday. That means I need to make two creatures today.

I can’t make a backlog of creatures to post in the future, every creature I make cannot be drawn before that creature’s day.

The creature must be colored, but it does not have to be shaded.

I feel like doing this has actually helped me a lot, if anything it’s sure helped me come up with a lot of new ocs. The new ocs would make me think about how they would interact with my older ocs that I had before I started doing this, which would make me think about where I would place my new ocs in this world, which would in turn cause me to rethink the world I was building, and this is a way in which I believe this daily creature thing has helped me with my creative endeavors.

I knew that the daily creatures would help me get better at making actual serious art that people would like, but I did not expect people to start liking the daily creatures themselves this much. I don’t understand. I’m making all these in microsoft paint which is not capable of even a fraction of what I do in the other art programs I use, and there are other people who use microsoft paint who are capable of doing much more impressive things with its limited tool set than I am. There are other people who also make daily drawings, but their drawings that they make every single day have full backgrounds and shading. This is a creature that I shat out in five minutes while I was sleep deprived and was the last thing I did before finally going to bed at 2 am, yet somehow it has over 100 notes.

I really do appreciate all the compliments I get for my daily creatures, but I’m not really sure how to respond to it. I’m just surprised.

#original post

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ofsunnydays-and-moonlitnights · 2 years

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What if you fell? A ficlet.

Moon edition 🌙

One minute you were walking down a dark corridor accompanying Moon on his security rounds the next thing you know you’re on the floor.

“Ouch…” You whimper.

Clunk! Moon lands near you. “You good?” he asks.

“Y-yeah I’m good…” You inhale a sharp breath as you try to stand. The throbbing pain tells you you’ve bashed your knee real good.

Moon rolls his eyes. “Tripping on nothing, what are you three?”

“Hey it wasn’t nothing, that step tried to murder me.”

“Suuure… the barely even a step is plotting assassination.”

“I wouldn't be surprised at this point. Hey, barely a step? it’s not like I can see in the dark like you.”

He scoops you up and you squeak in surprise. “W-what are you doing?”

“Getting you to the closest first aid kit duh. It’s faster this way, dummy.”

You puff your cheeks. He has a point, you’d slow him down limping.

You rest your head on his shoulder as he carries you.

It was strangely comforting, the slight bounce of his step, the whirring and hum of his mechanics, his arms around you with no doubt he’d ever drop you by accident, he’s programed to have the instincts of a super dad you know the ones that backflip their kids out of the way of a literally car coming at them full speed, also to have the strength of a mother who’d lift a car to save her child, basically he’s a marvel of ingenuity, peak technology, they are simply amazing in everyw- you stop yourself there. Time and place, time and place… The closest first aid box wasn’t far enough. He puts you down on a bench. You sit there, he looks you over, that glow in his eye.

“Ok.” he goes to the box taking out everything he needs and returning with haste.

Wait, if his instincts are so great why did you hit the floor? Never mind…

You lift the clothes over your knee away to see what he already knew. Blood drips down your leg. Oh you scraped your knee. Those tiles are nasty.

“Sooo should I file an incident report or…”

“I already did. They’ll hopefully inspect the step and loose tile soon.” he sits on the floor in front of you.

“Oh cool thanks.”

He freezes. His eyes fixed on your injury.

Did he crash? Is he ok?

“Moon? Moon? Are you ok?”

. . .

His blinks back to life. “Yeah never better. You on the other hand?”

“Yeah… I’m sorry about this, I’m interrupting your rounds and everything right now.”

“Just be more careful.”

“I’ll try.”

“This bit might sting.” He dabs your wound clean with a wipe. It does sting a little.

He proceeds to patch you up with a good amount of bandaids.

“Thanks Moon.”

You go to stand but before you can you're swept off your feet.

“Moon?” you squeal. “I-I can walk now…”

“Better if you don’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know, maybe I don’t want to fix another boo boo tonight.”

He starts walking.

“I guess that makes sense. Where are we going anyway?”

“Daycare.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hope you liked this little ficlet ^-^

Sun edition ☀

#moon fnaf #fnaf sb #fnaf daycare attendant #fnaf moon #fnaf sun and moon #fnaf moondrop #of sunny days and moonlit nights #ficlet #minor injury tw #tw slight blood #idk how to tw let me know if there is anything i should

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missspringthyme · 2 months

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February 22nd, 2024

I didn't get up early, but I did finally go swimming!

It took me awhile to get out of the house, but the pool is only a 5 minute walk away so I wasn't worried. Unfortunately, I had gotten the open and closing times wrong and the lady at the counter kept had me go outside to take a picture of the actual open and close times. I got caught off guard enough that my German went completely through the window and I kept struggling with what to say to her while she fought to speak in broken denglish. It's so frustrating understanding a language better than you speak it, because it just makes it look like you're lying about your language abilities. Last night I ended up googling German intensive programs because I'm so sick of my language abilities. I have a few lifelong goals that I desperately want that I don't talk much about, but they include getting my German and Japanese back and actually being genuinely physically fit.

I'm planning on asking my dad if he would be willing to bankroll me attending an intensive when I have the time (it's his fault english is my better language anyway) and hopefully if I manage to swim and do bodyweight workouts on the regular it'll put me in a good spot to actually get serious during my gap year.

When I left the pool, I considered just going back to my apartment. I came very close. The combination of me already feeling nervous about swimming (I feel very (incorrectly) self conscious when I do any formal of cardio) and the incident with the woman in the pool had me feeling very frozen. The other pool is a 25 minute walk away, so I decided to at least get some cardio in by walking over there.

The walk was nice, I keep thinking the solution to me hating walks is to pick a destination. When I got to the pool though, I sat outside nervous. I hate when this happens, but I've also just felt very stuck lately in general. I once again considered turning around and taking the walk as a win, but eventually I got myself to go it. Where I promptly found another chair to sit and freeze in. It continued like that until I finally, finally made it upstairs and to the second pool lady. Oh God.

She struggled a bit with my bonus card, but everything was fine. My German was fine, everything was fine. She scanned my card, and I went in. Maybe life isn't so terrible after all. I didn't bring a euro, so I stuffed my thing in an unlocked locker and brought my valuables out under my towel. Next time, I'm just bringing the bag out to the pool. I also didn't put my cap on until I could see if other people were wearing caps. I probably should protect my hair, but it makes me feel more self conscious when I'm not that good and other people aren't wearing them. Like the asshole who buys all the best gear before even trying the hobby.

The pool, for some reason, reminded me of the pool at my school in Tokyo. Something about the temperature and the feel of the water. Cold, but one that didn't seep into you. Water that felt like you were cutting into it, not pushing. As I paddled on my back, the memory of the ceiling of the ASIJ pool with the black and gold lane markers was fresh in my mind. I still remember exactly all the markers in that pool because they meant 'this lap is almost over, you're so close'. I made sure to go slowly and not overdo myself. I've always had a problem with anything endurance based because I don't know how to pace myself. Luckily, even my rest pace was faster than everyone else in the pool.

At one point, a bunch of school kids came in and started jumping off the diving board at the end of the pool so I had to stay clear. I did, however, get to watch them fall through the water in between breaths. I started timing my strokes so I could get a better look. I've always like being underwater, and I've always liked the big divide between the world above the water and the world below it. When the kids hit the water it's like time slows down. I watch the bubbles and the blues.

My goal is to eventually do 50 laps, and today I did 15. We'll work on it.

Later that night, I did a paint and sip that my building was putting on. I drank a schole instead of wine and had a good time. I spent a lot of time trying to convince authentic australian on the wrong german names for colors. Groin is the new grün.

Spanish neighbor is reading Breeding with Bigfoot so I'm excited to hear her thoughts as she progresses.

#roommates #friend #febuary #swimming

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