“Hey, Sparky. We are home.” Hall snatches my laptop off my lap. Rude. I was busy!
“Gimme it back!” I whine, reaching up for it, even though I know it will be useless because Hall is very tall, and I am very not, and also I’m sitting on the couch. Which doesn’t help matters. “I’m busy!”
“We got home a half hour ago, and you didn’t even notice.”
“I was busy! Give me it back!”
“Sparky, when was the last time you slept?” Scout sits down next to me, giving me a very stern look. I’m being ganged up on. They’re ganging up on me!
“I’m working.” I pout. I don’t even care if I look like a child, with my arms all crossed and everything, because they deserve to have a pouty child on their hands if this is the shit they are going to pull. They’ve been gone for nearly a week, and this is the coming home reunion I get? Unbelievable.
Or maybe they are just mad because I didn’t notice they came home. What did Hall say it’s been? Half hour or something? Yea, that probably pissed them off a bit. I normally have dinner and like, eight deserts ready when they come home, but the kitchen is currently desert and dinner-less. To reiterate, I’ve been busy.
“When did you last sleep? Or eat?” Hall repeats Scout’s question. Or I think he did. Things are kind of foggy right now?
When did I last sleep or eat? Excellent question now that I think about it. Thinking is very hard, and I am very dizzy, so it’s either been a while, or just like, six hours with my metabolism. I genuinely can’t remember. I got an idea for a new app and I’ve just been working on it since. Hyperfocus really is a bitch like that, huh?
“Um…”
“Get the protein bars,” Scout signs, giving Hall an exasperated look. At least, I think it’s exasperated and not just annoyed. Kind of hard to tell right now. Thinking is hard. This might be why my last twenty lines of code have been absolute jibberish. And why the app wouldn’t launch. I wish my rubber duck could tell me to eat rather than just give me the beady eyed stare of judgement when I realize the only thing missing from the code is a single end bracket.
“What was it this time?” Scout turns to me then, raising an eyebrow.
“App. It was supposed to… supposed to… is it bad I can’t actually remember what it was supposed to do?” I frown. That might also have been affecting my coding abilities. Eh, I’ll figure it out when I check it. Hall better have saved that shit when he took my laptop from me. I have a bad habit of not saving for hours. Probably because I don’t realize hours have passed. Maybe the next thing I figure out how to do is a better autosave.
“Yes.” Hall shoves a few of the calorie loaded bars for Supers like me, with our physically-impossible-to-maintain metabolisms. Helpful little buggers and all, but...
“These taste like shit.” I scowl. I eat them anyways. Otherwise Scout gets really upset with me, and I don’t like it when Scout’s upset with me. He cries when he gets frustrated. I don’t like seeing him cry.
“Feel a bit better?” Scout asks once I’ve finished shoving one of the bars down my throat. The quicker you eat them the less shit-like they taste. Seriously, with the number of these things they sell, they really need to invest in like, a flavor that isn’t crumbly cardboard dipped in a chemical bath.
Or maybe just a bed. I’d like a bed now. Apparently, food was needed, but sleep is also needed. I’m not really surprised. It’s probably been a day or two of sitting here. Keeping track is so very difficult.
“Mmhm.” I hum. “Tired now. Cuddles?”
“Sure, Sparky.” Hall laughs. It’s a nice laugh.
“You have a nice laugh…” I snuggle into Hall’s chest, reaching out until I grab some part of Scout and can pull him onto me, so that all three of us are piled on the couch. It is very nice.
“Go to sleep. We’ll order dinner and wake you up later.” Hall whispers. I feel someone kiss the back of my neck.
“Wait, I just figured out the problem with it!” I gasp, half jerking out of Hall’s arms to frantically look around for my computer... which is all the way over in the kitchen. Hall you ass!
“Go. To. Sleep.” Scout and Hall wrestle me back down.
I go to sleep. But if i forget the solution to that one pesky part of the coding that refused to work, I’m blaming their asses. I’ll make cinnamon rolls without frosting, see how Hall and his fucking sweet tooth like that. Hmph.
At least they are home now.
--
I had no idea how to end this... ugh, sorry it’s not the best but whatever.... Also, i’m adhd im allowed to hate on the curse that hyperfocusing can be, because it so is and if you’d like to argue then let me just mention i once spent an entire day writing, from 7am to 9pm, without ever drinking water, eating, or using the restroom, and the only thing that stopped me from continuing was because i couldn’t read the computer screen anymore. When i stood up i nearly blacked out, so just TRY me bitch, this is all personal experience.
The world we live in is driven and manipulated by a menacing and malicious evil which lurks behind the shadows and controls us like puppets; watching us violently compete with one another and tear at each other’s throat. It sneers and sniggers maleficently as it watches us destroy towns, cities, houses, etc.; all the while clapping it hands jubilantly as it succeeds in its malevolent ambitions.
Sadly, this evil, like all the other evil in the world, is amongst one of our creations; perhaps the most fiendish and malevolent of all; that is: ‘standards!’
Yes, you heard it right, STANDARDS!
These prerequisite standards are what’s destroying us. It’s what’s provoking us to tear each other down until only one of us remains dominant while the others die and burn in front our eyes. It’s what’s making us inhuman and snatches away our humanity from us.
Everyone in this contemporary world wants you to be ‘better’ – even if that means to completely alter yourself into something that you’re not. No one is just OK with you being you. Everyone expects you to be ‘more’.
Teachers expect their students to be smarter, parents expect their children to be geniuses by the age of five, boss’s expect their employees to work harder than machines possibly could, and this series of expectations goes on and on in a perpetual loop with no end to it.
Why? Why go on like this? Why can’t people just be OK with me being ‘ME’? Why can’t someone walk up to me and tell me that ‘It’s OK to be you’?
I’m here to say and do just that. Don’t listen to what others have to say. Don’t listen to those tyrannical standards which are making our lives a living hell. Don’t listen to anyone who wants you to ‘improve yourself’ by shaping your soul and your character into someone which you’re not just so the society can ‘accept’ you.
It’s OK to be you!
It’s OK to want to pursue a career not for the sake of money but for the sake of happiness.
It’s OK to do as your heart wants you to do.
It’s OK to not have a great body.
It’s OK to live with your parents.
It’s OK if you don’t understand Math or if you don’t get straight A’s in all your subjects.
It’s OK if you’re not a millionaire by the age of forty.
IT’S OK!!
Take a break! Calm yourself! Extract yourself from other’s expectations! Forget what the world wants from you! Forget what the society demands from you! Focus on what YOU want! Think hard about how YOU want to spend YOUR life!
You don’t have to meet anyone’s expectations nor the standards of the society. That’s not your job. You don’t owe it to them. You don’t owe anyone anything except those close to you.
Take this time to ruminate upon the instances wherein you had to crush your dreams or your own objectives just because you thought of ‘what the society would say’ or ‘what other people would say’ if you went on with it. My suggestion, write all of it down on a paper and then burn it. Watch as the flames eat through the paper within seconds and feel yourself being freed from these inexorable shackles you’ve found yourself captured within since your birth. Rise like a phoenix would from the ashes – free and willing to do what it wants to do.
The problem with the world right now is that everyone has this notion that if they remained happy by being who they were then they would end up being miserable and unhappy for the rest of their lives. Well, how do you think people feel right now? How much happiness and content can you see brimming in the world? Are people happy or miserable with their lives?
Being who you are, being OK with yourself is the first step into accepting and embracing your true nature. Happiness does not reside in money, it does not reside amongst wealth, it does not reside amongst influence or power – it resides within each human’s heart. As long as we pretend to be someone else only because the standards set by us require us to be that person…we won’t know happiness.
Therefore, I’m telling you this one more time: “IT’S OK TO BE YOURSELF!”
I AM OFFICIALLY FINISHED WITH FIRST DRAFT OF “BREATHER”!!!
At 90,790 words, I have finished it literally moments ago!!! After 37 days of hard, consistent work - or 217 if you count the first 583 words I wrote on March 11th xD
Intriguing Difference Between Films and the Books They were Based On
1. The Shining
The movie
Alcoholic writer, Jack Torrance gets a bee in his bonnet while looking over a hotel in Colorado. And then, when writers’ block really sets in he goes after his wife and child with an ax. He then proceeds to freeze to death.
The book
After hours of stalking his wife and mentally disturbed son, Jack sees the error in his ways and returns home, never to speak of that terse time in his life again.
Fun fact
Director Stanley Kubrick and author Stephen King never quite saw eye to eye. Likely due to King being high as a weather vane on Colombian marching powder at the time. On occasion he insisted Kubrick refer to him as Richard Bachman in hopes some of the ladies on set might mistake him for a member of 70s, Canadian rock band Bachman-Turner Overdrive. They never did.
2. No Country for Old Men
The movie
After finding a bit of money in a field, Llewelyn Moss find himself in the middle of a cat-and-mouse game with brutal killer and wearer of a fancy “bob” haircut, Anton Chigurh. There’s also a sheriff. He doesn’t do much.
The book
Pretty much the same, except Chigurh sports a pompadour hairdo. (For the film, the Coen Brothers ordered a pompadour wig, but it didn’t arrive in time for the first day of shooting. So the Coens (as they tend to do) improvised.
Fun fact
Frances McDormand had the chance to appear in the film, but opted to star in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. Both equally good films.
3. Sense and Sensibility
The movie
Written by Emma Thompson (and Jane Austen), this flick sees Emma Thompson, a young Kate Winslet and their siblings and mom gnaw on a meaty slice of life as they move from a glorious estate to a humble cottage. So pretty much, Arrested Development or Arthur 2: On the Rocks.
The book
The girls were much younger. And I mean statutory young, while Emma was well into her 30s when filming began.
