Today was a very long day, and I expected tonight to be quite the norm lately (uneventful) but spending a little time tonight reflecting actually has turned out to be something, at least that I think, will make me better in the short term. The past couple of months have been a wild ride for many reasons (there really are many) stemming from relationships, to work and even friendships dwindling and being replaced by other, more important social relationships. I usually write my thoughts in a little black book that hopefully will be burnt in the not-so-distant future, but I’ve told myself lately in order to promote Type Aloud I need to do a little more to get people to be interested in the person behind the website, if that sounds like a crock of shit or not.
One thing that I have not (ever, really) been afraid of is to state my opinion. I don’t pride myself in being an idiot; I know when to keep my mouth shut even when I shouldn’t, but I also know when people need to hear what I have to say. Just more lately the person on the other end of my verbal sparring tended to push back without realizing that I was merely giving advice and not trying to start World War III. There are just times in life that you need to hear the bitter, brutal, honest truth and sometimes you really only listen to it from people that you trust. There are other times that you are too stubborn to listen at all, and then you tend to get bitten in the ass.
I have been called several names by people that do not really know me. Some people call me a nerd, a geek, very few people call me a genius, but I tend to hear the utterance of asshole more than all of them. I know that I can be an asshole if I want to be, but I believe that it boils down to people not quite understanding where I am coming from. My view on the world is quite abysmal; I am not what I would describe as religious person, and I generally do not really have any faith in the human race as a whole. Really, how could I? The world is full of death, famine, war and generally a bunch of unhappy people that are content with being exactly that: unhappy.
If I am bothered by something I am damn well going to voice my opinion. Now, I am lucky enough to live in a part of the world where I am not going to be castrated for doing so, but even those around me tend to complain and bitch more often than not. My commute home from work I hear (and see) people that have given up on life. They are tired, hopeless, shell of human beings who go through the motions because they feel as-if there is nothing left for them to live for. This is the kind of shit that makes me sick. I think one of the only things I enjoyed about not being in the city landscape is that there are generally less people, and a smaller sample of people meant that you saw a less amount of unhappy souls.
This is partially the reason why I started Type Aloud; some of the best memories I have are those where my nose was stuffed in some book. I can also admit that I did what most kids do and leafed through the pages until the end because I did not want to read the whole book if it bored me. Shit, I still do that with novels that I purchase because I realize three-quarters of the way through that it is a piece of crap. There is just a part of me that needs to know the ending of a story in order to sleep at night.
For me, Type Aloud represents a place that all of these sad souls can come home and lose themselves for a few hours in reading. Despite the people in my life that are causing problems, think that I am an asshole, or otherwise have ill feelings towards me and mine: I always have the people who spend their time and effort writing their pains, wonders and dreams onto digital parchment. That’s the kind of life that I hope for.
