Why aren't I always programming?

[garote]

June 1st, 1993:

Hrmm. Write write write.

I haven't been doing much in the way of physical activity for awhile. Lots of programming, tho. Been really cramming with the programming -- making this computer jump, yeah.

It was fun interacting with my friends in The Shack last weekend. We sang, we played drums, we cracked jokes. We played SF2 up the yang.

Shit I wish Alex was here. For some reason, I wonder "why does he matter so much to me, I hardly know him" and yet... I feel that I do know him. He is like another me. Secretive and depressed and trying to find meaning in it all, plagued by hormones in the meantime.

We collaborated on Merryo Trolls - and that too was something special for me. I know he's brighter than I am, despite his claims that my PEA field work is beyond him... He managed to go from two-bit mini-assembler programmer to full-blown programming stud faster than I did, since we both started at the same time (when AndyM bought Merlin 16+)...

Now Skinny Puppy's "RiverZ End" flows thru my fones. What is it about this song that's so neat? It reminds me of the picture I'm drawing in school off and on - dark and twisted and rotting and secret and inhuman and lost... Hardly what I should be enjoying, were I "normal". Sigh. Oh, to be "normal".

Damn I wish Alex was around. Sitting next to him while we laugh over some japanese comic, some bit of fluff from the ethernet, or perhaps some particularly bad coding error. He's like a twin brother. But now he's in Japan. I feel... Like I've been left behind in hell.

I wish he had been with us when we saw "Legend of the Overfiend". Lots of bad dialogue, weird monsters, and unreal young cute innocent animated Japanese girls having sex... I can't believe it, the young girl is more exciting than the mature woman, and the animated girl is more exciting than the real one... Where does it end?

What does this open access to the sexual imagery, but not sex itself, do to a person? I don't know. Maybe it makes me depressed. Or maybe it makes me less depressed. Masturbation is like that. I notice that after masturbation, I become the person I have always wanted to be. That need, fulfilled, seems to drown all the sharp childhood memories I have gathered, makes life bearable, even livable. I remember sitting down once after masturbation to realize that the next days' math homework had not been done - and instantly getting it out and completing it, not out of fear or happiness, but because it needed to be done and I felt stable enough to do it.

Writing brings that stability. Work sometimes does. Programming does, of course. Schoolwork does not. Spiritually I gain nothing from homework. So easy, so easy to not do it - to accept the F, and keep on programming.

What is the right, and what is the wrong? Programming is my One Thing, I love doing it! How can I possibly give up my One Thing for a stupid homework assignment?

What Peirs Anthony said was this: "Whenever I am not writing, I feel that I am wasting valuable time. No matter what it is, I am constantly bothered by the question: Why am I not writing right now?"

What he meant by that was NOT that he was losing money - money matters little to him now, I expect. What he meant by that was exactly what I feel in regards to programming: I enjoy it more than anything else I do these days, so why am I not programming right NOW? It would make me happier!

That plagues me. Whenever I am doing schoolwork: Why am I not programming? Whenever I am trying to sleep: I should be programming right now. Whever I am watching TV, driving a car, eating, reading, even playing with my friends: Why am I doing this when I could be programming?

I suppose as soon as I become sexually "active", it will be "Why aren't I having SEX right now?" instead. Heh. Can't wait.

Shit, it's 10:49pm right now, I should be in bed instead of writing...

I came home from school at 1:19 today and slept for two hours. Weird dream. My mother was driving along this elevated freeway and she crashed the car. We were thrown from the car and landed on our feet with no damage. We walked back and examined the car and she said "I'm not driving that" and I asked "Why not?" and she said "Because it has the word 'BEGINNER' written on it." Sure enough, painted in large white letters on the underside of the car was "BEGINNER". I sighed like a frustrated parent and tried to get the car un-wrecked so that I could drive it instead.

Awhile after this I woke up - rather, I thought I woke up. I opened my eyes and saw my room. I then remember getting up and sitting on the side of my bed - and the view from my eyes NOT CHANGING. I was still seeing the room from my position on the bed.

I got down on my hands and knees, because I couldn't see in front of me, and crawled across the rug over to a desk - all the while seeing only the view from my position lying on the bed. I remember standing up and picking up a CD from a stack of CDs I left there on the desk (the stack is not really there, by the way - but it was in my dream) and trying to examine the CD, and seeing that one view of the room, again! No change!

Then I remember waking up AGAIN, from my position on the bed - and actually getting up and running to the bathroom - but STILL only seeing things from my initial place on the bed! My sight was frozen to that location!

And THEN, FINALLY, I woke up for real- from the same position on the bed, same view exactly. My eyes hurt. I remember realizing that all the times before when I had gotten up, I had gotten up with my "ghost body", or "dream body"... And this time making sure to establish connections with my ACTUAL limbs, causing me to get up for real. It was very strange.

And now, as I listen to the surreal tones of DownLoad fade away for what must be the seventh time, the clock shows 11:07pm. I guess I better go to bed. Sigh. Another day and nothing REAL has been done. I got the DGOD items list extended, added to the mouse control routines, optimized some areas and even got the program to display the name of the item clicked on.