We've Moved.

This blog will no longer be updated.  

Instead, I've moved to a blog that combines all my old LiveJournal and Blogger content at http://lousywords.com.

I invite you all to join me there.

Matt

What's Happening Now?

I don't blog nearly often enough.  If you're really interested in my immediate, largely unfiltered thinking, I'm on Twitter as @anothershoe.

My last post was all about my fantastic trip to BlizzCon 2014.  Let's catch people up a little, shall we?

I've moved.

No longer in glorious Wine Country, I'm living in Pacfica, CA now.  Pacifica is a suburb of San Francisco, nestled between mountains and the ocean, where it's a destination for surfers and people seeking a reason for their exorbitant real estate prices.  I'm renting the spare room of good friends who live a couple of miles from the glorious Linda Mar State Beach. Every morning I get to drive past the ocean and bays on my way to work. I highly recommend the experience.

I'm gainfully employed. Again.

I have a new job as a Technical Writer for Nominum, Inc. The people here are all phenomenal, the work is interesting, and I feel like my talents are appreciated. Pretty much what anyone could ask for in a day job.

I'm working out.

That's right. Me. Lardass Supreme, Master of the Seated Profession and Hobbies. In a gym. Five nights a week. And now I'm going to talk about it in excruciating detail. My motives. The inspiration. The challenges. Most importantly, the results.

Motivation and Inspiration

I want to "look good naked."

Seriously though, I'm fat. Not 'chunky' or 'big boned' or even 'more to love.' I'm straight up fat. Obese even. Any "Body Mass Index" score over 25 is overweight, while scores of 30 or more are obese. My BMI is 40.1 - Severely obese, in fact "Obese Class III (Very severely obese)."

That's terrible, horrible, depressing and a host of other descriptors.

I have health issues already which are contributory to my obesity, such as hypoglycemia and congenital spondylolisthesis.

In 2000, I injured my left hip in a car accident. A gnarly one in which I was lucky to have survived with so little damage to my body.

ASIDE: I was on a cross-country trip from Texas to North Dakota by car. 45 miles outside of Dallas, I lost control of my Nissan Pathfinder on a sheet of ice, spun out, hit a guardrail which tore out the bottom of my vehicle, threw the entire mess into the air and then came to rest on its right side after rolling twice. Had this been a ride in an amusement park, it might have been fun. At the time, I thought I had only some bumps and bruises. I was wrong. I'd pulled my groin and dislocated the joint in my hip.

In 2003, just barely finished healing from that accident, I tripped over my cat Gremlin and re-injured the same hip. I limped for 18 months, after being told there was nothing to be done for this new groin-pull except wait.

In 2004, just barely recovered from the last groin pull, I tripped over that same cat, and fell onto that hip, again dislocating the joint.  Since 2004 I've walked with a limp at least part of every day. Walking any distance meant horrific pain. Climbing stairs, riding a bike, even carrying groceries from my car to my apartment meant agony of a sort I wouldn't wish on anyone. Hell, it hurts to put on my shoes, and lifting my leg to put my pants on is agony.

I got fat. Then I went from fat to obese. And then to severely obese.

It would be easy to lay the blame on just my health problems and injuries. I had been larger than I liked since I was in my twenties. Lots of video games, programming, and other swivel-chair work had meant I was always a little overweight, but now, now I'm just fat.

I've tried diets in the past. Adkins, South Beach, caloric reduction, even the Hacker Diet. But I didn't have motivation, and physical pain meant I was never doing much to exercise. I'd tell myself "Next year, for BlizzCon I'll be in shape!" I never made it.

I've dated off an on over the years. And let me tell you - dating while fat is an exercise is humiliation. There is nothing that hurts like the flash of disappointment when you show up for a first meeting date and the other person realizes you're fat. People who love your charm, humor, wit, and intelligence cannot wait for a first date to be over when they discover you're fat. (Please note, I never hid my weight, and I don't look like an amorphous blob, but I'm clearly fat in person.)  It was hard in Texas where most people seem to carry a little bit extra, but it was downright cruel in Northern California. No one was ever gauche enough to say anything. But the shocking number of first dates have made it easy to recognize that look.

I'm not calling anyone out for that. I know I do it too. Our culture tells us that thin is the same as attractive. That defined musculature is sexy. People want to be in relationships with people who have bodies that excite them sexually. I don't have a problem with people having desire for trim, sexy bodies, or any other kind of body.  I don't condone shaming anyone's body. I just got sick to death of seeing that micro-expression that said "I'm not into this guy, he's fat."

I also wanted to walk to places without it hurting. I wanted to buy groceries without thinking carefully about how many trips from the car it would take to unload them. I wanted to be able to go to the beach and enjoy it, not just sit and wait for my leg or back to stop hurting. To go to Disneyland and not be the one holding everyone back.

While all this internal pressure was mounting, my friend Heather (@MortuaryReport on Twitter) was busting her ass to recover from a foot surgery and get back into shape. I watched her, this tiny waif of a woman put out a crushing number of miles on a bike despite chronic pain, and said to myself, "Hey, if she can do it with all that working against her, don't you think you could at least try?"

So when I started my new job and discovered it had a gym membership as a perk, I took it as a sign to finally make the god damned change.

The Challenge

1. Lose 100 pounds.
2. Get back flexibility and mobility. I want my hip to work as well as it can so that I can walk 3 miles and not have the thought of that be unbearable. Weight loss will help with this goal.
3. Seriously, I want to look good naked. I want to be hot.  And if not "hot" traditionally, I want people to look at my body and imagine that sex with that body would be fun and exciting.

My Plan

I have to account for the fact that I haven't done a workout (until recently) since 2000 (ironically, I was working out to lose weight then). I have no stamina, no physical strength, I'm starting from scratch, and standing for long periods of time is painful. So I have to start small.

First, I started measuring what I eat; not religiously, but I try to keep my calorie intake to 2,190 per day. I use an app on my phone called MyFitnessPal to journal all my food and exercise.

For ten days in January I spent ten minutes a day just stretching. You'd be amazed at how much sweat I produced just reaching down to touch my toes.

Then, on January 20th I started going to the gym. The important part here was to build the habit. I go every week night. I go, I put my gym shorts on in the locker room, fire up some music or an audio book on my phone and headphones, and I ride a stationary bike for thirty minutes.

I picked a time rather than a distance because I could make myself hit a time consistently.

The Results

For twelve days now I have gone to ride the bike. I started at level 0, and I've pushed myself a little each day. For all but three days I've managed the full thirty minutes.  My last two work outs have been twenty-five and twenty minutes each; both got cut short due to pain.  Really though, the last two have been triumphs in retrospect; I realized that I was pushing hard, at level 3 resistance on the bike and on both days hitting a four minute mile.

My leg moves better. I can walk from the parking lot to my desk without much pain. This was not true before I started working out.

I sleep better at night.

I get to sleep more easily.

That's not all.  Working out has been emotionally brutal. The first few days I knew I wasn't doing anything special. I was just showing up and trying.  After a week, I was convinced I was making almost no progress so I started pushing harder.  And then I hit the wall last night (Wednesday, 4 Feb, 2015).

I was riding the bike when at ten minutes in, I hurt so bad I had to stop. I was out of breath, dripping sweat, my hip felt like it was full of broken glass. My heart was hammering so hard I could hear my pulse through the music playing in my headphones.

I drank some water, caught my breath and started up again, making it for five minutes and a little over another mile.  I was shaking. Literally. My skin was flushed red, my shirt was soaked, and sweat was literally dripping off of me.

Again, I drank some water, killing the bottle I'd brought with me, and started pedaling again. I got through five minutes and again just over a mile. By now I'm shaking, sweating, and panting. I can't seem to catch my breath.  I'm staring at the god damned timer on the bike and I know I've got ten more minutes to go. I knew I was fucked.  Ten more minutes? It might as well be an hour. It might as well be the Heat Death of the Universe.  My leg and hip were screaming like murder victims. I stumbled off the bike and it was all I could do to stand.

I shook in-place for five minutes and then hobbled to the dressing room. My head was hanging. I was ashamed.

Really. Ashamed of my failure to ride a god damned bicycle for thirty minutes. Ashamed that I was limping. Ashamed to be fat. My inner monologue even said to me, "You're a fat, stupid, failure." It repeated like a loop in my head as I packed my gear and put on my jacket.

I limped back to my car in the parking lot, breathing heavily, sweating and trying to maintain composure. My face hurt from grinding my teeth to keep my face from betraying me.  I couldn't meet anyone's eyes as I passed them.

I got into the car, and I had to use my fucking arms to life my lifeless left leg into position. I couldn't do it normally because the pain was too intense.  I dry-swallowed 800mg of ibuprofen, closed the door of my car and lost control.

I sobbed. Like I was a five year old child lost in a park. I sobbed tears of anger, frustration, shame, and humiliation. Every bit of self-loathing acquired over the last two decades poured out of me for ten solid minutes. For me, such displays of emotion are rare. I'm almost as tightly wound as Cameron in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

"If anybody needs a day off it's Cameron. He's got a lotta things to sort out before he graduates. He can't be wound up this tight and go to college. His roommate'll kill him. Pardon my French, but Cameron is so uptight, if you stuck a lump of coal up his ass, in 2 weeks, you'd have a diamond."

I tweeted about things without revealing how hard it hit.

Off to the gym. Going to punish my meat suit until it reveals the way to Sesame Street.
— Inverse Incubus (@anothershoe) February 5, 2015

20 minutes, 200 calories. Had to stop because pain in my hip feels like grinding broken glass. Sorry sports fans.
— Inverse Incubus (@anothershoe) February 5, 2015

My last two workouts have been disappointing. Pain is so limiting. I hate being weak. Tomorrow 6 miles and 30 minutes or else.
— Inverse Incubus (@anothershoe) February 5, 2015

It's embarrassing to limp from the gym to your car then have to catch your breath and the shakes to stop. This program is working though.
— Inverse Incubus (@anothershoe) February 5, 2015

Each day I walk a bit easier. My hip bends a little more naturally. I can get around better. The way out is the way through.
— Inverse Incubus (@anothershoe) February 5, 2015

I just have to get the balance right.
— Inverse Incubus (@anothershoe) February 5, 2015

I got encouragement/straight talk from @MortuaryReport.

@anothershoe That's not embarrassing. That is being a human being and getting into shape.
— Brian Hauer (@BrianHauerTSO) February 5, 2015

These and many more messages and tweets came flooding in.

And you know what? They're right. I'm doing better than I give myself credit for. Fourteen days of riding and I'm doing amazing. I'm going to keep at it.

I have goals.

I am going to make them happen.

BlizzCon 2014, or How I Spent My Fall Vacation

Every year I attempt to attend BlizzCon.  It is two days of all things Blizzard Entertainment, which competes fiercely with Firaxis for the top spot on my video game totem pole of awesomeness.  I was fortunate enough to score not one, but two tickets to this festival of fun, and so I set sail for new lands … well, ok, Anaheim, California.

The Week Before

I grew up in Los Angeles, and I have a staggering number of friends who are still there or have moved there for professional reasons, so I like to bracket BlizzCon with some time to visit them.  Realizing I had even more free time than originally planned, I left beautiful wine country in northern California and headed down south. 

First up, the awesome and delightful Hauers (@BrianHauerTSO & @MichelleCHauer), who made me welcome in their home for Halloween and several days after.  Many hours were spent in conversation, watching great films like ‘Snowpiercer’ and ‘Hours’ and catching up on the new Constantine TV show, playing Family Business and Munchkin, and introducing them to my old friend Eric Heisserer (@HIGHzurrer), who can really work Munchkin’s “Charity” phase.  I’m just saying.  Staff of Napalm, sheesh!

Two Days ‘till BlizzCon

Then it was suddenly Wednesday morning, and time to hit Anaheim.  I drove out to John Wayne Airport and met with @arrowmaster (WoW AddOn Author/Maintainer) and @kaelten (Director of IT at Curse.com) and off to the convention center. There we checked into hotels, and started looking for friends who were already in town or arriving – most of them from the #wowuidev channel on freenode – and off to the Hilton bar.

If you have never been to the Anaheim Hilton then I have to explain, the lobby bar is enormous. And by enormous, I mean you can probably play a rousing game of football (American or that other one) in here.  The staff puts up with 25,000 video game fans and a host of journalists descending on them with aplomb. 

It wasn't long before drinks were had and Cards Against Humanity was being played.   Sadly, I had to skip both, because I had more friends to retrieve from the airport, specifically @RessyM.  By the time we returned, there was time for a single quick drink, then I had to haul my aging butt to bed. 

The ticket line opened at 9 am – this is a huge departure from previous years.  Normally, Blizzard employees and some temp hires staff the lines and things open at 5 pm and take forever.  But Blizzard did a very smart thing this year, partnering with EventBrite and letting them handle the ticketing and logistics.  I didn't get there at 9, but I did get there at 10:30 and instead of standing in line for hours and hours, I simply walked in, got my tickets scanned, and was handed my badges and goodie bags. Entire process lasted less than ten minutes.  If you've never stood in line for a name change on a badge at BlizzCon before, heck, even the regular badge line, then this miracle is lost on you.  I suddenly had hours left over and that meant a lot more time to socialize, root through my goodie bag, and geek out with more awesome attendees.  I hope this partnership is repeated.

If you want a full detailing of the Goodie Bag contents, the folks over at WoWHead did it extremely well, so I won’t repeat it.  I will note that I got the rare “Nova” gold pin, and no, I’m not trading it.

UI AddOn Author Dinner

WoWInterface.com and Curse.com sponsor a dinner for WoW AddOn authors, the WoW UI team at Blizzard and a few select guests.  It’s a chance to joke with friends you rarely get to see in person, to share stories, a meal, drinks, and have some laughs.  As a lead-in event to BlizzCon itself, I can think of nothing finer.  Crowded around with people who love WoW so much they strive to improve it, who dedicate hours to figuring out the API, and writing code for days or weeks, then maintaining , updating and improving that code is a humbling experience.  Yes, I’m one of them, but some of these guys are forces of nature, and they humble me.  Looking at you, Foxlit.

In case the narrative going forward doesn't make it clear, there’s a lot of drinking at BlizzCon. Normally after the UI Author dinner, there’s a gathering – and this night was no exception, based on when my roomies got back to the hotel, I know that a great deal of liquor and Cards Against Humanity was had.  I bowed out to spend the evening with an old friend instead.

BlizzCon 2014 – Opening Day

I’d been hearing at dinner the night before about how “you really don’t want to miss the opening ceremony” so I was pretty psyched.  Several friends and I had breakfast, and talked about how it was odd that we were getting this ‘buzz’ but that we didn't really know what it could be.  I mean, after all the Warlords of Draenor expansion was due to drop the next week, and Titan had been cancelled.  Everything else – like Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm were well covered as both release games and an alpha respectively, so what was going to fill that huge blank spot?  

Eric and I grabbed seats in a hall so crowded you couldn't hear yourself think, and then things got underway…

But First A Word From Our Conscience

Before I get into the awesomeness that was all the games, let me touch on a dark, evil, rank sub-culture in our gaming midst, those 'Ethics is Games Journalism' liars, otherwise known as Gamergate.  It pains me to have to even acknowledge the existence of these folk, but it makes what happens at the opening ceremony important. 

A small, vocal, angry, bitter group of people hiding out in some unsavory places on the 'net seem to think that feminists are somehow subverting gaming news outlets and exerting some undue control over video games.  That's a smokescreen for their real agenda; drive out of the games business any woman who dares to make a critique that some games are decidedly not friendly to women and that misogyny has such deep roots in our culture that we miss it when it’s expressed in games.  Pointing out simple things like not having female characters to play in games, women in stories should be more than just sexual eye candy or rewards to the hero, or female characters getting to have agency.   And that maybe we could get more interesting games if we included women.   

Those guys have repeatedly, relentlessly attacked the four most prominent women in the games field, and then attacked geek extraordinaire Felicia Day, for daring to blog about how now she feels fear where she used to feel community.  It’s repulsive on every level.   I spent a lot of my life being the weird kid, getting beaten up, ostracized, picked on and belittled. Games – Board games, Role-Playing Games, and when the tech caught up, video games were a place that didn't happen to me.  But now, video games are mainstream, and some of the formerly oppressed are using evil against women in our community.  I hate it.
  

So when Mike Morhaime of Blizzard said on stage to 25,000 people in the auditorium and thousands more watching via streaming that Blizzard stood against such actions, my heart was lifted.  He was mild, which is his entire manner, but he spoke directly and with emotion. Here’s a company that took a stance, and got it mostly right.  Thank you.

Then They Unleashed the AWESOME!

Watch the cinematic before proceeding.

Holy Bleep!  Blizzard made a SHOOTER? Even better than that, a shooter I want to play? 

This… does not compute! But it does! 

WANT IT! GIVE IT TO ME NOW, PUNY HUMANS, AND I WILL SPARE YOUR PATHETIC PLANET THE DESTRUCTION IT SO RIGHTFULLY DESERVES!

… Ahem.   Sorry, Got a little carried away there.

I've played shooters.  And I’m terrible at them.  Got started with Wolfenstien, then Doom, Quake, a little Call of Duty.  I've tried to love this genre, but it boils down to I’m older, more broken, and terrible at twitch gaming. After spending most of an afternoon on a Quake II server mostly waiting to respawn, I gave up on the entire category.

Which meant that most console games didn't appeal to me either.  The 'awesome' games for them are, well, shooters.  Aside from playing Neverwinter on the PS2, I've almost never been tempted to buy a console because most of the games are some sort of shooter or fighting game that left me cold.  I've stuck to PC/Mac games for things like MMOs and turn-based-strategy games like the Civ franchise.  

Now along comes a game like Overwatch – a shooter at its very core, but drenched in Superheroes, action, stories, and character?   I’m sold.  I want in.  I'm pleading for a beta slot, and I'll suffer dying at the hands of better players as often as it takes for gain a high level of skill.  

That’s the magic, right there, isn't it?  Take a thing I strongly dislike, and make it into a thing I covet.  An experience I crave.  Blizzard does that like no one else in the business. 

Of course they announced an expansion for Hearthstone Goblins vs Gnomes –  I’ll be playing that too.  I like Hearthstone.  It plays amazingly well on the PC or my Mac Book, but its true home is my iPad mini where playing it feels most natural.  Now Android tablets will bet to play it that way too! 

There's more … Heroes of the Storm is in Technical Alpha and already has a strong following – enough that a game which isn't even out yet has e-sports competitions. This game still looks amazing and I still want to play it.  My enthusiasm for it it undimmed a year later.

Did I mention the teaser for Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void?

The Cinematic Team at Blizzard is top notch.

That looks AWESOME.  I don’t play RTS games for reasons of physical pain. The amount of time I spend griping a mouse exacerbates my RSI pain to crippling levels. That said, I would watch a Zerg vs Protoss movie on the big screen.  I’d buy the DVD.  Blizzard?  Make this happen. The Cinematic Team at Blizzard is top notch.  

All of this happened and loaded into my brain before lunch.  I might have exploded in my chair.

I spent the rest of the day wandering the halls of the show, checking out art, taking pictures of things, and grabbing a quick nap so I could watch the talent show and costume contests, the results of which are all over the web, so I chose the WoWhead blog.

Here's a bunch of art and other shots from my wandering around.

Then there was drinking.  And more Cards Against Humanity – until 3am. Good thing I don’t get hangovers!

Day 2 – The Reckoning!

All the big news is out, so today is all about panels and e-sports.  Eric and I watched a lot of battles.  WoW Arena Semi Finals, Heroes of the Storm Semi Finals, StarCraft Semi Finals.  

Those games were intense.  INTENSE.   I'm sorry, but you weren't there and there's no way I can recount them for you in a way that does the experience justice.  Let's just say that WoW Arena Team Bleached Bones converted me to fandom.

The best for last. 

 METALLICA! 

Suddenly I'm 21, thin, and have my pony-tail back. Music transports you. Thank you #Metallica and #Blizzard for giving me youth again!
— Matt Converse (@anothershoe) November 9, 2014

Thank you all for sharing my experience via this humble little blog.

© 2014 Matt Converse - All rights reserved.

2014 Elections

  It's 2014 Election Day, and the US is busy tying itself in knots over who will be the Governor of their state or which party will control the House of Representatives and/or the Senate.  I have only one thing to say about all of that:

The machinery of maintaining the state depresses me.

777 Meme response.

  I was tagged by Laurel Amberdine (Laurel Amberdine @amberdine), with the memetic tag for 777. Since that's a rare occurrence and the meme sounded like a fun chance to force me to show some of my writing to you, I'm going to play along.

Here’s the meme: Post 7 sentences of your work, start on page 7, count 7 lines down.

  I'm working on a novella called "Blackjack Thorne & the Ace of Spades Save the Universe!" A sort of pulp-action adventure story set in a strange universe where magic gave humans the 'technology' to finally solve interstellar travel and AI.  This then is from page seven, seven lines in.

  It's not every day you find yourself locked in a cell, cuffed to a wall and awaiting torture at the hands of demons and a mad scientist, but let's not dwell too much on that.  I mean, after all, Ace was still out there, somewhere, and she wouldn't let me down. Or at least, that's what I kept telling myself. Keeping my spirits up, building morale, that sort of thing. I knew I was going to have to reach deep into my bag of tricks if I was going to get out of here, reunite with Ace, and maybe, if I was lucky keep the entire universe from being overrun by demons from Hell. 

  That's when the door to the cell opened. 

© 2014 Matt Converse - All rights reserved.

Sorrow-Eater

This happens with great frequency.  If I sit down in a public space, eventually someone, a complete stranger, will talk to me telling me things of a deeply personal and painful nature. Maybe they cry, maybe they stare into space while biting the words off in a monotone, but it happens to me more often than you might think.

Last night, I walked to my local pub for dinner and a quiet drink, and maybe to catch the last period of a hockey game.  I hadn't been in the place more than perhaps 15 minutes when a woman with an aura of sadness and long delicate fingers sat at a stool one down from me at the bar.

She ordered a drink, and I having been briefly distracted by her passing and motion, went back to watching hockey and waiting for my food.

"Cheers," she piped. "I'm not drinking alone!"

I turned, raised my beer saluted it in the customary fashion, asking "What are we drinking to?  A celebration?" I smiled, being polite.  It's a thing I force myself to do, politeness.  There's not enough of it in the world, so I'm trying to do my part.

And then began the litany of things; her son's maturity and impending move out of the house, the betrayals by her sister, the painful re-emergence of her son's father, the recent death of her grandfather, the horrible betrayals of her mother.  She cried. Multiple times. There was no room for words from me, even though she would pause and look like she wanted an answer. As soon as I had spoken a word, there were more from her, boiling, gasping out of her.

I offered the only solace I could, I listened. For almost two hours. I grew sad but when she wandered away she wasn't crying any more.

It's happened before.  Years ago, in LA, I was waiting for a bus.  I couldn't have been more than seventeen at the time, when a young man sat on the bench next to me and told me his life story in a monotone for an hour. I listened, nodded at the right places, and listened some more.  The details of his story have long faded, but I remember him walking away from the bus stop, his story told, with a lighter expression than when he'd seated himself.

It happens to me in diners, bars, parks, concerts. The speakers are all races, ages, sexes. Some have looked affluent, some destitute. Every one was profoundly sad.

There's an archetype out there in the world of the Sin-Eater.  These people would consume the sins of the dead, either preventing them from a undead state or allowing a burdened soul entry into Heaven, depending on your faith.

Perhaps that's a role for me, but instead of Sin, I eat Sorrow.

© 2014 Matt Converse - All rights reserved.

A tiny little bit on depression and how I cope.

I don't like myself very much most days. Some days, I practically loathe myself. Those are the days where I stay in my house, fail to shave, eat too little, drink too much and ruminate on all my failures.  Those are days when I long for someone, anyone, to look at me and say with such conviction that even I can believe it, "You're all right, you know?  A decent sort."  I don't want or need sympathy or pity.  Just to know internally that I'm all right.

Honestly though, the one person who can tell me that thing and the only one from whom I could ever really believe it is me. We're not wired to believe the opinions others hold of us. We all know that if only those people could see inside, see the real us, they'd loathe us too. That's our brains, lying to us. That's our mechanism that helps us be social, gregarious, helpful people run amok.

We're wired up, all of us to feel good about things that make us good people.  And to make abhorrent to us the things that would make us bad people.  Crank that baby up, and the lowest worm of a person will feel guilt and shame.  This mechanism is useful.  It makes us do the right thing when doing the wrong thing would feel good. It helps us understand and feel compassion for the failures of others.  It makes us want to help, not hurt.   But when that mechanism gets running over the recommended specifications, oh man do we suffer.

So I work on telling myself that it's just my brain lying to me.  I tell myself that my foibles aren't that bad.  That mistakes have been made, but nothing from which I couldn't pick myself up and still succeed.  Telling myself these things a process.  Like a twelve step program for my soul. I have to keep working it.  Can't give up.  Can't let that shitty part of my brain lie to me all the time.

I know I'm not the only one who feels this way, who feels like a worthless or shitty human being some days. If you're out there, locked in your own house, feeling crappy about everything - remember this - your brain is lying to you.

You're all right, you know?  A decent sort.

Keep telling yourself that.  When you forget, pick yourself up and dust yourself off.  You can do this.  You really can.

Because you know what?

You're all right, you know?  A decent sort.

© 2014 Matt Converse - All rights reserved.