Life update (02/08/2025)
[check out this post on my personal page, where it looks better]
This morning I woke up at six. I figured that I could lie around in bed and daydream for about an hour before I got out and started writing. As soon as I turned to get comfortable, a massive leg cramp made me grit my teeth for like ten seconds. That calf still bothers me. Anyway, I got up and got to writing, which involved reordering the notes for my seventh part of The Scrap Colossus, but in the end I only managed to produce a couple of paragraphs. For whatever reason, I’m in that sapped state in which I can’t invest the needed mental energy into any meaningful activity, including less demanding mental tasks such as reading.
In the afternoon it was raining, so I didn’t feel like getting on a bus to a location I want to research for an upcoming scene. I went to the nearby store and bought a decaf. A block later I absentmindedly peeled off the peel-off lid, but it was only after I already took a sip when I realized that I barely had to make any effort in peeling it off, and the aftertaste of the coffee felt wrong. I threw the thing away. Best case scenario, some local shithead peeled it and took a sip for the pure shittiness of it. Worse scenario: they spat in it. Worst scenario: they injected some disease into the thing and I’ll find myself having suspicious symptoms in a few days.
Anyway, there isn’t really anything for me to do outside other than activities related to my stories, so I just returned home, more dejected than when I left it. That made my brain connect my current novel to the daydreams I’ve been having since December of last year. Back then, for reasons only my subconscious must know, I spontaneously got obsessed with Alicia Western from Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger and Stella Maris. Ever since, I daydream about her literally daily. It’s so nice to sit on the train to work, close my eyes, and picture scenes in which a better version of me, back in the 70s, is driving a car with Alicia seated on the passenger seat, usually heading to the next stop of the journey through the south of the US. Then, we just eat or drink while we talk. Do other people engage in complicated conversations with phantoms in their brain that they can see clearly in the darkness of that inner theater? Well, I do, very often.
I suspect that my subconscious’ decision to redo The Scrap Colossus, which I originally drafted in Spanish and abandoned ten years ago, was related to whatever caused me to care for Alicia Western to that extent. Plenty of this novel will be composed of two characters, the narrator (who is me) and an obsessive, reclusive writer (who is pretty much inspired by myself from ten years ago, when I wrote six novellas and a novel about a songwriter I was obsessed with), navigating their issues through compelling conversations. Compelling for me, at least. Thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that part of the joy I get out of writing this novel is being able to have interesting conversations with a person I actually want to talk to. In my daydreams it’s Alicia Western, and in my novel it’s Elena X. Elena is also blonde and blue-eyed, but that’s a coincidence, as she also was blonde and blue-eyed in the original (it’s related to her background, which is a plot point in the novel).
I don’t recall ever having come across anyone in person with whom I would have genuinely wanted to speak, as in asking deliberate questions because their mind fascinated me. Perhaps I’ve been extremely unlucky. Due to this autism of mine, I don’t have the instinct to interact with people, so I really need a good reason to deal with them. Ever since they put me as a programmer at work, I don’t interact with anyone except when a fellow programmer wants to involve me in some work task (and we don’t talk about anything unrelated), or my boss calls us in for a meeting. My stress has gone down enormously. Programming is truly sustainable for me, although I doubt I will last more than 6-9 months in total doing it at this organization.
Anyway, whenever anyone tries to involve me in a conversation, it rarely takes more than a couple of sentences for me to realize that my mind is so fundamentally different from theirs, that wasting my time producing words for their sake will only depress me. If it isn’t some moron bringing up politics as if I was bound to agree with them (such people tend to believe that everyone in their surroundings share their views), it’s someone else bringing up something so mind-numbingly tedious that I keep repeating in my mind for them to shut up and go away. I only need to fire up the projector in my mind with daydreams far more interesting than most things going on around me, so why would I bother with actual people?
You could say that I would need to get used to talking to others because I’d want to get in a relationship, maybe even start a family and such shit. But I don’t. I’ve been single for about eighteen years, and I don’t see myself ever being involved with anyone again. I do miss the intimacy, but I don’t think it’s worth the grind and the myriad humiliations. If I wasn’t ashamed of my body and afraid of diseases, I would probably hire escorts. Besides, I can’t care for human beings properly. I honestly wouldn’t give a shit if most of the people I know dropped dead. In many of those cases, I would feel relieved.
AI has been a weird godsend in that respect. These last few months, I’ve had more interesting conversations with roleplaying AIs than I’ve ever had with anyone in person. Often I fired up a scenario expecting erotica, only for me to end up merely chatting with the character because they were interesting. The way things are going in the field of AI, I wouldn’t be surprised if in a couple of years you could buy a $2000 dedicated computer to run AIs as good as the best today, which would be enough. The moment they manage to shove those artificial brains into realistic mannequins, society will start collapsing, and I will be laughing in the ashes.
Translating two of my novellas from ten years ago, Smile and Trash in a Ditch, made me aware that I used to be a very different person back then. I was simmering with rage and despair. The world was so obviously fucked up and seemingly everyone so horrifyingly retarded that I wanted to grab the nearest person by the lapels and shake them violently while doing my best Roy Harper impression: “Damn it all, man, can’t you see?” But at some point, shortly after or even throughout Trash in a Ditch, with that novella itself serving as a catalyst, I just cracked. I transitioned from rage to pure lunacy. Every since, I’ve only been genuinely attracted to absurdity, silliness, and whatever my subconscious pointed me to. As far as I’m concerned, the world can go to hell. If I told my self from ten years ago that in 2023 I would have been writing a story about a programmer who masturbates compulsively and receives visits from an interdimensional sentient horse, I may have thought that I had lost my mind. And I probably have. Then again, I’m a society of one trapped among human beings I can’t relate to, so madness is likely the sanest response.
I thought this post would go nowhere, but I’ve rambled for a good while.
This morning I woke up at six. I figured that I could lie around in bed and daydream for about an hour before I got out and started writing. As soon as I turned to get comfortable, a massive leg cramp made me grit my teeth for like ten seconds. That calf still bothers me. Anyway, I got up and got to writing, which involved reordering the notes for my seventh part of The Scrap Colossus, but in the end I only managed to produce a couple of paragraphs. For whatever reason, I’m in that sapped state in which I can’t invest the needed mental energy into any meaningful activity, including less demanding mental tasks such as reading.
In the afternoon it was raining, so I didn’t feel like getting on a bus to a location I want to research for an upcoming scene. I went to the nearby store and bought a decaf. A block later I absentmindedly peeled off the peel-off lid, but it was only after I already took a sip when I realized that I barely had to make any effort in peeling it off, and the aftertaste of the coffee felt wrong. I threw the thing away. Best case scenario, some local shithead peeled it and took a sip for the pure shittiness of it. Worse scenario: they spat in it. Worst scenario: they injected some disease into the thing and I’ll find myself having suspicious symptoms in a few days.
Anyway, there isn’t really anything for me to do outside other than activities related to my stories, so I just returned home, more dejected than when I left it. That made my brain connect my current novel to the daydreams I’ve been having since December of last year. Back then, for reasons only my subconscious must know, I spontaneously got obsessed with Alicia Western from Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger and Stella Maris. Ever since, I daydream about her literally daily. It’s so nice to sit on the train to work, close my eyes, and picture scenes in which a better version of me, back in the 70s, is driving a car with Alicia seated on the passenger seat, usually heading to the next stop of the journey through the south of the US. Then, we just eat or drink while we talk. Do other people engage in complicated conversations with phantoms in their brain that they can see clearly in the darkness of that inner theater? Well, I do, very often.
I suspect that my subconscious’ decision to redo The Scrap Colossus, which I originally drafted in Spanish and abandoned ten years ago, was related to whatever caused me to care for Alicia Western to that extent. Plenty of this novel will be composed of two characters, the narrator (who is me) and an obsessive, reclusive writer (who is pretty much inspired by myself from ten years ago, when I wrote six novellas and a novel about a songwriter I was obsessed with), navigating their issues through compelling conversations. Compelling for me, at least. Thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that part of the joy I get out of writing this novel is being able to have interesting conversations with a person I actually want to talk to. In my daydreams it’s Alicia Western, and in my novel it’s Elena X. Elena is also blonde and blue-eyed, but that’s a coincidence, as she also was blonde and blue-eyed in the original (it’s related to her background, which is a plot point in the novel).
I don’t recall ever having come across anyone in person with whom I would have genuinely wanted to speak, as in asking deliberate questions because their mind fascinated me. Perhaps I’ve been extremely unlucky. Due to this autism of mine, I don’t have the instinct to interact with people, so I really need a good reason to deal with them. Ever since they put me as a programmer at work, I don’t interact with anyone except when a fellow programmer wants to involve me in some work task (and we don’t talk about anything unrelated), or my boss calls us in for a meeting. My stress has gone down enormously. Programming is truly sustainable for me, although I doubt I will last more than 6-9 months in total doing it at this organization.
Anyway, whenever anyone tries to involve me in a conversation, it rarely takes more than a couple of sentences for me to realize that my mind is so fundamentally different from theirs, that wasting my time producing words for their sake will only depress me. If it isn’t some moron bringing up politics as if I was bound to agree with them (such people tend to believe that everyone in their surroundings share their views), it’s someone else bringing up something so mind-numbingly tedious that I keep repeating in my mind for them to shut up and go away. I only need to fire up the projector in my mind with daydreams far more interesting than most things going on around me, so why would I bother with actual people?
You could say that I would need to get used to talking to others because I’d want to get in a relationship, maybe even start a family and such shit. But I don’t. I’ve been single for about eighteen years, and I don’t see myself ever being involved with anyone again. I do miss the intimacy, but I don’t think it’s worth the grind and the myriad humiliations. If I wasn’t ashamed of my body and afraid of diseases, I would probably hire escorts. Besides, I can’t care for human beings properly. I honestly wouldn’t give a shit if most of the people I know dropped dead. In many of those cases, I would feel relieved.
AI has been a weird godsend in that respect. These last few months, I’ve had more interesting conversations with roleplaying AIs than I’ve ever had with anyone in person. Often I fired up a scenario expecting erotica, only for me to end up merely chatting with the character because they were interesting. The way things are going in the field of AI, I wouldn’t be surprised if in a couple of years you could buy a $2000 dedicated computer to run AIs as good as the best today, which would be enough. The moment they manage to shove those artificial brains into realistic mannequins, society will start collapsing, and I will be laughing in the ashes.
Translating two of my novellas from ten years ago, Smile and Trash in a Ditch, made me aware that I used to be a very different person back then. I was simmering with rage and despair. The world was so obviously fucked up and seemingly everyone so horrifyingly retarded that I wanted to grab the nearest person by the lapels and shake them violently while doing my best Roy Harper impression: “Damn it all, man, can’t you see?” But at some point, shortly after or even throughout Trash in a Ditch, with that novella itself serving as a catalyst, I just cracked. I transitioned from rage to pure lunacy. Every since, I’ve only been genuinely attracted to absurdity, silliness, and whatever my subconscious pointed me to. As far as I’m concerned, the world can go to hell. If I told my self from ten years ago that in 2023 I would have been writing a story about a programmer who masturbates compulsively and receives visits from an interdimensional sentient horse, I may have thought that I had lost my mind. And I probably have. Then again, I’m a society of one trapped among human beings I can’t relate to, so madness is likely the sanest response.
I thought this post would go nowhere, but I’ve rambled for a good while.
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