Therapy can be a remarkable thing. Too bad I don’t have any. I certainly could use it these days.

To say I am a wreck at the moment could be considered an understatement in the same way that “the ocean is kind of big-ish” would be.
My life is a complete mess of broken stairs and self rearranging highways to nowhere.
I keep skipping back and forth between impossible to follow leads and plans I accumulated over the past 4 years and a new direction, free of bounds and restraints but uncertain, unfamiliar and unsafe.

My sleep schedule, which was messy at its best, is completely gone to hell and back. My eyes are completely red with thick dark underlines and I generally look and feel like a drug victim who simultaneously suffers from 3 weeks of withdrawal and overdose.

It’s been building up over the last 2 months or so and finally exploded. These last 2-3 weeks have been some sort of aftermath and time for me to pick up the pieces and decide where the glue should go.
And which to toss out.

But it took until now that not the situation, but I, broke down.

It’s surprising that I did not have a mental meltdown ever before in my life. Because usually I’m somewhat of a psychological piniata.
But it came suddenly, surprisingly and after about 60 hours without any notable sleep or productivity. Ok. So maybe not “that” suddenly and surprisingly.

But the point is. I found myself, without a clear memory of exactly what line of thought brought me there, in an empty room, screaming at the wall without making a sound.
I didn’t even know what to say to it. I just wanted to scream at it. Preferably without it hearing me.
The things on my mind at the time deemed it appropriately for me to shout and bang my head against said wall. So I complied.
While breaking out in tears and grinding teeth.

When the irony hit me, I began to laugh. Hard.
Here I stood, completely loosing it for once. Feeling the rush of emotions like I can truly say I never did before. But they were all wrong.
Was I not excited about how I might have a chance at completely reworking all that was wrong with my life so far? About not being held back by choices I made as a completely different person, half a decade ago?
Why then was it far more befitting for me to shout and curse without a single sound at all that I had lost or possible would lose as a result of actions so tiny I had hardly any control over the sum of them?
Why, after all of this, did it bother me the way it did. Had I not made peace with it already?

Apparently not.
All that I worked and hoped for… all this time. Presumably gone. For good.

And so. I laughed. And with this, my head cleared and began to formulate this very entry.
Among other things.

For the first time in months. I feel like I can think again.
It’s like some giant sticky goo has been removed from my eyes, ears and brain altogether.
The accumulated weight of it all is, at least for the moment, somewhat lifted.

There might be a way for me after all.

Don’t bother to try and understand this. This is one for me and me alone.

… you should listen. Sometimes, literally.

The music I like the most always had a habit of entering my life via strange and unexpected circumstances. This is a little tale of the latest example.

What intrigued me initially about the store was that they had some VHS tapes in the window. As well as good ol’Vinyl records.

I was curious.

They had a special sale. A CD for a pound. Sometimes a bit more, but never higher than 4 pounds.
I spend more money in that single store than in a complete week of living in england.

Standing out amongst the CD’s I bought there however was one I never heard before in my life.
It wasn’t the only one. I packed a lot of stuff I did not know. But with all of them, I had at least some idea what they were about.
Not this one however. I just bought it. No reason. It just happened.

I still do not know exactly what spurred me to take it with me. The “one pound” factor might have helped. But why this instead of one of the dozens of others? No clue.
The cover isn’t that interesting and you can not, in any way or form, guess what kind of music it is.
But maybe that was exactly the point.

When I asked the owner as to what sort of music it was, he just told me that it’s rather popular and well known. And that I should have heard it before, most likely without realizing that I did.

Instead of checking for this however, I did not listen to it for weeks. The other CD’s I bought just took over. In fact, I almost forgot that I had it.

That is until yesterday.
During a conversation on Teamspeak, someone mentioned a musician.
This was not all that surprising. Seeing as I asked around for some recommondations.
He described to me some of it, and told me that I ought to know some of it already. Perhaps without realizing it. It was supposed to be rather popular and well known.

When I asked him for an album title I was struck by a bit of lightning.
Didn’t I have an album with a similar title? I reached back and grabbed it.

There it was.
And I listened.

So I randomly grab one CD, out of a hundred. And I get reminded that I have it by pure chance.
And it turns out to be this.
A song so long forgotten that I did not even know it existed anymore. A song I heard exactly once. One and a half decade ago.

The music I like the most always had a habit of entering my life via strange and unexpected circumstances.
But I sure am glad to hear it once it finally does.

Maybe the next big musical thing in my life will fall out of an airplane and hit me in the head. It would at least be consistent.

There are things in this world, particularly the movie scene, that are sometimes called “so bad it’s good”.
We can laugh about them or be entertained by them because our mind clearly recognizes the shortcomings. It’s like watching someone trying to win a race with one leg missing.

And then there’s the stuff that’s even worse. It’s so bad that it’s bad again. If the aforementioned film is the equivalent to a one legged racer. This stuff would be the guy who had a birth defect and never developed legs to begin with.

And yet. He still takes part in the race.

There’s something about this that just fascinates me.

To name an example, there is Uwe Boll. His films are, with alarming regularity, such utter garbage that one would be forgiven to ask why he even bothers anymore.
And while I personally never liked a single one of his movies. I have to admit that he has gotten better over the years.
Still miles from actually being good. But getting there through sheer willpower.

It sounds a lot like what I am trying to do with my drawings and writings.

I wonder if people like him, or other people whose works are slaughtered by the public, view all of this with a mindset similar to my own.
It’s not about winning or loosing. It’s about doing what you want to do.
What you think you were meant to do.
What makes you happy.

And if others don’t like what you’re doing. Keep doing it anyway.
Because either you’re gonna get good enough for them to stop bothering you one day.
Or they’ll lose interest sooner than you’ll lose your spirit.

It may be a little rosy eyed of course. Perhaps even a bit of wishful thinking. But in many of these so called “worst <things> ever” are to me like the glowing eyes of a five year old.
Full of passion and wonder. Burning to see what he’ll do next, because he himself knows no more about it than you.
There is a passion to it.
Inspired by what the creator loves. Formed by his inability to focus. Brought down by his constraints on either experience or circumstance.

I might laugh about it and them in a casual manner. Make jokes about it during small talk, wasting no further thought on it.
But the reality is: Stuff like this has my deepest respect.

And if I ever manage to get the same kind of courage about showing my work. Being proud of it no matter how flawed.
I think I’ll be a lot better of.

As a matter of fact. This is the reason why I can’t bring myself to hate Mars of Destruction. It just screams a loud “I want to be more than I am” at me, whenever I so much as think about it.