You're all going to hate me very much for this post.

First of all, happy Thanksgiving. I'm grateful for the second NYAF video. But onto business.

I know this is really, really bad, because the headache I got last night from crying myself into oblivion hasn't gone away, even with a full night's sleep. I'd sleep more to get away from it, but I know that would only make it worse.

With respect to my bad news, there are two ways I can go with this. As always, I'd prefer to get the bad stuff out of the way first (it's as much optimism as you'll ever get out of me):

( The negative way of dealing with it (in which I share WAY too much): )

( That was tl;dr. Here's a summary. )

( The positive way of dealing with it: )

Those are my options, and they seem to be EXACTLY THE SAME THING, with different motives. In that respect, what the fuck does it matter why I do something? If the ends are the same, what difference do the means make? It's funny, when I was learning how to catch fly balls in softball practice, I asked the same question. "If I caught the ball, Dad, what difference does it make how I caught it?" "You're more likely to succeed one way than the other," he told me. I suppose that holds true: I suppose I will be more likely to succeed should I take the positive route.

But in the end, I'll still have caught the ball, I'll still have expended the same energy -- reluctance and will don't factor in -- and, if I win this game, I'll still be happy. Should I bother playing? Is it bad that this whole thing is making me question my pure love of the game? The last thing I want to do is question something that's given me an escape for so long: then the past twenty-odd years will truly have been for nothing.

Because of my low self-esteem -- I don't know WHERE the fuck that came from, by the way. Even though the boys never looked at me in junior high (or most of high school. ... and college. ... and after that), even though I wasn't cool, I somehow kept my head high, and I was damned PROUD of who I was. I wonder when that changed -- I think I am nothing, and I think it often. I think that people wouldn't miss me very much if I were gone, or that it would take them a short time to get over me. Whoever needed me would soon find a suitable -- or perhaps even better -- replacement. I'm a hindrance. Perhaps the past twenty-odd years truly have been for nothing. I mean, I'm not even supposed to be here: I was an accident.

That... summarizes things nicely, actually. Accident. A-C-C-I-D-E-N-T. Accident.

I'm gonna go watch more Firefly, now.