When I last left you hanging over a year ago, I was literally hanging, from a metaphorical vine I had created as an anaogly to my professional/ financial situation. Now, as I resume the story, I will press on with the said metaphor (seeing how it worked so well, and who doesn’t love an extended metaphor?) and pick up where I left off, Hanging from a vine…
So that was it, there was no more swing in the vine, I couldn’t get it moving. I was starting to slip. Death, on the jungle floor, loomed below me. Fuck it, it’s over, I was on the brink of absolute ruin. My rents were months over due and my sales were shit. I was eating like crap, Getting fat, and I was miserable. Yet I clung to that not-moving vine with all my life, slipping, slipping, until finally, I fell. I fell to the ground, which wasn’t actually very far below, and started running, Running on the Jungle floor. Rolling logs came at me in batches of three that I had to jump over. Caverous pits would open and close beneath my feet as I kept running. Occasionally another swinging vine came my way, and it would carry me over an upassable lake, or giant crater in the ground. I kept running. On occasion there would be no vine, and would be forced to transverse an unpassbale river over the heads of snapping crocodiles. I continued to run. Underground passages would reveals themselves to me, and I would take them as refuge from the logs and hungry crocs. But the tunnels were filled with deadly scorpions, and yielded no gold. Occasionally I would find a bar of gold or a brick of silver, or even a big bag of money, but none of it changed my situation. It would all collect in some big intangible tally on the top of the screen, but I was still in the same game, running and running. The background kept scrolling past, but there was no final board, no next level, no conclusion to the game. It just went on an on util I ran out of lives. Then it ends…
See what I did there? Yes I just likened my life to a game of Pitfall, which I think was very clever. Cuz that’s exactly how it was, just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did, and yet somehow it kept on going and going, with not real tragic disastrous end com, as I expected. The entire year went by where I was on the brink of absolute and complete financial disaster (you can hear the EXTENSIVE, 7 hour version of this harrowing tale on my exclusive Patreon page) yet somehow I kept going, against all wisdom. I made some of the best work of my life in that year, had a very emotionally fulfilling and socially satisfying 2016, and got to go to Japan for the first time inexplicably. All while being perpetually about to go bust, and get evicted form my apatmrnt and/ or my studio, and have my phone turned off and have my internet cut, or my electricity, or I have to mooch-money-off-my-18-year-old-girlfriend-how-embarassing-is-that kind of busted. Yet nothing happened. and I’m convinced it could potentially continue on like that for another year, and another and another until I drop dead. But why should it? I’m absolutely hyper aware that I’m a person sitting in front of a giant TV with a joystick in my hand, playing an epic game of Pitfall. I mean I am absolutely killing this game, but it’s also killing me. So I don’t have to play it any more. I mean I got the high score and all, and I could keep going and rack it up. But there’s a whole stack of other games right next to me. I could play them… But my High Score…. I just need the will to
TURN OFF THE GAME
That static hiss coming off the TV while you switch cartridges is kind of jarring. It’s a weird limbo. But it only lasts a few seconds. I’m excited to play something else. Or I could just get up and go outside…