Future: Oh Noes, It's Here! D:

"Time traveling is just too dangerous. Better that I devote myself to study the other great mystery of the universe... women."

Emmett 'Doc' Brown, Back to the Future Part II

I've been thinking about my future a lot lately—not just in a romantic context, but in a more all-encompassing context. I've never thought seriously about what I want to do with my life in terms of employment, but it's becoming readily apparent that I'd best start soon if I want to end up somewhere I can tolerate. When I was a kid, I was the best in my primary school with computers—no one touched me in terms of skill, so I'm like "well, this question's easy: I'ma work with computers and kick everyone's ass and become rich and that's mah plan :D". Then I get to high school, meeting people who can write code, design web pages, and build their own computers; the dream is quickly destroyed. I actually felt pretty shitty about that for a while in Years 7 and 8, believing myself to have lost what I believed was my strongest asset. I never thought about employment again until Year 12, paying no attention whenever they talked about work experience or university or anything of the sort.

Thankfully, I'm not without other talents. My foray into writing is probably the best thing to have happened to me thus far, at least in how it's getting me to think about what I'm gonna do to keep myself not dead. Ever since I got my first laugh—achieved when practicing using posessive pronouns in French class, where my sentence was 'The baby isn't yours' :P —I realised I had abilities I hadn't discovered. My experiences in high school drama class led to me learning how to perform in front of an audience, teaching me how to manipulate my actions and words to evoke a certain response. That, coupled with my love for Sally, gave me something to write about, a narrative thread I could explore through the prism of humour. The result was my first comic monologue (a term I have come to dread; it makes it sound like I'm telling jokes with a stick up my ass :P). Ever since, I've written stand-up on a regular basis—I still write jokes and bits of my own volition.

This led me into taking up Creative Writing as the focus of my study for the next three years at university. Thing is, I'm starting to question this course of action. I mean, first off, there are six mandatory courses, and two of them I have signed up for and skipped in their entirety, determining their content to be irrelevant. I can back this up on a critical level; I'm prepared to fight them on this if that's what it comes down to (if I don't have enough credits to do next year's courses or whatever). But that's not where it ends—lately, I've found myself uninterested in the work I have to do, even for the two courses that actually proved themselves relevant. I have a 1,500 word essay due in a week which I haven't started, and a 500 word story due tomorrow (today at this point, lol) which does not exist either. I have one and a half poems complete out of my planned cycle of four, and a play of at least six pages I need to write on top of that—I don't even have an idea for the play. That's a shitload I need to write in seven days.

I didn't really have this problem last semester with motivation—not with uni—but I don't seem to be pushing myself to do the work anymore. Perhaps it's other factors, but I'm not exactly depressed or anxious about anything else at the moment, not even about my future; I've just come to a few realisations, that's all. Maybe I don't want to write anything except stand-up. I enjoyed learning about poetic techniques and dramatic structures, but nothing of the narrative variety has caught my interest; I don't even read novels, for fuck's sake :P Part of it is definitely my own laziness—I am a procrastinator, always have been—but perhaps other things aren't as they should be either.

For one thing, uni hasn't been the most positive experience for me. I can't tell you how many times I've been in tutorials lately struggling to even pick up what the fuck the tutor or other students are on about, and this is regardless of whether I read the reading material or attended the lecture, nor is it reliant of my understanding of either stimulus. I sit in Text and Context wondering how people know all this crap about the text, how they picked up what they did by reading the same thing I did, where I didn't pick up any of it. I haven't felt intelligent at uni for a long while now, with only a few spots of pride in my achievements every now and then. I mean, I'm not an intellectual—if I was, I'd be teaching 'em, not sitting with 'em :P—but I still feel dumber every time I go, always realising there's this whole area of knowledge I'm down on or completely unaware of. I know I'm a first year, a small fish in a big pond, but no one else seems to have this issue.

Part of the problem is the only real friend I have in uni is real fuckin' smart. He's not the epitome of intellect, but he's certainly smarter than me, and I look up to him. Problem is that makes me feel inferior. It's not as if he deliberately tries to impose his intelligence onto me to make me feel bad; it's just that he's 7 years older than me and has been to uni for years, studying all kinds of different things, so he's naturally more adept than I am. The rest of the people in my tutorials also seem to be more up on things than I am, in terms of their writing ability and just their general knowledge.

Part of this is also me thinking more specifically about what jobs I'm open to. The only place I've worked for is the government, just doing clerical work, data entry, filing, that kind of crap, so I have little to no experience in any other environment. My goal in taking up Creative Writing was to experiment with modes of expression other than stand-up in order to expand my literary horizons, to explore ideas in new ways and in new forms. But, when I dream about the future I want, it's never as an author; it's always as a comedian.

I listen to music on my iPod and go "That'd be a really good song to walk on-stage to :)". I watch George Carlin being interviewed by James Lipton on Inside the Actor's Studio and vision taking Carlin's place, being asked the same questions—sometimes I even do it out loud and practice my answers, even making up questions I'd like to be asked. I watch Bill Hicks and become so filled with energy at the sight of his honesty that I get out of my seat and pace around, a monologue running through my head; it makes me want to piss people off with a truth they can no longer deny, whatever that truth may be. I think about Lenny Bruce and the impact he had on the freedom of expression in the United States, and want to make similar progress in my own way. I watch The Chaser do their shows on TV and want to be part of their group, or at least follow in their footsteps and continue the trend of controversial televised satire they established in this country. I watch episode upon episode of Whose Line just wishing I had the ability to think on my feet like those guys do, wanting to practise improv myself, start up a troupe or something, and achieve the same success they did on TV. Those are the people I look up to, and I do so without intent; they're who I want to be, and I can't change that.

The first thing I wrote, as I mentioned earlier, was about Sally, and the entire plot revolved around my fear of confronting her and asking her out. What's ridiculous is that I seem to keep wanting to rewrite that plot into every conceivable form, having to force myself to not rehash that idea and come up with new ones when I want to write poetry, theatre, or prose. Oftentimes, I do get new, original ideas, quite a few of which I've explored in this Creative Writing course, but I've found myself beating the same dead horse from time to time with these forms I'm still experimenting with.

Stand-up, on the other hand, is just so open for me. Just looking at the list of bits I currently have, there are fourty tabs in my Segments folder in OneNote, each on a different subject, amounting to at least thirty pages of material, probably more. Some of these bits are only a paragraph in length, some a few pages long, but the point is there's clear variety. And that's not counting the uncategorised shit I have in another tab: about twenty-five pages worth of random comic fodder sits there, some one-liners, along with some paragraphs that may fit better in their own Segment tab. And all of that was written in my own time, for my own sake, most of it remaining unperformed, yet the will to write it still within me. This is evidently what I want to do. Perhaps I'm daunted by uni at the moment and these writing prospects are still working their way into me—and some parts of the course I've thoroughly enjoyed and learned from—but the comedian within me will never die, and he wants to come out and play.

I've been thinking about what I want in terms of a relationship too. I've heard frequently of late that people are attracted to people who 'know what they want in a relationship', and this got me thinking of what I look for in a relationship. Do I really have standards, or a list of prerequisites? I've only ever really taken a look at a girl and went 'Hmmm, you look nice :)', then learned more about them and gone 'You're good on the inside too—I'm gonna like you now, but never ever talk to you cos that's scaryful :('.

See? I always have to make a fuckin' joke like that when I talk about girls :P

I think this is a good start right here:

But, when you get right down to it, the staple of the relationship is communication: talking and sharing things with one another. I miss having that special someone I could always talk to. I remember on my first date, after the movie had finished, taking my then-girlfriend outside the theatre and just talking. Well, I was talking, she was just laughing. I miss being able to make someone that happy, seeing a girl so vibrant and full of life simply because of what I was saying. And making her feel better when her brother kept calling her a hippo. And the whole cutesy syntax we always spoke to each other in. It was so special to me.

'Desire: Need Moar Persistence', published 22/8/2012

I evidently want someone who I can talk to about anything, feel comfortable opening up to, and be happy with. I think that's the most important thing: for one's presence and actions to make the other one happy, to ensure mutual gain in all aspects of life through experiencing life together as a unit (you know, if you want it to sound fuckin' lame :P). My ex and I talked about all sorts of stuff, and we enjoyed each other's company, so that's a staple. I think intellect is also important; if you don't have an active mind, wishing to remain wilfully ignorant, I probably wouldn't want to hang around you for very long anyway (this is the same guy who called himself 'dumb' a few paragraphs ago—consistency is for chumps :P). She'd also have to accept me for who I am, only encouraging me to change if there's actually a genuine problem to be fixed rather than just some silly thing she's uncomfortable with for no good reason.

I could describe what I like in a girl's body, but really, once I get to know who she is, her body becomes beautiful regardless of its physical nature because it represents what I love about her on the inside, so its practically irrelevant. If she's really out of shape or unclean, however, I'd probably avoid her. The physical can be important when drawing me in, but that phase can be skipped in the girl's personality really clicks with me (and I have an opportunity to talk to them that's not instigated by my own attraction to their body, lol).

I can name a few extras—I'd rather she didn't smoke, I'd rather she liked video games and/or computers, I'd rather she was willing to explore various sexual avenues, etc.—but there's no real point. Everything else about them is moot because I can't be any more accurate than what's written in the two paragraphs above. I just analyse women as they come along, and I don't really know any at the moment that I like the look or sound of, so I'll just have to wait until I meet one that does.

It's 4 am. Fuck that assignment; I need sleep. Story can come tomorrow. I have an idea, so that's the hard part over.