I used to be caught in a web of death, what a sensational way to put it! But how appropriate, considering its intricacy. I used to go through life as though dead, though I would still live in fear of tomorrow. There's something hilarious about the death-wish but I don't think anybody's elaborated on it yet, at least I haven't come across it though I'd love to. All my jokes are about my own death and pain because they've become foreign concepts -- no longer my world but a strong part of my past and it sometimes rears its head again but I banish it to my core unless in that moment its necessary to harness it. The dangerous part about mental illness is the desire to harness the power you have at the height of your mania -- the adrenaline rush of a constant flight -- the desire to do all and see all and get everything you feel you deserve. It's easy to skip pills, and find excuses to ruin your schedule, so that one day you can wake up and feel as though the world was everything and you could take it on again. But those days have become few and far between and its a positive because now you can sit, now you can be reasonable, now you can plan. With mania you are living for that moment, and that is important, and you should hold onto that. But you must have patience, and you must learn all your actions have consequences not just for others, not just arbitrary bullshit that won't morally affect you, but stuff that holds or withholds the keys to your future, and you do have one. At least this "you" I direct to myself, as I try to direct all of this to myself, as a moral exercise at least. The Tips on Radiance are all mementos to myself that I have a long journey ahead of me and it will be grueling work, but it is valid work, and my labor will pay off if I can just stay consistent.

I've written at least a diary entry or a page of my autobiography (which is hilariously presumptuous, I'll admit, and I love it for that) for the past three days, and I am positive I will have something of note by 2017 if I keep up with this. If I take my meds on time, and keep myself stimulated, and keep on working. 2015 was plot development, character building -- 2016 I begin to take what I deserve, and I do deserve it after all this time. That much I know is true.

I don't know to what extent I value posting on here vs. eventually getting published because who wants to publish what's already posted for free online? On the other hand, I don't know how much longer this site will be around but for brevity's sake it seems the best medium at the moment. I do have a lot to say but I also have got enough confirmation that people want to hear what I have to say and because this is a capitalist society, I want to capitalize. Because I'm terrible at work, at retail, at "unskilled" (though comprising a tremendous amount of skill) labor. And I need to find a way to live off what marginal gifts I do have, even if I can't always see them. I've submitted to a few places, and written a few things, and now I have to wait and the waiting is the hardest part but the rewards are beginning to show. When I'm at my most venomous I feel like the Jenny Holzer inflammatory essay where it says "I've been planning while you've been playing. I've been saving while you're spending. The game is almost over so it's time you acknowledge me. Do you want to fall not ever knowing who took you?" And now that I'm in a somewhat better place, for a while, I can say realistically I do want a vengeful sort of success against those that have harmed me, but not against the entire world. The "you" isnt a broad plural but a few singulars; the rest of the world im trying at least to regard with compassion and warmth because meeting more people everyday I'm convinced that's what most are made of. The main challenge of life is not how to live with people but how to connect with them. It's very easy to be tangential but quite another to intersect, and intersections are where foundations are built.

I wrote once I feel as though I'm reaching out over an infinite abyss for something just out of my reach but I think there's an invisible bridge underfoot slowly supporting me as I inch forward, and if I can just conquer my fear of the image of a void, the trip across it, I will get to whatever or whoever it is I'm reaching out to much faster than I suspect. So now I'm on the edge.