14082020

Felt even worse today for some reason: just a constant fugue of anger and frustration, and the sensation of imminent wrath. I spent most of the day just lying in bed too exhausted to even sit upright, staring at the ceiling and coming up with a hundred different ways to get back at all those sons of bitches who told me when I was younger – that are still probably convinced to this day – that I was doomed to failure, that I was beyond their help, that I deserved no good and would have no future. Most of all though I’ve just been angry at myself, all the stupid, wretched things I did for reasons I can no longer even remember. Why is it always these moments that come back to you one by one? What about all the good I’ve done? Why can’t I ever seem to remember any of that?

When I was sixteen or seventeen, after my third suspension or so, the vice principal of my high school told my mother – who then, in a moment of supposed concern which was really just thinly-veiled spite, told me – that if I continued acting the way I was acting, my future would be bleak: the world would crush me. I dunno, maybe he didn’t say that second part. Maybe that was my father. But the thing is, it doesn’t matter. I realise now that they were right. They were right because the world is not a good place, it is not a kind place; but a mean and vicious one where people like them float to the top, where people like them write the rules and set the guidelines and expectations and philosophies for how everyone else should live. Where otherwise decent people become cynical and cruel in their desperation to just survive, to bring home a few more dollars to save up for a room with a slightly better view. 

Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. We are told to trust in the judgement and grace of God, to forgive the transgressions of others against us as we hope God will forgive ours against others. In that sense, violence is its own kind of cynicism, its own kind of desperate selfishness. That recognition alone is the only thing that really keeps me some days from just letting myself slip. I wish I was a better person, someone with a calmer soul, a greater sense of compassion and a greater capacity for forgiveness. But I’m just another wretched son of a bitch in a world full of wretched sons of bitches. Only God forgives. So be it.

Anyways, I just continued working on the foraging system today during the moments I was able to focus for a bit. I implemented the sprites for the plants/fungi and adjusted the statistical algorithm which determines distribution of resources and conditional probabilities for picking up various ingredients. It still needs some work with the tuning – I really managed to come up with a pretty convoluted system – but the comforting thing is that at least it seems to work.