Why Would I Write

  • Hoarder Mentality

    I’ve seen the horrors of hoarders, thanks to all those shows on TV. I’ve always wondered how people can do such things to themselves. Collect so much shit until the point where it’s practically impossible to walk around their homes without tripping on anything. Why do these people want more things than they need?

    Today it struck me, I have a similar mentality too. Fortunately for me, I’m mostly limited by my budget so I can’t really afford to buy everything I want on whim. However, my problem doesn’t lie with physical goods. Beyond the countless books I have waiting to be read (thanks Big Bad Wolf!), I have more digital content than I can ever hope to finish consuming in a lifetime. I’ve got tons of music. Every time I fall in love with an artist, I tend to download their whole discography so I have access to it anytime. It just annoys me to know that I don’t have the complete collection of an artist’s catalog even if I’m only a fan of a couple of albums or songs.

    At first I thought, maybe I’m some sort of completionist, but then I realized I’m far from it. Especially when it comes to video games – I don’t really care about collecting all the achievements or getting every item in the game. I enjoy games pretty casually – as long as I finish the game and get to experience the story, I’m satisfied. I don’t need to do anything extra to enjoy it.

    I’ve got enough movies, TV series and cartoons to last a lifetime if I played them continuously nonstop. When will I find the time to watch them all? I won’t. Yet they sit idly on my hard disk drives, metaphorically collecting dust, until I decide to watch them. Same thing with all my ebooks and digital comics.

    Computer games – I’ve got a few hundred games in my Steam library, many I know I’ll never touch (titles I’ve obtained from bundles) and yet many more in my wish list. I bought them all because I was interested in them and they were available at a cheap price. I would love to play them all, but I don’t have the time to do so. I have more guitars and keyboards than I need, and god knows what else that’s hidden in the back of my shelves.

    And all these things I’ve mentioned have only been acquired over the past decade. There’s a whole lot more than I can’t recall at the moment I’ve been collecting my whole life. I used to keep empty alcohol bottles when I first started drinking, but I got rid of them in January. I know I don’t have any problems throwing out things I don’t need, I just need to find out why I wanted to keep so many in the first place, and stop that problem before it starts. I don’t want to end up on TV with a crew of people trying to coax me out of my room and clearing out my house because it has become hazardous to live in. It’s time to stop.

  • What’s Your Potential?

    I was listening to an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience (a very good podcast I discovered recently) where he was speaking to Dr. Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist. One of the topics which came up for discussion was potential. An unquantifiable value that human beings hold each other accountable for, despite it being vague and different for everyone. It brought back memories of the comments I used to receive in my report cards in school. George has so much potential.

    For context: I was never a top student, neither was I at the bottom of the class. I was the very definition of average. I got by in my classes, wasn’t much of a nuisance to my teachers, and I didn’t participate in any delinquent activities. But when you were enrolled in one of the ‘top’ schools in the country (debatable, also subjective), there were expectations to be met.

    I’m not sure how many kids received the same comments, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one. While it seemed like a reasonable comment back then (my parents took it as a neutral-positive statement), in retrospect it was just another way of saying I was a shitty kid. I mean, think about it. Everyone has the potential to do almost everything they want to in life. As long as they are physically capable, it’s all up to them to work hard and practice the right skills and techniques correctly to accomplish their goals.

    We all had the potential to become something. Whether that is something to be proud or ashamed of, nobody knows, we find out when it happens. If the teachers were blunt, they would have written: George hasn’t been showing any signs of being a future rocket scientist or doctor, he’s what we call in this school a disappointment. I guess if they wrote that, it would have probably been applicable to many other kids in the school as well. And there’s no way lil ol’ me could be the problem. It’s the fault of the school/teacher/education system! There would have been an uproar from the parents.

    However, as I grew older, I realized that school wasn’t as important as adults had wanted me to believe. With each new phase of life, what I had learned in the previous one didn’t matter to me. High school didn’t prepare me for college. College didn’t prepare me for work. Nothing prepared me for life in the working world – I learned all I needed to learn for work while on the job! School was just an alternative name for daycare. We were being taken care of until we could go out to make our own money.

    Back to my report card. Did my teachers have foresight? Did they know what I was going to be? I can’t say for sure. After all, they never told me what they thought my potential was. It’s vague statements like these that will haunt me until the day I die. What if I had already achieved my full potential? Does that mean I can’t do any better in life? Do the goalposts shift? Would I be capable of achieving more? How can I have so much potential if I don’t know where I am and what my limit is? It’s practically infinite, right?

    And that’s how I ended up writing.

  • Bucket List

    “We’re not the kids we used to be.”

    “You’re right. We’re not,” I replied.

    I stepped into the bank through the main doors and yelled at the top of my lungs. “Everybody, get down on the ground, right now!” I quickly pulled my shirt open to reveal all the dynamite strapped around my body and raised my hand holding a detonator to show them I meant business. “Give me all your money or I’ll blow this place to the ground!”

    My partner walked in after me and threw a couple of duffel bags onto the counter in front of the tellers.

    “Don’t make me repeat myself! Hands behind your backs! Follow my instructions and nobody is going to get hurt.”

    Nobody had to be told twice, everybody else in the bank was now lying on their front with their hands behind their backs.

    “Except the tellers, please get up and fill the bags with as much money as you can.”

    They complied without a word. Pleased with the situation, I smiled and lowered my hand, which was still holding on tightly to the trigger of a detonator.

    You see, the thing is – I knew that today would be the day that I was going to croak. It was a given. Many people have tried changing their fates. Nobody has ever succeeded. Knowing that, I didn’t even bother. However, knowing when I was going to die, I decided to live my life very differently. I mean, I can’t say if it would have been any different if I didn’t know – after all, I only had one life. But I guess that isn’t the point – or maybe it is.

    Because I knew I was going to die today, for the past year of my life I spent it accomplishing all the irrational fantasies I had on my bucket list. One of the first few things I pulled off was skydiving without a parachute. You would think that would have ended me, but nope – you can’t beat the date. So by some stroke of luck, I managed to survive. That put me into overdrive and I decided to do all the things that I was afraid of doing before. I hopped out of a car at a safari. I ran through a shooting range that had a live practice going on. I drove my car into a lake. Each time, I came out unscathed. I was living my best life.

    For my final task, I decided that I was going to live out my ultimate fantasy – to pull off a bank robbery. You see, I had done my best to stay clear of the law in all my previous tasks because what use would a life of ‘immortality’ be if I was locked up behind bars? Exactly. It would have been a miserable life.

    So here I stood, waiting for my money to be packed. Minutes felt like forever. I checked my watch hand – only thirty seconds to go before I met my soulmate. I wonder who she would be. Was she one of the customers on the floor? It was hard to tell, none of the people on the ground dared to look up at me. Thirty seconds passed, and the alarm on my watch rang. Just like clockwork, the bell at the entrance to the bank rang.

    *ding*

    In walked the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my life.

    “This must be her,” I thought to myself.

    She stood still, frozen, stunned at the scene that lay in front of her.

    “Wow,” she managed to whisper.

    “Wow,” I said to myself.

    Nimbly, she got down to her knees and lay on the ground. Her eyes met mine, and for a moment we exchanged glances. Then she never took her eyes off the tiled floor again.

    “So much for meeting my soulmate.”

    “Yo, I’ve got the money, let’s go!” said my partner who was now next to me with the loaded duffel bags strapped to both of his shoulders.

    He rushed me out through the front doors where the getaway car was waiting at the street corner.

    “Thanks a lot man,” he told me.

    “Don’t sweat it,” I said. The alarm on my watch rang again. “You better make a move.”

    “Tell Tort I said hi.”

    “I will.”

    The car shifted into gear and tore down the street. I sat down by the sidewalk and watched the car disappear in the distance. I took off the fake bomb that was strapped to my body and put the detonator down. I looked at the watch on my hand. “Any moment now.”

    The alarm went off for the last time. A sudden pain shot through my body and I felt my chest tighten. I began to lose consciousness and struggled for air. Then the world around me turned black.

    Writing Prompt from Reddit: Everyone is born with 3 dates on their wrist. One represents when you will accomplish your life’s goal, one is when you will meet your soulmate, and one is when you will die right down to the second. Yours are all the same day within a minute of each other.