balling out my gourd

 

Coming up as a wee lad, my general fitness was, how do you say, a sporadic shitshow.

When I was in the early grades of elementary school, I was a really skinny kid who did a lot of outdoor activities. It was the one time in my life where I was consistently tan (and yes, I can tan (thank you Cuba)), and I played a few sports.

getting humbled was a canon event

My first athletic pursuit was basketball. I played in one of the i9 Sports leagues, and I only did it once, seeing as I had NO FUCKING IDEA HOW TO PLAY.

I have a very vivid memory of my team's coach explaining to us the five positions: Point Guard (PG), Shooting Guard (SG), Small Forward (SF), Power Forward (PF), and Center (C). I remember this very clearly because it was one of the first times in my life where I've thought "What is bro yapping about". I don't think I made a single point my whole run with that team, because for some reason nobody ever thought to tell me how to actually shoot the ball. I can recall only one other moment from that experience, which is walking to the car in tears because I sucked ASSSSSSS and only passed it to our one good player.

Fun times.

After I quit basketball, my parents started having me do a different sport; football. For those of you who don't know, a funny little thing about i9 Sports is that the coaches are all parents. And my dad, being a man who loves football, ended up as my coach for the vast majority of teams I played on.

I don't think it's anywhere near an exaggeration to say that the only reason I had the position I did, Quarterback, was because of pure nepotism.

There were only two cases where I wasn't the QB. The first time was when my cousin Dominic joined the team. Now that man could throw. He was a much better QB than me, and was also faster and stronger, so I really just took the L on that one. Unfortunately for him, he was born a Cuban man, an ethnic group upon which God has placed a height limit of 5'10", so I don't think he plays football anymore.

The other time was when a FREAK OF NATURE joined our team. I don't know what the hell they fed that kid, but it must've been straight horse steroids and tren. I think he was like a year or so older than me, but DAMN that boy was tall. He was really good at catching and running too, so when I cried to my dad about being taken off QB he still had something to do. I don't remember that guy's name at all, but I would not be shocked to find out he's gone D1 or pro by now.

My football days were longer than those of basketball, but were still pretty short-lived. I hated football (and still do, what a fucking boring-ass-boof-ass excuse of a sport) and getting up early every Saturday was miserable.

Even though I hated it, I think I would have stuck with sports if it weren't for one thing: Roblox.

The Downfall

Around first grade, my best friend at the time (who is a punk ass b-word but that's a story for another time) introduced me to video games, and I think it'd be fair to say that the trajectory of my life went straight downhill since then. I would spend an ungodly amount of time online everyday playing games, spending so much time on my computer that I can't really play games for fun nowadays, because after a while I just feel like I'm wasting my life.

Elementary

So that was my main motivator to quit sports. And over the next few years, I started gaining a lot more weight. I don't really know if I was overweight or something like that, but over time
, especially around middle school, the shape of my body became a point of self-hatred for me, and sometimes I'd hurt myself out of frustration. For most of my life at this point, I was a really skinny kid, and growing up we're taught that being as skinny as possible is the ultimate goal of health and beauty, so seeing my body change rapidly was a lot for me.

But anywho! I had a friend at the time who was also a bit chubby going into middle school, but over the summer completely 180'ed and became much leaner. It was through him that I first became familiar with the idea of working out. He used this app, I believe it was called 30 Day Fitness Challenge or something like that, and seeing how well it worked for him, I went ahead and downloaded it.

Middle

I made that shit like a 5-day fitness challenge. After the first rest day it gave me, I completely forgot about it, and spent the next two years of middle school occasionally re-downloading it, maybe keeping up for a few days, maybe even a week if I was really committed. But it just never stuck.

Halfway through eighth grade, I switched from Nova Middle School (the public one, I did not go to that fuckass private school) to Florida Virtual School. Funny coinkydink, I switched to FLVS like two months before every school in the country went online because of COVID. Hooray!

To say that COVID was a very odd time in my life would be an understatement, but also it was like that for everyone so I'm really just preaching to the choir. But in terms of my physical appearance, boy oh boy did that completely change. I'm not sure if I dropped a lot of weight so much as I just started going through puberty, but at any rate I was a lot thinner and started feeling better about my health. I would like to now make the point that I realize skinny does not equal healthy nor attractive, but at the time that was how I saw it for myself.

Anyways, I spent the first few months of quarantine at home, slowly slimming down, until around the start of high school I looked like a shitty Pokemon evolution of myself.

About halfway through the school year, I started taking Taekwondo classes at a place near my house (I was still living in Tamarac at the time), and this was really my first taste of a fitness journey. I would go to class about four times a week, and I would genuinely tweak out on days where I couldn't go, so after a while I started working out at home. By working out, I really just mean core exercises. It was a really bad fitness regiment, but it paid off; I had relatively strong abdominal muscles for years. They weren't prominent, but they were definitely there!

I kept doing Taekwondo until the end of June. Firstly, the people at the studio started getting pretty lax with their masks. There was also a girl named Angel who would kick the living shit out of everyone, even if you were told to make light contact. Thankfully for me, I am apparently very bony and hurt to make physical contact with, so after a while she threw softer kicks. But my breaking point at this studio was when they started re-hiring staff. Up until this point, it had just been Master Anthony teaching classes, but then they brought back this other guy to help out, and oh my GODDDD he was a fucking prick. I only had him once, but it was enough for me. He was so strict and uptight, and when Angel and I were sparring, he got on my ass multiple times for making too much contact. Mind you, I'M FIGHTING FOR MY FUCKING LIFE AGAINST THIS BOOTLEG AMAZON WHO'S TRYING TO CRACK MY STERNUM.

So yeah, I quit.

But while I stopped doing Taekwondo, I actually managed to stick with my workouts. At least, until I started going to school in-person again. That shit really curb-stomped my energy. I didn't really do much in regards to physical activity for the rest of high school, except for a brief stint at a new Taekwondo place in Weston. After a while, though, I was kinda sick of it, and was really only going because there was a girl I thought was pretty, and that's not worth spending a monthly fee on.

Again, not much else happened for the rest of high school. I did a little workout here and there, got some pumps, some gains, you know how it is. But now we reach the reason I wrote this post.

Imagine I also put the peter griffin basketball image here

I love basketball. I really don't know where it came from; if you remember my earlier days in this sport, me and the ball had beef.

There wasn't any specific moment that got me into basketball, but little things over the course of months. In junior year of high school, I was out at a pizza place (called Sicilian Oven, highly recommend) with my dad, and they were playing the Eastern Conference Finals of the Heat vs. Celtics. As a self-proclaimed Celtics hater, I'm glad this was what initiated me into basketball.

After that, I started getting a little bit of basketball content on my Instagram and YouTube feeds, and after engaging with them they started taking over my home page. I thought it would be another random phase, or maybe an on-and-off interest, but over the next year I just kept watching basketball videos. It wasn't like I was actually watching games, but I was watching videos about players, coaches, drama, etc.

What drove me to start actually paying attention to the regular season games was the 2024 playoffs; I was at a birthday dinner for my friend Shreya at Yard House, and straight in front of me they were playing one of the Mavericks vs. Timberwolves games. I loosely followed the rest of the playoffs, generally rooting for the Mavs, and was sorely disappointed by the Finals (I refuse to acknowledge who won). But for the rest of the summer, I kept watching basketball videos and following stuff that happened during the offseason, and when it came time for me to start at university, the basketball brainrot finally got through to me.

My GOAT Shreya

gym bro era

I moved in on August 17th, and a week later was the first time I tried playing basketball at the on-campus gym. It's become an addiction since then.

I wanted to be consistent in the gym when I started here, and the only reason I've been able to achieve that is because of basketball. It's so much fun to me, and I'm genuinely at the point where my workout regiment revolves around what I want to get better at on the court. I started going to the gym to feel better about my physical appearance, and while it's still a motivator, basketball has completely overtaken that reason.

I know a lot of people who are the "Ughhhh I need to work out" type but don't really have a goal nor idea where to start. So I, an unqualified buffoon, feel that if talking about my experience in fitness and what I've learned might help even just one person, I'd be happy with that.

So now, some advice.

STRETCH. Muscle soreness is completely manageable if you stretch the muscles you're about to activate in your exercises. When I get to the gym, the first thing I do is head to the "yoga studio" area and stretch every muscle. If I'm playing basketball, I'll start with my toes/feet (idgaf if you think it's weird, I'm not walking around with a sore big toe), then stretch my ankles in every direction, then do calves, inner thighs, and hamstrings. I spend the most time on my hamstrings, but then I move on to the hips, glutes (to any dudes reading this I promise it is not gay to stretch/work out your glutes grow up), and from there I start moving to the upper body. I'll start with the obliques and lower back (which is my favorite stretch by far), then do abs, upper back, triceps, fingers, wrists, and forearms. After that I'll do biceps and pecs, then finish with shoulders.

When you type it out it looks like a lot, but this takes me 5-10 minutes depending on how lazy I am. Is it necessary to stretch every muscle? Not necessarily. If you're just doing bicep exercises, it doesn't make much sense to stretch your glutes, but if you're playing a sport it would make sense to go more full-body. I just like to stretch everything anyways; it's a good way to wake your body up and stretching consistently is really good for your body as you age. 

You're also supposed to stretch after working out, but I am extremely lazy after I finish, so I'll just try to stretch the specific muscle groups I just worked out. I do not have the effort to do a full-body stretch again.

My next piece of advice: DIET. I say "diet" in the general sense, not just eat less to get skinny. It's important to have a reason for working out, and the diet will depend on your goals. For example, I'm currently trying to lose fat and get to 155-160 pounds (I am about 165 right now). My reason for doing this is to be more agile and quicker when I play basketball, since my physique is naturally kind of stocky.

I'm trying to eat less calories, but also I don't eat enough protein, so I'm trying to shoot for 90g/100g of protein on days I work out to maintain and develop my muscles. The hardest part of the diet is eating right; I love cooking but I hate using my dorm's communal kitchen, so I used to buy a lot of pre-made stuff. The amount of sodium in them is so high, so I cut those out of my diet and try to incorporate a lot more unprocessed shit, like zero sugar yogurt and granola (my new favorite snack). Processed carbs are like crack for me, so trying to stop eating candy and ice cream and all that is really tough. 

But hey, I'm trying! I think the most important part is making a conscious effort to eat a little bit better every day. Not everyone needs a crazy change in their diet, but listening to my body makes me feel better about myself, physically and mentally. Also, eat your vitamins!

The last thing I'd say, and unfortunately this won't be capitalized and bolded because I don't feel like it, is to have fun!

Sounds a bit corny, but like I said earlier, the only reason I go to the gym at this point is because I love basketball. It's the most fun I have at the gym, and I probably would've quit if I was still going just to "look better". My current gym schedule is wake up at 7AM to play basketball (I'd get there around 7:30), and I'll usually leave around 9:30-10:30 depending on my classes. Last semester I would finish basketball an hour early so I could spend an hour or so lifting weights, but by the end of the semester I stopped doing weight training because doing all that in the span of three hours is suicide-inducing.

So now I do basketball in the mornings and lift weights after I finish classes, generally around 6PM. I also have Ensure protein shakes that I drink as soon as I get home from the gym (anabolic window or whatever the fuck). It sounds like a lot, but I do basketball because I have fun, I stretch because I enjoy being flexible and like the long-term benefits, I try to do exercises I don't hate (FUCK RDLs), and I am working on enjoying dieting. 

2 months in jim vs. 4 months in jim

Almost been six months, need to take a progress pic soon. I think that's all I have to say in terms of my fitness journey. It was a lot of yap, but I like talking about it, though, so. Cope.

Norf Norf by Vince Staples

seppuku counter: 8

So.

Happy New Years. Salutations. Yada yada.

I recently started my second semester, and this one is very special because I'm beginning my major; Creative Writing.

Last semester I was also doing an English class, but it was one of those lame-o "this is the proper way to write an essay" thingamajigs that you just have to chug through without trying to down a vial of sulfuric acid, so the major-specific classes I'm taking now are a real step up.

A thousand thanks to gleeb, shmerb, and the divine bodhisattvas for letting there be enough space for me to get into the Worldbuilding in Fiction workshop. A few days ago we had our first actual workshop, which is really just peer reviewing a few people's short stories. Unfortunately, the point of this blog post isn't to reminisce on that experience, although I did really enjoy the critiques I got and the whole conversation around it.

Instead, I feel more inclined to post the first draft of my short story on here. I don't want to really talk about it until after it's complete, but I feel obligated to mention the fact that I did not finish, so pretty much everything after the phone call was very rushed as I had to end it somehow for the deadline. If you do go through the hassle of reading it; first off, thank you, and secondly, if you could find it in yourself to text me some feedback (positive, negative, anything) I'd really appreciate that.

He was about eight-seventeenths of the way down the winding road when he noticed the portcullis had been raised before his arrival. It was a rather peculiar event, given the now-former master of the grounds’ insistence on eccentricity and displays of power. This was the type of man who’d own a portcullis, after all. The type of man who’d will artificial lakes and hills to obtrude an otherwise direct path to his house (which was, of course, to be nomenclated exclusively as a “manor” on all associated legal paraphernalia and in all sophistications of conversation), and then have the gall to divide said path into seventeenths, one’s progression through which being marked only at each multiple of four. Just after the four-seventeenths sign was the portcullis, a true monument of generational wealth, and it was operated by a kind guard named Alfonse, who’d wave you down before you approached and radio the security hub to raise the gate. It was Alfonse’s absence that day that allowed him to pass through without noticing. Mister Barbosa had always made it a point to have the portcullis lowered and guests screened, no matter if they had already visited hundreds of times, or had been invited by the master of the house himself.
    But today it was raised, and he couldn’t help but feel that the change was an omen of grave misfortune. As he approached the unmarked seventeenth-seventeenth of his journey, he caught from the corner of his eye the interim steward of the house whose whim now carried the authority to retire such an excessive excuse of security. His beat-up Volkswagen Beetle coughing its way up the final leg of the driveway, he watched as her figure disappeared from the window, and mentally prepared himself for the untold horrors of stilted niceties that were surely about to unfold. 
    And as if the two were synchronized on some great cosmic clock, the grand entrance swung open at the same time as his car door, the man muttering a silent prayer to deities he’d never believed in as he swung his bag over his person, exiting the vehicle in the stoic grace of a dead man walking.
    “Barry!” the woman exclaimed, arms outstretched as she tapped leisurely down the staircase. She was a rather tall woman, or at least taller than himself, with eyes of piercing green clarity that seemed transplanted into an otherwise husk-like facial structure.
    “Hello, Miss Barbosa,” he sighed. She paused, placing her hands on her hips and smirking; a body movement that might be considered endearing, of course presuming that it were performed by someone who even vaguely resembled the word charm. “Oh, please,” she said, now trudging slowly down the steps, “I know Santiago insisted on all that--incessant--formality, but you don’t have to worry about it anymore. You can just use my first name.”
    Barry considered this for a moment. He began to think of calling her Helen, but for some reason he could not will his vocal chords to make the sound. It would be too humanizing.
    Now staring at her, mentally fumbling in a moment of disassociation that can only be described as ghost-in-the-machine-ing, he watched as she, seemingly oblivious to the awkward lapse in conversation, scooped up his arm and, teeth bared into what he believed to be the implication of a smile, led him into the house. 

----

    Clarisse Barbosa-Smith was a smart woman. She had clawed her way up through her grandfather’s company by the pain of her own labors, and she’d be damned if she ever let anyone tread over her hard work. She, perched in the corner of the parlour with a glass of 1986 Quintarelli Recioto, examined now, for the twenty-fourth time, her surroundings.
    Sitting upon the central chesterfield was Luis, chatterboxing as per usual. Clarisse and the rest of the family had discovered long ago that Luis possessed a unique genetic trait that imbibed himself, and presumably any future carriers, with the ability to talk so much while saying so little. This ability manifested itself currently in a discussion of the untapped potential of cryptocurrency, directed more at his captive audience than to them. His closest victim, her father, laid out over the nearby divan, eyes drawn tightly closed, face smothered by his hand, perhaps in an attempt to suffocate himself to escape the conversation.
    A distance away from the two, lounging in an armchair, was David, whose posture and general existence managed to conjure both disgust and anger from Clarisse’s subconscious. At the moment, he was attempting to interject Luis’ tirade, though whether it was to refute or support the speech was unclear to all.
    “...and it’s only going to accumulate more value as time goes on,” Luis continued, “so the longer you wait to jump on the train-”
    “But how do you know that it’s going to-” David started.
    “-the faster it’s gonna be moving when you try to catch hold. You can’t just grab onto a speeding train, right?”
    “Well, yeah, that’s right, but-”
    “And that’s why the time is now, people,” he said, aimed at her father as if he were part of the conversation. “You have to get a ticket and hop on board before the train leaves the station.”
    “I don’t quite see where your analogy-”
    “You can’t just wave to the conductor through the window and ask him to stop the train and open the door for you while the train’s barreling down the tracks, right? Because the moment they go right through that little tunnel and you’re hanging for dear life on the outside, SPLAT goes David!”
    This analogy drove the conversation to a heated, albeit amusing temperament, but Clarisse had already stopped listening, for fear she might get an aneurysm. Her focus shifted instead on the opposite corner of the room, where Leo, now for the twenty-fourth time, caught her gaze, yet again startling him out of his hushed conversation with Aunt Selene. He was never this skittish, which made his reactions stand out. She didn’t suspect anything of it, but could not deny her piqued intere-
    CRASH!
    A vase suddenly smashed on the floor before Clarisse, as the three J’s came barreling into the parlour, each climbing over the other in what could only be described as the worst game of leapfrog that has ever been played. Clarisse managed to move closer to the fire in time to escape the trio’s next target; the wall. As the largest J, Jason, began yowling in pain, forehead swelling by the second, his parents entered, giggling at the incident at an almost nauseating pitch.
    “Oh, sweetie. You have to be more careful around those corners,” Jeremy said, arm squeezing his wife disgustingly close to his person. The woman, giving her much-younger husband a deep kiss, presumably as part of some witchcraft to steal his youth, dislodged herself from him, beaming ear-to-ear as she ran up and swallowed Clarisse in a bear hug. “Oh, Reesie Puff! How have you been? It’s been so long!”
    “Hello, Jessica.” Clarisse managed to pry herself free from the woman, allowing Jessica to sicc herself on the distant Leo as Jeremy approached.
    “Hello, Clarisse. Long time no see.”
    She grunted in response, staring him down. His face seemed to be torn between a feigned smile and confused awkwardness--exactly where she wanted him. Out of the corner of her eye, she could just barely make out Jessica leaning towards Leo, whispering something, when David came up from behind, arm contorting itself around his shoulders.
    “Well,” he laughed, “look who it is!” Shrugging his arm off, Clarisse took a seat beside her father, ears enjoying the newfound peace as Luis joined the three J’s in their latest iteration of Destroy the Manor. Her father tapped the side of her leg, propping himself up to look with her into the hearth. He was a man of very few words, so it was through small moments like these that Clarisse felt present with him.
    “MIGGY!” 
    Her father jumped to his feet fast enough to avoid a love-tackle from Jessica, the force of which sent her flying headfirst into the cushion. Pushing herself up, she gasped theatrically. “How dare you, mister. Avoiding your baby sister?!”
    Turning away, she pouted like a child, huffing and puffing. Clarisse looked away as her father approached her aunt, her focus instead returned to Leo and Selene. Closer now than before, she was just barely unable to pick up their conversation over the sounds of Luis yelling at the J’s. Determined to discover the topic of conversation, she leaned forward, inching her way to-
    “I have some information about Dad’s death.”
    She froze. Not wanting to reveal that she overheard the hushed conversation happening right next to her, she remained still as Jessica’s footsteps echoed towards the doorway, shortly followed by her father’s. She turned to watch them leaving, eyes bewildered, unable to decide between following them or staying. As the pair approached the exit, the sharp click of heels on stone marched their way in, followed by a sing-song exclamation.
    “It’s time!”

----

    Barry watched as Miss Barbosa blew through Miguel and Jessica, whirling about the room with swift chatter. Watching her scold her three youngest grandchildren and one man-child, Barry took a terse step through the now-frozen siblings who remained blocking the doorway, offering a meager grunt as greetings. He found himself thankful for the family matriarch, pulling the full focus of the room to herself as he shuffled towards the fireplace. The only ones who seemed to notice him were Clarissa, by virtue of her proximity to the fireplace, and Jessica’s son, who stood by the far wall next to Miss Barbosa’s other daughter, Selene.
    Barry often had a difficult time remembering the names of the family members, as well as their relation to one another. Removing the contents of his bag, Barry tried to recall the name of Jessica’s son. He possessed a countenance where you could talk to him for an hour, walk away from, and completely forget you two ever met, something that Barry had actually done at an event years ago. Regardless, he was sure that the man’s name began with a “K”, though his extensive process of recalling the only two “K” names he knew was cut short by the lady of the house.
    “Let's get this show on the road,” Miss Barbosa said, perching herself on the edge of the couch near Clarissa. The family soon gathered around, trailing closer like a horde of undead. Barry shuffled his papers around, looking for the first page of the will. “Just one moment,” he announced. After some brief delay, he found the page and took a deep breath. “So, as you all know, I am here to read the final will and testament of Santiago Antonio de Jesus Barbosa,” he said, stumbling a bit over the pronunciation of Mister Barbosa’s full name. 

He read ahead, in case of any other words that might jumble his tongue, wondering once more why this couldn’t have been an email. He’d posed the very same thought to Miss Barbosa on their walk to the living room.

“Oh, you know how hard it is to get everyone together at our age,” she had told him, his arm still firmly trapped in her grasp. He took particular offense to the implication of “our age”, as Barry was about three decades younger than the walking corpse. She had sighed heavily. “I just hope that my husband’s death can bring us all closer together. Make us stronger, as a family.”
    Barry now watched as Miss Barbosa pinched Clarissa’s cheek, pulling it to check the elasticity. “You should really pay more attention to how much you’re eating.” Seeing Clarissa biting her words, he decided to mediate the tension of the room by speeding up the reading.
    “In the interest of time, I’m going to go ahead and skip to the naming of beneficiaries and division of-” 
    “COULD YOU BE LOVED”
    His ringtone for Lucy blared through his pocket as he scrambled, accidentally dropping the papers in his haste. Scuffing them back together and placing them above the fireplace, he stood up to find the entire Barbosa bloodline staring at him in hungry expectation, waiting for him to decline the call and continue with the oration. But, much to their disappointment, Barry excused himself and left the room.
    Lucy never called him when he was at work. The only time that she did was ten years, seven months, and twelve days ago, scolding Barry for leaving the oven on while he was gone. His dearly beloved, blessed with photographic memory, had never let go of the mistake, bringing it incident up at least thrice a week. To get a call from her while at work was an omen of unparalleled disaster. 
    Hand quivering, he raised the phone up, managing a hesitant “Hello?”
    “Hello, dear. Forgetting something?”

----

Clarisse’s mind raced with questions. Too many abnormalities had occurred in too short of a time. She thought about approaching Jessica, but she wasn’t even sure about the nature of the information. Besides, where Leo’s earlier behavior had been an amusement for her at best, she now wondered if he knew about something she didn’t. He and his mother were harboring secrets, and Clarisse wouldn’t let them leave without telling her.

    She got up, deciding that Leo was the easier target. She made her way around the family to where he stood, when suddenly David blocked her path.
    “Dearest,” he smiled, “since it looks like you’ll be moving up in the family company, I think it’s time we talk about…maybe, finally, having-”
    “Not right now. I’m busy.”
    David scoffed, pressing his eyes closed to recall the exact response she’d heard him rehearsing in the mirror earlier. “Yes, well, you’ve said this many times now, but I do believe that-and she’s gone,” he muttered, having opened his eyes to find the space where Clarisse stood now empty.
    Right behind Leo, she reached out to grab his shoulder, when every head swiveled to the source of a loud gasp. Standing before the hearth, her grandmother had picked up and read through the papers.
    “Nothing. Nothing. He’s left us with nothing.”
    The first to move was Luis. He grabbed the papers from their grandmother’s shaking hands, skimming through them aloud. “Being of sound mind…all my debts…bequest the entirety of my estate, including but not limited to all cash assets and stocks in my possession, as well as the manor on 129 S Raven Ln, to any one charity picked by the executor of my will.”
    They sat in silence for a moment, contemplating the news, until Selene noticed their one hope. “Well, who’s the executor?” she squeaked.
    Eyes aglow with salvation, Luis again scrambled through the pages, muttering incoherently until he suddenly stopped.
    “Well?” Selene asked.
    He read slowly. “I nominate and appoint Barry Winkler as my personal representative and the executor of my will.”
    Clarisse stared in shock, her thoughts again pounding through her brain. She couldn’t believe that this outsider held so much power over her, as if someone else would have the right to deny her what she earned. 
    “I knew he was up to something.” Clarisse turned to listen to her grandmother. “He’s been coming to the manor almost every day for the past month.”
    “We need to get him back in here and make him explain,” Clarisse said, standing and marching out of the room. But as she entered the foyer, the only thing she saw was the front door splayed open, the sound of a beat-up Volkswagen Beetle coughing its way down the winding road.

uhhhhhhhhhh. pebis?

i'm an adult now. i think

Before I... well... yap, there's something I want to say about the way I write these blogs, that you honestly may have noticed on past posts of mine, and that is that I write over a long period of time and often come back to revise or correct different sections. I don't always write sequentially, so sometimes I may backpedal something I already wrote or something that is mentioned later; I try to keep it as comprehensible as possible, but there may be some time-related weirdness. Happy reading.

So now that my research paper and finals are finished, I really have no excuse not to write. Thanksgiving break really curb-stomped and Of Mice and Men'd my work ethic but I think I can maintain it over winter break, as I will have virtually nothing to do for the two-or-so weeks I'm spending with my dad. The original goal I set for myself in the first draft of this post was to have 15 pages of Home written by the time this gets published.

It seemed like a reasonable goal, and yet when I finally reached only the fifth page, I realized just how poorly planned this entire project is. My outline document, which is barely even a page itself, is so unorganized. It even has a section called Add Somewhere, the contents of which I have not added anywhere in the past month or two it's existed. It's such a shitshow that the worldbuilding, which is arguably my favorite part of writing any story, is just--well actually, let me show you.

bruh.

Back to the coping board

So after realizing that I would be stabbing myself in the foot by trying to write like this, I went down the incredible rabbit hole of self-deprecation and found myself questioning (for the nth time this week) my career choices, my work ethic, my value as a human being, yada yada yada. 

I can be dramatic sometimes.

But after my drama-queen spiral, I wanted to figure out somewhere to go from here, some way to improve. And that desire to better myself ended up in a solid multi-hour doomscroll session, BUT where it landed me was important.

For context, my favorite director is Christopher Nolan, and the first of his movies I saw was actually Oppenheimer. I watched a LOT of interviews of him and the cast after the movie came out, and I think it's a fair claim to say that movie is a big reason for why I don't completely hate filmmaking. But that's besides the point; the point here is, after watching Interstellar in theaters a few days ago, I was in another Chris Nolan-interview binge-watching state of mind.

And through these different interviews, I made my way back to an Oppenheimer interview I watched a while ago. But there was one moment towards the end that I completely overlooked last time. Matt Damon talks about being unable to pick a favorite/best Nolan movie, that it's just impossible. 

As the little cretin of spite and malice that I am, I tried to immediately disprove that claim. And yet I couldn't.

I started thinking more about what actually does separate Nolan's films from one another. I've not seen all of them, but the ones I have were so different from each other that it seemed pointless to compare 

any together. For example, is Memento less awe-inspiring than Oppenheimer? Yeah, well, no shit. Very few movies can ever compare to that kind of gravity.

But is it any lesser than Oppenheimer? I thought about that for a while. I really enjoyed Memento and the conversation it provoked, on a level identical to that of Oppenheimer. It got me thinking about what I truly value in a film, and on a simpler level what I value in a story.

I ultimately settled on the opinion that both of these films are masterpieces that live and breathe within the parameters of the story; and what I mean by that is that Memento would never ask for the grandiose, theatrical explosions. Oppenheimer is a whirling, larger-than-life hurricane of a movie, yet it's made that way because that's what best fit the parameters of visualizing the life of the man whose creation literally changed the chemical composition of our entire planet and all carbon-based life.

Memento is meant to be human; the plot, the themes, the dynamics between characters are all pieces of a puzzle, one that just happens to be smaller than Oppenheimer. If we think of stories as puzzles, then yes, sometimes we may need more pieces and a larger canvas to fully capture the image, yet that does not mean that a smaller puzzle with less pieces is any less beautiful.

At this point, I may just be rambling a perspective you disagree with, or may have already realized, so I will try to summarize why I find this philosophy important.

I don't know what Home is. The idea started in some feedback I wrote for my friend Wade's script. After a bit of brainstorming, I believed it could make a good short film. Then I realized there were so many avenues I could explore with it that it might work best as a limited series. And then I thought it could be shortened to a feature-length film. Without making up my mind on what it could be, I just blasted past worldbuilding and fully outlining the story and started writing. The story as it is now is a small puzzle that I've lost the pieces for, and yet all the initial planning and ideas indicated that this should be a much larger puzzle. I wanted to capture a human theme with a massive plot, and I think it was disrespectful to the story for me to attempt that without genuine foresight and planning.

Ordinarily, I'd end the blog somewhere around here, but I'd like to take the time in this post to really explore the process of resetting my writing style and building back from the ground up.

but before that!

This is a blog. I'm kind of obligated to make it a mishmash of insight into my mind and just horseshit gabbing. So.

I've been dealing with brain fog for a while now. As you can tell from the title, it was sort of foundational to the idea behind this website. But boy, oh boy, has it gotten worse.

Visualization of my Prefrontal Cortex

Short-form content is really a pain in the ass. I deleted TikTok and Twitter years ago because I was genuinely addicted to them, but recently Instagram reels and YouTube shorts have been slitting my ever-scarred brain yet again. I think I may just have to delete the latter app off my phone; I really only go on it to watch RTGame, basketball clips, or check if CoryxKenshin is back (he unfortunately is not). 

Fun fact, the time between writing these two paragraphs was spent doomscrolling reels. Art truly imitates reality and whatnot.

What really frustrates the ever-living fuck out of me about Instagram is that it's such a convenient app. I have so many friends that I only talk to on there, because WOW am I bad at striking up text conversations. I'm sure that, given enough time off Instagram, I could become better at making the time to reach out to those people, but socializing is such a damn hassle.

There's really only one genuinely good solution I found, which is the Distraction Free Instagram app. Which is unfortunately only on Android. So I guess I will cope and eventually try deleting the app. Again.

this hurts me more than it hurts you. Actually it really hurts only me.

To begin improving my present writing, I will face my greatest fear. Ever.

Reading my past works.

The reason for subjecting myself to such a Herculean feat of self-torture is that, while I sometimes watch a movie, read a book, or generally consume a piece of content, and subsequently analyze/review what I liked about it and think about how I might implement that in my own work, I find myself realizing that I haven't really gotten better at writing since...ever?

You might say that that's an exaggeration, to which I would say shut the fuck up, but on a more serious note I feel like there's some validity to the hyperbole. I read a lot as a kid, and my writing style reflected the random amalgamation of words I'd read or phrases I knew. It was like throwing paint at a canvas; I knew what each word meant but there was never any collective intent behind each word choice, or in other words sentences didn't really build off their predecessors.

To begin this process of self-immolation, I'd like to start with a document I found in my old personal email that I'm 60% sure I didn't write.

This document, titled "AoA: Worldbuilding" is twelve pages long. For this reason, as I can't imagine I managed to plan that many pages of a project, I don't think I wrote this, and yet I have editing access, have no recollection of it at all, and it reads like something I'd write. So with the rather large chance of this being some random person's work I'm shitting on, I'd like to steamroll pretty much everything about this amalgamation of horseshit.

First of all, what the actual fuck is this language. The pantheon of the Gods is comprised of Jalzahar, Turnagg, Aidmora, Varao, Axdos, Merenos, and the Ur-Dragon. 

WHAT THE FUCK IS AN UR-DRAGON?!

Ignoring the names of these Gods, presumably none of them grounded in some common fictional language, the actual power delegations between them make no sense. Jalzahar, who was pretty much the catalyst of this 'Divine Ruin' that killed most of the Gods, is the God of Light, Justice, Righteousness, etc. Ok. Sure, I can see that. Then we have someone like Merenos, who's the God of Magic, Knowledge, and Hope. Okay... I can see that, too. There's not so many Gods of natural phenomena but I suppose this is a society that valued ideology and philosophical thou-- Ur-Dragon, God of Dragons.

What the fuck.

I don't want to get too much into the actual worldbuilding, because I'm not so sure if this is my own work, so I'll just leave it at this.

Yeah, I don't think I wrote this.

After deeper examination, I've found virtually nothing else on my Docs, save for a diss track against Cian. This was made as a part of Di$$ Squad, which, in case you didn't go to school at Nova Middle, or did go but were generally considered "normal", was a hip, burgeoning rap group formed by my old friend Taeshaun, a group I was somewhat part of. I say "somewhat" in the sense that it was really only "somewhat" a group, as no one wanted to be a part of it except for Taeshaun and we never actually made any music. I've lived many lives.

Anyways, here's the first verse.

Leaving the realm of Google Docs, I'd like to take a look at what little Final Draft scripts I have left. I believe the first thing I wrote on Final Draft was a mockumentary called Super Maurice. It has unfortunately been lost to the sands of time (I re-discovered it years ago and deleted it due to embarrassment). I've lost a lot of my past works to the same issue.

One of the few remaining ones is a skit I actually wrote in my Junior year called Next to Godliness. You can read it yourself, but it's a mockumentary inspired by a then-recent binge of Modern Family and the general state of affairs in the apartment I was living in at the time. It's pretty alright for a two-to-three-minute skit, I think it would really just come down to production and editing to get the punchlines to land properly. Not my best work, but also not bad.

The next script I'd like to look at is my favorite from high school; Weefle, Beefle, Shnoop! I say it's my favorite not because it's particularly well-written, but I just had the most fun writing it from the perspective of a slightly demented, omnipotent game show host. This one is inspired by the episode of Voltron: Legendary Defender called The Feud! Again, I don't really have much to say here, but mainly because the critiques of my next and final work apply to this one too. Also, Weefle, Beefle, Shnoop, unlike its predecessor, was actually made and aired on my high school TV program's YouTube channel, so you can see that in all its poorly-executed glory.

If you were to ask me what my best work is, I would say INCANDESENCE. Do I think it's objectively good? No. But it represents a lot to me, as it was the hardest video I've ever made and I refused to give up on it. In fact, this blog itself was made to document the process of making it as part of a class, and you can watch the final thing here.

So while I have a lot of previous posts showing my process making the short film, I've never really had a chance to fully dog on the script. Firstly, I'd like to say that, though the film is stylistically inspired by Interstellar, I think it's more fair to say that it's more inspired by Christopher Nolan's works as a whole. For example, the intro, both with its "cold open" and supertitle, are pretty much a direct reference to the script of Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer

INCANDESENCE

By the way, the line of prose I included is from the poem She Was a Phantom of Delight, which I had to read in AICE Literature AS. I hated that class, but there were some takeaways I gained from it. The full line was "And now I see with eye serene/The very pulse of the machine", which was in reference to the author's wife, but I thought it fit well as a metaphor for the black hole being the pulse of the story, as Noah's life and his work started bleeding together. Again, you'll have to go to my past posts (pre-April 2024) to see the full story and BTS.

But back to the script. One thing I've really had a hard time coming to terms with in screenwriting is the lack of detail included in the page; not only does this become a difficulty due to my background in writing prose, but also because I'm not a big fan of dialogue. I love writing dialogue, and I find the intricacies you convey through it interesting, but I seem to prefer having characters communicate through their actions, not subtext.

But because of this, the script is kind of... bad. It's written like a book--a very overstimulating book. The amount of underlining, italicizing, and bolding in that shit is too much. I remember there being some method behind the madness; one was for sound, one was for emphasis, yada yada yada. But trying to read this gives me a major headache, one the likes of which have never been fathomed. If Zeus read this shit there'd be two Athenas.

But for as much as I now dislike this script, I think it was a very good starting point. You may agree that this is a very detail-heavy screenplay and rather overstimulating, but the writing style of this was, for the most part, inspired by First Man. If you read even the first page of that, I think you'll agree.

At any rate, looking back at my past screenplays, I think I need to pursue a more minimalist approach to the details of a scene. One thing that stands out to me about Nolan's scripts is that it leaves a lot of room for collaboration and new ideas; if everything is written out, with every detail done to a T, it doesn't really encourage other people to help fill in the blanks, and that's a very special feature of filmmaking that just doesn't translate to something like writing a novel.

Getting off my Gargantuan Ass

"So what did we gain from that?" - my inner voice after participating in a Timothee Chalamet look-alike contest, but also, presumably, your inner voice after reading all that. Well, you probably gained nothing (yay!), but going through these pieces of horseshit helped me understand that I need to make a conscious effort to condense my script to the barest level, while still keeping every necessary detail. Basically, to say everything with as little as possible. It's very counterintuitive, but I think it'll be fun.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's time to start on:

Pretend it just says "WORLDBUILDING". I couldn't really find anything that has only the one word on it. So. Also it's not really a fantasy it's a sci-fi. So. I guess I will just commit seppuku to atone for this monstrous blunder.

Anywho.

A lot of the time with worldbuilding you center around a base idea and develop the world around it; its cultures, events, history, etc. For example, you might start with a base magic system and then slap in some nations based vaguely or tightly on real-world cultures, and from then on you work out the intricacies between these peoples and from there develop the history, political climate, and all that shit. You can also take that base idea and, instead of going through the hassle of building an entire world, just make it work within the real world. Harry Potter's a great representative of this; J.K. Rowling (had to wash my hands after typing that name out) just slapped magic into the world and reconfigured the Earth to accommodate a secret society of wizards.

The way I'm going about the worldbuilding for this project, though, is more along the lines of Dune (a thousand apologies for the amount of Frank Herbert shmeat-gobbling that has been displayed on this blog. The seppuku counter is now at two). Dune kind of takes the Harry Potter route, molding the story into the real world around the idea; except it does this at a point in time thousands of years from the present. I'm only going a few decades ahead, but like Herbert, I need to come up with a chain of events that logically lead from what the audience knows (our world as it is now) to the point where the story takes place.

This is basically a long-winded way of me saying Home is based on the real world and is a fictional alternate future. I should really add more TLDRs here.

The year is 2067. The environmental movement surged in 2046, spiking in support after Category 6 Hurricane Monty left over 20,000 dead, decimating South and Central Florida. The American government began to develop new technologies to both prevent further climate catastrophes and adapt to the new global environment, with the United Nations and global community swiftly following suit. The story takes place in a time of oceanification, or migration from land-based cities to ocean-based ones, with about 10% of the global population already living offshore.

That's about as much worldbuilding I feel like sharing right now. There's a lot more political and scientific details that I have written out that aren't fully developed, so I'm just not going to share those yet. 

One of the more important disclaimers I have to say regarding this piece of worldbuilding, as well as the rest of it as I continue to develop this project over the course of my future blogs, is that it's very important to me that I don't force these into the story. I'm giving full details here on this blog, but one of the things I hate most in media is exposition dumps.

THE ONLY good exposition dump

The full story shouldn't be handed to the audience. A good movie, TV show, or any piece of media, should give you the details--some hidden, some overt, some left out yet alluded to--and ask that you be the one to piece everything together. You don't have to make it some Dark Souls, FromSoft-level shit where nothing is given to the audience and every dot is connected by yourself (and VaatiVidya), but at the very least what you should do, and what I'm trying to do in this work, is give the audience enough to imagine the full puzzle, even if they can't find some pieces.

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I'm staying with my dad until after Christmas. At the time of writing this, it's Monday the 23rd, and my dad still has to work today, so in an attempt to entertain myself I took a walk.

He lives in the downtown area, so I'm walking past a lot of apartment complexes, government buildings, offices, shops, restaurants, etc. until I eventually reach this quaint little lake. It's all decorated for the holidays and it's nice to walk around and just listen to music. After about halfway around the lake, I notice a Publix and decide that, while I'm already here, I should just buy the ingredients we need for the food we're bringing to our family's Christmas party.

I get in, get out, but standing right outside this exit door is a homeless woman asking for food, who I just brushed straight past after she directly asked me for something, for anything really.

I spent the whole walk back thinking about that. One thing I've been taught, like many other people, growing up is to just kinda... ignore homeless people and pretend they don't exist. Again, I know that a lot of people do this, and it's not an act of malice so much as it is a concern for safety. You never know what anyone who stops you on the street's gonna do. But it just felt kind of different this time. I had a small cake that my dad asked me to get. It's not like giving away this cake would ruin the Christmas party; it's one of those things that's just gonna get half-eaten and forgotten in the leftovers. I had a sandwich that I bought because my dad works late and I just didn't feel like eating the stuff he already had in his fridge.

Giving her something to eat wouldn't have solved the root problem; she'd still have to worry about her next meal. But it's something almost trivial that I could've done that would have at least helped someone else a little bit.

It feels kind of performative, in a way, to be writing about this. "BREAKING: Middle class guy feels bad about wealth inequality" big whoop. But this is a blog, and I don't journal, so if there's anywhere I would talk about it, I guess it'd be here?

I think my main frustration with the whole situation is that I really can't do anything to genuinely help anyone. What the fuck is my broke ass gonna do to fix the homelessness crisis?? The only thing I seem to find myself doing is sitting here, in my cozy little apartment, eating the food someone in need asked me for, typing some bullshit to make me feel better about doing nothing. What pisses me off even more is that I'll probably just mope around about it some more, maybe a couple of hours, maybe the rest of the day, until eventually I wake up and just forget about it and go back inside my bubble.

Virtually nothing I do helps anyone. I don't say that to be a pessimist or self-deprecate, but making a cool story with neat little plot twists that probably won't see the light of day won't help feed someone. But also, the only way I can ever hope to actually make an impact on people's lives is through this meaningless horseshit, to become good enough at writing that I make enough money from it, and hopefully without losing my soul from any modicum of success, so that I can maybe just help someone sleep indoors.

Again, this could just be some performative gobbledegook that I'm spewing from nowhere, but I really don't want to wake up one day at fifty years old and find the collected value of my entire life just sitting on my bookshelf. I'd love to be a successful writer, but today just reminded me that if all I ever do is sit inside and try to get my bank account to the next zero, I think I'd be in hell.

Don't know when the next blog post will be. Hopefully by then I'll have enough of the worldbuilding settled to start figuring out the plot.

Happy Holidays. (Seppuku counter: 3)