Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1582: Thinking About Thinking

I was going to try and write something about the space and design of this office, but I don’t have anything that I can run with that I feel will work. I want things to work, but I’ve got nothing. So now I’m thinking about how I think about things.

I remember a while ago writing a thing about a tower, and I don’t think it went anywhere. I don’t remember it going anywhere, at least. At this point in time it does not matter, however. But maybe it does. Maybe if I were to read over everything I’ve written, I’d better understand how I think about things and why I think about things. Maybe it’d help me develop a better understanding of everything. I don’t know if I would, but I do wonder. Wondering is what I do a lot of and it seems to be what I’m best at doing. At least sometimes, anyway.

So I’m wondering about how I think about things. I’m thinking about how I think about things. Why did I write those two sentences in the way I wrote them, and in that particular order? How do I go about constructing a sentence that I feel makes sense? How do I go about putting words together in an order that follows conventions that have been set out? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t think about that enough, and perhaps I should think about it more often.

Maybe if I did that, I’d have a better understanding of how I can go about improving my writing. That would be awesome. But maybe I wouldn’t, and maybe I quite like my rough ways of going through things. Maybe I like the mess that I create, and maybe I don’t want to change that. I fear that I’d get too into the editing of things and that’d cause issues, as I’d start restructuring everything and then it’d lead to something actually worth the time spent reading. Why would I want to inflict that onto people? Why would I want to inflict that upon myself?

Maybe I don’t want to inflict anything.

The path to better writing is one paved with grave consequences, and I don’t think I have it in me to think about the way I write things. The way I think about things. The way I put thought into words that can be read. I don’t feel it is a safe and responsible thing to create a situation where people know what I’m on about. I don’t want to create something that could get out of hand and thus lead to some sort of success as people finally have an idea of what I’ve been going on about as I chose to create a situation where my writing made sense and led to something vaguely poignant, thus creating a situation where I have reached into their minds and their hearts in a way that affects them.

Rather keep the mess and overall senselessness.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 06:34:19

This started serious and became a silly bit of writing over time. It probably doesn’t work, but I don’t care. It was fun to write.

Written at work.

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One Thousand Word Challenge 254: Things Thinging

You know those times when you do the thing and the thing you do is the thing you do? Yeah. It’s one of those days. A day of things thinging and I’m here embracing it all. Or embracing nothing.

I’m not sure as to what I should be doing, but that’s oaky. I can kill some time. I can kill a lot of time, actually. I should be doing more productive things but I’m not, so here I sit. I sit and I get to sit whilst being tired. It’s a wonderful time.

There’s still a sense of time slipping away. I feel as though I am losing it, and I feel as though I should be moving. As though I should be movie. I feel as though I should be looking beyond the concrete and glass and all the structure that I feel is so relentlessly cold and devouring, and I should be in a grand, open emptiness. As though I should be experiencing something out there, and weeping freely, and feeling something. I feel happy, but I feel as though I’m a spectator to my happiness. I don’t feel as though I am genuinely experiencing it.

I feel that, perhaps, I am too detached from what I desire. Too distant, too far removed. I’m yearning for something familiar and away from the city, but I’m a little bit bound at the moment. I can’t go much of anywhere, so I need to tough it out and hold on. I need to wait. Bide my time. Squirrel away my money.

I feel a great sadness for what is happening in the world, but I feel detached from that sadness. I feel as though I should actually be feeling it, but it’s not part of me. It’s kept away by something I don’t know. Or something I’m not familiar with. I’m peeling away from myself, maybe. I don’t know.

IS this all there is to life? Just all this suffering being witnessed from a distance? All this pain spread out and increasing constantly, and feeling powerless to do much of anything about it? Who decided that all the suffering and misery in the world was a fair trade to what we consider a functioning, modern society? Who said that this was the right way to be about things? I want to yell at them. I want to cry and yell at them, because this is just not right. Nor is it just.

Sometimes I feel like I’m someone who just looks out a window and longs for more. Sometimes I feel as though that’s all I can do. I know I can do more, but there’s so much all the time and it’s paralysing. I’m told that there’s opportunity out there, and I’m glad I get to work where I work. I’m glad I get to have the experiences that I have, but I feel lost and adrift, aimlessly floating through a space that’s continually reshaped, preventing me from getting some sort of necessary traction.

I go there and things have changed, so I try to go back to where I was but I can’t as there’s no open route anymore. I look around and it’s all a thick fog consuming everything, and then when it lifts all that is around me is a decayed, graying husk of a landscape. It’s one pockmarked with cold structure that is heavy and creates a terrible weight for the planet to bear.

People amble about to wherever they are heading and it all feels incredibly aimless. It feels as though all this moving toward locations to sit for a while in order to move out of them to get to another location and being paid money for this does not seem like how life should be lived. I have to wonder why we have collectively decided that this is the best course of action for everyone to take in order to live a life. It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel human. We keep doing it.

Maybe things will change sooner rather than later. Maybe our hands will be forced when it comes to change. I can only wonder about what lies ahead and where thigs go. All I can do is sit here and hope for the best, or rather that’s what I feel is all I can do.

The biggest issues are that too many people are willing to give up, and not enough people are willing to show how we can do more without having to try and be monumental about it all. At least, that’s what I think the two biggest issues are. There are probably plenty who would disagree with me, and that’s fine. I don’t mind, to be honest. I’ve other things that I want to worry about.

Ultimately though, I want to feel connected to where I am again. I want to feel some sort of realness to this all, and I know it’s real, but it doesn’t feel real. Out there, beyond the city, beyond the suburbs is what feels real to me. Being among the sound of nature and away from the sound of people. Feeling something, experiencing something. Getting things done and doing things among a cleaner air, and seeing massive, overwhelming spaces that make me feel small and appreciative of the world we live in. That is what I want to be around.

I think that it’s sometimes quite difficult to function in a way that people see as healthy. I think it’s difficult to keep on going through days of smearing activity. Things blending into a big swirl of nothingness that makes no sense and has no real rhyme or reason. Of course these things do make sense, but it all feels so lifeless and soulless to me, and I need to feed my soul. I need to feel a sense of attachment that I cannot readily feel right now.

I don’t want to feel like I’m detached from my feelings.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 14:15:39

This one felt like it took a long time to write, and I think it’s due to how heavy I got whilst writing it. It’s just a rather sad bit of writing.

Written at work.

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2814:2814スカイライン

One listen for this one, and it was much the same as last in some ways. I did spend a lot of time thinking about what I was hearing, which wasn’t good, but I do think what I wrote represents the song quite well.

2814’s “2814スカイライン” is from 2814.

I hope you enjoy.

A light percussion plays a gentle pattern, and something swirly spirals out from behind it. It spirals and comes forward, and within it more sound reveals itself. The percussion remains steady, unyielding, and it doesn’t need to do much more.

The sounds spiraling continue their flow, and they reveal themselves very slowly. They flow as though a fresh exposure, and within them some tension. Some foreboding comes forward, and from them structures rise and rise further, and keep on looking and reaching further still. Towering, smooth, shimmery, and as though experiencing a memory for something yet to happen.

A future comes forward, a grandness, and a discomfort among this sterility. But it’s all wonderful and cool and sleek, and it speaks of the idea of a better tomorrow, even if only in terms of aesthesis.

Buzzing shoots across the great space here and there, among curls and curvatures. something has taken off and is flying away and toward, and it’s all some sort of imposing structure and design, all woozy, spreading out and spreading forward, and toward and away, and it goes on and on, and it seems reachable through clear plastics and glasses, keeping it all out of reach, but appreciable still.

The sounds seem to heave and rise, and rise a little more. They are heaving and dragging mass with them the best they can; a congealed mass gaining more, then shrinking, diminishing to a single point compressing, minimising and getting smaller and more compressed, and somehow disappearing, then the song ends.

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2814: 我愛你

One listen, and this one I just went in and knocked out. There was one particular part where I got stuck and started to think a bit, but thankfully it wasn’t as long as it felt and I got back on track.

There was another point where I started wondering if this song is about sex or not, and some of that came through. The piece is interesting in that it is – at least to me – quite open to interpretation, so it might just be about anything, really.

2814’s “我愛你” is from 2814.

I hope you enjoy.

Something aethereal, something haunted. It reaches forward. It reaches through vagueness, and it keeps reaching and calling, but it cannot get past the veil. Percussion falls in drops, and a voice moans, or calls out. And disappears. And something rubbery and squeaky now falls down a window. It falls in drips, and it soon is smothered by the warbling, wavering scene. An image that does not maintain its structure and keeps on changing.

Voice calls out, percussion rains down, and more structured percussion comes in on a polished beam of brightness. Everything moves forward as it is expected to, and the sounds shift and change as they need to. They move in a slow procession and a scene of brightness, and a bassy sound heaves and halts in a steady motion.

In and out brightness moves, bright and multiplied and spread out across the space. It relaxes, but it does not feel relaxed, and it when the bass disappears it’s almost as though everything is being shrunk down into a cassette. The percussion disappears and these loops are left yearning, hoping for something to let them free, moving in and out of passion, trying to touch it and experience the romance of it all, but only ever being able to get an impression. Only ever able to experience a facsimile of what they desire.

The percussion and bass return, heaving, striking out, thumping and thudding, moving with precision, moving with a looseness. Loose and proceeding, loose and precise and filthy among the swirl of ambiguity. The cold fug spreading through a darkly blue space, filled with noise and clarity in equal measure, and continuing ever onward.

Sounds fade away and voice moans, warbling away into nothingness. Familiarity returns in a melancholic moment of rest,  found in a connective moment. Bits of sound come out here and there among the loop, lost among the waves. Lost among the familiarity of sound and expression, and everything peel back and fades away, leaving only impression, leaving noise whilst sound moans percussion drips on down, and leaving nothing at the song’s end.

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Elephant Gym: Ocean in the Night (Orchestra Version)

One listen.

Just went in, wrote whatever. Did my best to not think and knocked it out. Don’t know how it reads, but it felt good to write.

Elephant Gym’s “Ocean in the Night” is from two releases. The one I wrote about, the orchestra version, is from World. The original version is from Balance.

I hope you enjoy.

A plinking fades in, along with a warm and gently melody. When the vocals commence some sound pulls away. Guitar is there, melodic and light. Bits and pieces of other sound here and the vocals float along, soft and aloft. And then the percussion comes in.

The percussion itself is nice and structured and framing, or underpinning, and from it sounds pull away and disappear, or rather, diminish. Then everything energises and starts rising. The vocals rise too, and they rise and reach and sound climactic. Guitar rages on its own for a moment before everything returns and gently lowers.

In this new section there’s a little melancholy among the gentleness of everything, and it sort of comes to a momentary thinking point before coming to a little dance. A fascination with the fanciness of it all, and there’s this joy and innocence in the sounds as they all move around carefully, keeping their structure and keeping their sense of fun.

Another sort of lowering of things before the sounds all pick up and rise and rise and rise some more. The sounds gain their liveliness and their push, and it’s almost like skimming across a surface, but everything still feels gentle. And it gets to a point where a moment is held on and things seem beautiful, or at least trying to force beauty. And there’s layers and textures, and everything is vivid and lively and calm, and it’s a pleasant place to be.

It all builds and pushes and keeps going before finding the last few notes to emphasise just before the song ends.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1581: Fresh Day

The start of it all. The smell of a fresh day, coming out of the rain. Things curling around things. An expression finding a dawn hurled upon a grey sigh. Twisted, turning, finding words scrambling to get to the surface, but never quite getting there.

Everything twists and everything inverts. Where the stars lie are beyond the visible reach. Beyond what welcomes us into a warm state. Beyond the diminishing of the night. It all fades away and never seems to; it just disappears, and the day comes and the day is here.

People get around, walking here and there. They come into an old space and they fill the space with sound. The sound of their voices, the sound of their shuffling. The sound of their waking up in order to complete a task. To fulfill an obligation. To attend learning, or meetings, or many other things out there that they may need to get involved in. And it continues on.

The morning is young and innocent. It is a child that doesn’t need cradling or comfort. It comes here and it presents itself to you, and to everyone. It removes a veil cast across a vast space, and it looks toward the tomorrow. It learns quickly. It learns rapidly. It was born knowing that it, too shall pass. Its time is limited, and the many people running about, moving in throbbing crowds, moving to wherever they must, do not notice. Change is routine, and this has happened before, and it will happen again.

Rain implies itself. It does not fall, and it hangs there. It hangs in the sky, waiting. Waiting to change the shape of the day, waiting to press into the sides, to confirm, to transfer. To move mood and frame everything with a context, and it comes and goes as it needs.

A fresh day, a young day, and already getting toward an older day. Moving toward that inevitable change, toward what lies ahead. Changing the landscape, passing time, turning and turning as time passes and denotes various shifts. The day is young now, and it grows. It grows and eventually it withers away, and it shares a process it has shared with the night for far longer than we’ll ever know. We can only guess.

The day lives through people, the people live through the day. Everything becomes an exchange and offering, and it is dictated by how the day is and how people interact with it and each other, and every day is the same, but what people get out of it changes. Everything shifts and turns and becomes something new and old from varying perspectives and angles, but right now everything is young. Everything is young and youthful, and youth brings sound and presence and activity. Youth carries upon it a fresh growth, and the gathering of experience, and with the gathering of experience the day will gain its fill and subsume it before it disappears into past, as it always does.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 09:12:02

This one I slowed down on quite a bit. I started thinking about what I was writing and how I was writing it, and that resulted in a mess of words thrown together haphazardly.

Written at work.

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Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares: Pora Sotunda

One listen.

I had a fair bit of concern doing this as I was worried about wandering into misrepresentation. I didn’t want to do something like say “deep spirituality ethnic sounds”. Admittedly that’s a bit dramatic, but to me it seems that a lot of non-English music is often portrayed as being more spiritual, cosmic, or lazily classified as “ethnic” when it better described as folk music, and that’s not something I want to be contributing to.

My understanding when it comes to Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares (aka The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices) is that it was initially rooted in ethnomusicological research and exploration, and became something beyond that. If that’s not the case, then please let me know.

When it came to writing this, I think I was influenced a bit by a sense of scene in terms of where I’ve been when I’ve been listening to the song. That didn’t come through too much, however, and I feel that my concerns around covering the song might’ve made my writing a bit more hesitant than I’d have liked. Good to have the concern, but best to work with it.

Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares’ “Pora Sotunda” is from BooCheeMish.

I hope you enjoy.

Voices in harmony repeating a phrase as gentle percussion plays along, enhancing the rhythm. Another voice takes lead, draws long, follows a line. The choir steps back, and eventually another voice comes in, a little more hushed, and only for a moment.

A voice rises up in bits, allowing space and calling out, and then it holds the floor. The percussion returns, as does the chorus, and it all seems to descend and follow lines of terrain and geography, flowing into a valley and spilling out with all the added instrumentation forming a sort of cradle… maybe. It’s all there and everything supports everything.

There’s something touching about this. Something that feels like being held, being understood. Being comforted in a way that’s difficult to replicate.

It all moves to one voice and minimal instrumentation once more. Brief flourishes as the voice makes a little journey. The choir returns, repeating phrase like a chant, and another voice comes in, and they all seem to waft around, move like something vague, slowly moving, moving with the air, moving with the space. Moving around and curling around, moving inward, coming closer, before all comes to a close at the song’s end.

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One Thousand Word Challenge 253: Rambling About Wondering

It’s a little cold and that’s okay. Starting this bit of writing with that particular wording probably isn’t okay, but it being a little cold is.

It’s a quiet day. It’s another day spent chipping away at whatever and hoping for the best and all of that fun stuff. Sitting here at lunch, falling in line, going through the motions. Going through the processes. I’m getting there. I’m getting to the end of it, or I’m not getting to the end of it. I don’t even know what “it” is, in this context. Maybe it’s just a reference to life. Who knows. I don’t, I just threw it in there.

I’m thinking about nothing, or rather, I’m thinking about not much in particular. Just the process of writing and being alive and all that. In a few hours I’ll take off, head on home, go and rest. I’ll be good. I’ll be fine. I’ll even be a little bit exhausted. This is a good way to be. Or it’s not. It’s just what it is, really.

Sometimes I feel like I’m forcing myself far more than I should. I don’t know if I am, but sometimes I feel I am. I’m trying to do something rather silly, really. I’m trying to get through words and sentences and I’m trying to create a really big mess, and I’m good at doing that but it’s also really tiring. It’s strenuous work, doing all this going on about whatever, but it is a form of work. It’s a form of process.

When I think these things, I don’t really know what it is that I’m thinking, I guess. I guess I’m thinking about getting to the end and hoping that there’s something that comes forward among it all. I guess I’m hoping to be able to say that I’ve done what I set out to do, but I don’t know if I am really hoping for that. I do know that I still enjoy writing, even if it is a struggle in places.

I’m wondering about when the last time I made an observation was, and not just one where I start talking about looking after each other and the environment, which both I think are important, don’t get me wrong, but rather, something that means something, even if it’s really mundane. I wonder about this, and I wonder if, perhaps, I’ve nothing left to offer, or if I ever had anything to offer at all.

I can remember a time when I was a bit more chipper than I am now. Things were different, I was in a different position in life and I was younger. Now I’m not as young as I was then and I still am chipper sometimes, but I am also very much elsewhere. I’m looking inward to try and go outward, if that makes sense. It probably does but I think it doesn’t, but I also hope it does.

Layers.

So… yeah. Sitting here, trying to live my life. Feeling isolated, feeling alone. Wondering about myself. I have to do a lot of hard thinking. I have to think about where I went wrong, or if I did indeed go wrong at all. I have to think about a lot of things. What do I offer to the world? What do I offer to my community? Am I actually a good person? Do I think I’m good? I don’t know, I just think that I’m trying. Probably better to think that I’m trying and then try and keep trying rather than think I’m a good person and be an asshole. I hope.

I do wonder at what point I tapped out and ran out of things to say. I wonder if I’ve ever had any relevance to anyone, and I know I have, but here I mean strictly in terms of writing. I don’t know if I have or have no, and I can only wonder more. But at the same time, does it matter? Does it matter if I have been relevant to someone? Does it matter if someone has ready my writing and felt something? In a way it probably does, but if I’m writing for the enjoyment of writing, then it shouldn’t.

I’ve published so much of this rambling, so surely it must mean that I’ve wanted it read. I’ve put it out there and people have been able to look at what I put out there, or rather put here. They’ve a choice to engage, and if they have, then maybe they have gotten something out of it all, and that probably does matter to me. Up until a point, anyway.

Perhaps a lot of us yearn for some sort of validation external to us more than we let on, and maybe I do. I have to admit that much. I’ve spent a lot of time not thinking or feeling like I’ve wanted it, but right now, I think I could be wrong in that thinking. Perhaps wrong is not the way to describe it. Perhaps it should more be that I was unaware in my thinking.

Maybe it’s due to how close to the end of this blog everything is that has me wondering more about this stuff. It probably is. That and a bit of a low set of feelings coming in. But I do wonder and I keep wondering. What can I say about all of this? What can I do about all of this? This is a towering work of messy thoughts and messy use of words. That’s… all there is to it, but it still means something to me. At the very least I can accept that. But I don’t know if any of it was worth it or not… at least to someone who isn’t me.

I know that Ewe has read a lot of this stuff and that’s something I’m happy about. It means something to someone else, at least, so maybe it’s all worth it.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 13:16:68

Good speed. Writing is a bit of a mess, but it’s how everything was coming out.

Written at work.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1580: Life on Hold

Here I am, sitting on hold. Sitting and waiting, trying to get things sorted. This looks like it’ll be a short hold, but it could also be a long hold. Seems like it’s a holding day. Or time. Or whatever.

What I get to listen to is “Opus No. 1”, and so not much has changed there. It still exists. It still floats around. I still get to hear it. What a piece of music. So heavily ingrained in a culture and style and way of dong things, and so often not thought of. Now I get to live with it. I get to experience it as I’m living my life on hold. It goes on forever and loops around. It’s broken up into bits and pieces and never allowed to finish. Its spell is disrupted by a voice that repeats the same thing every time and everything is circular. Nothing finishes. Nothing gets to go far.

It’s easy to end up living life on hold, and that’s something you want to desperately avoid as much as possible, but sometimes you just can’t. Sometimes it just happens and it all just goes on, and then you see that you start to age. You start to get older. All your friends are getting married and having kids or not having kids, and you’re there on the phone, waiting to be connected to someone. Waiting to get through so you can discuss whatever issue it is that needs to be fixed, but you need to get the right person as you’ve spent so much of your time on hold that you’re now on some sort of legacy product that you cannot be forced off of, but has been discontinued for whatever reason. But you can’t et through to anyone anyway as the lines are busy.

You try to go to sleep but you can’t, so you stay awake and soon your bags get so big that you can carry your groceries in them. Lethargy takes over, and energy seems to be something you once understood, and perhaps had a fondness for, but is something that was left behind long ago. Or rather, it left you behind as you’ve been a sedentary part of the furniture for far longer than you can remember. Time keeps ticking away and “Opus No. 1” is never allowed to finish as it gets interrupted by a voice that tells you that the lines are busy and someone will be with you soon, and then it starts again. Did it even get halfway? You’re not sure. Maybe it did, but you’re so used to hearing a snippet of it that you can’t even be sure if that’s the whole song or not. Maybe it is the whole song and anything beyond what you’ve heard on loop for decades is just a construction of your mind. A fabrication borne from a yearning for something more than this life you’re stuck in and can do little about; a life lived on hold.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 06:59:97

I wasn’t on hold for to long, thankfully. Got this bit of writing out of it and that makes me happy as this was fun to write.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1579: I Am the Clock

Alright, just trying to squeeze another spewing of thoughts in before I start work for the day, and there is not much to squeeze in at this juncture. Maybe I’ve juiced all the juice out of the fruit or something. Don’t now and I don’t need to know.

The barrel has been scraped. There is no bottom left. It’s just an open hole, and now the barrel is one of those beads, but larger. Much larger. you could fit it on a very thick rope, and that’d be neat. That’d be cool. Jewellery for a giant.

Still, there could be more that could be said about many different things. There could be plenty to spin and turn around and twist and do all of those things that we like to think that we do but don’t actually do, and so therefore… yeah. It all goes and goes it all does. And therefore, this is the way of doing things.

Anyway, where was I?

So yeah, a good few minutes before I start doing much of anything. A good few minutes to get into the gritty of the nitty and try to find the relation among the relation among all the other things that I throw out there. Surely there must be a thread of happiness among it all, and surely there must be a great big thread of sadness, too. So I race and I fight the clock. I battle the clock. I am the clock.

Oh god, I am the clock.

So anyway… yeah. Or nah. Or yeah nah nah yeah nah. Yeah. Yeah nah.

It’s in these situations where I must recognise the limitations of my excess, I feel, as I am incredibly limited and my excess is… well, it’s not astounding, let’s put it that way. But I keep going as I always have. I keep pushing on and fighting for a better load of bad, and I keep on contributing to the great deep pool of waste, and so on as life goes on. I think about what it all means and if I’ve meant anything at all, and the answer probably is a great big resounding no. However, I do think that I can find what it is that I want to find among it all, and that’s enough “deep” thinking for one day.

If anything, this is all a clear indicator that my thoughts have been a significant mess for a while, and no amount of throwing words together in undesirable orders will make much of anything in that regard different. Perhaps if I just wrote instead of continually spewing, things would be different. There’d be a body of work that was strong. I’m sure that when it comes to the end, I’ll look back at all of this and go “Yeah, I was pretty messed up and not handling it at all, despite what I think”. Either that or something along the lines of “It’s amazing how far one can go with boredom”.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 06:09:21

With this one I had a bit of time on my hands. I was waiting for things to happen so I could do things and had to wait. Threw myself into the writing and… yeah.

Written at work.

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