Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1259: Wanting to Persist

Posted on May 23, 2023 by Stupidity Hole

I was writing this thing about how today has been absolutely fucked and despairing but that doesn’t get me very far. I want to write something more positive than what I was writing but I’m not sure if I have the energy in me. Still, I don’t want to give up. I want to keep on pushing on and hope that I write something a bit more positive than what I was writing before I started this bit of writing.

I don’t know if I can. Still, I want to try.

I want to persist. I want to succeed in the face of what feels like overwhelming defeat. I want to be able to have a roof over my head without having to worry about being poor too. There are some good things around and there is joy out there. Maybe there isn’t in here, but there is out there and so maybe it’s time to get out of here and see what happens.

I have to leave the house soon anyway but I’m not sure if that counts.

There still is about two months left for my partner and I to find a place to live. I’m hoping we find it sooner rather than later as I don’t have many, if any options if we don’t find anything. I’m trying to hold on and not let myself roll around in despair, but it’s getting tiring and it’s tough. Hanging in there is difficult when you’re not getting anywhere.

But still I have to keep trying. I have to keep on trying to survive and I have to struggle to get ahead, or I have to struggle to get into a position where I’m no longer struggling. It has been a long lifetime thus far and I can only imagine that at this point it is going to get longer, but I hold on. This isn’t the time to give up.

See now I don’t know what else to say. The thing is the pressure that I’m feeling is constant and it’s getting worse and I keep on pushing on, and I need help to get through this, but the help I need is not available to me and so I just have to keep on going and hoping. I have to keep on moving forward and remain focused on the goal. Once a house is sorted then I can worry about other things, but there is so much to worry about at the moment.

But I persist and I go forward because I owe it to my partner and myself to not give up. I need help but if it’s not coming then I still have to do what I can and I have to hold onto hope, and allow that to keep me going. It’s hard, but maybe I’ll get there. Maybe I won’t have to spend much more time worrying about having a new place to live. Maybe within the next few weeks there will be success.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 08:01:68

Speed is fine with this one. More concerned about what I’m putting forward than the speed.

It is a really tough time and I’m struggling and there isn’t a small chance I won’t be successful. Still persisting but it’s really hard to do so.

Written at home.

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P-Oiler: Pleasantly O/C’d

Posted on May 22, 2023 by Stupidity Hole

Four listens for this one.
I’m not sure if this represents the song well, but it was what I was getting from the song. It’s very moody and atmospheric so I think if you listened to it it would make sense that the below could be inspired  by it, but it’d be pretty evident how unrepresentative of it the writing is.

P-Oiler’s “Pleasantly O/C’d” is from Greatest Hits Vol. III.

I hope you enjoy.

—

Across an empty expanse a walk spanning eons continues. Inward always and continuous it seems to go whilst motion looks forward. Motion looks forward as do the eyes and they search forever, looking to find something that allows for any sense of meaning to manifest.

Across an empty expanse lightning cracked and provided some detail, and it revealed nothing other than the only change noticed in a long time. It released the fury of a thousand suns within the span of half a second and it was gone and all was silent. The space hung in a perpetual twilight and the walk continued. Objects grow meaningless as they lose form and reshape into themselves, and then another appeared.

Stars hung in the sky as they stared at each other, looking for the words to give some sort of meaning to the experience but they had nothing, and so the stared, and days passed with no motion, but nothing came and so they continued on, and as the first walked past they shed a tear as they turned to dust in the wind and the song came to an end.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1258: Thinking About Stuff

Posted on May 22, 2023 by Stupidity Hole

And so the music comes back on and that means it’s writing time.

It has been a long day compressed into a short day. Sitting, thinking about the idea of hope and the idea of freedom. Thinking about things that don’t matter but always do.

Wondering where the road will take me when I head off to go pick up my partner. Knowing the direction and location but also wondering about what thinking I will do, assuming I do any thinking at all.

Thinking about standing up and walking away and walking to fight for a better future. Wondering as to how much wandering I should do. There is a road to follow and perhaps I should stick to it tonight.

The horizon never ends. It keeps on spitting things out as you try to approach.

Perhaps it’s not thinking about thinking, or freedom and hope that I should be thinking about, but rather where I am and where I’m going. Maybe I should be worrying about how I’m going to handle the rest of the evening but there’s not much to handle at this point. What I need is rest and maybe I should be thinking about rest, but there’s so much more to think about.

Perhaps I should just try to switch my brain off for a bit and fly on by. See where the rest of the day takes me by not being completely there, or at least not mentally present. Maybe it would lead to the day becoming decompressed and so everything will feel alright. A day will feel like a day. A drive will feel like a drive.

The drive remains a journey but its meaning is what I’m going to imprint upon it. Of course there is the meaning based around achieving a goal but there can be something else, but it really depends on how much I want to go into that. I don’t know if I do. I’d rather let myself just go with it. Not worry about anything. Have a sense of hope and feel a sense of freedom from a series of thoughts that will not mean much outside of their meaning everything.

Thoughts float on by and they sometimes move like aggressive drivers, risking crashing into each other for no reason other than a lack of care and respect for the requirement of driving safely. However, instead when they crash the thoughts might combine into something as familiar as it would be new.

As the horizon puts things in the way we keep moving toward it when we chase it, but maybe the goal is never to reach the horizon but to reach something along the way. Maybe the goal is to try and find something in ourselves. The journey is endless but in a sense it provides space. It doesn’t provide time but it gives us pause for reflection as well as viewing, but only if that is what we want. Perhaps it can provide many differing things.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 08:03:43

Bit slow but I think this turned out okay. Needs a bit of cohesiveness but I think there’s a bit more clarity than usual.

Written at home.

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Indistinct Form at Sunset

Posted on May 21, 2023 by Stupidity Hole

Just a photo of some clouds as seen from my backyard and during sunset.
Sort of a muted, soft scene with a light sense of layering, I think.

I like how there’s a vague sense of something recognisable in some of the clouds. Not much else to say there; just something I like.

This is my submission into the two hundred-and-fiftieth Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. The theme for this one is “Skyscapes or Cloudscapes“.

The host of the Lens-Artists challenges cycles weekly between the following people:

Week 1 – Tina

Week 2 – Patti

Week 3 – Ann-Christine aka Leya

Week 4 – Amy

Week 5 – John Steiner

Week 6 – Sofia Alves

Week 7 – Anne Sandler

Week 8 – Donna

Week 9 – Guest host

Amy is curating this one. For the next one Anne is curating.

The challenges are fun to engage with. The themes are specific enough to keep some focus whilst loose enough to allow room for interpretation. I recommend participating as it’s a fun community to be engaged with and it’s a good way to focus on subject. If you don’t participate, you should still check out what others of the Lens-Artists community are submitting.

I hope you enjoy.

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P-Oiler: Compress Me

Posted on May 21, 2023 by Stupidity Hole

A few unfortunate restarts on this one. Had difficulty getting a grip with what was going on. Should’ve just gone for two listens but I didn’t.

I think what I wrote here captures the song really well, but not in a way that gets its energy across. There’s an idea of that energy, but not really a coverage of it, if that makes sense.

P-Oiler’s “Compress Me” is from Greatest Hits Vol. III.

I hope you enjoy.

—

A little light strumming beeps into quiet. A sudden burst of loudness before the light strumming comes in. The burst comes back and shows a rhythmic chug. A voice asks who the hell you are in a small space between, a little guitar seems to flicker off of it and the rhythm then fills all the space. It rises and mutes slightly whilst always sounding at maximum. Minimum, yet maximum.

It starts rising and then a lot of the loud falls away. It sort of yells and then leaves mostly bass and percussion to funk away with some other sounds here and there. This is a smooth moment of sorts and it has a bit of a bounce. More voice here and there and eventually guitar becomes more prominent as the bass becomes more aggressive. Percussion shifts and rolls over itself, and its back to rocking out.

Constriction and release go hand-in-hand as the sounds increase in their sense of loudness, but it’s much more controlled in feel than earlier. There’s a bite and grit but it retains a sense of smoothness until it returns to that early rhythmic chug.

Once more it stops and leaves mostly percussion and bass. Guitar is there, playing a little solo of sorts and keeping the funk alive and it all builds up again. The sounds of traffic, or at least an idea of traffic appear before it pulls back to the funk once more.

At least for a short moment and that traffic-like section returns and builds and once more the sounds unleash in their chug and punch forward and suddenly stop, leaving something more “ambient” and stretched to close things as the song ends.

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1257: Jerkiness Ramble

Posted on May 21, 2023 by Stupidity Hole

Writing whenever I’ve a queue of photos processing is never fun as there’s a sort of jerkiness that comes through, and of course that is due to how many resources my computer has to allocate to tasks at any given time. That aside, it’s not something I usually do. I think I may have once or twice before now, but otherwise I try to avoid it due to not wanting to have to deal with writing whilst my computer is busy processing photos.

I’m doing it now as I want to try and maximise my time. I don’t have long before work starts so I need to get a few things done before then and so now it is time for compression. Not a fun time but it is a time, as they say.

So now that that is out of the way I guess I can start talking about some other things but there isn’t anything coming to me at the moment. I’m not going to write about some sort of fantastic situation right now.

Oh, I was going to write about friendship.

So I had this idea where I was going to write about friendship as a way to work out some thoughts for a thing that’s in the very, very early stages of planning. Worried about planning and refining too much. Don’t want to lose the emotional content of the whole thing. Want to keep it feeling in the moment, as they say, but even so it’s still good to try and plan some things out and get some ideas down in some manner, so that was my plan this morning. Then started thinking about the having the thing being stale when it actually happens and… yeah.

So anyway, I’m not going to write about that this morning as I need to work out some other things first. There are a lot of things to work out and this is a set of some of those things and so there will be no writing about friendship this morning. Instead it’s just this lengthy ramble about how I was going to and then decided not to and maybe that’s the way it’s meant to be. Maybe I’m not meant to write about friendship on this morning of mornings and instead deal with the jerkiness of writing whilst my computer is processing photos. Perhaps that is the hand of fate playing its cards and now I’m out of a full house.

I will complete this task diligently. I will see it to completion in as least efficient a manner as possible and I will succeed somehow, but perhaps there is no success whatsoever to this. Perhaps all this is is a series of steps forward whilst success keeps galloping away.

Who knows.

On the plus side I get to do a bit of writing right now and that’s a good thing. Good way to warm up, but now I’m thinking I might have been better off writing about friendship.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 07:29:05

Not bad, not good. Somewhere in the middle.

In a way this feels like trying to work out an idea. Not so much the friendship bit, but something else. Unsure of what, however.

Written at home.

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A Poem About Mentally Drifting Off

Posted on May 20, 2023 by Stupidity Hole

This was written a bit faster than I’d hoped.
Pretty sure it makes for an idea that should be worked upon rather than something published in any capacity. That said, rigorous standards of quality is seldom a regularity here, so… yeah.

I hope you enjoy.

—

Caught in a drift
Floating away on thoughts
Carried through a night
Moving above closing lights
Anchored in a single position
Held at a desk
Yet somewhere else entirely
Caught in a drift
Floating above a changing landscape
Dreaming of what is there
Hoping for what is to come

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Five-Hundred Word Challenge 1256: Last Five Minutes of the Shift

Posted on May 20, 2023 by Stupidity Hole

Got around five minutes before work ends. Gonna see if I can get this done in that time. Probably won’t but that’s fine. That’s all okay. Not the worst thing in the world.

Sometimes the rush makes me reflective of a job I no loner work and I wonder why. I certainly have no nostalgia for that job and am glad that I can say it has been years since I was last in its offices, but sometimes I do miss the people, or at least the people who I worked with and now no longer talk to.

I don’t miss cycling from St Leonards to Glebe at night, though sometimes I do. It was an easy run in some ways. Not the best and not the worst. Realistically I could do it again but seeing as I live a little further away from St Leonards now it would end up taking a lot longer and so I don’t want to do that.

Maybe one day.

Thinking about how sometimes I’d do my writing in the last ten minutes of working in an evening. It was something I could do and so it was something I’d do on occasion. I think.

It was a very different time back then to how it is now, or maybe I’m just more aware of things now than I was then. Not sure. Some things have certainly changed, but I also think there are some things I was pretty ignorant of back then that I no longer am, or at least I’d like to believe I no longer am.

Still so much to learn really.

Actually, sometimes I do miss that office space. Not so much the business I worked for, but the office space itself. It wasn’t the best. It wasn’t the worst.

And there goes the last five minutes of the shift.

So anyway, it was kind of a cosy office space, though maybe it was ore that it was one I was really familiar with. It’s where I met Ewe, Fe and a few others but it was one I got to know. But I don’t think I’d go back given the opportunity unless it was for some sort of biological research rather than more customer service.

Working in St Leonards certainly was a time. It was not a good time most of the time but it certainly was a time for realising a lot of things. Also was a time for feeling as though that was going to be the rest of my life, and I’m finding myself feeling the same way now. The environment may change but all I’ve done is move sideways. Hopefully I can move upward at some point.

It’s cold now and that reminds me a little of the cycle. I think I’ve written about that cycle home before and I’ll probably write about it again at some point in the future. For now I think I’m just going to wrap this up somewhere around here.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 09:58:97

Toward the end of this I slowed down a bit. I think it had to do with the work shift coming to an end. Also tried to pick my words somewhat carefully. Didn’t lead to an improvement, or maybe it did.

Written at home.

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Anamanaguchi: Power Supply

Posted on May 19, 2023 by Stupidity Hole

Had a rough start to this one but eventually got a feel, or at least I think I got a feel for what was going on.

Just realised I could’ve written about how the song powers up and winds down, making the title pretty appropriate. Didn’t. Kept things relatively brief but could’ve written some things differently.

Anamanaguchi’s “Power Supply” is from Power Supply.

I hope you enjoy.

—

A sound moves about rapidly between a few notes. The beat starts building and stomps away, and soon bass joins. A brief pause and then the sounds charge forward without necessarily altering their speed.

There’s something smooth and gliding in this and fun, and maybe there’s a bit of guitar in here as well. There’s a slight pause of sorts where the sounds sort of throw their hands up in the air as a celebratory thing before they get back to their gliding smoothly.

The sounds charge forward in unison; some electronics sort of rise up in parts and then they stop again for a moment with a bit more space before getting back on with it, and they keep moving between these shifts, alternating a little here and there.

The electronics offer extra details as they follow the rhythm, almost looking to draw attention to themselves rather than the melody. They dance and fly whilst everything else charges along, but they don’t quite feel separate, and so this sense of harmony continues as the sounds fade out and the song ends.

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Anamanaguchi: Dawn Metropolis

Posted on May 18, 2023 by Stupidity Hole

Two listens for this one, in part due to being a bit slower this afternoon than I was this morning.

I struggled a bit with this one. The struggling came down to listening to this and trying to work if there was anything beneath the surface, as the song seems really shallow. That’s fine; I think it’s a nice bit of fun, but it has potential to offer more and it doesn’t seem to do so.

Essentially I got caught up on something that perhaps I shouldn’t have and so I ended up writing something that was really clunky. It does cover the song but I can see where I could have done better.

Anamanaguchi’s “Dawn Metropolis” is from Dawn Metropolis.

I hope you enjoy.

—

A waking energy comes through. It’s the heralding of the hustle and the bustle and the sounds ride smooth as they travel forward. Electronics glide along the rhythm and there’s something warmly celebratory about all of this. Something really joyful.

A drop away leaving one sound before everything comes back in and continues on. The rhythm remains steady and all seems cool and busy. More of the space and scene is revealed and it’s easy to take in. This section seems to ooze cool.

Something cuts in and out and melody is rich and it continues on. All remain steady and focused and keep pushing for fun and joy. A brief flicker before continuing on once more.

Until it doesn’t. Until it stops and leaves electronics to pulse and reveal something grandiose. Other sounds come in and and once more they all return to a state of the celebratory. Here everything becomes grand and massive whilst remaining small. It’s busy and its looking ahead but its firmly in the moment. It’s of now.

More flickering as all others are held in motion, seemingly ready to go ahead once more but before anything else happens the sounds stop and the song ends.

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