Oh and I gotta recommend Minor Acts of Heroism, an awesome, charming, and very pretty little webcomic. The one and only backside is that the updates are far apart.

Words as my Wolverine

I'm somewhere on page 64 in a story that I know will be my best yet. It's been under construction for more or less two years, on and off, and I've gone to great pains making sure every word is right, rewriting large chunks, digging deep into my own emotions and letting it take its time. There's a part I've rewritten a whole of five times, and it's still not just that right as it needs to be. Because it's important I get it right; it's built around emotions so deep and basic to me, that writing the story has been a way to cope with something bigger than I ever thought I could handle. And it's starring a character that's been in my head for an even longer time, and that I greatly love.

I'm at approximately 3/4, at the build up to the moment when they jump off the trampoline and really make the dive to the big finale, and I'm letting the conversation between two characters flow freely because if the story is right, they will naturally come to all the points I need them to. And then one of them says a line, that completely throws me off. Just like the veil that is supposed to come off the main character's eyes around now, I realize I've walked on air. It takes all momentum out of me, I've been writing nonstop for four hours and now my fingers just freeze.

I try to create some kind of comeback, a sensible answer. But what's happened, is that I've come forward in my attempts at processing the things that lay as ground for this story. The writing process has taken me to a new step in my own emotional state. Unfortunately, that means my head now decides that this story is crap. I've come around and gotten a grip on it and started to understand it, so suddenly I can't understand why I needed to write this story. I've passed the point of no return; knowledge.

It's an homage, in a way, to someone I loved, though. And a form of celebration of love itself, although that might seem twisted. So I will finish it. And I will hope that it isn't crap, that it is a story that need to be read as much as it needed to be written. I will hope I can still do it justice. While before I was a demon writing of inner demons, I'm now, well, not so much. And there is much of the demon in this story.

They say it's the journey, not the goal.

The learning process is a painful one. It's a long stretch of pure repetition, where you make mistakes, correct them, adjust and memorize. You slowly crawl your way from abysmal to passable. When you hit that passable, you've struggled so much that you think, now, now it'll work. Then you have a row of opportunities ahead, most of which will turn out not in your favor, not exactly because of you, but because the right moment simply won't arrive. If you're lucky you won't have to wait too long for that right moment, but no matter how long, you will be frustrated, eager to accomplish something. The deceptive initial success will fill you with confidence and hope. And this is the moment, when you're ready for your time in the limelight and your share of the rewards, that life will tear the carpet from under your feet. You'll make A Mistake. The other "mistakes" you made were just little forgettable sidesteps on a wide road, this is where you set your foot down and realize you've been walking on a rope and you just missed it. Most likely you won't just fall yourself, but everyone else around you. It's when you've stood up from that fall, seen to your comrades, patched up the bruises and hopefully nobody was seriously hurt or maybe they were, that you've actually really learned something. And it will only be worth it if you get up and do it all again, because this is the point where you realize, where you fully understand, that all that work has taught you the letter A. Now for the rest of the letters of the alphabet.

What you also realize, most likely, is that all you will ever get out of all this is the slight chance that at some point, just when the time is right and the moon is red and pigs fly, you might get to recite the alphabet just once, if you manage to walk that mile on the rope, and it probably won't be perfect or pretty or at all as you dreamed of all those days in initial training. It's here you'll know if you really like what you're doing; if you really want to learn, because if you do, it will be worth it even so.

A or B

One or the other is true:

A) I am utterly incapable of motivating myself to do anything I don't want to do, and I cannot anticipate or control what I want to do.

B) I subconsciously sabotage everything I do whether I want it or not, for some sublime psychological reason yet undiscovered.

I'm not sure how to find out, since I never know if I actually want something. Hm.

A Farewell to S

I just found out another good, brave man has left the battle. It's frightening that people can just suddenly disappear like that, somehow I hold in calculation that the people closest to me might die at any moment from age or disease or accident, but I forget that everyone around us are also mortal. In any case, yesterday was his time. I really liked him, the little I saw of him - in fact I had one of those little-girl-crushes on him and used to spy on him whenever he visited dad - and it feels unfair that those I've liked the most are the ones fading away first. My heart to his family.

Return to the Lifestream, strong one. Our essences might meet again there.

Note to self:

Just came home from the IKAA Gathering, overall two things will stay in my memory of this day, aside from the obvious "pretty house", "oh gosh so many koreans" and stuff.

a Swedish Korean adoptee who have lived in Korea five years, yet never really thought about any of the stuff talked about today - racism, identity, nationality... It made me wonder many things about her and myself, but most of all it felt like hope: here is someone just like me who is at peace.

and an Italian Korean adoptee who said "Maybe this is our prize - our gift in return for the traumas and things we've gone through: a unique perspective that nobody else can have." It made me realize that I don't feel as if this whole Korean thing, or this whole adopted thing, was forced on me and I don't wish it undone. It's more like I'm trying to understand this unique perspective I was given, because it's my duty and privilege as the receiver of such a gift.

the choice of What If

Tomorrow I am off to meet other Korean adoptees, mostly Swedes but also from other parts of the world, and to listen to a bunch of them talking about, well... us. I asked myself "why", just before, and I'm not sure. I think, because I want to determine just how big a part of me this really is.

But as to "how big parts of us things are" it's a little arbitrary, wouldn't you say? Would I be this hopeless unmotivated game geek with author dreams if there had been nothing wrong with my leg? Or would I be a world famous dancer and model with posters in half the male population's bedrooms? Could anyone say that the two are the same person? And would my leg problem be the "defining" in my life, if we knew for a fact that the other path would have happen had it not been? Since there's so many other "defining" moments. Had I not gone to school away from home at 16 I might not have failed and lost confidence, but I might also have withered into a voiceless mouse in a corner without the support and inspiration of the people I met there. Or, everything might have gone exactly the same. So who can say which choices actually made a difference in our lives, and which don't. Maybe the big choices don't really matter, and some random small ones end up dictating our lives.

Well, the choice to go to this seminar will probably not lead to any life-defining changes. Unless I meet the most violently handsome Korean guy with whom I elope and raise sixteen babies, or a giant robot decide to invade Stockholm just tomorrow and beam me up into space. While those two would certainly be fun, it's the tiny little realistic "what-if"s that really scare/excite me. Like, what if I meet someone who is actually a younger sibling of mine, adopted away as I was, and we would possibly never know.

You know, thinking about that, any younger adopted Korean could be a sibling. Okay, so if that violently handsome Korean guy is not older than me, then I'll say goodbye and thanks for the fish. Do not want to go near that possibility, especially with a prospect of sixteen babies.

Pew Pew

I drew something at last! The name is not a thanks for inspiration ;) it's a total coincidence!