Ok the words were the same because the blurb was the exact same text as the article. Perhaps I should come up with a new rule. #12 from headliner article, and #12 from the first article under “latest news,” provided it isn’t a “video.” Going by those rules, the words would be “Exit Challenges.”
I’m not too pleased with “Exit Challenges,” but instead of thinking them over I’m just going to dive right in and see what comes.
I’ve decided to write. I thought today about how I should do something to force myself to write, but I wasn’t sure what. I also wasn’t sure what I’d write about. I was thinking first of a random word generator, but then I realized I had an infinite number of random words at my fingertips. “The 12th word,” I thought. “I will use the 12th word of the top story at cnn.com as my seed word.” Imagining I would take that word and twist it into an irreverent mess of a story, I smiled. But one word was a little too limitless. I clicked through to open the story, the short blurb on the front wasn’t, as I had expected, the first few paragraphs of the story. “The 12th words,” I revised. “I will use the 12th word of the blurb, and the 12th word of the story itself. Except in the case of stupid words like ‘the,’ and whatever else I deem stupid. I shall have ultimate veto power!”
I grinned. I like power.
And when I got home, I checked my words: His. “That works, I guess,” I thought. Next word: “the.” Lame. Ok 11th word: Monday. That seemed to work for me. “His Monday.” And off I went, to write this post. Only once looking back when I needed to confirm that the 12th word had indeed been ‘the.’ It was. But the 11th word was not ‘Monday.’ How did I fuck that up? The real 11th word ended up being ‘make.’ Was I going crazy? Perhaps CNN often updates stories ‘live,’ especially those that are popular. “His Make” is stupid, I will go with “His Monday,” because I have ULTIMATE VETO POWER.
And so the tale begins: His Monday.
Recently–both in the near-recent and the far-recent–I’ve missed the feeling of self discovery I once found through writing. Occasionally I’ll ‘pick up the keyboard’ (as the phrase may go) and try to discover something about myself. Mostly it doesn’t work. Tonight I may have discovered something, but even if I didn’t it felt good to write. It spurred a searching of old emails and a re-reading of a long dialog I had with an old ex.
Interestingly enough the dialog begin because she had stumbled upon my original ‘blog,’ (produced wholly within a self-created php blog engine!) found herself mentioned numerous times, and taken issue with the light in which I had portrayed her. It was a fair complaint. But, then, so were my lighting decisions.
Nothing came of this dialog. It was clear then, as it had been clear fresh out of that relationship, that we were different. And what I did was place a lot of blame on the hardship of that relationship upon her.
You see, at a young age I had come to the habit of presenting myself as wise beyond my years. Being a frequenter of MMOs at the time (and, indeed, this being the original meeting place of myself and this ex) I had ample opportunity to hone this habit. And it affected our relationship greatly. For in my ongoing attempts to appear mature I managed to convince her that I was. She, being my senior, treated the relationship as any other. And so when I saw faults in her or in us, instead of handling them maturely I buried them. So handy at this was I that I managed to stretch what should’ve been over within a matter of months to a gruelling period of almost 2 years (such a number I merely guess at). Impressive, no?
And then, tragically, it ended! Acting the part of a mature person, I did my best to make up reasons for the relationship’s failure. I think my repeated stabs at pinning down the ‘culprit’ came close to the truth a number of times, but I was so caught up in not letting such a failed relationship ruin me that I ignored its effect on me. No, it wasn’t like this one single event changed my life, but the shell I had been in my entire life (growing up as a shy person, that is)–a hole out of which I mislabeled this relationship–remained and I was so trying to claim myself unaffected and unchanged that I let it harden, let it scar up. A mistake I believe I took with me through the years, and may still be making today.
To call it ’shyness’ isn’t to explore it fully, but my own perspective it will serve the purpose. Perhaps writing again, assuming it keep it up (which I never do), will define it further and deliver me from it.