Good morning crickets. Welcome to day number two-hundred-fifty-three of Operation Achieve Anything. It’s Monday, starting the second week of my new experimental graveyard shift schedule that I’ll be committing to until I finish up fixing all of the uncommitted typo corrections that my spellchecker caused throughout the entire site. Well, the spellchecker didn’t create the typos, it’s only to blame for the noncommital part since the issue stems from my blog publisher using incompatible programming languages and the spellcheck provided no warning that this was even a potential issue.

I’ve already shared enough about this is in the past, but it’s currently the main focus of my waking existence as I rush and rush to get everything tidied up so that I can start treating this blog more professionally. Not only do I love this schedule because it’s affording me a lot of extra time to get a lot of extra things done, in general, but I also spent a bulk of my adult life working an overnight schedule, so I’m actually in my comfort zone and not being torched, the way it might sound.

Though this schedule comes with its own stressors built in, I prefer the silent but strange vibe of the world that comes with being highly productive when the normals are sound asleep providing a break from their busybody frantic behaviors. The reverse, when you get to rest while the noisy cogs rush through their day, is also preferable, except for the fact that it provides more opportunities for you to get stuck in your head.

Other than the schedule and vibe, I often opted to work graveyard in an effort to keep my friends seeing me in a positive light by not having to be around me so much. This actually transitions into my assignment for today where I’m supposed to share my history with friends. First off, no matter what I’m about to say, this isn’t going to be me playing the blame game which often seems to be the new way that examining causality now appears to be treated. No, I take a majority of the blame but also acknowledge that I’m not alone in this dance.

It all started with me as a super shy kid who preferred to hang out with my imaginary Mexican mouse named Senior who was my earliest childhood friend. I was the second born, with an older sister who got all of the attention. Not that she ever did anything to promote this lopsided affection, and it wasn’t anything over the top, but it was just enough to leave me feeling alone to figure out how to navigate life all by myself. I think my parents also so my shyness as me pushing them away and thanks to their own ineffectual upbringings, they just let it be.

I couldn’t tell you the last time I hugged either one of my parents going way back to when I was just a little kid. My aversion to being touch minus any physical abuse is one of the reasons I feel that if I were raised today, I’d probably land in the autistic spectrum, which I also attribute to the quirky way that I develop relationships with my friends to where it’s all or nothing and no in between. Then again, I also fear that my neurotic thoughts come from a healthy head that was just never given any sense of direction.

It didn’t help that the friends that I did land only help to add to the confusion. Like my very first best friend from elementary school who always made it perfectly clear that I was only his best friend while at school because he had a real best friend who went to a different school, and they would hang out when he went home. I get it, he was young and just being honest, but I had enough abandonment issues as part of being from a broken home that, when combined with this early introduction of the concept of being friends out of convenience, I never felt all that close to anyone.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a lot of fun throughout my life and have utterly enjoyed a lot of people but, when all is said and done, the performance like quality that comes with living a shy life can lead on to live a different reality than the one public witnessed by friends. I think that I lot of people only saw the me that who laughed while I was drunk, as someone who may have had a few dark inner thoughts but for the most part, was genuinely having fun.

These friends would be correct in most cases in that I did have a lot of fun, but I think right up until I up and left Seattle with minimal warning I don’t think that they believed that the depression that I often joked about ran as deep as I claimed. Again, this is entirely my fault for always using comedic misdirections whenever discussion would get too serious.

This unwillingness/inability to connect on a deeper level has always led to issued when my collection of friends would eventually start to settle leading our vice based relationships to fall apart. As someone who always joined groups of pre-established friends, this phase always seemed to lead to a new round of abandonment as, me being the rowdy friend, was pushed to the outskirts in order to make more room for normal.

I take all of the blame for forcing the fall the last time a group started to settle because of how many times I’ve seen it happen before. If I were just willing to settle, the relationships would have been salvageable, but considering the fact that I was also in the middle of a mid-life crisis meltdown, having just given up on my over two-decade-old screenwriting dream, I became a bit of a bridge burner, rather than wait to, once again be left alone.

Now, I still fondly look back at these friendships, but I just don’t think that I have it in me to do it ever again. This is why, at least until I taste a bit of a success, I’ve settled with the idea of being a grumpy old shut-in as I grow old. This could, and probably will change, but until I can figure out how to be happy with/by myself, I’ve grown content with the idea of a solo future with just me and my project to provide the activities I need for my mind.

As for today’s assignment, I’m supposed to continue the Achieve Anything… book’s friendship theme and list at least five ways that I could be a better friend. Though I am committed to being a loner, there are still a few people in my life so I’ll have to figure out ways to be a better friend/person in general to those who are still in my life. Of course, you’ll have to wait for tomorrow to read this list but I promise to come up with something. Until then, it’s now time for me to sign off by saying, good day and good luck to you and all of your projects.

Talk to you soon.

Sincerely,

The Wicker Breaker

P.S. Below are links to my novel, which I plan to promote as part of Operation Achieve Anything, as well as a link to where you can buy the book that is providing the structure to this project in case you would like to purchase it in order to play along.