Ladies and gentlemen, David Bowie.
Good evening, everyone. I apologize for the somewhat lackluster title for this post, but it was the best one I could think of. Sometimes titles are hard. As for the David Bowie video used above, I partly included it in this post because the song was used in the recent series finale of Regular Show. That was definitely one of the best shows from the Cartoon Network to come out in recent years in my opinion. Anyway, the above David Bowie song should hopefully tie in with the later parts of this post.
Anyway, this evening I've kind of been reflecting a little bit on where my life is going and what the future has in store for me and for us all. I mean we have entered some pretty dark times. Everyone says that 2016 was a bad year, but chances are that year will be nothing compared to what the next four years may have in store for the world. I apologize for getting political here, but I feel like I once again have to point out the elephant in the room. Donald Trump is now officially the President of the United Sates. That happened, and we let it happen. Just how we let it happen has been a question I've been asking myself repeatedly off and on this past month. I mean I know all the factors that led to it, but still... how the hell did we get here?
The thing about Trump is that he didn't become president to try and make this country a better place. I'm sure that's what he believes, because the man is totally deluded and just all around nuts. But the fact is Trump became president because he wanted to try and mold himself into this great historical figure who brought this country into a golden age of prosperity. There is no doubt at this point that Donald Trump will go down in history, but it will likely be as the worst president this country has ever had. I can even see someone decades from now making a movie called Donald Trump: American Dictator. His agenda is toxic and his cabinet picks are a nightmare. As things are now, there are a lot of things that are at stake. Things like the future of our climate, the future of the free and open Internet that we all currently enjoy, and in some cases even our basic civil rights.
Of course there are a lot of movements out there who are fighting as we speak to oppose Trump's agenda; movements that I actually have some faith in. Whether or not any of these movements will succeed, I cannot at all say. I'd like to believe that they will, but I guess in the end I've always been the kind of guy who hopes for the best and expects the worst. In other words, I'm the type of guy who usually sees the glass as half empty. As someone who suffers from occasional bouts of anxiety and depression, I guess I can't help but be that type of person. Anyway, the point I've been trying to make is that we're living in some very uncertain times. It's easy to assume that the world is going to hell and that the future holds nothing but despair, but in a world like this there are some good things that are still happening in the world too.
Earlier tonight, my dad and I watched this week's episode of NCIS. We usually DVR it so we can fast-forward though the commercials when we watch it later. I don't know how many people reading are familiar with that show, so I won't bore anyone with the details of what happened in the episode. What I will say that I found it to be a pretty inspirational episode. It reminded me that even in dark times like this long season of evil that we've found ourselves in, the best thing we can do is to just keep pressing on and to enjoy the good moments that come to us rather than worry about the future. With me for instance, I've recently become a paid intern at my local public library. I don't know how long the internship will last, but I am hoping that it'll turn into a more permanent position later on. If it doesn't, then at the very least it'll look good on my resume. So for the immediate future, my life is pretty good. This is where I was hoping that the David Bowie video used earlier would tie in.
Going back to further in the future though, I have been wondering a lot recently about where my life is going. This isn't merely because of the now very uncertain future of this country, though I will admit that was a pretty big catalyst. Another big catalyst is the fact that I've got a birthday coming up right around the corner. As I'm sure most of the people on this site know, I do quite a bit of fan fiction writing. Well the thing is that I'm thirty years old, fairly soon I'll be thirty-one, and I can't help but wonder if I'll still be writing fan fiction when I'm forty-one. Don't get me wrong, I have absolutely no intentions of quitting the fan fiction game anytime soon. It's just that I can't see myself doing that for the rest of my life. I mean one of these days I'd like to go into more "serious" writing of some kind. Eventually I'd like to publish at least one legitimate novel of some kind.
The question I keep coming back to is when is the time for that going to come? Or more accurately, when is this fan fiction period of mine going to come to an end? I guess I'll probably know myself when the time finally does come. One concern I have is that I just don't want to leave anything unfinished, but the fact is that we always do. Last month I went ahead and evaluated my various ongoing fan fiction projects to try and figure out which ones I'm most likely to finish. In the end, either I'll be the one to decide when this fan fiction period of my life will come to an end, or maybe fate will make that decision for me.
I'd like to thank everyone who actually read though all the way to the end of this long rambling post of mine. I guess I just had a lot to get off my chest. Until next time, let's all try to remember all the good things that still happen in this life.
