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 Well, not so much fun and leisure as...get some damn writing done, you fool! |
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A while ago, I attended a writers' workshop and the lady who hosted it told us all to go away with this bit of advice - to write for just ten minutes a day. I was determined to go ahead with it and I did...for two days. So today I remembered that I'd resolved to do so and I whipped out my journal and wrote for fifteen minutes. I'm typing out pretty much the same thing that I wrote earlier, with some differences. I find I can go a lot more in-depth when I'm typing than when I'm writing by hand. Writing by hand is such a chore! I've struggled with loneliness a lot throughout my twenty-nine years. I struggled with it when I was the only one home with my mum when I was a teen and everybody else had other places to be. I struggled with it after marriage and when we moved into our own house for the first time. I struggled with it after my son was born and I felt torn between pursuing my writing and being a good mum, because my culture seems to indicate that a woman has absolutely no chance of living her own life - or at least, she has no chance of attaining any goals she hasn't already attained - once she has children. I feel it occasionally still, even though I get so little time to myself nowadays that any alone time is simply awesome. I've tried to come to terms with the idea that being alone isn't a bad thing - and a lot of the time, it isn't. My friends don't live nearby so I don't get to see them often, and even when I do, I feel like there isn't much depth to our conversations. I'm surrounded by people who do not think like me, who do not share any of my interests and hobbies. I feel like I've become desensitised to isolation. Loneliness is my preferred way to be. I walked into my college cafeteria at lunch today and it was the usual hubbub of activity. Youngsters walking around, chatting animatedly, shouting across the room, laughing, eating, socialising. I could recall how that clamour wouldn't have bothered me ten-twelve years ago, when I would have been one of the youngsters talking excitedly with her friends. But, as this moment, I just found an out-of-the-way little table and sat down. I watched the crowds for a while, wondering why it was only at moments like these that the sense of isolation became so strong. In the middle of a crowd, I feel most alone. |
| 13:20 The challenge today asks participants to discuss potential breakthroughs in ageing - specifically, if immortality were possible, what would be the advantages and disadvantages of it? I think immortality is a terrible idea. Us humans are douchebags with the limited time we each have on this planet and we've managed to screw it over plenty as it is. Imagine if just a handful of us douchebags were to be around forever - things just wouldn't be the same! I think if the ageing cure were found, it would initially only be available to those who could afford it - I just don't see it being sold as over-the-counter medicine. So of course, only the rich would have access to immortality. Their lifestyles would just be about living it up, to the detriment of the rest of the people and the planet. There's nothing to say that the fertility of these people would be hampered by immortality so, within a few generations, every job everywhere would be taken up by an immortal - because they can only sustain a party for so long before their funds run out. We normal folks would live at the sidelines, just trying to get some food together to survive. Before long, we'd die out. The immortals would breed and spawn more immortals. Society would just consist of immortals. And then, in a few more generations, after wreaking havoc on the planet even more by waging war on other colonies of immortals to get their food stock (because everything is rapidly dwindling, even the crops they're harvesting), the ozone layer just gives up and leaves Earth to it. We have no protection from the sun. Temperatures go up. Various species of animals - the few that are left - can no longer take the heat and die. The ice caps melt, flooding various countries and taking down a sizable amount of the immortal population. Diseases run rampant. Immortals have been looking into space travel for a long time but nothing ever happened because they now squabble children over who gets to do what. And so the richest among them, the originals, have been secretly developing their own technologies and looking into moving to other planets. They have space travel. They manage to escape, leaving their descendants to slowly perish along with the planet. They land on Mars and begin the whole process over again  13:45 That was fun! ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
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