It’s done. It’s over.

No more pain. No more suffering.

The only suffering left is for those who are close to him. His wife and children and grandchild.

He’s gone and there wasn’t much anyone can do.

He’s gone.

I hope that he passed with his loved ones. I hope that he was comfortable.

He was loved.

* * *

I haven’t heard of specific dates but there are rumors of it happening when I’m away at business. I wouldn’t be able to make it, as much as I know that I should and want to. I just can’t.

* * *

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCponfeWNOI&quot;Wish I Was There

Lost and trying to figure things out.

I watched the movie last night. It was a backers exclusive from Kickstarter.

It wasn’t good. I can honestly say that. It had potential but things just didn’t come together as I wanted them to. It just didn’t work. It wasn’t horrible.

Overall, it was just okay.

There were some touching moments and touching scenes, but I just…don’t know. It just didn’t work.

Was I disappointed that I backed the movie, no. I’m not, like I wasn’t disappointed or regretful in backing Veronica Mars either.

I can understand why Braff went the Kickstarter route. It was definitely a passion project for him.

I wish him the best on this project.

* * *

The movie hits a little close to home with me, and given what just happened with my uncle and his family, it was definitely a touchy area.

I cried. Tears fell.

Movies with characters with daddy issues, especially dying fathers, affect me that way.

I’m sure if my cousins watched this movie, they’ll feel the same, since Braff’s character had to watch his father die from cancer.

Too close.

Too much.

I can understand where Braff is coming from, in terms of his mindset, in terms of why he’s making his movie.

He made Garden State as his therapy for the dreaded Quarter-Life-Crisis, and this is for what one goes through when he’s in his thirties.

I can see what he’s doing, for in a way, I am going through what he’s going through.

This movie in a way is about losing that boyhood dream, knowing exactly what you want to do, but tweaking it just a little bit. Just grow up and be responsible.

Just be responsible.

Man up.

It just takes him losing his father and being a father himself, never wanting to be the type of father that his own was, that he realizes that all his father wanted for him to do was to be the best he can be. Be responsible. Be a man.

He was proud, in the end, on his deathbed, confessing words that he could have never said on his good days.

It’s funny how that is the case in real life. It isn’t until the end we put away our pride and in our humility we realize what is important.

Family.

Posterity.

Love.

That’s all that is important.

We look out for family.

Who else is there to love us, if not for family?

* * *

Proud.

His father was proud. He heard his deathbed confession. He was really proud of both of his sons.

One of the many things that I struggle with on most days is whether or not my father was proud.

I don’t know.

I never heard him say it. He just didn’t know that he didn’t have much time left.

He left me, us, too soon.

I miss him.

And I will never know.

All I can do is believe that he did. He was proud of me.

I have to believe that I heard it in his voice as he called me weekly. I have to believe that I saw it in his face as he said goodbye to me on the last day I saw him alive.

I just have to believe.

Most days I struggle with it.

I struggle to believe.

But that is a fault of my wiring. It’s a fatal flaw of my brain. It’s one of my hamartia.

I just can’t believe it until I experience it. My analytical mind is based too much of science and experience. Hypotheticals are just untested hypotheses that needs to be tested and tested until it can become a theory.

Unfortunately, with this life of mine, with this luck that I was given, with a father who had passed way too soon, this hypothetical hypothesis of my soul would never be tested.

There is no test.

I guess ultimately in the end, I have a crisis of faith.

It’s not a spiritual crisis of finding God or an all knowing being.

No, it’s just a faith of believing that my dear father was proud of me. That he loved me.

The only thing I can do is work on my faith and believe in it.

I have help. I just need to do the work.

Faith.

Believe.

He was proud of me.

Believe in that.

* * *

Ultimately in the end of the film, with the loss of his father, knowing that he was proud of him, a catharsis came over him and an opportunity to do what he’s passionate about and be paid to do it. It falls on his lap.

Sometimes life just happens that way. After you hit your lowest, you see clearer and things just fall for you.

He becomes the responsible family man, the father that he was meant to be. He becomes a breadwinner, providing for his family, and a father who teaches his kids important skills.

Is that what we ultimately end up doing? Doing a job and being a part of something that is bound by blood? Is that the ultimate ultimate that is life?

In a way, it is what I want.

Family.

Children of my own.

But other than that, what else is it that I want? What is my passion and am I doing whatever I can to pursue it?

I don’t know.

* * *

What do I want?

I know for sure that I am not lost. I’ve written how this Mid-Life-Crisis of mine doesn’t feel anything like the Quarter-Life-Crisis that I gone through in my early twenties.

But in a way, it is ultimately about what I want. What it is that I want out of life? What I want to do and ultimately what kind of man that I want to become?

Let’s get all of the obvious that I want out of the way.

I do love my life as how it is right now, how it stands right now.

Many people might not see that, but I do.

I love my freedom. I’m not lonely, or do I ever get lonely, ’cause for the most part, I am hardly ever alone.

But what do I want?

I want a family. I want kids.

I would love to have kids of my own. I would love to have the opportunity to have the challenge that is being a father.

I would love that.

I would love to fall in love. Who doesn’t right?

But I know for sure I am not willing to compromise my independence, my freedom, and my life right now for someone who I don’t feel a connection for.

I know for sure that if I don’t end up with someone like that and be alone till my last breath, I know that I would definitely be okay with it.

I want to create.

I want to create. Whether it is music (which I have no experience in), films, writing, photography, joy, food; no matter what it is, I want to create.

I don’t care if I’m successful in the traditional sense of that word, as long as I keep doing it, I think I’ll be happy. I don’t need to make money from it. None at all. As long as I do it, I think that matters more to me than anything else.

I want to write.

I want to write more than screenplays. I want to write more than these words into this empty void. I want to write a novel. I want to write a novella. I want to write short stories.

Prose.

I want to write prose.

I want to tell stories with my words and my thoughts.

I want to make people cry and feel pain with my words. I want to make people laugh and shed tears of joy with my thoughts.

Stories.

It’ll be a slow process as I work on it. A very slow process of consuming words from other people and type words of my own.

Will I have the patience and stamina for it?

I don’t know.

All I do know is that I want it. I’m passionate about it.

It’s my drug of choice and I would love to have my words be another’s heroin and feed their addiction.

Words.

They are powerful, if you allow them to be.

* * *

Life is about collecting stories.

Stories from your experience and stories from others.

Make them yours and tell them to the world.

Share the wealth of experiences so it can help others who are going through dark pains that you’ve gone through and survived.

Give them hope. Be the faith that they need to carry them through that tunnel to that glimmer of hope that we all need to just survive and live again.

We all have joys.

We all have pains.

Miseries and adventures.

Be charitable and share them.

Who knows, maybe you’ll save someone’s life in the end.

Isn’t that worth it?

Be someone’s hero.

Thoughts.

A lot have been in my thoughts as of late.

I originally planned on working on something creative today, going back to my current script but I just can’t focus. There’s just too much on my mind.

Family. Family is on my mind.

I got news yesterday that my uncle isn’t doing so well. He’s dying of lung cancer. He doesn’t have long left in this world; about a month to three months left and the shit thing is that we just found out yesterday.

He’s been battling it with some success for the past year and a half to two years, and we just found out about it now.

Family. Family is on my mind.

Communication.

That’s one thing that my family could be better at. I guess that is one thing that most people can be better at. Just better communicators.

* * *

I guess I can understand why the secrecy, the privacy in this nature. It’s a big thing. I understand.

It’s your problem and you don’t want other people to worry about it. It’s my family’s way I guess. I don’t know. I just…there’s just…

Yeah. It is what it is.

But we now know.

And what can we do? Nothing.

Heavy hearts.

Family.

* * *

I’m sure I wrote about this somewhere in these vest words that I’ve written over the years, but I’m tired. I’m tired of seeing so many of my loved ones just go.

My father’s generation is slowly dwindling away. One by one, every few years, poof and they’re gone.

That is a part of life, nature working how it is supposed to, but I just thought that we would have a lot more time with many of them. Besides my grandparents, they were all so young. None of them reaching the age when my grandparents went.

Dwindling.

Loss.

Life.

* * *

I still have to call my mom later to let her know.

Of course she’s worried about my health and to my knowledge, I am fine.

I am healthy. I could be healthier. Fuck, everyone can be healthier.

* * *

So distracted today.

Thoughts are definitely elsewhere.

* * *

Things are just heavy today. Thoughts are just weighing me down. Life, nature, they’re getting in the way.

* * *

I’m off here in this void, exiled away from the rest of the world. Information just trickles down to me. No one tells me much of anything.

I’m sure that there is so much more in my family’s life that I don’t know about.

But to be fair, it’s not like I tell them everything either.

My life just goes on, day in, day out. Nothing much to report.

My day to day is the same as any other day.

I guess I just have no news.

No news is good news, I guess.

* * *

Exile.

I guess that was something I chose.

I moved down here with idealistic dreams, romantic notions. I was so young, so naive and such a dreamer.

Am I still?

I’m making an effort to keep in touch, to maintain some relationships and sometimes to make new ones, especially when it involves family.

Tis is life. My life.

This is how my world revolves and rotates.

All boiled down to my decisions.

We wrack ourselves up with our own guilt and our own voices and conscience, reliving our choices, hoping that we made the right one in most everything we do.

We are responsible for ourselves and no one, no deity, demigod, or otherworld spiritual presence is responsible.

Everything lies with us.

I make an effort with the ones I care for.

There is no guilt or regret there.

I try.

* * *

Trying to light up the dark

My mind moves in a slow haze, trying to find its way, connecting thoughts that once went so quickly, but not today.

My mind fogged by the copious amounts of alcohol I had yesterday and the nasty Freedom shots of vodka. In my opinion there wasn’t anything freedom about that. Nothing at all.

Yesterday for the most part was a blur, especially when I started to drink and had the shots in me. Before that, everything was fine, everything was okay; just the small chit chats of me being socially awkward at a party where I didn’t know that many people.

I tried. I did my best. The alcohol helped, but I hate the feeling after.

I shirked my responsibilities and didn’t get back to the dogs when I should have. One of the pups got scared. I’m sure it was Rocco. Paint shavings littered the carpet when I got home and a pee spot. Poor pups. I should have just gone home, but I was too drunk to drive. Blah.

Parties.

But overall, it wasn’t that bad. I don’t remember much of anything at all. Not sure how I came into conversations with the girl who was going back to Uganda for work. It was a long night and I went straight home and went to bed.

Long long day.

* * *

Slow.

Fingers are typing and punching the keys just a little bit slower than when it was full function. I can’t come up with thoughts in my head, I can’t come up with cohesive things to write about.

Just thoughts. Thoughts and thoughts.

Ugh, I’m just too old to be drinking like that. So much mixing. I’m smarter than that. I’m better than that. I’m just better than that.

No more. No more drinking for a while.

That bottle of wine in the fridge, it’s going to go in the sink.

Ugh.

* * *

Best laid plans / Are sometimes a one night stand

Smiling. Just a movie that makes me smile. Being Again. It just made me smile; the sweetness of the movie just touched my heart and not many movies as of late was had done that.

Not many at all.

Where we’re dancing in our tears

There’s his fucking young asshole who is sitting so close to me now. Fucking annoyed. He should just scooch a little over so he can be closer to the girl that he’s chatting with. Man up. Man up.

* * *

Music is off.

I’m listening to the conversation that is happening between these two.

Chinese movies. Jackie Chan singing. Mulan.

Just random convos by these random people.

Life is full of randomness.

Random.

I’m just rambling now. Just typing out words to just type out words like I need to reach a word quota for the day.

Am I getting close? What’s the quota? 500 words? 1,000 words? I guess I’ll see how close I get at the end of this hour and see how many words I get.

My mind drifts to eggplant and dinner and how to cook it. My mind drifts to food as I sit here kind of hungry, haven’t’ eaten something in about 24 hours. My mind drifts as it normally does.

Everything’s coming up roses

Ugh, it’s going to be a tough tough day for me. The day after of drinking so much. It’s almost as bad as weed. So slow. Brain moving in slow motion.

Saturday.

It’s just throwing me off, this whole holiday and three day weekend thing. I just don’t know what to do. Blah.

* * *

A break, why not?

Nothing here today is cohesive. I’m just free willy nilly chilly this thing today anyway. Might as well.

Obsessed. I’m obsessed with the music from Begin Again. Just obsessed and I can’t get it out of my head. Sure I am constantly listening to the soundtrack, to the songs to Lost Stars. Just obsessed.

I get this way about movies and books that just makes me feel, especially movies that come as an unexpected surprise. I had really no idea what I was expecting with the movie, but it was definitely pleasant.

I’m emo, I know. Blah.

Why is this fucking kid just fucking sitting right here next to me? Why?

Fucking personal space!

Such an off day today. Such an off day. Ugh. Alcohol.

Lots of ughs today.

Maybe I should just cook some rice and eat some of the braised pork belly I made yesterday, which was meant for last night’s dinner. Maybe I should.

Blah.

Prized writing today folks. Prized writing.