Life has been strange lately, but I suppose that is a paradox.  I have a sinking feeling it's strange because it is moving so fast, and if that is the case then it isn't strange at all - it is life.  What is strange, in the case described above, is the reality I previously regarded as life.

In any respect, I've left my "rut" (which is an inaccurate term, as the connotation is clearly negative when I was really quite fond of my rut).  Where I'm sitting now is somewhere between inspiration and depression.  The two, I've come to realize, are strikingly similar.

For one glorious month I was on cloud 9, perhaps even cloud 10, though that is pushing the bounds of my memories of happiness.  In love, making decent money, getting my stuff done in school, and even game making was going smoothly.

Then all at once it collapsed in on itself like the infinetly cliched house of cards it was.  The shit hammer of heartbreak and diploma exams occuring simultaneously, compounded by a terrible suicide and some insomnia/nightmares for good measure simply derailed and flattened me in every respect.

I'm getting back on track now, though it is slow going.  I feel like the only obstacle to recovery is my own pessimism, yet I can't seem to push it aside.  One voice inside me wants to retreat back to my "rut" (there's that word again), but a second wants to kick the first's ass.

And now I feel terrible for reducing Shawn Noel's death to a footnote in my pitiful rant versus life.  He deserves better, but I am not the man to provide it - I won't pretend to have been his friend.  I'm not sure who it was that didn't give our friendship a chance, but the only glimpse of him I ever caught was brief mumbles of text via AIM.  I can only hope that in whatever reality follows the present one, he finds peace.

-YMM
Watch the weather change.