Autumn in Hell

Few people know this, but for years I've obsessed over the classic computer game "Doom."

In case you don't remember, "Doom" is a run-and-gun game in which the player must escape the denizens of Hell, battling to survive while exploring strange surroundings and looking for a way out of the nightmare.

Over the years I've learned how the game works from a designer's standpoint, and found excellent tools for creating new maps, monsters, and so on. The above screen capture is from a project I've been picking at this week, a map meant to look Halloweenish and evil, as though it were Autumn in hell. Trick or treat! Senseless carnage, reflexive hand-eye coordination. I love it.

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Later that night...

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It is fiendishly late and I still can't sleep. I miss my friends already, though they just left a few hours ago. I used to be such a hermit, bent over my desk night after night, no visitors.

What happened? I guess the right kind of company makes these things easy. For the first time in my life I'm feeling receptive, and I have an urge to tell my closest pals: "Hey, the door is open! Come stay for a few days, work on your art, your reading, whatever. Escape." Sometimes I feel it would be only natural to form a pack of sorts, sharing food and lodgings, sleeping in a massive pile like lazy lions. I am a better person in the company of my good friends. I like to have 'em around.

Like most people, though, to be truly happy I do need a room to myself and a door to shut behind me. Every day.

But even so, most of my conscious life's been cloistered: reading and writing and studying and learning the guitar and learning to sing and learning to compose. These things eat hours like candy. Finally I'm learning to balance it out, to mingle. It feels good. But I fear the Autumn, fear the words "Farewell Summer," because when the leaves are falling my mates may all be gone out-of-state where I cannot see them. But I'll write them letters, at the very least.

Letter writing is miserably underrated. It's much like keeping a journal, but more interpersonally productive, more communal.

Alright. I have a nine-hour shift ahead. It begins in four hours.

Goodnight.