Vlandorn

Well hello there deviantART. It's been a long time since I last wrote a journal, but this morning, I feel the need to splurge my feelings onto the internet. This morning is monumental for me as it is the first morning I have woken up in my new home. That's right, I have finally moved out of my dad's house and am living with a friend. I know my last journal (from just under a year ago) was possibly the bleakest thing I've written on here and it centred around yet another big fight with my dad, please do not worry, this move is of my own accord and not from the war between me and him.

So, here I sit, just finished a cup of tea on a Saturday and no longer a child living at home. The rest of my life lies ahead of me and I am prepared to embrace it fully. 2013 has been pretty difficult though, some heavy family stuff that I won't go into has dogged me since the early months but now that is, at long last I might add, moving towards a conclusion and being finished, but aside from that one negative thing, life has been picking up.

No longer am I unemployed. I have a job and I have a direction for my life. For the first time I know without a shadow of doubt just what it is I need to do with my life. I've always wanted to make a mark on the world, not for egocentricism but for it being the one feeling I've had about myself I've known to be true. Now, I know how I need to do that. There is, and has always been, one thing that I love more than anything else and that is the participation and creation of fictional worlds in all regards. From reading to acting, from tabletop roleplaying games to playing a Final Fantasy, these worlds that are new and different and exist outside of… well, us. Hanging around with my new housemate before actually moving in with him has helped push my mind into thinking about who I really want to be. These past few months have been some of the best of my life. I say that with full honesty.

The story itself is, I feel, truly incredible. A demonstration of the coincidence that is fate. Me and a friend were going out for a drive one night, the friend asked if he could invite someone else from where he worked so I said yes. This person was my to be housemate. We got along well, with similar interests and intelligence and I came away from that meeting feeling that he was the sort of friend I've been ready to have all my life. So, we solidified our friendship, and through him I met another person, an artist who is happy to work with me on creating a graphic novel. Yet again, the coincidence that is fate.

And so, I moved house and now I life with my best friend. Who is designing a video game. That I am helping with. I'm finally feeling like my life is going in the right direction and, more to the point, like I know what direction that even is. I want to create worlds in any and every form I can. I want to involve myself in the demonstration of fictional worlds in every way. And I've never known that until recently, I've always been certain I wanted to act or to direct films or do this or that and it never occurred to me that it was my narrow-mindedness that was why I could never settle on one path and why I lacked the commitment to any one direction. This though, this is what I was born to do.

I even rediscovered how much I love to read through my housemate before he was my housemate. I lent him one of my favourite series, The Demon Cycle by Peter V. Brett if you were interested, and it really cemented our friendship and that in turn reignited my spark for reading and my appreciation of it. I think actually, it was my hype of how good the series is to try and persuade him to read it that helped me focus on how much I love worlds in general and how I want to be a part of the creation of them.

So, on that note of triumph, I will sign off from the journal. The end of an era and in turn, the beginning of one. The rest of my life begins now and I will make every single second worth it.

Sam Aitken, over and out.

Right then, I figure that after such a kind and warm hearted response from my last journal, you guys deserve to hear what's happened. Me and my dad talked it out. It wasn't easy and it took a long time, but we pushed through the shit. I feel like we've finally resolved some of this, and now we don't have this awful gloom hanging over the entire house. I'm not being forced to move out and things have actually started to look up, I came to a realisation about myself and how I am, especially in fights with my dad and we're moving forward.

After our talk we ate and just chatted. It felt really good to be able to shoot the shit with him again, like I was being reunited with an old friend. I'm really grateful for that, he's not just my dad, not just my old parent, he is my friend. We hung out and juggled and discussed redecorating my room, something I've been talking about for ages and I'm finally going to do it!

I feel like I'm coming out of a dark phase, like I'm shining a light on the parts of me I'm ashamed to look at and dealing with it. I am changing, I am growing, I am becoming something better than I was.

And thank you to everyone who commented on my last journal, your words really helped, and I'm so lucky and grateful that I have friends like you guys who I can count on;




(And )

Thank you all so much. Seriously, I can't say it enough.
A new improved Aitken, OUT!

So yeah. My dad is a magnificent cunt. I'll briefly fill you in on the details;

Last week, I come home from work, really worried because I apparently got a customer complaint for the day before (where I felt ace and on top of my game all day) and my boss made an aside comment that I might need to find a new job. It worried me all day.
Dad was away for the weekend at a show and comes back on Sunday night (when I was told about the complaint).
He asks how my weekend was and I tell him about the complaint. I continue to say that I'm really worried about it because my contract states that my employers are able to dismiss an employee without any prior warning and vice versa (we can quit whenever). My dad, genius that he is, immediately knows what I was going to say next and begins to answer my problems.

Of course, he got it all wrong. He says that they simply can't do that. They can. It's in my contract.

And then wouldn't let me explain to him what I meant or tell him that he was wrong, because of course, he knows everything I'm going to say next before I do. And one thing led to another and boom, instant fight.

We've left it till last night, when he suddenly comes out with "We're going to have a conversation about this" and doesn't let me converse back. Makes sense right? It's been awkward all week but it always is a bit after things turn south, but nevertheless, I continued with what I had to do, I made sure the house was nice and clean, I cooked, washed up and generally made things as easy for him as I could, what with him having to get a clock rushed out by Wednesday. Turns out, he didn't get the clock finished by Wednesday. Or Thursday. Heck, he only got it done today.

Regardless, today I go over to the workshop to ask what he planned to do for tea, because if it was easy and something I knew, I'd cook it, but then that leads into another forewarning about this "conversation" we are going to have. It's all stuff I've heard before, but still I listen, if a little annoyed. He says he's going to run it both now and tonight, something I accepted last night, over and over and over, as if repeating it will make me accept it even more. Finally, he stops and I begin to say something that has been bothering me about this whole mess all week, that it's funny how I've been blamed and isolated by him all week when what started the whole fucking fight was that I had a problem that he wouldn't listen to. Turns out, a minute of silence between us means he's still talking and suddenly I'm interrupting him. No chance for me to defend myself and he comes out on the attack, saying that I'm dominating the conversation. Yeah, I know, funny how things go around huh?

Of course, this pushes my buttons, especially when at the start, I just asked a simple question of whether or not this will be an exchange of views and open dialogue, or whether I'm going to just have to listen to what he thinks I did wrong. Guess he answered that one, eh? I begin to lose control, I'm not happy that I did, but I did. I started quipping back with sharp attacks of my own until it goes all out shouting between us. He keeps claiming he's going to run the conversation in one breath, when in the next he states that I'm dominating the conversation.

Now that, that really gets me. That simple duality. It pushes me over. He opens the door and asks me to leave and as I'm walking back over the road to the house, he opens the door and casually shouts, "Start making plans to move out."

So fucking great. Yet again, he punishes and pushes me away because he can't accept that it's not just me fucking up. It's both of us. I accept that it is me more than him, but the fact that he just denies his involvement and paints himself to be an angel or a saint is not on. I'm 19. I barely have a job and hell, I don't even know if I've got one to go back to tomorrow, and he tells me to move out.

FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU YOU STUPID FUCKING ASSHOLE!
FUCK!
YOU!

Wow. Sorry that wasn't all that brief after all. I just needed to get this off my chest and here felt like the only place I could. Please do forgive me, I'm only human.

If anyone has taken the time to read this all the way, thank you, I do appreciate it.
Aitken out...

Here's something, an idea that came to me. It's inspired by a friend who ran a Naruto forum game, with a proviso on joining with a high powered character that you have a low powered character, a Genin at the Chuunin exams. It was a good idea as it meant you could watch as your character grew from being weak to being awesome but still keeping your super badass awesome character.

I wondered if I could port that idea into Bleach and I think I can. Instead of Genin, I have Unseated Officers, maybe straight from the Academy. No Bankai, no mastery, just low ranking Shinigami. Give the positions of Captains to people who already are applying with an Unseated Officer so that when the low power characters rise through the ranks, they are actually promoted.

I'm not fully sure how it'd all work out, I'd need to go over the kinks, but I think the idea has potential. I'd like to know what you think, those precious few of you who like Bleach and my ideas.

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