[check out this post on my personal page, where it looks better]

It’s been a few months since a switch flipped in my head and I suddenly didn’t feel like writing fiction anymore. I only act to satisfy my subconscious, so if she wishes to focus on anything else, that’s what I do. To a certain extent, I’ve felt relieved. I was under the pressure to perform, even though virtually nobody read my stuff. I suppose it’s related to the ingrained need to provide a service, a product, regularly, or else you’re worthless.

We men are the slaves of society: invisible drones intended to serve tirelessly until we grow too old, resented the moment we show weakness, abandoned the moment we break down. Our value tied to the quality of the last thing we provided, a value that depreciates very fast. If you cease providing, you may as well be trash that someone should pick up and throw away. Remembering all those years of writing chapters, the feeling I got when I posted the next one was something like, “I finally deserve to relax for a while.” And I always give my 110% on the things I care about, so I put an insane amount of hours into writing my stories, the sort of effort that wouldn’t be feasible if I had anything resembling a social life. I recall plenty of cases in which I could only finish a single paragraph in a whole writing session that may have taken three hours.

Was it worth it? Well, I don’t feel much in terms of accomplishment. It certainly wasn’t monetarily rewarding. It was also humiliating to see authors, some local whom I knew personally, that objectively were far worse writers than I, promoted in newspapers, called into radio shows, and seemingly being able to make a living through writing, while my stories only caused me trouble. I do have the memories, many of them far stronger than the lingering remains of stuff that has actually happened to me. It took me about three months to write My Own Desert Places, my first novel in English. I have a vivid memory of seeing the female main character walking down a cobbled street in Hondarribia, seen from behind, her brown hair swaying as she clutched a binder, heading to a writing course. She never existed. I remember going to a patisserie in Donostia along with a French secretary and a Paleolithic child, where we stuffed ourselves with delicious pastries. That never happened. I have grafted into my heart griefs of things that happened in my stories, of people lost to accidents, of dreams ruined, that make my eyes water whenever I recall them, even though none of that ever happened.

What does it all mean? I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m forty years old, I’m insufficient as a human being, my body is a disaster, my brain is an even worse disaster, and I’m beyond exhausted. I don’t want the life I’m living. I need a change of scenery. I want to be where nobody knows me, where I don’t feel responsible for any living soul, and I can simply sit alone in a room and be myself. But it seems all we’re meant to do in this shitty world is work and work for money that is worth less every passing month.

We used to enslave ourselves because at least you got something of value out of the pain: usually a family of your own. But I’ve never wanted to burden anyone with my genes. Even if I did, that would be a terrible idea, as I would be an incompetent father. But even if I could be a good father, nobody would want to have children with me. So I guess I’m just going through the motions until my body breaks down completely.

On a lighter note, I’m working daily on my programming project! I originally envisioned it as a browser-based platform to play adventure games, immersive sims, etc., in a chat format. Given that I’m a hedonist, it has turned into a complex, very powerful platform to create erotica, relying on large language models to act as the other characters. Got to enjoy my fetishes through it. Constantly coming up with ideas for it, to the extent that it never feels like I could take a break and show the current state. I plan to make a video about its features, with the faint hope that someone else will want to add code and content to the repository, content that I will be able to enjoy myself.

Anyway, thanks for reading, I guess.