In highschool I wrote a story about a middle-generation of stellar travelers. Their parents were born on earth and left as children, and the middle generation will not live long enough to see their destination. They live their entire lives on the ship and I wrote about them trying to find their place in everything. They will never know blue skies and warm beaches and open fields with warm breezes. Theyâll never know birdsong or crickets or frogs. Theyâll never hear the rain on the roof of a dreary day. I never could find the right way to end the story. I wanted it to be a happy ending, but I didnât know how to do it.
I realize now that it was a book about me dealing with depression before I even knew it. Looking back at how blatant the projecting was, itâs obvious now. It wasnât then.
In the story, the middle-generation people are lost. Theyâre apathetic. Theyâre just a placeholder. The only job they have is to keep the ship running, have kids, and die. As the middle generation of people began becoming adults, suicide rates were skyrocketing. Crime and drug rates were jumping. This generation was completely apathetic because they felt that they had no use.
In the story, a small group of people in the middle-generation create the Weather Project. They turn the ship into a terrarium. They make magnificent gardens and take the DNA of animals they took with them and recreate them and they make this cold, metal spaceship that they have to live their entire lives on into a home. They take what little they have and they break it and rearrange it into something beautiful. They take this radical idea and turn the ship into a wonderful jungle of trees and birds and sunshine.
And I realize now how much it reflects my state of mind as I transitioned from a child into an adult while dealing with depression. You always hear âit gets betterâ and âwhen youâre older things will be easierâ and I was so sick of waiting for it to get better. I was in the middle-generation stage. And I was sick of it. I was so sick of waiting.
When I was in highschool I didnât know how to end the story. I didnât know how to have a happy ending. I didnât have the life experience then to finish the story in a meaningful way. I didnât know how to make it better for these middle-generation characters.
But now that Iâm older, Iâm learning. That if you sit and wait for things to get better, it never will. You have to take your life and break it apart and rearrange it into something beautiful. You have to make the cold metal ship into the garden that you deserve. You have to make your own meaning. You have to plant your own garden.
You have to teach yourself that being happy is not a radical idea.
God you guys I never thought this would become so popular đą I was gonna name it The Weather Project after the art installment that inspired it
Autumnal views from the postgraduate room in the library, where it is so warm and quiet and I am daydreaming about all the lives that have been lived in this neighbourhood
My list of 5:
1) Sneak out in the middle of the night with someone you like. Drive to the middle of nowhere to simply watch the stars and the moon from the roof. Talk about the universe & everhthing in between.
2) Draw. Sculpt. Or write. Put your tangled thoughts into art. Show it to someone or hide it under your bed.
3) Put yourself first sometimes. Do what you want even if people tell you otherwise. Wear the clothes you want & listen to the music your heart desires. Don’t fall under pressure of pleasig others.
4) Spend 1 or 2 hours alone everyday. Go to a coffee shop & sit by the window. Bring your favorite book or look at the people surrounding you.
5)Go out at night. Dress up for once and make sure to feel beautiful and classy. There is just something strangely exciting about looking like you’ve got it all together but deep down you’re a nervous wreck.
I love them so much because theyâre about as sharp as a baseball and their anatomy is ridiculous to the point of them literally being classified as plankton for years because they just sort of get blown around by the ocean and look confused, but because they lay more eggs than ANY OTHER VERTEBRATE IN EXISTENCE, evolution canât stop them
Why is no big predator coming and gnawing on them?
Their biggest defense is that theyâre massive and have super tough skin, but they do get hunted by sharks or sea lions sometimes and they just sort of float there like âoh botherâ as it happens
Even funnier, because they eat nothing but jellyfish theyâre really low in nutritional value anyway, so they basically survive by being not worth eating because theyâre like a big floating rice cracker wrapped in leather.
So basically the only reason natural selection hasnât taken care if them is because they are the most useless fish
yes, theyâve perfected uselessness to the point of being unstoppable
a true inspiration
I bet they are secretly thinking some big fish thoughts.
“I am so afraid of disappointing the people I love, I often forget that I am someone I love too. And I need kindness just as much as I believe the people I love do.”
If you live in the US, you should not be freaking out about nuclear war with North Korea in a “we’re all going to die” way. DPRK has one rocket that can reach the continental US, it’s barely gotten functional, and they have no warheads small enough to be carried by that rocket. They can theoretically hit Hawaii and Alaska, but Hawaii is a small, long-range target and Alaska has very low population density, so attacks there would likely be ineffective.
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t be freaking out about nuclear war with North Korea. It’s to say that you should stop being so fucking self-centered about it.
We’re not going to die. If we nuke North Korea, we’ll wipe out thousands of noncombatants, just like we did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even in an “ideal” outcome for that first strike, where Kim goes down immediately, his military apparatus will retaliate — against South Korea and probably Japan. This hypothetical nuclear exchange will kill millions of civilians who, surprise surprise, live far away and look sort of not-European. Then we’ll spend the rest of our long, non-incinerated lives bickering with each other over whether it was cool of us to start that fight.
If you want to speak out against Trump’s nuclear bullshittery, don’t bleat “we’re all going to die.” Yell “no atrocities in our name.”
