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Some family surprised us with a random visit this weekend. I spent the entire weekend with them, that being my uncle, aunt, and cousins. We wpent most of the time eating, sharing stories (mostly them, not me), and I showed them around town. They loved just driving around and admiring the scenery. I often forget just how beautiful it is out here, especially at this time of year. I only really leave the house to go to work, so the seasons, days and years, pass me by like pebbles on the side of the road most of the time. Where they live it's mostly brushland, so our vibrant, big green trees everywhere seem like a marvel. It's so rustic and quaint out here, that I imagined it must seem like some kind of RPG starter village out. Like a more forested Shire hidden out past the urban jungle hell of Mordor. They're used to concrete and steel, while much out here is stil brick, mortar, and wood. How easy it is to take peace and quiet for granted.

There was a tinge of melancholy to my family's visit. I was happy to see everyone, it had been a while, and everyone's doing alright, but it struck me when I saw my uncle- for the first time in years. It had only been a few years, but since then my grandpa had died, among others, and I finally took notice of the gray in his hair, the lines on his face, just how old he really looked. I remember being a little boy, playing with him as a munch younger man, younger than I am now even. His hair was a vibrant brown, almost orange, then- even the darker stubble on his chin had more color somehow than it does now. He had a much fuller head of hair, long and curly, tied back in a pony tail. He himself admitted he couldn't pull that off now. He talked to my mother about retirement, about his old body beginning the slow process into total failure despite his efforts. It hit me well and truly for the first time since I lost grandpa that he too would not be around forever. My time with him is limited. Indeed, my time on this Earth is limited. One day, sooner than I could possibly hope to imagine, I will have to say goodbye to him for the last time. Him, my mother, my aunt, and many others. Hope though we may to the contrary, time is not a boss monster you can kill with the power of friendship and believing in yourself.

But I've never concerned myself with the defeat of time. There are far more tangible, human beasts out there to defeat. That hideous Leviathian we at the CTRL call "The Committee" or "The Organization".

I sometimes feel like a child playing pretend when I talk about The Committee, or CTRL, the BKS, any of the things we talk about on the CTRL/Schizopunk website and associated projects. Like I'm just a deluded, chuunibyou riddled loser playing at mad scientist knight. I've always felt like there was nothing I could do. Only just recently did I start to see myself as at least the person who brings the truly talented people together to try to do... Something. Anything. Whatever they want, even if not a single ounce of it puts even a dent into the Committee's slow marching, crawling chaos. Maybe out of the chaos of their lives, their imaginations, their work... Something can emerge that well and truly bring the fight to the mad bastards running our world into the ground. They can do something, but me? I'm not special, I'm nobody, I can't do anything but bring like minds together. Though I've been getting better, I think I haven't really been able to see myself leaving my room ever, only maybe shifting where "my room" is on this Earth. Changes of scenery only really as "changes of what I see out my window". Not as chances to learn and grow.

I say all that because one of the more neccesarily uncomfortable, consistent conversation my family had with me were that they want me to do something. Anything. Right now I work a basic, shitty customer service job that pays minimum wage. They don't think it suits my talents. I have a hard time believing I have any, but ever since I was little I've apparently been "The smart one". I know a bit about a bit, and don't get me wrong, I have a lot of interests that I love learning about, but of what use is knowledge of feathered early Cretaceous tyrannosauroids adapted to colder northern environs or that electrically charged particles confined to regions without magnetic and electric fields can still be affected by electromagnetic potential? All this means is that I read a lot. Anyone can read a lot, most just choose not to. That I remember much of what I read has always been seen by my family as some kind of magical "sponge" ability, that this means more than that I just read a lot and am genuinely interested in what I read. I'm glad they seem to believe in me so much, but it also frustrates me. I know I can't live up to their expectations, especially since I never have before. It's always been "you're so smart, yet you can't do this basic thing" since I was a little boy. I can't even do the simplest things that they all have been doing since they were preteens but yet they also expect me to be able to do what even they claim is "the impossible".

They want me to go to school. For anything, whatever I want. They suggested potential jobs like museum curator or something or the sort and all I could do was just smile and nod. Sure, maybe I could do that, but do I want to? Not really. They said I could be a teacher, either a science or history one. Could I do that too? Sure, but I really don't want to do that. Smile and nod. That's all I could do. I get they're just looking out for me, I get they don't want me to work minimum wage service jobs for the rest of my life, but what else is there? I don't personally see much difference between being a teacher or librarian and my current job. Maybe working at a museum or something could be cooler, sure, but I hate how everything is oriented to talking to random people who probably don't care what I have to say about anything. Could I become an actual scientist or something? Sure, maybe, but what's the point in this day and age? Your real job as a researcher isn't to uncover truths about the world we live in, it's to pump out papers, to find the results sponsors want you to find, to be a mouthpiece for the Committee. I don't think there's any field that hasn't been reduced to grindset paperpushing profitseeking. Don't publish a billion papers a year regardless of their veracity or reproducibility? Eat shit.

What do I want to do? Paleontology? Archeology? Particle Physics? Cybernetics? I want to defeat the Committee. I want to free the world. Of course, I couldn't say that to my family.

Recently though, I've been distant observer to a few things. A friend of mine went off on a several year excursion to the Far East to both learn and teach, and not long ago my knight errant set off to the much closer but still far off Coastal East. One to face challenges he feels are pertinent to him that he can learn and grow from, and another to seize an opportunity to have both the time to practice and grow in his craft as well as lighten the burden of some unfortunate debts. Before my amphibious friend set off on his turning point quest, we had a talk about why to took on his undertaking. This years long excursion is just the second or third phase of an undertaking years in the making, and according to him he did it simply because what he's learned over and is going to go learn over there are simply things he had no experience and/or skill in. They're new and challenging things and he wants to take them on for that reason alone. It's a mindset I really admire, even if I don't really share it. I wish I could be like that, but I am nothing if not self-doubting.

And yet, not just my family but all my friends to believe that I'm brilliant. Talented even. That I have so much potential that I'm simply just wasting. Wasting away in my room doing nothing. A friend of mine even stated that I'm perhaps one of if not the smartest person he's ever met. The only woman I've ever truly loved; the brilliant, talented genius unlike any I've personally ever met also thought the same, much to my surprise. No, I'm sure she still thinks that.

It's thanks to her that I found it within myself to keep moving forward at my most stagnant and depressed, that I finally started to believe that even if I'm not much, even if I'm nobody; a nobody can still move things ever so slightly in a better direction. That's why I founded the CTRL.

Maybe there's something to what she sees in me, to what they all see in me. Maybe I am more than think, more than meets my own eye. I used to think that I could get somewhere, but only if pulled to those heights by my fellow knights. Recently though my amphibious friend and the CTRL's resident archival autist put it to me that as the hidden face of this organization, it's health and success is as much my own personal success and health as the sum group's. I have to set a direction, not just for the CTRL, but for my own life. I only have so much time, and if I want to even begin to see my goal to defeat those who think themselves worthy of managing the world, then I have to use that time to build the skills to do so. To build the CTRL, to build the small, invisible rebellion against their falsely constructed consensus reality that will need to be built to last beyond me.

I've butted heads with the frog before on the neccesity of that. He's asserted that the neccesary changes in consensus could take eons. I'm greatly uncertain that we have eons to spare. We may not even have so much as half a century. It's depressing, and demotivating. I mustn't blackpill though. As previously stated elsewhere: blackpilling is the mindkiller.

It was perhaps providence, but nonetheless serendipitous that I also finally began the 3rd season of Mushoku Tensei this weekend. This show and story is near and dear to my heart. It was in conjunction with the encouragement of my genius companion that this show helped me begin to believe than even someone such as myself mattered, that I could change things, this world, for the better. Just by being alive. Just by being me. Just by doing what only I, in my time and my place, can do.

Season 3 begins us with the perspective of the 3rd main heroine after she seemingly abandoned our main hero, on her quest to the land of the Sword God to seek his guidance in becoming a stronger swordswoman, worthy of standing side by side with Rudeus (the show's protagonist). Most of my life, despite my lack of belief in my own skill and talents, I must admit that much everything in my life has come easily to me. I've rarely struggled to pick of what I've needed to in life, and most of what I haven't been able I must also admit, against the credit of my family; they've simply done for me out of annoyance.

I think maybe I need to go out of my way to challenge myself, to take on those things far and away from my wheelhouse, for the betterment not just of myself but the CTRL. So I can add more to it, bring more to the table, have more to say that could be of use, of help. But most of all, I want to feel like, if things were different, I could be worthy of standing side by side with her. I was always confounded about what that meant, she was already, and likely still is, so proud of me. I know she felt I could stand side by side with her, in her own way, and indeed I think she probably wanted to catch up to me in certain senses, mystery though they may be to me. But I realize now that the key to solving my conundrum isn't somehow trying to build a me she can, if we meet again, be even more proud of than she already is; I want to show her something even more amazing. A me I can be proud of.

I think it may be about time to start my own quest, that maybe a turning point is upon my own life as much as everyone else's. I hear the UK has some programs that may be of suitable challenge, and my stepfather brought up something about a studying abroad program in Norway not too long ago. I've always wanted to go there, and while I'm not to fond of the current status of Airstrip One, I can't lie that there is ample opportunity to well and truly establish a British CTRL there. We'll have to see. The horrific thing about tomorrow is also the most wonderful thing: it always comes. My whole life it feels like I've been living in stasis. Life on pause, waiting to finally return to a homee that's now unrecognizable, sulking over love never found, lost at most in potentiality. I can't live like that, though, and I know she wouldn't want me to keep sitting here sulking over her. She always wanted me to keep moving forward, despite it all.

I know everyone's been worried about me. Mom, my uncle, my aunt, my friends, my lab mems. I'm sure even she occasionally thinks about and worries for me. So I won't go on living on pause anymore. There's no going back to how things were. I can't go back home to restart me life from 1st grade as I always felt my life should have gone. I can't go back and say the right words, do the right things that maybe could made me and her into us, and I can't bring back grandpa, and say to him all the things I regret never saying. But I can do more than say those things, I can live them, I can become the man he wanted me to be, I can go out and have hope the connection between her and I forged isn't wholly unique and there is another wonderfully brilliant woman out there just like her I can forge and even stronger, closer connection with: I can have faith in the me she saw, forge the potential she saw in me into a realized, real thing. I can restart my life right here, right now. All I have to do is open my eyes to the opportunities around me, and not be afraid to take them. It's easier said than done, and admittedly it's hard to see a loser like myself in my much more succesful and well adjusted lab mems. It can seem like a no brainer, of course they're capable of much more than me, but I shouldn't think like that. It may be just a story, but that's the value in them. I'm obviously not getting reincarnated into another world, but the point still stands. Even a loser like Rudeus Greyrat was in his former life can get a second chance at it. It can be as simple as reaching out

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