Your Regularly-Scheduled Cancellation
This vent has probably been a long time coming, but I'm in a particular mood today and I just got a bit of bad news that tipped me over the edge.
Over the last few... decades, I suppose, I've been taking on projects, we'll call them. Lots of projects. Big ones, small ones, and everything inbetween because I like to think of myself as a good guy. How does taking on projects make me a good guy? Because, generally speaking, I take on projects that try to help people and make their lives easier. I tutor for cheap or free if ever asked (usually when I'm paid it's because the person won't take no for an answer). I created, and am still working on, a (currently) 27 page spreadsheet to make character generation and management easier in one of my favorite systems (yes, 27 pages actually makes it easier than the usual methods). I'm compiling a pdf of houserules for the same system and, because I care, I'm actually making it look like a real rulebook. I review, give feedback, edit, and explain both the what and the why for all of it whenever I give it. I critique artwork for artists to help them improve their style (and I'm decently good at it too, if only because I grew up surrounded by artists of every creed and color). I write novels and stories and songs to entertain and to pay tribute to people. I'm available 24/7 by phone or text if anyone in my family or very small circle of friends needs anything, and I check all the websites I frequent multiple times a day, along with my email and Skype, so that I'm there when I'm needed. I read every. single. message that's sent to me, in any format, unless it's from a corporation or is obvious spam.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea: I'm a martyr.
Yes, I know. Haha. Tyr the Martyr. Way to be original, guy, but it's true. I sacrifice, and will sacrifice, whatever I am to help other people and to make their lives easier. I ask for very little in return, and with the way my life has gone, I expect even less. I've been through two house fires (one of which burned 60% of my body when I was two years old, and both before age 10), a tornado (in the middle of a mountain valley, which hit only my little dirt road, and only really damaged my house). It took over 60 surgeries to get me to nearly full mobility, and I still can't look straight ahead without extending my neck. I lost my birthmom to one of those fires, didn't know my birthdad until I was 14, and my total friend count (not Facebook, not chums or people I hang out with, but friends) has never been higher than 5, and even then it's been debatable as to whether or not they were really friends based on what happened. But that's all just life, that's just the background stuff that makes it so difficult when the work I put into doing the things I listed is dragged through the muck.
I just... sometimes I put an idea out there to help someone, and then someone else just tears at every little thing wrong about it without acknowledging anything good in it. Other people will lay their praise on the side of the plate, and then throw a heaping helping of "But this is why it all sucks" for the main dish. Most people don't say a word, and so I never know if it means anything to them at all. All I want is to put a smile on someone's face, to do some good, but I find myself lost in a sea of impassivity and scorn. I'm drowning.
I wake up and check my messages, nervous that someone, somewhere, will be invalidating weeks, months, and sometimes years of effort on my part by simply saying "This is dumb and unusable." I know I should ignore the words, but when there's so little positive feedback, and a mass of nothing else, it's hard. I've given up a lot of people in my life recently who only made my life harder, my work seem less meaningful, who cause more stress than they do happiness, but I have found almost nothing to fill the holes that other people have gouged out of me.
No. It's not all bad. Some people really do listen, really do appreciate what I do and what I've done, some people will give me the greatest compliments in my life just by saying something as simple as "This is really cool" or even "Thank you for doing this." There is light in my life and wonderful people in the world whom I really couldn't live without. I don't know what I would do without that handful who stop to say "You did a good job," and leave it at that.
Anyways, this is all really just a preamble. It's all the mountain of baggage I wade through every morning. It might even be a repeat of stuff I've said before here, but I'm just too drained to check through the older pages on this thread looking for what I might have only said in my head a thousand times before.
It's all just the stuff that makes the one class I was looking forward to this semester being cancelled a week before classes begin so hard to take. Apparently, almost no one else at my little college thinks Science Fiction is worth spending a few hours a week on. This mean I need to find a new class to fill the hole or I lose all of my financial aid, and I really have no idea what I'm going to do, because almost anything I take is going to ruin my work schedule now, and those that won't ruin my schedule won't be giving me any kind of credit I might need or want (beyond the obvious hole in hours).
I'm sorry for any spelling or grammar errors, and for any problems with flow or consistency. As an English Education Major I should probably care enough about this rant to go back through and check it, but I'm just so tired. I'm so bleeping tired... and it's only 1 in the afternoon.