dark room, window pressed against the leaves, drizzle, eurythmic hum pressing through the air. basinski, mad men, mission. two four years ago, in the library of demosthenian hall. it was around spring break and no one was there. very, very empty.

dt was alive but not active. sitting at that desk staring out, elijah craig in the ginger beer, "don draper makes an old fashioned." ginger beer cuz that's what my mom got us as kids, mad men because I was around suits and professionals for the first time. I knew to know how much I didn't know, but I really didn't know. a good bit of that was coming out of villa rica and being in suspension in smyrna, and so much of it was how much I forgot over the pandemic. wasn't present, wasn't ready, wasn't focused. the break I prayed for in february 2020 started a month later, and I wasn't ready for it to end until may 2023, my worthless ass. by the time I got back to uga, I didn't speak the language, especially not in the body, and I was still betwixt and between dirt. not a businessman, not a lawyer, not anything. all I cared and thought about was what I felt and could feel.

I wasn't ready for what I thought I prepared for all throughout high school, and that's why I was hiding out in that library. it was comfortable, quiet, resting in the resin of old architecture, more humane than modern. it was a place to mingle with history at a time when I wasn't ready to read it, much less write it. I was just reflecting on life and myself at the time, not the actual academic work. that's on me, not anyone else, and I'm not the type who gets that kind of luxury easy. I paid with time and opportunity, not money. I sat in myself those couple months and gave up the next three years.

a little more than a year after that, was at where I am right now, nearly. on the loveseat in this basement, windows open on the fourth of july. linux on the old laptop cuz the one I bought landscaping broke. stephanie mccurry, ash and christian, that paper I wrote down here in the puddle of time, drinking with travis/shane/sabrina/jacob. had no idea allllll the others that would end up down here. miracle. a weak, precious whisper of what once was of that basement in mirror lake, where all of villa rica swirled. missed it, but as I said, let that heartfelt drum tap tap out, got up and walked.

that's the sad part: it doesn't feel like growing up. there's no big emotional experience or payoff like there is with everything else. no fireworks or music, no neurochemical explosion. you just do it, just happens. at some point it's just life. this is shitty to say, but you miss the lows along with the highs. depression can feel like it means something, clocking in typically does not. you have to make it matter, and at some point along the way I did. that's the mark of having grown up. it's been three years since I graduated and landed down here, incomplete but at least degreed. nickel creek and the song about forever. whatever happened after that, I was gonna have to do. an old lament of mine about puberty and your late teens/early twenties is that even if you ain't doing SHIT, shit happens. things change, you change. after that, they don't. it's on you.

and here I am, at that point. these have been a very unremarkable three years. the year at the firm was Boring and very much empty, but I learned. the first year at candler was good, even in the moments it was hell. the second year has led to this. the extended moment I've been waiting for. spring break, which I could reasonably drag out to the eighteenth if I get shameless enough. maybe. we'll see. by that point, the green really should be on its way in and, maybe, I'll have an idea where I end up in the fall. more pressingly, if I get everything I need done tonight, I'll have the albatross of revision off. the research I have wanted but not been able to do. a story to tell, a future to imagine, an argument to make. which is what lawyers do, and what I have not been great at all these years. maybe this is where I can change that. speak the language I didn't know, my God, four years ago. like I said then, get it done. it's so close, and it can go so far.

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got done around the 28th and immediately had to start back. no writing, no existing. just getting it done. been a month since I turned the big one in and it feels like yesterday, and now the Big one might as well be next week. not enough time. starting to learn there never ever will be. push on.

dec 18 - what on earth made him say I can drown you with this shallow soul

dec 12 - vaporwave, nostalgia put to tape before it is even remembered, all that. perhaps. don't doubt that.

don't give a d a m n. when it's 3am, using little books as bookmarks for big books, it just fits. especially when it's instrumental work. nothing wrong with vocal sampling, but the crafting of aural space with just a damn (depersonalizing) synth board really seals off the room.

if it could just be 3am for three days. I'd emerge done.

dec 8 - there is so much shame in every jot and tittle that goes here or there, and not in the word doc. this circle never ends, sitting in my seventh circle setting something whatever the fuck I wrote in january 2020. I don't know how this keeps happening. I mean, I do, I've had so many other obligations (and admittedly have gotten a lot of other things done), but here we are in yet another december semester agony. it's really not even that much work. it's, just, I want to be done. and I've done so much already. I'm bored. I'm tired of putting life and culture in the periphery, in outer orbit. I'm tired of screening it away. but I simply do not have the resources to make it any other way.

I can't believe it's almost 2026. it is a very serious number. this year, we recognized ten years since we came together. 2015 was the transition year. we all started that year in veritable youth, waning adolescence that would not wink away until some flashing comet came. by the time the calendar turned to 2016, the gust had blown through all of us, and the levity was gone. business to attend to, to be perturbed by - to be the object and obstacle of. to be forgotten by. what is there ten years to remember since, much less of.

oct 31 - writing is writing the same thing again and again so you can write it differently

sep 9 - I never thought about “writing”, but I started a Tumblr account that quickly became a digital diary wired together with a few friends (rest in peace ... and ...). On this account, I scratched out my first foray into typographic thought. In early May, 2015, I wrote a post about how I was “really interested in something like history and science” and “want[ed] to become more than mediocre,” but was terrified of the “monumental task” ahead and wished instead to just be “a normal teenager.” Nonetheless, I kept it up, and from then on I probably wrote as much if not more on Tumblr than I ever did in high school.

aug 15 - this is the feeling. it's a desperate heart. it's wonder on the screen. the seven second synth is swimming in my head and my heart shivers. the kid inside never dies she just cries louder. it's cute - murder drones. sincere in the way only youth is: urgent and yearning like when you had never felt it but you still somehow knew it, instincts telling you what you're about to learn. it's cringy and I do not care. I cringe, and it's not just because it's cringy, but because I like it and it's honest and it's embarrassing to accept it. I like the energy and rapidity of the fight scenes, even if they're kind of bad. I like the awkward earnest crushes. it's ... and I on my dorm floor. it's ... and I landing on one another at a party in eighth grade. all that visual effusion just to paint your heart.

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may 24th - for sure
this is a draft. that's all it can be. it's something to do, to just start and put into a slot to get finished later. that's what most everything is now. I do get around to it (typically), but in a time span that feels inhuman, impersonal. another side of writing, it seems. my imagination has always treated texts like original, continuous, coherent, and perhaps even spontaneous blocks of natural thought and expression. I didn't know about the stuttering formation and configuration. I guess that's why I like old books more - writing's usually one.

sometimes there's what you're trying to imagine, get to, or just transfigure, and then there's what you just have to write. what's there and damming the pen until the point is clear.

everyone's at cannes. or they were. or harvard - law school - broadway - anywhere, again. we're at home. not again: never left.

april 4th - paris
I've been avoiding writing here for a few days: shame, frustration, confusion, distraction, inability. haven't gotten a damn thing done on these assignments even though I like the topics. I just flat out don't want to do it. I wanna run around outside. I want to see my friends. I want to make some money. I wanna go to sleep. spring's calling and I'm going to voicemail. it's feeling better right now, slow progress, and there could be a breakthrough coming, but for the past like week it's just been a block that I just haven't been able to get by.

it's sounded like undergrad. can't even fully articulate what that was yet, but it was new friends, shared spaces, happenstance developments. just there. just around.

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I look at my library and get sad. both of em. they portended so much and never were but so little.

iTunes. thhhirteen or so years of real work and continuity on it. scrubbed, organized, transported. brought for this moment and everyone in between. I loved music. - . every album was potential. it was to grow. it was a ticket. it was a conversation. it was a more rich personage and a better life. still like it. but it doesn't feel like that anymore. no community ahead to share with. no friends to make. no honesty. no why. I looked at those covers and had hope for what could be, what I had. now it's just what it is.

the books. used to have a few and it felt like everything. got a whole bunch and I know it's only the beginning of something that can and never will end. they don't matter and neither do I. ship sailed.

the gloom passes. it settles in now and then, I can look at the pictures and see the world and wonder, all that, but it doesn't stay. any number of things push in, typically friends, who I love and are still the inspiration of everything I am and dream. but. we don't all dream like we did. it gurgles and sinks. it doesn't all mean what it did. early days of giving up. I don't believe it. I don't want it. I want us and what we can be. god we need to be closer.

we need a home.

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third time writing about the lost blog. was careless with my computer, broke it, lost all the passwords on it, including the one to this account. now there's a forgotten password function on the site - thanks for that. back from the living, back from the neverdead.

I'm glad this account got lost for a time. it was the wrong one to do what I want to do on here. creager's a name, a person. you can remember who creager is, you can know what they did. for the other blog, it's just coldout, no one to stick that to. you gotta figure things out on your own.

the other account is longform and topical, and as much as I want to, it's hard to write there with regularity, which likewise makes it hard to be there with any regularity. that's a mailbox serviced by an amateur courier, an alleyway forum. this is me, as things currently stand.

I get it now, why xpmx cycled through accounts. eyes creep in, memories lace throughout space, and the thing really takes a life of its own, but only out of old pieces of you that don't keep track with wherever you're at. disconcerting when it starts to rot.

the style and tone will be familiar here. kinda can't help it. this "write a blog" screen shows up and I snap into old ways of talking about how to be new. I think I just haven't gotten over the fact that this space, which twenty years ago was revolutionary, is as antiquated as the telegram, if not more so. technology and culture aren't linear, almost nothing is. we didn't have to leave here, just like we don't have to get off the train, but we're not the engineers, and so our destination ain't our call. they should realize that this language, this culture, this existence ain't theirs, either, but they build an oceanic bubble of cruft and craft that no one other than them can parse through. I do too, but I'm honest about it, which is good enough.

for the purposes of m46, this is me. said it twice to make it real, not sure I've ever done that on here: been real-time. might not be real fast, but I'm here. you can comment on, message, interact with my other accounts however you want to. maybe I'll be in character, maybe I won't. will have to see what happens. this spark's old. flashes aren't supposed to linger, so they age quick. wasn't supposed to get this far. not supposed to think this hard. no, that's your job.

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