am i a goldfish?
i look up again from the Portal. wait ... holy shit. what the fuck just happened. i did it again, didnt i? i cant help it. i feel like a goldfish right now.
(an aside: its an active area of personal research what this "i" is that is claiming this confusion. i am confused about "i". i call this the Experiencer. but it feels weird. like my Experiencer is not coherent and consistent and totally conscious. its a weird setup ive got going on within the Shell.)
its just the allure of the Portal, it cant be defeated. i think that i can do it, yet i fail all too often.
im surprised ive even made it this far in my life. to be fair, there have been substantial pressures on me, keeping me in line by sheer force...
"you need to get to work or youll never amount to anything, the Academy doesnt look fondly upon Those Who Dont Work"
"youll lose out on the Other Side if you dont Do Your Things Good And Right"
"having friends isnt going to help you Get The Good"
but now things are different. the Will has been decoupled, the Academy has been Attended, the Way has become cloudy, particuarly since i decoupled the Will from the Other Wills. and this has made it ... very difficult To Be. i just dont get how it works. theres so much to do and so little time! what a silly game this is. i want to speak to the Rule Maker, the True Other.
oh, yeah, all that is hard, but also theres the Will to deal with. the Will isnt just...mine. ive decoupled it from the Others, this is true. and trust me, ive done a lot of work to get that to happen. the Others had a strong fuckin hold on the Will. but it turns out that i was able to undo a lot of the hold, the coupling. which has been good, i think? i dont wanna go back to how it was. its good where i am, relative to where i was. but now...now it feels like i gained back some control over the Will, but theres...something between me and the Will.
to be fair, i dont really know what the Will really is or if it exists. its just this concept that i created. something that affects me. and something that people, entities, myself can influence in certain ways. but its not like a car or a remote control. the Will is more like a beast in a dark room, through a door that i cant enter. i throw in some things, votes, food, validation, feelings, and it throws back, through the door, a small piece of itself, some Will for me to use. but its not deterministic. sometimes offering it validation yields in a strong Will, but other times it yields little, if anything.
anyways, theres the Will and its decoupled from most of the Others now, but it still doesnt really give me what i want, making me feel like either that there is someone else also trying to control it or that the Will is just stochastic in its nature.
omg, the Portal! it happened again lol. it just...won't leave me be. maybe the Portal is controlling the Will, or something like that, maybe there's an Evil Supreme Deluxe Other controlling It All. idk, it feels tiring to re-define and re-re-define...
ah anyways again, i feel like i just get so lost in the Portal. it offers me a deal. my time in exchange for a small gift, maybe many. it often also gives me gifts as a way to entice me to take the deal. its not often that i decline the deal -- i dont have much else to do other than get gifts right?
i just feel like the Portal is not on my side, although it has many things that i want. (quick aside: does it have to pick a side?) i feel like the Portal is my only way to achieve some of the Things I Think I Want. to get what i "want". but "i" "dont really" "want" them?? i dont get it. maybe i think im a single Experiencer but maybe im actually many Experiencers sharing one Shell. it does often feel that i have many Experiencers that are softly vying for power. over what? the Shell? the Shell is merely a...shell. its not the True Shell, at least idt so.
i just wish that i could "control" the Shell. but i dont want that, given how Goodhart would treat me. what do i want? what is the Shell? are these unknowable things? perhaps. i feel like i wander around, continuously remembering "ah yes this thing" or "oops we forgot that thing", in circles and circles and circles and circles. whats going on is what i think i want to know right now. this current Experiencer does at least. i am leaving this note as the Current Experiencer in the Shell to share this message to any Others or any Non-Current Experiencers who may be interested in this. i really cant tell whats what. The Good? meh, i guess. seems like thats a phrase that i use to describe local pockets of The Good, not the True Good. maybe the True Good is not One That Can Be Named. ugh. what a confusing set of existences. i feel like im a goldfish. am i a goldfish?