Current mood:	depressed
Current music:	'Behold The Vastness And Sorrow' by Wolves In The Throne Room
Entry tags:	concerts, dream theater, grandpa, life, music, writing

Lately, I have started to really take to my writing again - as I suppose may have been apparent by the fact I am back to posting daily. It's been at the forefront of my fight against boredom and loneliness; it certainly served me well back in my early teenage years when I felt similarly socially isolated and shy. I am really looking forward to the start of the new university year and yet it is still over 1.5 months away. The Christmas holidays are agonisingly long. So I've been writing fiction again to fill in my evenings, and for once I feel like I am not writing total garbage. I remember when I was 13 and I dreamt of being an author. Now there was a pipe dream. Far too many people have pretentions of being an author, while far too few of them have any actual talent. So now I just write for the fun of it and just try to hone my skills - it will be helpful later when writing academically, and it refocuses my mind and has its therapeutic qualities.

I'm also rather looking forward to the Dream Theater concert that is a fortnight from today. Given their history of never coming to Australia before, I am incredibly happy that they are coming here and I am trying to avoid looking at the setlists for their current shows in Asia. I want to be surprised, and I also would rather not know if they are doing The Ministry Of Lost Souls and Prophets Of War - if I must have twenty minutes of my life wasted on that complete crap, I would rather not be dreading it beforehand. I just wish they had come here on the previous tour. I've looked fairly extensively through the setlist archive on Mike Portnoy's website, and I think the last tour had some of their best sets, while the current one has some of the worst. No doubt part of this impression is created by the predictable presence of songs from Systematic Chaos. I found that album to be more than just disappointing. Ah well, at least they play for 2.5-3 hours, so over two thirds of the show should be quality music.

Moving topics completely, the news at the moment seems to be so tremendously depressing. I've tried to write entries reflecting on various events but it all ends up in the same sort of pondering and asking "why?" Maybe it's just my state of mind that I'm feeling things more acutely than normal. I find myself turning the television news off in disgust increasingly frequently. Visiting news websites almost feels like a chore. And then of course I turn to my personal life only to find Grandpa has not been doing spectacularly the last week. He will hopefully be receiving treatment to make him more comfortable this coming week, as long as he is capable of travelling halfway down the South Island to receive it. It's too hard to accept the fact that there will not be a cure or even a considerable improvement in his condition.

So it'll be another birthday plagued by worry about a family member's health. Lucky me. No wonder I have been immersing myself in fiction, whether it's writing my own or reading that of others.