My First Autumn

On my last update, dated late August, I spoke about focusing on overcoming the depression I’ve long struggled with, and that’s what I’ve been up to since these past months — keeping myself busy by working, doing some silly memes here and there, and by pushing through the final version of Sword’s draft after putting this passion project on hold for roughly three years.

Presently, I’m close to finishing the final changes to chapter 9 out of 12. I’ve been fine-combing things, fixing a lot of grammar mistakes I committed in 2020-2021 to the best of my ability, thus making things easier for whoever ends up editing it. I didn’t do major changes to the plot, but I did fix a few plot holes here and there, such as shuffling locations around so certain events make more sense and what have you. Dialogue between characters is much more improved now, I’d say.

Despite how rather lengthy this novel is, its message remains the same: Fight for what you believe in, fight for your friends, family, loved ones, even strangers — fight to protect all of their smiles.

I do expect to finish this final draft by the end of the year so that I can, at last, now that I’m out of Venezuela, start looking for an editor and do all of the other stuff I need to do before publishing it.

The isolation and depression do creep in every now and then, and I still get short(er) bursts of relapse still, such as last week, which I’m still working towards curbing in its entirety. I’m rather behind on learning Italian because I’ve spent much of my free time on Sword and other things instead.

I’ve consistently continued my DDP Yoga six days per week, only skipping a couple days when I caught a cold earlier this month and a day earlier this week when it was too cold for me, as I usually do them in the night after work — so what I’m doing now as of yesterday is to do it in the morning while the sun’s still up right before work instead. 

I’m still fat, not gonna lie about that, but I’m down almost two shirt sizes, which really helps me feel better. I’m probably at a point where I need to do more than my normal routine to lose more weight (which is kinda my plateau right now), but I’ll keep pushing myself.

Now, when it comes to my brother, he’s been doing significantly great these past weeks, something that has made me most happy—like you have no idea.

He’s become much more active and engaged in normal day-to-day activities such as cooking, to the point that, for the first time in his life, he’s been cooking his own meals. He started with something simple as hot dogs, and now he’s all the way to preparing simple pasta sauces. I still cut the onions and all other stuff for him, as his hands aren’t that dexterous, and help him by supervising or giving my input, but he’s far more independent in this regard, which is simply amazing.

Earlier this week he surprised me by showing more initiative. He took a premade salad we bought, and added some tore toasted Bread rounds to make pseudo-croutons. This might be normal to some but given his mental condition, the fact he took this “out of the box” initiative is huge, something he wouldn’t have done a couple years ago.

A few weeks ago he went to take a haircut alone on his own for the first time, using his (much better than mine) self-taught knowledge of Italian to get an appointment, go the next day, get his haircut, pay, et al. 

He’s been quite diligently with Duolingo and other tools to learn Italian, and is far more ahead than me. I tried to entice him to go with me to Italian classes in a nearby town on Saturday mornings, but failed to convince him — perhaps it’s because its kinda hard for him to wake up on Saturday mornings, especially in this weather. 

My depression bs aside, seeing him this active and outgoing these past weeks has been amazing and is definitely helping me keep going. At the end of it all, everything I’ve done these past years is for him to have a better life.

Can’t say I’ve done anything new, fun, or interesting these past weeks other than my normal routine and working on Sword. We are in a small town and most of the people living here al elderly men and women — much like our old place in Caracas, where most of my remaining neighbors were elderly. There aren’t many common interests between us, so it’s not like I can talk with them about… I don’t know, video games, anime, the latest shitpost meme, or what have you.

I still struggle to form coherent Italian sentences with my limited grasp of the language, so it’s not like I get to have full length conversations about other more normal or serious topics either.

All that stuff aside though, we’ve been going through some much-needed quiet and peaceful days. To be honest, I’m not used to this tranquility at all, as in some ways I’m still somewhat in a fight-or-flight state, given all that went through over the past decade of my life or so.

But hey, I even got myself an actual comfy computer chair, something I haven’t had since 2019 when my previous and very old chair became too worn to keep using. My fat ass hasn’t been this comfy in years.

When it comes to Venezuela, though, I’ve just been rather distant of it all other than family drama and some neighbor bs, tl;dr neighbors were bitching at my cousin because she left some stuff within the boundaries of the apartment’s parking spot that she’s planning to give away (under my permission).

In what is another small world moment in my life, because of that neighbor drama, a former neighbor of mine and I found out that we’re relatively close here in Italy. Like me, she has dual Italian citizenship, and moved to Italy some years ago. Had a rather pleasant talk with her, she was always good to my mom and grandmother.

As for the country’s serious political situation following the sham of the July 28 presidential election — which Maduro plain outright stole — I don’t have much to say that hasn’t been said before, so yeah.

The beliefs that I’ve maintained for over seven years still stand, even after the recent events. The continuation of the Venezuelan crisis was, is, and continues to be good business for several groups of interest across both sides of the country’s political crisis, so as long as that remains true, it’s even much difficult for Venezuelans to oust Maduro’s authoritarian socialist regime.

I’ve been meaning to finish a draft that touches upon that subject as a “finale” of some sorts, if only to sort of close a chapter of covering life in Venezuela, as I no longer live there.

Regardless, there’s also the fact that I’ve just progressively disconnected myself from a lot of things, Venezuelan included, and focusing more on my own things. I’ve always maintained the notion that there’s not much I can do for the country, if at all — but I could, perhaps, if God blesses me with the means, help people individually with their projects and dreams, in the hopes that they can pay it forward, and so on.

I also need to hit it big so I can enact my master (but expensive I guess) plan of avoiding autumn and winter by tactically traveling around avoiding cold weather, lol. 

Should I ever have that kinda money, I’d prolly just visit the Southern Hemisphere when autumn begins in the Northern Hemisphere, and then go back to it during spring, something like that. Who knows, maybe next year I’ll be more used to the cold.

Would that I  have more interesting tales to tell about these past weeks, but not much has been going on around here, which is also a blessing, honestly.