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A good autumn morning to you, Brandon of 2026. How has the future been treating you? Did you thoroughly enjoy summer as you should? Hopefully things have been better than 2025 was. Not that 2025 was the worst year ever or anything, but it certainly was a rollercoaster of emotions. A year of significant change. Between graduating WMU, breaking it off with Carrie, Devon, reconnecting with Carrie, and dad’s divorce. With change, discomfort often follows. And occasionally disappointment. In many ways, I’ve gotten everything I wanted. I finished my bachelor’s degree despite insurmountable challenges, officially avenging my past self, my family lineage, and sticking it to anyone who thought I wasn’t worth the time. I have the easiest job I could realistically ask for, and have expanded our little archive quite a bit. I think we’re sitting around 1.3TB of media now. I would assume you are well beyond that. Tell me we got some sort of storage expansion for the laptop by now? (If ole’ girl is still kickin’, that is). Are you “done” in the sense I expected to reach by then? I hope with the bulk of it, at least. For as rewarding as it is, it’s a very consuming project, and something we’ve seen get out of hand with people on the internet. Remember that guy we saw on r/datahoarders that had over 500TB of data on his NAS because he was scraping every bit of media he could find? This man was scraping Tik Tok pages to build some sort of historical record to pass on to future humans showing the “downfall of society.” He thought he was performing some sort of social justice, when in reality when society truly ends, his data will most certainly be lost as well. Even if it was somehow recovered, how would anyone navigate something that large? How would they understand the context of it without intricately analyzing it on an academic level (just to find it not very coherent or useful anyway). Oh well, no sense ******** on him too hard, regardless of how ridiculously unlikely it is that his hoard will play any sort of cultural relevance during the end-times. He thinks he is doing something important, as we all like to. It’s all equally unimportant when the stars flicker away in the end. People like him have successfully preserved things of importance in the past, and I am grateful for their ‘spirit’ at the very least. As you likely remember, my current motivation is to preserve media that holds significance to me, for ease of access and as a record of who I was and what I valued at the time (as if anyone ever finds it or cares. I guess I am as pretentious as that hoarder, after all). I don’t trust corporations to preserve anything for the sake of artistic value. In the minimal sense they do preserve anything, it is only for the value they can immediately extract from it, and always locked behind an excessive paywall spread across multiple platforms, relying on a shady business model of predatorily syphoning endless dollars a month from those who’ve forgotten they have a subscription in the first place. But hey, that’s late-stage capitalism, baby. It brings me great ease and satisfaction to truly have these things I enjoy in a way that cannot be taken from me. Shows like Chappelle’s Show may not always be deemed “culturally appropriate,” and available to access. And I don’t have to dig through which service I need to subscribe to watch it. I’m not going to make the same mistake I did in 2013 the last time I made one of these, and ask “how is X?” because there is no reasonable point (and it was not good). Instead, I will only ask, “are you happy?” I hope you are. I hope you are feeling better than I am right now. In many ways I have a lot of optimism for the direction of my life. But in other ways, I am quite scared of what the future holds. I feel alone quite often, and especially at this moment. I feel more alone than I perhaps ever have. And I’ve been feeling it for quite some time. I’ve struggled with this to some extent as far back as I can remember. At least when we were young, I had the façade of friendship in the volume of people around me. Now, I feel a bit isolated. I’m currently sitting in the 1941 Stryker command center staring at these **** screens, and this is the atmosphere I work in night after night. Just me, the night, and empty buildings – which is great for reflection, working on personal projects, and physically absolutely cake. But I do miss the social opportunities of a normal job sometimes. I graduated from Western this year, which removed another facet of social interaction. Populated environments rarely lead to meaningful connections, but at least the possibility was there compared to now. Our family is very small. My friend group (and acquaintance group) is very, very small. I feel like a ghost, wandering the earth alone. It would mean the world to me if you found some sort of social outlet for us. Perhaps you work at a totally different place, in a totally different atmosphere than the loneliness that pervades now. Perhaps you are surrounded by interesting coworkers who value and respect you. Maybe there are opportunities to make a real friend where you are. How is human resources going by the way? Is it compelling and fruitful being the voice of the “little guy” against corporate? Solving issues, monitoring profiles, creating policies, endless paperwork, etc. I predict it is a solid mix of potential fulfillment and possibility wrapped up in a **** ton of monotonous paperwork, a fairly dry corporate atmosphere with at least one ******* boss or coworker that bothers you. Hopefully you are making more money by now, though. I may make less, but **** we will always remember how dreamy this security gig was. I’ve gotten so much personal **** done that would have taken me a lot longer had I been working a normal 9-5 job. It’s unfortunate how monetarily limiting this job is, though. Never could be a career for this pay… Unless I’m severely underestimating the value of my free time and should have just accepted my meager pay for how utterly stress free this gig is. How do you feel about that? Have you jumped careers yet? Was it worth the salary? You can always find another if you need to. Last night (9/27) is when our long-time friend Caitlyn revealed why we haven’t heard from her in some time. And on party Friday, of all days. Our last party day before Sober October starts! Gah, the timing of some things. But ****, man. That one really, really hurts. At first, I was incredibly offended. How a friendship of 17 years could be thrown away so emotionlessly for a guy. I wouldn’t cast her away forever for any girl. I know me and her commonly went years without speaking, but I thought our friendship was always implicit; that no matter how much time passed, that bond from our youth that was unbreakable. That she would always be happy to hear from me, no matter how much time passed. I don’t know why I let it get out of touch for as long as I did. I assumed she felt about me the way I always have her. Apparently at some point, that went away. Which is strange, because this isn’t the first time we’ve gone for years without talking. She had love for me in 2019. She had it in 2023 the last time we really spoke. Going for years without communicating and then picking up where we left off has regularly been our thing. We always seemed to pick up right where we left off, happy to be speaking again. I assumed it would always be that way. Perhaps that was me taking her kind nature for granted. But it’s not like I was the only one complicit in that pattern. The more I think about it, however, the more I consider it on a deeper level. The last time we spoke, she was divorcing her husband, David. She was in a pretty vulnerable spot, and making some odd decisions (that played a part in why we spent the last two years not speaking). I can’t help but think she was hurting more than she let on at the time. Maybe she really needed a friend, and I compromised that. I didn’t take care of her as a friend should. I let us slip into obscurity when she needed me most. Before she broke it to me that she didn’t want to talk again, she let it slip that her life had gotten much worse after then. She mentioned how it “felt like a lifetime ago.” I know two years is quite a while, but to me, it wasn’t a “lifetime” ago by any means, even with dramatic changes since then. I don’t know if that’s just my own relaxed perception of time, but she did very briefly mention a boyfriend dying… so that’s definitely an indication of why it felt like a lifetime ago – and probably just the tip of the iceberg. I should have been there for her in the right way. She needed me and I left her to suffer. I feel like I often treat the people I love as if I don’t. Perhaps if I worked harder to stay in regular contact, and reminded her how important she was to me regularly instead of springing it on her every several years, we would still be close. I don’t know. The primary reason she stated alluded to me being an ex, popping in and out of her life whenever I wanted, and how she is going to respect her current relationship by not associating with an ex. It is perhaps possible that no matter how close we were, she was always going to maintain that value once she got with this new guy, and that this outcome was the inevitability of a long-distance girl friend. There is a strong possibility that things could have been different, and I’m struggling to exist with the guilt of that possibility. The question ultimately stems from an inherent fault of my own. Part of why this is so difficult is the significance Caitlyn had on our life. Part of it is the timing of it all. And no, I’m not just talking about messing up a perfectly good drunken Friday night! I mean with me and Devon falling apart a mere month and some change ago as well. That one still hurts quite a bit. Does it hurt you still? For me, it’s still a solid 7/10 ******* with me, even though she was likely always going to be a “flash in the pan” spark of reliving my teenaged years through an emotional, bipolar bisexual goth freak. But I really did care for her a lot too. I had even finally tricked myself into thinking we were going to work right before it all blew up. Looking back on the chaos of our relationship, however, it seems I allowed myself to get sucked in too deep. Even still, I miss hanging out with her like hell. I wish she would at least text me. The fact that she said “you can always come to me if you need anything” and “I want us to work, I just need some time away” and “okay [I will find my way back to you]” being the very last things she said to me before spontaneously leaving me on read. Perhaps just another firm example of why she is not the most… emotionally viable person to settle down with. I wish I didn’t miss her so **** much. She had some **** fine qualities that I will miss. Nobody had ever showered me with that kind of excitement just for being mine. It felt really nice to be appreciated so thoroughly. This is my first true journal entry in years and I haven’t had the chance to talk any of this out yet, so you’re getting the rawest of it, bucko. Who knows. It was a heartfelt, but friendly “you mean the world to me” to Caitlyn that turned her from inquiring about my life, to “we can’t talk anymore.” The thought that’s currently haunting me is, maybe people typically don’t feel anything close to what I do for them, like I attach myself in ways others don’t and in ways that aren’t normal or healthy, and people don’t share the sentimentality I do for our history and what it means to me. Maybe I’m just too emotional and watched too many movies. It doesn’t sound right, but lately it feels like everyone I care about is a robot and never give a fraction of a **** about me as I do for them. Maybe I would have that, but I push everybody away because I’m a cruel, needy *******, and I’m such an ******* that I can’t even see how much of an ******* I am. I know that has certainly been the case in the past, but maybe I am only just now realizing how big of a ******* insufferable ***** I am. I treated Carrie like **** just to push her away very recently, because of how much has happened and how weird it’s felt being with her again, and how uncertain and scared I am. Maybe there is a reason I have nearly zero friends or family to reach out to. Maybe there is a reason Devon, Caitlyn, and even Carrie have fallen away from me. Carrie did say a big reason we broke up is she felt like she couldn’t make me happy and that I didn’t love her anymore. There is a lot to that, but I was disgusting to her sometimes too. God, I am in a severe pit right now, at the crossroads of social and emotional collapse, and I’ve been just burying it and burying it. This “hello from the past!” letter is more of a “God, please somebody listen to me and help me, I’m ******* struggling right now. ******* PLEASE tell me we’ve sorted some of this **** out by now!!” It's difficult not to absolutely scream this very moment. The Lo-Fi I am listening to while writing this is only marginally helping. I have to be a better person, or you might not even exist. Switching gears from that depressing reality into something less depressing, dad got officially divorced from Evie a couple weeks ago, (the 14th or so). And although that is inherently a sad development, it is an absolutely necessary one, and the beginning (I hope) of something much brighter. She was a massive source of stress, manipulation and torment for him. I’m sure she affected mine and his relationship. I’ve been worrying about him for years now. I’ve seen the stress she’s caused. I don’t know how he managed sobriety, to be honest. Now, at the very least, we don’t have to worry about a narcissistic succubus draining the life of our father. Now we just need to make sure he doesn’t start doing that on his own. I’m hoping for good news from you. I’m hoping you can tell me how much better he is doing, and how much better your relationship is now that she is gone. God, I need some good news right now. Many things in my life have been trending downward at the macro level, and I see myself circling a dark pit. The point of this letter is to show you where I really am mentally in this moment so you can compare it to where you are today. How do you feel about all the things I’ve talked about tonight? Do your feelings about anything from today surprise you? How much is different, and how much is the same? What is a part of your life now that I can’t conceive of today? I’d really like to know. Some things that I think would be really fun and would make me feel better: • Settling into a meaningful relationship. • Being a better friend and lover. • Building a good friendship that feels fulfilling. • Maybe adopting a cute little kitten companion?? • Finishing my Master’s, and getting a decent, well-paying job. • Losing weight, feeling healthier, enjoying more warm nights. • Journal more. This has been insightful. • Get the archive to a point that feels “whole.” • Make closure with one of the people mentioned tonight. Best wishes from the past, - Bdog 9/28/2025