I've felt a weird sense of panic ever since I've stopped wanting to die. Like I want to make sure that my life is as documented as possible. The Epsilon Project is a big part of that. The blog is to conquer my perfectionism and just write. The repository is to make sure my old work doesn't go to rot.

I can't help but think about what would happen if I unexpectedly died. Because I have no idea when I will die, none of us do. I could have a long life and die at 89; I could get hit by a car when I'm 47; I could be kidnapped in two days; there could be a cure to mortality and I live for a hundred thousand years. I've tried to leave letters behind in case of my untimely demise but I keep procrastinating on it.

I think this is also a reaction to a realization of my unproductivity. I often think about what I've made in the past five years. Hold up I can literally list it for you. Music: an EP of five songs, plus an electronic album. Writings: three awkward short videos plus an odd school newspaper opinion piece or two. And I think that's about it. Like I've tried to think about it for like 10 minutes and I can't add much more. Except the mountains of school work that I was forced to pump out. I seriously think that the work that students do should have some significance, either to them or to their community. Because this crap that I was forced to do in high school has not been looked at since my teachers skimmed over them to give me an A minus or B plus: not extraordinary but not bad either. Of course my standards are different from others.

I was thinking about putting some of this school work onto here but I'm not sure about the possible legal ramifications? Like would that be helping people cheat? I wouldn't give the prompts, I don't think. Some of this stuff is actually pretty good. I started with my poems, though that's a different story altogether since it wasn't really graded or prompted.

Let me just clarify real quick that the stuff I write in poems and in song lyrics is not necessarily a reflection of what I feel or think. I make shit up half the time. It's either just more convenient or the made-up stuff just hits harder. It's mostly exaggerations rather than straight-up lies. Like in “Take a Seat”, the refrain “don't worry” is not what was going through my head during that period. Actually I was kinda being a pain in the ass to my loved ones because I was not holding back with what I told them. I was at a really tough spot and I felt that it was the only option to rely on other people. That “selfish” decision saved my life. I feel an immense amount of gratitude towards those people that helped me. But “don't worry” sounded more edgy.

I feel this same panic with the songs I listen to. I have so much music that I've put in my mega-playlist on Spotify and no one knows what I think about those songs. Like there are certain songs that have so many emotions tied up with them. I also have tried to make a playlist called “The Vault” with all my favorite songs, but as I've added and removed songs over the past three or four years, it's only gotten harder. I've realized that preference is not just quantitative, it's qualitative too. It's multidimensional or something. Or it's not even dimensional at all, it's infinite-dimensional. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely songs that I like more than others, but there are also songs where I can't decide whether I like them more or less than other songs.

For example, I love the album SOUR by Olivia Rodrigo. I think it's one of the best debut projects I've ever heard, it's a zero-skip album for me. But I couldn't pick a favorite song. I could tell you that my favorites are “drivers license”, “deja vu”, and “favorite crime”, but then I'll relisten to “jealousy, jealousy” or “1 step forward, 3 steps back” and I have to reconsider where I draw the favorites line. And to ask which is #1 among those, that's impossible.

Or 30 by Adele. That album was so good, but it's definitely not a no-skip album. Once I hear that bitchass kid on “My Little Love” — skip. But that album sticks out in my memory and so I wanted to add a song from there to my favorites playlist, but for the life of me I can't pick one. For 21, that's easy: “Somewhere Like You”. 25: “When We Were Young”. 19: I actually don't know, there are a couple that I like. For “30”, I like all of them, apart from my skips.

I have to remind myself that no one cares about me as much as me. I'm not a narcissist or anything like that, I'm just enjoying my life a whole lot more and I want to share that enjoyment. But I think about how much I care about other peoples' lives and I definitely don't want to know all of the intricate details. I want to preserve details about my life for my descendants, but I don't give much of a shit about my ancestors. I don't know how much people listen to my music, but they don't think about me or analyze my music the same way they think about their favorite artists. I'm not disappointed in the slightest — I mean it's actually a little bit of a relief that they don't do that because I can't imagine giving that much energy in return to everyone close to me.

But I would die to have someone give an in-depth review of my music. I don't want it for the validation of a positive review (I actually don't think I would get a good review, like I don't think my music is bad but it's definitely not like 10/10 worthy or anything). I want the attention and analysis that they give to my work. The lack of such a review reminds me that all the attention that I give to my work will not be mirrored after I die. That's sort of a sad thought.

I remember looking at my reflection in the mirror as a 3 or 4-year-old and thinking about why I was living, what I was meant to do. My conclusion was that I was placed on this Earth because I would either be super famous, like a famous singer, or be super smart, like Albert Einstein. I've since realized that mundanity is actually ok too. But there's still a part of me that wants to do something significant before I die. I want to make something — some idea, some work, whatever — that will long outlive me. Again, it's a reaction to death.

I wish I was dumb. I wish I could do nothing and not think about how I was wasting my life away. But I'm at least smart enough to be absolutely miserable about the fact that I'm gonna die and leave nothing to my name or to this world. I also think about solipsism and how I could be freaking out for nothing and nothing is real anyway and I should just enjoy myself in the moment. But I can't prevent myself from thinking about what I'll think on my deathbed — if I'm lucky enough to have one — and what my life was.

You know what this is also a reaction to? I was in the closet from 11 to 18. SEVEN YEARS. I can't help but think about how I wasted that time. I can hear someone saying that I didn't waste that time, that I needed that time. Or that the time I came out was the right time to come out by nature of me coming out then and not before — the result is the evidence itself. But I definitely procrastinated a little bit, and now I'm 19 and have never loved someone who loves me back. I fucked it up and I will never get a redo.

So I really don't know what I'm supposed to do. Maybe I'll be on my deathbed and realize that I don't give a shit what happens after I die and I wasted THAT time. Ughhhhhhhh

There's a related conflict between what I feel I should do and what I want to do. Like I want to paint my bedroom walls a darker color but I know that it will make the room smaller and there's the possibility that I won't like it more than how much I don't like my room color now. And then I'll be stuck with it for who knows how long because I'll feel too guilty to start the whole process over again because I would be a spoiled ungrateful wasteful careless person. But I know if I don't do it I'll regret what could have been. At least in the hypothetical scenario I will know that I'm stupid, but if I don't do it then I'll never know. So I decided to do it.

Anyway it's late so I'm done writing now. You know I would hate to die in my sleep, like that's the worst way to die. I'm not gonna knock on wood because superstition is stupid and jinxing isn't real.